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Posted by j0hn on December 1st, 2006 — in Prozac Top News
This weekend’s CPL Nordic event is the fourth Quake 3 event of the 2006 World Season and the last stop before the CPL Winter Championships in three weeks.
Top players attending include Fan “Jibo” Zhibo, who finished third at last week’s CPL Italy event; being defeated by Marcel “k1ller” Paul in the semifinals. While third place being a very respectable finish, it was a disappointment to Zhibo and he wants revenge this weekend. Like last week, two more long-time old-school Swedish players are back; namely Alexander “Z4muZ” Ihrfohrs and Cyrus “proZaC” Malekani. Each of these players were top of the line Quake 3 players back in the day and are both returning to try their luck once again after many years. Poland’s top Quake 3 player and only non-Swedish European CPL Nordic attendee Maciej “zik” Jakuc looks to prove once again how powerful the Eastern Europeans can be when given a chance.
Unfortunately for spectators, many of the top names listed on the sign-up page for the event have withdrawn their participation from the event. CPL Italy winner Magnus “fojji” Olsson is one of many who will not be participating due to the low amount of prize money offered. Joining him are Daniel “K!cker” Karlsson, Andreas “Zonic” Isberg, Lars “brescia” Henningsen and Josef “NaAani” Schwan. ESWC 2006 Quake 4 champion Michael “winz” Bignet has not played any games since the ClanBase EuroCup finals due to his poor internet connection. He has confirmed that he will be bootcamping soon and will play in the 2007 World Tour. Russia’s shining hope, Nikita “Nike” Volgo, was unable to obtain a passport in time and will have to sit out as well.
Eight of the top players participating at the event have been interviewed, inquiring into their practice regime leading up to this weekend, their thoughts on CPL Nordic’s disappointing prize money, and if they will participate in the upcoming 2007 World Tour.
The seedings for this weekend’s event have also been re-done due to the poor job that was done for the previous seedings. You can view the old seedings at this location. The new official seedings, including who is and who isn’t attending the event compared to the sign-up list are as follows:
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Posted by j0hn on November 27th, 2006 — in Prozac Top News
Prozac is a brand name for fluoxetine, a drug primarily used to treat conditions such as depression, eating disorders, premenstrual mood disorder and anxiety disorders.
Fluoxetine stimulates the brain’s levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin; inadequate amounts of that chemical are linked to depression. The medicine blocks unused serotonin from being absorbed by a nerve cell, sending it to another nerve cell and facilitating transfer of the chemical along the brain’s synapses.
At first, the drug was heralded as a wonder treatment, with Newsweek giving the pill cover story treatment on March 26, 1990, titling one article “The Promise of Prozac.”
But Benjamin Garris wasn’t alone in believing something was wrong while he was on Prozac. Long before he consumed the drug, a grassroots movement spread a message that Prozac made people worse — specifically, more violent and suicidal.
In 1989, Joseph T. Wesbecker killed eight of his co-workers and injured 12 others with an assault rifle before killing himself in Louisville, Ky. Mr. Wesbecker was taking Prozac. The drug’s manufacturer, Eli Lilly, reached a settlement over the effects of the drug when a lawsuit was filed on behalf of the people killed by Mr. Wesbecker.
The scientific community also began to weigh in. In the March 1991 edition of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychology, researchers from the Yale University School of Medicine described how six out of 42 patients ages 10 to 17 with a history of psychological problems worsened while being treated with fluoxetine.
On Sept. 20, 1991, about three years before Garris was prescribed Prozac, the Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service of the Food and Drug Administration met with the Psychopharmacological Drugs Advisory Committee in Rockville.
The purpose of the meeting: To hold a “scientific investigation into suicidal ideation, suicidal acts, and other violent behavior reported to occur in association with the pharmacological treatment of depression.”
Although all makers of antidepressants were invited to the meeting, only Eli Lilly sent representation.
A clear divide developed during the session.
The committee heard stories from people about how they or their friends or relatives changed while under the influence of Prozac and antidepressants:
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¥ “After being on Prozac for 21 days, my wife shot and killed both of these two boys right there. She turned the gun to herself and shot herself twice. Now she’s in jail for murder. This is the kind of lady that never took a drug, no mixed drinks, no alcohol, no reason to be depressed, just some nerve problems, like everybody else from time to time.”
However, members of the professional psychological and psychiatric community said they believed introducing a warning system or other punitive measures for anti
Boscov
depressants would pose a serious risk for the larger community of people who are stricken with depression:
¥ “We have certainly heard some very sad, troubling, and tragic stories and anecdotes this morning. We also know that when depression is untreated, some 15 percent of patients will kill themselves, additional tragedies, and many more suffer from untreated depression who do not suicide. But depression is eminently treatable. Once recognized and appropriately managed with combinations of pharmacotherapies and psychotherapies, the vast majority of individuals with depression can be treated effectively and lead useful and productive lives.”
Representatives from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Eli Lilly testified that studies and trials of Prozac, which they said encompassed more than 8,000 patients, showed only a small number of adverse events and no direct connection between increased suicide or violent risk.
