This blog has remained serviceable over the year despite the ebb and flow of post frequency, and I intend to continue to post about nothing and everything. I recently started a run of daily writing over at 750words.com in an effort to keep my brain-juice simmering, and so far that has been a welcome repository for creative and analytical offal. Take this, as an example:

As you can see, my sub-conscious is a dramatic 16-year-old writer of love notes and woe-is-me prose that is overtly committed to emotional extremes. The point is, 750words helps you put to page whatever is bottled in your head, even if it’s just an exercise in dramatics and wordplay. I highly recommend it, even if you aren’t the journaling type. The heart of the above quote holds some truth, too—I have decided to spend less time in front of a machine and make the time I do spend sitting here more productive. If I’m at the computer, I want it to be a willful choice and not my modus operandi. There is too much in this world to be missed, otherwise.

A Thing My Dad Did Some Years Ago That Was Good

This blog was launched on Father’s Day last year with a phone call from Luke to Darth Vader, and this year I thought I’d add an anecdote about my dad in honor of all the other great dads that I know and love. Being a dad (or a father, or a pop, or an Old Man) is a tough job. The male, by tradition and usually in practice, is the not-very-soft sex—particularly when it comes to the father-son dynamic. Father’s are not often known for their tenderness, their eagerness to hug and dote and fawn over a son, their long emotional sit-downs or their proclivity to cry. In spite of their hardened sensibilities, father’s will, from time to time, show you that they love you, that they support you, that they care for you, and they will do it in their own special way.

Me and my dad, keeping it real in King Salmon, Alaska.

When I was about fourteen, I was a relatively minor terror. I wasn’t cracking open bottles from the bar at a friend’s house or smoking dime bags of weed in the woods, but I was hoarding M80s to blow up fish in the reservoir, shooting BB guns at friends in cardboard “armor,” stealing porno tapes from friends’ parents, performing ill-advised stunts on bikes and skates, and mixing all manner of accelerants in an effort to generate some kind of totally awesome explosion. Typical middle-class teenage male behavior to be sure, but it gave my parents all kinds of reasons to ground me, to throw up their hands in frustration, to keep me locked away from friends and the dangers of the world. I was aimless and ungrateful and beginning to despise my parents’ stranglehold on my freedoms, man. I felt like a prisoner in my own home, a young man devoid of privacy or rights, and I wondered whether my parents would ever understand. (Will Smith had officially declared that parents just don’t understand some years prior).

I remember my dad coming up to my room shortly after I was sent there for performing yet another bone-headed stunt. I was undoubtedly sulking and stewing in my state of parental loathing, but this rare visit from my dad sobered me up for the moment—he only handled the Really Serious Shit, and I was sure this particular stunt hadn’t been all that serious. He walked in and told me to follow him down to the shop, which was household code for the cramped basement room on the backside of the house where my dad kept an impressive collection of tools, woodworking equipment, maintenance supplies and whatever project he happened to be working on at the time. It was, in the parlance of our times, a man cave, and it was not a space that entertained invited guests. It was the one space in our house that was generally off-limits to anyone that wasn’t my dad.

If You Build It, They Will Come Together

I joined him there in that long and narrow space, built-in workbenches running the length of the room on both sides, the tops set at waist height and covered in wood scraps, clamps, tools, and all manner of hardware neatly organized into metal cabinets with small, clear-plastic drawers. He motioned to a stack of 2x4s, said, “We’re building you a box,” and that’s precisely what we set about doing for the afternoon. We sketched out the specifications on paper, took some measurements, and cut the wood to size. We set the hinges and routed out a lip for the lid. This was no ordinary box: it had a routed lid with hinges! We hammered and clamped and finished the project, and before the afternoon was out I had myself a two-foot-by-one-and-a-half-foot box that stood about 16″ off the ground. It was an admirable piece of carpentry for the cost of an afternoon.

As I surveyed my work, Dad bent to rummage through a box below one of the workbenches and after a moment he produced a latch and a padlock. “One more piece,” he said as he dug out a couple of nails from one of the clear-plastic drawers. He hammered on the latch and handed me the padlock and key. “It’s yours, and you can do what you want with it. I know you’ve been looking for some privacy and I want you to know that your mom and I trust you. Be smart, alright?” It was a very simple and powerful expression of love and trust—one of the very few times my dad invited me to build something with him, the first explicit acknowledgement that I was growing up and in need of my own space, the leap of faith implicit in the act of giving me my own lockbox. It was transformative, a sudden balancing of power, and I was instantly filled with gratitude and humbled by the solemn acceptance of my parents’ trust.

