Robot In Disguise

Woof

2010-02-14T18:19:00.004-06:00

So my plan for LOST this season was just to relax, try to stop irresponsibly speculating at every possible moment, leave my episode critiques to a minimum and enjoy the concluding chapter of a story the producers spent five seasons spinning. I was able to stick to that plan for just under three episodes.

I was not a happy camper with “What Kate Does”. It seemed like a bizarre way to use one of the series’ final fifteen episodes – a curious detour on our way to answers. There is so much to do and so many things to explain, but we were served up with a warmed over episode potmarked with clichéd vagaries and tired back stories.

I suppose I shouldn’t be too critical of any episode that focuses on Kate as that means a lot of screen time for Evangeline Lilly. But I have a tough time caring about her character within the context of the safe-815 world. The potential intrigue and excitement of the characters that landed safely at LAX is how their past lives have been different from the ones that we have already understood and how the characters themselves are different than their on-island counterparts. But with Kate we got exactly what we were expecting – a dogged fugitive with the occasional sentimental weakness. Her narrative orbit between Jack, Sawyer and Aaron is well-worn now, known to the viewer and never all that interesting in the first place. This episode pioneered no new territory. There was no clarification on her pre-815 life or any suggestion that Kate might be somehow different than the same character we would have expected to find. So effectively what Kate did was bring whatever momentum was built from the season premier to a screeching halt. There seemed to be about 20 minutes worth of story that was stretched into the full episode, which probably explains my surprise when I fast-forwarded through what I thought was the second commercial break, but was in fact the last of the episode.

Though to be fair, it wasn’t entirely Kate’s fault the episode collapsed faster than the 4-toed statue. I am quickly growing tired of the Temple captivity and worry that the location itself symbolizes season 6 as a whole – a once intriguing location that once reveled leads only to a disheartening let-down. If things don’t turn around quickly, the temple could be to season 6 what the Hydra was to season 3, shackling the story telling because the producers think the location is much more interesting than it really is.

Perhaps the temple’s most interesting superpower isn’t the ability to heal the lifeless, but actually to compel those within its walls to speak in unnecessary vagaries. I mean seriously…why don’t they actually just tell Jack what the hell is going on. The stupid euphemisms and vague descriptions are getting really old, really quickly. It was a fine tactic to use in season three – loosely define what is happening so the audience has a whet appetite for three more years of being strung along. But guess what? We made it. You made it interesting enough for us to wait it out for six years and interminably long breaks between seasons. We are sufficiently interested in the show. We aren’t going to leave you now. We have too much invested and too much hope that the payoff will meet our buy-in. SO STOP EXPLAINING THINGS USING WORDS LIKE “INFECTED”, “CLAIMED” OR “CANDIDATE”. EXPLAIN TO US WHAT THE HELL IT MEANS AND WHY WE SHOULD CARE. THERE ARE ENOUGH DAMN MYSTERIES…GIVE US THE PAYOFF. WE ARE SMART ENOUGH TO PICK UP YOUR KIERKEGAARD REFERENCES AND OBSESSION WITH ALICE IN WONDERLAND…WE CAN UNDERSTAND WHATEVER DARKNESS IS TRYING TO GET NEAR SAYID HEART IF YOU WILL JUST GODDAMN WRITE IT DOWN FOR THE ACTORS TO SAY IT. WHY THE HELL DOESN’T JACK ASK “WITH WHAT?” WHEN HE IS TOLD SAYID'S IS “INFECTED”? HE IS A GODFORSAKEN DOCTOR DAMNIT. HE CAN UNDERSTAND AND WE CAN TOO. WE ARE NOT CHARLIE BROWN AND YOU ARE NOT LUCY. LET US KICK THE DAMN FOOTBALL…WE’VE WAITED LONG ENOUGH. I feel sometimes like the producers treat us like we are in second grade. Like they are a parent after a car breaks down and we ask what happened, but the only thing our parents will tell us is “the car is sick”. Scratch that…they would tell us the “car is infected” and leave it at that. That is more frustrating than trying to explain why Claire would get back into a cab with a woman who held a gun to her head. Wouldn't she have gone right to the police after getting forced out of the cab?

That being said, I suppose there were a few cool moments. Ethan showing up as Claire’s doctor was interesting for sure and gave me hope that Ben and Juliet will be – or already are – interacting with the 815 passengers in some way in the future. And I suppose the return of Claire was interesting as well, as she has now become the Island’s new Rousseau – a deranged wanderer who has lost her child after giving birth on the Island. Kate’s moment of recognition, driving by Jack outside of the LAX terminal, was also significant, but only so because it was the first time someone other than Jack seemed to stir a lost recognition in the fog of their mind. But the moment was fleeting.

The “nothing happened” complaint is one heard frequently, though it is often misplaced. The importance of a single episode is rarely immediately evident and the lines of demarcation in a serialized drama like LOST should be unimportant. It is all just one big story. Nothing is self-contained. And until we get a proper look at the entire mosaic, the importance of each tile can’t be fully appreciated or criticized. I am just not sure right now what this piece adds, especially with precious few left to reveal.

The Beginning of the End

2010-02-05T17:35:00.003-06:00

As you can see, commitment to my blog is tenuous at best, negligent at worst. I have not posted since the day John McCain decided he would try to skip the first Presidential debate so that he could help craft a bailout package in the Senate. This is what happens when you spend your free time organizing Family Feud parties. But here I stand (or type), shameful of my neglect, an absentee father who now must face the sobering realization that so many one-time moments have passed without me there - or at the very least, commenting upon them to an audience of no more than 4.

So I have no idea whether I will have the perseverance nor enough warmed over insight every week to scribble my thoughts about the most recent episode of LOST, but - damnit - I am going to try.

And so we start with the very literal beginning of the end. I found myself pleasantly disoriented with the season premier - excited by the prospect of a new narrative structure and the full out gauntlet of answers to questions that hopefully won't lead to more questions. The former is likely to be more satisfying than the wicked pursuit or expectation of the latter.

After 3 seasons of exclusive flashbacks, season four unleashed the narrative shackles, as flash forwards told the story for the O6's departure from the Island, while last season was the skull-clowning time travel narrative, which admittedly I found far too abstract and confusing to enjoy fully. And no more than 5 minutes into Season 6, the curtain was pulled back on this year's narrative engine - the flash sideways. While this may have (read: did) annoy a lot of you, I ate it up. I think the assumption was that if the A-bomb detonation did in fact work, everything would be exactly the same for the characters until the moment they should have crashed onto the island. No, sir. Things on the plane were different - some slightly askew, others wildly off-base. Obvious examples are Hurley's insistance that he is the luckiest man alive, Shannon's absence from 815 and, most strangely, Desmond's presence. But I want to point to a few smaller things. Sayid had an Iranian passport, not an Iraqi passport; Sawyer certainly didn't look as if he just mistakenly killed the wrong man; Desmond didn't look as forelore as he should be if he were still trying doggedly to win the approval of Charles Widmore; and also I don't believe that Sun and Jin are yet married. Sun is referred to as Miss Paik at the border and Jin isn't wearing a wedding ring. None of the characters appear to have the exact life experiences leading up to 815, but granted, the differences are sometimes subtle and based in irresponsible speculation. I also don't think you can assume Claire is pregnant - we didn't get a complete view of her in the taxi - or that Locke's biological father pushed him out of a high rise. Understanding how these characters are different from the ones we have come to know - and how the two personas are ultimately reconciled - offers a distraction from the cascade of raw revelations.

This is why I hope to find the flash sideways (there has to be a better name for it) so compelling; to see how the lives of the people on 815 would have intertwined even if they plane had not crashed on the island; enjoying the dramatic irony behind Locke and Jack's interactions - two former (current?) adversaries playing out their relationship in an entirely different way. Kate and Claire - Aaron's two "mothers" - and what happens after the taxi squeals out of LAX. These are two small examples, but the new possibilities for the characters and their outcomes gives the flash sideways a refreshing take on characters we have gotten to know so well in the past six years. It also begs the questions as to where are others and do they already have some type of relationship with those on 815. Where are Farraday and Widmore? Is Penny somehow with Sawyer? What about Juliet and Ben since they aren't on the Island? (By the way, I don't think we can assume the bomb directly caused the Island to sink. There is a difference between what the bomb caused and what the bomb enabled. Just something to keep in mind). I think this will provide a nice intrigue to the weighty hopelessness that saddles the same characters currently on the island...

So long as the two narratives somehow meet. I am going to be terribly disappointed if I find out that LOST's final season turns out to be a Choose Your Own Adventure where we can pick the world that we want to believe is the most true - or most convenient. (I am also going to be disappointed if the lesson from LOST is the best way to deal with a painful past is to erase it.) I don't want to have Island Jack find redemption in 1 world, but remain adrift in another. There is room for ambiguity, but not for two wildly divergent outcomes. Which leads to the question of what nudges these two narratives (which are 3 years apart) onto a collision course? The easy answer for the safe-815 flight is Jack. Jack seemed to be unable to stir the embers of his mind enough to light the flame of memory when he saw Desmond. In fact, he appeared to be the only one to have some semblance of recognition. But saying that Jack will figure it out is too easy, so I am going to go with Desmond. We have no idea where Desmond is exactly after Ben shot him and sent him to the hospital, but we know 2004 Desmond is on 815 and he has already shown himself to not be constrained by the limits of time and space. I will tenuously assume that is still the case and say it is him that sends the 2004'ers to 2007.

As for the trigger sending the on-island narrative toward their safe 2004 counterparts, I vote for Sawyer. The closing scene of last season - Sawyer losing Juliet down the drill hole - was too dramatic and emotional to be a false climax. To bring Sawyer and Juliet back together - even briefly - diminished emotional wallop of their supposed final good bye and seemed like a strange way to spend 15 minutes of an episode. Unless it serves a larger purpose. And I think that purpose was Juliet seeding in Sawyer's mind that Jack's plan did indeed work, at least in some capacity. My guess is that it's a pivotal piece of information that informs decisions farther down the line as Sawyer - or Miles - shares that bit of information with others on the island.

That assumes that Flocke/Man in Black/Smokey leaves anyone else on the Island alive to share the information with. I appreciated the confirmation the Smokey, Flocke and the Man in Black were all one in the same - something that was hinted at during last season's finale - along with the indication that the ash line does in fact keep Smokey at bay and I am trying to grapple with those implications in my mind. I think the most curious impact is on Jacob's Cabin. We have long been lead to believe that the cabin - which was encircled by an ash/soot line - was inhabited by the mysterious Jacob, but last year's finale suggested that Jacob hadn't been there in a very long time. Which begs the question, "Well, who was Locke talking to and hearing in there?" My guess would be Smokey/Man in Black. Given what we know now about Smokey's difficultly penetrating ash lines, we have to think that maybe the ash line around the cabin was keeping something/one inside rather than the reverse. If you remember, the first visit to Jacob's Cabin - which are some of my favorite scenes in LOST - was made by Ben and Locke. In the cabin, Ben feigned a conversation with Jacob, while Locke called his ruse...until Locke heard someone say "Help me" and then the house started rockin'. While the cabin shook, a figure flashed briefly on the screen, one that looked strangely like Locke, albeit with longer hair.

One the second trip to the cabin, Locke entered, this time without Ben, only to find Christian sitting in the rocking chair, who told John that he needed to move the Island. At each stage, it was Locke who was spoken to - who was given instructions. It is as if whoever inhabited the cabin needed Locke - and only Locke - some grander reason. Locke's use appears now to be the vehicle through which the Man in Black was able to fully make it through the loophole he so desperately sought. And once Locke's dead body arrived back on the island, the Man in Black was able to escape his cabin banishment and get entirely through the loophole, allowing for him to kill Jacob. Remember when Ilana's group found the cabin after Flocke was leading the others to the statue, the soot/ash line was broken, which I took to mean as a sign of escape. Now there are problems with this. The smoke monster appeared a number of times and in a number of different places well before Locke's dead body would have allowed for the Man in Black to escape. And if Richard knew Jacob lived beneath the statue's foot, why didn't he tell Ben and Locke they were going to the wrong place/talking with the wrong people? But to me, this connection between Locke and whatever or whoever was in the cabin is too strong for their not to be something grander beneath the surface. Locke seems to have been a pawn in the Man in Black's larger scheme. For some reason, Locke had to be the vehicle through which the loophole was opened and perhaps Locke's entire life was orchestrated to fulfill the Man in Black's desire to kill Jacob. To be in a place and a position so that the loophole could be exploited and vengeance had. I would not be shocked if we find out the person who caused the accident that sent Locke's mother into premature labor, was in fact the Man in Black. I know the information we have right now counters some of this thinking, but this entire story arc hasn't yet been told.

Just a few other things. I said this when watching - as have others since - but if you are to read into Flocke's "chains" line to Richard, I think you can conclude that Richard was a slave on the Black Rock, not a captain or officer as many - including myself - have speculated.

I think what happened to Sayid at the temple is the same thing that happened to Ben after Sayid shot him 30 years ago, though I am intrigued with the idea of Jacob using Sayid's body the same way the Man in Black is using Locke (though the Man in Black is not using Locke's body, just his persona, likeness and memories). This would also make this photo wildly deeper and symbolic if it came down to "Locke/Man in Black" vs. "Sayid/Jacob". In the Lost Supper photo, Locke is obviously in Jesus' seat while Sayid occupies Judas' position.

I also laugh at the idea that the note hidden inside Charlie's guitar case read, "If something bad happens to me, I need to use either Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Sayid or Hurley's body - preferably not Hurley's if you can help it though. Love - Jacob."

I assume answers will come quickly enough, but who knows. I am just going to try to enjoy the ride.

A Message From the Detroit Lions

2008-09-24T17:10:00.006-05:00

The Detroit Lions this week face a historic crisis in our football operations system. We must game plan to address our 0-3 record. If we do not, wins will dry up, with devastating consequences for our organization and fans. Our fans will no longer be able to cheer once every other game and their emotion investment will be at stake. Our franchise will not have enough wins to make the playoffs. If we do not act, every corner of our organization will be impacted. We cannot allow this to happen.

Last Sunday, we laid an egg in San Francisco and we have since discussed priorities and concerns with the game plan our coaching staff has put forward. This morning, we met with a group of front office staff to talk about the proposals on the table and the steps that we should take going forward. I have also spoken with members of the league office to hear their perspective.

It has become clear that we have no idea what we are doing. The only consensus that can be reached is there is no support for the current game plan. We do not believe that the plan on the table will pass – or run or defend – as it currently stands, and we are running out of time.

Tomorrow morning, we will suspend all football operations going forward. I have spoken with Commissioner Goodell and informed him of our decision and have asked him to have the rest of the league join me.

I am calling on the Commissioner to convene a meeting with the leadership from both conferences of the League, including All Davis. It is time for all teams to come together to solve this problem because we clearly can’t do it ourselves.

We must meet as football franchises, not as Lions or Bears, and we must meet until this crisis is resolved. We are directing our front office to work with the league to delay next Sunday’s game until we have taken action to address this crisis. We are willing to delay all 13 remaining games if we can. Despite these dire circumstances, we will be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel as soon as we move the limp bodies of our wide receiver busts are moved to the side.

I am confident that before the games start next Sunday - or by the start of the 2014 season - we can achieve consensus on a game plan for the Lions going forward that will stabilize our gridiron fortunes, protect season ticket holders and earn the confidence of the Lion fans. All we must do to achieve this is temporarily set competitive games aside, and we are committed to doing so. Just please remember, we believe the fundamentals of our franchise is strong.

Following that fateful 2001 season in which we went 9-11 after our front office didn't take the "NFL Determined to Play 20 Games Inside America" memo seriously, our organization came together to throw its support behind an ineffective leader. Teams across the country now lament that he is no longer indirectly helping them secure their own division titles because we are such doormats and directly preventing us from addressing our franchise's troubles. Now that there has been a change at the top, we hope we will eventually have the chance to prove that Detroit is once again capable of winning this league.

Source material.

Family Feud Glory

2008-09-16T21:11:00.000-05:00

I love the Family Feud. I know it is childish and juvenile at certain points, but it is unendingly hilarious, mainly because of the blatant stupidity displayed on the show. When asked for a state where you can wear the same clothes year round, would you answer Washington, D.C.? Who thinks “whoops” rhymes with “barn”? Are clothes something just little kids wear? Does a bad golfer really go through a lot of carts? And is Regis Kelly one of Oprah’s best friends? Some of my favorite Feud moments can be seen here, here, here, and here. There is much more to love…watching people get an X to the face, listening to the audience respond en mass to the remaining answers being revealed, and having people give the Family Feud-default answer of choice – “making love!” A few weeks ago, when one of the questions was “Name something that children close their eyes when doing”, Alyse’s immediate response was “MAKING LOVE!”.

One of the more subtle aspects of Family Feud is their tendency to play racial groups against each other. I swear one time during college the Whites played the Blacks. And this happens with some regularity and certainly not with any malice. Just an interesting point of pattern recognition. While watching a few weeks ago with my roommate, we saw a family with an Adolph – dressed as a U.S. Marine, which we suspect was done for the sole purpose of deflecting suspension – playing the Schweitermans. Thankfully the Schweitermans handedly defeated Adolph, but the underlying context was tough to not miss and at least get a chuckle out of. (It was like when I went to a Catholic wedding this summer and the priest was joking about the flexibility of four year-olds…if you are going to lead me to the threshold of uncomfortable jokes, I will gladly cross it.)

This got my roommate and I thinking, what if the Obamas played the McCains played each other on the Family Feud? How hilarious would that be? So we thought about various questions and the candidates’ and their families’ responses, which carried over the next day to Gchat. The following is a “Best of…”, many of which are not by me. Please enjoy. And feel free to add your own.

“Name the most expensive electronic in your home.”
McCain: “My phonograph.”

“Name something you would hear at your local church.”
Obama: “God damn America.”

“Other than Democracy, name a form of government currently in use that you admire.”
McCain: “The feudal system.”

“Name a characteristic of middle class Americans.”
Obama: “Bitter.”

“Name something that costs less than a quarter.”
McCain: “A box of cereal.”

“Name a member of the Holy Trinity.”
Obama: “Me.”

“Name an invention you’d hope to see in your lifetime.”
McCain: “Sliced bread.”

“Name something people pop on a regular basis.”
Cindy McCain: “Pills”

“Name something commonly held in a football stadium.”
Obama: “Acceptance speeches”

“Name a recent event that thrilled the nation.”
McCain: “The Cubs World Series victory.”

“Name a place you wouldn't find lipstick.”
Palin: “A pitbull.”
Obama: “Hillary.”

“Other than the presidency, name a life goal of yours.”
McCain: “Visiting all 24 states.”

“Name something people hope for.”
Obama launches into his stump speech

“Name something a married couple may have more than 2 of.”
McCain: “Houses.”

“Name one of the 7 deadly sins.”
McCain: “Inexperience!”

“Name an unpopular sports franchise.”
Obama: “Mavericks.”
McCain: “Browns.”

A few other things about this election. I can't figure out how Obama let the "change" message get hijacked. I still don't understand how the Democrats allowed for this election to be more of a referendum on Obama than on Bush/Republicans policies of the past eight years. And I still don't see how Republicans can balance their desire for a nuclear family and to have such a inflexible position on abortion. I promise more regular posts now.

Is Batman's middle initial W?

2008-07-27T22:27:00.003-05:00

While not mentioned explicitly in the film, Joker is the prototypical terrorist – a chaos-inducing agent, who acts not because he doesn't know better but because he relishes in the resulting bedlam. He is decidedly Hobbesian, wishing for a return to the state of nature because, in that context, no one will be able to stand him down.

And Batman is a one-man Department of Homeland Security, complete with his own Patriot Act – a "Batriot Act", if you will. He is a creature that, to the public, looks and operates like evil, but who is in creed and deed a fully virtuous man. Despite straddling the line between hero and outlaw, Batman applies his power and influence judiciously. He does not kill – or run the Joker over with the Bat-Pod after being taunted to do otherwise; nor does he unnecessarily trample upon the civic liberties of Gotham's citizens beyond when an imminent threat has passed.

The connection between the film's subtext and the current political environment is not difficult to see. And on the surface, the film seems to subtly nod its head in agreement with the path set by the Bush administration. A July 25 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal details these parallels between Batman and Bush.

While that initially seems to be true, the issues are as nuanced and two-sided as Harvey Dent's coin. Batman swears his foes crossed the line, but Alfred counters, validly illustrating the slippery slope of escalation by saying, "You crossed the line first...And in their desperation they turned to a man they didn't fully understand." Such is the nature of telling adversaries to bring it on. Batman also created an enormously powerful wire-tapping system and then immediately relinquished control, for its power was too great for a single individual to possess. While Batman can be certain that he will re-establish civil boundaries when the emergency has receded, one thinks that such a promise from the current administration would ring hallow.

Another point where the parallel falls apart is the simple fact that there is a reason Batman needs to wear a mask and hide his identity - because he course of action is not one that can be taken by elected officials. There cannot be relative disregard by figures towards the public they are in theory serving by trampling on both civil liberties and mores. We expect our leaders to reflect Batman's morals and virtues, but not necessarily embrace his methods.

Regardless of political leanings or whether one thinks Dent serves as a warning about the folly of placing all their eggs in a basket held by a single white knight, what can be mutually agreed upon is that the film derives much of its success by serving as a mirror of the culture it is serving.

I swear, this is the last Dark Knight related post and after almost a month of seriousness, I will come up with something more light-hearted for next week.

Partons of the Artist of the Beautiful

2008-07-21T07:42:00.000-05:00

While I would love to give a review of The Dark Knight, I feel like too much has already been said towards the film’s quality. I can hardly add to it. It was a rich morality tale with a firm footing in both the arenas of crime drama and adventure cinema, but one where the action never eclipsed its intelligence. The subtext of the film – one spun tightly of terrorists, a one-man Department of Homeland Security and the danger of putting all of one’s eggs in the basket of a (delusional?) white knight. When more of my friends have seen it, I may post a review/explanation of the themes as I see it and try to tease out more of the subtext. For example, any doubt that Bruce Wayne is the alter ego to Batman is erased in a single decision made halfway through the film. Let there be no more debate on that front.