“Taken all together, with these anecdotal data one has to raise the obvious question. It seems likely that what we have here is a situation that we are taught in medical school,” said Dr. Charles Nemeroff of Emory University, on behalf of Eli Lilly. “Things can be true, (or) true and unrelated. Patients can be suicidal, patients can be being treated with an antidepressant, yet there is no cause-and-effect relationship.
“At best, these are anecdotal reports.”
In the end, the committee agreed with Eli Lilly, the FDA and the medical community, voting that no credible evidence supported a conclusion that antidepressants cause or increase suicidal or violent behaviors, and no labeling change should be made.
In September 2004, the FDA approved a warning label for antidepressants, including Prozac. The warning states the drugs can cause suicidal actions in patients under the age of 18.
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Posted by j0hn on November 24th, 2006 — in Prozac Top News
Their rooms are a mess, their trophies line the walls, and both have profiles on MySpace.com. Stephen and Jacob Meszaros seem like typical teenagers until their mother offers a glimpse into the family’s medicine cabinet.
Bottles of psychiatric medications fill the shelves. Stephen, 15, takes the antidepressants Zoloft and Desyrel for depression, the anticonvulsant Lamictal to moderate his moods and the stimulant Focalin XR to improve concentration. Jacob, 14, takes Focalin XR for concentration, the anticonvulsant Depakote to moderate his moods, the antipsychotic Risperdal to reduce anger and the antihypertensive Catapres to induce sleep.
Over the last three years, each boy has been prescribed 28 different psychiatric drugs.
“Sometimes, when you look at all the drugs they’ve taken, you wonder, ‘Wow, did I really do this to my kids?’ ” said their mother, Tricia Kehoe of Sharpsville, Pa. “But I’ve seen them without the meds, and there’s a major difference.”
There is little doubt that some psychiatric medicines, taken by themselves, work well in children. For example, dozens of studies have shown that stimulants improve attentiveness. A handful of other psychiatric drugs have proven effective against childhood obsessive compulsive disorder, among other problems.
But a growing number of children and teenagers in the United States are taking not just a single drug for discrete psychiatric difficulties but combinations of powerful and even life-threatening medications to treat a dizzying array of problems.
Last year in the United States, about 1.6 million children and teenagers — 280,000 of them under age 10 — were given at least two psychiatric drugs in combination, according to an analysis performed by Medco Health Solutions at the request of The New York Times. More than 500,000 were prescribed at least three psychiatric drugs. More than 160,000 got at least four medications together, the analysis found.
Many psychiatrists and parents believe that such drug combinations, often referred to as drug cocktails, help. But there is virtually no scientific evidence to justify this multiplication of pills, researchers say. A few studies have shown that a combination of two drugs can be helpful in adult patients, but the evidence in children is scant. And there is no evidence at all — “zero,” “zip,” “nil,” experts said — that combining three or more drugs is appropriate or even effective in children or adults.
“There are not any good scientific data to support the widespread use of these medicines in children, particularly in young children where the scientific data are even more scarce,” said Dr. Thomas R. Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health.
Psychiatrists who prescribe drug combinations say that the ability to mix and match medications improves their chances of being able to help children who are seriously, even desperately, ill.
Dr. Joseph Biederman, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard, said that doctors commonly used multiple medicines to treat heart disease, diabetes, cancer and AIDS. “Child psychiatry is not any different,” Dr. Biederman said. “These drugs have revolutionized how we treat severe psychopathology in children.”
The controversy leaves parents in a terrible bind. Desperate to help, many agonize over whether to medicate their children.
Mothers and fathers sometimes disagree, with the dispute straining or even ending marriages. Since some psychiatric drugs can cause worrisome physical effects, parents say that they must on occasion make a terrifying choice between their child’s physical health and his mental health.
The parents interviewed for this article told their stories, they said, in hopes of gaining greater acceptance for their children and themselves. Nearly all recalled being in a store when their child threw a tantrum and feeling that onlookers branded them as bad parents. They also said they hoped to help others negotiate what many said were unequal and often fraught relationships with psychiatrists.
“We struggled so much, made so many mistakes and felt so stigmatized, I hope our story can make it easier for others,” said Jacquie Erickson of Anchorage. Her daughter, Kaitlyn Johnston, 10, has taken psychiatric drugs since she turned 5 for diagnoses that include bipolar disorder.
On Shaky Ground
Stimulants like Ritalin are by far the most commonly prescribed psychiatric medicines in children. But doctors routinely pair stimulants with antidepressants, antipsychotics and anticonvulsants, even though some of these medications can cause serious side effects, have few proven pediatric psychiatric benefits and lack clear evidence about how they interact or influence mental and physical development.
Last year, the Food and Drug Administration required drug makers to warn on their labels that antidepressants can cause suicidal thoughts and behavior in some children. Anticonvulsant drugs carry warnings about liver and pancreas damage and fatal skin rashes. The side effects of antipsychotic medicines can include rapid weight gain, diabetes, irreversible tics and, in elderly patients with dementia, sudden death. When drugs are combined, these risks compound.
Ms. Kehoe, who receives government financial and child-care assistance because her children are considered mentally ill, said she knew that there were risks to the drug cocktails. Both her sons are short and underweight for their age — a common side effect of stimulants — and she fears that the drugs have affected their health and behavior in other ways.
