Some of you have been grumbling for this, so here ya go. I have no idea when the show is, so I thought I would get this thread up now.
I will be icing my shoulder.
This post is in: Open Threads, Television
Some of you have been grumbling for this, so here ya go. I have no idea when the show is, so I thought I would get this thread up now.
I will be icing my shoulder.
Comments are closed.
Dave C
Thank you! :)
MikeJ
Here open thread…thready thready thready!
I’ll go make some fliers. We’ll find this thread.
Joseph Nobles
Ah, great, a thread to keep avoiding. I can’t watch my recording until much later tonight (0230 Eastern at the very earliest).
Comrade Luke
You know what I’d like to see here at old Balloon Juice?
One full day of dedication to the Gulf oil spill that matches the attention given to Rand fucking Paul and the liberfuckingtarians. And I say that having learned a TON from that conversation.
I’m issuing a challenge to the posters here to do some reading, put in some thought, and share the issues you think are important with us we can discuss them.
The administration isn’t doing it. The media isn’t doing it. BP sure as fuckall isn’t doing it.
Make Monday Oil Spill Monday. Accept the challenge!
Maybe the lib blogs could coordinate on this topic for one day.
Because it’s that important.
ETA: It would be great to coordinate Left Blogistan on this and show it’s worth more than pushing dollars to candidates. Maybe it will embolden action in other areas.
PurpleGirl
According to the TV schedule at Road Runner, Lost is on now and for the rest of the night it looks like. Since I’ve not watched it at all, I will skip it and watch other things. One of my guilty pleasures is Hoarders. My activity tonight is preparing for two computer classes at the public library tomorrow.
John: why are you icing the shoulder? Is it the shoulder you had surgery on? What did you overdo?
RSR
FYI: 7PM (ET) – 9PM is recap; 9PM (ET) – 11:30PM is finale.
dmsilev
Too many twists and turns for me; I gave up years ago. Instead, a DVD of Ratatouille is cued up in the player, waiting for the popcorn to finish popping.
dms
Brachiator
What I find amazing is that Lost is being shown in the UK at 5 am (which is 9pm ET) so that British viewers can see it at the same time as American audiences, minimizing spoilage.
Even the freakin’ Olympics were tape delayed.
I predict a spike of absenteeism in the UK come Monday.
arguingwithsignposts
@Comrade Luke:
I’ve been following The Oil Drum recently, and I don’t understand nearly enough about the process, but it’s been a good place to keep abreast of everything.
And yeah, the Paulapalooza was a little much, but understandable given this is, ostensibly, a political blog.
Alex K
@Comrade Luke:
There was a thread about Rand al-Thor fucking Paul Atreides and I fucking missed it? No one tells me ANYTHING around here!
bkny
a little chicken humor:
Chicken costumes banned at Nevada polling places after Lowden’s chicken quip
MARTIN GRIFFITH
AP News
May 23, 2010 11:43 EDT
Voters dressed in chicken costumes won’t be allowed inside Nevada polling places this year.
State election officials on Friday added chicken suits to the list of banned items after weeks of ridicule directed at Republican Senate candidate Sue Lowden.
debit
@Comrade Luke: Really? It’s dominating the rec list at GOS every time I go there. And I’m pretty sure the administration isn’t sitting around with their thumbs up their butts and hoping that the oil will just run out. What would you have them do? Announce every hour on the hour that it’s a clusterfuck, it’s getting worse and they can’t stop it?
@thread: I wondered this morning why I’d stopped putting in a garden every year. Now I remember why. Ow, ow and also ow.
Martin
@Comrade Luke:
I vote for this as well.
Josie
@debit: That’s why you do raised beds and mulch. The combination is great. I am over sixty and have a bad hip, and even I can grow stuff in raised beds. You just add a little more soil and compost each year and plant your own seedlings, add mulch and water carefully. That and planting some things in pots are the bomb.
Mike Kay
maybe the blogosphere can show unity by changing their collective colors to black (crude oil).
arguingwithsignposts
@Martin:
Not to put a damper on things, but there is not a damned thing we can do about this oil fuck up. We can throw up our hands, bu there seriously isn’t much we can do (aside from donate and/or volunteer for cleanup duty).
Rand Paul is a politician on dry land, running for office. The BP oil spill is a mile under the surface of the GOM. While the FPers could post till their heart’s content, the content of such posts would basically amount to “we can’t do anything.”
This has been going on for over a month, and I’ve been watching the gulf coast I grew up on get destroyed. BJ won’t make a difference. Seriously.
Mothra
:) LOST :)
I’ve loved the whole series. :)
Martin
@debit:
Yeah, but most of those diaries have been about James Carville, why the scientists are wrong about the response, why the Coast Guard is a puppet of BP, and why Obama is as bad as Bush and has yet to accomplish a single thing since coming into office.
Martin
@arguingwithsignposts: I don’t expect to make a difference, but I guess my thought was more along the lines of – what information is everyone finding on where the oil is going, what would be a reasonable adjustment to offshore drilling policy, what do we think the longer-term consequence to drill-baby-drill will be politically, junk like that.
We can’t do shit, really, but there’s stuff out there to learn, ideas to ruminate on. Cole’s last post was contrasting the state of the airline industry from pre-price regulation to now. Personally I think that swung from over-regulated to under-regulated and never even touched a middle ground. I wonder what a middle ground on oil drilling regulation would look like, which is actually a topical question if the MMS is going to be reformed. Fuck, I’d like to invite the libertarians over for a defense of why the industry shouldn’t get the regulatory shackles put on them, and how the hell the free market could have any bearing on something like this at all.
Mike in NC
Bad weather here is ruining the “Lost” retrospective. Either the picture signal or the audio keep crapping out periodically. Wife is ready to pull her hair out.
arguingwithsignposts
@Martin: fair enough. that’s going on at The Oil Drum. There is no way BJ can match that. So my question is, why bother?
perhaps there should be an FP resources post, but really, it’s not in this blog’s wheelhouse to spend so much time on the peak oil/energy issue.
MikeJ
The only way I can stand the Sunday morning bobbleheads is with CoT’s translations. I just read something mind blowingly stupid in his “transcript”. I realise it’s humour, but it was so stupid that I could actually visualise it being said:
Woodward: why don’t they call Google to fix the oil spill?
