I was convinced at first that Libby didn't really die. 1. We never actually saw her being buried (Desmond's boat showed up during her funeral). 2. The writers made a big deal about the blankets and she was holding the blankets in front of her when she was shot. 3. The Libby/Hurley relationship was just developing. 4. We were getting tantalizing tidbits of her back-story, especially her brief appearance as a patient at Hurley's institution. 5. Hurley's insistence that he would soon figure out where he'd seen her. 6. I just plain liked her. I suppose it's still possible that she could return in Season 6.
I read that Cynthia Watros and Michelle Rodriguez were picked up for DUI during the filming of season 2, and that that may have had something to do with why Libby and Ana were killed off so suddenly.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
LOST Season 2 Favorites
I’m well into season 3 now, but I want to review my favorite episodes of season 2. I’ve decided there are several types of episodes I like.
First there are the episodes that tell a good stand-alone story. A fine example is The Long Con. The story of Sawyer’s long con in real life kept us guessing through various twists and turns – who is conning whom? - right up to the end, and beyond, leaving us with the question: Does he go after the girl, or is he conning her too? (we find out in season 3). Meanwhile on the island, he is running a long con to obtain the weapons and drugs, though it’s not clear why. He tells Kate: “It’s what I do. You run, I con.”
Next, there are episodes that advance the overall story of the island by answering some questions and raising new ones. I particularly liked Lockdown, which introduced the idea of the periodic lockdown of the hatch (why?), the rough map of the island, and leads us to question whether Henry actually pressed the button or not (he says he did, later says he didn’t, but it seems he must have, or maybe not…), and thus again the question of whether the button pushing has a reason or not. It answered the question of Henry’s truthfulness: Sayid proved he was lying. And it twists with the appearance of food dropped by parachute, which still hasn’t been explained. Lock’s back story is interesting in that we are never sure until the end if he is being conned again.
Finally, there are the very special episodes where life on the island and a character’s previous life intersect dramatically. Perhaps my favorite episode of season 2 is the Hurley-centric Dave. The Dave character is interesting in and of itself. But the interplay of reality and imagination in both realms is compelling. Is island-Dave a real entity pretending to be an imaginary entity? I think he is the first of the various “appearances” we’ve seen of somebody who never really existed (or did he?) Or is he purely imaginary? And the consequences for our understanding of the whole island experience are profound. Dave makes a very good case that it’s all in Hurley’s head. Nah, can’t be, can it? And the ending in the institution when Libby shows up is one of the most truly shocking moments I’ve experienced. It literally gave me goose bumps. Too bad the writers decided to abandon the Libby character. She will be missed.
First there are the episodes that tell a good stand-alone story. A fine example is The Long Con. The story of Sawyer’s long con in real life kept us guessing through various twists and turns – who is conning whom? - right up to the end, and beyond, leaving us with the question: Does he go after the girl, or is he conning her too? (we find out in season 3). Meanwhile on the island, he is running a long con to obtain the weapons and drugs, though it’s not clear why. He tells Kate: “It’s what I do. You run, I con.”
Next, there are episodes that advance the overall story of the island by answering some questions and raising new ones. I particularly liked Lockdown, which introduced the idea of the periodic lockdown of the hatch (why?), the rough map of the island, and leads us to question whether Henry actually pressed the button or not (he says he did, later says he didn’t, but it seems he must have, or maybe not…), and thus again the question of whether the button pushing has a reason or not. It answered the question of Henry’s truthfulness: Sayid proved he was lying. And it twists with the appearance of food dropped by parachute, which still hasn’t been explained. Lock’s back story is interesting in that we are never sure until the end if he is being conned again.