What I do want to touch briefly upon though is one’s capacity for awe and excitement as we age. There is a scene halfway through Knocked Up when Seth Rogen’s character is at the park with Pete (the fantasy-baseball-draft-sneaker husband) and Pete’s daughter. Pete is bemoaning the doldrums of aging, how life grows mundane and lacks joy. He tells Rogen, “I wish I liked anything as much as I like bubbles,” a defeated man who has watched all the promise and joy evaporate from his life. Bills, suits and responsibility ravage any enjoyment he may have. He lives in the real world equivalent of post-Mufasa Pride Rock. Promise and hope, joy and genuine excitement are such rare things. And I refuse to turn into Pete. The months of anticipation for The Dark Knight served as a nice reminder to me of what fun truly enjoying something can be – that even though the days of superhero lunch boxes and Trapper Keepers have long since been, we can still be childishly awed and impishly impatient. I found it relieving that I could be so excited by something so utterly inconsequential. As I made thank you notes out of pages from a Dark Knight coloring book for each of my friends who joined me for the movie or as I thought through the logistics of taking a three foot wide Batman balloon on the El to dinner and then to Navy Pier, it occurred to me how few of these moments there still are.

While the growing freedom we earn as we grow is appreciated, it takes some of the special/mysterious quality away from the outside world. We can go get a Happy Meal any time we want. R-rated movies aren’t all that special. Neither are most bars. The internet is flooded with top-heavy shirtless clownettes. Our capacity for amazement has been shrunk to a narrow, fleeting band and our desire for “amazement” is not always driven by the best of impulses. But having a few things that unmistakably remind us of our youth can be powerful in a way that escapes nostalgia and captures our dormant imagination. It is that much more special when the occurrences are beyond our purchase. That is, we can’t pay for a new Batman film anytime we want. We can’t demand with our Benjamin’s a new U2 album or book by Klosterman. It is almost entirely out of our control. And perhaps that is what is most subtly childlike about the experience.

Regardless of the reason, I was simply thrilled that I could enjoy both the anticipation of the film and the actual 152 minutes of footage on a 6 story high screen like I was – at least temporarily – a six-year old and know that the ability to be awed does not totally disappear as we leave a once seemingly endless Neverland.

Favre Just Can't Quit You

2008-07-13T21:53:00.004-05:00

To me, underlying motivations of fandom are inherently different sport-to-sport. Fans of baseball root for the game's traditional and urban/rural past as much as they do for the hometown team. Just look at the stadiums we build and revere. Basketball fans marvel at the individual accomplishments of the sport's stars as much as they revel of the achievement of individual teams. And in football, fans root for the logo on the helmet regardless of who hides themselves behind the anonymous mask and beneath the hulking pads. The sport is a byproduct of a society emphasizing structural functionalism, where the position being occupied is elevated about the individual occupying the position. It is a cold view of the surrounding world, but one that is entirely accurate for American football. Only the collective, synchronized action of the men in the Honolulu blue jerseys or star-emblazoned helmets matter, not who is executing them one year to the next.

And that is what makes this Brett Favre debacle all that more interesting. For the first time in recent league history, the identity of a single player has eclipsed the importance of the larger team - and thereby the logo on the helmet. Emmitt Smith nor Joe Montana, Jerry Rice nor Kurt Warner and Joey Harrington (OK, OK, I kid with the last one...) had the same identity larger than their individual team when they moved on to a finish their accomplished careers in an all-together foreign helmet. But one gets the feeling that a move by Brett Favre would ripple across both the league and Packer Nation in a way that none of the above moves could muster collectively.

(As an aside, I just want to posit my theory on Joey Harrington. He will continue to be an asshat until he starts to go by Joe. Joey just doesn't cut it in the NFL. You think Joey Montana would have won 4 Super Bowls? Or would Tommy Brady have 3 rings and a smoking hot girlfriend? What In-N-Out burger location might Stevie Young and Jimmy Kelly be working at? Mr. Unitas is the only one to get a pass because his last name is so absolutely perfect).

Favre could cause a total identity crisis for Pack fans. Would the anger and frustration over the front office's egos be enough to - at least temporarily - drive long-time Packer fans away from the team? And really, is there anyone under age of 23 that is actually a Packers fan or is everyone born after 1985 just Brett Favre fans? I honestly think this is the quintessential question that will be answered in the coming months. He is the only thing twenty-something Packer fans have known and I can empathize with that. If Steve Yzerman had pseudo-retired and then gone to play with a different team, I would seriously have to examine my fan-lationship with the Red Wings.

I have long thought that the most egotistical drama queen in sports was Roger Clemens. His act was tired and old. And now he is reaping what he has long sowed. But I would put Favre right behind Mr. Mindy McCready. The annual indulgence with his inner-Hamlet, the unending speculation about his future, the now melodramatic good-bye on Thursday night in the 2006 season finale at Lambeau and the New Year's Eve tears on the Soldier Field turf ten days later, then his emotional press conference in March and his continual dominance of the Lions all wore on me. I just wished (and despite the Phoenician rise last season, I still do) that he would just go away. But don't you dare tell that to a Packers fan. And their insistence and loyalty to Favre will be uniquely tested in the coming season. The Packers organization has long be held as an example of David consistently competing with Goliaths and connecting in a unique and lasting way with their fan-base - from the inherited ticket policy to the community ownership structure of the front office. These nuanced issues and flawed characters make the current situation ripe for the Shakespearian pen, but the lead role in the "Merchant of Menace" has yet to the cast. Does Favre truly mean more than the oblong G so long hailed and worshiped in America's dairyland? If you are a fan of the NFL, it is a fascinating question to ponder and to see how it is played out.

It's Bat-Week. A review of The Dark Knight will be posted next weekend. The forecast is 57 levels of awesomeness.

By Choice, Not By Chance

2008-06-30T07:56:00.009-05:00

Superhero origins all pivot on circumstance. No self-destructing Krypton, no Superman on the Kent family farm. No radioactive arachnid, no Spider-Man. No misused gamma rays, no Hulk. And Batman's origin hinges on circumstance as well: no murder, no Batman. But Batman’s origin is not as simple as that.

What is noble about Batman/Bruce Wayne is that he chooses his path; he is a product of free will and determination, not chance. His parents may have been murdered, but he isn’t the only mourning son of slain parents. Unlike Superman, Spidey, or Hulk, the circumstance that grips Wayne’s world is shared by others. What differentiates the Dark Knight is that he embarks on his journey consciously. Spider-Man’s “great power” is thrust upon him by fate, forcing him to accept “great responsibility”. Wayne chooses the burden of great responsibility that sets him about a journey for establishing himself as a great power. Batman is a Horatio Alger-character – self-made and reliant, his effectiveness hinging upon cunning and ingenuity, not an inexhaustible supply of inherited power – while the others are more members of the Lucky Sperm Club. (This is particularly ironic because of massive wealth of the Wayne family.)

Very few other superheroes - and none of the big guns - choose their path. Clark Kent, Peter Parker, Bruce Banner, and Logan all have no choice in their alter-egos. They are victims of fate, subservient to the surrounding world. And my guess is that if Clark, Peter, Bruce and Logan were asked whether they would give up their superpowers to become regular humans, each would do it in a moment for a chance at normalcy. Wayne had normalcy and willingly embarked on a different path. His genesis was conscious, not manipulated by the heavy-hand of fate.

While Kent and crew painfully embrace their alter-egos, Bruce Wayne is the only one who truly becomes his alter-ego without reservations and emotional hindrance. And in doing so, Batman becomes the man's true ego, while Bruce Wayne becomes his alter ego. I am wont to believe that any character or person who chooses to become "something else entirely" - as Ducard says at the beginning of "Batman Begins" - assumes that "new" identity as their ego, relegating their previous life to their alter-ego. That is why I was so thrilled with how "Batman Begins" ended, with Rachael Dawes acknowledging that, "your real face is the one that criminals now fear. The man I loved - the man who vanished - he never came back at all. But maybe he's still out there, somewhere. Maybe someday, when Gotham no longer needs Batman, I'll see him again." That is EXACTLY right. He has become something else entirely and in doing so, marginalized another part of his life. By choice, not by chance. And this is what differentiates himself in the crowded superhero canon. Since Wayne chooses to assume the Batman identity, Bruce Wayne becomes the alter-ego, not vice versa.

(A quick aside and perhaps a point of clarification - based on this standard, James Gatz is the alter ego to Jay Gatsby because Fitzgerald's protagonist willingly chooses to be Gatsby rather than Gatz. Although this is slightly complicated by the fact that Gatsby is never bound by dual identities like Batman/Bruce Wayne is.)

And Batman is clearly a man on a mission, but it's not pursuit of personal vengeance. His aim is much higher than that. He wants Gotham to be a better place, a city where a young Bruce Wayne would not become a victim. In a way, he's out to make himself obsolete (this will be a central thematic tension in the new film). Spider-man, Superman, and Batman are all heroes who wish they didn’t exist. The difference is that Spider-Man and Superman wish that fate had not dealt them these super cards, while Batman wishes he lived in a world where he was not needed.

The cumulative effect of this is that the world Batman inhabits – the world without flying men and purple-pants wearing angry monsters, but with crime, grit and corruption – is that much more believable to us, the audience. We can understand how a man became a cape-and-cowl-clad creature of the (k)night and in some small way relate to him in a way that others can never be relatable to those watching their exploits. We can understand and empathize with Peter Parker, but not with Spider-man. We can feel for Clark Kent, but not for Superman. But we can emphasize with both Batman and Bruce Wayne. Now as for the Joker…

And That Is Why He Sleeps With A Swedish Model On A Nightly Basis

2008-06-18T09:52:00.008-05:00

Quite simply, Tiger Woods is amazing. Woods is completing his application for "Best Golfer Ever" at a time when we can honestly say we remember the greatest at their greatest. And for people my own age, this is the first time we have witnessed something like this. Gretzky - whose prime came before my age of sports fandom - and Jordan - who we were never able to fully appreciate because we didn't know any better - skirt the boundaries of our memory, but Woods is planted firmly in the middle of our consciousness. Federer comes close and there are countless would-be heirs that are great (LeBron, Kobe, Crosby, Peyton, etc.), but not atop their sport's Mt. Olympus like Woods is. It is almost unconscionable than a single athlete has dominated an individual sport with as many competitors as he has. He has extended the frontier of individual accomplishment farther than any other single athlete probably in the history of sport. And it is a marvel to watch.

But it isn't fun. And it isn't fun because Tiger isn't all that much fun. Nor does he seem to be having any of it.

We can respect and awe at Tiger without enjoying him. His clutch putt on 18 was thrilling, but his reaction wasn't. His reactions are almost exclusively loud releases of tension and competitive rage. And there's nothing wrong with that. He is the most competitive and mentally strong athlete that I remember seeing. But there seems to be so little joy in his triumph. From the reactions to the victory-interview platitudes, there seems to be a quota on his fun. And that quota apparently is zero. I just want one Tiger moment where he tosses his club out of glee and surprise or reacts Justin Leonard style out of childish joy. (His fist pump is nice and all, but he is one of the worst high-fivers in sports history.)

He knows he is going to make the putts...there is almost no surprise like Mickelson's reaction on the 18th green of Augusta in 2004 quite simply because I find it difficult to believe he is surprised by anything any more. And never was that more apparent than this past weekend when we witnessed Tiger's intensity with Rocco Mediate's infectious charisma. While I want to see greatness in its prime, I'd prefer that Tiger trounced the field or had to grind out a win against some loud mouth bozo - I'm looking at you Sergio and Rory. It's tough to watch Tiger beat someone like Rocco - a golfer on the back nine of his career, never having won a major, and knowing a single victory at the U.S. Open would make his career. To root for Tiger in these situations is to board a bullet train for history where none of the brief stops are any more meaningful than any other until you get to History Stop #19. Rocco is traveling on the path next to Tiger's bullet train rails in a covered wagon, enjoying the ride and appreciating the moments as they happen.

Tiger is the frat guy making his way through all the girls from the hottest sorority on campus not because he enjoys it, but because he can and it is expected of him. And Rocco is the slightly awkward, but ebulliently charming boy in the corner who starts to flirt with a remarkably attractive female way out of his league. And things are going perfectly well, until Tiger swoops in, takes another trophy home, and leaves the good guy empty handed.

A Preview Review

2008-06-11T21:44:00.001-05:00

Movie trailers are so damn sneaky. You go to the theater to plop down $10 to see some movie you are at least somewhat excited to experience in the theater, hopeful at the comedic or dramatic promise of the film, and interested in investing at least 120 minutes of your time. You get your popcorn, find a seat in the rocking chairs, and wait for the movie to start. And then comes some absolutely kick-ass trailer and you are awe-struck. And pumped. And excited. For an entirely different movie than the one you just paid to watch. No longer do you care about Indy's fedora or Scarlett's cleavage, but you want badly to see how gruesome the Joker's cut smile is and why exactly Dectective Gordon took an ax to the Bat-Signal. That's the power of trailers. (If I ran a movie theater, I would seriously consider running the trailer of the movie everyone was about to see, just to get them re-amped for what they are about to see.) Maybe it is part of the human psyche that enjoys being teased and wanting what we can't currently have. But many trailers are artful and entertaining on their own, often times more so than the movies they are born from and for. And so here is a list of some remarkable trailers - for one reason or a number.

Superman Returns

A pretty flat reinterpretation of the Man of Steel welcomed movie goers in the summer of 2006 and fans may have felt a tad disappointed both with the performances and the film after this rather remarkable and well-crafted teaser appeared a year before the film was released. The brief shots of a young Clark Kent on the family's farm, the enduring relationship with Lois Lane, and the amazingly fantastic voice over from Marlon Brando. The late Brando played Superman's late father Jor-El in the 1978 film starring Christopher Reeves. Jor-El sends his son to Earth from the dying Krypton, giving his son the marching orders used in the trailer. Not only are they beautifully written, they are perfectly delivered and provide the trailer's - and probably the movie's - best moment. Although, now thinking about it, maybe we shouldn't have been so surprised the movie was so dimensionless since best part of the trailer was, in fact, part of the original Superman film and nothing new. And Brandon Roth's performance isn't really showcased in this trailer, which was probably one of the smarter things they could have done. Although he does look exceptionally bored before he flashes back to Earth.

Two other quick things. Brando was paid $3.7 million and a percentage of the profits for his 12-days of work on the original film, ultimately getting upwards of $14 million for 10 minutes of screen time. Some extra footage shot for the Superman sequel that wasn't used in Superman II was incorporated into Superman Returns. And I know I don't have the proper perspective for this, but doesn't Lois Lane do a disservice to her gender, more so than any other woman in pop culture? She is always getting herself into trouble and the hot shot Daily Planet reporter can't even figure out that Clark Kent is Superman. That doesn't speak very well to her investigative prowess. He doesn't even wear a mask. He takes off his glasses and parts his hair on opposite sides...it's not that tough to figure out.

Godzilla

Another example of a film's buzz and trailer totally out-pacing the attention the film deserved on its actual merits. The audio on the video isn't fantastic, but the juxtaposition of the museum tour discussing the largest and most predatory dinosaurs just before one of their skeletons is crushed by the foot of Godzilla strikes me as pretty fantastic marketing. Especially behind its "Size Matters" tag line. Too bad the movie left much to be desired. All of Madison Square Garden teeming with impregnated eggs? We all know that was the work of Stephan Marbury or Shawn Kemp, not some Japanese monster.

Psycho

Movie trailers sure have changed, even in the past 15 years. But a trailer from the 1960s is a sight to behold, oozing unintentional comedy and perhaps boredom. The trailer for Psycho is a great example. It doesn't actually show any footage. It's essentially a set walk through with the admittedly creepy Alfred Hitchcock with his curly enunciation and subtle command. Spoiler alert: Dire and horrible events took place in Norman Bates house and accompanying motel. Although the preview does pique interest with Hitchcock peaking into the closet and toilet, shuttering and closing it before the audience actually sees anything. Me thinks a similar marketing strategy would fall flat on its face today, but it apparently worked wonders in the late 50s and early 60s.

The Dark Knight

This should not be a surprise that it's here. And I can safely make the claim that the film's merit did not impact its landing on this list, mainly because no one has seen the film yet. But there is something fascinatingly awesome with this trailer. Equal amounts drama, action, and melancholy, the trailer is stronger than that of Godzilla or Superman Returns, mainly because the performances of the late Ledger and Bale are not hidden beneath a veneer of explosions and chase scenes. The trailer is grounded in the film itself and not in the superficial marketing that can be done to cover a film's huge deficiencies - see again Godzilla and Superman Returns.

Much more about The Dark Knight in the coming weeks, but I honestly could not be more excited for this film. A few more links. The trailer for Batman & Robin has to be one of the worst previews in cinematic history - it was also one of the worst films. And here is a Lego version of the first full Dark Knight trailer. Watch the real trailer first. Pretty amusing.

Finding Neverland

Quite simply, there is nothing I don't love about the trailer. The flowing music, gentle tone, the whimsical voice-over, well-explained plot, and cast of amazing characters. Pretty damn good.

Gladiator

Another incredible, solid piece of cinematic tease. The non-voice over works because the parallel structure of "The general who became a slave, the slave who became a gladiator, the gladiator who defied an empire" is so effective and well written. The spartan dialog intermixed in the trailer doesn't make it overly complicated or ambitious. The lines that are spoken are chilling tag lines - "At my signal unleash hell" and "Am I not merciful?!" - but what really drives the trailer's 500 levels of awesomeness is the ridiculously good score set against the striking battle scenes. The film delivered too - winning Crow a Best Actor Oscar while the film took home Best Picture.

A Clockwork Orange

A pretty good example of perspective by incongruity, with the playful music sounding like it dropped out of the Music Man, but with lyrics discussing blood while juxtaposed with indifferent Alex frolicking around clobbering people in the junk with his club. It is remarkably creepy, which shouldn't come as a surprise. It's sort of the trailer equivilent of seeing a clown with a gun.

And I have no words for either this one. Or this. No idea where they came from.

What can you add?

It's Been A Fun Few Months

2008-06-05T08:42:00.002-05:00

A few quick thoughts on the Detroit Red Wings Stanley Cup victory from this week and what the team's legacy will be. First off, it was nice that they went home with the equivalent of this and didn't get a repeat visit from this round and tumbly ass hat, like they did on Monday night. And that's may be this team's legacy. They simply never let anything bother them. Goalie changes. Disallowed goals. 3OT losses. Bad penalties. 5-on-3s. Road games. The President's Cup. Quick goals by opponents. They never lost their cool and always had a sufficient counter punch. They are the anti-Pistons in this regard. The Pistons seem to be distraught if Rip's face mask begins to fog and if Sheed's headband is slightly out of place so that it makes his bald spot look abnormally large. It's not as if the Pistons were never like this. Their response to the 3 OT loss at home to the Nets in Game 5 (which forever made me hate this man of all people), and after Kobe almost single-handedly won Game Two of the Finals when the Pistons had the Lakers on the ropes, was admirable and memorable. But the Pistons have gotten mentally weak as their ice-bound counterparts have bolstered their mental fortitude.

This version of the Red Wings - so technically sound and saavy, but also gritty tough and resilient - would let no such sideshows hijack their march. While Zetterberg rightly won the Conn Smythe, Datsyuk's play was equally amazing. Only a few years ago, people wondered aloud if the playoff pressure got to the young winger, but questions like that seem to have disappeared with memories of a hockey-less winter in Detroit. Datsyuk helped dominate play for periods on end, but it was his hitting that came as a welcome surprise and addition to his extensive quiver of tricks. This team seemed unwilling to bestow some undeserved title on a no-name goalie as had been their spring tradition for the past handful of years. There would be no Roloson, no Giguere, no Kiprusoff this year. Instead, they let their own unsung goalie do the stonewalling and get the recognition he so deserves, but fails to receive.

And so here's to the men in the Winged Wheel, who for almost as long as I can remember, have made spring hockey such a memorable and enjoyable staple in the life of some of my closest friends and in my own.

Time for a parade.

That was excruciating.

2008-06-03T09:39:00.000-05:00

A Super Bowl Will Air Before the Next Episode of LOST

2008-06-01T23:33:00.000-05:00

The above is a pretty depressing sight, the thought of no more LOST for 8 months. The mark of every season finale is both an annus mirabilis (for it's a celebration of the past season) and annus horribles (the unnerving thought of our beloved showing going dark). And so no matter the fulfilling nature of the season finale, we are left with the television equivalent of rolling a Q in Scattergories - a perplexing and fruitless search for possible answers without having any where near enough ammunition to complete the terrible frustrating task while you pitifully wait for the time to expire and to move forward.

I have written a number of times before that LOST's individual episodes are like a single piece of a mosaic. And this single tile - aptly named "There's No Place Like Home" - was a sweeping epic, emotionally charged and cutting a wide swath across the show's meta-landscape. But it also left me with some questions and concerns as to how the show will evolve from here. I will dispense of my major criticism here before I get into what I though to be a throughly satisfying ending to the fourth season of LOST. Quite simply, I am not buying Jack's grief and burning passion to return to the Island. I just don't get it. Jack didn't broker a deal to get only a handful of the Oceanic Six off the Island. He didn't consciously chose the other five like an elementary school kickball game, leaving the dozens of other survivors on the Island fending for themselves. He - and his Oceanic Six compadres - was lucky to escape alive. There is no shame in not going back for Jin after the freighter exploded and he didn't have a choice to return to the Island for Claire and Sawyer. He did the best he could. Now one could make the argument that Jack's best will simply never be enough (thank you Dr. Christian Shepard for that), but beyond that, I'm not sold on his whole bearded island ambition. Now I suppose we may not have the entire story. Locke - moonlighting as Jeremy Bentham - may have told Jack that Jin has survived, Sawyer is bonking Juliet, and his father is making cameos in a dilapidating (and mobile) cabin, but if the season finale was supposed to convince of us that Jack truly has a good reason to return to the island, mission unaccomplished.