Knowing is Half the Battle

I slipped the lock onto the clasp, rushed the box to my room, and pushed it into my closet where it sat for much of its time in that house, untended and empty. I tossed a few things in there now and again, but the box was much more than a place to store crap I didn’t want my parents to see—for me, that box was a symbol of my independence, a symbol of my parents’ trust, a physical confirmation of the fact that I had respect in my house and that my parents did, on some level, understand. The memory and experience of building that box with my dad, the thrill that ran through my teenaged bones when I realized that I had secured a modicum of freedom, and the desire to maintain and respect my parents’ trust kept me from doing a lot of dumb things.

The Box, resting comfortably on my porch here in Chicago.

So I dressed that box up over the years with stickers and photos and shlepped it from one house to the next, on to college and here to Chicago where it now sits on my back porch. It’s starting to warp from outdoor exposure, but it still leads a noble life as a seat during parties, as a container for grill gear—suitably manly contents, I think—and as a reminder of years past, of freedom, independence, and trust, and of a father’s love for his son.

Happy Father’s Day to one and all!

The Lost Theory Map: @datatat.

This is the real shit, people. I am posting this from the future. I DO NOT HAVE MUCH TIME THE WHITE LIGHT IS COMI—

To the cast of Lost and its creators: Thanks for the memories!

We’ve done it again, folks—another Tuesday in the bag and one more Lost episode to digest. I’m chewing over the minutiae like a boy who’s been tasked with finishing an extra stalk of broccoli before he can leave the table. Tonight’s episode was filled with new conflicts and what are sure to be the final series of character arcs before this whole damned party comes to an end in another few weeks. The stage is set for the third and final act, and yet…I can’t help but feel as though it’s time for me to take my leave of the Lost world. The novelty of my personal viewing adventure is worn, my spirits are flagging, the ship is grinding towards shore. “I don’t feel anything,” says Sayid at the start of tonight’s episode, “not anger, pain, or happiness.” I share that sentiment, although it’s not entirely true for me. I do feel something, and that’s a small amount of disappointment in myself and my inability to remain curious and committed to this show.

I’ve tried! My god, how I’ve tried! You’ve seen it; you know. I’m nine episodes into the last season of one of the most convoluted stories ever told on television. I parachuted into the party, a cad wearing street clothes at a fancy masquerade ball, and I tried to have a good time. That’s a terrible metaphor, but the point I’m making is this: a show of this scope was never meant to be entertainment for a casual interloper. There are layers here, and depth, and relationships that were built on years of nuance that no outsider could possibly pick up on. Sure, I’ve had my fun—but this is a fool’s errand! I checked the clock twice during the last twenty minutes of tonight’s show, and that’s no way to spend what should be an otherwise enjoyable Tuesday evening of television.

So, I’m putting my coverage on pause for the moment. I may return to the game in an episode or two, or I may just wait until the grand finale to see how it all comes together. Popping my head into a world that is more or less walled off to the uninvested was a gamble, but I’m happy to say that it was an enjoyable experience and I’m proud to have kept my inner cynic at bay (for the most part). At the very least, this little experiment has been a great exercise in writing regularly. I hope to continue the pattern of posting at least once a week, even if I’m no longer covering the mysteries of Lost’s last season. The everyday world has enough of its own mysteries, after all.

But tonight, it’s different. Tonight, they are electric. They’ve waited so long for this episode to air! They are pitched forward, their hip bones barely connected to the front edge of the couch cushions. They are giddy with the thought of Lost’s faithful finally learning the darkest and oldest secrets of The Island! They exchange elated sidelong glances as they quickly sip their wine and wait.

Welcome to Hell

The episode begins! Richard sits with the rest of Jacob’s Candidates huddled around a fire on the beach, each of them in quiet repose. They are contemplating what to do next, though Richard is of little help. Jack implores him, and Richard berates him back:

Richard

You’re dead, Jack. We’re all dead. Welcome to Hell. This island? It’s hell. And I’m going to find the man who can help me get off of it.

Cut to commercial! I can practically hear the exultant cries and the clinking of glass coming from the creators’ couch somewhere out there in the world. The episode comes back from commercial and we have traveled some hundreds of years back in time to meet Ricardo, Richard’s prior self, who tries desperately to care for his deathly ill wife. Ricardo rides half a day to a doctor who refuses him help. In his rage and desperation he kills the doctor, returning with the medicine to find his wife already gone on to the great ship in the sky. He crumples to the floor and is soon cast into jail for his crime.

Feasting on the Bones of Richard’s Backstory

“Feast, you hungry throng! Feast on the meaty bones of Richard’s backstory. Feast until your maw is slick with the juices of Richard’s despair and regret!” The creators are swept up in their work, hooting and cheering and spilling cheap wine on an already soiled carpet. The episode is a film unto itself! An hour’s worth of storytelling that could easily stand on its own as a tale of tragic loss and devilish games. They are proud, and rightly so.