Was it actually said? And if so, why can’t we get better media? And if not, why is it so believable that it would be?
fordpowers
LOST: As Summarized By Cats
Polish the Guillotines
Cocktail hour. What are you drinking (WAYD)?
Ritz-Bijou. No curacao in the house, so I subbed with Cointreau. It’s like a dry martini with an orangey sweetness. The citrus of the Cointreau and the herbal/floral notes in the gin complement each other well.
QuaintIrene
Moi, aussi. I stopped watching mid-way thru the third season. Too much WTF?
John, I was wondering how the shoulder was doing, specially after the posts about all your outdoor work.
PurpleGirl
@fordpowers: LOL. I will defer to others as to the accuracy of this, but it was funny.
TR
I can’t believe the whole show was a dream of Walt’s.
Oh, sorry — spoiler alert.
Laura W.
@fordpowers:
Is that what that kitty said?
That just made my day.
I’ve never seen one episode, and I regret it not, but I just knew there would be something of worth in this thread if I held on.
I can only imagine how funny that must be to those of you who have actually watched Lost all these
decadesyears.Litlebritdifrnt
I am proud to say that I have absolutely no clue what “Lost” is. Is it some sort of TV show?
Davis X. Machina
Those are the moderates. Here is a real Democrat:
.
Comrade Luke has already gotten what he wished for, just not here. It’s a big blogosphere.
SIA
@bkny: I posted this earlier and didn’t get a peep. I’m not squawking about it though. (heehee)
kommrade reproductive vigor
Lost is the spin off of the Survivor shows, right?
freelancer (itouch)
Thank you John.
Happy dance!
frosty
@arguingwithsignposts:
That’s where I’ve been getting my news as well. The posts are good, but the real value is in the commenters who’ve been working in the industry for decades.
SIA
@MikeJ: The Stupid was Strong on MTP today. I haven’t watched in a while, and I wanted to see how they were going to handle Randy Paul’s defection. Clearly DG’s feefees were hurt. Then he went back to his usual dreadful schtick. Ugh. He’s bad. Really bad.
Here’s the best way to get a recap on the Sunday shows: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/23/tv-soundoff-sunday-talkin_n_586342.html
Yes, it’s HuffPo, but J. Linkins is funny.
arguingwithsignposts
@frosty:
Yeah, agreed. Many of the posts are just an opportunity to read the comments. Another example of why comments are worth the effort.
Linda Featheringill
@Comrade Luke:
A day devoted to the oil spill would be neat.
I’ll continue to keep up with The Oil Drum so maybe I can add something substantive to the discussion.
Good idea!
[happy face] :-)
Ash Can
“Lost?” Meh. After today’s Blackhawks game, everything else on the teevee is just anticlimactic.
frosty
@MikeJ:
Oh, fuck me, did Woodward really say that? Are these journalamists so stupid they don’t understand the difference between computer science, programming, geology, and petrochemical engineering? Like, it’s all (finger quotes) technology (close quotes) it’s all the same dreary shit I couldn’t quite manage in 10th grade.
I despair. I’m moving to India where they actually appreciate engineers. We’re led and lied to by a bunch of dumb fucks.
Mike Kay
American born Al Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki appeared on tee vee today calling for the murder of US civilians, saying bombing airliners and killing hundreds of civilians is “merely a drop of water in the sea.”
Tell me why hippies are more concerned about this mass murder’s civil rights than the lives of his innocent victims?
.
Linda Featheringill
@Martin: Talking about the oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
We can’t do anything about Rand Paul, either. Or Hamsher. Or libertarians. Or people who get paid for writing stuff that is much worse than what we write. Or who wins at ball games. Or Morning Joe. Or. Or. . . . .
We know we are just talking.
But most of us don’t have the hots for Mr. Paul and therefore he has not disappointed us and so we have no desire to continue wailing and gnashing our teeth.
Brian J
@PurpleGirl:
That show is absolutely horrifying. My mother loves it and watches it without realizing she’s just a few steps away from being as bad. Okay, maybe not a few steps, but she’s definitely one of the least organized people on the planet, and a horrible pack rat to boot.
Vincent Vega
I went out to a bar in Houston yesterday with some friends to watch the Champions League final and it was really crowded. We were pretty pumped until we realized that the bar was hosting a Lost trivia contest and 90% of the people were there for that and not the soccer. After Inter’s second goal, we started yelling out “Locke!” every time a question was asked. The Lost fans near us were scowling…
Davis X. Machina
@Mike Kay:
I missed the trial. Link, please.
schrodinger's cat
I am totally lost on this thread, since I have never seen Lost. BTW how is Tunch? The last Tunch sighting was when he was all tied up at the vet’s. Poor baby, hope he has recovered from the horrible traumatic experience.
Grilled some chicken today and made chicken tacos and guacamole, was delicious!
Brian J
@Vincent Vega:
“Lost” fans are nearly as annoying as fans of “Buffy/Angel/Alias” or any other (relative) cult show out there, but not quite there just yet. They do seem to be more fun to mess with, though.
D-Chance.
@Comrade Luke: Only if we’re allowed to post .jpegs of Mohammed with it…
In the meantime, not-yet-a-senator Rand is getting waaaaay too much attention. So much so that Sarah! is now making, “Hey, this is supposed to be about MEEEEEeeee!” statements.
Keith G
@Mike Kay:
I feel ya.
Maybe we can get Rand Paul to club that fucker to death with a weed whacker then dump his body into the Gulf of Mexico.
Mike Kay
@Davis X. Machina: perfect hippie logic: killing bin laden would be wrong because he’s innocent (no trial)/ killing Reinhard Heydrich was wrong because he was innocent (no trial).
Monkeyfister
There was a series of massive blowouts at the BP Oil Disaster site today. I live-blogged them through the entire day. The “live” SpillCam is just a loop right now. I have a screengrab of the last view of the most recent eruption of utter chaos. Bad, bad things happened down there today.
http://monkeyfister.blogspot.com/2010/05/major-change-down-below.html
–mf
D-Chance.
@debit:
Oh, I don’t know… how about telling BP to either fix it yesterday, or lose the fucking company because we’re freezing all assets in the US, pending complete and satisfactory clean-up of their mess? And how about doing that three weeks ago instead of just now sending out a few scrubs to give it a look-see (yep, it’s still there, allllrighty)?
