A public service announcement

I'm 56 years old, and I have an appointment on Friday for my annual skin check, because melanoma is not something I want to have to deal with. Whether you are 16 or 56 or 76, please don't mess around with sun exposure. If something on your skin doesn't look right, have it checked out. And if you've ever had a blistering sunburn, make an appointment like the one I have on Friday. Your future grandchildren will thank you.

Tell me you've never done this.

I can't tell you how many times in my life I've been convinced I have cancer. The infected hair follicle that I was convinced meant I had leukemia. The headache that lasted 3 days that had me convinced I had a brain tumor. Ovulation pain that had me convinced I had ovarian cancer. For someone who hates to go to doctors, I've sure put up with a lot of anxiety to avoid going to them. And meanwhile, I come from a family where we're so mean the Goddess does't want us and keeps us here a long, long time. My mother has survived 18 years after lung cancer surgery. You know what the 5-year survival rate for lung cancer is? 15%. And Mom is still kicking 18 years later. And still smoking. I'm serious. Don't fuck with us, because we are made out of tough stuff.

So after obsessing about cancer my entire life, what do I do now? Work on oncology clinical trials. Don't ever let it be said that the Goddess (or Jehovah, if you like) doesn't have a snarky sense of humor.

So after watching Marc Maron on Conan at the top of this post (actually not pissing off the right, more's the pity), don't you dare tell me you've never gone through exactly what he describes. In fact, tell me about when you did.

Messin' With The Kid

One of the things I had to do as part of the mountainous learning curves of my current job is to become versed in the jargon of oncology. Terms like RECIST, CTCAE grading, various forms of cancer classification, are now part of my daily vocabulary. I don't like having to look at the data from oncology trials, because the minute you look at the data, the 40 or 50 patients in an early trial become actual people -- people with cancer, usually advanced cancer, looking for any hope at all.

And so it was with a particular form of dread that I processed the news that former Mets catcher Gary Carter has been diagnosed with an inoperable, aggressive, stage 4 glioblastoma.

If you weren't a Mets fan in 1985, it's hard to relate to the excitement that fans had at the news that Gary Carter was coming to "our team." Frank Cashen, one of the smartest baseball guys ever to serve as general manager of a ball team, had hit upon the right formula for building a winning franchise -- grow talent from within, and anchor that young talent with solid veterans who still had a few good years ahead of them. Keith Hernandez was the first of those solid veterans, who came to the Mets in 1983 in the Great Neil Allen and Rick Ownbey Swindle. Carter was the second.

Carter was the yin to Hernandez' yang. Hernandez was smart, intense, aggressive. Carter was just as smart, just as intense, just as aggressive, but he covered it all with a smile that made you feel as if the sun had just come out on a rainy day. There isn't a player active today who plays with the same sheer joy that Gary Carter did. There was a reason they called him "Kid." You always had the sense that he'd play even if they didn't pay him.

Mike Lupica, on Carter in a play in game 6 of the 1986 World Series that is now all but forgotten in the drama of the Bill Buckner debacle:

Carter was the first one up with two outs and nobody on and the Mets about to lose the World Series to the Red Sox. This was Gary Carter, who helped make the Mets legit the way Keith Hernandez did before him, who had to keep Game 6 and that Saturday night and the World Series alive. Tough out.

This was Gary Carter, the catcher that year, already on his way to the Hall of Fame but now having gotten the stage in New York after all his years with the Montreal Expos, who was down to his last strike against Calvin Schiraldi, the Red Sox closer.

And in the quiet of the Mets clubhouse later that night, long after Saturday night had become Sunday morning, Carter repeated something he had been saying since one of the most famous baseball games ever played in the city of New York had ended.

One last reporter asked Carter what he was thinking when he stepped to the plate and he said, "I was thinking that I wasn't going to make the last out of the World Series."

It was the same thing he had said to first base coach Bill Robinson after Carter singled to left off Schiraldi and started the greatest half-inning the Mets have ever played. And in the excitement of the moment, Gary Carter might have used the kind of language we never used to hear from him in the clubhouse.

"I wasn't making the last out of the ----ing World Series," is the way Bill Robinson used to tell it.

Gary Carter has always been the nice guy, the affable guy, but that affability masked a will of steel. I hope that will of steel, and the outpouring of love, prayers, and support that have come from all quarters in the wake of this terrible news, serve him well as he deals with a therapy that is still all about burn-and-poison, because there just isn't anything else to do.

We'll be here in the stands rooting for him. Because when you're a Mets fan, you're used to having your heart broken, and our hearts are broken today. But just when you think all is lost, they pull off a miracle.

Gary Carter has already been part of one miracle when his team in 1986 managed to pull out a win no one expected them to, in the bottom of the 10th. Who knows? Maybe, just maybe, The Kid can pull off another one.

This just seemed appropriate

I myself have always been fond of this:

Not sure what else to say...

Is it any wonder that fictional people are becoming more appealing than real ones?

I'm starting to find myself recording ever more things on the DVR. I used to try to limit myself to two series at a time; maybe Dexter and Lost; or Nurse Jackie and True Blood. Do I really want to find myself on my deathbed wishing I'd spent more time watching television? This means I've missed some really great series, like Rescue Me and the first two season of Mad Men.

But when I go to the supermarket and think "one in five of these people think Barack Obama is a Muslim terrorist", and I look at Sharron Angle's and Sarah Palin's lunatic eyes and think that these are major political figures; when I listen to news that isn't NPR and it's all the frothing about Lindsey Lohan, as if they can't wait till a young actress' problems finally put her in a grave so they can say "How could such a thing happen?", the fictional characters of televised series begin to seem far more appealing; even the evil ones, like the deliciously deranged Russell the Vampire King on True Blood. I've even picked up Mad Men this season.

