Get Ready

I'm making it my goal in June to post something every day, no matter how mundane. I've been seriously slacking on this blog and I need to get on a roll again.

Maybe I'll write the post of a lifetime. Or maybe I'll bore you to tears. You'll just have to wait and see.

In honor of this, here is a video by Regina Spektor. Enjoy.

Happy Memorial Day

It seems weird to say "Happy" Memorial Day, doesn't it? It's not really supposed to be a happy day. I mean this:

is what we're supposed to be remembering.

But really, what it is, is this:

So pull out the grill and start remembering and have a "happy" day.

Soundset

I spent my afternoon at Soundset, the local hip hop festival. Yes, Minnesota has a hip hop festival. We actually have an amazing hip hop scene here led by the folks at Rhymesayers, containing such acts as Atmosphere and P.O.S..

The weather was cold and rainy. It kind of put a damper on things. I also ate some, what I thought, was undercooked pizza that left my stomach rumbling. We ended up leaving early.

But, we did get to see P.O.S.. He is really amazing. Smart lyrics, live band...he's almost punk rock in his sound. I highly recommend you pick up his album Never Better. It is so good. At the very least check out his song "Purexed". It gives me the chills every time, its so good.

I will say I was disappointed by the amount of litter everywhere. They could have done a better job with containing the garbage. Maybe hire a green team next time?

I don't know if I'd go again next year. I can take Hip Hop in doses, but the constant bass got to me after a while. It's not really my scene. Except for P.O.S.. He makes me happy.

There Is A Crack In Everything

A beautiful Memorial Weekend is upon us. I had to take the day off work today to get a new central air unit installed. Our old one finally quit us. The first guy to start the installation, showed up at 8am. He left about 20 minutes later and said someone else will be here "around noon" to finish the job. WTF? The next guy showed up at 1:30. He's still here. He's making a lot of noise. I've had to sit here all day waiting and waiting and waiting for these people. I've got nothing done. What a wasted day.

In the midst of all this, I discovered this on my kitchen floor:

This is the same kitchen floor that I just had installed less than a year ago. This did not help make my day any better.

Luckily, I had 20 minutes to run to Menards to see if they still have this tile, and they did. So I've got replacement tile. Now I just need someone to fix it.

Every so often, I seem to go through a real unluckly patch of time. I really hope things aren't headed that way again.

AI Season 9

Another season of American Idol is over. It was brutal. BRUTAL. There was only one good contestant the entire season, and she came in second.



The American Idol confetti shower was given to Lee DeWyze this year.



He seems nice enough. But it's not a competition about who's the nicest. If this were any other season, and I'm including the beginning of this downward spiral that started last season, he would have been maybe an 8th place finisher. Because, let's face it, the guy can't sing. He barely sang on key the entire season. He can growl and yell through a song - and sometimes that works. But he can't actually sing.

I'm not someone who listens to music for pretty vocals. I will take emotion and grit over an angelic falsetto any day. But, American Idol is a singing competition. And Lee can't sing.

In all honesty, though, it seems fitting that the wrong contestant won. It was an abysmal season. Each contestant was a dud. No one showed any star power, much less captivating vocal talent. The only who came close was Ms. Crystal Bowersox. But, I'm not going to pick up the Melissa Ethridige 2.0 album we are due to get.

Couple all of those vocal atrocities with the obvious amount of disinterest held by top judge Simon Cowell and how could anyone watch this shit anymore? Oh, yeah. I did. But I have no will power. I get sucked into things easily. But once they got down to the final three, I stopped. I checked out the finale last night on and off, but I hadn't watched an episode in about 3 weeks.

And what a finale. Lee's win makes it obvious that tween girls are the main watchers and voters of this program. So why fill the night with aging adult contemporary artists like the Bee Gees, and Hall and Oates, and Joe Cocker, and Chicago. Chicago! What is wrong with this show?



Thankfully, this season was so utterly dull that I know I will never watch it again. In fact, with Lost over, I am going to try to cut out as much TV as I can. The only shows that I watch now are Project Runway, How I Met Your Mother, Community, and Modern Family. That's manageable.

And In The End...

It's been a while since my last post. A lot has happened. So much that I wish I would have written about, but I just couldn't find the time. But I couldn't pass on this one.

Lost ended last night. And though my recaps have become a bit sloppy or absent all together, I still love this show. It's just that,as the end approached, it just all got so...thick. It was/is almost impossible to try to piece it all together or break it all down. So, I'm not going to try. Last night was two and a half hours of incredible television and all I can do is just give my opinion on it like the rest of the internet is doing right now.