The episode continues with Ricardo granted reprieve by an opportunistic priest who sells him into slavery and puts him on a ship to The New World. It isn’t long before the ship is caught in a storm at sea and is shipwrecked on The Island. The shipwrecked crew kills what’s left of the slaves before coming to Ricardo, who stands shackled to the ship and unable to save himself. It is then that the Smoke Monster attacks, killing everyone on the ship but saving Ricardo for unspoken reasons.

Lost’s creators have opened a second bottle by now, and they are becoming overly complimentary of one another. They high-five with fervor as the episode then spins into a series of drowsy scene fades that mimic Ricardo’s lapses in and out of consciousness. He wakes and tries to carve his shackles away from the wall of the ship. He wakes again to find a boar shoving his snout into the rotted belly of the dead man next to him. He wakes once more to find Isabella, his dead wife, there to take care of him. She is soon eaten by the Smoke Monster, and he cries out in helplessness before he succumbs once more to his body’s thirst, hunger, and pain. He finally wakes to find a man dressed in black, a man who—like Zombie John—is possessed by the Black Smoke. He is, in other words, evil incarnate. El Diablo de The Island. But he denies as much, and sends Ricardo out on a mission to stab a man through the chest with an elaborate dagger. This, he says, is the only way for Richard to reach salvation and find his way back to Isabella.

Jacob and El Diablo de The Island kick it on the beach.

The man he seeks is Jacob, and after a fight on the beach they befriend one another and Jacob lets him in on The Island’s greatest secret. The Island, he says, is like a bottle of wine filled with the most evil of spirits. Jacob, by comparison, is the cork that keeps all of that evil from spilling out into the world. He is the yin to the devil’s yang, the white stone on the balanced scale of good and evil. And he needs help—Ricardo’s help, to be specific. He cannot promise the return of Isabella, he cannot absolve him of his sins, but he can grant him eternal life and a special role in the guardianship of The Island. A deal is struck, and the devil is disappointed.

The Players, the Pawns, and the Playing Field

The creators are so stoked, man. They are so psyched right now! The entire microcosmic purpose of The Island played out in this, the turning point of Richard’s backstory! The choice between good and evil, an element of free will and personal incentive, and The Island, the blank canvas upon which it all plays out. Jacob joins The Man in Black on a hillside after Richard has made his choice, and they regard each other with the same formality shared by master-class chess players. Jacob hands The Man in Black—El Diablo de The Island—a flask of wine. “Enjoy it,” he says, “while you pass the time.” Jacob leaves, and The Man in Black smashes the wine flask against a tree, a not-so-subtle nod to the coming war between The Candidates and Zombie John’s army of followers.

The episode ends with Richard—modern-day Richard—crashing through the jungle and unearthing Isabella’s necklace that he buried there as Ricardo some hundreds of years before. He calls out to El Diablo de The Island, promising his services in exchange for passage out of hell and off The Island. But Hurley arrives and does his best impression of Oda Mae Brown by channeling a Ghost-like reunion between Isabella and Richard. Richard is renewed, and returns to Zombie Jacob’s fold.

Two bottles of wine consumed, the episode at a close, and the creators lean back on their couch with the contentment reserved for men who have accomplished great feats. This was the story within the story, a tale that might stand on its own were it not such a critical linchpin for the rest of the slowly unraveling epic. We have now reached the halfway mark for this final season, and if the water cooler talk around my place of work is indicative of Lost’s followers and their waning enthusiasm, this episode provided a much-needed jolt and gave the series’ creators a collective sigh of relief and a rightfully-earned clink of the wine glass.

Dude, you can’t triple stamp a double-cross! No erasies.

Michael Landon’s on TV. He’s on a TV on my TV, inside this episode of Lost, and he’s teaching Laura about life and death. It’s a snip from Little House on the Prairie, and the curly-haired saint is sharing his thoughts on achieving eternal life through laughter and memory. L.A. Sawyer is watching intently, hanging on Landon’s words, musing in silence as he sits alone and awash in the light from his television screen. This is a message! There’s a reason Lost’s creators chose this clip. There’s some vague foreshadowing, like a glint from the river bottom, but it’s hard to know what it means.

Which gets me to thinking about basic human instincts, like our desire to find pattern and meaning in chaos, or our perpetual search for answers to the unknown or unknowable. If I was truly invested in this show, I might spend an hour looking up that Little House clip to figure out its context. I might find a transcript of what Michael Landon actually said, and I might spend another hour thinking about how that applies to the world of Lost. I would do all of these things because of my desire to find meaning amongst the chaos, and it would all stem from my faith in the show’s creators. The human propensity for faith, it seems, is an integral component to Lost’s story arc. The most faithful of Lost’s followers have carried on because they’re invested in a compelling story that is full of mysteries yet solved. They have faith in the story, faith in the writers and creators, and they’re committed to finding pattern in the chaos.