What ties my watching together is that it increasingly seems to be a theme of "women on the verge of a nervous breakdown." It isn't that these are fragile flowers in need of protection; it's that the women of television, armed as they are with awards and nominations (Edie Falco of Nurse Jackie with three Emmys, two Golden Globes, three SAG awards and even more nominations where she DIDN'T win; True Blood's Anna Paquin with an Academy Award before even reaching her teens and a bunch of Emmy nominations; and now The Big C's Laura Linney, with a slew of acting awards for the films You Can Count On Me, Mystic River, Kinsey, The Squid and the Whale, and the HBO series John Adams. And that doesn't even include Weeds' Mary-Louse Parker, because I don't watch Weeds.) Even Mad Men has sucked me in, not because I give a rat's ass about the scumbaggy advertising executive at the center of the show, but because we're starting to see the women begin to get an inkling that there just may be more to life than getting coffee for men who don't appreciate them, and as a result, we're seeing some damn fine performances from the actresses on this show behind their sheath dresses and beehive hairdos. The problem with Mad Men right now is that the cultural upheaval that's coming has never translated well to fiction (see also: Taking Woodstock) without looking absurdly silly, and I'm skeptical as to whether this show can handle it either.

But both cable and broadcast have become a haven of sorts for award-winning film actresses on the far side of 40, and while it's somewhat disturbing that being a drug dealer, a pill-popper, or a woman with cancer, seem to be the only way that a woman over 40 can be interesting in the world of television (at least since Lois Smith as Sookie Stackhouse's lovingly hip and tolerant granny was dispatched in True Blood's first season), when the alternative is to be Courteney Cox on Cougars, we'll take what we can get.

I was particularly looking forward to The Big C, mostly because Laura Linney could read the stock listings in the Sunday New York Times and have her face reveal a universe of emotions, but also because with Oliver Platt and Gabourey Sidibe also on board, how bad can it be? And it's not, but there's something about The Big C that's troublesome. It isn't that it's taking on cancer; cable has done this before, when Emma Thompson grabbed cancer by the balls and shook it like a terrier before expiring with dignity in Wit. And it isn't about being funny, because sometimes laughter really IS the best medicine. And it certainly isn't about being self-limiting, because there's something to be said about even a great show having a finite lifespan (I'll be back to this after we see serial killer/police blood spatter analyst Dexter Morgan be the only husband in history to not be a suspect in the death of his wife on Dexter this season). But while I'll continue to watch The Big C because of its great cast, I won't like myself for doing it.

The biggest problem with this show is the idea that you can somehow keep a cancer diagnosis from your family, especially from your children. This is about the most selfish thing that a person with cancer can do. There are people who are going to still be around after Cathy Jamison dies, and while I'm sure this character wants to be a wild and crazy gal before it's too late, there's something profoundly selfish about hiding this kind of information. This isn't a question of choice, or of self-empowerment, it's about what you owe your children. And no matter how much Cathy Jamison wants to turn cartwheels in the hallway of the school where she teaches, and no matter how much of a sullen asshole and practical jokester her son may be, she owes it to him to start preparing him for life without her. And it isn't about teaching him how to clear a clogged toilet, although it's clear that this kid's father (Oliver Platt) isn't going to do it. It's about giving him something to hold onto after she is gone and only memory is left. And throwing him against a wall and saying "I'm going to raise you so hard it'll make your head spin" isn't the way to do it. Because THAT's what he'll remember.

The other problem with The Big C is that it's just too twee. Lone Scherfig was able to pull this off in Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself (review) with the right balance of pathos and humor, but there's something self-consciously adorable about The Big C, with its quirky eco-warrior brother and the insistence that Cathy's education about the value of just living one's life doesn't extend to Gabourey Sidibe's character, who seems to have already learned that lesson but the show feels a need to make weight loss her goal anyway (kind of an odd choice when dealing with a movie about cancer).

The other part of The Big C that's uncomfortable is how eerily it mirrors the real-life struggle of Salon writer Mary Elizabeth Williams, whose own recent melanoma diagnosis makes Linney's quirky character somewhat less compelling than she might be otherwise.

Still, in a world where stupidity has become the primary currency of real life, it's hard to blame some of us for preferring to step into a world in which women spouting witty repartee can be celebrated instead of spending too much time in the real one, where women who can do nothing but blather incoherently are regarded by the media as qualified presidential candidates and other women spouting the kind of crap that we used to associate with crazy homeless people may receive up to 50% of the vote in a Senate race.

Meet President McCain!The Real Danger to Come From All of This Nonsense.

I'm juggling drafts here at the Rooster Ranch and while most of the incoming stuff seems to be of the Hillary vs. Obama variety show, in which the democrats once again shoot themselves in the foot while working out their very dysfunctional childhood tragedies as the repugs sneak in and blow up the Acme surprise box. Look, I know that they've had shit for candidates on the other side, but at least they have coagulated around one turd. Maybe its the batcrap craziest of 'em, and the one least able to maintain his facade, but so be it...the rub is the presentation by the huge advertising machine that has it's big gears turning underground as I type this. While we squabble about tit and tat they are getting ready, as usual...and as usual, we are locked in battle with ourselves.

From the Daily Kos "writer's strike," (h/t Skippy) where Hillary supporters feel overwhelmed by hate comments, to just about every mainstream media outlet, the story is the big fight between the 2 rarities that the democratic party has managed to put up for scrutiny. The story goes that the world will end if one or the other candidate becomes the general favorite and we are all caught up in the spectacle until WE become the story; the split party! This thing has reached the narcissistic stage, and I, for one, am gonna refrain from taking sides until we get to the general or unless something is real news. I'm also gonna encourage all democrats to do the same. Vote in your primary and then shut up except to go after the republican candidates in all races. The party needs to take the reins and stop the insanity now. Until they do we are in danger of a McCain Presidency. There is nothing to see here folks; move on by.

