Sydney used to cover things like music, environmental justice and Occupy for The L Magazine in Brooklyn. She has also contributed to the Washington Square News, Brooklyn Magazine and NPR's All Songs Considered. Outside of writing, Sydney is an ardent fan of sunflower seed butter and the old version of Final Cut Pro.
If you walk into "Side Effects" looking for a gritty, realistic treatment of what it's like to go on and off of psychiatric meds, you're walking into the wrong theater. If you come looking for a critique of Big Pharma's marketing practices, you'll leave perplexed. But if you see "Side Effects" to get lost in Jude Law's baby blue "trust-me" eyes and to indulge in Catherine Zeta-Jones' skillful portrayal of a hyper-sexual psychiatrist in silky business casual, you're definitely in the right place. Indeed, the film makes it easy enough to OD on psycho-thriller kitsch.
Steven Soderbergh's latest (and possibly last) film in fact begins with a keen picture of deep-seated modern malaise. Emily Taylor, played by Rooney Mara, is a graphic designer in her late 20s—an artist with dreams deferred by her marriage to Martin (Channing Tatum), who's just been let out of prison after serving time for insider trading. Emily finds herself overcome by crushing depression upon reuniting with Martin in the real world, and after a suicide attempt she finds herself in the care of Dr. Jonathan Banks (Jude Law), a warm, sentimental psychiatrist who consults Emily's former shrink, played by Catherine Zeta-Jones, about treatment. Eventually, as recommended by Zeta-Jones' character, Dr. Banks prescribes his patient Ablixa, a fictional SSRI with some very disturbing side effects. Or that's what viewers are led to believe, until the second half of the film gets sucked into a senseless plot wormhole and implodes.
Fifteen minutes before Victoria Bruton's lunch shift at a busy Philadelphia dining joint, she began to feel dizzy and hot. "I had gone to my boss and asked if I could leave because I wasn't feeling well," Bruton, now 41, remembers of her first case of what she assumed to be the flu. "They asked that I finish the shift. And frankly, I couldn't afford not to." The sole source of income for her two daughters, Bruton powered through the shift—and spent the next two days confined to a sickbed.
Like most of the country, Philadelphia doesn't require restaurants to pay sick leave for its food handlers, though longtime food workers like Bruton, advocacy organizations, and lawmakers are currently fighting for a law to do so in Pennsylvania. Councilmen in Portland, Oregon, are also debating a similar initiative. But these two proposals are the exception rather than the norm: According to a study from the Food Chain Workers Alliance, 79 percent of food workers in the United States don't have paid sick leave or don't know if they do. And it's not just flu that sick servers can spread—a study out this week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that the food industry's labor practices may be contributing to some of the nation's most common foodborne illness outbreaks, and even more than previously thought.
We survived the apocalypse, the fiscal cliff, and a new Ke$ha album. If the last bit of 2012 was gloom and doom, 2013, at least, may offer a musical respite. Here are five albums we can look forward to in the new year.
Yo La Tengo, Fade (January 15) In a world of one-hit wonders, quietly depressing reunion tours, and bands that put out a few great albums and then fall off the face of the planet, Yo La Tengo are the freak survivalists. Fade marks the trio's 14th studio album—since 1986, they've showered a unique, consistent goodness on an adoring cult of fans. In November, YLT prereleased the Fade single "Before We Run," a swelling, meditative lullaby sung in Georgia Hubley's honest alto. More recently, the band put out "Ohm," a gentle krautrocker with a chorus bound to glue itself to the inside of your skull. To celebrate the upcoming full-length, YLT has announced a series of West Coast in-record-store shows. (Check out the schedule here.)
Unknown Mortal Orchestra, II (February 5): Frontman Ruban Nielson has described this sophomore album as "lonely." That'd be a major change of pace from the band's debut, which clattered onto the scene in 2011 as a funky, exuberant patchwork of psych-pop songs—the stuff of surrealistic lyrics and deliciously weird, tart guitar lines recalling the earliest Pink Floyd. It's been nearly two years since Nielson, former guitarist of New Zealand's experimental noise outfit The Mint Chicks, let those first few tracks loose via Bandcamp, and I'm not the only one who's been keeping a keen weather eye out for UMO's next delivery. If "Swim and Sleep (Like a Shark)," a single from II, is anything by which to judge the release, Nielson's second effort is shaping up to be just as inspired as the first. Loneliness, in this case, is welcome.
The tragedy in Newtown has revived a national debate about gun control, focusing attention on the laws (and loopholes) governing gun ownership in America, and raising a host of questions about how to prevent future Newtowns (and Auroras and Columbines and Virginia Techs). Chief among them is how to keep weapons out of the hands of mentally ill people. Newtown shooter Adam Lanza, whose mother was reportedly seeking to have her son committed to a mental institution, carried out the shootings with weapons that had been legally purchased by his mom, but across the country it's frighteningly easy for people with serious psychiatric problems to purchase weapons.
It's technically against federal law to sell guns to people with a severe mental illness, but in practice the background check system is so flawed it rarely filters out those with disqualifying psychiatric problems. There are a number of roadblocks to enforcing the law. One of them is that only gun sales by federally licensed arms dealers require background checks. That means a huge chunk—40 percent—of private gun sales don't require buyers to be vetted. (This is the so-called "gun show" loophole, though currently six states have laws that close it.) The law also defines disqualifying mental illness narrowly. It only forbids gun sales to people who have been determined by a court to be seriously mentally ill, or who have been involuntarily committed to a mental institution. This means that the system often overlooks dangerous and disturbed people who don't have a paper trail.
Bearing witness to the worst year of gun rampages in modern US history.
—By Mother Jones staff
| Fri Dec. 21, 2012 2:16 AM PST
The media coverage tends to linger on the killers. But as the nation mourns the excruciating losses in Newtown—and finally begins to confront an epidemic of mass shootings amid the worst year for them in modern US history—it is equally important to bear witness to the victims. What follows are portraits of 151 people physically wounded or killed in the rampages of 2012. In addition to the victims of this year's seven mass shootings, we've included the victims of similar but less lethal rampages in a Portland shopping mall, a Milwaukee spa, and a Cleveland high school.
The total number of lives devastated by these attacks far exceeds 151, of course, starting with survivors who narrowly escaped physical harm, such as the unidentified six-year-old girl who played dead and walked out of Sandy Hook Elementary School against all odds. Mother Jones has only included photos of those injured and killed that were shared publicly by the families or survivors themselves, or for which we were granted specific permission. For essential context and findings from our in-depth investigation, also see our guide to mass shootings in America.
Scroll down to begin, or jump directly to any of these attacks of 2012:
Beyond the blustering on Benghazi and the budget sequester, there are many serious issues facing the nation. Climate change, gun violence, immigration reform, drone warfare, human rights—Mother Jones is dedicated to serious investigative reporting on all of these. But we need your help. We're a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and our work is mostly funded by donations. Please donate 5 or 10 bucks to the Mother Jones Investigative Fund today to turbocharge our reporting and amplify our voice. Thanks!