First off, this is an ending you will either love or hate and it will depend on why you watched the show. There really weren't any answers given, at least not to the long standing "must answer" questions. Because, really, do they really matter? As this show wound down, I found myself consistently disappointed with the answers that were given and they way they were given. Everything was so blunt, and this show has never been blunt. Did you really want some person/being to sit down the cast and tell them: Walt is special because of the following traits....The Island needed him because....Now let's move on to Chapter 2 where we discuss why The Island could disappear....

No. No one really wants that. And not truly resolving those things does not mean that none of it mattered. Walt mattered, at a time. And then he didn't. The Island was done with him. And he got to go home.

And can't we all just rest on the idea that The Island is just a crazy place? One of those weird spots on Earth where crazy things happen? Do we really need a scientific explanation for all of it?

As I watched last night, and the realization kicked in that this was not going to be about answers, I realized I didn't care. Because what it was all about, was the characters. It's always been about that. All those episodes of complaining about how I don't give a shit about who Kate is going to pick, well it turns out I did. Because, very surprising to me, when she and Jack said goodbye on that cliff, I cried. I didn't cry for Jin and Sun. But I did cry for Jack and Kate. What the hell.

Now, I'm not saying the ending was perfect. It was a little too "Christian Shepherd" for me. It still got me at the moment, but looking back now, I am a little skived by the whole thing.

I do find it somewhat funny that the writers who have denied that The Island is purgatory for 6 seasons, still found a way to get around that denial. Sure, The Island wasn't purgatory, but the Sideways World kind of was. The Losties still had to find some sort of redemption before they could all go to heaven. It's odd that it was a world they all created for themselves to meet up in once they all died. Was that really their ideal world? Or am I missing something? Ideally, did Jack really want to be with Juliette, but only for long enough to have a kid with her and then get divorced? Did Kate really still want to be on the run? Charlie still wanted to be a junkie? Sayid wanted Nadiya to be with his brother? Actually, that one kind of made sense. As it turned out, Sayid's true love was not Nadiya, but Shannon. Who would have thought?

It's interesting to see what triggered everyone's memories. Most people had to couple up. Except for John, who got his legs back, and Jack, who found his father. Oh, and Ben, who had to get the crap beaten out of him. Poor Ben.

It was certainly an ending filled with tears. I cried often. I cried when Claire and Charlie were reunited. I cried when Sawyer and Juliette found each other. I cried when Locke got up and walked. I cried when Jack hugged his dad. I cried when Kate and Jack said their goodbyes. I cried when Hurley saw Charlie again. I cried when Hurley realized Jack was going to die going down into The Light. And, I cried, oh boy did I cry, when Vincent curled up next to a dying Jack in the end. A cheap ploy for tears? Sure. But it works. It works every time.

So what does it all mean?

Who knows? I've been reading about people complaining that Dharma really never meant anything, that The Temple was pointless, that Smokey and Jacob were a waste of time, that it was all really pointless. But you can't just have a show about a plane crash on a crazy Island and then one episode in have Jacob come out of the woods and tell everyone what's going on. There has to be a story. And there was. And Dharma and The Temple and Widmore and Richard and Jacob and NotFBIChick and all of them all helped to tell that story.

You could venture to guess that when Richard finally died, he went off to his own ideal world. He wasn't at the church with the rest of them. Maybe Ben is not meant to go off with our Losties. He was with Dharma and Richard and Rosseau and Alex. That is who he is connected to and why he didn't join the Losties in their departure. Just because we focused on our initial survivors doesn't mean that everyone else we've met through the years didn't serve their own purpose or have their own story to tell.

And, speaking of Richard, what do you think he did when they finally reached normal land? Here is a guy from a long long time ago met with a new world he's only had little tastes of. It must have been pretty insane.

I've also been thinking about how long they all had to wait to meet again. Note Kate's mention to Jack that she has missed him for so long. Note Hurley and Ben's mention of the teamwork they had during their run protecting The Island. What crazy adventures did Hurley and Ben have? Did they have their own Oceanic 6? I like to think Hurley would have been very up front with new visitors to The Island.

So how long was it? Assuming most of them lived a normal life, maybe 50 years. But then, what if Hurley and Ben protected The Island for thousands of years? Kind of crazy to think about.