Which makes me wonder: Do Lost’s creators really intend to deliver the windfall of answers required to satiate the hungriest of faithful Lost followers? If I had to bet money, I’d say that this story will end up leaving just as many questions unanswered as answered. But that’s what makes a fictional universe great, right? The unknowable, the endless search for answers, the canon of thought and swirling mystery folded into its very structure. It is, in many ways, its own religion. And like all great religions, there is a leap of faith required to follow on into the chaos, with the hope of finding some meaning out there among the mysteries.

But enough of my abstract speculations. I won’t bother with an entire episode recap, but I will say that this show certainly set a high-water mark for classic double-crosses! The episode kicks off with L.A. Sawyer giving the ‘ol double-cross to a con-woman he was sleeping with. Back on The Island, Sawyer is sent to Hydra island to do a little recon for Zombie John. He finds a young woman and a giant pile of dead bodies. The woman promptly gives Sawyer the sly ‘ol double-cross when he confronts her about the bodies on the beach, leading him into an ambush of gun-toting goons that take him back to a submarine to meet a man named Whitmore. This meeting sets up the dreaded (and rarely attempted) triple double-cross. Sawyer sells Zombie John out to Whitmore, paddles back to The Island and sells Whitmore out to Zombie John. And then! In a final scene between Sawyer and Kate, he dismounts with a double-cross that has Zombie John and Whitmore fighting it out while he and Kate flee in the submarine. Hoo-boy, was it ever a delicious twist of allegiances! More to come, my friends. So much more.

No one should ever dig their own grave. Not even Ben Linus.

Episode six, people! Let’s do this thing! Lives hang in the balance, opposing armies grow in ranks, and ABC’s voiceover talent sets the stage for a dramatic comeuppance—Will Ben Linus, hapless murderer of the revered Jacob, finally get his? Spoiler: his life is spared, he returns to the fold, and the grave he spent half the episode digging for himself will go unfilled…for now.

The Witch Trial of Ben Linus

Ben’s troubles begin early in the episode when Jacob’s Girlfriend asks Miles to perform his talk-to-the-dead trick to find out exactly how Jacob—kind-eyed Zombie Jacob—was killed. Miles crouches, eyes closed, his hands placed on a scrap of Jacob’s clothing, and after a moment of pained flashback he reveals that Jacob was murdered by Ben, in the temple, with the knife (hat tip, Clue). This comes as no surprise to the viewing audience, but Jacob’s Girlfriend is filled with a rage for revenge, and in a moment of judgement reminiscent of the Salem witch trials, she grimly nods and silently condemns Ben to death.

She keeps Ben’s conviction under wraps until she marches him out to the burial ground on the beach, straps his ankle to a tree, and sticks a crude shovel in his hands. “Start digging,” she says. “We’ve got a grave to fill, a body to be buried, and yes, if you read between the lines, I’m saying that you are in the process of digging your own grave.” And so poor, contemptible Ben begins to dig. Everyone else from the group mills about on the beach, avoiding eye contact, looking for usable shelter or leftover food from a previous camp.

Elsewhere in the Jungle

Jack and Hugo traipse through the foliage on their way back to the temple. Hugo knows there is nothing there for them. He plays coy and attempts to lead Jack off in a different direction, but not before Richard emerges from the trees and takes them to…a pirate ship that sits in the middle of a clearing. It is covered in vine and filled with unstable explosives. Richard reveals his intent to employ Jack and Hugo as unwitting executors. He shares his pain of being promised a purpose, a reason to follow Jacob here to The Island, and now that Jacob is dead he is ready to die. It seems he can not kill himself, and so he asks that Jack do the honors. Jack calls his bluff, lights a stick of dynamite, and sits down at a barrel of gunpowder as the fuse slowly burns. Drama! Jack’s confidence pays off, and as he and Richard debate the purpose of their lives, the flame winks out on the fuse and there is a quiet moment of revelation: We have a purpose!

Return to the Fold

Cut back to Ben Linus, who continues to carve a body-shaped pit out of wet sand. Miles approaches and offers food without sympathy; he is a casual observer, like a seasoned buzzard circling the walking dead. Ben is desperate to escape and offers Miles millions if he’ll help him get out and off The Island. Miles scoffs and moves on. But then! Zombie John emerges from the dark recesses, Ben’s ankle strap is loosed with a wave of Zombie John’s hand, and Ben runs for a rifle that Zombie John has placed in a clearing not far from where he stands. Jacob’s Girlfriend gives chase! Ben gets the drop on her and swings the rifle around! No shots are fired. Instead, Ben shares his life story, whimpers about the sacrifices he’s made, his regrets, and exposes his vulnerabilities. “I killed Jacob because I needed to belong, and Zombie John is the only one that would have me.” Jacob’s Girlfriend, in an effort to diffuse Ben’s pathetic display, simply says, “I’ll have you,” and walks back toward the beach.