“But I don’t think the insurance would pay for it if the F.D.A. didn’t decide that children should use it,” said Ms. Kehoe, who herself takes psychiatric medication.
In fact, the drug agency has specifically warned against the use of Lamictal, one of the drugs Stephen takes, in children who, like him, do not suffer from seizures because in 8 out of 1,000 children the drug causes life-threatening rashes.
Stephen and Jacob’s psychiatrist did not reply to telephone messages left with an office secretary on three different days. Ms. Kehoe said that she asked him to speak to this reporter but that he refused. The boys have had 11 psychiatrists over the last three years, according to prescription records, and many more before that, Ms. Kehoe said.
In interviews, Stephen and Jacob said they hated taking their drug cocktails.
“Everybody hates meds,” Jacob said.
Ms. Kehoe said her youngest son, Lucas Keck, was showing signs of attention deficit disorder and might soon need to start medication.
“I see the hyperness in him,” she said. “My pediatrician has said that he would venture to say that Lucas will be A.D.H.D.”
Stephen and Jacob were Lucas’s age — 6 — when they were given their first prescriptions.
The F.D.A. requires drug makers to prove that their drugs work safely before the agency will approve them for sale in the United States. But doctors can prescribe and combine approved medicines as they see fit. Such mixing is common in medicine but rarely studied by drug makers.
Psychiatrists started mixing psychiatric medications because the drugs were only moderately effective and often caused terrible side effects, said Dr. Steven E. Hyman, the provost of Harvard University and former director of the National Institute of Mental Health. “None of these drugs by themselves do an adequate job of controlling symptoms,” Dr. Hyman said.
If one drug failed, many psychiatrists assumed that two or more drugs used together might succeed. For decades, no one studied whether this was accurate. But in recent years, a trickle of studies have examined the question, with mixed results.
In studies in adults, some combinations of two drugs have been shown to work better than single medications to improve the symptoms of depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and the mania associated with bipolar disorder. For example, a recent large government-financed study in adults, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, found that two antidepressants worked a bit better than one for adults who suffered from chronic, severe depression. But other studies have found no benefit from commonly prescribed drug combinations.
The use of two-medicine combinations in children is on much shakier ground. Even for single drugs, the effectiveness of some psychiatric medications in younger patients is questionable: most trials of antidepressants in depressed children, for instance, fail to show any beneficial effect. But hardly any studies have examined the safety or the effectiveness of medicine combinations in children. A 2003 review in The American Journal of Psychiatry found only six controlled trials of two-drug combinations. Four of the six failed to show any benefit; in a fifth, the improvement was offset by greater side effects.
“No one has been able to show that the benefits of these combinations outweigh the risks in children,” said Dr. Daniel J. Safer, an associate professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and an author of the 2003 review.
If the evidence for two-drug combinations is minimal, for three-drug combinations it is nonexistent, several top experts said.
“The data is zip,” Dr. Hyman said.
Many psychiatrists said that they turned to drug cocktails only in desperate circumstances. “If you’ve got a 15-year-old who is cutting up her arms, you’ve got a barn on fire and what are you supposed to do?” asked Dr. Alexander Lerman, a child and adolescent psychiatrist in New York, who said he rarely prescribed combinations.
Billy and Jackie Igafo-Te’o of Jackson, Mich., are among the desperate. In the last seven years, their 12-year-old son, Michael, “has been on just about everything you can put a child on,” Mrs. Igafo-Te’o said. He is now taking four medications: an antipsychotic, an anticonvulsant, an antidepressant and a sleep medicine.
Despite the medications, Michael’s behavior has grown increasingly disruptive. He has kicked and punched holes in almost every wall of the Igafo-Te’o home. He wrenched the sink off the wall in the upstairs bathroom and pulled two bedroom doors off their hinges, damaging the frames. The family no longer fixes the damage.
During a recent visit, Michael and Mr. Igafo-Te’o were sitting on the living-room floor. Michael wanted the phone. His father held it out of reach to prevent Michael from playing with it. Michael became increasingly desperate. He cried. He cursed.
“That’s it, you have a timeout,” Mr. Igafo-Te’o said.
“No, no, no,” Michael answered. “You pimp!”
He slapped his father in the face, hard. Mr. Igafo-Te’o hustled Michael into the kitchen and forced him to sit for 20 minutes.
“What’s the purpose of all this medication if I still have to do that?” Mr. Igafo-Te’o asked.
He said he wanted to end Michael’s drug therapy. Among other side effects, the drugs have made Michael obese, which has led to asthma.
Mrs. Igafo-Te’o quietly disagreed. “I’m afraid he wouldn’t be able to focus,” she said. “I’m afraid he would regress socially.”
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“Regress socially? Look at him!” her husband responded, motioning to their son, crying uncontrollably on the kitchen floor.
“I have to believe in something,” his wife mumbled and walked out of the room.
Mr. Igafo-Te’o watched her go and then smiled apologetically.
“We always debate meds,” he said.
