LOST: LeFeur

Before I get into LeFeur, I have to tell Vickie, Ryan, Cassie, and Holli that they were right about last week’s episode and the reason’s Locke tried to hang himself. I watched that scene online yesterday afternoon several times and I reached the same conclusion: Locke hanging himself not because he was depressed but because he felt that it was the only way to bring people back to the island. The whole suicide subject still stirs up powerful emotions in me and I think the first time I saw it, I put too much of my own life history into the scene. I stand corrected.

Now to this week’s episode….

Wasn’t it great?

The most intriguing part of the episode for me took place in the first minute of the show when we saw the back of the giant four-toed statue. He (or she) appears to be holding an ankh – the same symbol that was on Paul’s – the guy who was shot by the Others – necklace. (There’s a decent shot of the statue here.) This has left some to speculate if the giant statue is an Egyptian god. I’m not going to take a position on what the statue is other than it does have characteristics make it seem only part human. I anyone else has insights on the statue, chime in.

The one think I’ve sorely missed from this season’s episodes is the lack of flashbacks. And this episode gave us flashbacks. OK, they’re not the traditional flashbacks where we learn specific background about a character, but it was more of a group flashback about how they made it from point A to Point B. But I loved the way the writers seamlessly weaved the parallel stories and the theme of love and loss together.

We saw how Amy lost her husband to the Others and eventually moved on and remarried Horace. But even then, Horace is insecure whether or not Amy really got over her dead husband. Sawyer, I thought, gave a great speech to Horace about three years being plenty of time to get over someone. (For the record, it is.) I also liked the tender scene on the dock between Juliet and Sawyer. I liked the way he convinced her to stay on the island at least two more weeks and, three years later gives her the encouragement she needs when putting on the doctors’ gloves for the first time in three years.

Yet we know Sawyer still has feelings for Kate which is most likely the reason he didn’t tell Juliet where he was going at the end of the episode. Three years may be enough time to get over someone – but once that person comes back a lot of old feelings come back. It’s going to be interesting to see how the writers handle the Sawyer-Kate-Juliet feelings in the upcoming episodes.

Sadly, we have to wait two weeks to find out.

I'm Cool

It's official. I'm cool. Which is much better than being uncool.

Thanks Emilie.

LOST: The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham

I was relieved to see that Locke didn’t kill himself. When he was getting ready to hang himself I was worried that LOST was going to turn into Dead Poets Society. Had Locke actually done himself in, it would have ruined the show for me forever.

The reasons that people kill themselves are extremely complex and rarely understood. So trying to make a suicide of a major character credible in a book or on TV or the movies is extremely hard to pull off. When Locke was getting ready to hang himself I didn’t buy it. Sure, I think the writers did a good job of showing Locke’s lack of influence with all the survivors (except Sun). And I could see why he was depressed that no one could come back to the island with him? But depressed enough to be suicidal? Not by a long shot. It was completely unbelievable.

At least they somewhat saved the scene but having Ben kill him. Still, why couldn’t they just have Ben take him out in the first place? Why go through the whole suicidal thing in the first place? Why have Ben talk him down only to end up killing him? But I think everyone is going to cheer when Ben finally gets what’s coming to him.

But the episode wasn’t a complete waste. We learned a lot more about Charles Widmore, Matthew Abbadon, and the woman Locke loved. We also opened an interesting story line with the new plane crash and survivors. Apparently Lapidus didn’t disappear with Jack, Kate and the others (why?) and was able to put the plane down in one piece. And seeing Abbadon get killed through the back windshield of the car was a very cool shot.

The big two questions, of course, is why did Locke came back from the dead? And where in time are the new survivors? Back in the 1970s with Jack and the gang or are they somewhere else in time? I don’t see how the Dharma Initiative could have not sent some people over to check out the crash.

Houston: WTF?

I’ve made no secret of the fact that Marathon Girl and I would like to relocate our family to the Houston area in the next couple of years. And since the town’s always on our mind, I take the time to occasionally read about the goings on in that fair city. After the hurricane ripped through the area in September, I was proud to see that Houstonians got together, cleaned up the city and got on with their lives. And when they got a dusting of snow in December, I figured we could live with the occasional cold weather – even if the snow was one of the three things we wanted to get away from.

But then I see a story in the Houston Chronicle like this and it makes me want to reconsider all of my plans about moving out there:

Public funds to pay for private debt

Houston taxpayers could start footing the bill to help first-time homebuyers pay off debts and improve their credit scores, under a proposal before City Council this week.

The “Credit Score Enhancement Program” will give up to $3,000 in grants to individuals who are trying to qualify for mortgages through the city’s homebuyers assistance program. City officials say some applicants fall short of eligibility by only 10 or 20 points on their credit scores, and paying off some debt balances can quickly improve their numbers.

