Hey Bartender, Lord Stanley Needs a Refill

Just a quick bartender joke for Friday.   This one has made the rounds as a Facebook Status Update, which is where I stole it from, and gets the all around "Awesome Possum Award" for the day.

A guy walks into a bar and orders an Ovechkin.

Bartender says 'Whats an Ovechkin?'

Guy says 'It's a white Russian without a Cup.'

Let's go PENS!!!!  Game 1 against the Habs tonight!!!!

Oil Spill Threatening The Gulf Coast

The Gulf Coast of the United States is in imminent danger from an oil slick heading to shore.   It had been previously thought that the spill was caused by an oil rig, Deepwater Horizon, which had exploded offshore.  However, we have just recently learned that the oil spill was not caused by the rig's explosion.  Instead it was caused by the cast of Jersey Shore filming in Miami Beach.   One of the filming crew spoke with EPA officials shortly after completing the scene that caused the spill.  "We had no idea of the impact that we would have on the environment.   We all warned the cast not to get Snooki's hair wet, but when we saw her go down into the water we knew we had a situation."  The cameraman then explained to Michael Sorrentino that he was not referring to him but to the spill.  

EPA officials estimate that between the amount of hair and spray tan products on the cast members, the ecosystem is serious peril.   It was originally thought that Miami was in immediate danger but it seemed that the slick moved South around the Keys and has ended up in the Gulf of Mexico, threatening Louisiana.

LOST Theories for S6E13 The Last Recruit April 20th, 2010

Since last night's episode was a repeat I will post last week's analysis... if you can call it that... today.  For some reason this never published last Thursday though it was scheduled to do so.   Technology is great when it works.  Ask the Dharma Initiative about that one.

Reunions. Yes, I tend to boil each episode down into one word but that’s how I viewed this episode. The biggest of all was the reunion of Jin and Sun but more on that later.

The other reunions of note in this episode are as follows. We have a reunion, of sorts, between the original Losties. Jack and Claire reunite as brother and sister in the original timeline and the alterverse. Jack and Locke reunite as opposing sides of the same coin in the original timeline and in the alterverse Jack is reunited with the man he spoke of miracles with while waiting for lost luggage to come up with some knives and a dead father at LAX. Kate and Jack reunite as two points of the exhausted love triangle of them plus Sawyer, even though it’s pretty apparent that Sawyer has moved on from Kate as a love interest. We also have a reuniting of Sayid and his soul…again more on that later.

Jack and Locke. At first I couldn’t figure out what the big deal was between their exchanged, Telemundo like, glances. The James Bond Horn riffs were in full effect as Jack trotted out of the flora into the sightline of his old nemesis, John Locke. Because we as an audience member see everything on the table whereas individual characters only get some of the given circumstances and that tends to get buried after three or four episodes that encompass maybe a day or two. I totally forgot that Jack wasn’t at the temple when MiB smoked the joint. He was at the lighthouse with Hurley earning infinite years of bad luck. In fact, Jack hadn’t seen Locke since he was in the funeral home back in the states, not to mention he had only seen him once in passing since they left the island from “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham.” But he already knew that something was wrong with Locke. Maybe someone filled him in on what happened, “previously on LOST.” Still, the old gang being back together meant the reunion of tension between Jack and Sawyer and Jack and Locke, not to mention the reunion with Sawyer and his Sawyerisms, the best aimed at Frank Lapidus claiming he just walked off the set of a Burt Reynolds movie and by calling him Chesty later on.

SAYID’S SOUL
Anyone who really thinks that Sayid killed Desmond in the well needs to be… well… shot. It makes you wonder though if Desmond has the same power as the MiB did with potential assassins. “Don’t let him speak to you or it’s already too late,” seems to be the mantra with missions to kill the other guy. MiB told Alpert that and Dogen told Sayid that. In both cases they failed. Maybe Sayid did shoot Desmond, but since Desmond spoke to him before hand he negated the ability for Sayid to be able to kill him. Instead he reached out to Sayid as a human being needing redemption from sin for the sake of his loved Nadia. It seems as if both Claire and Sayid are now back on Team Jacob, for now.

JIN AND SUN
I try not to be influenced by other writers when it comes to my opinion on the nature of things like LOST but Doc Jensen over at EW really ruined this episode for me, after I had watched the last episode and then read his recap. He suggested that perhaps MiB is not in fact impersonating John Locke. It seemed odd that Desmond chose to call MiB as John Locke while everyone can sense that he’s not. He suggested that maybe MiB is hiding like John Carpenter’s The Thing in someone else and pointed towards Frank “Chesty” Lapidus. That unnerved me because I really didn’t enjoy the payoff of Sun being reunited with Jin… and her voice because I kept thinking, “Wait a minute. Doc Jensen said that he thinks MiB is inside Frank Lapidus and Frank asked everyone to come down to the galley on the Elizabeth for some Frank and beans (get it) while Jack and Sawyer played King of the Boat and Jack jumped off. What if Frank infected everyone else and now Sun is part MiB. And now she’s running towards that sonic fence and is liable to go poof. Now, that would be a great twist…. Aw their kissing and I really missed that moment.” That was long winded, I admit, but I tend to think at 45 rpms while the show is moving at 33 1/3.