Divergent Views
Most experts agree that some children are so violent or suicidal that a combination of psychiatric drugs is worth trying. But recently, more psychiatrists have been asking whether in some cases drugs are being prescribed for children who do not need them, or for problems that fall within the spectrum of normal behavior. The doubters are especially concerned with the growing use of drug combinations for preschoolers.
Fate Riske, 3, of Fond du Lac, Wis., takes two antipsychotics and a sleeping medicine to control what her mother, Elizabeth Klein-Riske, said were hours-long tantrums, a desire to watch the same movies repeatedly and an insistence on eating the meat, cheese and bread in her sandwiches separately.
On a recent visit, Fate played sweetly for four hours as her parents, who both have trouble walking, sat in front of a television. Sucking on a pacifier, Fate showed off her pink dress and matching shoes.
Mrs. Klein-Riske credited the drugs for Fate’s cherubic behavior during the visit. But a few weeks on a different antipsychotic led Fate to become aggressive, talk rapidly and “run around wild, totally out of control,” said Mrs. Klein-Riske, who receives government financial and child-care assistance because her daughter is considered mentally ill.
Fate’s weight ballooned in five months to 48 pounds from 30.
Dr. Gary Sachs, director of the Bipolar Clinic and Research Program at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, estimated that half the children referred to his clinic for research in recent years — including many who took drug combinations — had the wrong diagnosis and often did well on fewer drugs. “Even among properly diagnosed bipolar patients, many come to our program already taking medicines that interfered with each other,” Dr. Sachs said.
But Dr. Judith Rapoport, a senior investigator in child psychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health, said that in her experience, few children were overmedicated. Dr. Rapoport studies children with schizophrenia. Before entering her study, children must be drug-free for three weeks.
“We’ve had a handful of cases who are completely normal when they get off drugs,” Dr. Rapoport said. “But most of these kids become very, very sick and unmanageable without drugs.”
The first psychiatric problem diagnosed in most children is attention deficit disorder, treated with stimulants — drugs that improve attentiveness. But when children’s problems persist, parents’ relatively good experience with stimulants often convinces them to agree to try other medicines — in some cases drugs like the antipsychotic Risperdal or the anticonvulsant Depakote that have few proven benefits in children and greater dangers, said Dr. Ranga Krishnan, chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral science at Duke University.
“After you get them on one drug, parents don’t seem to mind the second,” said Dr. Krishnan, who said that he had grave doubts about the growing use of psychiatric drug cocktails in children.
Antidepressants are commonly paired with stimulants, but antidepressant use has declined over the last year after the F.D.A. warning about suicide risk. In their place, physicians are prescribing combinations that include antipsychotic and anticonvulsant drugs, according to Medco. From 2001 to 2005, the use of antipsychotic drugs in children and teenagers grew 73 percent, Medco found. Among girls, antipsychotic use more than doubled.
On Again, Off Again
Andrew Darr of Caldwell, Idaho, whose sons took medications, said that he was opposed to it from the start. “When you come home from work and instead of getting them clawing at your feet and yelling, ‘Daddy, Daddy,’ you get a lethargic grunt, it just kills you,” Mr. Darr said.
His wife, Leslie Darr, eventually agreed to stop the medicines, but only after a family tragedy.
The Darrs have four children, Nicholas, 16, Nathan, 15, Becky, 12, and Benjamin, 9. At 3, Nicholas suffered a mild brain injury when undiagnosed appendicitis led him to suffer weeks of high fever, Mrs. Darr said.
Mrs. Darr said that she was pressured by school officials to give Nicholas a stimulant at age 6. Nathan soon followed.
Three years later, the boys had a traumatic weekend away with relatives. A month after that, Mrs. Darr said, both were hospitalized for a week and given a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and prescriptions for antipsychotic, antidepressant and sleeping medicines.
Over the next three years, Nicholas’s weight ballooned to 140 pounds from 52. Nathan went to 115 pounds from 48. Neither boy got much taller, Mrs. Darr said. They did poorly in school.
Then Becky developed a brain tumor. A nurse practitioner gave Mrs. Darr free samples of an antipsychotic drug to help her cope. After starting it, she said, she could not sleep or think straight. She realized that she had been giving similar medicines to her sons for years and she decided to wean the boys off the pills.
Their behavior immediately worsened. At one point, Nicholas left the house during a blizzard wearing only boxer shorts, Mrs. Darr said. They found him in a tire swing saying, “Baaa.”
“There were several times that we almost gave up,” Mr. Darr said.
But after four months off medication, the boys’ behavior normalized, the Darrs said, and they were transferred out of special education and into regular classes. The Darrs recently allowed the boys to spend their first evening at a mall without supervision, and in July they gave both boys their first bicycles. “They’ve come a long way,” Mrs. Darr said.
In an interview, Nicholas said the drugs “were not cool.”
“You go to school and everybody thinks, ‘Look at that retard,’ ” he said.
Still, most of the parents interviewed for this article said their children’s behavior deteriorated rapidly without medication.
Joanne Johnson of Hillsborough, N.J., described a psychiatrist’s effort to wean her 17-year-old son, Brad, off of all five of his psychiatric medicines as “the biggest mistake of our lives.”