I'll talk about McCain, the general election, other races, and any real news that comes down the pike about Clinton or Obama (and I don't mean he said-she said,) that is progressing towards a conclusion to the primary season, but otherwise, I'm finished with the argument about who would be better for the country. The truth is that John McCain would be disastrous, and I'm frightened enough to want to urge the democratic party to get a move on so that we can all get behind one candidate and stop the McCain machine. If a miracle happened and John Edwards came roaring back with a billionaire backer, I'd be right up front carrying a sign, but its not gonna happen so... back to reality:

President McCain.
Lets all ponder the concept of that for a while. The fact that he is dangerously wrong on the issues is one thing...Oh, maybe he is better than Romnuckabee on one thing or another, and maybe he is a little less planet friendly or less pro-choice here or there, but the main problem that we have from the get-go, before we even begin to sort out the niggling things about spinning into the sun and who is really a real conservative, is the fucking war! McCain's issues page, "Iraq Victory" subsection begins with the following:

A greater military commitment now is necessary if we are to achieve long-term success in Iraq.

He doesn't mean have a draft and then send in a quarter million troops and get this thing over with...no he means the same old crap of trying to train the security forces there and stay until they can totally take care of themselves in a democratic way, whatever that is when filtered through the Haliburton/Blackwater government that's been in charge.There is really no need to read further at this point because there are just too many active and former military specialists who have been saying that our military is stretched too thin and that we cant possibly continue like this, much less start another one. The fact that McCain seems oblivious to the very real problems faced not only on the front lines of this war, but stateside, should be enough to make any thoughtful American reconsider a vote for McCain. The fact that the war is impacting our economy in such a devastating way is more cause for worry, and for the more self centered of Americans, that should be enough....see, even if we currently don't have to make personal sacrifices for this war, the financial difficulties caused by it are going to find each and every one of us on one level of another. If gas prices are bad for the average American now, just wait! $4 per gallon is right around the corner, and with it comes higher prices for everything that relies on fuel. The truth is that under a McCain presidency, or any Presidency that will continue the existing war and compound it in any way, we will likely be forced into a draft, a war tax, and sacrifices the likes of which we haven't previously seen. If this war doesn't touch you now, it will shortly. In order to follow McCain's plan we have to have a draft.

McCain admits himself to being a bit weak on economic issues, even as he tries to tap dance out of that admission, while at the same time aligning himself with the dawn of Reaganomics. Its enough to make your head spin.


A quick look at McCain's own issues page, reveals a troubling pattern of corporate economic incentives that seem to be more of the same old thing. He pays lip service to tax cuts for the middle class, but what is apparent is that his focus is still on the trickle down, but does not address the loss of jobs to outsourcing and the CEO payout. How does McCain think that the health care system should be reformed? Increase competition between providers, of course!
Its all some sort of fantasy, as far as I can see; promises that don't have any concrete plan. How would one increase competition between medical providers exactly? In what world can you mess around with the content of provider's care in medicine without serious regulation, (the type which that McCain is completely against...or is he?)

With a 10 percent corporate tax cut and the dream that it will result in a raise in American wages, (complete with footnotes!!)McCain is all over the place. Cut, cut, cut...and where is the money coming from as we fight on in the middle east until we're victorious? Add to that his pie in the sky plan to strengthen our borders and stop illegal immigration, with some nod to America being some "shining city on the hill" to the rest of the world, and NO PLAN.

Its all there, or not there, as I've said, and we don't have the luxury of letting another crazy work out his mommy or torture (take your pick) problems on the country. Americans who insist on believing the unfounded line that we can somehow pull off a victory in Iraq, bomb Iran, and/or somehow help Colombia with their growing problems, without a huge change in our current lives, are dreaming. The fact is that our version of "help" tends to create more problems, unless we begin with a quick hit and run plan, and a huge amount of troops. We also usually throw alot of aid in immediately, as I recall from previous strikes. There is no doubt that we have created more terrorists with our "War on Terra" just by how it has been carried out, and that we are in much bigger danger from the toll of continuing our activities in Iraq than of the terra itself. Hell, if some other country did to us what we've done to Iraq, I'd be joining the rebel army myself!

If the idea of a full blown depression and a broken military doesn't give you pause, try this:

John McCain agrees with retired Army General Jack Keane that there are simply not enough American forces in Iraq. More troops are necessary to clear and hold insurgent strongholds; to provide security for rebuilding local institutions and economies; to halt sectarian violence in Baghdad and disarm Sunni and Shia militias; to dismantle al Qaeda; to train the Iraqi Army;

So, I'm assuming that this is on top of the surge troops that are "working."How long have we been trying to train the Iraqi forces and clear and hold strongholds? This is a war without end, and the longer we stay in it, the more we self destruct. There is hardly a passage in McCain's Issues section that doesn't spell some sort of destruction of whatever American way of life is left when these wingnuts are done with us. Instead of Issues, why not call them Delusions?

Deluded is what John McCain is. He has some incredible deficit in his emotional control, with that about to blow persona, and who knows what resentments are hidden there after his failed election bids, not to mention his actual real-life torture, that he seems to use when its convenient and dismiss when its an issue of possible mental health concerns. Any of us can Google this and get many, many different stories and ideas about McCain's fitness to take the highest office in this
country, but it seems like it is very obvious that he is someone who does not have a good grasp on his emotions some of the time, and perhaps that should be something that we consider carefully.

I suppose that it would be politically incorrect to say that McCain also has cancer. Malignant Melanoma is an aggressive and deadly form of cancer, as the the New York Times reported when McCain had his first major relapse in 2000. According to statistics, melanomas caught in stage 1 or 2 can be cured pretty easily, but later stages along with thickness/size of tumors and recurrence sites, along with the general fitness of the person, make the survival rates fall. This is measured in 5 and 10 year increments. Because McCain is someone who has had recurrences and those recurrences were spreading of original cancers along with new cancers, it may be impossible to figure out his exact chances for long term survival unless he comes out and talks about it beyond the "I'm cured" line. He may be "cured" of those particular cancers, but he really cant say that the next one, and there will be a next one, wont be more aggressive that the ones before. I guess I'm saying that the republican party had better look hard at McCain's running mate...harder than usual.