O-bots can spin all they want, but their boy has a definite excretory stench on his thumb from its willful placement for the past few weeks. The one time the country actually needed a freaking commie leftist, and he went on a “let the market work itself out” binge…
Davis X. Machina
Bad, bad things happened down there today.
And Obama did them all.
It remains to be determined, however, whether he did them on his own, or at the behest of BP.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Never watched it. In fact, I’m here on the left coast at 7:07 PDT, I’ve just watched two minutes of the “pregame show”, and that’s the most Lost I’ve ever watched. I dunno, seems about as pointless and uninteresting as an episode of Seinfeld. But I didn’t like the recent Star Trek movie either, so what do I know.
Zuzu's Petals
@Martin:
No fair. I’ll be in flight all day.
Martin
@Monkeyfister: Wow, that’s really interesting. I’m looking at the CNN video but so far it’s difficult to tell what’s going on. The CNN video isn’t the same as the BP video, however. Do you know why they’re different?
Martin
@D-Chance.: If you freeze all assets, how are they supposed to either pay for the cleanup or cap the leak? Did you give your idea any thought whatsoever?
Zuzu's Petals
@arguingwithsignposts:
Yes, I’ve followed The Oildrum regularly. The posters are really knowledgeable, as are many of the commenters. Unfortunately a few blowhards signed up just to shout their “political” views in the comments, so you have to sort through a little more opinion to get to the helfpful info. Still worth it, though.
frankdawg
@Martin:
So you want to talk about the oil spill but you don’t want to mention that the government isn’t protecting us, that BP isn’t being honest and does not really know what it is doing, that the Coast Guard has not acted in the best interest of the country . . . so what would you want to discuss? What shade of brown the shit we are in is?
D-Chance.
@arguingwithsignposts:
By that standard, Cole should just shut down completely. After all, for every post he or his pee-ons make, there’s someone else out there more qualified on the subject chosen for comment…
Zuzu's Petals
@Monkeyfister:
Oh crap.
debit
@Josie: Well, now you tell me after everything’s in. :) Actually this is probably my last summer in this place (I hope) so the raised beds will have to wait until next year.
@D-Chance.: You know what? I am sick and tired of the Obot bullshit. Seriously fucking sick of it. I don’t participate in political discussion here, so you have no idea what my feelings are toward Obama. And frankly, they shouldn’t matter because the facts are your “solutions” don’t address the problem, they are the retaliatory but accomplish nothing cowboy type antics I’d expect from a teabagger. Freeze their assets? Sure, that’ll make ’em want to do something about that spill that they probably don’t even think about anymore. Jesus Christ.
Mike Kay
@frankdawg:
Is this a new form of “truther”? Obama and Biden were behind the
9/11attacksoil spill?I know naderites like to say they’re part of a reality based community, but that said, dailykos has had to ban a ton of
naderitestruthers over the years for saying Bush/MI6/Mosad were behind the london, Madrid, and US attacks.Martin
@frankdawg: Did I say any of those things? Or did I point out that freezing the assets of the company that you are dependent on to fix this problem (like it or not) is counterproductive. I have no objection to punishing BP. Fuck, I’m okay treating them like Iran at this point and booting their fucking ass out of the country entirely, but doing that *before* the leak is capped is idiotic.
Is the government protecting us? No. The voters don’t want them to in this particular circumstance. Remember drill baby drill? The public has consistently (though clearly not unanimously) stated that they trust the oil industry to largely police themselves. The public has consistently also stated they don’t want taxpayer dollars to bail out the failures of industry. What’s the difference between the Coast Guard paying for the cleanup and TARP, fundamentally?
Where is your evidence that the Coast Guard isn’t acting in the best interest of the country? Because they and the Army Corps were there meanies that said that a sand berm would take 6 months to build and that maybe instead of fixating on that solution we should think of something that would be completed before all the oil had moved entirely into the marshes?
Is BP being honest? Sometimes, sometimes not. BP can be trusted to always act in BPs interests. So long as lying to us is in their interests, we can trust them to do that. The goal is to change that relationship, either through public backlash or legal/regulatory means so that lying to us *isn’t* in their best interests.
D-Chance.
As a follow-up, congrats to Sarah!. Oil spill? Rand-mania/phobia? Who cares, she claims the top three blurbs on Memeorandum right now.
We are all now followers of the political world’s Kate Gosselin…
arguingwithsignposts
@D-Chance.: Oh, grow the fuck up. It’s one thing to spend a lot of time talking about libertarianism – which doesn’t exist in the known world – and quite another to discuss BOPs and “top kills” and the like with any sort of technical knowledge. Read the threads at The Oil Drum. If you think BJ could approach the levels of mathematical, engineering, and oil industry analysis, then by all means step right up.
Bostondreams
@Davis X. Machina:
i love the suggestion that Obama should have nationalized British Petroleum. Yeah, that would fly.
Vincent Vega
So is Lost over yet? what happened? I watched season 1 and that was it…
D-Chance.
The Great Shame.
Can’t say that I disagree with much of anything Daou writes.
But, hey, Lost is on! And Raaaaand…
/rolls eyes.
arguingwithsignposts
@D-Chance.:
God-fucking-damn. Just because people aren’t marching in the streets doesn’t mean they aren’t angry. Because street protests mean so much (see, for example, the immigration marches of recent vintage). Also, let’s get peter daou up in the house answering this question: What the FUCK more could he do? I’m sorry, but this is not Katrina. And fuckers who keep spouting bullshit about how Obama should be a Truman on this thing are fucking morans.
/rant
fucen tarmal
i think i made it start to finish without ever watching a moment of lost. its soccer to me
MikeJ
@Vincent Vega: Tommy Westphall dreamed it all.
kay
@D-Chance.:
You must not have read the “action items”
2) Declare British Petroleum in violation of its lease and kick them off the site. Threaten to seize all American assets of BP-America immediately if they do not assist in setting up a claims system which will be administered and overseen by the U.S. and paid by BP. (Hire all those poor Sallie Mae folks who were going to lose their jobs because of student loan reform for this purpose. /snark)
How are they going to go to BP for compensation if they kick them off the site of the clean-up, D-Chance?
Tell me how that works. BP will be barred from the site but completely liable for anything that happens after they get “kicked off”?
Are they going to leave their equipment, or are we seizing that, too?
I think BP would probably love it if the federal government took claim on this disaster, D-Chance. You-all might want to think that plan through.