The proposal has aroused critics who say the city should not use public funds to help people pay down car loans, credit card balances, or other debts — even if the slight credit bump would help them realize the dream of home- ownership.

Read the rest of the article here.

I don’t go around asking my neighbors for money to pay off any debts I may have incurred. The last thing I want to do is to be forced to pay off the debts of someone else. Does it even occur to these politicians that maybe if people learned to pay off debts and improve their credit score on their own they just might do a better job of paying off their mortgage once they’re able to obtain one?

Idiotic programs like this are something I’d expect from cities like Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Eagle Mountain (Utah). You know, cities with politicians that don’t mind using tax payers as ATMs for just about everything.

But Houston?

Does that independent, Texas sprit not exist in the state’s largest city?

Someone please tell me this is a joke.

If not, I’ll have to consider relocating San Antonio, Dallas, or some other place in the Lone Star state that actually is run by politicians that believe in freedom and personal liberty.

LOST: 316

Kudos to the writers for providing the audience with lots of concrete answers to questions that have been hanging around the show for years. Eloise Hawking’s did a great job of explaining about the electromagnetic energy, the island time shifting, and how the island could be found from the Lamp-Post. It’s nice to know the Dharma Initiative (and the U.S. Government, apparently) didn’t happen upon the island by chance.

And speaking of the Dharma Initiative, wasn’t it great to see Jin driving those blue Dharma van? I take back what I said a few weeks ago about Jin being alive. What a perfect way for Kate, Jack, and Hurley to be greeted on their return to the island.

One thing I hadn’t thought about when Locke “fixed” the wheel inside the island was that what time he jumped everyone to when he did it. Now it looks like we’re back to the 1970s in the heyday of the Dharma Initiative. And I thought we had learned everything we could about those mysterious Dharma guys. I’m so glad I’m wrong. There’s no better way to learn about them then to have Jack, Kate, and the rest of the crew become part of it.

And I loved the way everyone – even Charlie – ended up on the plane. When the Island wants you, I guess fate finds a way of bringing everyone together. Do you hear that Desmond? Even though you’re “done with the island” I bet you end up crashing again on its shores with Penny and your kid. Sayid, Hurley, and Lapidus ended up on Ajira Airlines flight 316 even though going to the Island was the last thing they were trying to do. I bet we see you on the Island again before the season is over.

Utah's Gary Coleman Obsession II

The Utah media's morbid fixation with with Gary Colman continues.

This guy sneezes and the local media runs 2 minute news clips and front page stories about the guy. Maybe if they stop giving him attention, he'll move to another celebrity-deprived state like Iowa and start torturing the people there with his antics.

Video deposition of Gary Coleman will not be released by Janice Peterson - Daily Herald

A judge ruled Tuesday that the videotaped deposition of Gary Coleman will not be released to the public until a personal injury lawsuit against him has been settled.

Coleman's attorney, Terry Plant, argued that if the video is released, it could quickly get onto Web sites like YouTube and destroy Coleman. Judge Samuel McVey agreed that releasing the video could be harmful, but he said he worried about the likelihood of a fair trial if people in the jury pool see the deposition.

"I do not want to come in here and have the whole jury challenged off," he said.

The attorney for plaintiff Colt Rushton, Dustin Lance, objected to keeping the deposition sealed, saying the likelihood of a fair trial is the same whether the video is released or not. Many people around the county already know all about the case from media reports, and Coleman is just asking for special privileges, he said.

"We've got an uphill battle," Lance said. "This case has already been tried in the media."

Read the rest of the article here.

Imitation: The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Our kids are napping and I’m taking advantage of a couple hours of quiet time to finish the last chapter in my novel. I feel eyes on me and look at the door to the bedroom and see my four-year-old son standing there. He always had a hard time napping on my days off. He’d much rather play with Dad then nap.

I tell him he needs to nap. He shakes his head and climbs up on the bed with me. He watches me write for a few minutes and asks if he can use Marathon Girl’s laptop.

“Sure,” I tell him. If he’s not going to nap, he might as well stay busy.

I get Marathon Girl’s laptop and start it up for him. He knows how to login to the kids account we have set up on there and start the games he likes to play so I go back to my writing.

A minute later I feel eyes on me again. I look at him then at the computer screen. He’s not playing games.

“Why aren’t you playing games?” I ask.

“I don’t want to play games,” he says.

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to write. I want to write like you.”

I smile and show him how to open Word. He begins “typing” then looks at me for approval.

“You’re writing really good,” I tell him.

He smiles and I return to my book.

A couple minutes later I feel a tug on my sleeve.

“Look,” he says.

I look at the screen. All by himself he’s figured out how to change the font, size, and color of the type. There’s a ton of green and red text of different sizes across the screen.