The folly of running John McCain for President is something that we dems haven't had a chance to revel in because of our own problems. At some point we have to set aside our differences and start chipping away at this guy. He is so full of faults that ...well, I imagine still that if there is a way to hand the election to him, we will...but lets surprise ourselves, one soul at a time, and turn away from the propaganda about the left and towards the task at hand.

Welcome to the general election, in which we are at war with John McCain, and our candidate, whoever that may be, is as good as we can do right now...lets get to work!


c/p RIPCoco

But don't even look at this stuff, let's focus on the fat people

Twenty years ago it was cigarette smoking blamed for American health problems. Today it's Teh Fatties. Yes, obesity is blamed for just about everything, from diabetes to certain cancers to pregnant women who gain too much weight passing The Curse of Obesity to their children.

Blaming everything on obesity has a few advantages to society at large. It allows thin people to feel virtuous. It feeds the multibillion dollar diet industry. It gives health insurers a way to discriminate without having to resort to expensive risk testing. And it allows employers to hire based on physical appearance, all under the guise of "wanting healthy employees."

Few people other than the most avid fat acceptance folks are saying that it's possible for a five foot tall woman to weigh 500 pounds and be healthy. But when we live in a society in which we inhale and consume toxins and artificial foods belched out by multinational corporations, blaming Teh Fat People seems just a bit of an oversimplification -- and a diversion.

Katharine Mieszkowski at Salon interviews epidemiologist Devra Davis, author of The Secret History of the War on Cancer:

Testicular cancer in men under age 40 has risen 50 percent in a decade. What are the theories about why there might be such a radical increase?

In the United States and Japan, there has been a significant decline in the birth of baby boys. What does this have to do with testicular cancer? Well, there's a theory of testicular dysgenesis, which means that there is something on the Y chromosome that is transmitted to boys that is affecting their overall health, and it may affect whether or not a boy sperm works to fertilize an egg.

Something is affecting fathers' ability to make baby boys, which may also be affecting the ability of the boys that are conceived to become fathers. It may be affecting sperm count, which is declining. It may also be affecting development of testicular cancer, which peaks in young men in their 20s. And these things are likely to be related to early life exposures to hormone-mimicking chemicals.

[snip]

In 1977, Richard Merrill, who later became dean of the University of Virginia Law School, was the chief counsel of the Food and Drug Administration, and he formally asked the U.S. attorney to convene a grand jury to decide whether or not to indict the producer of aspartame, G.D. Searle, for misrepresenting "findings, concealing material facts and making false statements" in aspartame safety tests.

This is not some left-wing group. This is the actual chief counsel of the FDA asking the U.S. attorney's office to convene a grand jury. It never happened, because by the time the grand jury was ready to be convened we had a new president. That president was Reagan, and within a month of Reagan taking office, he had a proposal from a guy you might have heard of named Donald Rumsfeld [who was then chief operating officer of Searle].

And Jan. 22, 1981, one day after Reagan's inauguration -- one day -- Searle reapplied for FDA approval. Prior to that, ever single request for approval was turned down by all the scientists ever looking at the data. That's a fact. There's no dispute about that fact. And then, it gets approved May 19, 1981.

Remember what happened with the Reagan revolution? It was: "We need to get the government off our backs." One of the backs it got off of was suppressing the aspartame industry. Later, many of the people who worked at the FDA to evaluate aspartame ended up going to work for the company producing it.

[snip]

We have gone backward since the '70s. In the '70s, in the decision on lead in gasoline, the court said we could use experimental evidence that something was a threat to human health in order to prevent harm. The court repeatedly ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency could use theories, models and estimates to prevent harm.

Now, we have to prove that harm has already happened before taking action to prevent additional harm. In the area of cancer this is a travesty, since most cancer in adults takes five, 10, 20 or 30 years [to develop]. It means that we have no opportunity to prevent cancer, because we must prove through human evidence that it's already happened. I think that is fundamentally wrong public policy. Ninety percent of all claims now for toxic torts are denied.

What the court decisions have done is to make the burden of proof close to impossible when it comes to human harm and environmental contamination.

[snip]

What does the history of work-related exposures to carcinogens being covered up mean for workplace safety today?

The United States today has the smallest percentage of men and women working in blue-collar jobs in modern history. Just as an example, computers today are made in the United States by robots, which is called "lights-out manufacturing." Where people are exposed to computer manufacturing is in Asia. So, we've exported our dirty jobs. In the United States today it's not so much of a problem.

But polar bears in the Arctic are showing up as hermaphrodites with toxic waste in their bodies that would qualify them for burial in a hazardous waste site. How do you think that they're getting exposed to these pollutants? They don't work at factories. But they are at the top of the polar food chain, and pollutants go up through the food chain stored in fat from the little fish to the big fish to the walrus to the polar bear. Ultimately, they're making it very clear that pollutants don't need passports, and that you can't ban toxic materials in one nation. It has to be a global policy.

[snip]

A recent report from the American Cancer Society found that breast cancer death rates are falling. To what do you attribute that?

Some people think it's because of hormone replacement therapy, which, if it's true, is extraordinary. The question is: Is it a true decrease? One possibility is that we stopped doing as many mammograms. There have been budget cuts, as you may have heard. With fewer mammograms, then you'd be finding less breast cancer. A third possibility is that there is a real decrease because fat-seeking pesticides, like DDT, are at the lowest point in American history.

Yet, Gen Xers are at greater risk of developing breast cancer than their grandmothers?

When Gen Xers reach their 40s, the risks are higher than the risk was for their grandmothers when they were in their 40s.