All of their deaths happened. Everything we saw on The Island was real. When Jughead went off, it didn't make an alternate timeline. It simply propelled everyone to present day, but they were always still stuck on The Island. Everything went on as we saw. Kate, Sawyer, Claire, Miles, Richard, and The Pilot all flew off The Island and lived their lives. We don't know what they did or how they spent it, but they all got away.

Hurley and Ben spent an unknown amount of time protecting The Island.

Jack died as we saw him die. Lying where he originally landed with a very precious Vincent curled up next to him (that still chokes me up).

We can assume Rose, Bernard, and Vincent lived out their days on The Island.

It seems that Daniel and Charlotte were not meant to head for the afterlife at this time. Desmond even told Eloise that Daniel was not coming with him. I believe that that "purgatory" world kept on with these outlying characters until they were ready to go. Daniel continued his music career. Ben and Rosseau and Alex built a life together.

Everyone and Everything had a purpose. None of it was in vain. The Island is still a very important and powerful place and is still being protected and most likely new visitors are coming and going and the cycle continues.

There are a lot of things that we will focus on as we rewatch the series as a whole. There will be a lot of things that maybe won't make sense at all. A lot of pieces that won't fit. But one that that has stayed consistent, is the characters. And, in the end, that's what this show was about.

Lost, The Final Season, Episode 14, "Across The Sea"

Let's just get this out of the way: I did not enjoy last night's episode. After the insanity that was "The Candidate", this just seemed like a poor follow up. It's not that I was expecting explosions and non-stop action, I knew what the episode was about going in, I just felt it was executed poorly. To begin with: Allison Janney? Really? I love Allison Janney on the West Wing. I loved her in Drop Dead Gorgeous. I think she's a great actress. But not for this role. She completely took me out of it.

Allison played the fake mother to our Jacob and Smokey. She had been living alone on The Island for, what I assume are many many years when a pregnant woman washed ashore. Allison brought her back to her camp and helped her birth her two children. The first born, Jacob, was named by his birth mother. Smokey was a surprise and the mother was not prepared to name a second child, so she didn't. Allison saw the opportunity to have these heirs to her title of Island Protector and promptly smashed their birth mother in the head with a rock.

She raised the two boys to believe there is nothing beyond The Island and to fear any other people that might show up. She tells Smokey he is very special, but doesn't say why. While chasing a boar through the jungle one day, the boys stumbled upon other people. A group of men, They hid and watched as the men killed the boar. They ran back to tell Allison. She decided it was time to tell them the "truth". She brought them, blindfolded, to a mysterious cavern on The Island. On the way, she tells them that they are meant to be there and that the people will hurt them. She tells them she has made it so Jacob and Smokey can never hurt each other. They get to the cavern, It is surrounded by a pool of water. Inside it glowed bright yellow. She called it The Light. And there was a piece of the Light in every man. But most men are evil and want more Light than they can have. So she has to protect it. And now, so do the boys. The men on The Island will try to get to The Light and take it and if they do, very bad things will happen.

At one point, young Smokey (he hasn't actually become Smokey yet, but since he doesn't have a name, I have nothing to call him but Smokey) stumbles upon a game on the beach. It is a box with squares on it. Inside are black and white rocks. He shows it to Jacob and they begin to play. Jacob says Smokey is making up the rules. He says he just knows what they are because he is special. While playing, Smokey sees a woman. He gets up to follow her. She leads him to the other side of The Island where the men who killed the boar live. She tells him that she is his mother and that Allison killed her after she gave birth. She tells him that the people at the camp are his people and he belongs with them. He asks her why Jacob can't see her and she says it's because she is dead. Smokey takes that explanation as is and decides to leave Jacob and Allison and join his people. He tries to get Jacob to come along with him, but Jacob doesn't want to go. He doesn't want to hear bad things about Allison and starts to beat up Smokey. Allison breaks them up and begs Smokey not to leave, but he still does.

Flash forward 30 years later. Smokey is still living amongst his people on The Island trying to find a way off of it. Jacob is still living with his fake mother. They meet regularly to play their game of Backgammon. Smokey tells Jacob he's found a way to leave. Jacob, who is now the whiniest 30 something I've ever seen, still believes there is nothing beyond The Island and that he has to protect the glowing cave of Light. He runs home to tell Allison the Smokey is getting off The Island. He cries to her about she always loved Smokey more. She says that's not true, then runs off to find Smokey. She finds him in a well. The same well the holds - what will become - the Frozen Donkey Wheel. The FDW is not yet complete or frozen. But Smokey has somehow figured out, with the help of his people, that if he creates some sort of friction with The Light, it will transport him out of there. He said he has been searching for The Light and has ran all over The Island but could not find it. That is when he decided to go underneath The Island and that is when he found it and now he is going to leave. She goes to give him one last hug goodbye and then smashes his head against the wall. He passes out.