Ben returns to the beach and is unceremoniously reinstated as a member of Zombie Jacob’s army. Hugo, Jack, and Richard walk onto the beach and rejoin their friends in a slow-motion reunion of fellow castaways. Jin and Sawyer are still lost to the jungle, but it would seem that most of the main characters have settled into their camps—some backing Zombie Jacob, the others backing Zombie John. The stage is set! What sort of climactic face-off can we expect?

“Warshed.”

Try saying that post title ten times fast, eh? This is a note to those devoted few who care about such things: I know that you were expecting a new Lost post, but life intervenes and I will have to put it off for a couple more days. Rest assured, I will have my notes logged before the next episode airs. This is a short transmission, so I’ll leave you with the video posted above. This is the kind of material that makes me love local access TV—there is a certain zen to it, really.

Sayid wants to be good, but boy can he be so bad.

I’m standing and looking out my window now, hardly watching the TV turned on beside me. The gray ceiling of Chicago winter feels exceptionally oppressive this evening. It reflects the sallow glow of street lamps, turning dirty piles of snow into diseased scoops of yellow-orange sherbet. [Ed. note: There is no such thing as "sherbert." I have unwittingly added an extra "r" to sherbet for more than twenty years without correction. I now stand corrected.] The fifth episode has finished, the earth has rotated another handful of degrees, the world outside my window is still frozen, and somewhere, in some fictional time-space, on some godforsaken island, an army has amassed in support of Zombie John.

I don’t have much detail to share on tonight’s episode. My heart wasn’t in it. The hour kicked off with Sayid’s forgettable L.A. subplot, spoiling an already soul-dampening dinner. I ate with my hands and sullenly chewed my way through a pile of cold chicken parts and cheese slices, perking up slightly as I finished the plate to watch as Island Sayid and Stony-face battled to the death. Stony-face decided to forego the final blow and instead told Sayid to leave the compound, just as you might tell a mangy dog to get on, scram, and don’t ever come back, ya here? The scene and the dinner were equally disappointing.

My spirits continued to flag as the episode wore on. I checked the clock twice and stood to stare out across the city, the sky choked with cloud, the TV playing on and filling the room with strained string instruments. Kate returned to the temple, Claire was banished to a pit, Zombie John convinced Sayid to do his dirty work. The gamut of emotion, the rise and fall of a character’s arc in a short, two-minute span: Stony-face shares the story of his life with Sayid by the pool; a crescendo of music, a palpable tenderness, and without another word Sayid yanks Stony under the water and drowns him. Stony-face’s hippie sidekick rushes to the pool in time to get his throat slit by Sayid. It’s a hopeless finish for a pair of short-lived characters.

The winter grows long, the mysteries deepen, and my thoughts drift to Sawyer. Sawyer, where’d you go? You and Zombie John made a pact, remember? But you haven’t reappeared. I wonder if you aren’t off doing what any sensible man might do when faced with the oppression of winter or the loneliness of island life. I bet you’re back at your house, sipping from your whiskey bottle, waiting for the world to end.

I turn away from the window and turn off the TV. I think I’ll have a little sip from that bottle myself.

“There’s a dawgness growing in him.”

A quarter of the way through this dense thicket of mystery and my addled brain can hardly stand the shock. The rapid plot line hopping—the dizzying cast from one time or place unto another—is taking its toll. I hardly have a moment to process a particular scene’s dynamics, to look around and get my bearings, to admire the lush green of a jungle fern or the architectural details of an L.A. office building before I am rushed on to the next edit, where there’s a good chance that I may find myself in an entirely different time and space and reconnecting with a different set of characters. Perhaps this is the storytellers’ intent: to recreate the nauseating effects of time travel for the anxious viewers at home. If so, congratulations—it’s working.

Drawing Lines

There are lines being drawn out there in the jungle. Zombie Jacob and Zombie John, foraging for pawns. Darkness and light, the kindest of eyes and the coldest of stares, each gathering recruits for some unspoken event. Zombie Jacob spent the episode shuttling Hugo and Jack through the jungle and out to a lighthouse on the other side of the island. He gave Hugo (lovable, bumbling Hugo) the courage to lead Jack out of the temple grounds and deep into the jungle. They encountered an inhaler, a pile of skeletons, and the shattered remains of a coffin that once belonged to Jack’s dad. “I did that,” said Jack, looking down at the coffin parts. And then they moved on.