It was great to see them back together after all that time but the moment was short lived as Widmore turned the tables on Sawyer and now he’s back to being prisoner of the Others… one of the originals, mind you.

THEORY DEBUNK TIME
I don’t really have a lot to debunk other than I’m pretty sure that Widmore is not exactly on the side of good. Maybe he’s Chaotic neutral. Perhaps he’s simply trying to get Desmond to interact with a source of electromagnetic energy in order to turn back the hands of time to save Daniel, who knows. Ben once said Charles only wanted to exploit the power of the island. He broke the rules by making several trips off the island and having Penny. I don’t know what that has to do with anything, really in the larger scheme of MiB and Jacob’s bargument. The only theory I will pat myself on the back about is why Desmond ram rodded Locke. (20 points if you knock him out of the chair, brutha) He did it to put him in direct contact with Jack to spark a memory. And did you notice that he looked at Locke in a mirror?

NEW THEORIES
I don’t even want to get into a lot of theories because it’s too hard to even fathom what could be going on with Jack and Locke, but I will pose this new theory about Jack.

1. Jack’s wife/ex-wife is Juliet.

The age of David puts Jack’s age at the time of conception around 21. He could have conceivably met Juliet at medical school and fathered a child. Now that she is divorced or weary of men because of Jack she meets Sawyer and decides to get coffee but go Dutch. Perhaps Juliet will meet Sawyer at the hospital when he goes to talk with Sun about the shooting. Juliet will be the OB/GYN that helped save Sun’s baby.

2. More than one Lostie is MiB

The biggest gamble of a theory I have is that at the end there will be a reveal that one or more of the remaining Losties aside from Locke will be MiB. Wouldn’t that be a trip if it all came down to Team MiB and Team Jacob standing on opposing sides only to have select members of Team Jacob turn and point their guns at Jack and Desmond. It’s a long shot theory because that would mean that Frank infected Hurley who was voted least likely to become a host for the smoke monster in his senior year.

That’s all I got. See you at the reunion here next week.

Madison Avenue Death Camps

There is a movement that has been sweeping the country in the past few years. Ultra-nutjob-extremist groups have been targeting and rounding up those they consider to be problematic individuals. These individuals do not look like the rest of us and therefore they are deemed undesirable. Additionally, these groups believe that the actions of these “individuals” are responsible for degradation of our youth and our values and must be eradicated.

In 1992, these extremists began their crusade against an individual. Not only did they disapprove of their public perception, they also disapproved of the lifestyle of a female parading as a male in public. The individual disappeared and mysteriously died of kidney failure the following year. Four years later, an individual by the name of Joe was targeted and removed from the public eye, never to be seen again. He was thought to have led to the corruption of minors. Five years prior, they began these extremists began their crusade against these Since then, the phasing out of these public personas has taken place without intervention and now they have set their sights on what they believe is Public Enemy Number One. If we allow them to take out this intended target then there will be no stopping them.

Ronald McDonald has been a corporate icon for the McDonald’s Corporation since 1963. He is now being pushed into retirement by a group known as Corporate Accountability International. They feel that McDonald’s has been using the friendly faced clown as an enticement for children to eat and crave fast food. Well, duh?!?!?!   Come on, it’s a frickin’ clown. Who else are they marketing to?  You want to go one step further?  Who the hell is the demographic for Happy Meals?   The damn thing comes with a burger, fries, soft drink and toy!   Of course, that is by choice not the only option when it comes to picking the meal.  

To say that Ronald McDonald is the leading cause for the increasing levels of obesity among children is like saying that the lingerie section in the Sears catalog is leading cause of sex addiction. While it may be true that kids eat too much fast food, it’s not because a damn clown said to. It’s because the parents buy it. Unless these kids are taking their allowance money and riding their big wheels to McDonald’s I don’t think they are doing the buying. That being said, if they DID DO THAT, we probably wouldn’t have an obesity problem because these kids would be getting exercise going to the Golden Arches.