She runs to Jacob and tells him it's time. She brings him back to The Light and tells him it's now his turn to be The Island Protector. He tells her he doesn't want to, but she says he has no choice. She pulls out a bottle of "wine" and pours a glass. This is the same bottle Jacob has Richard drink from much later. She tells Jacob to drink from the glass. She tells him to never enter The Light. He asks if he will die if he does? She said no, but he will become something much worse than dead. He drinks from the glass. She says they are now one.

Jacob runs off to get firewood for the night and Allison heads back to camp. Smokey sneaks up on her and stabs her from behind. She says she's sorry and then she thanks him for killing her.

Jacob returns and freaks out. He attacks Smokey and drags him back to The Light. They fight and Jacob tosses him in the water. Smokey floats down stream and right into The Light. Then it gets quiet. Then it gets loud and out of The Light shoots the actual Smoke Monster - clicks, clacks, flashing lights and all. It shoots past Jacob and into the sky. Jacob pees his pants. Well, not really. But I bet he did. He's just so whiney.

On his way back to camp, he sees brother Smokey' s body in the trees, dead. He feels terrible and carries him back to camp. He places Smokey's body in the cave along with Allison's. He puts the black and white rocks from the game into a bag and places it into her hand. And now we know the origin of our Adam and Eve. And, just in case we completely forgot about this particular mystery, The Powers That Be decided to shove it in our face by cutting this scene with the scene from the first season where Jack and the gang discover the bodies. What they didn't show is Jack estimating the bodies to be at least 50 years old. A bit off there. Which brings me to the end of the episode and another question/issue I have with this particular episode: When the hell was it? There was zero reference to time in this episode and it really through me off, along with many other aspects. Let's take a look at those.

1. A clue as to the time period this episode landed in would have been helpful.

One thing of note is that there wasn't a single shot of the statue. Or any Egyptian like items anywhere. Yet, in modern times, we have this humongous statue with hieroglyphics lining the inside. We have the Temple with hieroglyphics inside. When did they get here? I have a theory about that, and I'll get to it soon.

2. Suddenly everyone speaks English.

I was completely taken out of this episode right from the start when out of nowhere Allison and Birth Mother switched to English. It made no sense. I tried to throw up some theory about how the mix Allison was making in the bowl and fed to Birth Mother is the same mix Locke gave to Boone and it made him hallucinate back in season 1 and that maybe it also made it so Birth Mother could speak English, but that was just me grasping at straws to try to make some sense of it. This show spent a whole episode just a few episodes ago entirely in Spanish. Subtitles are obviously not an issue. Why the change of heart?

3. Lowest Common Denominator

From the switching to English to that final cut scene, it really felt that the writers decided they had to cater to the lowest common denominator who watches the show. Why they felt, just three episodes from the end, that now is the time to do that, I'll never know. Everything was spoken so slowly and plainly (and in English). Shoving the "This is Adam and Eve!!!!OMG!!!!11111" scene in at the end just made me feel stupid. We all knew that. We figured that out. Hell, you just had a scene not a couple of episodes ago where Hurley was talking about them, so they were fresh in our minds. Why did they feel the need to shove it down our throats? It was like they were trying to prove a point about how they had it planned all along, even though there are inconsistencies with that story and they could have made Adam and Eve anyone and fit it into the story line at any point.

4. Smokey Is Evil. Don't Forget.

Last episode they made it very VERY clear that Smokey is an asshole. So, why this sudden turn around where they make you feel sorry for him? I suppose we are to say that Smokey is not Jacob's brother, he just lived in his form until recently when he took Locke's body. Sure, okay. I buy it. BUT, Jacob seems to communicate with him/it as his brother. And if Smokey is not actually his brother, but just looks like him, why couldn't Smokey just kill Jacob? Allison only made it so Jacob and his brother couldn't kill each other. So you'd think Smokey could do what it wanted.

AND, on a similar subject, we have always been told Dead is Dead. And just a few episodes ago, UnLocke/Smokey told Jack that he is the one who has appeared as all the walking/talking dead people on the show. Yet, this episode made it seem that Smokey had been trapped in that cave until Jacob went and screwed it up. So, how was it that Birth Mother appeared to Jacob's brother? That just doesn't make sense. Unless it's just that Jacob's brother is special like how Hurley is special. That I can also buy.