“Wow. That’s really good,” I tell him.

He smiles.

“What are you writing?” I ask

“A book,” he says.

“What’s it about?”

“I can’t tell you until it’s done.”

I give him a hug and we both go back to writing.

In another 30 minutes I’ll be done with my novel. Then I’ll tell my four-year-old what it’s about.

I hope he’ll tell me what his book’s about too.

LOST: This Place is Death

Did the writers really have to kill Charlotte so soon? I was hoping to learn more about her first. A series of flashbacks would have been nice. You know, something that would give the viewer more of sense of why she was so determined to find the island again and why her mom took her off the island again. Instead all we get is this story about how she grew up on the island and how Faraday may have warned her as kid not to come back. Since the writers have generally done a good job fleshing out even minor characters in the past, I was a little disappointed that we never got a really good sense of who Charlotte was. Who was her father, after all? Hopefully they don’t take out the Ghostbusters before we can learn a little more about him.

But learning more about the smoke monster was cool – even if Rousseau told us way back in Season 1 that it was a security system. At least we know that it’s guarding the temple now. And the temple seems to be the last structure on the island that we haven’t seen yet and it was the place that Ben told the Others to flee for safety. I’m looking forward to seeing more of it.

Even though I was left wanting when it comes to Rousseau’s story, it was nice to see them tie up the story she told Sayid back in Season 1 about her lover, Robert, not noticing the firing pin was missing on the gun. (Remember when Sayid pointed the rifle at her and pulled the trigger only to have it not fire?) And now we got to see it. Little tie-ins like that really make me appreciate the detail the writers adhere to when writing this show. Of course we need to know more about why the heck happened to those guys that made Rousseau think they were “infected.” Hopefully we get to see more of Rousseau’s story before the wrap up the show.

And isn’t Ben just a killer character. The more he manipulates people, the more I can’t stand the guy. But he really is becoming the central character since his actions seem to determine the what everyone else does. I just hope he gets what’s coming to him by the time the show comes to an end next year.

A Street Fighter Named Abel

See the above picture?

That’s me.

Well, not the real me. It a new character in Street Fighter IV named Abel.

Wikipedia describes Abel as “a French mixed martial artist. He is described as an amnesiac, a "man with no past" looking to defeat surviving members of Shadaloo.”

So it’s not exactly me.

I’m not French. I don’t have blonde hair.

But he’s built like me. And he has all my trademark fighting moves.

So it’s close enough.

Watch me take out Gouki in the video below.

LOST: The Little Prince

I was a little bummed to see that Jin was alive. It’s nothing personal. I think he’s a wonderfully engaging, complex character. My worry is that the writers are losing control of the story. Why was Jin able to survive the explosion and end back up in 1988 when Rousseau came to the island? The ship he was on was way outside the time radius of the island. If he’s alive, does that mean Michael’s still alive? And are we going to have three storylines (Jin and Rousseau, the Oceanic Six, and the time shifting island survivors) instead of two? That’s simply going to make the show even more difficult to follow.

The writers have opened a huge can of worms with this. If they don’t have a good explanation for it all, I’ll be very disappointed. I hope they didn’t do it just to make it easy play to get Sun back. That’s what the preview for next week’s episode made it look like anyway. If that’s the only reason then the writers are getting lazy.

And what effect will this have on Sun? She’s become such an extremely resourceful and calculating person since Jin died and I’ve really liked how she’s changed. I worry that bringing Jin back will simply put Sun back into the role she played before he was thought to have died.

The cool thing about Jin being back is that we can finally learn the back story of Danielle Rousseau and what happened to her group. That’s a story I’ve wanted to see for years. I’m hoping her story will shed some light on the numbers, the smoke monster, how Ben ended up with her child, and a few of the other mysterious aspects of the island.

***

Here’s a LOST conspiracy theory that me and a co-worker were throwing around this morning. Three of the survivors on the island are getting nosebleeds: Charlotte, Miles, and Juliet. According to Faraday, their nosebleeds and sickness correlates to how long they’ve been on the island. We know that Juliet’s been on the island for several years and it’s kind of assumed that Charlotte was born there. Miles however seems very surprised that his nose is bleeding and says he’s only been on the island a short time to which Faraday replies, “Are you sure?” and he says it in such a way that implies that he knows that Miles has been on the island longer than he knows.

Our theory is that Miles is the son of Dr. Pierre Chang. You know, the guy in all the Dharma Initiative videos. He was born on the island but, for whatever reason, left when he was little. (Remember that the first scene in the episode “Because You Left” shows Chang’s wife waking him up and telling was his turn to take care of the kid. The fact he was born on the island (if he’s Chang’s kids) would go a long way in explaining the reason he can apparently sense dead people and why he’s getting the nosebleeds.

What say you?