Finally, there are the very special episodes where life on the island and a character’s previous life intersect dramatically. Perhaps my favorite episode of season 2 is the Hurley-centric Dave. The Dave character is interesting in and of itself. But the interplay of reality and imagination in both realms is compelling. Is island-Dave a real entity pretending to be an imaginary entity? I think he is the first of the various “appearances” we’ve seen of somebody who never really existed (or did he?) Or is he purely imaginary? And the consequences for our understanding of the whole island experience are profound. Dave makes a very good case that it’s all in Hurley’s head. Nah, can’t be, can it? And the ending in the institution when Libby shows up is one of the most truly shocking moments I’ve experienced. It literally gave me goose bumps. Too bad the writers decided to abandon the Libby character. She will be missed.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
What I'm Reading Now, Part 3
Finished A Wrinkle in Time. Not good.
Finished The Big U, by Neal Stephenson. I highly recommend it to anybody interested in higher education. Though highly unrealistic, it is hilarious satire of university life. Stephenson skewers everybody: various student types, administrators, trustees, the Pres, unionized staff, and notably, those silly faculty members. I wanted to read The Big U because it involves Dungeons and Dragons being played in the tunnels under the university.
Now I'm reading The Dungeon Master, an account of the real-life disappearance of Dallas Egbert, a 16-year-old genius college student at Michigan State when we were there. It's written by William Dear, the private investigator who found Egbert. Though self-aggrandizing, Dear's account is well written. Egbert was known to have played D & D in the steam tunnels under good old MSU, thus the connection with The Big U.
My interest in these books had nothing to do with my current interest in Lost. Imagine my surprise when they began to overlap. Egbert's obsessions look amazingly like those of Locke and Eko. The underground tunnels in both books remind me of the various hatches on the island. And in The Big U, as in Lost, the line between reality and fantasy blur. In The Big U, the underground gamers see radioactive rats the size of dobermans, there are swarms of bats in upper dorm rooms, and students take directions from electronic devices such as TV test patterns, neon logos, and box fans.
Or maybe I'm just seeing things.
Finished The Big U, by Neal Stephenson. I highly recommend it to anybody interested in higher education. Though highly unrealistic, it is hilarious satire of university life. Stephenson skewers everybody: various student types, administrators, trustees, the Pres, unionized staff, and notably, those silly faculty members. I wanted to read The Big U because it involves Dungeons and Dragons being played in the tunnels under the university.
Now I'm reading The Dungeon Master, an account of the real-life disappearance of Dallas Egbert, a 16-year-old genius college student at Michigan State when we were there. It's written by William Dear, the private investigator who found Egbert. Though self-aggrandizing, Dear's account is well written. Egbert was known to have played D & D in the steam tunnels under good old MSU, thus the connection with The Big U.
My interest in these books had nothing to do with my current interest in Lost. Imagine my surprise when they began to overlap. Egbert's obsessions look amazingly like those of Locke and Eko. The underground tunnels in both books remind me of the various hatches on the island. And in The Big U, as in Lost, the line between reality and fantasy blur. In The Big U, the underground gamers see radioactive rats the size of dobermans, there are swarms of bats in upper dorm rooms, and students take directions from electronic devices such as TV test patterns, neon logos, and box fans.
Or maybe I'm just seeing things.
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
What I’m Reading Now, Part 2
I’m about half-way done dragging myself through A Wrinkle in Time. I’m not really enjoying it.
First of all, it’s aimed at teenagers, but that doesn’t mean it has to be juvenile. I mean really, the three mysterious beings are called Mrs. Whosit, Mrs. What and Mrs. Which. The evil being is a shadow called The Black Thing (also called IT). Secondly, it’s fantasy, which I only like if it’s funny, like the Xanth series, or extremely well-done, like the Lord of the Rings movies. I didn’t even like the LOTR novels (I know, that’s almost sacrilegious.)
I can see why the producers place a copy of a Wrinkle in Time on the island in Lost. It attempts to combine science (the tessaract, a sort of worm-hole) with magic. I’m still not sure if there are magical elements in Lost or not, but it certainly seems so at times. The show explicitly delineates a distinction between science and faith. Furthermore, A Wrinkle in Time deals with time travel, as the title suggests. And it has a number of religious allegorical references, as does Lost.