However the scene between Jack (Colonel Free Will) and Locke (Captain Fate) in the greenhouse may be the (symbolic) key to the central themes LOST has so carefully planted along its narrative path. Locke seemed to try and convince Jack that Jack was destined to arrive at the Island, that he was "supposed" to be there. Unsurprisingly, Jack was having none of it and essentially told Locke to shove all his fate sound-and-fury in his own Dharma Station. I wrote a few weeks ago that I thought the Island may be the one place where fate and free will exist simultaneously and with perfect balance - and with Locke/fate and Jack/free will playing out on different ends of the Island. Fate and free will are in mutual need of each other in order to keep the surrounding world orderly, with neither fate or free will having a preponderance of the power. But if Jack and free will depart from the Island, nothing will be there to counteract fate and everything will fall out of balance and into chaos. The chaos apparently ensued and Locke pinpoints Jack's departure from the Island as the seminal moment for these events. As we have seen a number of times on the show, fate/course correction ultimately trumps free will (Locke's arrival at the Island, Charlie's death, etc.), but the two must exist simultaneously - serving as checks and balances - for things to function in an effective, efficient manner. The absence of one throws the other into flux, thus the Island's apparent descent into chaos. One could make the argument that Jack's post-Island life - devoid of fate - has caused him his anguish. And what if Jack's fate truly lies in the Island? Christian's appearance both in Jacob's cabin (along with Jack's half-sister, Claire) and his exceptionally eerie dismissal of Michael suggests a higher communal relationship between the Island and the Shepard blood line that Jack blindingly rejects. Regardless, this is all WILD SPECULATION in an attempt to explain Jack's bearded future and instability.

Also Jack's reason for lying - to protect the ones who stayed seemed a little flimsy - doesn't make oodles of sense, especially if he believes those still on the Island will be in danger if the truth comes out. What makes him believe that they - the Oceanic Six - are going to be safe once they are off the Island and dealing with their pseudo-celebrity?

The other lingering concern that I have is the meta-structure for the show's penultimate season. The post-Island future is now the present and presumably we have yet to see a scene farther into the future than Jack and Ben's nocturnal chat at the funeral home. Which leads me to wonder whether we will see another narrative shift in the coming season. Will the flash forwards/backs be less common? Will we shift between post-Island moving action (in the past) and Oceanic Six present? Or will we again see well into the future early in the season and build backwards like we did in season four? And now that we know how they got off and are left to wonder why exactly Jack wants to get back, has the show lost some of its narrative momentum?

One final lingering concern is that last season ended with the audience knowing that Jack wanted to go back to the Island. This season ended only a few hours further into Jack's evening, leaving the audience with the single wrinkle that Jack needed to bring everyone else back along with him - including a dead Locke? (And Walt too? Does Walt know his dad is dead?). While it is true that the season worked to tie the post-Island future with the on-island present, I would have liked to see the plot's frontier extended a little more. But this may just be me being overly critical - a sort of Manifest Destiny for the plot from a fan's perspective.

Despite these qualms, I really enjoyed the season's conclusion and payoff, which amounted to the Oceanic Six's actual rescue (from Penny, no less) and the journey down to the Orchid in an attempt to move the Island. Starting with the latter, a number of people independent of me think the Island moved only in time and not in location. It wasn't too difficult to see that once Ben moved the frosted gears causing the Island to disappear, that he was relegated to the Sahara Desert. "The Shape of Things To Come" opened with a startled and wounded Ben awakening wearing a parka in the middle of the Sahara. We now know that only moments before Ben had been on the Island playing with the Island's subterranean mechanisms. In the episode's next flash forward scene, Ben is checking into a Tunisian hotel asking the date, which is late October 2005. Since we know the Island was moved in early January 2005 (Desmond called Penny on Christmas Eve), I think it is safe to assume Ben was sent to the same time the Island moved to, but was banished to a location far away. My guess is that the Island hasn't moved locations, but rather it has simply failed to exist between January 2005 and October 2005. Just as you wouldn't be able to find Ben in March of 2005, you wouldn't be able to find the Island during that same time. And just as Ben abruptly reappears in October, the Island does as well. And just so you don't think I am pilfering Doc Jensen's ideas as my own, I'll add further support to the argument he didn't pick up on. In the Dharma video Locke watched as Ben loaded the portal with metallic objects, Dr. Halliwax said that the rabbit would seemingly disappear for 100 milliseconds as he was being sent into the future, during which time he would not exist. The exact same principles apply to the Island's movement and its ability to be seen/located in the interim time period. The other thing about the Island's movement is the resulting light and sound was strikingly similar to the events that followed Desmond's turn of the failsafe key in the season two finale. I'm not going to get into any connection here, but I wouldn't be too surprised if a connection between the button, the release of the mounting electromagnetic energy and keeping the Island for moving forward in time was all related.

Which leads to questions about the scope of what was moved. Jin and Farraday almost have to be alive. They cannot keep killing core characters - especially if one (Jin) is a significant reason Jack would return to the Island. And they almost must have been moved with the Island. Otherwise Farraday would be left with a raft load of red shirts and less than ten gallons of gasoline while Jin would be floating at sea and both would have no where to go. The gaping hole in this theory is that the copter would have been within the radius of the Island's movement (albeit in the air) and it didn't go, so why would Jin (who was the furthers out) or the inflatable ferry? My initial guess is that Jin and Farraday got sent to October 2005 even though Sun believes Jin to be dead - and blames both her father and Jack for the fact.

The other interesting thing about the moving mechanism is to note that Ben had to break through a Dharma station to get at the Island's true power structures. Even Halliwax acknowledged in the above video it was the Island's unique properties that allowed for Dharma to do their thing, not something that the Dharma Initiative consciously and artificially created on the Island. This lends further support to the idea that the Island was discovered and not manufactured; that the Dharma Initiative built their infrastructure on what already existed on the Island and something unique and precious existed long before Alvar Honso set up the DI.

And Ben not being allowed back to the Island? I'm not buying that either. He is too calculating and overzealous when it comes to issues of the Island. I just can't imagine Ben permanently ceding that power to Locke. Maybe he can't return while the current leader of the Others is alive - giving Ben a reason to dispose of Locke. And a few of you (along with myself) have wondered aloud whether Locke got off the Island by moving the Island himself. While that's a possibility, we know there is a way to get off the Island without moving it (Richard, Ethan and Zeke left with apparent regularity) and my guess is that Locke did as well.

But that leaves the lingering and meaty question of what exactly did happen when the Oceanic Six left the Island. One thing that has bothered me in the past few weeks is why Richard Alpert capitulates to Ben and Locke when he has clearly been there longer and has a clear philosophy as to how the Island should be used. It is as if Ben and Locke are the Presidents of the Others while Alpert is the leader of the bureaucracy. I am still flummoxed about this, but my best guess is Alpert believes whole-heartedly in fate and is comfortable with his own fate that he is not to lead the Others, but to serve as Ben and Locke's right handed man. While leads us to more parallels between the Bugged-Eyes One and Mr. Clean.

Ben finally sheds his mensch facade as he killed Keamy out of rage and anguish over Alex's death, condemning the folks on the freighter to death without any remorse ("So?"). What was different here was Ben did not even attempt to keep his hands clean of the spilling blood - a sharp departure from his previous perspective. He reacted out of blind revenge and with a singular selfish goal, much in the same way Michael acted towards the end of season two - an interesting parallel considering Ben was in fine form blaming Michael for Libby and Ana Lucia's death while maintaining his moral high ground during "Meet Kevin Johnson". All of this draws striking similarities with Locke's disposition which I probably should have picked up earlier on. Locke doesn't want to do his own dirty work - he was never able to fully stand up to his father and duped Sawyer into killing him for Locke and then taking credit for it himself. He sabotaged Jack and Juliet's ride off the Island by blowing up the submarine but continued to maintain his moral innocence. This combined with his verbal stab at Jack ("If you lie to them half as well as you lie to yourself, they'll believe you") makes me believe he is the perfect replacement for Ben.

A few quick things. I think there is a reasonable chance that Charlotte is Annie - Ben's old Dharma friend - or related to her. I think Claire is dead and died during the night she, Sawyer and Miles camped - as Miles could sense the impending death on their jungle hike which would explain his increased interest in Aaron's ma. The reunion between Desmond and Penny was pretty spectacular, although it makes one wonder how much we will be seeing Desmond over the next two years. And that Sun and Widmore's common interest is finding the Island.

Depending of whether or not I feel like writing about LOST next week, I may have a season recap. But regardless, I am going to have to find something to blog about for the next 35 weeks. Any and all ideas are appreciated.

I likely chose poorly

2008-05-26T11:59:00.017-05:00

Inspired by Indiana Jones and his quest for some crystal skulls (along with an AV Club post), here's a list of my favorite objects of pursuit in movie history. Feel free to call me a limited-minded clown in the comments and add whatever I have clearly missed.

Maltese Falcon - Maltese Falcon
A priceless bejeweled bird statue that was long-lost is zealously pursued both in print - in 1930's classic by Dashiell Hammett - and thrice on screen - most famously in the 1940s film starring Humphrey Bogart as Hammett's venerable private eye Sam Spade. The story arc is wraught with deception, trickery and murder as Spade and a group of bad guys try to locate the statuette who had been covered in enamel to belie its true value. But the pursuit is ultimately in vain as the villains get their hands on the bird only to find the material under the black veneer as worthless. All the deception - all the all-consuming effort - in an attempt to possess a trinket rather than "something only dreams are made of."

Sex - American Pie
This pursuit is the yoke to any number of films - Porky's and Superbad comes to mind - but I think American Pie is probably the best example. Four guys strike a pact to deflower their girlfriends - or anyone with two legs and wearing something bigger than a training bra - before the end of their prom night. This inevitably leads to hi-jinks and the search for an even more mythologized object - the g-spot - as the four "gentlemen" go about a means to the agreed end in their own individualized and haphazard way. My biggest problem with the film is that it is totally unbelievable. Not Oz joining the choir or Stifler's mom claiming she hadn't gone under the knife, but the contention that Tara Reid would still be a virgin by the time she got to her senior prom. This is simply not possible and way outside the bounds of believability. Although I suppose Reid was still a virgin if your definition of "virgin" is "getting Eiffel Towered in the men's room of a roadside IHOP after taking rails off the toilet seat."

The One Ring - Lord of the Ring trilogy
This list would have no credibility if the ring weren't included - not that I have any visions of grandeur about it nor am I looking for it by writing Robot. The three films have at their core the pursuit of an all-powerful ring infused with destructive and persuasive powers. But unlike others on this list, the ring isn't being sought to possess, but to destroy, leading the protagonists to Mount Doom where the climax of the films take place in epic fashion. So, it's here on the list. Don't yell at me in the comments or on Gchat.

The Ark of the Covenant & Holy Grail - Indiana Jones series
These two objects and films were the inspiration for the list. The formula of the Indy films is so accessible and enjoyable, especially when they have the scene 25 minutes into each film - after an extended (and unrelated) action sequence - where the pursued artifact is explained in detail and the stakes are set. These intriguing - yet clarifying scenes - serve as a necessary set-up for the 90 minutes of action that follows and invests the audience in the long-sought, powerful objects. In both instances, the building tension leads to a satisfying crescendo with two memorable climatic scenes. The ultimate fate of the ark - the U.S. government seizing the golden artifact that holds the remnants of the original Ten Commandments - all but reburies it, not in sand but bureaucracy. And the "he chose poorly" line from the Knight at the conclusion of Last Crusade stands as one of the most effectively understated line in movie history.

Gray's Sports Almanac - Back to the Future II
Less mythic and sexy than most pursuits, the Gray's Sports Almanac is perhaps the most lucrative. Irresponsibility skirting the time-space continuum, Marty McFly tries to being the almanac back with him from the future in an attempt to make riches by placing a few sure bets in the 1980s, all the while knowing the outcome of each major sporting event. Of course, Doc talks him out of it, but the meat head Biff steals Gray's, the DeLorean and Marty's plan, illustrating the entirely undesirable consequences of playing with time. But perhaps the most memorable sports moment of Future's second installment was the huge LED board that announced that Cubs had defeated an unnamed team from Miami in the World Series.

The Big W - It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
It's A Mad... is probably the funniest film no one reading this has seen featuring untold numbers of famous comedians - Tracy, Burle, Caesar, Winters, Rooney, Hackett, Keaton, Ethel Merman. Unfortunately a recent interpretation - Rat Race - was an unworthy successor, but the plot is similar - a dying man tells a group of people about a hidden fortune and the mad scramble is on to locate it. In Mad, it's know that the treasure is buried under a giant W, which turns out to be four huge palm trees buried at an angle. On the way, there are countless memorable scenes including one with a drunken airline pilot ("Let's just shoot him down and get it over with"), at a Ray & Irwin's gas station ("We're going to have to kill him"), dynamiting out of a locked hardware store basement, and the final rush once people realize what exactly the big W is.

The perfect Christmas tree - National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
Not that there aren't amazingly memorable scenes throughout the entire movie ("We are standing at the threshold of Hell" and anything with Cousin Eddie come to mind), but the Griswold family starts by seeking out the perfect Christmas tree in what looks to be a national park. The family station wagon ends up under a semi then crashing over a snowbank, they don't remember an ax, and by the time they actually find the Christmas tree - haloed with glow and touched with the voice of angels - the Griswold's daughter appears to have taken on the complexion of Grimace. When they finally open the tree, it is slightly larger than expected crashing through windows and drywall alike. The pursuit of the tree reaches its final hilarity when Clark tries to read in bed, caress his wife's hair and turn off the lamp all with sap covering his fingers. Classic and memorable.

Woody - Toy Story 2
After Woody is accidentilly sold at a garage sale to a rare toy dealer, Buzz and company spend the balance of the film tracking him down. This gets the nod over the first film because it is one of that rare breed where the sequel outshines the original. The wink-wink, nod-nod nature of the script - playing off of Buzz' ego and making it even more adult-friendly than the first - creates a more complete film from beginning to end, more emotionally compelling as well when Andy's other toys discover than the Alpha toy isn't so keen on breaking up the Round Up Gang. The scene of the toys trying to cross the street into Al's Toy Barn stand as one of the most entertaining action sequences on this list.

Pamela Anderson - Borat
This doesn't really even need to be explained, but she possesses the breasts that launched a thousand ships (or at least a single ice cream truck) in perhaps the most comedic pursuit in the 21st century. We must also commend Borat, who shows courage and persistence after he discovers that the object of his affection may not have - ummmmm - "saved herself" for our Kazakhstanian hero. Which brings up this totally unrelated and utterly pointless observation - have Pamela Anderson's breasts been seen by more people than any other woman's? The only one I can think who has likely been seen more times topless than her is Kate Winslet.

Richard Kimball & the One Armed Man - The Fugitive
"Alright, listen up, people. Our fugitive has been on the run for ninety minutes. Average foot speed over uneven ground barring injuries is 4 miles-per-hour. That gives us a radius of six miles. What I want from each and every one of you is a hard-target search of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in that area. Checkpoints go up at fifteen miles. Your fugitive's name is Dr. Richard Kimble. Go get him."

"I didn't kill my wife." "I don't care"

Awesome.

A few others in the pursued person division - John & Sarah Connor (depending on the film), Private Ryan ("The Mission is a Man") and Keyser Soze - along with the Heart of the Ocean from Titanic, the golden ticket from Willy Wonka, and the defecting Red October. Let me know if I have forgotten any.

Big two-hour LOST finale this week. You can click here for all my previous LOST columns, including this one where I explain why I think it is Ben is the casket.

This Would Have Been A Perfect Time To Pull the "Mission Accomplished" Banner Out of the Closet

2008-05-18T07:34:00.002-05:00

A few of you who I know read regularly were less than pleased with Thursday's episode of LOST, frustrated with the slow pacing of the show and how it seems as if we have been in a holding pattern for the last three weeks. While that is understandable, I'm going to defend the show and "There's No Place Like Home, Part I". First off, this was the opening hour of a three hour season finale, so in effect we saw the opening twenty minutes. There's no way the episode's merit or worth can be judged at this point. The counter (and valid) argument to that is LOST - more than almost every other show on television - is just one big episode because of the serial-nature of its story arc, so the line of demarcation week-to-week is almost negligible. The other predicament LOST's writers find themselves in is the show's massive scope and the large footprint of all encompassing episodes. And by that, I mean LOST has the decision to focus on one group (the freighter folk, the beach crew, Locke's comrades, etc.) in depth - which would get people angry that they didn't see what the hell else was going on with the other characters - or they could give the audience a smattering and taste of each Island course - and the criticism would be that "nothing happened!" and that the show was too jumpy and disjointed. Honestly, they can't win. And on Thursday, they decided to go with the latter, more epic approach - which is the appropriate decision for a season finale. The problem is that they are fighting on six fronts - the freighter, the beach, the Orchid-journey, the Jack/Sawyer's jungle trek, the Sayid/Kate trip and the future. With 42 minutes and five different areas to cover, that gives each group about 7 minutes a piece on average. That's not a whole lot of time to do anything substantial. But I thought the first third of the fourth season's finale was effective, interesting, and compelling.

The most striking thing to me was the state of post-Island Jack. Jack seems desperately and foolishly invested in the Oceanic Six's bundle of lies, like the captain of a doomed mission who feels the need to keep the morale of the crew high as they toss buckets of water overboard. His cold, calculating reassurance on the cargo plane on their way to meet the families provided a striking relief to his on-Island "live together" leadership - Jack still asserted himself as the point man, but seemed to plead with the other four adults to buy into his plan. The striking press conference scene further establishes the deck of cards engineered by Jack that we know is going to tumble in their future. And the realization of Claire being his half-sister and Aaron his nephew at the end of Papa Shepard's funeral struck at Jack's core. I know it wasn't earth shattering news for the audience, but we needed to see Jack's realization at some point, to see how his tenuous grip on an uncontrollable situation began to unravel. Jack is marinating in his lies - about the rescue, about Aaron's relationship, and again about his father. His empty words at the funeral echoed his later exchange with Kate in the hallway after reading to Aaron. Try as he might, Jack cannot shake the overbearing hand of his father, which can provide a proxy for Jack's reaction to his post-Island decisions. Try as he might to shake the decisions that lead him off the Island, the burden of knowledge and his past is too great to bear.

But Jack isn't the only one with father issues. The post-Island world belongs to the mothers as was made clear in the opening scene. Jack was greeted by his loving mother, Sun didn't even acknowledge her father as she hugged her mother, Hurley's strained relationship with his father was never entirely forged, and Kate - a new mother herself - found no warm comfort after debarking the plane, only the realization that she would be responsible for maintaining a relationship with her adopted son that she was unable to sustain with her own mother.

Sun's visceral reaction with her father and again with her potential game-changing acquisition of a stake in Paik Industries will likely play a large part of the next few seasons. I've thought for a while now that Sun's father could be the Korean parallel with Widmore - whether he is looking for the Island or not, I'm not sure, but the parallels between Penny and Sun are striking. And either the Oceanic settlement was ridiculously rich, the show had a logic gap or Sun was receiving third-party help to initiate a hostile infiltration of Paik Industries. My guess is that Penny is playing venture capitalist, providing the seed money to Sun in an attempt to leverage the two's paternal companies in an attempt to find the Island and their loves. The scene reminded me of the end of Batman Begins when Bruce Wayne has bought a controlling ownership of Wayne Enterprises to the surprise of Mr. Earle.

There were a number of smaller things I really enjoyed about the episode. I love how Sawyer called Jack out on his one-note song, telling him he sounded like a broken record about his insistence to get off the Island using the freighter folk. (This is particularly entertaining because I'm not convinced of Matthew Fox's range of acting ability so his character's single dimension could also be his own.) Sawyer's nice dig against Jack saying how Locke was right about the disastrous intentions of the freighter folk and how the "running through the jungle with a phone" routine didn't work must have grated the stubbled doc, sending him out to prove himself once again before Sawyer joining with Sawyer joining him, saying "you don't get to die alone."

The Michael and Jin/Sun interaction on the deck of the freighter was amazing and strained. The thinly veiled assertion that "Jesus Christ is not a weapon" was pretty entertaining social commentary.

The realization that Keamy's arm band was actually a detonation button for the C4 on the freighter was pretty vital.

The return of seemingly angry and disgusted Alpert was a nice added touch.

The numbers on the dash that sent Hurley barreling down his street seemed gimmicky, but I suppose they make sense. I also love how Hurley is frequently used as the voice of the fan, asking the literal questions we want attacked - like "What about - you know - the whole being dead at the bottom of the ocean thing?" late last year after Naomi parachuted onto the Island. He served the same purpose this past week on his trek to the Orchid, wondering aloud (as I did last week) "If we move the Island, wouldn't the dudes with guns move with us too?" Ben's curt response dripped of contempt for Hurley's (and our) limited mind, perhaps an unconscious reaction to how the writers and producers react to each to the antsy, limited and unyielding onslaught of questions they must get on a daily basis.

One thing that I think gets overlooked in a number of episodes, but was exceptional this week was Michael Giacchino's score. It is at its best when it can be sweeping and epic, like the end of this week's episode with the slowed shot of the freighter, Jack/Sawyer, Ben's surrender, Kate/Sayid and the Others, and Locke's move to the Orchid station. It's often overlooked, but was exceptional this week.

I do wonder why one of the questions from the reporters or one of the points of clarification during the press conference didn't relate to the plane that was found at the bottom of the ocean. That seems like a pretty natural question...did the O6 make it out of that wreckage before it went down and how does the fake plane's resting place compare with the supposed home for the Oceanic Six? Who is the other responsible for Jin's death? And how can Sayid be so certain that no other survivors will be found? And just as we got to explore the Looking Glass Station during last year's season finale, this year we will get an eye-full of what the Orchid as to offer. The second two-thirds of the season finale doesn't air until May 29th, so not only will we need to wait for that, I will have to figure out something else to blog about this weekend.