Victim of the Press Gang

At the lighthouse, Jack’s temper rises to a fever pitch when he sees an image of his childhood home in the lighthouse’s reflecting glass. “Jacob was watching! He’s always been watching! Why?!” Hugo doesn’t have the answer, and so Jack smashes the glass and they leave the lighthouse. Zombie Jacob reappears soon after and tells Hugo that it all went according to plan, and thanks him for being his willing pawn. The two of them, Jack and Hugo, are now recruited, and the rest of the group back at the temple will probably be killed by an anonymous “bad person” that is soon to arrive on The Island. It is too late to save them. Hugo wipes blue ink from his forehead and sighs with the despair of a man who has been press-ganged.

That Way Madness Lies

Elsewhere in the jungle, Claire has gone mad. Jin, who we last saw detained by a bear trap, is extracted by Claire and taken back to her camp, where it soon becomes clear that three years alone in the bush has a way of eating at the mind. Look, a bassinet! And inside, an animal skull and furs shaped to look like a small child! She wants her baby back, and she is absolutely not making a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Chili’s Restaurant chain. She makes this point particularly clear by swinging an axe into The Expendable Character Who Everyone Thought Was Already Dead. Jin shudders and takes nervous sips from his water bottle. Zombie John, who no doubt has a nose for madness, sniffs Claire out. He has recruited her along with Sawyer and the pair of Zombies now stand at two apiece. If this unspoken future event (the one for which they are recruiting) is going to be a test of wills and killer instinct, Zombie John has clearly made the better alliance. Sawyer, with his rugged good looks and his fuck it sensibilities, and Claire, with her skull-baby creations and her willingness to stick an axe in a man’s stomach, would surely crush the likes of Hugo (lovable, bumbling Hugo) and Jack, who is obviously struggling his way through some kind of Daddy Dearest complex. The results should be interesting.

No earthly man could ever hold a stare like Zombie John.

Zombie John is on a mission. I can see it in his eyes, those fearless eyes, and they don’t betray a thing. They are nothing like Zombie Jacob’s eyes; no kindness, no empathy. Zombie John is a man of darker origins. He has answers, he’s said as much, but damned if he’ll share them with anyone he can’t trust. What he needs then is a confidant of sorts, a pawn to play, and so he coils up into smoke and plunges back into the jungle in search of Sawyer.

Sawyer, to his credit, has done the wisest thing and gone off to drink himself to death. Who can blame him? He’s stuck on some godforsaken island, stranded in space-time and struggling with the loss of the woman he loved. He’s a broken man, and no one suffering the same fate can say they wouldn’t want to watch the world wither away through a lens clouded with whiskey. And so there he sits, holed up in his house on the lake with his lips wrapped around a bottle and The Stooges playing on in the background. This is how his world will end. As the light dims and the alcohol-induced hallucinations mix with waking dreams, Zombie John shuffles into the room and takes Sawyer by surprise:

Sawyer

What ghost is this? Doth mine eyes deceive? You are not John Locke, for he is dead and you are fearless. Come, drink with me, stranger! Let me pour thee a juice glass of Wild Turkey, and let us rest awhile until Death comes knocking at the door.

Sawyer doesn’t actually say those things; most of it is implied. Instead, he changes course and decides to follow Zombie John back out into the jungle after he is promised answers (and after he pulls on some pants).

There are few things in this world more dangerous than a man who is both drunk and unafraid of death, and as Sawyer stumbles along behind Zombie John it’s clear that he’s reached the fuck it stage of sensitivity. He and Zombie John both see the vision of a boy running ahead of them in the foliage, but Sawyer brushes it off without much thought. Richard, who was clubbed and beaten and left behind by Zombie John in an earlier scene, emerges from the trees to tell Sawyer that Zombie John is, in fact, a zombie, and that he can’t be trusted. Sawyer fairly ignores this advice and continues on, but he pulls a gun on Zombie John for good measure. Zombie John stares back with those fearless eyes, tells him that he’s just an old trapped soul looking for release, and Sawyer gives him a fuck it shrug before soldiering on.

They soon arrive at a cliff and climb down to a cave, at the mouth of which sits a scale with two rocks: one black, one white. The scale is balanced, static; no more black than white. Zombie John steps toward the scale and hefts the white rock in his hand. He turns to the sea and casts it out into the great beyond as the scale, now free of its weight, tips affirmatively to black. A contemplative stillness descends, Sawyer is ushered into the cave, and Zombie John’s torch reveals the scrawled names of Island survivors written there by Zombie Jacob. Zombie Jacob, the man who brought all of them to The Island. Zombie Jacob, the man who touched their lives and weaved this terrible web, the man who wants one of them to become his permanent replacement there on The Island.

I only want one thing, Zombie John tells Sawyer, and that’s to get off The Island. Sawyer pauses, considers, and gives him the fuck it shrug: Let’s do it.

The iris is opening, my friends! There are mysteries unraveling before our very eyes, emerging from darkness unto the light. A cave scratched with names and numbers, an unholy alliance formed, an unbalanced scale. Something unsavory is afoot!