5. Jacob

Apparently Jacob is some stunted man child. Some 40 year old dork who would be equal to some freak who has lived in his mother's basement all his life. What an idiot. They basically made him just slightly above retarded. He was Forrest Gump. He is a disappointment.

Question and Theory Time!

With only 3 hours left of Lost, one would believe that theories one might have would be correct. The show has given us so much already that we should be piecing it all together and these final hours will just exist to wrap it all up. But, somehow, I know this is not so. But let's try it anyway.

1. Babies

Is it possible that, due to the tragedy that befell their birth mother, that Jacob and Smokey have somehow made it impossible for women to give birth on The Island. Maybe they are concerned for the innocence of life - after what happened to them - and would not want to be tempted into taking those babies and making them their new heirs to The Island Protector throne. Maybe that's why Jacob keeps bringing other people to The Island to test them. But, I guess that wouldn't explain why he enters the lives of Kate and Sawyer when they are children.

2. Smokey's origins

It would seem that Smokey was unleashed when Jacob threw his brother into the cave. Allison seemed to know that something like this would happen. Why and How? Could it be that by throwing his brother into The Light while he was filled with anger it made Smokey evil? Is Smokey all the evilness of a soul? Obviously the Dark to The Light. The judgement center. The Light is maybe the belief in everyone's goodness, while Smokey is a judger who believes everyone has evil inside them that is stronger than The Light. And when Jacob and his NotBrother are sitting on the beach discussing their plans, that Jacob brings people to The Island to prove they are good and Smokey just proves that Jacob is wrong. Maybe Jacob needs to find a truly good soul because that will be what it takes to get rid of Smokey. And maybe that good soul is Desmond? Maybe Desmond can send Smokey back to The Light and then Jacob can finally hand the reigns of Protector over to Jack?

Also, who killed all those men from the Birth Mother's ship. It certainly looked like the job of Smokey. But if Smokey was locked away, then who did it? Was it really Allison? Is she that superhuman?

3. The Candidates

When Birth Mother first bore Jacob, Allison didn't seem too interested. But when the second one came, that was when something seemed to click. Could it be that not just one Candidate is needed, but two? One to take over the Protector role, and one to kill the former Protector? I don't know what the point of that would be, but it seems this show is all about pairs. Maybe Jacob wanted Walt and Aaron. Maybe that's why they don't mean anything anymore because they are no longer together. Maybe that's why there was Ben AND Richard. Jack AND Locke.

4. Time Travel/Egyptian References

So, as I said, my big beef with the episode was not having an established time frame to view it in. The only clue I could think of was the well. So let's start there.

-When Locke descended into the well to turn the Frozen Donkey Wheel, it was during the The Island's time skipping days. It was fully formed and open. The Orchid Station was built, so we can assume it was post - Dharma. So sometime between the late 1970s and present day.

-During his descent, time shifts, and the well disappears completely. It's just ground. Sawyer is left holding a rope that is attached to the ground. After last night's episode, this would make me believe that they had skipped to a time pre-Jacob's Island birth.

-Then time shifts again. This time there is a well, but it is filled in with dirt. This makes me believe that they have shifted to a time post-Jacob becoming Island Protector, but pre-Dharma. We also see the fully formed statue for the first time.

So, What does it all mean? How the hell should I know? What I think happened is that at some point after Smokey is unleashed, someone gets that Frozen Donkey Wheel together and turns it. This causes The Island to begin its time travel. Maybe at some point it travels and lands somewhere near Egypt in ancient Egyptian times and they inhabit The Island and find it to be a sacred place. They live there and build statues and temples and then it flashes in time again and ends up somewhere else. Eventually, at some other point, someone had to go down and turn the FDW again to stop the time from skipping. And maybe at this point, they also froze it. Maybe that's when Jacob left The Island to go recruit Candidates. Because, how else does Jacob get on and off The Island?

I know in a recent post I couldn't come up with very many unanswered questions, but when you really start to think about it, there are so many left. But last night's episode did answer some of my requests:

1. Adam and Eve
2. Kind of answered what the Smoke Monster is
3. What Jacob is (but why did he turn to ash when he died? Wait. I know! Because his body is so old that that is all that is left!)

So, for now, I am going to rest with the notion that this will all make sense. Looking back on the final episodes of last season, I was so disappointed with the second to last episode that I almost quit the show. But the finale blew my mind.

I hope that happens again.