John Can See Dead People, But Of Course Not Jacob

2008-05-11T23:20:00.002-05:00

First off, a non-LOST observation. If you haven't seen Iron Man and are planning on seeing it, skip to the next paragraph, but if you have seen it, I have a question. I cannot understand why the Afghani terrorists would ask Tony Stark to build the Jericho Missile if they were already dealing under the table with Stark Industries rogue CEO. If they didn't want to kill him so that they could use him for leverage in getting more money or weapons from Stark Industries, that's fine. If they didn't know they were supposed to kill Stark and really wanted the Jericho - then just demand that as payment for offing the industrialist. But why would they EVER ask him to build anything if they were already getting it or on the cusp of receiving anything for killing him?! It makes absolutely no sense. If someone can give me a reasonably plausible explanation as to why the terrorists not only kept Stark alive, but asked him to build something, I will buy you lunch.

And now on to this week's LOST. I know a few of you who read this regularly are either going to be surprised that I didn't find "Cabin Fever" all that satisfying or just out-right angry that my little brain is too microscopic to appreciate the nuances of the show and to see the episode for what it truly is. That being said, I was awfully disappointed. I have written before that the set-up/payoff cycle works for LOST in that it allows for the show to alternate between examining character development and turning the answer faucet from drip to a more steady stream. My issue with "Cabin Fever" is that it didn't really do either - nothing was answered (it was actually significantly more muddled) and the emotional footprint of Locke's past did not expand beyond the boundaries of what we already knew. The episode was rather dimensionless. We already knew that Locke was special, that Locke was chosen, and that Locke's fate was to arrive at some point on the Island and partake in his spiritual walkabout - in fact the fourth episode of the first season did a pretty good job establishing these themes. This most recent episode only rehashed them - although some rather absurd curve balls (even for LOST) were thrown in. We now know Alpert was chasing after Ben from an early age and Abaddon met John between his accident and the 815 crash...which to me doesn't mean much beyond this...

Locke for a long time has tried to exercise free will over his own life. He insisted that the knife Alpert brought was his even when the timeless rho-chi implored him to choose one of the remaining items Locke had not yet dismissed - the baseball glove, the Book of Laws and the comic book. As a high-schooler, John refused to attend Mittelos Biosciences summer camp, defiantly telling his adviser, "Don't tell me what I can't do." John even refused to listen to Abaddon who suggested the much needed walkabout for himself - all examples of John clinging to free will while delaying fate from taking over. But Locke can no longer do that. Locke's stranglehold on free will ended when 815 crashes onto the mysterious rock - the biggest course correction experiences thus far in the show. It's like Charlie's death - just as Desmond could keep Charlie alive for only so long, John could only avoid the Island for so long before course correction took over, ironing out pass attempts to exercise free will. For Charlie, it was death. For Locke, it was his arrival to the Island. And from John's arrival onward, he has relinquished himself to his fate - at least mostly. John's insistence on not pushing the button at the end of season two was a dangerous regression into exercising his free will. But beyond that, Locke has laid down his arms against fate and allowed it to guide him on the island. He has used it as rationalization for more than a few things - for initially pushing the button, for the death of Boone, and for his apparent communal understanding with the Island's zeitgeist. And he used it again at the end of Thursday's episode, telling Christian Shepard, "I am here because I was chosen to be." (not "I am here because I choose to be.") Which Christian responds to be saying, "That's absolutely right."

It is as if the Island is a place where fate and free will exist in perfect balance and parallel and the audience is seeing the two diametrically opposed philosophies play out on the Island - with the benefits and consequences of both being explicitly explored. Locke and Ben's corner is exploring the phenomenon of fate while Jack's beach dwellers try to play out an exercise in free will. This acceptance of his own fate has allowed for Locke to ascend into his rightful throne at the expense of Ben's position while Jack and crew cling to the power of free will.

Which raises a string of questions. Why is Ben capitulating to Locke, allowing for Locke to commune with the Island Ben has so zealously protected? And why was Ben even in that position if the Dharma Initiative killing was not Ben's idea, but rather the Others' former leader? And why couldn't Ben have been marginalized if he wasn't the Others traditional leader? We already know that Alpert has a far different philosophy for how the Island should be used than Ben (that is why Alpert gave Locke the file showing that Locke's dad killed Sawyer's parents) so why wasn't Alpert the natural post-purge leader or able to unseat an increasingly unstable Ben? Unless Ben is to Jacob as Locke is to Widmore - both pawns being used to manipulate the Island's future to the advantage of the island's two competing Zeus. And Ben realizes that the only way to cut Locke's puppet strings of a fate (which stands to reason benefit Widmore) is to abdicate his seat on the right hand side of Jacob's throne. And that would be the reason Ben allows Locke to enter Jacob's cabin alone. What the episode was successful at what drawing a stronger parallel between Locke and Ben, especially regarding their births - both had mother's of the same name who screamed out their son's given name immediately after birth and who soon found themselves apart from their baby boys - through death in Ben's case and adoption through Locke's. But I didn't feel like these "new" parallels were enough to drive the show into uncharted emotional territory. Meanwhile, Ben's continual insistence that he is innocent is driving me nuts. As someone pointed out to me earlier this week, Ben is not exactly the mensch he claims to be. He cannot be entirely detached from all of the surrounding chaos and escape any type of responsibility.

Which brings us to a brief discussion about the cabin scene. The two previous trips to the cabin were two of the creepiest and most memorable scenes in the LOST canon. This one however was less mysterious and more let-down. The elements of fate were again at play here, most explicitly when John said why he was there and again when Locke asks where Aaron is, with Christian's reply being "He's where he is supposed to be." Claire almost has to be dead. There is nothing in her character that indicates she would just leave Aaron anywhere, especially since she spent most of the first three seasons of LOST screaming things about her "BEHHHHH-BEEEE!" She also looked high as a kite, probably breaking open some of those virgin Mary dolls with the heroin inside of them as a way to feel closer to Charlie. Maybe only those within the Shepard's bloodline have a communal nature with Jacob, but that seems pretty tenuous to me. And Locke's marching orders from the cabin - "to move the Island" - could mean either in location or time. Either way, I don't see how it would save anything since the helicopter-bound Keamy is already over the Island.

A few more things. We have come to anticipate - and expect - that the first half of season's would be overly mysterious with the second half serving as an answer payoff that at least clarifies some of the more medium sized questions. This is what made the second half of season three so enjoyable. This past episode not only didn't clear anything up, it effectively threw mud all over this structure. The timeline of the Island lagging behind the outside world and water was shot to hell when the doctor was killed well after he washed up on shore. There was no further clarification about Jacob and certainly no light on the boat, which has justed turned into a constant rabble-rabble that seemingly lacks any type of genuine drama. And my only non-explosive guess for what was strapped to Keamy's arm is a device that faciliates the time-travel Ben takes from the Island. The only evidence for that is the logo on the Plan B document was the same Dharma logo that was on Ben's parka at the beginning of The Shape of Things To Come".

My guess is that the long-teased and much hyped Orchid Station (where the rabbit video was shot) is the one place Ben could go if the Island was in grave danger - and now thanks to Plan B opened from the ship's safe - Keamy knows where it is too. Hopefully it surfaces over the next two weeks. And brings with it some long-sought and much needed clarification on more than a few fronts.

I promise a non-LOST post in the next week or so as well.

If it's not broken, Jack won't touch it.

2008-05-04T21:39:00.000-05:00

Before I start a brief analysis on this past week's "Something Nice Back At Home", I want to return briefly to the tete-a-tete between Ben and Widmore. It has always stuck me as strangely as to why the Freighter Missionaries aren't threatening - and have orders not - to kill Ben. He clearly needs to be alive for some reason. And during his midnight liaison with Charles, Ben ominously says, "we both know I can't do that" responding to Charles inquiry whether he has arrived to kill him, indicating that Ben also needs Charles alive for some reason. But why? Why can't Ben just eliminate Charles if he knows where he is? It seems that it would save him tons of time, energy and concern, while protecting the Island. My thinking is that Ben is Charles constant and Charles is Ben's. Admittedly there is little current evidence to support this theory, but it would go a long way to explaining why they need each other alive and how Ben stomachs his apparent location/time travel treks off the Island. If anyone has any thoughts on this, please let me know. I'd love to discuss. Now onto this week's installment of the trippy, tropical adventure.

I wrote earlier this year that the fourth season of LOST was settling into a predictable routine - Season 1-esque character build/plot set-up, mythos-changing and answer revealing pay-off, followed by the cycle repeating. I think "Something Nice..." fit well into the routine, as it focused on Jack's evolution - or rather devolution - while bridging the character's differing Island-present and post-Island future as well. It also set many of the pieces in place for the season's final push (Jin's agreement to get Sun off the Island, Claire gone missing, the departure of Keamy and crew from the Island, etc.)

With the heavy emotion focus on post-Island Jack this felt the most like a Season 1 episode - eye-opening first scene included! - where "answers" took a backseat to the character motivations and complexities. And we again saw the over-zealous, paranoid Jack that destroyed his first marriage and relationship with his father. We now know how Jack went from happy-go-lucky pseudo-celeb after his Island return to grizzled alcoholic whose relationship with Kate had become strained. Jack MUST have something to fix, so he breaks what he can - his relationships with his dad, Sarah, and now Kate - through his own destructive ways. There were signs that Jack was sliding backwards even before his shotgun proposal to Kate. The Red Sox had once again lost to the Yanks as it recalls one of his father's favorite sayings - his return to the heavy drinking, his smothering paranoia surrounding Kate (who he views more of a possessed object than a worthy pursuit), and the haunting echo of his father's heavy hand. When he steps on the Millennium Falcon toy in the kitchen, Jack's "son of a bitch" response isn't really the way you'd expect him to refer to his half-sister and nephew, which is ironically tragic for the audience if Jack does not yet know his relation to Aaron. The MF's pilot - the rogue Han Solo - easily could be paralleled with the Island's maverick Sawyer. As Jack leaves the kitchen to join Kate in the shower, the camera lingers on the toy and newspaper, a harbinger of Jack's troublesome, insecure past that returns to haunt him and failures he has yet to learn from.

Which brings us to a number of quick takeaways from the episode. First, who was Kate with while Jack was home downing three beers, a bottle of wine and a glass of hard liquor? My guess - and I'm not the only one who thinks this - is that Kate was closing some loop with Cassidy, the mother of Sawyer's daughter who crossed paths with the fugitive and helped connect Kate and her mother.

The reason Sawyer couldn't do it himself was presumably because he was still on the Island, but the new wrinkle on that was when Jack indicating that Sawyer chose to stay behind on the Island, rather than returning to the mainland. This is the first time that anyone said those remaining on the Island had a choice as to whether they should leave or stay - an interesting dynamic to see play out in the next few weeks because it seems that more than six would choose to leave if offered the opportunity. And if it were a choice, why are the O6 lying about the survival of their remaining 815 compatriots? I'd think this will be clarified in the coming weeks.

And what's the deal with Jack's dad? Jack spoke of his father in the past tense after finishing the second chapter of Alice In Wonderland to Aaron - saying "he was a good story-teller" - but the white tennis-shoe wearing AA member keeps showing up. His appearance on the Island to Claire could be just chalked up to the visions others have seen - Eko's brother, Kate's horse, Boone, etc. - but the seperation between Claire and her child along with the fact that Miles saw Doc Christian added a new wrinkle into the story. I still don't think he's alive and most certainly he is not around Jack's post-Island life in any physical sense, but something weird is going on. I know that's a real insightful statement I just made.

Three other quick things. If the Island has some control over the 815 survivors, why is it (seemingly) leaving Kate, Sayid, and Sun alone while tormenting Jack and Hurley? Why wasn't the Smoke Monster more effective in killing some of the Freighter assassins? Did Ben program it not to kill so that Ben can continue making the claim that he is not a murderer? And who else was disappointed that Rousseau was actually dead? I thought that was a wasteful end to one of the show's more intriguing characters. Her death - unlike Boone's or Charlie's - meant nothing in the larger scheme of the show's web or character development. It seemed poorly executed and an indistinguishable way to send her off the show.

Hopefully next week's episode takes us to Jacob's castle - it's called "Cabin Fever" (!) and gets Desmond a little more screen time.

Jerry Gives Lawyers the Willies

2008-04-30T09:48:00.004-05:00

Jerry Springer has been invited by the graduation committee - comprised of L3 students - to give the commencement at Northwestern Law School's commencement May 16. Apparently some students are rather displeased with the selection of Mr. Springer to give the commencement address, even though he is a NU Law grad and an accomplished politician in his own right. He apparently also hosts a television show. One student articulates their objection to Springer's address by saying, "People feel like he has made his name and fame by taking advantage of people." Ummm, correct me if I am wrong, but isn't that EXACTLY what about 93% of the graduates Springer is addressing are going to do with their careers? He sounds like the perfect(!) commencement speaker for a law school commencement. Although you could make a case for these two clowns.

This is a preview and exhibit #1 for a future terrible logos post.

And this if the funniest thing I have seen this year, without question.

American guys would NEVER react like British guys, right? RIGHT?

Awesome Episode? Or Awesomeist Episode?

2008-04-27T23:32:00.001-05:00

As much as I enjoy writing about Miss Scarlet and the appeal of comic book films, nothing is as much fun to write as post-LOST episode musings filled with irresponsible speculation. After an involuntary five-week hiatus caused by the writer's strike this fall/winter, LOST returned with one of its richest, most exciting and spectacular episode ever. "The Shape of Things To Come" illustrated what LOST at its best can be - revealing, emotional, thought-provoking and fun. Once the announcement was made that LOST would produce eight episodes worth of material in six episodes, I wonder aloud how the pacing of the remaining season 4 episodes would change and how it may be exactly what fans were hoping for in terms of accelerated payoff. "The Shape..." clearly answered that question and did so for the better. I viewed the episode not so much as a door-opening, game-changing journey - although there was plenty of that - but more of a bridge between on-island life and post-island exploits. Here are a bunch of quick hit takeaways and observations from an episode that joins "Walkabout", "The Hunting Party", "Through the Looking Glass" and "The Constant" atop the show's Mt. Olympus.

Alex's Execution

Cold, brutal and startling - and probably the most unexpected television death since the final seconds of 24's first season. This may seem overly simplified/obvious, but what surprised me about Alex's execution is that it actually happened. Alex was perhaps the final instrument of leverage the Freighter Folk had to get Ben to cooperate. By killing her, they sacrificed their high ground and opened the door for Ben to unleash Pig Pen's brother onto them without worry about harming his daughter. It seems short-sighted and rash and makes me wonder if Keamy actually wants to get Ben alive or whether alive is preferable, but dead is still OK. (Note: This could also be explained away if the actress who portrays Alex requested more time to appear in Maroon 5 videos.) Regardless, the execution-style slaughter, Ben's "He changed the rules" reaction and the resulting hell unleashed upon the camouflaged-clad killers made for compelling television.

Smokey/Pig Pen

Holy Hell. I'm not sure what to add here, but it clearly appears that Ben has at least some sort of control or influence over the enigmatic Smokey. After returning from his hidden room looking like Santa after he traveled down a recently used chimney, my favorite black character on LOST (sorry, Rose and Abaddon) unleashed a focused hell upon the freighter assassins. Like its appearance late in season three when it appeared to snap photographs of Kate and Juliet, Smokey flashed multiple times as it ravaged the tree line just outside of Otherville as the 815ers and Ben stood watching. I can't imagine Ben has complete control over Smokey, much like my parents don't have complete control over their black labs, but both Smokey and the labs can be dispatched periodically with a specific mission, such as "Go terrorize those people" - which both Smokey and the dogs respond to. Anyway, it was another small, but important piece to the mosaic that makes up Smokey's story and purpose. It also makes one wonder what other tricks Ben can pull in his little room. Like...

Ben's Traveling

I am hesitant to speculate much about Ben appearing to be able to travel instantaneously around the world, but this will most certainly come to play in the next handful of episodes. What I will do is direct you to this video released by the exec producers this past summer about a yet-to-be-seen/located Dharma station. The name on Ben's parka when he arrives in the Sahara corresponds with the doctor's name in the video - Halliwax. What I also found interesting about Ben's travel-portal abilities is that Sayid is apparently unaware of them when he confronts Ben in Tikrit, asking quite pointedly how he got from the Island. I have always thought that Ben got the Oceanic 6 off the Island in the same way that he travels from the rock to the mainland, but that apparently isn't the case. I'd be open to ideas about how and who exactly gets the Oceanic 6 off the Island if anyone has any because it isn't looking like Ben any longer and the Freighter Foursome are becoming more trouble than they are worth.

Sayid's Transition Into Hitman

When I say that "The Shape..." serves as more of a bridge than as a unveiling of a new frontier, the clarified post-Island dynamic between Sayid and Ben is the best example of my thinking. We now understand why Sayid has signed up as a foot soldier in the war between Ben and Charles Widmore - the murder of Sayid's wife Nadia in LA pushed him over the edge and into Ben's camp. But I'm not convinced that it was a Widmore associate who murdered Nadia. I think it makes a lot more sense if Ben had orchestrated that in an attempt to recruit Sayid to his side. We know Ben is a master manipulator and Sayid's contention at the end of "The Economist" when Ben was treating Sayid's wound ("you used her to recruit me into killing for you") at least hints at the possibility that Sayid now knows Ben had some knowledge of Nadia's murder one way or another. My guess is that in the elapsed time between the end of "The Shape..." and "The Economist" Sayid becomes aware of Ben's involvement in Nadia's death, but continues to work for him because of another reason - perhaps the continued safety and presumed release of the remaining 815 survivors still on the Island. I have a few issues with my own theory here and how it matches up with what I have previously written about, but it is a little too complex to try and type out so if you are REALLY interested, you can ask me in person.

Widmore/Linus Showdown

As I have written before, my favorite scenes in LOST deal with Jacob's cabin and the interaction between Locke and Ben. But the closing scene of Thursday's episode was both poignant, important, and beautiful. While it didn't have the same shock value as the flash-forward reveal at the close of season three, it was the LOST equivalent of Khrushchev and Kennedy meeting in the same room to discuss the Cold War. It was a wonderfully shot scene - Ben in all black, Charles in white; a frequent motif on the Island - with half shadows and chilly, cutting dialog. Here's to hoping that this isn't the last verbal spar between the master puppets in the theater to determine the Island's fate and ownership. And the chilling revelation that Ben was on the hunt for Penny evoked an audible gasp from my girlfriend and left me more than a little surprised and intrigued at the prospect of Ben keeping LOST-madness champion Desmond from his life's love. Lingering questions from the scene: why can't Ben kill Widmore? What previous involvement with the Island did Charles have? Where could Penny be hiding that makes Charles so certain of her safety? And if Ben and Widmore know of each other and interact, why would Sayid be used as a mechanism for getting at/locating Elsa's presumed boss during "The Economist"?

And just to clarify what Hurley had to say regarding Risk, Australia is actually the least important continent in the game.

A solid, fantastic, and splendidly woven yarn reminded me again as to how much I enjoy - and missed - LOST. Any thoughts from you are welcome and appreciated.

Mr. Potato Head Politics

2008-04-20T23:16:00.001-05:00

This is half-assed, but I decided to post it so that there was something new this week before a LOST-post next weekend. I like Michael and Pam and Dwight, as well as Jack and Liz Lemon, but nothing is better than Jacob and Ben, Desmond and Sayid. Anyway, on to this post...

By now, most everyone who pays even peripheral attention to politics has seen footage of last week's Democratic Presidential debate between Sens. Obama and Clinton. The way the debate's first hour was handled by ABC moderators has been criticized from a number of different angles, but Sen. Obama's camp was without question the most dismayed and taken aback by the questions posed. However with all due respect to two of George Stephanopoulos' most awful moments - the "does Rev. Wright love this country as much as you" and the "I know you don't want to talk about it" dismissal of a Clinton-Richardson conversation - ABC let a Pennsylvania citizen - Nash McCabe - provide the greatest unintentional highlight of the befuddling evening. In response to Obama removing an American flag pin from his lapel early on in his candidacy, McCabe asked if Obama believed in the American flag, but tried to soften her question by saying the inquire was not intended to question his patriotism. It seems as if as long as the question wasn't "Do you believe the American flag actually exists in physical form?", McCabe was questioning his patriotism. Since Obama is both hesitant to wear the American flag pin and is sick of having to answer questions about it, here are some prop/flair suggestions for Obama to wear during the next debate so that people clearly knows about his love of America and its citizens. We could each make our own Barak-debate doll, plugging in the pieces of flair we would want our leaders to wear on the trail. It'd be Mr. Potato Head politics. I personally think it would be hilarious if he walked onto the podium looking like this, displaying the minimum 37 pieces of flair.

Captain America's Shield

Nothing says "I love this country" more than wielding a nigh-indestructible convex shield made from a fusion of vibranium and with an experimental steel alloy measuring 2.5 feet in diameter. It would serve a number of purposes. First, it is red, white and blue - the most successful color-scheme in world history - and presumably made in the USA. Patriotic and economically stimulating! More questions from the moderators that Obama doesn't want to answer during the debate? CLANK! across the questioners grill. Hell, the ricocheting shield toss could take care of multiple moderators AND Clinton in a single toss. And the shield has already defeated the Nazis. The GOP and shadow terrorists would hardly be a test of its power. Clearly, the shield would be a bigger addition to the campaign than Oprah.

World's Greatest Dad Mug

Defending oneself for two straight hours must parch one's throad. That's why instead of having a boring, standard water glass, Obama should clearly drink some Dunkin Donuts coffee - the brew of the masses - from a "World's Greatest Dad" mug between questions. Because nothing says "World's Greatest Dad" like having to tell your school age kids that they will have to follow daddy and mommy to Iowa for two months in the winter, then around to a cadre of other states and then maybe they will have move into a house Mr. Rezko didn't buy for them.

Coexist Headband

What better prop to draw attention away from one's Dumbo ears than to sport one of these stylish wears across one's forehead for the duration of the debate - or maybe just one appropriate question. It is a simple way to appeal to three separate Demographics - Christians, Jews and Muslims at the same time! - while connecting with one of the world's most recognizable and socially active stars - Bono. In fact, I would suggest that Obama wear exclusively Bono outfits, namely this one, and this one, and this one.with former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill.

Presidential Seal Accessories

What says "I'm both Presidential and America-loving" better than walking out with a fist full of arrows in one hand, an olive branch in the other, and a dozen sheets of toilet paper being held in his mouth with "E Pluribus Unum" scrawled on it?

