March 13th thru the Ides of March

March 13th:

* I'm waiting to pick something up off of Craigslist. The last email? "You can come at 11 and pick it up". Yeah, uh, howsabout at some point you give me a phone # or say, an *address* so I can do that.[this was a sewing machine for Lisa. It worked great for nearly a month, then went kaput]

* My intense common sense/demands u stop right there/hearin' bout your missionary style/does not make me smile/no no/I get sweaty as a sauna/when I think of you up on'a/uh-uh/I don't mean to hate/but you ugly folk should masturbate - Danielle Fischel on The Dish

* Finished 'Gone for Good', the first novel I've read by Harlan Coben. It's a good read and a solid page turner. Still, while one twist or turn is great, an endless parade of them (all more extreme than the last) gnaws away at the all important suspension of disbelief. Unless you're watching The Sting. Then it's cool.

March 14th:

* Actor Peter Graves passes away. RIP.

* [re: a hypothetical Pujos-Howard trade] The logic in the article is persuasive, but I don't see it happening. Howard's #'s will fall off a cliff in a few years, and assuming a) you can afford Pujols and b) he's not outed for steroids (hint hint nudge nudge) Albert's the better option.

The Ides of March:

* "I want to be remembered when I'm dead. I want books written about me. I want songs sung about me. And then, hundreds of years from now, I want episodes of my life to be played out weekly at half past nine by some great heroic actor of the age." - Happy International Blackadder Status Day!

* Archaeologists Find 40,000-Year-Old Tools at Tasmanian Construction Site

* TV quote of the morning: "I *do* have oily skin. I'm 30 years old and I still look F---ing 22. 'Cuz I have oily f---ing skin." - Raven on Rupaul's Drag Race

* [on the 25th anniversary of the dot-com] Happy annivesary, you beautiful user-friendly web addy you!

* If word gets out that I'm missing, 500 girls will kill themselves and I wouldn't want them on my conscience - not when they ought to be on my face! - Happy International Blackadder Status Day!

* Good news: Smiley's cast will come off at 9 a.m. on my birthday. Bad news: one of LuLu's fish was obviously dying, and so I fed him to our turtle (circle of life and all). I had Smiley and Ginger say a prayer over him as they were a bit too gleeful over the feeding bit. He was a good fish, nothing more than a 30 cent feeder that's lasted since last May. RIP noble swimmer.

* The Bucks' Andrew Bogut was named Eastern Conference Player of the Week

* Woman aims to become world's fattest

"In order to pay for the enormous amounts of food she is eating — her weekly grocery bill is $815 — Ms Simpson makes money by running a website where men pay to watch her consume fast food." As Lisa said - that's just sad.

TV

We're watching the finale of DWTS, and in particular Kate Gosselin's 'rise to the heavens'. May I just say - WTF??? Lisa and I burst out laughing, as did Tom Bergeron, and probably most of America. Oh Lordy. 

 Nicole won Season 10 of DWTS, and she deserved the title. The whole finale was over the top but fun to watch. OTOH, American Idol sucked. Bowersox's 'Black Velvet' was impressive vocally but she looked (let's be honest) like a clydesdale in that black dress. Yikes. Meanwhile Lee brought his C game at best. Bowersox will/should take the crown of a crappy, crappy season.

Torchwood

I DVR'd a Torchwood marathon on BBC, the first time I've had a chance to see this Doctor Who spinoff. Much darker than Who, but so far the acting and writing are top notch. The negatives? As usual writer/creator Russell T. Davies tries hard to push his personal beliefs on the audience, which always gets on my nerves.

The Little Stranger

Just finished "The Little Stranger" by Sarah Waters, a ghost story set in the countryside of postwar England. Waters is a heck of a writer, and her prose sings. Here's the problem: there are literally ~ 9 pages of action in the 463 pg novel, almost all of it retold by a third party. I suppose the last line of the novel is supposed to 'unlock the secret' of the house, but is it worth the effort to get there?

Lost's finale: A more detailed exploration

I intentionally avoided any details/spoilers about the Lost finale yesterday, but by now you've either seen it, or have no interest in ever taking the plunge. So I'd like to put some of my thoughts down, in part to refute some of the wilder (aka dumber) notions out there. Not that I blame the fans; for once we were treated to a more-or-less straightforward story, with clearly defined cause and effects, and I think some Lost fans just can't change gears at the last moment.

Let's start out simple. I think Desmond was put on the island by Jacob as a weapon, just as Jack said. Destroying the island was a temptation MIB couldn't pass up, and he was too busy relishing the idea to realize disconnecting the source once again made him mortal and vulnerable. It was, to paraphrase Sawyer, a long con.

What was the source? Who/what put it there? We'll never know. Neither did any of the characters, and if they're not complaining, why should we?

Was Jack destined to die? It was his choice to take the job, but there's that gray area of fate/free will again. Knowing Jack, was there any real question who would accept the duty? Was he steered towards the position because he was a better candidate (no pun intended) to physically defeat MIB? Was he sacrificed in order to preserve Hurley's eventual reign?