Even for Fire Dog Lake, that’s stupid.
frankdawg
@Martin:
You implied you were tired of hearing those things on GOS so I was wondering what it was you did want to discuss. Sorry if I misunderstood you.
And it looks like we have a hot contender for the “Brick Head Bill – HEY LOOK AT ME I’M AN ASSHOLE SAYING STUPID SHIT” award up there. And Mikey (I assume the K stands for krap for brains) this is the last time I intend to respond to you. Go back to searching for scheisse porn and leave the nice people here alone.
Kobie
@Vincent Vega: Same here. I got about three or four episodes into season two before I couldn’t figure out what the fuck was happening.
mcd410x
“A dingo ate my baby”
Aw, I miss BTVS.
kay
@D-Chance.:
Now that we’ve kicked BP off the site, and they go merrily on their way, heaving a huge sigh of relief, and the federal government assumes full responsibility for the crisis, what happens?
Who do you think pays? Not BP. We revoked their lease and kicked them off the site!
Jesus. Why not just bail them out directly?
Linda Featheringill
11:22 p.m. EDT.
http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/homepage/STAGING/local_assets/bp_homepage/html/rov_stream.html
It looks to me like there is a lot of stuff rolling out of there.
robertdsc
If you need to ask, then our system has already failed. But just for laughs, can you name a single victim of his? Can you persuade a judge to deliver an arrest warrant and indictment? Can you get a conviction in a state that has a death penalty? Can you persuade a judge that what he’s doing meets the standard of treason as defined in the Constitution?
That’s what our system is supposed to do. Go through the whole process and get things on paper.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Shill Baby Shill!
ajr22
Lost ends, and I still don’t know even the most basic questions about the island. I guess that was kinda expected though, but wtf?
RedKitten
Damn you, Abrams.
I am STILL really fucking confused.
meh
they are all dead. the sideways flash was them finding each other in the afterlife.
NobodySpecial
So, did it end with Ed Begley, Jr. in the shower?
Todd
My catch phrase for the next 24 hours: Thanks to Hulu, I waited only < six months instead of six years for that bullshit.
asiangrrlMN
I watched one and a half eps of Lost (two seasons later) because my brother really liked the show. That’s an hour-and-a-half of my time I will NEVER GET BACK.
/still bitter
Twasn’t me who broke the thread! Honest!
Vincent Vega
That ending sucked! I mean, Tony is just sitting there with his family, and fucking Meadow is taking forever to park the fucking car and that creepy guy in the fucking Members Only jacket is lurking around and it just fades to black! WTF?
Oh wait…
Brien Jackson
That was horrible.
Mike Kay
that was the GREATEST FUCKING ENDING EVAH!
a new high water mark in television history.
in case you missed it. (spoiler alert – it will knock your socks off)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0&feature=related
Yutsano
Bleah. Count me among those who care not one whit for Lost. I’m focusing more on the fact that I get cut open at 5:30 am tomorrow. First question for the doctor: did you have coffee this morning?
asiangrrlMN
@Yutsano: Um, would you want that to be a yes or no? I can see the pitfalls either way. So, you will not be up late tonight. RIGHT?? (Intimidating fake-wife glare here).
Felanius Kootea (formerly Salt and freshly ground black people)
@Linda Featheringill: I’m seeing a frozen video link right now (9:02 PDT).
@Yutsano: Good luck with the surgery. From my experience, surgeons are usually bright-eyed at work by 4 a.m. I’d be more worried about an afternoon or evening surgery.
freelancer (itouch)
I am so fucking pissed and disappointed.
I was elated and satisfied, up until a certain point. Then I was seething. I’m still a bit pissed. Goddamnit.
Might as well as had Patrick Duffy on the other side of the door to greet Christian.
So much for liberal Hollywood bias.
JGabriel
Yutsano:
Are you sure you want the answer to that? If I were the doctor, my reply would be, “Would you rather hear that I’m sleepy or shaky?”
Which probably explains why I never pursued a career in medicine.
Good luck with your surgery.
.
Hawes
I like the fact they never explained exactly what the Island was. Honestly, is there an explanation that would have satisfied anyone?
The Island is what has to be protected.
Ironically, the ending was a bit ripped off from the movie “Jacob’s Ladder”
Coincident? Methinks not.
Ash
I stopped watching the show around season 3 sometime when it just got to be too exhausting. It’s disappointing that they went in some lame religious mumbo-jumb direction.
Mike Kay
USA Today is calling it the greatest finale ever – “a truly great show”.
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/reviews/2010-05-24-lostreview24_ST_N.htm
fucen tarmal
gee, you mean lost fans feel jerked around by the ending?
what? you expected they would come up with something to explain everything?
i’m sure there are 7000 pages of production notes somewhere that outline all the crap the writers were supposed to keep in mind as they developed the characters and the story.
maybe they will sell them to you in multi-book form, some time around christmas, for the next few years.
chase ended the sopranos the right way, the only way a tv series that is based on the characters keeping going can, the characters keep going with out you…
Anne Laurie
@Yutsano: Best wishes for your surgery. By all means, stop back tomorrow & let us know how things worked out!
Sentient Puddle
I, for one, am pretty satisfied with the ending. Yeah, they didn’t go into overdrive explaining various mysteries and shit, but honestly, who realistically expected that? They picked up on the big plot threads, and mostly followed through with them to the end.
There’s only one real thing I could nitpick at, but meh. Not worth trying at this point.
Martin
@Yutsano: Good luck with the surgery. These things always feel much worse going in than coming out, in my experience. Don’t forget to tip your nurse!
Martin
We find out that the Island is Luke’s father?
tonyatlas
Blatant ripoff of the Sixth Sense. Now I have the pleasure of going into work and hear people talk about how great the ending was. Bullshit. So exactly when did these people die, and why all the nonsense about the Island needing to be saved? I will probably have to sleep on this but this and BSG are duking it out for Worst….Ending….Ever!
Yutsano
Thanks y’all. I promise not to be up too much later (as I have to be up at 4 am, yuck!) and I’m getting a ton of reassurance from freelancer on my phone, so I’m gonna be good and calm about it. I promise to report in tomorrow with the results, as long as I’m not too loopy. :)
Bnut
Guess I came in late on this one. Apparently BJ is full of Lost haters.
Chuck Butcher
@Yutsano:
Best to you.