Why is it that these nut jobs keep blaming corporations for what’s wrong in the world. I admit I have no warm fuzzies for huge, multibillion dollar/cannot fail type corporations and I’m sure that there are a lot of things being done wrong within the walls of HQ but to blame them outright for a problem that has started in the home is ridiculous. Look, I go to McDonald’s and I have a child. She hasn’t acquired a taste for hamburger yet and pretty much eats only the cheese from the sandwich but I agree that it’s not healthy for any of us. We go as a reward for doing something especially good and we go mostly so she can play on the slide. In other words we go to a fast food restaurant for her to get exercise. They one getting fatter is me and I’m old enough to make my own decisions not ones based on clown influence. Besides, most kids are scared of clowns. Hell, my kid is afraid of Santa but will walk up to a six foot tall mutant mouse named Chuckee and kiss him on his fake oversized nose. She loves the mouse not the pizza.

Back in 1992 and 1997 when Spuds Mackenzie and Joe Camel were given pink slips the claim was that the visage of these anthropomorphic mascots was contributing to underage alcohol and tobacco use. Still, the safeguards for preventing this consumption was in place. You had to be of a certain age and furnish identification in order to obtain these vices. The fact that the usage of these things was so prevalent among teens and underage children wasn’t so much the fault of the lovable and cuddly mascots on the advertisements but the safeguards in place failed to prevent the acquisition of such things. Fake IDs, lazy or incompetent store clerks, PEER PRESSURE and oh, heaven forbid, unaware or uncaring parents were failing to protect the impressionable.

If you want to ban something, ban kids. Peer pressure and desire to imitate role models is far more of an incentive to do something. They learn it by watching others who they look up to and they want to emulate that behavior. It could be their parents or that older kid who looks cool lighting up a cigarette. They get into these bad habits and form addictions either because of the nature of the behavior or the drug itself has addictive properties.

And since we can’t ban kids, let’s ban professional athletes. The recent indiscretions of my own state’s team is enough cause to shield the impressionable youth from their off the field antics. When a kid with an Internet connection can read a twitter feed from their favorite football player and see the atrocious use of language and demeanor towards women and another kid can come home from school wearing their favorite quarterback’s jersey and ask their parents, “What’s sexual harassment?” Then we know that there has to be some type of intervention. But it has to be on the parents’ part, not the pro or anti groups.

But back to food, my favorite vice. This attack on corporate mascots is a veiled attempt to somehow correct the problem that parents do not take care of their kids. They give them too much freedom and convenience and expect them to make the right decision before they have the maturity to do so.

I’m just as guilty. My kid has way too much awareness of the English language and she’s not even three. But I do not blame shows like The Family Guy for teaching my child the word douche bag. I blame myself for allowing her to watch The Family Guy at an age where she absorbs anything that makes me laugh, when I see it, and then wishes to be funny and see her Daddy giggle uncontrollably. We don’t watch it anymore and the effects are still apparent and she knows that it’s wrong but we’re slowly reaching her with our admonishment of that sort of behavior. But we try to do other things, continually, to get her into the habit of eating better foods. We are still working at it and admittedly she doesn’t get all the good foods that she should.

Who’s next, Ernie the elf. Him and the other Keebler elves will be rounded up and forced to stop selling cookies. Their only chance for a sustainable income will be to get their own show on TLC like Little People Big World, The Little Couple, Our Little Life, and Little Chocolatiers. Honestly, what the hell is going on with TLC, they’ve suddenly become The Lilliputian Channel. Then, look out Jack in the Box and Chester Cheetah. If Ronald falls you are on notice. They’ll be coming by and putting you on a train to the Little Debbie Death Camps.

LOST Theories for S6E12 Everybody Loves Hugo April 13th, 2010

I apologize for missing last Wednesday’s usual posting. Unfortunately, I had other things going on as you may have read in a previous post. That being said, we shall move on and carry on and keep heading towards the inevitable conclusion of LOST’s final season.

Because I wanted to play catch up with last week and still make this week’s post, I figured I would just post a few ideas instead of going into full tangent mode.

First up, did the actress playing Ilana have a run in with the Hawaii Highway Patrol? Just checking since she blew up rather unexpectedly after screaming for the umpteenth time about her “mission” and “training” to protect the candidates. Maybe, that’s what she did. She kept them from blowing up via Black Rock Dynamite. That stuff is insanely volatile.

Anyway, this episode was all about irony, in a sense. It was ironic that Ilana blew up after spouting off about her mission. It was ironic that Michael showed up at Libby’s grave site when Hurley really wanted to see Libby out of all the dead people who he’s seen. It was ironic that Hurley once again planned on blowing something up since the sister episode to this, entitled “Everybody Hates Hugo” had him plotting to blow up the Dharma rations since he knew it would get everyone mad at him when they ran out of food. It was ironic that Desmond was forced (read: thrown) into and underground hatch (read: well) by Locke Ness since it was Desmond who sort of forced Locke into the hatch to push the button when he took off. It was ironic that Desmond has become the Alterverse’s version of Jacob and instead of touching Locke after he crashed to the ground, he’s the one doing the crashing. People speculate the reason for Desmond doing what he did. I’ll get to that in the theories. And it was ironic that Ben, of all people, came to the aid of John Locke since he killed him in the original timeline. It was ironic that Hurley led the three people Locke Ness/MiB needed to get off the island right to him and then made him promise not to hurt anyone.

