Roger Ebert's Last Words

[Stoney Mason]

Esquire Article

http://www.esquire.com/features/roger-ebert-0310


His response article

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/02/roger_eberts_last_words_cont.html

[The Fake Shemp]

 

[Himu]

I really respect Ebert. This is making me so sad.

[BlueTsunami]

His operation was fairly recent, right? I'm wondering if he'll eventually get some sort of re constructive surgery for the jawline.

Edit: I suck, four years since? Wow

Ebert always had music playing in his hospital room, an esoteric digital collection that drew doctors and nurses to his bedside more than they might have been otherwise inclined to visit. There was one song in particular he played over and over: "I'm Your Man," by Leonard Cohen. That song saved his life.j

<333

[Ichirou]

Good article, but makes it sound like he's got like a year to live or something.  His quality of life may not be that great (not being able to eat, poor guy ) but it sounds like the cancer hasn't come back.

[BlueTsunami]

Just read about the multiple failed operations he underwent to repair the jaw and more importantly his voice and ability to eat solid foods (pulling bone and skin from various areas of his body, whittling down one of his shoulders and legs). That would have devastated most people.

[EmCeeGrammar]

Thread title is the worst pun ever.

[recursivelyenumerable]

If it's so easy, why don't you do it?

[AdmiralViscen]

Maybe they should put him in a Na'vi, I bet he'd sit there and just scream for five minutes

[Beezy]

Maybe they should put him in a Na'vi, I bet he'd sit there and just scream for five minutes

[brawndolicious]

How is it that we're still unable to create a synthetic artificial jawbone? Would the immune system attack it?

There's a lot of nerves and muscles to keep in mind.  When I had to have my jaw fixed, the temporary distractors had to press on some nerves on the right side of my face making it completely numb (hence expressionless) for a whole summer.  that was only for a few cm of jawbone.

As for the OP:


would anybody give a rat's ass about this type of situation if it wasn't happening to a celebrity?  it's just vain to imagine how the situation feels when you don't have to deal with it.

[Stoney Mason]

would anybody give a rat's ass about this type of situation if it wasn't happening to a celebrity? 

Welcome to planet earth.

[Cormacaroni]

How is it that we're still unable to create a synthetic artificial jawbone? Would the immune system attack it?

There's a lot of nerves and muscles to keep in mind.  When I had to have my jaw fixed, the temporary distractors had to press on some nerves on the right side of my face making it completely numb (hence expressionless) for a whole summer.  that was only for a few cm of jawbone.

As for the OP:


would anybody give a rat's ass about this type of situation if it wasn't happening to a celebrity?  it's just vain to imagine how the situation feels when you don't have to deal with it.

Despite this having actually happened to  you, I am nevertheless convinced this is a bizarre contortion of the facts of the case.

[drew]

i can only hope that if god forbid i ever have to get a toe amputated that my friends and family build and bring me my very own dj roomba

[brawndolicious]

Welcome to planet earth.

I'm so lonely, I better become a celebrity to get attention.

Despite this having actually happened to  you, I am nevertheless convinced this is a bizarre contortion of the facts of the case.

well the things that I'm talking about are basically like these metal rails attached to your upper and lower jaws and what they do is fracture the bone so that they can increase/decrease the gap between the right and left side of the jaw a few mm a day so that the correct amount of bone is formed.  for some reason, only the right side nerves were pinched but feeling and movement gradually came back after several weeks.  having a stroke victim's facial expressions (like laughing with half your mouth and drooling with the other half...) isn't nearly as bad as having to be on a liquid diet.  I lost ten pounds the first week on that.

[cubicle47b]

I'm so lonely, I better become a celebrity to get attention.

The next Spencer Pratt.

[ManaByte]

[youtube=560,345][/youtube]

[demi]

Haha is that his wife or something? Didnt know he was into that dark meat

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

True story, he dated Oprah in the 80's.

[Ichirou]

Ebert isn't racist like John Mayer.

