Martha Knows Everything...and You Should, Too

PLANET CANCER

There are lots of things I don't talk about a lot on this blog. But it's occurred to me, since it's affected so many of those I love, that I might talk a little about cancer, especially since I've decided to put the graphic novel about my dad's brain cancer on...hm, let's call it the middle burner. On the front burner is the cat and dog book stuff.

So far, cancer has skipped over me. But not my dad or my mom or my aunt or my great-aunt or now, a number of Jeff's relatives. It's a drag, and it's a journey. I wish my father were around to find out how many celebrities have gotten exactly the same kind of brain cancer he got, being such a celebrity ho as he was, except that it would bum him out that there's been so little progress in 20 years. Jeff and I saw a little boy in a cafe with a slightly swollen face, too egg-shaped not to have either chemo and/or anti-convulsants causing it. Good luck, I whispered in my mind. Good luck, fast luck, big luck.

I think my two favorite movies about cancer patients are IKIRU, the great Kurosawa classic, which manages to make being a lowly Japanese political functionary the most ass-kicking samurai experience you've ever seen, and my long-ago acquaintances Shari Berman and Robert Pulcini's magnificently cranky AMERICAN SPLENDOR. That movie has lots of fantastic things, not the least of which is Paul Giamatti's furious and yet curiously sexy performance. But holy moly, if there were an Oscar for most realistic chemo side effects, they would have won hands down.

Now, there are amazing cancer blogs, among them, novelist Maureen McHugh's Hodgkins & Me: "I'm home from Planet Cancer and all my friends are here and it's feeling just great."

posted by Martha @ 10:19 PM