THEORY TIME
(I told you this was going to be short)

1. Desmond plowed through Locke because:


1. He loves Grand Theft Auto, brutha.
2. He knows Locke is really MiB (The mirror to this is his response of “John Locke” when MiB asked if he knew who he was.)
3. He wanted to show him something (Indirectly a nod to Charlie’s failed Lupe’s Escape move)

People have speculated that Desmond did this because he wants to out the MiB or at least kill him getting rid of the illusion or something. I say this was to push Locke into the care of Mr. Fix It, Jack Shepherd which will spawn a Jack/John Déjà vu moment when Jack touches scalpel to skin.

2. The pouch contains:


1. Jacob’s ashes gathered by Ilana from the Foot
2. Jewels from The Inferno... enough to save the Goon Docks 

I’m not sure if the purpose is some sort of Matrix move wherein Hurley switches MiB’s regular coffee with Jacobian Blend or if whoever becomes the new Jacob needs the old Jacob in order to do it. In either case, somehow Hurley knew exactly what to do with the bag of ash.

3. The island is a:


1. Cork
2. Tomb
3. Womb
4. ????

 The question was so simple. “What is the island.” I’ve been told that the secret is a four letter word with no As or Es and possibly an O. Well, Jacob pretty much told Richard what the island was in Ab Aeterno. It’s a cork keeping evil trapped. Maybe it’s a tomb…. Or a womb. Hmmm.

4. MiB needs the others (no pun) because:


1. He needs the conditions of the O6 leaving in order to be able to replicate it.
2. He plans to just kill them in order to keep them from becoming the next Jacob

Think about it. Claire stands in for Aaron, and then he pretty much offs Sawyer and Jin before transferring himself into Frank. Hmm. Now wouldn’t the biggest head fake of all be that MiB is not really in Locke at all… or a piece of him is. I would not put Team Lost above referencing The Thing in an attempt to throw you off the path. Who says the Smoke Monster couldn’t be imitating multiple people. After all, Desmond called MiB John Locke and while a bit dazed and confused, Desmond seemed pretty in tune with what’s going on, though he did end up in a well.

 

Or it could just be that once they get in the air, he will kill everyone to keep them from becoming the next Jacob but I have a feeling that Desmond is special because he can repel the smoke because he’s got some kind of electromagnetic properties.

5. The little boy is:


1. A rapidly growing Jacob getting ready to assume the persona of a candidate and that’s why his hair has changed color with every candidate that witnesses him in the presence of MiB. Blond for Sawyer, Brown for Desmond.
2. Young MiB reliving his childhood since he told Kate about it. 

God called one more amazing woman to live w/him

I didn't write this and the words are better for it.   Thank you Brenna.

1944 - 2010

Today, April 11th, 2010, God called one more person to leave the earth and go to a better place. To most people she was just another person, but to me and a lot more people she was the best lady in the world. To me, she was one of my two most amazing grandmas. I'll always love her, and nothing could ever change that. She was awesome. She always took me to see movies when I was little, she was the one to always hold family dinners for holidays, or to just visit.

What's funny is that just two weeks ago, she was fine. She was happy. Then yesterday, she went into a coma from her brain bleeding. The only thing keeping her alive was a breathing machine. The doctors said anything could've caused it, but most of my family were pretty sure it was a brain tumor. Just a few months ago, she got better from one. Now look what happened. My mom and aunt told me I could talk to her, even though she couldn't respond. They said she could hear me. But I didn't know what to say. I didn't want to repeat what everyone else kept telling her over and over again. And I also felt bad knowing she couldn't reply. I knew she wouldve felt bad about that too. So I just prayed.

It was the second time I've ever seen my stepdad cry.. Its actually kind of funny but I love him too. Everyone was crying except the people who never even see my grandma much. They just looked at her. But I could tell they were sad. How couldn't they be?

The only thing that is making me not cry right this minute is how good my 2 year old cousin Bailey is handeling it all. She understands she'll never see Grammy again, but she seemed happy. She KNEW she went to a better place. She even said so.

I only wrote this so I would remember her forever. I don't know how many people will even care enough to read this, but those of you who did, thank you. Me and my family could use a lot of prayers. Thank you.

r.i.p. Grandma
we will always remember you.