Yutsano
@Bnut: No hate here, just indifference after I missed the first episode and I realized that I’d have no clue WTF was happening after that point. For those that enjoy enjoy, if not, well, it is an open thread after all.
Mike Kay
@Bnut: they only hate L0sT because Obama wrote the ending.
scav
@Bnut: well, the what the hell is Lost contingent don’t have a lot to say and/or contribute, honestly. Not that it should slow anybody down, not this lot anyhoo.
Good luck Yutsano — posting while too loopy would be a definite draw in my subsector of the universe.
jl
Good luck to Yutsano tomorrow morning.
As for Lost, never saw it and have no interest. It dawned on me that it was not a reality show sometime ago. And then I became aware it was a fiction story about all the weird mysterious stuff that happened on this island. And those has been the only time I can remember thinking about it.
Did they go all it was all a dream, Jacob’s Ladder, Incident at Owl Creek, Bob Newhart Show dream finale on the poor viewers’ asses for the last episode? My sympathies if that is the case.
A more appropriate ending would be me getting whatever hot chicks are on the show. That would been sorta deus ex machina since who the hell am I and why should any of the veiwers care? But hot chicks on mysterious islands… hey, I am in on that, so I would have found that to be a perfectly satisfying ending.
JGabriel
I think Whedon got serialization right with BtVS: Tell a story each season and finish it. That way, if the series finale is a little weak, as Buffy’s was, then the audience at least doesn’t feel cheated for watching every season, most of which ended coherently, just a little disappointed with the last.
.
Bnut
I will freely admit that Lost is unfollowable to anyone who does not keep up. How is this different than MASH, Friends, etc? Lots of followers, lots of story lines that need to be resolved?
Yutsano
FL is chiding me to get to bed, so I’d better comply with that order. I’ll check in with positive news on the morrow.
robertdsc
Best of luck, Yutsano.
mclaren
While everyone is nattering about trivia like the Lost series finale or that picayune little BP oil spill, it’s heartening to see that our mainstream media are on top of the really important stories of the week:
Actual headline. Source: Washington Post.
jl
As for whether Obama should be considere a hero or a traitor to the liberal / progressive cause, and what evidence his behavior during the BP spill provides, I have a ready answer: I do not know.
Krugman says actions indicate the corporations that were so coddled under Bush II hate Obama’s guts:
“…the campaign contributions of commercial banks — traditionally Republican-leaning, but only mildly so. So far this year, according to The Washington Post, 63 percent of spending by banks’ corporate PACs has gone to Republicans, up from 53 percent last year. Securities and investment firms, traditionally Democratic-leaning, are now giving more money to Republicans. And oil and gas companies, always Republican-leaning, have gone all out, bestowing 76 percent of their largess on the G.O.P.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/opinion/24krugman.html
I’m not sure why anti-Obama progressives and GOP reactionaries think it is a good idea to blame the WH for not stopping what may well be an unstoppable oil spill, even by the all the petroleum industry and engineering experts in the world put together.
I do have serious questions about why more was not done to protect the Louisana coast.
Vast waves of fresh and toxic gooey oil are fouling hundreds of miles of the Gulf Coast.
Why, it is almost as if there had been vast waves, plumes and rivers of fresh and toxic gooey oil traveling under the water all these weeks. Why, perhaps, in some possible universe, BP has been lying, behaving in an uncooperative and dishonest way, and continuing to engage in conveniently very gross negligence in the hope they could minimize liability for the damages, if maybe they could hide the size of the spill.
Hoocoodanode?
scav
well, for those others from the united union of frumps (go team!) with nothing better to do, one could always scan the non-fashion pages to catch up on the cozy little friends Israel cuddled with. Revealed: how Israel offered to sell South Africa nuclear weapons and a bit more on a marriage of convenience and military might.
Martin
@Bnut: Truly serialized shows are new. Friends and lost had story arcs, but the show never seriously assumed prior knowledge.
The first truly serialized show I remember was The Prisoner, then Twin Peaks. Granted, in those even if you kept up you barely knew what the fuck was going on, but if you missed a show, you were boned. I’ve seen pretty much every MASH and Star Trek but I’ve hardly seen any in order. I can more-or-less pieces the series together in my head without much trouble. It’d be a lot harder with a BSG or 24 where characters show up with no lead-in, and it’s critical to know *who* they are. Joey’s relationship to the rest of the crew was never all that material to getting the punchline in Friends.
Once DVRs and series on DVD hit, full serialization has become a standard feature of dramas, and the writers can largely give up trying to carry the viewer along. They treat it much more like a 26 hour long movie.
srv
I think in the future that people will feel as embarrassed about watching Lost as they do when they see pics of themselves in bell-bottoms.
Martin
@jl: I don’t think anyone was hiding that. The whole point of injecting the dispersants directly into the leak flow was to get the oil to form an emulsion with the water and try and hold it down deep where it wouldn’t get caught in the loop current or foul animals closer to the surface. I don’t think this was any great secret. If the oil can sit still down there, over weeks and months bacteria will break it down and it won’t do too much harm.
The downside to the plan is that when some of that stuff hits the surface it’s not a thin slick but like a 6″ thick mat of snot.
Of course, that’s all too boring and technical for the media to write or talk about, but did you hear that Elena Kagan doesn’t like to cross her legs and the elections last Tuesday was armageddon for Democrats?
scav
@scav: oh, and a belated, all hail to Tom Lehrer — Who’s Next from 1966.
Bnut
@Martin:
I’m not sure I see how a very long movie is a worse alternative to a series you can just pick up wherever. An episode of ‘Frasier’ at 2am and an episode of Lost are apples and oranges. They both have their place. Is a series that requires prior knowledge somehow inferior?
Martin
@Bnut: No, I wasn’t suggesting that. More, it was to point out that true serialized shows were almost impossible to market before DVRs.
10 years ago if you missed an episode you were fucked. There was no way to watch it before the next one aired. If you were really diligent you could set up your VCR to record it, but you could probably only support 1-2 shows per week like that. But with DVRs, online viewing, on-demand, and season DVDs so you can catch up an entire missed season, it’s not unreasonable to do it.
Personally, I like long story arcs. I don’t much care for a series of one-off episodes, so I like the new format.