Brad, then 13, became suicidal and was hospitalized for weeks, Ms. Johnson said.
“He went into the hospital on five drugs and came out on five different ones, but he was unstable,” she said. “It took a little over two years to find the right match again.”
Brad is now taking lithium, an antipsychotic, an anticonvulsant, an antidepressant, a stimulant and a sleeping pill.
“He’ll probably be on these for the rest of his life,” Ms. Johnson said.
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Posted by j0hn on November 23rd, 2006 — in Prozac Top News
NEW ORLEANS, Nov. 22 — Research has challenged the conventional wisdom that depressed patients need three to four weeks to respond to antidepressant medication and that any earlier response is due to the placebo effect, said an investigator here.
Measurable non-placebo responses may occur during the first week of treatment, studies published last year suggest, said Ronald W. Pies, M.D., of the Tufts New England Medical Center in Boston, at the U.S. Psychiatric & Mental Health Congress here.
Previous studies, some published in the 1980s, found that while a placebo response was evident at week one and continued unabated, a true drug response did not appear until at least week three. Almost no drug-placebo separation occurred before three weeks, Dr. Pies said.
However, more-recent research has uncovered a different pattern. One meta-analysis published last year included 47 double-blind trials of antidepressants. The trials included more than 5,000 patients on active drug and more than 3,000 patients on placebo. Drugs used included selective-serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), tricyclics, and heterocyclics, Dr. Pies said.
This meta-analysis found that 57% of the drug-placebo separation occurred during the first two weeks of treatment. The magnitude of improvement in symptoms diminished after two weeks in both the active treatment and placebo patients, Dr. Pies said.
Other studies published in 2005 found that the best predictor of long-term response to antidepressant drugs was in fact the degree of symptom improvement during the first two weeks, Dr. Pies said.
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These findings raise the question of whether physicians should be switching antidepressant drugs sooner, rather than having patients bear the cost of four to six weeks on a drug that isn’t working after the first two weeks, Dr. Pies said.
However, Dr. Pies said, .the newer data does not exclude the possibility that the full drug benefit might take longer to emerge — perhaps three to 10 weeks.
In addition, although the meta-analysis found statistically significant improvements in depressive symptoms, these may not translate to robust, clinically significant changes in the real world, Dr. Pies said.
Furthermore, some symptoms of depression may improve quickly with treatment while others take longer. For example, guilt and anxiety may improve during the first week of treatment, but libido and insomnia might not improve until nine weeks of treatment, Dr. Pies said.
“Therefore, waiting three to four weeks to asses a patient’s response to an antidepressant is still reasonable,” Dr. Pies said.
However, a patient reporting symptom improvement extremely early — within two to 48 hours of treatment-is likely to be experiencing a placebo response, he said.
And it is important to realize that comprehensive recovery from depression takes time — perhaps four or more months, Dr. Pies said.
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Posted by j0hn on November 20th, 2006 — in Prozac Top News
So now they’re putting air bags on airplanes. An innovation that experts say could have saved dozens of lives in the last 20 years, had they been in place.
And yet. There’s something disturbing about them, too. Maybe because, after the kind of airplane crashes we worry about, they always end up picking the victims out of a field with tweezers. Air bags don’t seem like they would be much help in those crashes.
It’s as if automakers started adding a dashboard warning light, “DON’T BACK OVER THE TODDLER!” Sure, it might avoid a few tragedies. But the warning would also add something grim to the routine experience of driving. Ditto for air bags. Flying is dreary enough as it is; now we get to gaze at these new, possibly futile devices and contemplate explosive death during the two-hour delay waiting to take off. Thanks, guys.
Top of the world!
The 11-year-old asked to see “White Heat,” the Jimmy Cagney classic, and I raced off to rent it, happy that he was displaying interest in any picture that didn’t have the word “Saw” in the title.
I was worried “White Heat” wouldn’t hold up well — that it would be muddy and hard to follow. Then, as we watched the crisp, fast-moving, in-focus gangster classic, I realized I had thought it would be mush because I last watched it on my family’s old black-and-white Zenith around 1972, no doubt from the grainy print that Channel Z had sitting around the back room for decades. Turns out they knew how to shoot films in focus, even in 1949.
The lad was enthralled — refusing even to pause it when I had to step away.
“We’ve got to buy this,” he said, after Cagney’s famous closing lines atop that gasoline tank. “Made it, ma! Top of the world!”
What I had to know was what made him interested in seeing it in the first place. He had never heard of Jimmy Cagney (”Is he famous?” he asked. “He was,” I said.).
The answer: The Simpsons made some reference that piqued his curiosity. Which seems very fitting, since I first heard opera by watching Bugs Bunny cartoons.
The legacy continues.
Is Kerry ‘08 toast yet?
Ross Perot was a very exciting presidential candidate. In 1992. For about a week. “60 Minutes” did a profile of him in which he seemed smart and dynamic and plain-speaking and Trumanesque. He was a billionaire and a businessman and could get things done.
Then it became plain that he was also nuts. He started babbling about the government infiltrating his daughter’s wedding ceremony, and his campaign fell apart like a Bulgarian vacuum cleaner.