Sawyer (or James, as Kate affectionately refers to him) is a rugged drifter with little apparent allegiance to the rest of his island companions. The stringy hair and squinty eyes convey a sense of paranoia and distrust, and I’m sure he smells faintly of booze and petulance when standing nearby. He is the prototypical Lone Wolf, and he barely gives the rest of the group so much as a nod before walking back out into the jungle after wresting the gun from a Temple guard:

Hugo

Wait. Sawyer. Please. You could take us all with you! You have a gun now! Look! These guards are intimidated by your good looks and piercing stare!

Sawyer

Forget it. I’m a loner Hugo, a rebel. See you guys in the great beyond. Peace!

Kate

Take me with you, Sawyer.

Sawyer

Back off, Kate. I need to do this alone. There’s a ring I need to find in a house in the jungle, and I need to throw that ring in the lake.

Stony-face

You have to stay. If you leave, the mysterious reason we’ve been keeping you here will be ruined.

Sawyer

Good luck with that. I’m out.

The look on Stony-face’s face said it all: Thanks to the self-interest of Sawyer, they were all doomed (for unspoken reasons). Resigned to his powerlessness, Stony-face allows Kate and Jin to set off as a search party to track down Sawyer. They soon split ways (naturally), and the rest of the episode rolls on into a series of space-time flips between L.A. Kate and Island Kate. My narrative studies might be leading me a little astray, but I’m pretty sure that L.A. Kate and Island Kate are one and the same person, existing in parallel worlds or at different points along the space-time continuum. It’s still a mystery, but what I know for certain is that L.A. Kate is a murderess on the run who’s hampered by a heart of gold.

And her patience! My god, the store of patience this woman has for the pregnant blonde she unintentionally takes hostage and whisks away in a stolen taxi. The pregnant blonde turns out to be Claire, a character who apparently has some attachment to Island Kate, and she is positively helpless. She arrived from Australia scared, insecure, and alone, and she soon finds herself kicked from the cab when L.A. Kate suddenly remembers that she is, in fact, on the run from the law. Claire is left stranded at a bus stop while L.A. Kate drives to a tire shop and has her handcuffs graciously cut from her wrists by a helpful law-snubbing shop mechanic. And then, a twist: Kate’s heart of gold grows heavy at the sight of Claire’s baby clothes, and she soon returns to pick up the pregnant Claire and shuttle her to an adoptive family’s home—the baby, you see, is meant to be given to an American couple.

But then! A second twist: the adoptive American couple is no longer together! The lawless murderer and her pregnant companion arrive at the home to find an apologetic woman who effectively says:

Potential Mother

So, my husband left me a few days ago? And I neglected to call you before you flew to America? And I’m sorry, it’s a bummer, but I guess I don’t really want your baby anymore? I feel bad, I do. I’m a bad person.

To which Claire responds by immediately going into labor. Claire and Kate wave goodbye and speed on to the hospital in the stolen cab.

Enough action for a snowbound evening in Chicago? Well think again, because I haven’t even covered the torture session, a martial arts-enhanced Heimlich maneuver, and Jin caught in a bear trap. Shots ring out, Claire appears on a ridge, and the episode ends with her back on The Island. The world of Lost is nothing if not bewildering.

Breaking bread and drinking from Lost’s cup.

I’m two hours into Lost’s final season and I already feel as though I’m trifling with a world of which I know too little. I have stumbled upon an ancient book of spells in the forgotten wing of the library and conjured the road to hell with a cursory reading. I’m the wayward square who wanders into the roadhouse bar and is greeted with a record scratch and pitying stares. The grizzliest man at the bar sneers and spits at his side. “You look lost, boy.” Everyone falls about the place with laughter and knowing pats on the back, and I sheepishly nod my head in agreement. In other words, I have no idea what I’ve gotten myself into.

Two hours in and I don’t have much to go on besides a few hard facts culled from this evening’s viewing. Juliet’s dead. I say this with assurance, but one can never be sure of death’s permanence on The Island— she’s the only one of three dead from this episode who remained dead, and a 66% chance of returning from the grave is pretty good odds for anyone. She was granted a brief session of afterlife communication in which she relayed to Sawyer that “it worked.” I presume the ghost of Juliet was referring to the bomb she set off in the magnetic well, but the meaning was ambiguous and her words were small comfort to Sawyer who was still pissed at Jack over the whole thing. I hope she returns in one form or another; the tender moment she shared with Sawyer down in that hole seemed to soften his edges in a disarming sort of way.

There are two Johns in this tale. One lies on the beach, asleep or unconscious or dead in the sand, and the other is an evil sort that inspired Ben to murder. Bizarro John is the embodiment of something cursed, there’s no doubt. His flesh deflects bullets and when he’s cornered he becomes a roiling cloud of black smoke that is capable of coiling up men in dusty tendrils and tossing them haphazardly around a room. A frightening beast to be sure, and he seems particularly upset with Richard, assuming the beating Bizzaro John gave him just before dragging him off into the foliage is any evidence.