A Mongo Confession

In light of recent news stories such as Tiger Woods and Jesse James, I felt that it was unfortunate but necessary to come forward with an admittance and apology. My behavior is not excusable nor expected of someone who tries to uphold certain values. Although I am not without faults and far short of perfect I cannot make excuses for my actions. Instead of dealing with these issues and shortcomings away from the daily life I have come to lead, I feel the need to cleanse my soul and start the healing with you, my readers.
I never thought it would be so hard to walk that line and coming to grips with what has transpired in recent years is going to take some time. I do not ask for forgiveness but support in making things right. I know I am asking far more than I deserve but by seeking help I am making that first step towards closure and I thank those who have chosen to come together around me instead of shying away in fear and disgust.

The heart of the matter is that I have had several secret relationships with other women since before and after my marriage. I did treat my marriage honestly and have made several efforts to conceal my actions over the years. Now, I can sit here and tell that these others meant nothing to me and that it was just mindless engagements but that would be lying. I have had multiple encounters with these others and continued to participate in secretive activity with them while my wife was even in the house. It is amazing how you can conceal certain things if you truly wish to. Unfortunately, remnants of our trysts were left behind and were and now I am forced to come clean. Quite frankly, maybe I wished this upon myself. Perhaps the strain of concealing these acts was too much and I unconsciously put myself in the path of discovery in order to end the charade. I do admit that having my wife walk into our kitchen and catch me in an embrace with one of these others was regretful but ultimately, I have hurt her more than I can ever know.

Now, in the interest of protecting all parties, I was advised to not divulge the names of these other women but I feel that by concealing their identities they will undoubtedly be thrust into focus in an attempt to capitalize on what could be considered a scandalous situation. I have conferred with all parties and have been given clearance by all but one to announce their identities in the hopes that we can stop the wildfires of gossip before the flames can be fanned. This is extremely difficult and I find that my hands are shaking as I write this.

The names of the involved parties are:
Wendy
Dolly Madison
Little Debbie
Sara Lee
Betty Crocker
an unnamed Hostess
Dairy Queen

Please accept my sincerest apologies for breaking the trust we had between us. I will try to be a better person.

LOST Theories for S6E11 Happily Ever After April 6th, 2010

Relationships. Whether it’s the relationships between strangers on a plane, parents and their children, husbands and wives, and even those who are kept apart by time, space, and a weirdo island, relationships make up the core of LOST. We saw it in Season One in a father and son trying to repair a broken relationship. We saw it on the island and we saw it off the island as each of the survivors’ back stories intertwined with one another.

Now, when we are so near the endgame, we see that relationships still drive the story of LOST. We see a husband and wife trying to desperately get back to one another. We see a mother struggling with sanity after her son was taken from her three years before. And we see two forces, opposite sides of the same coin struggling in their relationship to good and evil. But the biggest relationships are those that were possibly not meant to be. And the producers have said to not read too much into the relationship between the Flash Lefts and the Original Timeline. I say, “Screw that.” If anything, last night made that relationship all the more clearer.

Critics of the Flash Lefts may be brought back into the fold after last night’s episode or will just give up their relationship to LOST altogether. There will be some that will hail that Happily Ever After was the BEE of LOST and they will do it in their best Simpson’s Comic Book Guy voice. I think it was good, but it doesn’t sit above "The Constant" on my ever evolving top ten list of best episodes ever. Because in that episode lies the destiny of Desmond Hume in the following phrase, "If anything goes wrong, Desmond Hume will be my constant."

The good of the episode is that we get to see Desmond, of course, but also Charlie, Eloise, Penny and Daniel. The bad is that we get more mysteries than answers. The highlights are Charlie getting to reprise his death scene with a different ending from "Through the Looking Glass" (although it would have been funny if Charlie would have put his hand up to the glass and been missing part of his pinky finger in a nod to FlashForward) and the low points include Sayid having the chance to put us out of our misery with killing Zoe, the most hated character since Nikki and Paulo, and not following through for once with his homicidal tendencies.

The biggest mystery solved is the connection between the Flash Left Verse and the Real World and that some people are self aware that their seemingly perfect lives are merely a lie. The newest mystery is how does Desmond plan on convincing Locke, Hurley, and Claire, among others who are better off in this fake life, that they are better off being dead, unlucky, and crazy sometime else. Not to mention, how do you reconcile the two timelines and bring everyone three years forward and to the right?

My general theories about what the island is and how everything functions keeps getting turned about like a giant Rubik’s Cube. I work for hours to solve one side thinking I’m making progress only to have five other sides still unsolved. In order to work on them I have to screw up the one thing I thought I had figured out. In the case of LOST it’s the nature of who is the key to everything.