I can’t really see Sawyer liking it at all. I suppose if it were the only book on the island…
First of all, it’s aimed at teenagers, but that doesn’t mean it has to be juvenile. I mean really, the three mysterious beings are called Mrs. Whosit, Mrs. What and Mrs. Which. The evil being is a shadow called The Black Thing (also called IT). Secondly, it’s fantasy, which I only like if it’s funny, like the Xanth series, or extremely well-done, like the Lord of the Rings movies. I didn’t even like the LOTR novels (I know, that’s almost sacrilegious.)
I can see why the producers place a copy of a Wrinkle in Time on the island in Lost. It attempts to combine science (the tessaract, a sort of worm-hole) with magic. I’m still not sure if there are magical elements in Lost or not, but it certainly seems so at times. The show explicitly delineates a distinction between science and faith. Furthermore, A Wrinkle in Time deals with time travel, as the title suggests. And it has a number of religious allegorical references, as does Lost.
I can’t really see Sawyer liking it at all. I suppose if it were the only book on the island…
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Madman Jack
Thought you all might enjoy this. Note that the tree was still there when I shot this video.
What I’m Reading Now, Part 1
I generally try to finish one book before starting another. However, for reasons explained below, I am currently reading “A Wrinkle in Time” by Madeleine L’Engle, and “The Big U” by Neil Stephenson. Thanks, Lynn! This post will deal mostly with Stephenson and “The Big U”. Later posts in the series will deal with a non-fiction book related to “The Big U”, with “A Wrinkle in Time”, with other Lost-related books, and with the serendipitous “con-fusion” of Stephenson and Lost.
I’m reading “A Wrinkle in Time” because Sawyer was reading it on the beach. Among other books referenced in Lost, it has plot elements directly related to the story. I’m reading “The Big U” because it is a library book, and has to be returned soon.
For those of you not familiar with Stephenson, he is a great writer. His magnum opus is the Baroque Cycle, a trilogy of long, heavy novels set in the 1600’s: “Quicksilver”, “The Confusion”, and “The System of the World”. I find myself unable to write a brief summary, so I won’t even try. (Jeff, you want to try?) Suffice it to say anybody with a liberal arts education will appreciate them. “Cryptonomicon” is a follow-up novel (though written earlier) set in the current time and in WWII. Equally fascinating. I highly recommend them all. One of the main characters in the Trilogy is Jack (hmmmm), a character to rival Locke. Other Stephenson novels I have read are Snow Crash and Zodiac. I have his most recent, Anathem, on the shelf waiting for my attention. I didn’t enjoy Zodiac as much, though still a good read. And I read Snow Crash long ago. I don’t remember much about it other than its cyberpunk-ness. Stephenson has said that, after 9-11, he decided science fiction wasn’t serious enough, so he switched to historical fiction (although his historical fiction isn’t like any historical fiction I’ve read).
Recently I became interested in the utility tunnels and sewers running under many college campuses, including Michigan State. These radiate an irresistible draw on college students, many of whom have broken into them and used them for all manner of silly and vile activities. While we were at Michigan State, a child-prodigy college student named Dallas Egbert (seriously) vanished from the campus and from the face of the Earth. The story dominated campus news for months. Theories abounded, among them that he had been playing a physically real version of Dungeons and Dragons in the tunnels, and had been killed. That turned out to be not quite true, and he was eventually found. His story is told in “The Dungeon Master” by his former attorney William Dear. I look forward to reading that after I finish “The Big U”.