Jenny
@jl: Perfect. all this online hysterical crap accusing Obama of being a corporatist. Funny how the actual corporations don’t feel that way and contribute to the incompetent likes of Boehner. But hell, the WATB protesters need a boogeyman, real or made of straw.
Seanly
@Sentient Puddle:
Thank you.
The island was the McGuffin – it doesn’t matter what it was or why or what Dharma Initiative was doing or why the hatch kept getting Dharma food drops (with new washing machine) 20 years after The Others killed off the real Dharma folks.
In the end it was about the characters. The geek fodder of we-want-to-know-how-they-can-go-faster-than-light wasn’t the point of the show. I wanted answers too, but now I see that they don’t matter. What was important was that I cared for the characters and enjoyed the journey.
justme
What. A. Baww-fest.
I still liked it, but wow. They pulled out all the stops.
Joel
Imagine if the Wire handled their finale like Lost.
Just imagine.
MTiffany
“Those were Jacob’s rules.” I loved the look on Hurley’s face.
“Dharma” Initiative, indeed. If you don’t get your happy ending in this life…
Martin
A friend of mine was a writer for the show Melrose Place (it was a job) and when they finally rolled around to ending that show his idea was for one of the characters to reveal that they had contracted AIDS 10 years earlier, letting the audience retrace all of who slept with who until you realize that everyone on the show now has AIDS.
Thought it would have been a rather moral and fitting end to a show like that…
James in WA
@Ash:
It’s disappointing that they went in some lame religious mumbo-jumb direction.
I don’t see that. Could you explain?
It’s true that it ended in a catholic church, but that doesn’t mean much. If you look at it that way, the “redeemed” characters were all pretty sinful. Kate goes to heaven? Seriously? She’s a murderer! Michael killed, too — but remember, he has to stay on the island forever.
So I really don’t see any conventional religion explanation working here. Seems to me that the writers were really just trying to focus upon and emphasize positive aspects of the human condition, and I think that they did that really well.
Zuzu's Petals
@arguingwithsignposts:
I read The Oil Drum and other professional boards like gCaptain. And I’m getting the distinct impression that these folks are holding their breath over the top kill. It’s freaky to read how hard it is and how many ways it could wrong.
justme
There were certainly some hefty nods. The one that made me howl at the tube was as Jack was dying, stumbling through the bamboo, clutching the stab wound in his side that will kill him, there was a shoe nailed halfway up one of the stalks, just in case somebody missed the other Jesus references.
The multi-denominational stained glass window behind Jack’s dad was a nice touch, though.
JGabriel
@Joel:
It would have been a travesty, because The Wire is social drama, which is a completely different genre than adventure / fantasy set in an artificial myth-form.
Imagining BtVS with a similar finale isn’t that out of place, for instance, because it’s a similar genre.
.
CaseyL
I liked the emotionality of the ending, and disliked the “it was all a dream while in purgatory” wrap-up. I wanted to believe they all had found their happily-ever-afters in Sideways World, which they earned after their years on the island. And, yeah, the Christian theology was *very* disappointing: it would have been a lot more interesting if they’d gone with a Hindu denouement.
PS: Very much enjoying the Kimmel “alt.endings.”
JGabriel
Sentient Puddle:
I didn’t. The finale wasn’t the place for that. It would have been nice for some more of the mysteries to get cleared up over the course of the season – why time travel? why polar bears? who built the Egyptian statue and why? – but not in the last episode. Finales are for resolution, not explanation.
Anyway, it was a bit too sentimental and heavy-handed with the kitshy religious symbolism for my taste, but at least it was pretty much structurally and thematically coherent with the rest of the season / series, unlike the complete mess that was the ending for BSG.
.
JGabriel
CaseyL:
Can we really call it “Sideways World” anymore? I thought the ending revealed that what we all interpreted as a parallel timeline was in fact a flash-forward.
.
YellowJournalism
@CaseyL:
I think they did get their happy endings, but it’s tied too much to the concept of finding one’s soulmate and being allowed to move on to a higher plane of existence as being a reward. Me? I’m the one who would enjoy the Matrix life, the type that would probably have stayed behind, like Ben, and enjoyed the happier version of my life for a while. Make something meaningful out of it, or some shit like that.
I would not have been disappointed if the “sideways” world had been an actual second timeline where they all would have found each other based on knowing each other in the first timeline. Except some people would end up in jail, I guess.
Joseph Nobles
I guess technically Sideways World was a flash-forward. It was the afterlife – a construct they had all made together so they could find each other and move on to the next level, whatever that was.
Island Time was always reality. The plane really crashed, they really went through all that. That’s what I got from it.
wrb
Man, HuffPo has gone completely firebag over the spill.
Hiding or ignoring what is being done, convinced that since daddy hasn’t made the world perfect he isn’t trying.
debbie
@Mike Kay:
I’m with you! This was my original theory, and I don’t see how else it could have ended. Now all the crap they put into the plot can be explained as the characters’ minds struggling to make sense of their situations. The mind will grasp for even the most ridiculous possibilities because it can’t accept death.
What I’d like to know is what about Ben? He didn’t go into the church, so he’s not crossing over, but he seemed very kind-hearted as he sat outside. I know nothing about religious symbolism, but maybe he was some kind of shepherd, guiding them towards the light. That would explain all the beatings he took, as the characters’ were fighting acceptance of their deaths. He just kept coming back for more.
The dog should have been there at the church, though.
@James in WA
You must have missed the banner on the wall with all the religious symbols on it — Jewish Star, Crescent, etc.
ChrisS
As someone who went into the finale expecting disappointment, I thought that they ended the series as well as they could. As Desmond said long ago, None of this matters.
Key points:
– They did crash on an island, and they did have a epic struggle of good v. evil culminating in a showdown that featured self-sacrifice (Only Desmond could pull the plug on the Island, allowing MIB to become mortal, and Jack’s destiny was to sacrifice himself to put the plug back and save the island).
– Hugo and Ben lived long lives as replacements for Jacob and Richard, watching over the people that came, fought, and died. And I’d guess they eventually found replacements for themselves and passed on. Everyone dies, kiddo, some live longer lives than others.
– In the end, none of the Island mysteries were important to the characters. What was the light? Where did the other mother come from, what was the Dharma Initiative doing, What did Widmore want, time-travel, polar bears, etc. All of that was just scenery and tangential story lines.