But while fans overly analyze and try and pick apart every little thing about every episode, every sentence, every prop, and every pop culture connection between the show, science fiction literature and religion I tend to skew the connections by offering the oddball ones. Before I move onto individual aspects of the episode let me pepper my section on Desmond with this. Everyone is discussing and theorizing that Demsond’s experiment was used to cause the acknowledgement of the Flash Lefts. I don’t know that is the whole truth. We’ve seen over the course of almost six years that when someone has a flashback or in this case a flash left the connection… or relationship between the two is implied but the action that is taking place at the moment of the “whoosh.” I’m not so sure this wasn’t simply the same thing.

Maybe Desmond, being forced to withstand another Catastrophic Electromagnetic Event wasn’t designed to make him see the alternate reality but see something else that makes him compliant with Widmore’s plan. His Flash Left doppelganger may have the same inherent talent as his Original Timeline self and can see the connections as well, not just because he licked a giant 9 volt battery in the original timeline. What C.E.E. did Charlie and Daniel experience that caused them to realize the truth? Perhaps that C.E.E. is more commonly known as L.O.V.E. and when Sideways Sawyer meets Sideways Juliet and Sideways Hugo meets Sideways Libby, they’ll see the truth, too.

CHARLIE IN THE ALTERVERSE
Alterverse? I like that, I can’t keep typing Flash Left because it just doesn’t have that great flow to it. Alterverse feels more natural to say. Anyway, I liken Charlie to a type of dream I’ve often had in my life. You may or may not have had this dream. The setting or characters in this dream are inconsequential as they can be interchangeable with nearly any others. The focus is that at some point in your dream you suddenly become self aware that you are dreaming. For me it’s usually a scenario where I am supposed to take a very important test that I haven’t studied for. I don’t even remember going to any of the classes. As the test gets passed around and I find that I cannot read the questions. Suddenly, I realize that I am over 30 and no longer sitting in my 11th grade U.S. History class. (akin to a Batman The Animated Series episode plotline) So, then I proceed to just sit as an observer, put my head down, or run around the classroom yelling and screaming obscenities for the hell of it.

Now, I told you that story to tell you this one. Charlie has the same self realization that he doesn’t belong in this reality. It’s almost like Groundhog Day where Bill Murray starts goofing around because he realizes there are no consequences to his actions because he will wake up to the same day, every day. So, Charlie shows Desmond that something is wrong. Desmond then goes to the Widmore estate to inform Mrs. Widmore of Charlie not showing up to perform. After he begins to question reality, Eloise steps in and tells him to stop. Well, of course she does. She knows full well what’s going on and doesn’t want to see a reality where she kills her own son and then 30 years later sends him to his own death by her younger self. But what is important is that Desmond meets Daniel and Daniel also realizes that something is wrong. Perhaps the trick is that you have to have died in the original timeline to recognize that something is off in the alterverse. The exception would be John Locke, but there is no telling whether or not Locke is really Locke in the alterverse, just yet.

DESMOND IN THE ORIGINAL TIMELINE
“The island isn’t done with you yet!” Is the phrase we keep hearing from characters about Desmond’s destiny. But what does that mean? Is the island a stage five clinger? Or have the puppet masters of Jacob and MiB not finished their game of Dungeons & Dragons yet and still need Desmond to prove a point one way or the other. Desmond’s role may or may not be that important to the overall mythology. I tend to look at these last few seasons as a giant Rube Goldberg machine (The Game Mousetrap to all you unfamiliar with the concept.) Basically, the island and everything on it is one overly complex machine with many parts that when activated performs a simple task. Think of MiB’s loophole scheme to kill Jacob. All of that work just so he could leave the island. However, in keeping him on the island or stopping him for good, another equally complex and intricate device needs to be activated. In that device all the castaways and island visitors have a part to play. Perhaps Desmond is just one cog in a bigger wheel. Us old school text adventure gamers will recognize this as a sort of Chekhov’s Gun, where a seemingly unimportant item or character will suddenly become important later on and “Will Know What To Do When The Time Comes." For me, I’d rather see Desmond be Chekhov’s Gun that Zoe. At some point, because of Desmond’s ability to withstand Catastrophic Electromagnetic Events, he may be useful in performing some task relating to Jin’s knowledge of where these concentrated electromagnetic “Hot Pockets” are. We already know the Swan and the Orchid have one but where is the third one?

THE PACKAGE
A friend commented on my facebook import of last week’s post and said that perhaps Desmond is not the package. This could be a plot twist. I didn’t believe the probability seeing as how Desmond was introduced to Snoopy eyed Sayid in the water, but perhaps there could be something to this. What if Desmond is not the package but merely the mailman? Why would he need to be drugged if he was double padlocked on the sub? Maybe someone is still on the sub or being held somewhere else and they are the package. Maybe that person has a special talent that makes them somewhat akin to a hydrogen bomb that can interact with a “hot pocket.” Maybe that person is Walt?