“The Big U” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_U ) is set on the campus of American Megaversity, whose foundation is also riddled with tunnels and sewers. The book is a brilliant satire of life on a college campus. Written in 1984, it feels only slightly dated. Though its events occur on a large campus, graduates of Kalamazoo, Blackburn, and Illinois Wesleyan will recognize many of the groups it satirizes. Among them are the self-named Airheads (a female dorm wing), members of the Physics Club and the Computing Club who also tend to be members of Megaversity Association for Reenactments and Simulations (M.A.R.S.), the Stalinist Underground Batallion, and the Temple of the Unlimited Godhead. Stephenson ( http://web.mac.com/nealstephenson/Neal_Stephensons_Site/Old_site.html
) wrote the novel while at Boston University, on which it is not-so-loosely based. He was not proud of it, calling it “a first novel written in a hurry by a young man a long time ago." The novel had been out of print for years when Stephenson discovered that it was selling for hundreds of dollars on ebay. He reluctantly allowed it to be republished saying “the only thing worse than people reading the book was paying that much to read it”. I respectfully disagree.
I’m reading “A Wrinkle in Time” because Sawyer was reading it on the beach. Among other books referenced in Lost, it has plot elements directly related to the story. I’m reading “The Big U” because it is a library book, and has to be returned soon.
For those of you not familiar with Stephenson, he is a great writer. His magnum opus is the Baroque Cycle, a trilogy of long, heavy novels set in the 1600’s: “Quicksilver”, “The Confusion”, and “The System of the World”. I find myself unable to write a brief summary, so I won’t even try. (Jeff, you want to try?) Suffice it to say anybody with a liberal arts education will appreciate them. “Cryptonomicon” is a follow-up novel (though written earlier) set in the current time and in WWII. Equally fascinating. I highly recommend them all. One of the main characters in the Trilogy is Jack (hmmmm), a character to rival Locke. Other Stephenson novels I have read are Snow Crash and Zodiac. I have his most recent, Anathem, on the shelf waiting for my attention. I didn’t enjoy Zodiac as much, though still a good read. And I read Snow Crash long ago. I don’t remember much about it other than its cyberpunk-ness. Stephenson has said that, after 9-11, he decided science fiction wasn’t serious enough, so he switched to historical fiction (although his historical fiction isn’t like any historical fiction I’ve read).
Recently I became interested in the utility tunnels and sewers running under many college campuses, including Michigan State. These radiate an irresistible draw on college students, many of whom have broken into them and used them for all manner of silly and vile activities. While we were at Michigan State, a child-prodigy college student named Dallas Egbert (seriously) vanished from the campus and from the face of the Earth. The story dominated campus news for months. Theories abounded, among them that he had been playing a physically real version of Dungeons and Dragons in the tunnels, and had been killed. That turned out to be not quite true, and he was eventually found. His story is told in “The Dungeon Master” by his former attorney William Dear. I look forward to reading that after I finish “The Big U”.
“The Big U” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_U ) is set on the campus of American Megaversity, whose foundation is also riddled with tunnels and sewers. The book is a brilliant satire of life on a college campus. Written in 1984, it feels only slightly dated. Though its events occur on a large campus, graduates of Kalamazoo, Blackburn, and Illinois Wesleyan will recognize many of the groups it satirizes. Among them are the self-named Airheads (a female dorm wing), members of the Physics Club and the Computing Club who also tend to be members of Megaversity Association for Reenactments and Simulations (M.A.R.S.), the Stalinist Underground Batallion, and the Temple of the Unlimited Godhead. Stephenson ( http://web.mac.com/nealstephenson/Neal_Stephensons_Site/Old_site.html
) wrote the novel while at Boston University, on which it is not-so-loosely based. He was not proud of it, calling it “a first novel written in a hurry by a young man a long time ago." The novel had been out of print for years when Stephenson discovered that it was selling for hundreds of dollars on ebay. He reluctantly allowed it to be republished saying “the only thing worse than people reading the book was paying that much to read it”. I respectfully disagree.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Changes at the house
Thought you all might like to see some the changes we've made here.
I laid laminate flooring in the kitchen and hallway.
We had the livingroom carpeted.
We had the old maple tree in the play yard taken out.
Stay tuned for video of Jack romping around the old tree.
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