– Lost was a story about strangers crashing together on a weird Island that allowed them to find personal growth, redemption, and true love. It was never about the Island or Jacob. It was about the central characters. Watching the finale allowed everyone to recapture some of the best moments in the series without doing a cheesy clip-show.
– There was absolutely no way the producers could ever answer all of the mysteries they used to develop the characters, so they emphatically made any question you had moot.
I loved the finale, and it may have been a bit ham-handed with the religious allusions, but this is television, not high art. It left me completely satisfied and thoroughly impressed. I fought back tears most of the night. And in the end, whether you build excel spreadsheets, houses, clean gutters, run a bank, punch numbers in a computer to prevent a catastrophe, or protect a magical island from other folks, none of it really matters. It;s about the bonds you form with the people around you and it’s about love.
chopper
@Monkeyfister:
yeah, mf, i saw a lot of your coverage of this at latoc. good work.
how’s the new tomato cultivar coming along?
RedKitten
@ChrisS: That all makes sense, and I can get behind that. But that last scene in the church — WHEN the hell did that take place? Only after every last stinking one of them was dead, including Aaron? (And why would he show up as a baby in that scene, when in the flash-forwards, he’s school-age, and it’s not out of line to imagine he lived longer than that.) Hurley and Ben obviously outlived Jack — so why the fuck were they there waiting for HIM? That’s the part that’s baffling me.
daryljfontaine
@ChrisS: I can tell, based on having to explain it to one of the people I watched it with, that this finale is going to need a lot of ‘splaining around the watercooler today. The entire series was not a hoax! not an imaginary story! not all of the characters in freakin’ purgatory!
But the LAX half of the last season was. Sort of.
Loved the finale. But I’ve enjoyed the series from the beginning, in a “good tv” way rather than a rabid-Trekkie way. The only thing worse than scary LOST fans though is the people who have decided to be smug about never watching or getting into the show. If it ain’t your cup of tea, fine, but don’t be a hipster turd about it. (“I used to not watch LOST when not watching LOST was cool!“)
D
ChrisS
Hurley and Ben obviously outlived Jack—so why the fuck were they there waiting for HIM? That’s the part that’s baffling me.
Perhaps it just took Jack longer to let go and to realize that he was done. As Jack’s dad said, “there is no now,” in the alternate sideways universe.
The characters developed their strongest emotional bonds during their Island time, so that’s how they saw themselves at the end. Desmond was the constant, he was ready first and realized that everyone else was ready as well. Hugo was an emotionally strong character and had fewer personal battles to fight, other than that he wasn’t bad luck. Which he knew in the sideways universe (“I’m the luckiest guy alive”). Ben stayed outside the church because he still had to contemplate all the bad shit he did. Etc.
The finale was less about the specifics and more about the general arc of character development. At the end, I cried and told my wife that I loved her and suddenly I couldn’t give two shits about the Dharma Initiative and polar bears or the smoke monster when going into the finale, I was demanding answers to some of those questions.
Redshirt
The Alt-reality could have taken place millenia after the events of the show – Hurley, for example, could have died after thousands of years on the island.
Christian explained that there was no time in the Alt-verse, and since everyone dies sometime, they’re all there.
Ben still needs to hook up with Rousseau in the alt-verse, hence he’s not ready to move on yet.
Jenny
@wrb: HuffPo went firebag a long time ago. Remember when Arianna made a big stink saying Biden should resign in protest over Afghanistan. But it’s a slow news period, and until the Arkansas run off happens, this is all they have to scream about.
tkogrumpy
@Mike Kay: are we?
Gaffa
@justme:
Eh, that shoe was there in the opening scenes of the Pilot, which you see just after Jack wakes up.
We find out later those are the cheap shoes Jack buys to put on his father’s corpse’s feet for the coffin trip.
Which means, although there’s no way we could have known at the time, the clue that Christian’s coffin was empty was already shown about ten seconds into the show’s run.
It wasn’t a Jesus motif; it was implying Jack was returning back full circle to the beginning.
chopper
@ChrisS:
i’m not sure ben stayed outside to contemplate all the bad things he did – he stayed on the island with hurley for god knows how long trying to ‘do things right this time’ and probably made peace with his previous asshole self in all that time.
i think he stayed because the one person he really cared about, who he was drawn to in the purgatory world, wasn’t yet ‘converted’ and ready to ascend as well – his daughter.
if i were him i wouldn’t have wanted to go without her. knowing things now he can craft a real relationship with his kid and go when he wants to, with her.
Chinn Romney
I bailed out early in season 1, but I’m glad they cleared up the thing that had been bothering me ever since. That Fat Guy should’ve lost a ton of weight, being on a deserted island and all. At least they got his hair right, the rest of them had access to a Rand Paul Salon somewhere on the other side of the island.
Pococurante
In some beliefs a soul can decide not to progress, instead staying behind to help others at or below their plane of existence. The Buddha is an example.
Ben stayed behind because, at his core, he was a good person warped by his environment / upbringing. In his immediate afterlife he was “free” to become the person he wanted to be. That is, someone dedicated to service for others rather than self. That he considered it his own dharma was a personal decision but he could have made the same decision simply because he likes to help people.
Now we go a next step out into crazyland: our current state of science suggests time is nothing more than a structural element – stepping up a “layer” (spatial dimension) simply makes less relevant the perceived time in lower planes. (At its simplest this the Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity).
So basically Sideways Universe was not heaven, just a higher level of existence, sort of a personal Limbo where the recently dead get a chance to play through their psyche one last time before making one of three decisions: go back down a level (reincarnate) and try again, stay where they are and “help” from the outside in, or move on to the next level.
Lost’s theme was not all Christian except the concept that flawed people must give themselves permission to be redeemed, instead of playing the “the world broke me I can’t change” card. Everything else is Eastern. Only Christianity pushes the afterlife as a free “get out of jail” card.
Pococurante
@Chinn Romney: That’s always bugged me too. I was wondering of the actor was required to stay heavy. I remember the fun Babylon 5’s writers had when “Flounder” (Stephen Furst) skinnied down to a third his former size.
Joel
in summary
main arc resolution was as good as it could have been, given where they had gone with the show in season six.
secondary arc resolution was useless, as the entire secondary arc was. I know it’s supposed to explain the main arc, and people can defend it six ways ’til sunday, but it sucked donkey anuses and didn’t belong. Some things just don’t need explanation.