But at least there was that moment, that excitement, when it seemed like Perot was The Guy. Which is more than can be said for John Kerry, who loped on the scene in 2004 and somehow took control — I’ll never figure out how. Maybe the Republicans were behind it. Anyway, the Demo-crats hoped for the best. But I never met anyone who had Kerry fever, who felt here was the dynamic leader to guide America into the future.
And now he’s back. At least in his own mind. He popped up near the end of the 2006 midterm elections, thinking he’d warm his fingers over the Republican flame-out, and instead singed himself with his “botched joke.”
One would assume that his deeply humiliating gaffe would send him back into the shadows. Noooooo. It hasn’t affected his hunger for the presidency. “Not in the least,” he told a Sunday TV talk show, explaining that he would decide whether to run for president next year.
Umm, actually, the public has already decided. Thanks, but no thanks. The only issue on the table is when that decision will dawn upon John Kerry. Soon, I hope.
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Africa: 1, U.S.: 0
“It’s a sad day,” I told my wife, looking up from the Sunday papers, “when South Africa sprints ahead of the United States regarding human rights.”
The largest nation in Africa has just made gay marriage legal, following the lead of such radical regimes as Canada, Spain and Belgium. Meanwhile, the United States agonizes over whether to engrave the definition of marriage as being between “one man and one woman” on our currency, lest we be mistaken for queers.
She said South Africa’s legacy of apartheid is a thing of the past.
“Well, they’re making up for lost time,” I said. A moment of coffee-scented silence.
“What is it about religion,” she wondered, “that they need people to hate?”
That’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it? A true mystery. I can’t understand it. Myself, were I convinced that I was curled up in God’s lap, with the Divine Entity scratching behind my ear and murmuring approval over my existence, were I certain that I was living in exact accordance with the rather narrow expectations of the Lord God Almighty Creator of the Universe, who not only heard my personal prayers, cutting loud and clear through the static of the Cosmos, but found time to answer them on occasion, making my life smoother until the inevitable day when I was assigned my richly deserved place in Eternal Paradise, well, to be honest, I might extend some true charity toward my inferiors. I imagine that my first impulse, upon waking up every morning, would not be to roll out of bed and find some fringe group whose activities didn’t mirror my own to hound and harass.
Don’t mince words. Denying gays the right to marry is oppression. Marriage is a civil institution — oh, religions each have their own versions, with all the veils and gold leaf and incense and chants and whatever. But you can — if you’re straight — go have it done at any one of a number of county offices without a murmur about divinity. Someday, our policy will seem a violation of humanity — like apartheid. It seems that way now, to people whose eyes are not foggy with religious ecstasies.
Today’s chuckle
This space often provokes discussion of what is funny. I think Mel Brooks sums up the nature of comedy — and tragedy — in two neat sentences:
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Posted by j0hn on November 14th, 2006 — in Prozac Top News
There’s something about new country music that’s always bothered me.
I can’t stand listening to the stuff.
I don’t have a problem with old country songs because they’re genuinely rustic and refreshingly honest. They’re about lyin’ and cheatin’ and drinkin’ at the honkytonk after workin’ at the ranch all day.
And those old country singers are convincing not because they’re great actors, but because they actually lived like they sang — rough and tough, sad and lonesome. If more people today compared their cushy, modern lives to the old country songs, Prozac would be unnecessary.
New country music, though, doesn’t have the same trashy appeal. It’s toned down, sanitized and neatly packaged in clean little snippets of electronic sound. It’s about flying into stadiums on helicopters while covered head to toe in silver sequins, and it’s sung by people who live in brick mansions with diamond-studded swimming pools and exotic sports cars in the garage.
New country music is nothing but Madonna in a cowboy hat and Elton John in leather chaps. It’s revolting.
And that’s why whenever I drive a new pickup, I wonder whether it’s more of a Hank Williams truck — real, honest and hard-working — or more of a Keith Urban truck that’s all about flash and dazzle.
Oddly enough, I drove a mid-size Japanese pickup this week that seems more like Hank than some of its American competitors.
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The Nissan Frontier would be out of place covered in rhinestones. It’s a plain-Jane truck designed to do hard work in the country. And I love that.
It comes with some fairly flashy new features, sure enough. There’s a factory-installed bedliner and big, beefy rails built into the bed so you can easily tie down all the big, beefy stuff you’re hauling. It has a powerful V6 engine with variable valve timing and pistons that are covered with Teflon, for heaven’s sake.
But when it comes right down to it, the Frontier is just a truck.
When you step into the driver’s seat, you’d think it has DNA stretching back for generations in America. It doesn’t, obviously, but it feels that way. Everything about it is easy to operate and easy to understand. It’s comfortable and roomy, at least in the front seat, because mid-size trucks today are nearly as spacious as the full-size trucks from Hank’s era.
When you drive a Frontier, it doesn’t feel soft and squishy like a Toyota car. It feels rugged and sturdy, built like a 19th century steam locomotive that takes some actual heft to drive. The engine has a nice, deep roar, and the steering wheel requires a firm tug to get it to turn anywhere.