SAYID’S ROLE
If ever there was a case for IS HE BAD OR ISN’T HE it’s Sayid. His pa-pa-pa-poker face, his pa poker face leaves me wondering if he isn’t in some way working both sides against the middle. Still, he killed Dogen and Lennon and red shirt number 23 for Team Widmore but he let Zoe live and took Desmond with him. If Desmond was had some kind of clarity or epiphany maybe he sees that he’s supposed to go with Sayid or it could be that he’s just a little bit high. Not sure. In any case, the truly evil Sayid would have killed Zoe instead of letting her run back to Charles to report the abduction.

THEORY DEBUNK TIME
I have no energy to scan old posts right now and pick theories I postulated however, the ones about Zoe and Desmond’s role in the story still stand because I think that the “sacrifice” Widmore says Desmond will have to make is to either to become the new Jacob, die to save everyone, or in a really wacked out scenario keep the alterverse the way it is because it’s the way things should be. However, I did check back to a previous post and decided to debunk my theory from Recon.

5. The Ajira survivors were killed by...


1. Widmore because he’s a sick bastard.
2. Locke Monster because they didn’t want to go with him OR he used them as leverage for Sawyer.
3. Something else happened to them entirely.

We know that the MiB/Locke Ness Monster cannot travel over water in smoke form but he was able to travel to the Hydra Island to chat with Charles about Jin’s abduction. In that case, he either killed the other Ajira survivors before he went to the temple OR Widmore did it for whatever reason. I think the fact that they were beginning to smell bad and attract flies might indicate it was still MiB’s handy work, although I am not a doctor or forensic scientist. Either way I’m debunking C. because it probably won’t ever get explained anyway and that means that C. is irrelevant.

NEW THEORIES

1. Desmond is going to...


1. Be the package
2. Deliver the package


2. And his sacrifice will be…


1. Die in the process
2. Become the new Jacob.
3. Keep the alterverse the way it is.

His sacrifice must involve his love for Penny somehow otherwise it wouldn’t have been so important to focus on their relationship in previous episodes.

3. Sayid is


1. Evil
2. Pulling a Sonny Crockett and playing evil
3. Just plain crackers

I still can’t come to grips with the whole idea of who is good and who is evil. If that is going to be a big twist then they are really going to lose the audience members who don’t slice and dice the series as much as those who do. I mean that in the case of people who look back on episodes and say, “Well that makes perfect sense now because so and so was really good/bad. But I find Sayid’s lack of character motivation disturbing in that I can’t read him….much like History tests in dreams.

4. The experiment was meant to…


1. Show Desmond the alterverse and allow his doppelganger to realize the truth.
2. Simply show that he can withstand a C.E.E. so that he can interact with the “Hot Pocket.”

I’m going with B. on this one as I previously stated. Charlie and Daniel are the exception to A. in that they merely caught a glimpse of love by seeing Claire and Charlotte which caused them to experience the notion that “this life is not our real life.” Now, you may say that unless Desmond is in love with Charlie, that theory doesn’t jive. I say, ”What was written on Charlie’s hand?” That’s right, it involved Penny and that is his relationship to the original timeline, he loved Penny and would cross time and space to be with her.

That’s all for now. Can’t wait for next week’s episode entitled “Everybody Loves Hugo.” Because why shouldn’t they.

Screams From An Italian Restaurant

I will start off by saying that ten years ago, I would be guilty of this. Although, I don’t know why. I question it because almost 15 years ago, at the age of 20, I would have been content to mosey into my favorite dark and smoky bar, Hemingway’s, nestled below the dorms of The University of Pittsburgh and just slink into a set of tables, near the back and just hang out. No loud whooping it up. No lined up shots along the bar ready to toss back. Simply a few us, just sitting there, enjoying our drinks and loving life as an unemployed actor, contemplating life after college.

Shhh. Don’t tell anyone I was drinking underage in a bar. Well, it’s not like any famous NFL quarterback, with questionable morals was there buying me drinks… at least because I’m a guy. (I had a whole tangent written involving the joke about keeping a guy’s “you know what” in his wife’s purse. I’ll just skip it.) My point is that, yeah, I went a little nuts when I turned 21 and spent my hard earned pay partying after a long day of working for an Amusement Park in Ohio, still, after that year I retreated back to my cloak of tortured, misunderstood, old, before his time, soul. That was until I graduated college and had to get a real job.

Then it was, “Hey a bunch of friends are going to the local sports bar for wings. Let’s be loud and tell jokes and make lots of noise.” The 21 year old me would have glaringly side-eyed the 25 year old me for being annoying. Still, it was a simple phase that I grew out of before I hit 30. I very rarely drink except for a holiday which may be at most a glass of wine with dinner. However, I like to go and enjoy a good dinner with company. Usually, on Saturday, we join my in-laws for dinner at an Italian restaurant, near our home. It’s a hard place to get into on a Saturday night. They aren’t very big and with a little one it’s easier to get a large booth and let her sit on a booster between my wife and I?

