hero | hero
Oct.28.2009
Recently, I sat on my balcony, reading for a little while, catching up on things I'd forgotten I already knew about Errol Flynn, my childhood film hero. The night before, I’d watched one of his films for the... Nth... time.
I say “childhood hero”--He's still one of my heroes; even though I now...
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Oct.07.2009
I’ve always tried to be the hero. Since I first picked up a comic book or a novel, I was trying to be that guy who saved everyone—the dog, the damsel, the world. Growing up, I pretended to be Sgt Rock and Sgt Fury from comics. I was Thor and Captain America and Captain Marvel. I had power and...
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Oct.06.2009
Turning good guys to bad and vice versa or writing characters that are a hearty mix of both has always been a favorite pastime of mine. People were convinced Ty was the hero of TYGERS until about 4 scenes in, when I turned the tables and showed them a 4 y/o boy's best friend was a psychopath...
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Aug.24.2009
OK, I'm not drawn to needy man-children who have just taken an emotional beating from true-loves and certainly can't turn to their dysfuncational families for help. I prefer boys with the courage of adults, like Edgar Sawtelle, to vice-versa. And Woody Allen's so mastered dysfuncational families,...
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Aug.14.2009
When I was growing up in a suburb of New York, we had a family doctor, an avuncular type whose office smelled like Listerine and potatoes. Dr. Kreske played fast and loose with the lollipops (especially after booster shots) and even came to our house if we were laid low. Once, when I had the mumps...
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Aug.14.2009
Last week CNN repeatedly aired video of a woman dragging her son through a drug store. The woman told the investigating police officers that the reason she couldn't pick up her pre-schooler and carry him was because she was too weak to do so. Apparently, she has the autoimmune disorder, lupus, a...
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Aug.13.2009
Once there was a boy.
There wasn’t anything particularly unusual about him when he was born, but his parents, like most parents, believed him to be the most perfect baby.
He was a rough-and-tumble child, as boys tend to be — active and talkative and social.
Somewhere along the way, he developed...
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Aug.13.2009
As far as I think, ‘Hero’ is one type of person who is a bit difficult to define. In movies like Batman or Superman or Spiderman, the word ‘hero’ always means an extraordinary person who gets his power either by his genes or by plenty of exercises and it always seems quite hard to beat him, let...
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Aug.12.2009
The heroine in my life is my stepmother. She died at 93 years of age after a lifetime of experiences that would have taken down a less loving person. I called her “Dorry,” a nickname that stuck when she was a young girl, shorter than her four sisters and teased because she was slow. “Dorry” was...
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Aug.12.2009
Hedwig Schwarz, my great-aunt from Horb, Germany, in the beautiful Black Forest, was the lone survivor of deportation in her town. At the old Jewish cemetery in Rexingen, one can find her gravestone set apart, topped with stones left by each respectful visitor who wishes to pay homage.
When the...
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