I've developed a theory of Xeno estrogen, named for the Greek word for "foreign." Basically, all of the risk factors that have been identified for breast cancer, except radiation, are related to the total lifetime exposure to hormones. So, the earlier in life you get your period and the later in life you go through menopause, the more hormones you're exposed to in your lifetime, and the greater your risk of breast cancer. The more alcohol you drink in your lifetime -- alcohol is highly estrogenic -- the greater your risk of breast cancer. The less exercise you get -- exercise lowers the amount of circulating estrogen -- the more estrogen in your life. The more fat in your body, the more estrogen, because fat is estrogenic.

Endocrine disrupters in the environment certainly have been shown to affect the chances. Certain plastic, phthalates, some pesticides, arsenic, mercury, diesel exhaust, all of these things have been shown to increase the risk. Some things that are widely used in cosmetics, like parabens, are estrogenic. So, the sum total of natural and synthetic estrogen in your lifetime affects your risk of breast cancer.

Why are more young girls going into puberty at an earlier age? Why are more young girls developing breasts? There are several reasons to think that hormones in personal care products may be playing a role, particularly for breast cancer in young black women.

A number of years ago there was a study of the high incidence of breast cancer on Long Island, to determine if environmental factors such as old pesticide residues were a factor. Among the other causes speculated (because God forbid we should blame anything produced by a corporation) was the high percentage of Ashkenazic (Eastern European) Jewish women on Long Island and their consumption of fatty meats like pastrami. Yes, folks, it's not Monsanto or Dow Chemical that caused your cancer, it's the local kosher delicatessen.

And now we have the revelation of children's toys being contaminated with lead at the same time as 1 in 150 children being diagnosed as autistic, as much as 10% of this country's children being diagnosed as ADHD, and increased incidence of sensory integration disorders, and other learning disorders.

Given the government's long track record of protecting corporations against investigation of the safety of products, we need to look carefully at who funds the studies that always seem to point repsonsibility away from the toxic stews being produced by multinational corporations and towards individual fault.

A Death in Toontown

Back in 2005, I wrote about dealing with the deaths of fictional characters. This was in response to the end of Six Feet Under and what looked at the time, and proved not to be the imminent demise of Wally in the Funky Winkerbean comic strip from an errant land mine in Afghanistan.

If Funky author Tom Batiuk copped out of having to blow Wally to smithereens via the most unlikely mine disarming ever, when it comes to beleagured character Lisa Crawford Moore, Batiuk let her have it with both barrels.

Lisa has been a staple in the strip for much of its run -- as a pregnant teenager in the strip's earlier incarnation who gave up her baby for adoption and finished high school. Later, after Batiuk fast-forwarded the strip, she went on to go to law school and establish a thriving practice, marry her best friend -- Funky's dorky sidekick Les, battle breast cancer successfully and produce a daughter, only to find herself with a recurrence of cancer earlier this year.

Batiuk has taken a lot of flack over the last few years for dealing with topics like alcoholism, the war in the Middle East, and Lisa's cancer. But for those of us who for some strange reason find ourselves drawn (heh) first to the "storyline" strips like Funky and For Better or Worse, the storylines are what have kept us coming back.

Early on in Lisa's cancer struggle, Batiuk took on the health care industry, writing about Les and Lisa's struggles with their HMO, "DenialCare." This time the industry was curiously absent and it was the health care delivery system that screwed up, mixing up Lisa's scans with those of another patient. This is hardly a far-fetched concept, given the news from Long Beach, NY this morning of a woman suing a medical lab for mixing up test results which resulted in her having a double mastectomy when she turned out not to have cancer at all.

Over the last few months, Batiuk, a cancer survivor himself, hasn't shrunk from presenting the devastation of cancer. He's packed the storyline with content, with Lisa testifying before Congress for more cancer research funding, finding that the son she gave up years before (who turned out to be another character in the strip), and making the decision to stop the radiation and chemotherapy that was making her feel awful and live whatever time she had left, and he hasn't shied away from presenting late-stage cancer in all its devastation. In Monday's heartbreaking strip, the cancer, now metastasized to Lisa'a brain, took her eyesight, thus ensuring that she would not, as she'd wished, see the leaves turn one more time.

Against a backdrop in which a presidential candidate's wife is also battling a recurrence of breast cancer, Lisa's storyline seems to be a slap in the face of the millions of women battling breast cancer today. But for someone in Lisa's position, with an aggressive form of cancer that has spread beyond medicine's ability to do much more than throw a bunch of chemicals at it and see if anything at least slows it down, choosing to let nature take its course rather than live a sick and miserable few weeks longer, can be just as courageous a decision as the one to keep fighting a futile battle. My point is that everyone with cancer is different, their cancers are different, and Lisa's choice is not about "giving up" but about choosing how you want to make the cancer journey.

Today, Batiuk finally and mercifully ends Lisa's struggle after wisely choosing to end the graphic depiction of end-stage cancer. He shows Lisa'a death as taking place in a kind of halfway point between life and death, in which the cancer patient sees herself as she was when she was healthy in a netherworld with no context and no background, as if it were some kind of demented Duck Amuck sequel. But rather than prolong the reader's agony by showing us Les and daughter Summer's long grieving process, he's going to flash-forward the strip ten years, beginning on Sunday, October 21st.