[Himu]

Ebert is my hero.

[AdmiralViscen]

[youtube=560,345][/youtube]

Wow, Oprah really let herself go.

[Ichirou]

Ebert is my hero.

He's an awesome dude.

[CajoleJuice]

http://deadspin.com/5482198/my-roger-ebert-story

Meanwhile, the Web was beginning to emerge, and we young turks, swept in during the dot-com boom, all thought we were punk rock gods, ready to kill our idols. Ebert began to feel like the old guard: In the wake of Siskel's death, he had become a ubiquitous presence on television, at the expense of his writing, I felt. In 2000, when I'd moved to New York and, like everybody else, was being paid far too much just to be told I was part of the next "MTV Generation" of Internet stars, I thought I knew everything. You had to burn down the past. These were the days of We Live in Public, of Pets.com, of bringing your dog in the office, of Webvan, of espnet.sportszone.com. We all thought we were hot shit.

And I was ready to make my own name. My editor at Ironminds, the old Web magazine I moved out to New York for, had heard me drunkenly bitching about Ebert at a bar the night before and suggested I write about him. "Put him in his place," he said. "Yeah: It's our time now," I said. We were all so, so stupid.

So I did. The next morning, Ironminds ran a piece called "I Am Sick Of Roger Ebert's Fat F—-ing Face." The piece — which, mercifully, is no longer online — wasn't as virulent as that headline would imply, but I did use that exact line in the piece, and I did make a few cheap shots about his weight. The thesis of the piece was that Ebert's work was suffering because he was on television all the time, but that's not really what it was about: It was me lashing out at Daddy, trying to make my own name, trying to feed off his. That's not what I thought I was doing at the time. But that's absolutely what it was.

[Ichirou]

I read that.  The sad thing is that in the paragraphs leading up to that moment he talks about how he corresponded with Ebert back when he was in college, how he worked at the same student newspaper Ebert did, how Ebert gave him access to a critic's screening of an upcoming film, etc.  So basically Ebert did really good things by him, and this guy repaid him by making fun of his weight and writing a derogatory article about him.

Guy proceeds to say a lot of nice things about Ebert and act very apologetic, but he just comes off as an asshole after that article title.  No way to recover from being that big a douche.

[CajoleJuice]

Yes, I read it too, Ichirou. I just wanted to post that part.

I haven't read any of Leitch's other work, but in that article he comes off as pretty full of himself. Is that par for the course with him?

The dude did use the royal "we" when he was the Deadspin editor, so yeah, I'd say he is.

(Most people who know him seem to say the opposite, but come on!)

[Mandark]

Eh, writing an autobiographical piece where you cop to being wrong and don't sugarcoat events isn't easy.  I don't know that I could do it.

Not screwing up is better than screwing up and admitting it, but I don't see a need to pile on someone for something he obviously regrets and which we only know of because he made it public.

[CajoleJuice]

I'm not even piling on him for what he did to Ebert. I found it interesting and amusing, albeit fucked up. I posted that one part because it was the most ridiculous part of the post. I *am* making fun of him for the royal we.

I agree that writing about something that can only make you look like a total fucking asshole must be extremely hard.

[Ichirou]

Not screwing up is better than screwing up and admitting it, but I don't see a need to pile on someone for something he obviously regrets and which we only know of because he made it public.

He published an article telling someone who'd done nothing but be nice to him and had helped guide and counsel him that he was "tired of his fat fucking face."  I think that already made it pretty fucking public, dude.

[chronovore]

Not screwing up is better than screwing up and admitting it, but I don't see a need to pile on someone for something he obviously regrets and which we only know of because he made it public.

He published an article telling someone who'd done nothing but be nice to him and had helped guide and counsel him that he was "tired of his fat fucking face."  I think that already made it pretty fucking public, dude.

Pretty sure "which we only know of because he made it public" is referring to "regrets."

But, hey, if being a douche is unrecoverable, we should all just hang up our damned hats right now.