Statue of Liberty Crown Souvenir

He may have an aversion to wearing red, white, and blue, but there is a color that everyone understands and can agree on especially when Mother Economy is on vacation in China - green. The stylish Statue of Liberty crown would be a wonderful addition to Barak's wardrobe.

There have to be more, but I can't get myself excited to write about them.

Unfortunately Erin Esurance Just Misssed the Cut

2008-04-13T21:53:00.032-05:00

I honestly have no idea what inspired this post, but here it is. I'm also not entirely sure if I used any criteria, but I tried to keep it fictional characters, most likely from one's childhood. It is essentially looking at irrational childhood crushes and whether a long-term relationship with them could work.

Queen Frostine

The wholesome female monarch is married to King Candy and his huge phallic candy stick. However not all may be sugar sweet in the Candy Kingdom and Miss Frostine seems to be back on the market. In recent editions of Candy Land, the Queen has been renamed Princess Frostine, making her one of the most eligible board game sirens. Not only is she angelic, but powerful and influential; her occupied space on the Candy Land board is the furthest along you can automatically move by drawing a card. As much as I like Mr. Mint and Plumpy, drawing their cards rarely helps you actually win the game. There is little competition from other Candy Land women. Grandma Nutt may be a cougar and a good cook, but not exactly crush material and Princess Lolly looks like she is about 6. My guess is that Chris Hansen's team emails photos of Lolly out to guys in order to get them to come to the "To Catch A Predator" house. Chances it would work: 70% - she gets the benefit of the doubt on the apparent divorce and the second times a charm, right? Maybe.

Carmen Sandiego

What is there not to like about Carmen? Brazen, powerful, mysterious, jet-setting, and with her own amazingly awesome song inspired by her globalexploits. The only draw backs? She may be too elusive, enjoying her "bachelorette-dom". There is lots of competition for her attention - Vic the Slick, the Double Trouble twins, RoboCrook and Top Grunge, not to mention the four members of Rockapella and Greg Lee. And we can't be absolutely certain that her face is vaguely similar to the Opera Ghost in the bowels of the Opera Garnier. This recent photo of the felonious fetale doesn't soothe any concerns I have. 3.8% - first of you, you need to find her and then convince her to settle down. Exciting prospect, but not likely.

Miss Scarlet

Up there with Queen Frostine in the board game hierarchy, the sultry Scarlet just can't help but attract the unrequited attention of twelve-year olds. Cunning, beautiful, and resident in an expansive nine room mansion, the biggest hang-up with her is that she always seems to be skirting the law and under investigation for murder. Rumors persist that she has lecherous tendencies and cannot shake the overzealous eye of Colonel Mustard or the trophy-wife seeker Mr. Green. Other female competition in the Boddy mansion is pretty limited though. Mrs. Peacock looks to be related to Grandma Nutt and while Miss White appears ready for some role-play adventure, my guess is that she's spending most of her time getting high in the conservatory. 57% - if she stays out of jail and doesn't go for the nice guy in the Boddy Mansion - Professor Plum - then it could work.

Princess Peach

The Princess seems to share a wardrobe with Queen Frostine, but doesn't come with all the baggage that a recent divorcee does, which makes her seemingly more of an attractive mate. But Queen Frostine must have gotten at least half of the Candy Kingdom in her divorce while the Princess ALWAYS seems to be getting herself kidnapped by King Koopa. She may be more work than she is worth and she doesn't seem to have learned her lesson. She gets saved by the Super Mario Brothers in the game's first installment and runs around in the second one before getting captured again, sending the brothers on another epic journey in Super Mario Brothers 3 - although I may be able to forgive her for it because the third installment of SMB may be one of the greatest video games ever. So if she was the face that launched a thousand raccoon tails, then she should be thanked for that. Three other quick points - she induces a serious case of the blue balls because every time Mario thinks he's gotten to the right castle to save the Princess, she is always somewhere else. She also now has a unsettling resemblance to what an older Jonbenet Ramsey might look like. Regardless, she beats out Zelda on this list because Zelda was entirely helpless and the Princess actually is a decent driver in MarioKart. 83% - it may not be exciting and you'd have to live far away from any castles, but the odds are for it working.

Catwoman

With the leather form-fitting outfit and the whip, potential suitors should probably be worried about her being into some serious S&M. But at the innocent age of eleven, that really doesn't cross your mind. She is Carmen Jr. - masked face and flair for the theatrical, but her burglaries don't really hold a candle to Sandiego's epic thefts. While sexy, I can't look beyond the awful movie. Not even a ripped leather outfit on Halle Barry - nor promo photos like this - could save that film. Plus, she has had a recurring love-affair with the Dark Knight, thwarting all boyhood dreams unless they lost their parents in Crime Alley and live in a Manor outside of a fictitious metropolitan area. 2% - she carries a whip with her. That'll get old before you unpack all your boxes. Plus she likes cats.

Daphne Blake

The red-headed flame of the Mystery Machine, Daphne didn't always fill the damsel-in-distress role, although it happened pretty often. But her tendency to yell a startled "jeepers!" always made me think that Fred was maybe putting the moves on her. But that never happened thanks to the world's most effective and consistent cock-block - Velma - who always shadowing Fred and Daphne when the quintet went off to investigate mysterious happenings. I would pay probably upwards of $50 to see an episode where Velma volunteers to go with Daphne and Fred to explore the haunted house, followed by Fred clocking her across the face with a fairway wood so he could get some alone time with his fellow ascot wearer. 98% - but only if you can separate her from Velma. If not, then .04% - chances are that a homicide will be taking place and Daphne will be a jail-house widow if Velma came in tow.

Smurfette

She is the epitome of "press box hot". There is nothing more hilarious than watch the mostly male media members ogle and swoon over a marginally attractive female in the press box, who is only getting the attention because she is the only female in the place. If Patty Bouvier - Marge Simpson's sister - were a sports writer, she would be treated as if she were Scarlett Johansson. It's the same way with Smurfette. She is the only female in a sea of blue skinned, white pant-wearing men. It doesn't matter what she looks like...she is "press box hot" and thus gets obscene amounts of attention, much of it undeserved. 4% - the competition is just too great.

Betty Rubble

It is reasonably likely Jack Donaghy got on his horn and checked to see if the pre-historic hottie would make an appearance on "MILF Island". That's only because Tina Fey's character on "30 Rock" - Liz Lemon - isn't married, otherwise she would have Rubble's spot. 0% - if she left Barney, that would ruin our entire conception of who she is and make her immediately undesirable. Plus, almost no one has a stone/rock-inspired last name and we all know that is important to Betty.

Judy Jetson

She's cute and all, but there are two things that are huge warning signs. My guess she is the cattiest, most obnoxiously demanding, and spoiled one on this list, but I suppose she comes by it honestly. Her mom just swipes George's wallet from him at the end of the opening credits. And the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Plus, she's - what - 17 and she already has a head full of gray hair. That is just not right. 12% - who would have thought a Christina Aguilera marriage would have worked? But young Judy could easily teeter towards Spears-dom.

I think the Color Kid is coming out in 2010

2008-04-07T23:39:00.002-05:00

There are a few events every year that mark the beginning of seasons to me. This means winter. This means fall. This just sounds like the trees blooming and the coming thaw of spring. And increasingly summer sounds something like this. Or this. Or this. Since 2000, the summer movie docket has been populated – perhaps overpopulated – with superhero films based on comic book characters. In each year of the new millennium, a superhero film has finished as one of the top ten grossing films in the country – from 2000’s X-Men to 2007’s Spider-Man 3. The future Hollywood landscape looks similar – Iron Man makes his silver screen debut in May. The purple jeans-clad Hulk gets a much needed – albeit not highly demanded – re-visitation after Ang Lee’s tedious attempt earlier this decade. And a certain young man is almost beside himself waiting for The Dark Knight. 2009 will see the release of a Wolverine origin story starring Hugh Jackman, a Captain America pic, and G.I. Joe (I am hoping it starts like this). The success of these films comes at a time when the mainstream popularity of comic books has dropped significantly over the past two decades. But the heroes who once found themselves published only in the marginalized mediums of comic books have captured wide and loyal viewing audiences.

Why have these films found traction? Why can’t Hollywood get enough of them? And why are even more coming down the pipeline? A few thoughts.

The incredible number of characters and stories

Hollywood loves to take an idea or story formula and beat it into the ground until there is nothing but the tired shell of the original idea. Think of what they did to television game shows in the late 1990s and how they spawned bastardized off-spring of shows like Friends, The X-Files, and Sex and the City to see this pattern. Comic book films are a similar phenomenon. One studio sees another score a huge hit with a comic book adaptation and they want their own. Fortunately, the comic book canon is enormous, both in the number of characters and their rich, numerous story lines. These characters have been created and recreated countless times and are available to be reinterpreted on film again. Studios can delve deep into the character’s cannon to pull the most compelling stories to adapt onto the big screen. The material and storyline often times just needs to be found, not created. The incredible depth not only provides a single story arc, but a number of compelling plots and angles for a single character, making sequels that much more viable and attractive.

Batman is a great example of this. Warner Brothers released four Batman films between 1989 and 1997 with the final installment – Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin – essentially killing the franchises’ momentum. After waiting almost a decade, Warner Brothers revived Batman by fusing three of the character’s best graphic novel stories into a film, relying heavily on Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One. The resulting film – Batman Begins – stayed true to the character’s roots, scrapping the previous image of the Batman from the 1990s films and in doing so found greater success at the box office than any of the other previous Batman movies.

Special effects and compelling stories merge

Much of the film’s appeal to an audience much wider than core comic book readers stems from the reemphasis on the compelling characters and narrative structure rather than relying solely on special effects to sell the film. Since audiences have come to take awesome and intricate special effects for granted, studios can no longer rely solely on special effects to sell a film, a la Twister. The novelty of special effects has worn off, resulting in audiences now expecting some dimension and complexity to the characters and a certain narrative quality in addition to the visual fireworks. Comic books are uniquely ripe for this type of adaptation. Comic book films allow for the film makers to uniquely structure a compelling story arc – a vast canvas with complex characters, flawed figures, and intricate emotions – within the traditional blockbuster blueprint whose foundation is in special effects.

Emphasis on the story means emphasis on the alter ego

Because the character’s emotional component is on the forefront of the story, this means that the superheroes’ alter-ego is an important component in connecting with the audience. Audiences are unable to relate to Spider-man’s graceful swings down New York City’s concrete canyons, but they can emphasize with Peter Parker’s rent problems and his overriding concern for his Aunt May. A movie-goer might not be able to share Wolverine physical make-up, but most in the audience can connect with the character’s status as marginalized and misunderstood. The X-Men series does a particularly deft job at balancing their protagonists’ super powers with their emotional baggage. There is a judicial display of their superpowers throughout the films in order to not dilute the human element of the story. The script even calls for the X-Men to call themselves by their given names (Logan, Scott, Eric), not their mutant names (Wolverine, Cyclops, and Magneto, respectively). These psychologically complex characters with obvious emotional concerns provide these films their ethos, making it easier for the director to communicate the story to the audience.

This also impacts the casting of these characters. The casting decisions take into account both the superhero and the alter-ego. Tobey Maguire might not seem like he would be a natural pick for Spider-Man, but he is spot on as Peter Parker, showing that both sides of the character were considered when casting the role. The other component is that most of these leads in the superhero films since 2000 have been relative unknowns; Maguire as Spider-Man, Christian Bale as Batman, Hugh Jackman as Wolverine, and Brandon Roth as Superman. This makes it easier for the director to communicate with the audience because they are not distracted by seeing a well-known actor in the role, but rather the physical representation of an iconic image.

Comic books are essentially a director’s story boards

Another advantage to comic book adaptations is the way in which comic books are written. They are essentially story boards to the directors, a graphic organizer of illustrations that are displayed in sequence for the explicit purpose of visualizing motion sequences. Comic strips in the 1930s and 40s are now generally considered to be the video tape of its day. The advancements in special effects has allowed for directors to create a world where the action of the character can be convincingly and believably shown on screen, whereas before the movement of a Spider-man or Magneto could only be imagined by the reader in the static pages of the comic book. Special effects in motion pictures filled in the imagined action only implied in the two-dimensional, static world of comic books.

It is fun to watch

This may be obscenely simple, but superhero movies – on the whole – are fun to watch. Most of these characters are unrealized heroes and boys of all ages like things that fly, explode, and have capes. As long as it is treated seriously, then it is tough to go wrong. That means stay away from these clowns.

The best NBA season since they sported these fashionable wears

2008-03-31T19:51:00.013-05:00

If you know me as a sports fan, you know my allegiances lie with the Red Wings and Lions first, then the Cubs and Tigers followed probably last by the Pistons. I suppose this is odd for two reasons: 1) I hate the Bulls and their fans more than any other opposing team in any of the four major sports and 2) no Cubs, Red Wings or Lions loss caused me to gravity test a cinder block like the Pistons double-overtime loss to the Nets in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals in 2004 did - although a poor Taboo card holder experienced my wrath during Game 5 of the 2006 World Series. Regardless, I get less worked up about the Pistons and watch fewer of their games and NBA games in general than any other sport. I simply care less - far less - about the NBA than any of the other sports. So remember that when I say this: the season's NBA regular season has been more compelling than any other regular season for any sport that I can remember in my life time. Despite the disheartening - if not unsurprising - revelation last summer that referee Tim Donaghy had unsavory and compromising relationships with gamblers, the NBA has had a series of remarkable luck and great play since that dark day last June. Of the three "scandals" that broke last summer - Bonds and the home run chase, Vick and Bad Newz Kennels, and Donaghy - the mess Donaghy left was most damaging because it involved the very credibility of its sport. I'd recommend this Bill Simmons' column recounting its impact.

But Donaghy's indiscretions have thankfully been blurred by a Pax Association - the Rockets, LeBron Kevin Garnett, Chris Paul, the 76ers, Deron Williams, the Lakers, the compelling race in the Western Conference, and the incredible shift of talent west of the Mississippi as Pau Gasol, Shaq, Jason Kidd, and Kyle Korver. As of Monday, 1.5 games separated the top five seeds in the West, while just 5.5 games lie between the top of the conference and the ninth, no-playoff-invitation place. Denver, Dallas and Golden State are tied at 5.5 games back and fill spots 7 through 9 respectively. The race is fluid, dynamic, and exciting. I have deliberately set aside more time this season to watch NBA games than I can remember before and that is almost entirely due to the compelling story lines and exciting race out West. The games matter more and there is a heightened sense of urgency to maintain one's level of play instead of shutting in down for 3/4 of the season, waiting until the playoffs to turn it on. That is what makes it great live drama. Now the NBA has had a few issues this year - the Sonics situation is inexcusable, the Knicks are still an unbelievable embarrassment, the Heat are pretty awful, and the race for the final playoff spot in the East involves four "teams" who are more than ten games under .500. I suppose it is an example of the "best of times/worst of times" dichotomy, but things are pretty good in Stern-ville right now. But here's a suggestion for making the best of times better.

Allow only 6 teams per conference in the playoffs
I know, i know...keeping 8 teams per conference is more financially lucrative, keeps people in jobs, increases interest in cities who are in the race, and theoretically insulates teams from tanking it for the lottery if they have a shot at the playoffs. Ideally the NBA would lower the amount of games, increasing the importance of each game. This is one reason why the NFL works so well; the paucity of NFL games adds to their importance. The importance of each NFL game equals 5 NBA/NHL games and 10 MLB games. Ideally this ratio would be lower for NBA games, but scaling back on the schedule isn't likely. So the other option/challenge is to make the 82 games that are played more important. The easiest way to do this is to cut the number of playoff teams. Rarely are there seasons like this where an entire conference's standings are in flux on what seems to be a nightly basis. By cutting down on the number of playoff teams, that decreases the margin of error and heightens their sense of urgency. This would not only increase interest in the race for the sixth spot, but a six-team per conference format would mean that the top two seeds would have a first round bye as three would play six and four would square off versus five in a best-of-five opening round. Races for the top two spots would insure that the conference's top teams would not coast it into the playoffs, giving fans more to watch than the clowns in the 6-8 seeds battle it out for the final playoff spot. I don't see one reason why this wouldn't accomplish two huge goals: increase the importance of games and make the race to the playoffs more exciting. It would also make the unending NBA playoff season shorter. Amen to that.

Plus, does it really benefit anyone that 16 of 30 teams make the playoffs? Doesn't 12 of 30 seem like a better and more deserving ratio? Baseball lets in 8 of 30 teams and the wild card has been a huge success. Football lets 12 of 30 in and I don't think anyone argues that their system is flawed or unjust. While there have been some great stories from 8 seeds in basketball (Warriors, Nuggets, Knicks), those are few and far between. Most of the time these teams are not championship caliber and only enter into the playoffs to disrupt teams who have spent a season building to where they have gotten to. If they were leaving out championship caliber teams, then I wouldn't be encouraging the reduction to six. But it has been proven that the 7th and 8th seeds are nothing but undeserving pests. Get rid of them and I think most everyone benefits, including the quality of games throughout the regular season. Plus, if crappy coaches and GMs jobs are saved by making the playoffs even though the teams have no real hope of increasing their team's success ceiling in the next couple of years, shouldn't that change be made anyway? Why should the mirage of a playoff birth obscure miserable talent development and execution?

Again, if you aren't going to reduce the overall number of games, then you need to figure out a way to make the games more important. I have little doubt that this would work.

One smaller suggestion (and I'm not the first that has called for this), but they need to reseed the playoffs. The NHL does this and so does the NFL and both have found great success(!) - and even sexy time - with it. The NBA has recently seen its best playoff match-ups betrayed by their unyielding system. Last year the marque Suns-Spurs series was played in the conference semi-finals rather than the finals while two lower seeds - the Jazz and Warriors - battled it out on the bottom half of the bracket. This could have easily been avoided if a policy of reseeding had been in place and if such an egregious example could not persuade the NBA to change its policy, I'm not sure what will. But I think it needs to happen.

Other thoughts to this other than suggesting that they don't assign Donaghy any more games in the most important playoff series of the year?

Just Make It Stop

2008-03-25T02:48:00.000-05:00

Of all the disgraced politicians, Eliot Spitzer may be my favorite. He owned up to what he did rather than unendingly deny his actions then attack the legality of the investigation that ensnarled him. He took responsibility and stepped aside, avoiding the circus atmosphere that would have engulfed Albany and inhibited him from effectively doing his job. While most people would agree that sex with a prostitute is unbecoming behavior for most men – and especially one of the nation's governors – it is still just an adulterous affair. It could have been far worse. Spitzer didn't use public funds to bankroll his prostitution fix, nor did he compromise the office or his constituents by placing those he was having an affair with into government positions they were unqualified for, as his New Jersey counterpart did. It was more the wide disparity of his public crusades and his private indulgences that sunk his political ship. Regardless, the scope of damage could have been worse and Spitzer addressed it in a direct and prompt way, yet he still stepped aside.

And if Spitzer has set the bar for resignation, then Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has surpassed it with plenty of room to spare. But the mayor hasn't taken a single cue from the former New York governor. A quick recap of the mess Kilpatrick has found himself in: Kilpatrick, son of a U.S. Congresswoman, was elected Mayor in 2001 at the age of 31. A young and charismatic leader, Kilpatrick was supposed to represent the promise and hope of a reborn Detroit. Unfortunately, Kilpatrick used the position's power and influence like a child would use a toy chest – picking and choosing the best way to entertain himself. There has been long rumors of a wild party of the mayoral mansion - the Manoogian (or Boogie-Down) Mansion - involving strippers and an alleged altercation between a dancer and Kilpatrick's wife. The young woman was shot dead in a drive-by shooting soon thereafter as her boyfriend sat in the front passenger seat of her car. The party instigated an investigation by internal affairs, but we derailed when the IA head and two cops were abruptly fired – or "misappointed" by the Mayor. The three sued the city for wrongful termination, knowing that they had been fired because of their impending exposure of the Mayor and his misdeeds. In the whistleblower trial, the Mayor and his female Chief of Staff (long-time friend) testified to no wrong doing and indicated that there was not an intimate relationship between the Mayor and his most immediate appointee. The city – at the Mayor's urging – agreed to a $9 million dollar settlement with the three cops in October. But early this year, the Detroit Free Press published rather salacious and implicating text messages between the Mayor and Chief of Staff of the two's affair and the firing of the three cops. It is pretty clear that perjury occurred. The Chief of Staff resigned soon thereafter and yesterday the Mayor was charged with 8 different counts, ranging from obstruction of justice, perjury and conspiracy. The former Chief of Staff also was charged with a half dozen or so charges. It is a huge mess, but the Mayor – despite large amounts of evidence to the contrary – expects to be cleared of any wrong doing and has refused to resign, even though an impending trial would take up much of the Mayor's time and attention away from a city that desperately needs it.

Kym Worthy, the prosecutor who charged the Mayor Monday, was exactly right…this is not a personal matter. If the Mayor just had an affair, then that could be considered an isolated and personal matter.

But the fact is that the Mayor flaunted and mocked the justice system during the whistle blower trail, ruined the reputations and careers of Detroiters who were doing their sworn duty while he was not, and the fact that the Mayor used $9 million from the city's coffers to cover up his embarrassing behavior. If any other city employee had cost Detroit close to eight-figures to avoid embarrassment, they would be ousted immediately. I am not entirely sure how the Mayor is any different.

And so the Mayor and his team have fallen into the familiar posture of deny, deny, deny and then attacking those who brought the mess to light. The Mayor has apologized, but not specifying what he is apologizing for and has hinted that his defense strategy will be based on proving that it wasn't his thumbs that pounded out the text messages to his Chief of Staff. The defense seems rather flimsy considering that Beatty has acknowledged the affair and resigned. The Mayor's team has also accused of the Free Press of being racially motivated, but the press seems to be willing to expose mayoral sex scandals regardless of race – take a look at San Francisco's mayor or George Ryan in Illinois, the white governor who is now serving time in rural Wisconsin for bribery charges. But Kilpatrick is hoping to rally his base by implicitly saying, "If I am removed, the white suburbanites have won and we can't have that." The Mayor used the N word at the end of the State of the City address, another strike to the wedge that continues to divide many of metro Detroit's residents. And since Worthy is black, they can't use the racially-motivated card against her, so they say the charges she has brought about are politically motivated. Those who have shown they have difficultly taking their responsibility seriously believe themselves to be the only ones who aren't culpable for this mess. Their hubris could not more clearly be shown.