During this compelling storyline, which had readers scratching their heads about how much they were grieving the imminent demise of a person who isn't even played by an actor, and isn't even three-dimensional, one anonymous blogger has provided such a community in which Funky fans can read the strips along with snarky commentary (which has grown markedly less snarky as Lisa's disease has progressed), so if you don't read the strip and want to follow the storyline, you still can. One ingenious Funky fan has dealt with the strange emotion of grieving for a pen-and-ink character by imagining the strip as a show in which the characters are portrayed by actors with the same names. Because one needs to laugh even in the face of tragedy, I was able to obtain permission from the author (who, alas, has no site to link to and wishes to be identified only as "Ash") to reprint in its entiretythis seriously funny "interview" with "Lisa Crawford", who plays Lisa in the strip:

When reality gets a bit too heavy for me to deal with, in this case for example, I always end up thinking about the death of Bill the Cat. If you are not familiar with Bloom County, there was a particular episode that dealt with Bills death. Obviously, everything was screwball and comedy, since frankly I was never quite sure if Bill fit the definition of alive. Anyway, there is a part where various comic strip characters are being interviewed about the life and death of Bill. I believe in one panel, Charlie Brown, in silhouette, talks about Bill drinking all his root beer and trashing his Hollywood bungalow.

I see Lisa Crawford, who plays the character Lisa Crawford Moore on the comic strip Funky Winkerbean sitting down and doing an interview about her departure from Funky Winkerbean.

Lisa, thanks for taking the time to speak with us today.

Lisa: You are so welcome. I'm happy to be interviewed.

Lisa, you have been a character in Funky Winkerbean (FW) for decades. We saw your character grow from an awkward teenager to a successful lawyer, marrying your best friend and having a child with him. How do you feel about your departure from FW?

Lisa: Wow, there are just so many emotions going through my head right now. Obviously sadness and loss is the primary emotion I'm feeling. I have loved working on FW. I practically grew up on the set of FW. I am personally close to most of the cast and I hope to see them regularly after this.

I'm also partially happy. I think it's time I move on. I have had offers to appear in other strips. I may have a small part on For Better or Worse, as a predatory home wrecker, trying to break up Michael's marriage. I still do not know if I will take the part, but it would be a challenge.

More importantly, I'm going to go home and eat and eat and eat. I had to lose 45lbs this last 6 months! I need to gain back 20lbs (laughter).

Was the idea of killing of your character, strictly Tom Batiuk's (TB) idea, or did you have any input?

Lisa: Well, I have a small ranch in Texas that I spend the winters at. In fact, my neighbor is Thomas Haden Church. That man should have his OWN strip, let me tell you! Anyway, I was out riding horseback when I see Tom pull up to the fence. I'm thinking, what the hell is Tom doing out here?? This was down time for all of us on the strip.

I ride to the fence gate, let Tom in, he gets out of his rented car and tells me he has made an important decision and he and I have to talk.

Tom and I have always had our differences. I do believe I have slapped him on at least two occasions, with little regret on my part. But I love Tom, both professionally and personally. He told me what he had planed for my character. I slapped him for the third occasion.

Tom and I spent two of the most heart wrenching two days working out what would happen to Lisa. I made peace with Tom and understood where he was going with the character. I didn't quite like it, but I understood.

I also made peace with my character Lisa last winter too. There is a small grave on a hill on the ranch, under an old mesquite tree that represents my time on FW. The grave has a maternity dress I wore during the whole teen pregnancy episode, a Robin costume I wore when I married Les, a pink ribbon I got during breast cancer awareness month walkathon and a whole bunch of mud from my tears.

You and Les Moore have had a professional and personal relationship for years. You both seemed like the perfect couple. What happened and where are you two now?

Lisa: Boy, where to star with that? Les and I have been friends from day one. I have always adored Les as a friend. I believe it all started to change some time in the late 80's. In fact, I know the precise moment and it involved Tina Yothers. About two weeks before, that said "moment" Les and I were at a party in New York. I think we were helping Tom sell one of his books and we had appeared on the Today show. Anyway, Les and I get invited to this glitzy party for a movie premier, I don't even remember which. Being in the comic strip industry and being invited to a movie premier is a big deal. In the entertainment world, we are slightly ahead of Soap Opera celebrity. Slightly more famous, less cash. Them's the breaks. Anyway, while we were there, Les got the idea that he is going to go introduce himself to Winnona Ryder. He offers her a drink and introduces himself. She offers him a $40 tip, thinking he is a polite waiter. Oh the wretched look on Les's face. I felt so bad for him that night. It wasn't like Les is Brad DeGroot from Luann. That's another story which needs a shot of tequila to tell. I grabbed Les by the arm before he embarrassed himself even further and explained that we had an even bigger party we needed to attend. He and I spent the rest of the night at some coffee house in Greenwich talking and laughing and I was thinking Winnona really lost out that night.

Fast forward two weeks and who do I see Les with on the set? That's right, Tina Yothers from Family Ties. I don't know the full story, but an episode of Family Ties was going to involve Tina stuck up a rope in gym and Les was going to make a guest appearance, stuck up another rope, right by her. Lazy writers at the time, I guess. I didn't know that feelings for Les I had, had grown to the extent I was feeling at that moment. I was fuming. I was absolutely f***ing livid. I was about as angry and jealous as I think I have ever been. I wanted to take a fresh, steaming hot Montoni pepperoni pizza and smash it right in Tina's face.

You know, you spend a lot of time with someone, you sometimes don't recognize feelings that sneak up on you. I really thought I thought of Les as a brother, honestly. A good friend, a buddy even. But more than that? If you would have told me I would end up falling for Les, I would have told you that was about as likely as Charles Schultz writing in that Charlie Brown actually kicks the football from Lucy and then goes and actually kicks Lucy's ass.

A year passed and as many of my fans know, Les and I ended up getting married and we have two wonderful children together. Reality sat in about 5 years down the road and unlike the comics, Les and I changed and it was not in a way that made us grow closer. Towards the end of our marriage, things got so ugly, I almost had to quit the strip. I really pushed Tom into writing that difficult time into the strip. You know, Les falls for one of his students. Gets arrested. Thrown in jail, beaten and only occasionally seen in the comic. Tom didn't go for it, said it could be a good plot line, but it would be hard to bring in any comedy in it. Comedy. Cancer? Sure. Les's character getting busted with jail-bait and thrown into state prison, not so much. It was just the anger in me talking, but still. Gets me worked up just talking about it.

