AFFLECK UPDATE: A MAN FOR ALL AGES, OR ALL DONE

via metrojornal.com.br

Get to a certain age and the realization, if it hadn’t hit yet, of a finite time to make a difference sets in. This Affleck Update serves as a reminder of who to make a difference to.

In the confusion that is Hollywood it’s not enough to win the favor of the crowd and critics, especially if you’re a man who others try and live vicariously through. Especially if you’re an Academy Award winning hunk of man edging toward fifty with a soon to be ex-wife and three kids, in a committed relationship with a new showbiz lady, and in some kind of rehab counseling.

Man, that’s a mouthful even by People Magazine standards.

Why is it so hard for Ben Affleck to settle into the manly role of husband and father for his wife and kids? Don’t blame George Clooney for setting a bad example. He’s pulling his fair share.

What’s the problem with BA? The Affleck Update has one possible answer.

Some guys show up big, get early acclaim by their film peers, and fade away. We used to see them on game shows like Hollywood Squares. Oscar winners on television shows? The Partridge Family had one and it wasn’t David Cassidy.

Ben Affleck showed up big and didn’t follow the script. A writer, actor, and director, he found more to do than drink and drug himself into unrecognizable shape, more to do than eat himself into an Orson Welles profile during his downtime between The Sum Of All Fears in 2002 and Hollywoodland in 2006. He could have disappeared after Daredevil and Gigli, only to be seen in ‘What Happened To Ben Affleck’ shows, but somehow survived.

He got married in 2005 if that adds up to anything, which any married guy with THAT wife knows is everything. Add three kids and he was set to show the rest of us a new way to husband and daddy. It still might happen. Stranger reunions have been in the tabloid news which is not fake news, if you were wondering. I am.

If Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston can find more to talk about besides Angelina, there’s a chance for Ben Affleck. But he needs to see something first.

The Affleck Update points to director Kevin Smith and his recent health needs, like he needed to go to a hospital or else die. It’s the old story of here today, gone tomorrow. Ben, if you don’t like living with your wife and kids, do something different. Since you moved away from them, that’s something, but not uncommon.

Kids without dads in view, within earshot, grow up with a hollow spot. We meet them as adults everyday in people who can’t see what’s in front of them, who can’t get out of their own way, who can’t hear good advice when it’s offered. We meet them in relationships that don’t work out unless both people have hollow spots that spoon.

“You can’t make as big a difference to your kids if you’re dead,” I’ve been told. You need to address that hollow spot, Mr. Affleck, or practice saying, “Kids will be kids, they have their own lives,” when someone else picks them up at the police station because you have priorities and appointments higher than them on your To-Do list.

Be the ‘hard working man’ your kids can point to as adults. Be the ‘great provider’ when they go to college. But why wait? Why not be the, ‘yeah, he’s my dad and you won’t believe the mess he made in the garage,’ guy. Let your kids see you fail some little things to make them laugh.

You’ve got the big stuff covered. No one wants to hear, “Dad, what was more important than us,” from their kids. You don’t want to try and answer that question, Ben. There’s no good answer from any dad absent in a time of need, like homework help.