The biggest problem I have with the place is that they always seem to have the loudest and rowdiest bunch of people seated at a long set of tables right up against us. It never fails. It’s hard enough to be able to carry a conversation with my daughter jabbering away but when you have the 50-60 crowd of cackling women and screaming men who all seem to laugh in a simultaneous uproar it becomes nearly impossible.

Whenever we sit down and begin to see the staff pushing the tables together we know what is coming. A group of glammed up cougar wannabes, doused in Old Lady Spice, toting their cocktails from the bar over to the table. Then comes the man and their vodka tonics or whatever and they look like they should be in contracting. Well dressed and slicked up hair, perfect mustaches that would make a 70s porn star cry. They all sit down and begin talking loudly, laughing even louder, constantly making it difficult for us to get out or our server to get in to serve our dinners.

The ears bleed, the eyes water, and the left hand firmly restrains the right one which is wielding a steak knife aimed directly at the temple. Honestly, It is so hard to sit and carry on a civil conversation just below a mild roar and not be annoying? I could understand if we were in a rowdy bar or someplace like a T.G.I.Fridays. But this is a little Italian restaurant with excellent house dressing and low lighting. I’m just trying to enjoy my steak sandwich and I have to put up with the cackling. Even the 25 year old me would be sitting there with the 20 year old wondering, “WTF?” (mandatory use internet slang quota reached for this post.)

Ultimately, we just put up with it, keep our comments under our breath. We finish our meal and we go, awaiting the next week’s offering of the men and ladies of the Aqua Velva and Net set, respectively. It really is a good house dressing. I love the turkey club and the Fra Diavola. I just don’t like all the yelling. I’m grumpy and old now. I’m no longer a tortured soul. I have a family and a mortgage. I’m not an unemployed actor, but I play one on….ok that was too easy of a joke. I’m still misunderstood but that’s because I am the only guy in a household of females. There’s my wife, my daughter, three female cats and one male, but he doesn’t count because he’s fixed. (Here’s where the reprise of the “junk-in-the-wife’s-purse” joke would have come back.) Makes me want to scream sometimes. Perhaps I will over a nice seafood marinara and a piece of bread dipped in the house dressing. You really do have to try it.

The Expendables Might Come With High Deductibles

OK, here’s an idea I would have loved to sit in on when it was pitched.

Sylvester Stallone walks into an almost gothic looking executive office. There are recently sacrificed virgins on pikes around a desk made of botox injected starlet flesh. The grim visage of a soulless Hollywood executive looks at Sly and says,

“Impress me, mortal.”

Sly curls his lip, sucks back some human growth hormone and clears his throat. “Uh, ok. What we’re going to do is take every blockbuster action hero from the 80s, mix in some from the 90s, and a few from the present and put them all in a film together.”

An executive looks up from his plate of fresh baby livers and says, “Oooh, I’m intrigued. Go on. Who do you have in mind?”

“Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Mickey Rourke, and Steve Austin.”

Wiping the sacrificial blood from his lips the executive says, “What about The Rock?”

“No.”

“Wait a minute, is this a sequel?”

“No.”

“Remake?”

“No.”

“Video game?”

“No.”

“Comic Book?” “No.” “Old television show?” “No.” “Japanese Horror film?” “No” “Commercial about talking babies trading stocks.” “No.”

Executive frantically looks for button that opens the floor that will drop this insolent human into a pit of starved and rabid KardashLohan monsters. “Damnit. Where is it? DORIS! WHERE’S MY BUTTON? Oh, well. You’ve got a deal. I’ll give you $70 million for a budget.”
Honestly, WTF? (Internet slang quota per post reached) It’s like Hollywood crept into every 30 something male’s home while they was sleeping, checked out the titles in their vintage VHS collection, drank some of the out of date milk, leafed through a Mix Tape Collection then went in and stuck that thing from Batman Forever on their heads in order to suck out all their thoughts about action movies. With the information they all went back to their evil volcanic underground lairs complete with sharks and piranhas and gold painted women and devised the ultimate action movie. The fact that this is neither a sequel to or remake of any other movie almost scares me into thinking that someone is really paying attention out there. Unfortunately, this movie will probably fail for whatever reason whether…

A: It plain Sucks
B: Isn’t a remake or sequel
C: It’s not directed by Judd Apatow or starring Sacha Cohen, Bradley Cooper, or Amy Adams.

“Well does it at least have any CGI characters?”

“No.”

“Alright, $80 million but you are going to have to get your own health care coverage for all those old actors.”