The rumors about Funky and me are just that, rumors. It didn't take anyone else to come between us, we did that all on our own. Les and I came to an understanding. I had to come to realization that I could not change Les, and Les could not change who me. Les will always be, in my opinion, much like his comic strip character; a great listener and a good friend with a good heart and of course, a bit of a dork. Unlike his comic character, Les has almost no ability to commit to a relationship. I truly believe that Les would shrivel up and die if there were no women for him to seduce on an almost monthly basis. Myself? I had no desire to put up with it. Les was and is a great friend and a fantastic father. He unfortunately, made a lousy husband. Having children together, we managed to work things out as far as being friends with each other. Sometimes, he even listens to the fairly good advice I give him. Sometimes I think he should accidentally get shoved into one of the pizza ovens in the comic strip.

We know about your relationship with Les, how about your relationship with the other cast members?

Lisa: As I mentioned, I'm fairly close to most of the cast, especially the ones that have been there for a while. I have a home in Ohio, where the main set is and I do believe that almost everyone in FW has come over on several occasions. Funky and Holly come over to the ranch quite often, actually.

Is there any particular cast member you have or had a rocky relationship with?

Lisa: Other than Les? No, not really. I sometimes was a bit distant with Mr. Dinkle and to this day, I still call him Mr. Dinkle. It may not seem like it, but he is just so intense. So focused. So in character at all times. I learned so much of my craft from him, but never got to know him on anything other than a professional level.

Lisa, I want to clarify a rumor for us. Did you and Cindy ever have a lesbian affair?

Lisa:(nervous laughter) OH my! Where did that rumor come from?

It's been an urban legend for years and is quite a popular item to speculate about on the internet.

Lisa: (laughter) The internet. Of course. It's a series of tubes!

Well, I can say, I did have a wild side when I was younger. The whole teen pregnancy thing was actually not that far off from really happening. Cindy however?

Well, I'll end this rumor right now. No lesbian affair.

(giggling) But we made out on at least two occasions! We were teenagers and peppermint schnapps does strange things to me. Cindy was and is a hottie, can you blame me?

In 1992, Tom had you all age by 10 years, how did you all manage that?

Lisa: Well, the same way this upcoming jump will be handled. Lots and lots of make up. In 1992 it was such a relief to stop playing a teenager. I had to stoop to make myself look smaller and had to wear this girdle that made me have a figure only slightly more busty and curvy than a teenage boy. It was a nightmare. Most of us had had enough at that point. Tom may have said it was his idea, but frankly, most of the "teenagers" almost walked off for good.

How do you feel about the next 10 year jump, with your departure from FW?

Lisa: Well, I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned, but I will be in a few strips, mostly as flash backs and on video. Everyone else will just need to spend a little bit more time with make up and prosthetics here and there.

Also, a lot of the kids currently on the strip are being, well fired. I mean, in a way, it's a good thing. Growing up as a 6 year old, your entire life on a comic strip is too much. Look at what happened to those Family Circus kids. I mean, each one is in their 50's and they have to be digitally altered to still fit the strip. How many times has Billy been arrested for his "child" like behavior outside the strip? I'm sure there is only so much a judge is going to put up with and roaming around the neighborhood, jumping on peoples cars, walking through their houses and messing with their property may be cute for a 7 year old, but not a crazed 52 year old.

Autumn, who plays my daughter Summer is just a sweetie. Wise beyond her years. She actually will be on the ranch next year as I really have grown to think of her as a daughter.

The young lady that will be the new teenage Summer has already been hired. Apparently she was going to be in a new Spider-Girl strip, as the teenage daughter of Peter and Mary Jane Parker, but that didn't work out.

As far as character development? Who knows. I don't really know where Tom will be taking some of these characters. I heard that Wally Winkerbean does not have a contract yet, so maybe Tom still has some thinning of the heard to do. (points her finger in the shape of a pistol at a picture of Wally and her on her wall)

Is there anything you would like to say to FW fans before to end the interview?

Lisa: I would just like to thank them all for their support. I have seen the final strip with my character already. It's hard to watch yourself in a strip like that. The whole time, I was thinking of all the memories I have about FW. The laughter, the tears, the depression, the absolute joy. Those memories just came swelling back and it hit me like a real death would.

I think it's important to remember, that FW, like life has a whole grab bag of events that happen to the characters. We may not like the sadness, but it helps define laughter. We may not like the ugliness that sometimes life offers up, but it makes the beauty in life, that much more beautiful.

Lisa was a character in a comic strip called Funky Winkerbean. She loved and laughed. She cried and even hated, just like all of us. She was a geek who feel in love with another geek and that love was everlasting, as corny as that may sound. She had a child that no mother could love any more strongly. She died on her terms against an impossible fight. Yet, she lives on...every time you see Summer. Every time you think of her as a pregnant teenager trying to figure things out. Every time you think of her and Les being married on Halloween as Batman and Robin. Every time you think of her fighting and winning against breast cancer. Every time you think of her, Lisa is very much alive. It is your own comic strip in your own mind, it is your story of Lisa that matters. If you don't close the page on her memory, she will never be gone.

Lisa, thank you again for letting us interview you.

Lisa: It was my pleasure. And just to let you know, I'm going to have a book out by summer. Tentatively titled "Confessions of a Comic Strip Starlet: The Lisa Crawford Biography". I have several publishers who want the rights, but I have not picked one yet. Keep a look for it on Amazon.com and my subsequent tour to promote the book!

"Ash" isn't the only one who's gone meta on Lisa's story. The University Hospitals Ireland Cancer Center in Cleveland, Ohio, has set up "Lisa's Legacy Fund". Lisa's Story: The Other Shoe has just been published by Kent State University Press.

Now what to do about the leathery skin....