But the Kilpatrick's fellow African-American mayors from across the country cancelled an annual meeting/convention at the last minute because the Mayor is political toxic, but I'm sure the administration would admonish that group for some inexplicable reason too.

And unfortunately, the Mayor's irresponsibility has put Detroit back on the front page for all the wrong reasons. While Kilpatrick cannot take credit for getting Comerica Park and Ford Field built, nor attracting some of the world's most prestigious sporting events, or for the move of General Motors to their current downtown location, Kilpatrick has been at the helm of a remarkable seven years in Detroit, including the opening of the RiverWalk, Campus Martius Park, some positive neighborhood development, and perhaps the most important and memorable week in Detroit's long history – that first week of February 2006, when the nation descended onto Detroit for Super Bowl XL. Expectations were not only met, but clearly exceeded and while Kilpatrick cannot take much personal credit for the week's success, it did happen under his watch and its glow shined brightly on the city's chief. However that brief era of good feelings has ended and Kilpatrick now finds the business community distancing themselves from a man they so desperately wanted – and needed – to succeed. Development will have to be put on hold, attention will be distracted, and the nation's newspapers will be splashed with stories out of Detroit that no one can be proud of. He has had successes, but this gathering storm is more than the city should be asked to withstand.

But Kilpatrick – selfishly and stubbornly – will not spare the city and his family the embarrassment as lawyers trying to define "sexual relationship" and "intimate contact". He will hope that one juror will be unconvinced or unwilling to send away a man who once held such promise, but now only holds a battered and mocked reputation. He will hope that his base will be rallied to re-elect him in November 2009, showing that they would rather have nothing entirely to themselves than share it with anyone from the outside. And he will hope that the text messages recently subpoenaed by the murdered stripper's family doesn't implicate him in a gruesome and unthinkable act. This seems to be bottomless.

And make no mistake, the biggest victims of this will be those that care about and live in Detroit. They have gotten hoodwinked by a irresponsible man who has used the tools of progress for personal enjoyment. They have not gotten the leader they need. And they have once again been embarrassed nationally in a way that other cities would find incomprehensible and simply not stand for. The longer Detroiters and its business community allows for this to go on, the more they will look like Kilpatrick's wife – and the litany of other weary and despondent wives of philandering politicians – hanging on because it's all they know and it's what they have come accustomed to. Detroit deserves better, even if they don't realize it.

If Mikhail is Rasputin, then Michael is Wile E. Coyote - persistent yet epically incompetent

2008-03-24T21:26:00.010-05:00

Because of a trip home, I missed my normal Saturday early afternoon window for a re-watch of LOST and a post on the episode, so I apologize for this being a little later than usual as a few of you have pointed out. Anyway, I have lots of little thoughts on the mostly satisfying "Meet Kevin Johnson", an episode that reminded me of "Flashes Before Your Eyes", but maybe that is only because the flashback in both occupied almost the entire episode - although I do feel like it was time well spent.

We'll start with "WAAWWWW-ELLLLLAWTTTT!"'s dad. As I pointed out last week, I am not a huge fan of Michael and wish that Jin had rearranged his face Mr. Potato Head-style now, especially since Jin's watch was used to pawn a gun in order to commit suicide, an act Michael can't even effectively complete. Seriously, can this clown do anything right? I was impressed with the performance of the post-Island Michael and his strained relationship with the son he desperately wants to be a father to. That being said, I couldn't entirely buy his motivation for accepting the ride on the Flying Dutchman. Perhaps the producers painted themselves into a corner on this one, but it was tough to swallow. Michael is dangerously single-minded, his only goal being getting Walk back. Fine. Michael gets on the freighter to help his fellow 815 survivors and subsequently redeems himself for going Hannibal in the hatch, and is then reunited with Walt who realizes that his father is a hero. Fine. I buy that. What I don't buy is that Michael would get onto the freighter thinking "OK, I am going to show Walt what a redemptive soul I have by blowing up the entire ship and its crew, including myself, but never get to be reunited with my boy." That doesn't make any sense. Why would he want to continue on his suicidal path if he sees a way to right wrongs and ultimately show Walt the man his father truly is? Suicide before he meets Zeke in the alley = OK. Suicide afterwards = no sense. This was the most difficult part of the episode to swallow and it served as an obstacle from truly suspending my disbelief, a vital buy-in when you are watching LOST.

That being said, we now know why Jack could jump off the bridge on-ramp in the opening minutes of the season three finale - the Island wouldn't let him. This is also the second time "the Island" is said to have some mystical, controlling power off its rock - Hurley made the first allusion shooting hoops at the end of the season premier. I'm not sure where this is going, but it is an interesting thread to keep an eye on.

A couple more things Michael related. Zeke acknowledges that the Others have been keeping tabs on Michael since he returned to the mainland. This is the second time in three episodes - along with the Widmore beat down caught on tape - there has been an indication that the Others have an active network off the Island that serve some unknown purpose beyond 815 survivor espionage. Again, no huge insight here, but important to note and keep tabs on. How do they get off the Island? Was the sub the only way? I still think there is a landing strip somewhere on the Island.

I also think Michael gets stuck back on the Island, otherwise he would have been hailed as a member of the Oceanic and used that opportunity to serve as his coming out party - although the logistics of doing that and including Walt so he wouldn't have to hide in his bedroom under an assumed name could be difficult. And while Sayid coldly outed Michael to Cap'n Gault, I'm not entirely sure that the big guy didn't already know that Michael was an 815 survivor. Sayid clearly doesn't think Michael can be trusted more than those on the freighter and his nicely written - but cryptic - note about not trusting the captain clearly didn't do the trick. And I loved Ben's chilling reminder that Michael killed the insufferable Ana Lucia and tender (yet apparently mentally unstable) Libby. Speaking of Libby, I hope her brief flashes in Michael's conscious serve as a harbinger of future appearances. I still hold out hope that she has more impact on LOST's overarching story motif. We still don't know her last name.

More confusion on who put the plane at the bottom of the Pacific. This week evidence was shown to implicate Widmore as the reverse treasure hunter, but I'm still not sure you can discount Ben as the culprit. First off, that "evidence" was sort of flimsy and easily falsified. And why exactly would Widmore want the flight data recorder if it exposed the wreckage site as a fraud? There is always the possibility that the flight data recorder supports the crashed and sunk at sea with everyone aboard sequence of events, but by no means do I think the photo and order form discounts Ben/the Others from staging the 815 fuselage. When Lapidus was discussing with who he believed to be Kevin about 815, Lapidus subtly indicated that he is the reason that Widmore doesn't believe that 815 has been found. This web is getting awfully tangled.

Finally Rousseau and Carl. Carl was a logical choice to bite the bullet, a peripheral character who is clearly expendable, but Rousseau's death seemed sloppy and ill-timed, much like Eko's (although there were other reasons as to why Eko needed off the show). I had always hoped for a Rousseau back story, recounting her first few days on the Island, the illness that her fellow crew members succumb to, and properly placing her tile in the larger LOST mosaic. Her untimely end will not likely afford ourselves that opportunity and her storyline will almost without question feel incomplete. While I think most people will assume that Ben deliberately sent the trio into an ambush to separate Alex from her mother and dispose of the troublesome Carl, I'll leave you with an alternative theory...Cap'n Gault and Widmore have sent Lapidus and Keamy to the Island in order to capture Alex so that she can be used as leverage against Ben. We don't know where the helicopter has gone off to (one can assume the Island) and there's likely a reason to have shown Keamy practicing his shot off the side of the boat during the episode...

Also, if you want to irresponsibly speculate how Aaron ends up with the Oceanic 6, take a closer look to the preview shown at the end of the episode. 30 days until a new episode. It is going to be very interesting to see how the final five episodes of the season are paced.

The Health Department Put an End to the Hasselhoff Burger

2008-03-17T21:47:00.001-05:00

A little background on this post. A good friend of mine - Kenny Havok over at Zubaz & Cock Rock - went to Kuma's Corner last weekend. Kuma's is a burger spot in Lincoln Park whose menu features hair metal band-named burgers. If you know Mr. Havok, you know that hair metal is his specialty. Despite the horrible wait, the restaurant was reviewed positively over at Z&CR (scoring a 666!) with one notable exception; the burgers don't really have anything to do with the bands they honor, offering an excellent blogging opportunity. Mr. Havok's review includes suggestions on how to make how to make the burgers more like their respective band names along with a few suggestions of his own. In a revolutionary approach to blogging(!), Mr. Havok invited Robot In Disguise and The Situation Has Deteriorated to tandem blog on his post (I am certain this has NEVER been done before). So below you have my ideas about how the burgers would best represent the band they are named after. Although none of these ideas are as good as Matt Reedy's suggestion that the John Mayer Burger should be a salad...

Guns 'N Roses Burger - You get a small sample of the burger and it is really good so you order a second one. And you keep waiting and waiting, but it never comes out despite the fact that the chef keeps insisting that it will ready shortly.

Beyonce Burger - Hot and juicy offering popular with all sorts of people. It was originally part of the larger, more complicated Destiny Child burger, but people realized the only tasty part of the burger was the delicious middle, so the restaurant unceremoniously got rid of the other superfluous parts. The burger is now so popular, it is being served at local movies theaters as well.

Dave Matthews Band Burger - You try to order a regular hamburger, but the chef just keeps sending out a live cow. Again and again. Never anything fresh or new, just more live stuff keeps coming. While this is frustrating it is a better meal choice than the DMB Bisque, a hearty mixture of Chicago River water and poop from the tour bus.

Eminem Burger - The burger comes out and is sent back to the kitchen because it hasn't been blackened enough, even though it is better than every other blackened burger available in the restaurant.

Beatles Burger - Innovative and popular burger from England which is unlike any burger you have ever tasted until you get a side of Yoko halfway through the meal, which ruins the entire dining experience.

Nirvana Burger - The cow who's beef you were supposed to eat kills himself and the lettuce jumps to the Foo Fighters burger and no one is quite sure what happened to the tomato. Waiter suggests replacing your order with a Pearl Jam or Soundgarden offering.

Smashing Pumpkins Burger - You order it and take a bite, decide that it is so good you will share it with everyone else. You start passing it around from table to table, but for some reason the Smashing Pumpkin burger never makes an appearance back where it originally came from.

Rolling Stones Burger - A solid choice with cheddar, BBQ sauce, bacon with kobe beef and a kaiser roll. A staple for years. But everyone goes to the bar or bathroom when it comes out of the kitchen with something new on it.

Fall Out Boy, Guster, Oasis or Maroon 5 Burger - When you order either of these, you don't actually get anything, but you are asked by your waiter to go borrow/steal parts of everyone else's burger. You "build" your "own" burger from there, but never actually contribute anything original to the burger or overall menu.

Radiohead Burger - Only available online, you pay what you want and it is delivered through the mail four days later.

Arcade Fire Burger - It comes with 10 different ingredients that you would never put together yourself, but the taste is so perfectly orchestrated, that it is better than anything you have ever tasted before.

Coldplay Burger - scraps of the larger, more popular, and better U2 burger just put together under a stale bun.

Journey Burger - From south Detroit, a popular selection, but only on karaoke nights.

Any other suggestions?

Aaron counts!

2008-03-15T14:47:00.010-05:00

I loved the narrative gamesmanship of this past week's episode. Some of LOST's best moments (the season three finale, Desmond's conscious-travel and deja vu) have been born from taking the routine narrative structure and being innovative, finding them free of narrative constraints. And while "Ji Yeon" doesn't rank as one of the show's best, it still is better than some are giving it credit for.

It reminded me an awful lot of "Greatest Hits" - the penultimate episode in season 3 when Charlie recounts his life's top five moments before swimming down to the Looking Glass. Both have a once-wayward and flawed man who finally reconciles his previous failings with the woman he loves, only to (seemingly) approach their premature end. Charlie reconciled his drug use and found acceptance from Claire, allowing for him to make the sacrifice necessary to bring the 815 survivors the chance at rescue and warn them that those on the boat were not who they said they were. Jin needed a similar moment. The previous personal foot-soldier of Sun's father needed atonement for his misdeeds and the treatment of his wife, which ultimately drove her into the arms of another man. He needed to know about her infidelity and then only could he be certain about who the father of the baby in Sun's womb truly was. Speaking of that, how surprising and cold was it when the Ice Queen told Jin about Sun's affair to keep them from leaving for Locke's camp? I was horrified.

I feel as if this completed Jin story arch. No character has changed more over the survivors season of discontent than Jin. He transformed from a domineering, overzealous and isolated husband into a caring, affable and entirely enjoyable character. Now looking back at it, don't you wish Jin had clowned Michael badly in their season one beach side throw-down? That fishing scene with Bernard was marvelous, a clear portrait of a man changed. We needed one more glimpse of Jin slavishly completing the dirty/menial tasks from Mr. Kwan juxtaposed against the infidelity/forgiveness backdrop to serve as a clear illustration of how far he has come as a character. Does this mean that Jin is dead or is he still on the Island awaiting the same "rescue" that Sun enjoyed?

If I had to guess, I'd say that Jin is dead. I suppose it makes sense that he is still stuck on the Island, but Hurley's line about "do you want to go see him?" leads me to believe that he is in fact buried at the tombstone. This is my guess as to what happened. Jin was one of the two 815 passengers to survive the crash but die before rescue, which would jive with the testimony Jack gave on the stand during Kate's trial. Between the time of the crash and his death, Jin impregnated Sun, but died some time thereafter. After his death, Sun is unwilling to leave the Island without his body and therefore is brought along with the other members of the Oceanic 6. Jin is buried under the tombstone erected for the couple after the fabricated 815 wreckage was found and the families sought closure by holding funerals despite not having the body. That would explain the 9-22-2004 date on the headstone and it would also close the holes in Sun's story about who was the child's father and why she was having a child in the 6 to 9 month window after being rescued from the Island. I don't know whether I believe this myself, but it's an explanation that fits in with some of the flash forwards we have already been given. The strikes against the "Jin is dead" theory are the date on the tombstone (why wouldn't Sun have changed it?) and the fact that killing off 815 survivors makes it more difficult for the audience to buy into Jack's obsession with returning to the Island, my argument from a few weeks ago. Are we really going to care if Mr. Go-Gurt is the one Jack is returning to save?

One final thing about Jin. I think this solidifies the members of the Oceanic 6. Kate, Jack, Hurley, Sayid, Sun, and Aaron. I always thought the "Aaron wasn't on the manifest, so he can't be a member of the Oceanic 6" argument was weak. Those questions should end now.

That's enough speculation about Jin for now. Let's talk about the return of Michael. I know it wasn't exactly shocking, especially since at Comic-Con last year, LOST's executive producers were joined for a Q&A panel with Harold Perrineau to discuss his return. And that he has been included in the cast credits for the past month. I wonder why they decided to do it, sucking the surprise or anticipation out of his appearance. Regardless, we are likely going to get an eye full of Michael next week (yes, there is an episode...ABC has previously scheduled the break to begin after this week's episode, but for some reason they are airing another episode this week..I was wrong) and get an idea about where he and Walt have been since leaving the Island at the end of season two. Michael pretty clearly is sabotaging the freighter's engine and communication room, opening doors for Sayid and Desmond, and passing notes about not to trust the captain. But I'm not sure that we can take anything Michael says at face value. We know that above all else, Michael is concerned about Walt and will do whatever he can to protect his son. If it is in his best interest to plant a seed of distrust about the captain in the minds of Sayid and Desmond, he will do it. The captain seems at least somewhat interested in exposing Ben - hence the fake black box that has been recovered from th 815 wreckage - but if revealing the 815 crash site at the bottom of the ocean as a fraud is detrimental to Ben, Michael is going to do whatever he can to stop it out of love for his son. It will be interesting to see where Sayid's loyalties lie on the freighter - will he trust Michael who has proved to be dangerously single-minded or the freighter folk who have not exactly been forthcoming/trustworthy.

Two other quick things.
The captain's name is Gault, an echo of Atlas Shrugged's enigmatic John Galt. My guess is that this is not coincidental and that the motif of overzealous capitalism will play into the coming episodes.

Finally, I want to quickly make a defense of LOST at the risk of sounding like an apologist. I liked Thursday's episode, unlike some of my friends. I think people want more action, more plot movement, and that is understandable. But the downside of that is having to continually come up with stuff to fill air time and add unnecessary drama for the sake of drama's sake. I really don't want the show to turn into The O.C., adding unneeded plot twists and tiresome drama in the name of spicing up the show. If Oliver shows up on the Island, I am going to quit watching. Those of you who have watched both seasons of Friday Night Lights knows how a show's conviction can be hijacked and betrayed by superfluous additions and ill-planned drama. If the choices are appropriately paced or wildly frantic, I'd take the former. FNL and The O.C. ran out of creative juices. Lost runs the same risk, but I think there is a conscious effort to avoid it, setting up for a large payoff in this season's second half.

NOTE: Again, there is an episode this week. I was wrong in my post last week too. Enjoy.

Sam Adams B(eats) General Tso (Chicken)

2008-03-12T07:28:00.005-05:00

Samuel Adams organized the Boston Tea Party, but is better known as a beer brand; most people under 30 think of a nunchuck-wielding, orange-clad mutant turtle - not a Renaissance artist - when they hear the name Michelangelo. It's easy to see there's a long tradition in America of recalling history in a backhanded way, honoring people and places in ways that bear little resemblance to their actual significance - coincidental or not. In doing so, we recreate history and historical figures, remembering them in our own unique way.

For example, John Hancock should be remembered for large things (President of the Second Continental Congress), but his name lives on because of larger things – his signature on the Declaration of Independence and the downtown Chicago building. An O. Henry can be “A Gift of the Magi” and a gift of sugar high, as both short stories and candy bars are meant to be consumed. And one can assume that Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show didn’t feature football games between cowboys and redskins, but the Buffalo Bills’ 2007 schedule featured contests against both Cowboys (from Dallas) and Redskins (from Washington).

Americans also seem to usurp foreign allusions easily. Homer no longer fathered just the Iliad and the Odyssey, but also Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. Can you imagine Cadillac rolling up the waters of the Detroit River in a canoe outlined in chrome and with spinners on the paddles? Most remember Casablanca as home not to Hassan II Mosque – the world’s second largest – but rather Rick’s Café. And one would think Marco Polo’s navigation of the Silk Road was slightly less happenstance than the pool game that carries his name.

Others references simply cross one of the oceans on their own through cultural osmosis. A certain Irish rock band may make more noise than the early Cold War spy aircraft they lifted their name from: the U2. Few people remember that Bloody Mary was first related to a Tudor, not a Mimosa. The Duke of Windsor’s scandalous abdication is long forgotten, but his debonair double-knot remains popular. And the end at Marathon now isn’t widely known for a crippling Persian defeat, but rather for crippling pains in da feet. And I'm almost certain that General Tso's troops didn't enjoy his delicious chicken during the Taiping Rebellion, but I sure do.

Current pop culture isn’t immune to their trend either. If I said, “I just finished Gray’s Anatomy,” you’d think I’d been watching a 43-minute drama dripping with sexual tension rather than reading a 1,000+ page document dealing with skulls and tendons. The original Madonna didn’t roll around in the innkeeper’s stable singing “Like A Virgin” while wearing a wedding dress before the birth of Jesus. And if my roommate tosses his Apple, Steve Jobs – not Johnny Appleseed – takes offense. The most famous white Bronco should be John Elway, not the one with O.J. riding in the back seat. And if a young Hollywood celeb told his parents he was in Paris last night, he might not have been talking about the one with the Louvre.

We’re involved in this cultural exchange every day. We’ve created a culture that might seem like our own, but it’s not; it’s inherently interwoven with history in entertaining – albeit less relevant – ways. While mostly harmless, this “reinterpretation” can be embarrassing, especially for well-educated college students. And I offer a final example to stave off possible embarrassment: Beirut is the capital of Lebanon, not just a collegiate drinking game, to played with – not against – Sam Adams.

At least Jack didn't go to Bali for a Mike Tyson tattoo in this one...

2008-03-08T17:07:00.010-06:00

LOST gave us a flashback on Thursday. Not to the pre-815 Island through Juliet's perspective, but rather to the doldrums of early season three. Perhaps we have set the bar too high. Perhaps we are settling in to a familiar pattern - set-up, payoff, rinse, repeat. Perhaps the writers' pre-strike jitters manifested themselves into a poorly written script. But Thursday's episode of LOST seemed to miss the mark, almost alarmingly so. I will confess, I am not a huge fan of Juliet, so that might have played a part. And a much like the Kate episode, this seemed to be more of a plot accelerator/positioner than anything else. But Kate's episode answered some overarching questions. It gave us a wonderfully delicious twist at its conclusion. This episode just sort of sat there, full of potential energy but lacking a catalyst to spark it. Frustrating on a number of accounts, but satisfying on a few others. I'll start with the positive.

Ben & Locke
My favorite scenes in LOST have dealt with the mysterious (and mobile) cabin of Jacob's. But a very close second is the interaction between our two favorite Island seers, Locke and Ben. It is no surprising that Terry O'Quinn and Michael Emerson were both nominated for Best Supporting Actor (with O'Quinn winning). It's like Messier and Gretzky or Malone and Stockton...perfect compliments to each other and a beauty to watch perform. It is dynamic. And epic. And nerve-racking. And LOST at its absolute best. Ben's line at the end of the episode to Hurley and Saywer - "See you at dinner" - was the highlight of the show.

The SS Widmore
Well, we now know who sent the freighter and if you have read previous posts on this blog, the revelation shouldn't be too much of a surprise. Mr. Charles Widmore - Penny's father - is the uber-zealous bad guy, at least according to Bug-Eyed Ben. Ben's insistence that he didn't know what Mr. Widmore wanted from/of the Island - answering in LOST's speciality, generalities - is probably a load of red herring, but the reveal was satisfying none-the-less. I need to point out when I am right this week because I have a feeling my Oceanic 6 prediction will fall apart 815-style next week.