Still better than Battlestar Galactica.
chopper
@Pococurante:
it’s clear the ‘sideways world’ was a purgatory. methinks that everyone who ended up there started at the point they would have gone to the island – in the sideways world ben is taking care of his father who laments that they never went to the island and wondered what might have been. so likely when ben ultimately died in the real world (after his stint as the new alpert) he rewound to his childhood to start his new life in the sideways world.
others on the island, like juliet, rewound to the point in their adult life where they would have gone to the island. the rest rewound to flight 815 as that’s the point they would have ended up there. all because for all those people the island was the central experience of their lives.
the wild card is desmond. why didn’t he ‘rewind’ to the race which caused him to shipwreck on the island? why did he end up on flight 815? or was that just coincidence, and he did start in purgatory from an earlier part of his life. dunno.
Joseph Nobles
@Chinn Romney: Hurley’s non-weight loss was explained.
Pococurante
@chopper: Well, I’d quibble that Purgatory is not exactly analogous since it is a Christian concept that one has to “sweat off” their crimes through “Pain and Fire”.
As Lost played it, each soul was on a very personal journey that did not have to get permission to grow and move on.
But I understand your point. I was not entirely accurate to call it Limbo either. The problem is these are all Christian words so we’ll never escape the judgmentalism / bias that only an appeal to authority can free a soul to its full potential.
That’s very counter to the message Lost sent that we’re all personally responsible and able to guide our own destiny.
Sentient Puddle
OK well, since this is still going on, I’ll throw a quick thought out there.
Given the nature of the sideways universe, who the hell is Jack’s son supposed to be? I can’t figure out how he’s supposed to fit in at all.
Socrates
The Ultra-Rationalists need their art to be tidy, to have everything explained, and to make sense. They don’t want the rest of us to have any fun.
Tidy art is boring and sterile. Romantic art, like “Lost”, is ambitious, flawed, hopeful, and thrilling.
Redshirt
Jack’s son was not real, but rather a result of wish-fulfillment. No doubt to create a healthy Father – Son relationship that he feels like he never got himself.
ChrisS
@Socrates:
+1
And I thought that finale was pretty damn tidy when it was all said and done.
All of the lost loves were reunited in a way that emphasized and touched their shared past without being particularly cheesy and doing so in a way that assisted the storyline. That’s not easy to do.
Joel
@Socrates: I disagree. The finale was explaining things, as the entire sixth season was. The problem was, those explanations were lame and underdeveloped. What drew me into the show was the sense of dread, terror, and mystery. So I suppose I was naturally going to be underwhelmed by a happy-go-lucky version of eastern mysticism as the final resolution.
If I were going to force resolution, I would have
1) Never gone into the Jacob backstory. It was weak.
2) Never brought up the temple.
3) Given Ben a chance of redemption through punishment, like Raskalnikoff.
.. and so on. The one thing that they did handle well was Jack’s (main arc) ending.
Joel
@Socrates: I disagree. The finale was explaining things, as the entire sixth season was. The problem was, those explanations were lame and underdeveloped. What drew me into the show was the sense of dread, terror, and mystery. So I suppose I was naturally going to be underwhelmed by a happy-go-lucky version of eastern mysticism as the final resolution.
If I were going to force resolution, I would have
1) Never gone into the Jacob backstory. It was weak.
2) Never brought up the temple.
3) Given Ben a chance of redemption through punishment, like Raskalnikoff.
.. and so on. The one thing that they did handle well was Jack’s (main arc) ending.
chopper
@ChrisS:
not all of the lost loves. what about nadia?
Sentient Puddle
@chopper: Fair point, that one. It seems a little odd to consider Shannon as Sayid’s lost love.
Redshirt
Sayid and Shannon never made sense as a couple, and it made less sense that that’s who Sayid would find in the afterlife.
Then again, perhaps Sayid was a virgin and Shannon was his first. Might explain it.
I thought that was the weakest part of the finale, which was overall incredible.
Joseph Nobles
Andy Levy on Twitter: Lost Finale was Obama’s Katrina.
debbie
I don’t buy all that “rewinding.” I think none of them realized they had died and so were wandering about in a limbo/purgatory/whatever you want to call it like ghosts and were trying to find their way back to reality. Until they touched their (for lack of a better word) soulmate, found their truth, and remembered that they’d died.
Can someone explain why Hurley didn’t lose weight? I missed that.
Joel
@debbie: The failure to lose weight was explained by the Dharma food stuffs.
Remember November
I was dissapointed. As a fan of time-loop paradoxes and alternate realities, it jumped the Dharma Shark form S1.
and according to the CLean Water Act, the Fed Govt can step in anytime now and clean up after Big Pollution.
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/05/23/us/politics/politics-us-oil-rig-salazar.html?_r=2
Remember November
@Redshirt:
He married Nadia, and then she was killed soon after he got off the island.
Shannon wasn’t his true love- she was his fling.
Joseph Nobles
@debbie: Yes, just as Joel said. There was an entire episode that centered around Hurley hoarding food from the Dharma Initiative supplies that magically dropped every time the castaways were running short of grub. So all the people calling us dummies because Hurley never lost weight? They’re the dummies. Ha, ha.
For God’s sake, they had peanut butter in #10 cans. We should be wondering why they all didn’t jump 20 pounds in weight on the Island.
Katie5
@JGabriel: Hated the ending. Hated it. My spousal unit was all “it’s the Buddhist 4 Bardos!” Me, it’s like BSG all over again. What’s the point of applying logic to anything (e.g., how did the Black Pearl beach so far inland) if it turns out to be a faith argument.
I know that Lindelof et al. talk ab how Lost turns on relationships but if you’re going to end with God stuff then why suggest it’s something different from, say, the Ghost Whisperer?
And that resolving relationships in the sideways timeline? Pure Spielberg pandering to the Losties.
Argh.
debbie
Joel, Joseph Nobles:
Arghh. I forgot about the food. Thanks. But how good would 30-year-old food be, even if it was canned?
I lost track of how much time had passed since they crashed. Was that ever figured out?
Socrates
One time I went to see the play “Vampire Lesbians of Sodom”. It was over-the-top campy, plus, there were a number of scenes with writhing, scantily-clad women. Thoroughly enjoyable.
The next day my friend says he couldn’t enjoy it because the piano player missed some notes.
What the hell kind of life is that????