It’s especially refreshing when compared to the big, expensive luxury trucks like the Lincoln Mark LT that are cluttering up America’s highways. Nobody who drives a Lincoln truck would ever consider switching to a Frontier, and vice versa. They’re as different as Merele Haggard and Faith Hill. But the fact that these two different vehicles could both fall under the same “pickup” category is astonishing.
Give me Merle and the Frontier any day.
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Posted by j0hn on November 10th, 2006 — in Prozac Top News
America “hearts” Jonathan Adler. The potter-turned-designer-turned-cheeky taste pooh-bah has become a national design mascot.
He can put breasts on a vase and we’ll buy it; turn a giraffe into a lamp, and modern moms want it for the nursery; slap “Prozac” on a jar, sell it for $78, and we all sigh, “J’adore.”
He makes rugs and pillows and glamazon sofas, and, of course, he has his very own coffee-table book. Copy-kittens stalk him at design shows, resulting in coy Adler homages everywhere from Target to West Elm.
There’s an affordable Adler line for the masses at Bed Bath & Beyond, a new Adlerized hotel for the upper design classes in Palm Springs, Calif., and Jonathan Adler scented candles.
Adler is a delicious riot of fun: always chipper, never dressed in all black, eternally encouraging his followers to put clown art on the wall or speaking in unlikely Franglais. (He is Jewish and from New Jersey — but is all about “a soupçon” of this and “moiself” that.)
His official aesthetic is “happy chic,” and this means he has a bust of Michael Jackson in his New York apartment, puts Liza Minnelli on needlepoint throw pillows and believes passionately in the power of Krylon orange spray paint.
“My work, whatever the medium, is about making design that is unimpeachably chic but not off-putting or cold,” Adler says via e-mail. “I want my stuff to make people feel good.”
Joie de Jonathan
The Adler look is a wild melange of things he loves: from Pop Art and poodles to Palm Beach. It’s 1972 and 1992 and 2002, all at the same time. It is iconically but irreverently modern. He offers prissy houndstooth pillows and platinum vases with the same vigor that he shows cushions covered with the seven deadly sins.
“He has a great sense of humor about what he does,” says Margaret Russell, editor of Elle Decor. “He doesn’t take anything that seriously. He creates these terrific spaces and amazing products that people really gravitate to, and it’s done with a lightness and a freshness and a different, quirky taste.”
His inspirations include rap music, “The Shining,” Madonna, Kiki de Montparnasse and “The Terminator.” This man is not a snob, and it seems his America is just one DayGlo, Prozac’d land of fun.
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“I am widely influenced,” says Adler, 40. “I think snobbism can close one’s eyes to some really great stuff. I think that a soupçon of vulgarity is a great thing — sort of like Diana Vreeland saying that bad taste is like a dash of paprika.”
His breast lamp, by the way, is a huge seller. Though Adler reports that “some executive dude in Texas” was sued for sexual harassment for having one in his office. Clearly, someone out there isn’t playing this game.
“There’s a difference between taste and style,” he adds. “Taste is safe. Style is bold, and at its best, walks a fine line between good and bad taste.
Taste is forgettable. Style is memorable. So, an improbable splash of orange, a dollop of gold or a tidgy bit of kitsch are the things that make a room.”
Summer camp
Jonathan got his hands into clay at summer camp when he was 12. In 1979, for his bar mitzvah, he pleaded for a potter’s wheel, and his parents obliged.
Come college time, he officially studied art history and semiotics at Brown University in Providence, R.I., but, he says, often absconded to the nearby Rhode Island School of Design to play with clay. He also was told there that, officially, he had no talent.
So Adler tried the movie business: an assistant to “harpyish shrews,” but after three years, he gave in to the call of the vase.
“I assumed I was sacrificing any hope of fame or fortune to pursue my passion for clay,” he says. “I imagined a life hawking my wares at rain-soaked craft fairs, and that was fine. Finding an audience for my work was my idea of success.”
It happened quickly: In 1994, he showed his creations to a buyer for Barneys New York and design minds across the country swooned.
“It was modern and wasn’t like anything else people were doing in the market, especially during that time period,” says Gregory Gordon, an owner of Haus Modern Living in Scottsdale, Ariz. “… People stood up and took notice.”
In the beginning, Adler made everything himself. Pots and mugs bearing his fingerprints and signatures are collectors’ items and “hoarded,” Gordon says — you never see them on eBay.
When Adler decided he needed help, when his pieces were shown in magazines and everyone wanted more, more, more, he went to Aid to Artisans, a nonprofit organization that links designers with artisans in less fortunate countries. Soon enough, he was supporting a small village in Peru, where they throw his pots to this day in a workshop by the sea.
“He built this, and he built it on his own,” says Rima Suqi, shopping editor for New York Magazine and a longtime design journalist.
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Posted by j0hn on October 30th, 2006 — in Prozac Top News
I looked around when I heard someone crying, and there was Pollyanna bawling her eyes out. That’s how depressing was the one-two punch of pessimism in Paul Krugman’s and Bob Herbert’s New York Times pay-to-peruse columns of today.
