Yes, I know. Everyone’s got their hands in yer pockets this year. Between taxes and charities and schools and the strike, the last thing you need is another pitch for a donation.

I’ll proceed nonetheless.

I worked with Jim Abrahams on Scary Movie 4. Jim’s probably the nicest guy in the world, and I’m even including people who used to be in the world like Buddha and Jesus and such. Jim’s youngest son, Charlie, was born with Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome, which causes serious epilepsy in children. Jim and his doctors happened upon a specific diet high in fat (not dissimilar to the Atkins Diet, actually) that helped control the seizures, and Charlie’s life was turned around.

Still, about 500,000 American children live with pediatric epilepsy…and no one yet knows why the ketogenic diet helps some kids, how it stops seizures and what we might learn from it in terms of finding an eventual cure. There’s much work to be done.

So this Christmas, consider donating to The Charlie Foundation. If you’d like the direct link to the donation page, go to the California Community Foundation and look for the donation link near the bottom of the page.

That was going to be my big pitch, but I just got an email from a fellow WGA member who is running a charity site to help out below-the-line folks who are struggling right now. If you’re a professional writer with some produced scripts, consider signing them and donating them to Cash For The Crew, which auctions them off and sends the proceeds to The Motion Picture & Television Fund, which does good work on behalf of all workers in our industry.

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