And here I'd just gotten used to schmearing with SPF30 all the time:

For decades, researchers have puzzled over why rich northern countries have cancer rates many times higher than those in developing countries — and many have laid the blame on dangerous pollutants spewed out by industry.

But research into vitamin D is suggesting both a plausible answer to this medical puzzle and a heretical notion: that cancers and other disorders in rich countries aren't caused mainly by pollutants but by a vitamin deficiency known to be less acute or even non-existent in poor nations.

Those trying to brand contaminants as the key factor behind cancer in the West are "looking for a bogeyman that doesn't exist," argues Reinhold Vieth, professor at the Department of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Toronto and one of the world's top vitamin D experts. Instead, he says, the critical factor "is more likely a lack of vitamin D."

What's more, researchers are linking low vitamin D status to a host of other serious ailments, including multiple sclerosis, juvenile diabetes, influenza, osteoporosis and bone fractures among the elderly.

Sayeth pudentilla over at Skippy's place: "your mother was right. go outside and play."

Either that or take Os-Cal.

The grit of Roger Ebert

While going through old VHS tapes the other day I found a tape I'd made of a special memorial program broadcast after Gene Siskel died in 1999. In some circles, it was Siskel who was regarded as the "real film critic" of the Siskel and Ebert duo, while Ebert was just a hack.

Of course, these are the people who gave me fits during my seven years of reviewing movies; the kind of cinéastes who don't like any movie that isn't made in the Czech Republic or by Lars Von Trier and isn't 4 hours long. People used to tell me I was a good reviewer, but mostly all I did was write about movies and tell people what I thought. I never professed to have any kind of great knowledge of the Art of Cinema. I wrote because I wanted to write, and that was all.

To those in the know, "film critics" are people like Jonathan Rosenbaum, David Denby, Armond White, and of course the Doyenne of All Film Criticism, Pauline Kael. But just as Beverly Sills made opera accessible to those who don't like opera, Roger Eberg has made film reviews accessible to people who just like movies and don't know a gaffer from a key grip.

When you strip movies of all the mystique, what you end up with are "honest stories of working people as told by rich Hollywood stars." This is something that Roger Ebert has always understood. The reason that Ebert's reviews have always been mandatory reading is that Ebert always evaluates a movie within the context of its genre and what it's trying to do, rather than judging an action shoot-em-up by how it stands up against Dancer in the Dark.

Yet Ebert has never been the kind of quote whore whose blurbs are usually the earmark of a movie you should be sure to skip. For while he has never been guilty of taking movies too seriously, perhaps no one else has been a bigger booster of creative filmmaking. And no one's image has been as iconic in its association with film criticism. And so it's hard to underestimate the courage it took for Ebert to appear Wednesday night at the Overlooked Film Festival, which he created.

The recent cancer announcements of Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow caused a nationwide epidemic of discomfort, as Americans faced the prospect of having to look cancer right in the face. Well, Elizabeth Edwards was right there at the Democratic candidates debate last night, and Tony Snow plans to return to work on Monday despite a dire prognosis. Roger Ebert has been rendered unrecognizable by surgery to remove part of his jaw as part of treatment for salivary gland cancer last June. He wrote about it earlier this week:

I have received a lot of advice that I should not attend the Festival. I’m told that paparazzi will take unflattering pictures, people will be unkind, etc. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. As a journalist I can take it as well as dish it out.

So let’s talk turkey. What will I look like? To paraphrase a line from “Raging Bull,” I ain’t a pretty boy no more. (Not that I ever was. The original appeal of Siskel & Ebert was that we didn’t look like we belonged on TV.)

What happened was, cancer of the salivary gland spread to my right lower jaw. A segment of the mandible was removed. Two operations to replace the missing segment were unsuccessful, both leading to unanticipated bleeding.

A tracheostomy was necessary so, for the time being, I cannot speak. I make do with written notes and a lot of hand waving and eye-rolling. The doctors now plan an approach that does not involve the risk of unplanned bleeding. If all goes well, my speech will be restored.

So when I turn up in Urbana, I will be wearing a gauze bandage around my neck, and my mouth will be seen to droop. So it goes.

I was told photos of me in this condition would attract the gossip papers. So what? I have been very sick, am getting better and this is how it looks. I still have my brain and my typing fingers.

Although months in bed after the bleeding episodes caused a lack of strength and co-ordination, the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago restored my ability to walk on my own, climb stairs, etc. I no longer use a walker much and the wheelchair is more for occasional speed and comfort than need. Just today we went for a long stroll in Lincoln Park.

We spend too much time hiding illness. There is an assumption that I must always look the same. I hope to look better than I look now. But I’m not going to
miss my Festival.

Why do I want to go? Above all, to see the movies. Then to meet old friends and great directors and personally thank all the loyal audience members who continue to support the Festival. At least, not being able to speak, I am spared the need to explain why every film is “overlooked,” or why I wrote “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.”

Being sick is no fun. But you can have fun while you’re sick. I wouldn’t miss the Festival for anything!

If we had not recently seen Katie Couric attack Elizabeth Edwards on 60 Minutes for not having the decency to go home, die quietly, and not subject us to having to watch her condition slowly deteriorate, we might think that Eberts' friends concerns about bad press coverage to be misguided. But with cancer still the disease we dread most, it's inspiring to see high-profile people battling the disease refusing to just go away and hide. Roger Ebert loves movies, and for him to not attend this festival even if he had to be carried in on a sedan chair is unthinkable. And while there may yet be unfavorable coverage, so far what most papers are recounting is the standing ovation he received and the love the attendees have for this man who has arguably done more for the movies than anyone else in his field.

For those of us who have been admirers of Roger Ebert's work, the idea of a man who has made his living and his reputation through language being unable to speak is unspeakably cruel. And yet Ebert is right -- as long as he can think and type, he can still do his work. And so Roger Ebert joins Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow to form an unlikely trifecta of courage in the face of disease -- and show us how important it is to refuse to go quietly.