One other quick thing about the tape. How did Ben get it? He said he taped over the Red Sox win, but has also acknowledged that ever since the fail safe key was turned and the sky turned purple, their communication systems have been down. Ben showed Jack the Red Sox tape after the fail safe key was turned, meaning he taped over it after the communication problems had begun. Has Ben been lying about his ability to communicate with the outside world? In what capacity has he been doing this? And do the Others have only one damn VHS tape on the entire Island?

Ben's communication problems is a good segue for discussing the bad in "The Other Woman."

First off, how is Ben communicating with Harper? I know Ben always has a plan and it is possible that the spy (I will call him Michael from here on out) on the ship knew of Farraday and Charlotte's plan and communicated that to Bed pre-imprisonment. But the timing suggests that Ben sent Harper when he "knew" that Farraday and Charlotte had left for the Tempest. Is Ben communicating telepathically through the Island? Does he have something to do with the whispers, which Juliet heard just before she had stumbled across Harper (I actually really like this idea)? And where did Harper come from anyway? It felt like she just came from no where. In fact, that appears exactly right. She wasn't in the opening scene of season three - when Juliet's book club was interrupted by the 815 crash - but was inserted in that flashback during Thursday's episode, standing behind her husband Goodwin. Regardless, LOST has previously flirted with introducing characters that were there all along, but really weren't (see: Paulo and Nikki), and we all know how that has gone. Harper seemed to be another misstep made in the same vein. It's not as if she was a ghost and mirage in the same way Walt and Jack's father have been since both Juliet and Jack saw her. Any thoughts on this or whether I am alone in my feelings towards Harper would be appreciated.

The back story didn't do much for me either. I suppose we needed a story about the "history" between Ben and Juliet and I loved the scene when Ben's sophomoric pining for Juliet shown through. But did it have to take the entire episode? Is the motif of Ben owning Juliet going to be such a strong emotional tenor for the remainder of the season that it deserved the lengthy and tedious set-up it received in "The Other Woman"? I hope so, because if not, I feel the show burned a major opportunity to add more dimension to Juliet's character. And while I don't particularly care for Juliet, Elizabeth Mitchell's performance is consistent, strong, and believable.

But she was dealt a horrible hand with "The Other Woman" script. I'd like to nominate the "What I need for you is to help me? Will you help me? If we move all night maybe we can catch them. Thank you" scene as the cheesiest LOST scene ever and worst female monologue scene on TV or film since T2 when Sarah Connor said, "In an insane world, it was the sanest choice." And the kiss at the end of the episode was almost as bad. I don't understand Jack's interest in Juliet. Doesn't he need a project, something to fix? Kate seems to fit that mold much better than the Other's OB/GYN.

And finally, who is Juliet really working and looking out for? She says that it is in personal interest to be near Ben, but chooses to stay with Jack. She says that she ultimately thinks Ben will win whatever war the 815ers find themselves in the middle of and yet seems to be distancing herself from him. If he is so powerful and important and possessive, why doesn't Juliet just stick with Ben? The scope of his power is vast and her belief in Ben's eventual victory would make at least me believe that Juliet could never escape Ben's grip. It is in her own self-interest to stay closely aligned with and within proximity of Ben. So why try to work against him and yourself? And why did Ben and Farraday/Charlotte want to do essentially the same thing - neutralize/not use the gas.

Another thing...Goodwin clearly worked at the Tempest Station...shouldn't that have played into Juliet's hand at some point. Didn't he spill some beans in one of their post-tryst sessions in bed that would help Juliet stop Farraday and Charlotte? The acknowledgment that she recognized Goodwin's electrical burn was too much of a hint that Goodwin was involved in something dangerous at the Tempest to be left hanging. What exactly was going on at the station?

I think most of us can agree that "The Other Woman" episode was not classic LOST. But if the show has taught us anything, it's that the episodes must be viewed in the right light. Isolated episodes may not seem to have great importance, much the same way a single tile of a mosaic appears insignificant apart from its whole. However, both stand as integral parts of a larger whole that gain greater significance when placed within their proper context.

Last season, I felt the episode about Hurley and the old VW bus was a nice episode and would have fit perfectly in season one, but felt out of place in season three. I thought it was a waste of an episode. But over the course of the next few episodes, when the skeleton in the bus was revealed to be Ben's awful father and the bus saved the lives of Sayid, Jin and Bernard, the episodes full meaning was revealed. The surrounding tiles and new perspective gave the singular tile its proper and complete context. Then there was the Jack in Bali episode when he got the tattoos, which was awful at the time of airing and when the full story arc of season three was played out. Here's to hoping that "The Other Woman" is more like the former than the latter.

The flow of the season seems to be set-up, payoff, set up payoff (the Freighter Foursome arrival lead into Sayid's flashfoward; Kate's episode lead into an excellent Desmond-centric thriller). Next week - the last LOST episode until mid-April - appears at least to be a worthy payoff. The meaning and worth of its wayward, meandering set-up remains to be seen.

Just a quick note about next week's episode. I think everyone is pretty sure Ben's spy on the boat is Michael. And we know the last of the Oceanic 6 will be revealed. But I think everyone is hoping for something more. And my guess is that we will get it. LOST had 8 episodes completed before the strike, but they are only showing 7 before they take their 5 week break. This is clearly a conscious decision to leave the show on a high note, giving fans plenty to gnaw on over their brief hiatus. If the build up to a big reveal just turns out to be Michael, I think we will be let down by who ever make up the last two members of the Oceanic 6. I think we all expect more (something like Jack's dad as the captain of the freighter), and my hunch is that we will get it.

One, Two, Three, Favre, Bye...

2008-03-05T21:04:00.005-06:00

Brett Favre will be remembered for many things. The first touchdown pass on Super Bowl XXXI's second play from scrimmage, his performance the night after his dad's sudden death, the almost incomprehensible consecutive start streak, and his seasonal flirting with his inner Hamlet. Another amazing feat: for a very long time, Favre was the second most winning quarterback in Soldier Field history, behind Jim McMahon. That is almost as impressive as his consecutive game streak.

Personally I will remember him for hitting a wide open Sterling Sharp in the final minute of a playoff game against the Lions at the Silverdome, leaving a boy just shy of 10 absolutely devastated. And then there is of course this (this too if you have the right software).

Which got me to thinking, what are the most unintentionally hilarious/awkward athlete appearances in movies. Ray (Jesus) Allen in He Got Game doesn't count. But these do.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in Airplane!
Please put aside that Airplane! is one of the greatest comedies in American cinematic history with some of the wittiest dialog. Put aside that KAJ actually turns in a pretty damn good performance as Roger Murdock. And that his rant about trying to drag Walton and Lanier up and down the court for 48 minutes is the perfect response to what must be every athlete's unsaid emotional frustration with fans. The often aloof and mercurial Laker legend seems like such a bad pick for the role that he is perfect. And I suppose we should be thankful that Bill Walton wasn't cast. "OHHHH STRIKER! FLY IT DOWN, BIG FELLA!"
Best line: "Huh....Huh....Huh....What?!"

Dan Marino in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
The closest Dan Marino ever got to a Super Bowl championship ring was while filming Ace Ventura, and perhaps rightly so, because as putrid as his performance was in Ace Ventura, it was worse in Super Bowl XIX (1 TD, 3 INTS in a 38-16 loss to the 49ers). I'm not sure I even need to write any more about this. If you have seen the movie - and if you are reading this blog, my guess is that you've seen a handful of times - you know how painful it must have been to film. At least every young football fan learned an invaluable lesson...that when a field goal is missed it isn't always the kickers fault; and that laces out mean a world of difference. Right Lois Einhorn? And Tony Romo?
Best Line: Ace: Please don't kill me. I'll never tell anyone. Kill him, he's the one you want. Dan: No, no kill me. (see what I'm talking about...there's nothing here)

O.J. Simpson in the Naked Gun series
This goes up there with the KAJ appearance in Airplane! It was hilarious when it came out, still is to a large degree, but unlike KAJ, watching and laughing at O.J. now just seems wrong. And it is too bad, because the movies are pretty good and they stand up well over the test of time. But it is tough to enjoy. It is further complicated by the fact that Simpson stood as an example of sport's egalitarian qualities. He parlayed his on-field popularity into becoming the first black celebrity to be featured in a national corporate ad campaign, running through airport terminals for Hertz. In the mid-70s, a poll of grade-school children commissioned by Ladies' Home Journal named Simpson the nation's most admired figure. He starred in a number of other films, A Killing Affair, a made-for-television movie which stands as one of the first instances of interracial romance depicted in the mass media. Not quite as light-hearted as the other examples, but I think it's important to point out. At least we can still laugh at picturing Nordberg stuck on the underside of a bus on its way from L.A. to Detroit.
Best line: "Nobody run, just walk. Single file. That's it. Now if we just stay calm, no one's gonna be harmed by the huge bomb that's gonna explode any minute."

Shaq in Kazaam
I suppose you could have picked Blue Chips, but that was actually a pretty decent movie. Steel was much closer to making the list. But I picked Kazaam cause Steel didn't have the line "You smell like hippopotamus butt". Regardless, I don't think it's too surprising when you realize that Shaq started winning championships after he left his acting and rapping career behind. But he is a man of many interests and talents, as his recent law enforcement pursuits have shown.
Best Line: "Grab my belly and make a wish." That is also what he reportedly told Steve Nash after he was traded to the Suns. I suspect that wish wasn't "To slowly fall out of contention in the Western Conference playoff race."

Gheorghe Muresan in My Giant
I haven't seen the movie, but me thinks this might be one that Billy Crystal would like to have back. However, I included it mainly because Muresan's Wiki page says that he played a ventriloquist in Eminem's "My Name Is" music video. This astounds me. This should also astound you.

Brett Favre in There's Something About Mary
Some of Favre's performances in domes were pretty lame, but his appearance late in TSAM as Mary's former lover was just atrocious. (If that movie was made now, Peyton Manning would be the premium choice...just tell him it's a commercial and he's there.) But we have to give it to Favre, a lesser man would have fallen back into his pain killer addiction after prolonged exposure to Ben Stiller. And his amazing MasterCard and Prilosec ads show a much more comfortable Favre.
Best line: "I would have looked out for the water main, but that's just me" Whoops...that's the MasterCard ad.

Pele in Victory
I do feel bad for Pele. He is a world icon that has (let himself) been used as a political pawn and sullied some of his legacy (great chapter in How Soccer Explains the World). It may be a good thing since Victory wasn't exactly the epic soccer movie of our time. (Actually, if it wasn't, then what was?) What this movie needs is "Pele Stallone", not Pele and Stallone. Pele couldn't act. And Stallone (in the blue shirt) couldn't possible be believable as a goalkeeper. It just wasn't going to happen. Goldberg was a more believable goalie. But if you can suspend disbelief that Stallone knows soccer rules and that Pele (as Luis Fernandez) would have ended up in a German POW camp, then you can enjoy the movie. Even if you think soccer is for a bunch of hippie panzies. (I've played soccer for my entire life, so clearly I don't think that.)
Best Line: "Where do I stand for a corner kick?" - Stallone. I'm virtually certain that Stallone needed to know that during filming, so he at least "played his part."

Dennis Rodman in Simon Sez
I don't even need to explain this one, right?

Anything obvious I missed?

Link to my best sports logos post.

Nothing in teal was considered...

2008-03-03T22:12:00.000-06:00

This is only one man's opinion and it encompasses just teams from the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB. There are some really bizarre, amazing logos from minor/fray league teams and some fantastic college logos (including Sparky, Pete, Bucky, Faulkner-inspired Rebel, an angry Donald, a deranged Deacon, the Rose Bowl, the Orange Bowl, the "Hurricane" and the Gator) but that would be biting off more than I can chew.

The Hidden Letters Category

Montreal Expos
The only thing more impressive than the fact the the Expos managed to fit 4 letters into their logo (E, L, B, M) was that they had at various points Pedro Martines, Vladimir Guerrero, Larry Walker, Moises Alou, Marquis Grissom, Gary Carter, Andre Dawson, Tim Raines and John Wetteland, but never won anything. Bonus points for Youppi!, the Expos mascot who is now a staple at Canadians' games. He is the only mascot ever to change teams and leagues.

Milwaukee Brewers
For some reason, art students always come up with the best logo ideas/designs. Nike's ubiquitous swoosh was conjured up by an art student at Portland State in 1971, billing Nike $35 for 17.5 hours of work. 12 yeas later, Phil Knight gave her Nike stock in a show of gratitude. But I digress. The Brewers M and B that form a baseball glove is easily one of the most memorable and beloved baseball logos. Designed by a University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire, the logo was scrapped in 1993 for some awful, more-serious look. Thankfully the Brew Crew came to the senses in 2006 and began wearing the unis as a weekly home alternate, likely because it makes former Grosse Pointe Woods-Shores Little Leaguer Prince Fielder look slimmer.

Hartford Whalers
Like the Expos, the Whalers don't even exist any longer, much less their logo. But it lives on in the hearts of creative logo lovers everywhere. While I prefer the white to gray background, there is no debating that the whales tail is an amazing touch that creates the stylized H cut out of the green W. Despite the teams departure in 1997 at the hands of Detroiter Peter Karmanos, the Blowhole still hopes for a team in the city's future. I totally support it based on creative logo design and the Coffee-Shanahan trade that helped the Wings win the 1997 Stanley Cup.

Just Missed the Cut
New Jersey Devils

Bonus
Big Ten
When Penn State accepted the Big Ten's invitation to join in 1990, there were discussions about what to do with the conference's now-misnomer name. It was decided that the conference would retain its name, but the logo would reflect the addition of the Nittany Lions. The number 11 is now disguised in white while set against the conference's traditional blue lettering. While 11 teams causes scheduling headaches for the conference, it has lead to the best conference logo in the country. Here's to hoping Notre Dame stays independent, allowing for the logo to remain untouched.

FedEx
I hadn't realized it before it was pointed out to me recently, but there is an arrow in the FedEx logo! Yes! It's there! Between the E and x! Good luck ever looking at that logo again and not thinking about it.

Person Division

Pittsburgh Steelers
This logo was so much better before the Steelers tried needlessly to add a mascot last year and then named him Steely McBeam, a name that wouldn't even pass for in the porn industry. (He wasn't well received.) Regardless, there is no way you can't love the rotund construction worker punting the ball on the I-beam look that belonged to the black and gold in the early 1960s. The blue collar toughness of the Steel City calls for no warm and fuzzy caricatures - nor apparently a logo on both sides of the helmet - so this unnamed logo fell to the wayside as Swan, Bradshaw, and Terrible Towels came onto the scene. Regardless, it still ranks as an appropriate and fantastic concept of a team and its city.

Washington Senators
Although miserable on the field, the Washington Senators had one of the game's great logos. The suit-clad, silver haired pitcher is - like the Steelers - a wonderful marriage of city, team, and logo. Before the Senators moved west to Minneapolis to become the Twins, the Washington Monument was added to the archery target background, a thoughtful and unique touch, but one that I could not find in a photo big enough to post (you can find it here). One can only hope that the Nationals front office realizes they have one of the worst, most inane logos in sports and changes its logo scheme and team name.

New England Patriots
Maybe the easiest of the decisions, Pat Patriot is one of the greatest, most ornate and graphically-detailed logos ever. Period. At least until he was taken out back Old Yeller-style and killed in an execution-like manner in 1993. And you really can't argue with the results...since the logo change the Patriots have been to 5 Super Bowls, winning 3. And while Pat Patriot must have reminded fans and the front office of the position they were in when the Bears gave it to them in Super Bowl XX, that still doesn't excuse the unceremonious end he was subjected to.

Bonus

Chicago Blackhawks
Irene Castle, the owner's wife, designed the logo before World War II and it has stood as one of the most recognizable and storied logos in all of American sports. Of the four logos in the humans section, it is the only one still in use and despite resistance of the team's PR/marketing staff to "Commit to the Indian", the franchise is clearly dedicated to keeping the iconic logo on the front of the players' sweaters.

Just Missing the Cut
Boston Celtics
Denver Nuggets
Oakland Raiders
Minnesota Twins
Milwaukee Brewers Keg Man
Philadelphia Phillies
Pittsburgh Pirates All-Star Game Logo

Best Animal

Detroit Tigers
Call me a homer, but I like the simplicity of the design. I suppose if you didn't grow up in Detroit, you may not understand the importance of the logo, but it adorned the outside of now decrepit Tiger Stadium, stood for the 35-5 start in 1984, and combined a realistic depiction of a tiger with the logo friendly colors and design shirts necessitated. Bonus points for having these two alternates and for being adopted as the logo of Bayside High.

Chicago Bulls
Why does almost every NBA team incorporate a basketball into their logo? No other league experiences quite the epidemic that infected the Association (although MLB teams do like the baseball), but the Chicago Bulls have avoided it. And like their co-tenants at the United Center (the Blackhawks), they have one of the most iconic and enduring logo in American sports. Now synonymous with #23, the ball-less logo has been unchanged since the team entered the Association in 1967. The team gave us one of the best logos, most aesthetically pleasing unis, greatest player ever and most obnoxious fans west of Boston/NY. Let us be thankful for three of those four things.

Pittsburgh Penguins
A penguin can't fly, but who doesn't have mounds of respect for the waddling tuxedoed avians after watching "March of the Penguins"? The original logo designers of the Pittsburgh Penguins certainly did. The playful, portly penguin wearing skates in front of a triangular background has provided the basis for the team's logo for its 40 year history. But its the original logo scores the most points in terms of subtle creativity. While the penguin is now more muscular than portly and beak more menacing, the greatest touch/loss is the scarf, which was scrapped only a year into the team's design. It's a classy, playful addition that speaks to hockey's heritage of pick-up games on frozen ponds. While the penguin has almost no neck in the present logo, there has to be room for the scarf. Maybe even a winter hat...at least Youngstown State has the idea.

Just Missed The Cut
Baltimore Orioles
Cincinnati Bengals
Chicago Bears
Steroid-aided Toronto Blue Jay
Chicago Cubs (and again, and again)
St. Louis Cardinals
San Diego Padres (500 levels of awesome, according to Ken.)
St. Louis Cardinals (NFL edition)

Best Inanimate Object

St. Louis Blues
The Blue Note, as it's called, is so simple; a solid city-appropriate choice and incorporation into a color-pleasing logo. They also get bonus points for not capitulating to the lowest common denominator and incorporating the Gateway Arch to busy the design of the logo or jersey. And this is head and shoulders better than the Utah Jazz logo. If there were ever two teams that needed immediate name changing due to epic misnomer-status it is the Sodom Angels, the Bismark Heat and the Utah Jazz. Perspective by incongruity doesn't work in sports logos/nicknames.

Detroit Red Wings
Again, I may be playing homer, but is there a better logo in all of sports than the Winged Wheel? Classy, unchanged, unique and reflective of the Motor City with its spoked wheel - connecting both to the automotive industry and the city's Parisian-inspired street layout. The logo and team are so popular the team hasn't needed to surrender to marketing considerations and add an alternative logo or jersey. The logo even survived the "Dead Wing" era of the 1980s...that is how resilient it is.

New York Yankees/Boston Red Sox
These two teams have perhaps the most intertwined histories of two franchises of American sports. The only other two that come to mind are the Lakers and Celtics. Regardless, it seems pointless to try and separate the Yanks and Sawks now.

Just Missed the Cut
Detroit (nee Ford Wayne) Pistons
New York Jets

Best Stevie Wonder Interpretation
Miami Floridians (ABA Team)

Let me know what you think. Can anyone tell me if the guy in the MLB logo is batting right-handed or left-handed? And the natural follow-up is a worst logo list. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know.

The Spice Girls Were Desmond's Second Choice For His Constant

2008-03-02T14:19:00.013-06:00

You remember that scene in Saving Private Ryan when Tom Hank's character gives a monologue about the importance of finding Ryan to him? That it was a way home to his wife; that amid the horror and brutality of France's northern coast, there was a very humane, heartfelt reason behind these GIs' actions. It was merely an end to a personal means. Desmond is the embodiment of that speech to LOST, serving the exact same purpose. At the tail end of LOST's most scientifically trippy and fanciful episode, Desmond's call to Penny re-grounded the show in what differentiates it from other shows in the "science fiction" genre - The X-Files, Star Trek, even Heroes - if you can even make the claim LOST belongs in the same category. LOST, at its core, is about basic human emotions with the focus on the characters and their personal struggles rather than the mysterious island playground they find themselves on. If the characters didn't elicit some emotion, we'd never watch the show. Answers about the Island come too infrequently to sustain viewers. We have to be invested in the characters and be reminded that the shows strength lies in the 815 survivors, the Others, and the Freighter Foursome, not with the Black Smoke nor the Four-Toed Statue. And Desmond, more than any other character, serves of a reminder of the character's importance to the audience and the narrative. The audience will be able to swallow wormholes and time traveling consciouses if at the end the payoff is something as primal as finding the one you love. Desmond is a noble Odysseus, firmly planting the airy-fairy back into the realm of personal relationships. Like Odysseus, Desmond is completing an arduous journey back to a Penelope who has been faithfully waiting against the wishes of those surrounding her until her man can reclaim that which he left - except our Odysseus doesn't fail from the same ethical shortcomings as Homer's. Homer's Odysseus would sleep with Kate, Claire, Juliet, the stewardess, Rose and Sun if he thought it would help him off the Island, but that is neither here nor there.

Desmond is truly the only one who has something to get back to. Kate believes she's looking at jail. Jack has nothing. Hurley still has ghosts to wrestle with. Sun and Jin face an overzealous father. Claire - single motherhood. Desmond has Penelope. And ever since the end of season two, when we were told that Penny was looking desperately for the Island, the show's arch has been instilled with a subtle sense of the epic love story. Love is the constant. And while it hasn't been reduced to the lowest common, sappy denominator, the audience needs that reminder every once in a while, especially during episodes where we are asked to make huge narrative leaps that require high scientific understanding. Desmond serves that purpose and serves it well. A few more observations about that episode...