You tell me. None of it matters. Come to think of it, did anything?

I don't know if letting MIB free would have destroyed our world. Still, I can't imagine it's a good thing to have a cunning, ruthless and violent immortal walk the streets of Topeka. I can empathize with him, to a degree; keep me trapped for two millenia and I'd get miffed too. But oh well. Whatever his motives, whatever Mommy issues he had, he'd grown into a murdering thug. The last thing the world needed was him walking free.

Now, as to the 'flash-sideways'. Yes, it's purgatory, and if that word bothers you because of some 'Papist' connotations, deal with it. They are dead but not in heaven or hell, but rather in a 'holding cell' where they explore and move past the issues that plagued them in our world. In other words, a sort of purgatory.

It is NOT solely Jack's afterlife, where each character could be nothing more than the sum of his memory. Each character is clearly independent of the others; connected by their shared past, but dealing with a full life of their own.

No, this is a communal afterlife. Now I don't know if it's an L.A. created and occupied only by the Lost cast, or if it a larger, general 'world' that the characters borrow as their stage. My money is on the latter. When Christian talks of the cast making a world to find each other, I think he means that the force of their bonds drew each of them into proximity with one another. Their experiences - their 'world' - is fashioned by their need to reconnect.

So what about David, Jack's son? Who pops out a kid in purgatory? I go back to some references this season about how much the boy resembled Jack when he was young. I view him as a surrogate for Jack himself. I think Jack imagined/was given David to work out his issues with Christian and break the Shepard's dysfunctional father/son relationship.

Was the island (and all the events of the series) real? Yes, dangit, didn't you listen to Christian? It was real, so real that the relationships forged on the island transcended death. It was real, there were no do-overs, what happened happened.

Finally, Jack's death scene: I teared up. It was the ONLY suitable ending for the show, and I like how, thanks to Vincent, he didn't 'die alone'. Well done.

Well done indeed.

In

RE: Lost's finale: it makes television history as the first scripted/non-sports TV show to have an episode be simulcast in multiple countries, other than the US and Canada. Italy, Israel, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom showing the episode at the same time as the West Coast broadcast in the early hours of May 24, 2010 (5am to 7am, depending on location) in Europe

Ms. Hutchinson

St Adalbert Alumni - Today I ran into Miss Hutchinson for the first time in 20 years. Her hair was cut close to the scalp, with a pencil thin ponytail running down her skull to her shoulders. Not quite the traditional look of a Catholic school principal, eh?

My Opinion

No doubt mold exposure has health consequences, but HGTV is on & the steps taken to contain & remove a *small* amount of mold seem insane. Then a revelation - the contractor started out in asbestos removal. As that biz declined, the owner says they morphed to mold removal & "got the word out about the dangers". Huh. You'll excuse me if I think that translates to "stoked America's paranoia to keep the $$ coming in."

grrrrr

I spent some time w/ a friend before watching Lost, and he p*'d me off by blasting Lost as 'mainstream' (as if that's an insult) and all but an opiate of the masses. Here's what I think: I think anyone who watches 'The Cleveland Show' and literally LOL's at the lame, mildly racist 'comedy' is someone who's opinion on TV matters for shit.

Lost: The End

You want another insight into my chaotic head? For years now I've made the series finale of Lost a benchmark in my life, a goal that I had to reach. I was always a little worried that God, with His sense of humour, would have me drop dead a week before the finale just so I'd never know how it ended. Along the same lines I've decided, well in advance, to avoid becoming interested in anything after the age of 70, just so He can't screw me out of the answers to that too :)

Now . . . it's over. I made it.

And you know what? The word that comes to mind when I think of the finale, more than any other, is 'satisfied'.

As always Lost stayed devoted to the 'story', a true rarity on TV. The characters moved us and spoke to our hearts, but they existed to move the story along, not to bump it to the side. I love that, just as I love characters like Jack and Desmond.
What also impressed me is that through all the confusion and all the theories, Lost stayed true to its own canonical beliefs. There was an unapologetic belief in the spiritual, and the unflinching rule that 'what happened, happened'. There was no reset button, no 'it was all a dream'. For the characters, free will is real and powerful, even in the face of fate, but what is done is done; no amount of wishing will absolve them from facing the consequences of their actions. They may come to terms with the past, but they can never outrun it.

As to the finale in particular: I think Jack's fate on the island was what it needed to be, a necessary (and freely chosen) sacrifice as part of Jacob's long con; that the means of Smokey's defeat was surprising and emphatic; that the role of the Protector went to the person who was always destined to carry the burden. I also think the duct-taped jet using a dirt runway was a stretch, but who am I to argue with a majic island?

For the record, I think the resolution to the 'flash-sideways' was poignant, sweet, and most importantly, absolute. We know their fate was was exactly what we saw on the island - what happened happened, no takebacks. We also know that in the end it all mattered immensely - and didn't matter at all.

I think back on the last shot of the series, that perfect bookend to the pilot, and I'm torn between a smile and a tear.

Lost, I'll miss you. It's been a hell of a ride.