Just in time for the elections, the pair paint a picture of America so dreary you half-expected the Google logarithm to place Prozac ads on the page. Krugman tries to talk down the economy, while Herbert sees a more deep-seated malaise. Annotated excerpts:
Krugman: “Bursting Bubble Blues”
* “The housing boom became a bubble . . . the question now is how much pain the bursting bubble will inflict.” Guessing Krugman’s answer: a lot.
* “Some say the worst is already over . . . So maybe this is as bad as it gets. But I think the pessimists have a stronger case.” Told you so!
* “Home sales probably still have a long way to fall.”
* “You don’t want to make too much of the fact that some housing indicators have turned up; those indicators tend to bounce around a lot from month to month.” Don’t let some hard data stand in the way of a good jeremiad.
* “Moreover, much of the good news in the latest economic report is unsustainable at best, suspect at worst.” Rove at it again.
* “So this is probably just the beginning. How bad can it get? Well, you don’t have to go far to find grim forecasts.” No farther than the Times op-ed page.
* “In case you’re wondering, I don’t blame the Bush administration for the latest bad economic numbers.” Wanna bet?
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* “Still, the bad news will have political consequences. . . And if that hurts the G.O.P. in next week’s election, well, there’s a certain poetic justice involved.” I told you so!
Herbert: “The System’s Broken”
* “If you pay close attention to the news and then go out and talk to ordinary people, it’s hard not to come away with the feeling that the system of politics and government in the U.S. is broken.” No sweeping generalizations for Bob!
* “I spent the past week talking to residents in Chicago, southern Michigan and Indiana. No one was happy about the direction the country has taken.” No one? Where did Bob find his folks - the unemployment line?
* “. . . an increasing sense of disenchantment and unease that ordinary Americans are feeling when it comes to national politics and government. For far too many of them, the government in Washington is remote, unresponsive and ineffective.” Let me guess: solution - make government bigger!
* “Several people mentioned that their families were struggling financially at a time when the stock market had soared to all-time highs.” Darn those Monopoly millionaires!
* “Nearly all said they were repelled by the relentless barrage of tasteless and idiotic campaign commercials.” So why has YouTube had a gazillion hits for the Harold Ford Playboy ad?
* “Black voters, disillusioned by voter suppression efforts and a pervasive belief that their votes will not be properly counted, may not turn out in the numbers that the party was hoping for.” Rove and Diebold, at it again.
* “The system is broken. Most politicians would rather sacrifice their first born than tell voters the honest truth about tough issues.” Translation: raise taxes.
As I type this, it’s still dark here in upstate New York. But Herbert and Krugman notwithstanding, I’m betting that in an hour or so, the sun will rise.
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Posted by j0hn on October 27th, 2006 — in Prozac Top News
WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration recommended Wednesday that doctors prescribe the smallest quantity of Wyeth’s Effexor possible to help protect patients from fatally overdosing on the antidepressant pills.
The agency announced changes to the drug’s labeling today based on evidence of patients overdosing on the popular antidepressant, usually when taking it in combination with other drugs and alcohol.
Preceding the FDA’s decision was a letter from Wyeth, which says studies have shown Effexor patients are more likely to overdose than patients taking a different class of antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor drugs. Drugs in that class include Celexa, Zoloft and Prozac.
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Negative side affects connected with the drug range in seriousness from vomiting to death, according to the Oct. 17 letter Wyeth sent to doctors. But physicians still have discretion to determine what quantity to prescribe to patients.
Prudential Financial analyst Timothy Anderson wrote in a note to investors today that Wyeth’s announcement will only have “a marginal direct impact on the brand.” However it will likely cement Effexor into a “’second-line’ position” behind other drugs.
Global sales for the drug were $3.5 billion in 2005.
Shares of Wyeth rose 8 cents to $52.40 Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange.
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Posted by j0hn on October 24th, 2006 — in Prozac Top News
Best-selling antidepressant drugs may be making some men infertile, according to research reported yesterday. The warning follows a study of two men at Cornell Medical Centre in New York whose sperm counts dropped dramatically to almost zero while taking the drugs, but recovered to healthy levels whenever their medication was suspended.
The men were tested over a two-year period while being treated with the antidepressants Citalopram (Cipramil) or Sertraline (Lustral), which belong to the same class of drugs as Prozac and Seroxat, Britain’s biggest-selling antidepressants. A further 12 men at the clinic have since been discovered to experience a similar but less dramatic fall in sperm counts while on the medication.
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Doctors yesterday urged men receiving the drugs to combat depression not to stop taking them before consulting their GPs. While only two men at the clinic had a dramatic reaction to the drugs, the researchers believe large numbers of men may be affected to a lesser extent. The team, lead by Peter Schlegel, has launched an urgent clinical trial of 30 healthy men, to confirm how common the possible side-effect might be.
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“These were men with normal sperm counts that went to nearly zero when they were on these antidepressants but returned to normal when they were off them. It’s a dramatic effect and it’s never been described before,” said Professor Schelgel. “We believe that while it’s had a profound effect on these two men, it could be having a significant but more subtle effect on many more men.”
The previously unknown effect could be having a significant effect on couples trying to start families, Prof Schegel said.
Demand for antidepressants has soared in recent years, with doctors writing 19m prescriptions for Seroxat alone in 2004.
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