Desmond's Time Traveling Consciousness

So this is what I gather from the time-traveling consciousness: If someone is exposed to high levels of radiation or electro-magnetism and then comes in contact with the Island without following specific directions for getting to the Island, then they will have Desmond's jumping consciousness problem. Without that combination, you are OK We know Desmond was exposed to the electro-magnetism when he turned the fail-safe key at the end of season two and that the helicopter was knocked slightly off course when they flew to the freighter. Desmond lost it at that point. That logic train says if Locke, Charlie and Eko (who were in the Hatch when it exploded) were on the helicopter, they would have experienced the same problem as it pulls into the station. My guess is that we will find out that Minkowski at some point was also exposed to radiation and that when he left the freighter and went to look for the Island, he lost it. (We also know now why he couldn't make it to the phone in previous episodes...)

If you believe that, then it explains why Farraday hasn't flipped out when he arrived even though he had radiation exposure. The helicopter followed the exact right path on their approach to the Island. And since the pilot and Sayid hadn't had the radiation exposure, they didn't loose it on the helicopter when the copter was knocked off course.

As for Desmond and his flashes about Charlie's death, this is all I have: Desmond has slight conscious distortion while on the Island that allows/forces him to see a few hours/days into the future or past because of the Island's strange surrounding environment exacerbated by the turning of the failsafe key. As he leaves the Island, the environmental distortion further disorients his sense of surroundings and enables a conscious jump that is measured in years, not days.

We are also getting into issues with the time-travelers paradox...that someone from the future goes back in time to change the course of the future yet what happens to the world the time traveler comes from and to the memory of the people he visits. This was an issue during Back to the Future. But I think Terminator better illustrates these issues. The future still exists in the Terminator series and the people still exist but the course of the future can be changed. Kyle Reese still exists in the future, but in a different capacity. The better parallel with Terminator is the relationship between fate and free will. John and Sarah Conner can keep Judgement Day/SkyNet activation from happening for a certain period of time, but ultimately they are powerless to stop Judgement Day (see T3)...they can merely delay it. They can make choices to push it into the indeterminate future, but fate at some point always takes over. Sound familiar? It should. The relationship between Desmond and Charlie with regards to the latter's death is exactly like this. Desmond could only protect Charlie for so long. Fate and free will can coexist...and they do coexist on the Island, as illustrated by by Charlie's death. His fate was sealed, but Charlie made a conscious choice to fulfill that fate by not trying to swim from the Looking Glass after the Island's Rasputin blew open the port window. My guess is that this will be a stronger theme in the coming episodes and seasons.

That's all I have on that. My only question is why exactly does Farraday need a constant? And why would he choose Desmond if Desmond in 2004 was going to be on a deserted Island and isolated on the freighter? What if Farraday ended up in Aug. 2004 and Desmond was alone on the Island? How would Farraday get a hold of his constant?

The Black Rock Auction

It was reassuring to see Marisa Nicol's grandfather back on the show, bidding on a Black Rock log from our favorite ill-fated slave ship. I think it is important to remember that the contents of the journal had not been released to the public and were known only to the Hanso family - the same family who began the DHARMA Initiative. This lends further support to the idea that Mr. Widmore (and Penny's dad) is very interested in and aware of the Island, has bought the first mate's journal in an attempt to locate the Island and exploit it for some purpose. We can pretty safely conclude that there are four groups of people with a vested interest in the Island: 1) the Hanso family, who for some reason has given up on the Island and the DHARMA Initiative; 2) the Others, also known as the Island's original inhabitants and who are being lead by an overzealous and protecting Ben; and 3) The Widmore Corportation, headed by Penny's dad, with Mr. Widmore behind (and perhaps even on) the freighter...I'd guess we'll see him before the end of the season again in some capacity and 4) Penny who is using her resources to look for the Island, apart from her father's efforts and maybe without his knowledge. Mr. W uses the journal to locate the approximate position of the Black Rock when the last entry was made and search for the Island from there.

After the Oceanic 6 make it off the Island, Groups 2 and 3 battle it out for control of the Island, with Ben using Sayid to eliminate people in group 3 to protect the Island. Those are your main players...

Two other quick things. I don't think we have seen the end of Desmond and Penny in flashbacks. We still don't know why Desmond ended up in military prison and Desmond wrote frequently to Penny during his time in the clink (although all his letters were intercepted by Mr. W). The way it was left at the end of "The Constant" made it seem like Desmond had no interest in calling Penny until Christmas Eve 2004.

And speaking of Christmas Eve...why does Jack think it is right around Christmas (in "The Economist" when he is speaking with the pilot) and it is in fact Christmas Eve on the freighter? Shouldn't there be some time delay? If there is a 30 minute time difference on the beacon that is sent from the freighter to the Island, shouldn't the cumulative time difference over the course of 3 months be substantial? Doc Jensen says that maybe the time difference isn't a constant, that it flickers, much like Jacob's one cabin shanty town. I don't totally buy it and think this should (and will be) more fully explained later. That's all I've got for this week. Let me know what you think.

Is Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Issue Racist?

2008-02-26T16:22:00.024-06:00

Note that this is a rewritten/reorganized high-level recap of a longer paper. Since bibliographies aren’t ripe for blogs, I have stripped the citations from a number of facts. If you want a full copy of the paper, complete with bibliography and footnotes, email me. Also, this is not accusing the editors or photographers of Sports Illustrated of being consciously racist. The Swimsuit Issue is simply a well-known lens through which to llustrate how cultural images effect our perception of the surrounding world. To be fair, many of these examples come from SI's between 1996 and 2004. Since then, the issue has been better - consciously or not - about how they photograph women of color.

Sure, Sports Illustrated's annual swimsuit issue - which hit news stands earlier this month - stands as a cultural marker. It is perhaps the most (in)famous annual issue of any magazine and its arrival in the middle of brutal Midwest winters hints at the hopeful thaw that awaits in the coming months. Over its 40+ years of publication, the issue has managed to drum up its fair share of controversy.

That’s really no longer the case. Surrounding swimsuit issue controversy has been blunted in recent years because it’s now relatively tame in comparison to its contemporary surroundings. R-rated movies are more explicit than ever. The Internet age has brought many freedoms, including finding scantily clad women – and women who lack even a little clad – in mere seconds. (A great philosopher and noted Internet user, Trekkie Monster, is fond of asserting that, “The Internet is for porn.”) Unable to show women entirely naked (or without body paint on), SI is resigned to photograph merely near their swimsuits, rather than wearing them. Or as one model shows this year, only behind a well-placed oceanic shell. Culture at large will not be subjected to such restraints! But alas, Sports Illustrated must. However, there are a number of important other issues the publication brings up, at least on the periphery.

The most obvious component of this is the portrayal of women solely as sexual objects, encouraging individual and group practices that maintain gender inequality. I think we can all agree that the issue objectifies women. That’s not the point I’m trying to make.

Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue also helps determine and reinforce the accepted standard of beauty in America – blonde and straight hair, blued eyed, and small-nosed – descriptions that entirely exclude minorities. The larger issue with this is that most Americans have become so immersed in certain cultural standards that they are interpreted as natural, normal and bias-free. This establishes a pretty rigid hierarchy for beauty in America for women, where in-group prejudice fosters a sense of superiority to other women simply because of their racial characteristics.

This ethno-centric view of beauty captured by the Sports Illustrated cameras has a lengthy history and strong precedent. Only one model with visible African ancestry appeared between the inaugural issue and 1982. Only eleven of the ninety models – or 12% – featured on Sports Illustrated's archived section of their website in 2007 are African-American. The archive only dates back sixteen years or the percentage would certainly be substantially lower. While the number of African-American women featured slowly increased, the models typically exhibited Anglo-friendly features of light-skin and straight-hair. An African-American failed to appear on the issue's cover until 1996 when the magazine featured Tyra Banks posing next to a blonde-haired fair-skinned model. While Banks' appearance on the cover of the issue signifies progress, it still leaves room for improvement regarding the under representation of minorities in the media, even within the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. The success of one should not be used to obscure the injustices of many. To the publishers of the swimsuit issue, minorities seems to mean solely African American women; a single woman of color representing the entire spectrum of beauty, ignoring Latin-Americans, Asian-Americans, Native Americans and so forth. This is pretty clearly token-ship. For example, Banks was the only African-American model in the ‘96 issue.

Future issues also marginalized women of color, choosing instead to features models with an "ethnic" or "exotic" look who commonly possess slightly darker skin. Even so, the accepted American standard of beauty continues to dominate popular images. Consider the cover of the 2006 swimsuit issue – which declared the subjects to be the "All-Star Cover Models"– featuring eight women, with six of them reflecting America's beauty standard with white skin and blonde, straight hair. “2 OF 8 IS 25%. LOOK! DIVERSITY!” Hardly. The remaining two were brunettes, not blondes.

While this does not suggest that Sports Illustrated and its publishers are inherently racist, it does implicate the magazine in reinforcing the media's color-coded standards and norms. Once these standards of beauty find themselves accepted into the cultural conscious, they are tough to get rid of.

While the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue under represents minorities, the images of those minorities that are included still catalyze additional racial stereotypes. While scientists have since dismissed claims of inherent physical and mental differences, the prevailing image of blacks as more natural or physically gifted continue in contemporary America, perhaps influenced most greatly by success in the arena of sports.

Sports Illustrated perpetuates an image of African-Americans as more primitive and primal. Since the turn of the century, African American models are far more likely to pose with exotic animals or in unconventional settings than their Caucasian counterparts. In 2006, the only model to pose with an animal is thedarker-skinned, curly haired Noemie Lenoir, who is photographed with a leopard. The same holds true for the 2005 issue, where Oluchi Onweagba is photographed leaning on the front left leg of an elephant. In 2003, Jessica White made her swimsuit issue debut with a shoot in Kenya, where photographers captured her standing along side a river holding an elongated spear, which could be interpreted as either some type of primitive hunter or a fisher. Other photographs showed her in the midst of an African safari, even posing in a jewel-encrusted suit next to a safari hat and a book on African game, as if she was the most elusive and wildest target. A final five photo set shows her body caked in mud, as if she just emerged from the dirty waters of the small Kenyan pond behind her. Noemie Lenoir returned in this issue as well, photographed carrying a wicker basket of freshly picked fruit, implying a simple, primitive existence (Sports Illustrated 2003, p. 178). She is also shown in the 2004 issue straddling a Mississippi license plate (Sports Illustrated 2004, p. 136). The 2001 issue featured an extensive pictorial with Shakara Ledard, who posed in a series of shots inside of and around grass and clay huts, while her lighter-skinned counterparts rarely stepped off of the beach. This continued the following year when Ledard appeared playing a tambourine in the middle of a group of natives dancing, while her fellow models along for the shoot posed alone. I should point out each of these were photographs that actually published in the magazine. Countless others showing the models in more conventional (and I use that adjective loosely) poses, including a most in the on-line archive, were not selected to be published.

African-American models rarely appear in locations traditionally thought to be dominated by whites. For example, no models of color appeared in the 2001 pictorial titled "Arctic Explorers". Even on Tyra Banks' noteworthy first cover in 1996, she wore a leopard print swimsuit and needed to share the cover with a model of “standard beauty”. Sports Illustrated reinforces these collective stereotypes by positioning their models in situations that reaffirm the accepted position and interpretation of races in society at-large. The stereotype of blacks as more primal, basic, and unsophisticated finds continual traction through mediums like the swimsuit issue, which positions models within contexts that imply their accepted position and image within the social hierarchy while pandering to society's prejudices.

You think this type of representation doesn’t matter or that you have control over your subconscious reactions? Try an implicit association test for race and see what happens. You can take one here.

As for the editors and photographers of the swimsuit issue, are they racist? No, at least not overtly. But they are weaned on the same culture as we are and not immune to standardized beauty and socio-economic and historical concepts that we often bath ourselves in. Isolated examples like the swimsuit issue may not seem to have great importance, much the same way a single tile of a mosaic appears insignificant apart from its whole. However, both these stand as integral parts of a larger whole that gain greater significance when placed within their proper context. As for the case of the swimsuit issue, it helps construct and perpetuate exclusionary cultural standards.

Do Aaron and Ben count as part of the Oceanic 6?

2008-02-24T14:42:00.009-06:00

Piecing together the ever-expanding mythology of LOST is like attempting a crossword puzzle with only the down clues, a sometimes frustrating and often futile exercise. The paradox of LOST is that no one question can (or is) ever answered without two new ones popping up. So last week's episode was refreshing in its answering of some large Kate questions while setting the table for the rest of the season.

We found out both why Kate isn't in jail when she met with Jack at the airport fence at the end of season 3. And we also - presumably - found on who "he" is that would be wondering where Kate was when she excused herself from grizzly-beard Jack. And it wasn't Sawyer or Ben or her ex-husband from Tampa, but a BEH-BEE! More specifically, Aaron. As Hurley said after Rose and Bernard were reunited, "Didn't see that coming."

And for the second straight week before the gravel-pounding sound that marks the end of every Island adventure, we were left to wonder/speculate who exactly are the last two members of the Oceanic 6. Does Ben - under an adopted name from the 815 manifest - count? And more importantly, does Aaron? Let's take a look at these cases separately.

Aaron
My initial reaction is that Aaron wouldn't be considered a member of the Oceanic 6. But the more I think about it, the more likely I think he is. First, he makes it off the island despite not being born before the crash. I doubt its the Oceanic 6 plus one baby. That designation doesn't seem right. Plus a number of people, namely in red states, would say that Aaron - though unborn - was actually a survivor of the crash despite the fact he was not formally listed on the manifest.

What further convinces me is that some 815 survivors who want to get off the island can't get off. From a narrative perspective, if all the people who want to get off the island do, why should we care that Jack gets back to the Island? Why go back if there isn't anyone there that we want to see saved? And honestly, the number of people left on the Island who are 815 survivors that want to leave is pretty low. We already know that Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sayid want to leave. If Sun and Jin get off, would we really care that Locke and Sawyer (two who want to stay) or Claire, Rose and Bernard (who are now just periphery characters) got off? The writers know we have to emotionally invest in the characters to make the story compelling. We couldn't believe Jack's grief if the remaining stranded survivors were people who WANTED to be there. The way Sun and Jin have been written in the first few episodes has been meant to engender sympathy if they don't get off the Island (picking out a place to live in the US, excitement about having her baby in a hospital, etc.) So if Aaron counts as one of the Oceanic 6, that's one less core character the show has to remove from the Island. I'll apply this same logic for the last member of the Oceanic half-dozen and say that Michael is number six (again, I have no idea where Walt is) and speculate that neither Desmond nor Juliet makes it off. I suppose it's possible that Sun and Jin make it off, but I think that would be damaging to the narrative.

The case against? During Jack's testimony, he said that only eight people survived the crash and that Kate was a hero, helping people to shore and trying to save the other two. That wording would lead me to believe that six passengers survived the crash and made it to the shore, not five manifested passengers and one unborn baby. Beyond that, I don't have much. I'd put the Aaron odds at 3:2.

The other interesting thing about Aaron is that Jack is clearly hesitant to see him. We still don't know the circumstances that lead Aaron into Kate's protection, but I think it's pretty clear that he wasn't taken forcefully. Does Jack know that Claire is his half-sister now? Or that Aaron is his half-nephew? Does Jack make a decision that separates Claire and Aaron before he knows of their relation and upon its revelation, Jack is devastated by his choices more so than he previously has been? Last summer at Comic-Con, the shows producers were asked if Jack and Claire ever found out they were related. They began to answer the question and then abruptly stopped. I think it's pretty clear now why they wanted to avoid the question.

Ben
In an interview this week with Doc Jensen, the shows producers tried to make a case that Ben is one of the Oceanic Six, saying that nothing precludes him from being one of the Oceanic Six even though he wasn't on the plane. We know he is at least somewhat powerful (with a net worth of 3.2 million dollars?) and that he has a number of aliases. Who's to say that he couldn't just assume the identity of someone with no friends or family on the plane who would never know any difference? While technically this is possible, I don't think its likely at all. We know the O6 are celebrities and Ben - with all his unfinished business - doesn't probably want any time of attention or scrutiny that comes with the O6 status. My guess is that it's just a red-herring.

An interesting side note to that interview, the producers said by the end of the seventh episode (airing March 13), the O6 will be definitively known. Just something to keep in mind...

While "Eggtown" satisfied a few burning Kate questions, I feel as if it was more of a place-setter for the next few weeks. Coming off of "The Economist", LOST didn't have much room for improvement.

It's Not Wilson in the Casket

2008-02-20T22:07:00.016-06:00

I think it is at least somewhat likely that the last two yet-to-be-revealed members of the Oceanic 6 are Tom Hanks and Wilson (thank you, Kenny Havok), so if you are looking for really intelligent LOST analysis, this is not the place to be seeking it. I suggest making a trip over to Doc Jensen at Entertainment Weekly. I agree with most of what he argues, although he's way more excited about the possibility of 815/Other clones existing on the mainland than I am.

What I can promise is a regular dose of irresponsible speculation and rumor mongering. Let's start with my new favorite question: Who's in the casket at the end of season 3?

I always thought it was Michael in the casket but after the season premier when they introduced the Oceanic 6 idea, it wouldn't have made any sense for Michael to make it back to the mainland. How would he have explained how he got back? What would he have said happened to the plane and the other survivors? It doesn't seem like it would fit to have Michael make it back, so now I'm thinking he never returned to the mainland. Furthermore, I think it's very likely Michael is Ben's spy on the freighter. Don't ask me where "bigger, taller" Walt is. I don't even have a scientific wild ass guess for that. All I know is that he is probably bugging the hell out of the freighter crew yelling "WAAALLLTT!" as they travel across the Pacific.

I now think it's very likely that Ben is in the casket. We now know that Ben is still pulling the strings and controlling at least Sayid, having him killing Ben's foes. Ben's presumably doing this order to protect the island, likely from Matthew Abaddon (and Penny's father), who sent the Freighter Foursome to the Island to get Ben. As the exchanged at the end of 4x4 indicates, Sayid is killing in order to "protect his friends." This is important, and we can safely make the logical jump that Ben allowed six of the survivors off the Island to finish his dirty work. Once that work is done, Ben has presumably promised that he will let the balance of the survivors off. This explains why Jack - whose character would never willingly leave the Island and survivors behind knowing he couldn't return and have to lie about the course of events - is keeping his mouth shut and trying to keep Hurley quiet as well. He knows that once Ben has secured the Island's safety, Jack will be able to see the remaining 815 survivors released. That's enough to keep him quiet...at least for now.

Before the dirty work is done though, Ben dies/is killed and Jack - paralyzed by grief of leaving behind 40+ survivors - and knowing no other way to get back to the Island, absolutely loses it (see end of season 3). No one would come to Ben's funeral. Anyone he has ever known is either on the Island, dead on the Island, or unwilling to associate themselves with him. And a final nail into the Michael-idea coffin...why would the funeral home director ask if Jack was "family or friend" if Michael was in the casket? My excellent observational skills tell me that Michael's black...Jack's white. Another interesting piece overlooked in the scene; there is a notebook/journal next to the casket, a common accessory of Ben's.

Just a few loose ends regarding this. Why did Kate tell Jack, "This isn't going to change" at the end of season 3 when they met at the airport? If it was just a matter of eliminating threats to the Island, Jack's anguish could be assuaged. Who is Kate with when she says "he" will be wondering where she is?

And a few other questions: Who planted the fake 815 crash out in the Sunda Trench? If the Freighter Foursome wasn't expecting to find 815 survivors, why did the pilot (Frank Lapidus) memorize the names on the manifest? And why are the FFs afraid of Minkowski and why couldn't he come to the phone to talk with Miles in 4x2?

Reagan more like Monroe than Lohan is?

2008-02-19T16:46:00.005-06:00

If you're a male, it's likely that reaction to the newly released Lindsay Lohan photos in New York magazine went probably something like this. "I hate it when young, struggling actresses try to channel their inner/non-existent Monroe for attention, especially wh...oh, BOOBIES!" Effective strategy, but Lindsay and her mean girls aren't too original. Monroe has become the compass for the caravan of wayward, top-heavy, marginally talented starlets of Gen X & Y. Britney Spears was on the cover of Esquire in a Monroe inspired pose over three years ago when her career had already hit its apex. Countless others have been shot in Seven Year Itch, over-the-subway-gate style in the pages of Rolling Stone, W, and others. Even Madonna - without question the most talented and deserving contemporary of Monroe - has borrowed liberally from Norma Jean.

But none of this is new. Monroe was revolutionary. And talented. This continual re-hashing of her iconic status exploited by unworthy teeny-boppers is frustrating. The essence of the photos don't rely on Lohan's talents or her public persona (I have a feeling the thongless-in-the -bathroom-of-Butter idea was shot down early at the New York offices), but in the sorry exercise of parading the Monroe ideal around in a tired manner. If Lohan had any laurels or talent to fall back on, she wouldn't need to do this. You don't see Reese Witherspoon - or even Charlize Theron - doing this. Demi Moore figured out a way to avoid the MM trap too. Those three said, "Screw it, I'm doing my own thing, my own way."

Who other than desperate, fledgling actresses would continue to call upon the past to improve the trajectory of their sputtering star? Desperate, fledgling Republicans of course. While a McCain nomination looks all-but-certain now, a few weeks ago, McCain, Romney, Huckabee, Thompson, and Giuliani all tried their best to out-Ronald Reagan each other for the nod. Who could be unify the party like Reagan? Who could stand up to terrorism and the economy like Reagan? Who could teach my grandfather to swim most like Reagan (true story)? Who would have the guts to ask "Are you better now than you were four years ago" at a debate? (Unfortunately no one who wanted to actually WIN, but that would have been classic. Maybe Hillary or Obama can use that one.) It was a tiresome and stale exercise, indicating that the Republicans were stuck in 1980 while their Democratic counterparts were (for better or worse) firmly fixed on the 21st century and honest "change". Nancy Reagan was clearly exhausted after the GOP'ers continually asked her to go to dig up her husband's corpse so that they could ask him who was the legitimate heir to his kingdom. It was embarrassing and painful.

As of now, we know that Lohan cannot offer anything new and McCain, while he promises some change, already has found much of his maverick cache gone. Let just hope he doesn't decide to do a photo spread inspired by Some Like It Hot in a last ditch effort for attention and support.