The kind eyes of Zombie Jacob.

Jacob is a helpful jungle zombie who emerged from the green in time to give Hugo a guitar case and some advice on how to save Sayid, who is rapidly expiring from a gunshot wound. He had kind eyes, and its hard to imagine why Ben was compelled to stab and set fire to this agreeable soul. Jacob’s influence on the characters’ course of action remains strong despite his otherworldly existence and thanks to Hugo’s ability to see zombie ghosts. Their partnership and Jacob’s suggestions to care for Sayid lead the group to a temple of angry Others who would have just as soon killed the entire crew if it weren’t for Hugo dropping Jacob’s name. They reverse course and agree to help Sayid after Hugo produces the guitar case, a giant wooden ankh is lifted from it and broken in half, and a note from Zombie Jacob is discovered therein. Everybody likes a guy with kind eyes.

The Others appear to be a survivalist group of mixed interests and one Australian flight attendant. They are led by a stony-faced man who dislikes the way English tastes on his tongue. His henchmen dunk Sayid in a dirty life-giving pool and end up drowning him, though it’s hard to say whether this was their fault or whether Stony-face wasn’t watching his over-sized hourglass closely enough. The group is naturally grief-stricken, but they brighten when, miracle of miracles, Sayid wakes from death some time later and asks the same question most of us would ask after drowning in a life-giving pool: “What happened?”

And with that, the first episode in the final season comes to a close and my journey down the dimly lit road of Lost’s story line has just begun. Viewer’s will note that I have not touched on the parallel world in which the Oceanic flight touches down safely in L.A. and life carries on as usual, but the split narrative was too much for me to digest on the first pass. I hope this parallel world bears more Bizarro fruit, and that John’s counterparts get their own superhuman copies. Now that I’ve had my first immersion, I realize that I am doing a cruel disservice to Lost’s storytellers and their aim to create a narrative arc that is not open to the casual interloper. I am a trespasser, but I look forward to dissecting the next installment.

But here we are! The Lost creators, spinners of endless yarn, are soon to tie their ends and bring the series to a close. The final season begins tomorrow night, and now that I’ve avoided the previous five seasons of this story I thought I’d make the tireless Wednesday morning water cooler recaps a little more entertaining. I, a bitter and critical man, will watch the final season as a curious and open-minded outsider who, with the aid of hindsight, shall attempt to connect with the characters, their plights, and the plot lines as they come to a close. Expect an update each week as I follow along with the series, and don’t worry: I promise to remain objective.

Conan O’Brien: comic genius.

So much has transpired! I have left the country and returned. I have read books and watched movies and tasted foods. I have started the year of 2010, now twenty or more days passed, with the greatest of cheer and simplest of joys. But not all is well with the world. An earthquake devastated Haiti some thousands of miles away, and the world sent their doctors and money and rations to repair the people and places that were left. The bells are tolling, counting the dead.

Here, on America’s shores, a different bell tolls. It is the death knell of traditional television, and its deep metal tone echoed out across the country last night when Conan O’Brien stepped down from his Tonight Show slot. For whom does this bell toll? For the broadcasters that cannot adapt to a world of entertainment consumers that time-shift their interests. It tolls for the men who rely on Neilsen and the antiquated ratings system that they read like tea leaves. It tolls for the old guard, the ones who didn’t get it right, the ones who cast Conan out and into the shadows in the face of a popular uprising.

From those shadows shall emerge a man supported by the young and savvy. They will lift him on their shoulders with cries of “Coco! Coco!”, and this writhing sea of faithful will carry him on to his next venture, his next comedic palace and pulpit. They will cheer for him and rejoice in the pact made between this man and his followers, the pact that says, “Together, we will have fun.” Somewhere, someone smarter than NBC will discover the right way to monetize the passion for this man in a world of increasingly fragmented interest and attention.

The culture is changing, the bell is tolling, traditional television is dying, but Conan will be just fine. There are just too many, like myself, who love him and will carry him on into the great unknown expanse of entertainment’s future.

“Coco! Coco! Coco! Coco! Coco!…”

In spite of sounding like a complete shill at the moment, I’d also like to acknowledge Amazon’s airtight returns department. I recently bought a multimeter to test some parts of my pinball machine (more on that topic in a future post), and one of the functions on the meter was dead on arrival. I’ve never had to return anything to Amazon before, but after three clicks and a print-out I was on my way to drop the package back in the mail, postage-paid. I requested a replacement through the returns process, and within 30 minutes I had an email in my inbox explaining that the new multimeter would be at my door the next day. They just made this lazy consumer’s Christmas a little merrier.