One By One All Day

I think I've written about five of these sort of apologetic posts since I started this blog, but because I a.) live in New York (well, temporarily) and b.) have a job (albeit unpaid), I am chalking my failure at blogging and life up to sheer busyness (yes, that is a word) and the following factors:

30 Rock. I work here. Bam.

Beaton, Kate. The reason I want to go to Canada as soon as possible/the reason I feel better for obsessing over obscure historical personages. Stalkee at my comics convention this weekend.

Blogging. What I do while I wait for my laundry to dry.

Boats, rowing across gorgeous lakes in upstate New York of. See WHY LIFE IS WORTHWHILE.

Broadcast personalities, the spotting of. So far, six.

Brooklyn, New York. Sometimes shadesville, always classy.

Comic and Cartoon Art, Museum of. Facilitator of the dorkiest thing I have done this summer, which is attend an indie comics convention, stalk down all my favorite webcomics artists, and freak out accordingly. See GEEKERY.

Decemberists, the. Best hyper-literate prog-rock indie-pop folk quintet around and apparently now powerful enough to sell out Radio City Music Hall Wednesday night for a concert of epic proportions. See SPASMODIC DANCING, CAUSES OF.

Goddard Hall. We have an elevator made out of plywood. Seriously. See RESIDENCE, PLACES OF.

Lemon, Liz. I am still secretly hoping to run into her. See IMPOSSIBLE DREAMS.

Manhattan subway system, the. I told a tourist how to get to Times Square the other week. See PRETENDING TO BE A NEW YORKER.

Maps of New York. Mine has disappeared.

Matthews, Chris. Technically, my boss, although I see him about once every few weeks because he films out of Washington and my internship is with Hardball's production team in New York. Drinks black coffee. Knows my name now, which is sweet.

Meconis, Dylan. Indie webcomic goddess and author of the brilliant Family Man. I met her last weekend, and it was fabulous.

MGMT, music videos of. Getting me through the week. See WILLIAMSBURG, THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF.

Mohonk Labyrinth, the. The most frightening thing I have ever done. See MOUNTAINS, CLIMBING OF and TERRIFYING DEATH CREVICES, SQUEEZING ONESELF THROUGH.

Novels, the reading of. Makes you look cooler on the subway.

Philadelphia Phillies, the. Who destroyed the Mets this week? Oh, right. See BASEBALL, THE DOMINATION OF.

Rain, the abundance of. It's June, not April. Come on. See APOCALYPSE, WEATHER OF THE.

Topic banners, the writing of. My job last week at Hardball. I am responsible for such gems as "The Looming Confirmation Battle" and "What's Next for the GOP?"

Village, the. Best place in the world. Besides Brooklyn. And Philly.

Lost Review: Better Late than Never

There are various legitimate reasons for why this review is so overdue, why I have skipped Sunday Nunday and Tuesday Newsday this week (sigh), and why my life is mildly ridiculous right now, mainly revolving around some torn ligaments in my ankle (don't ask) and far too much homework.

However, I figure that since Lost is tonight and I will not get to watch it, I might as well console myself by writing a heinously overdue review.

Spoiler alert: I highly doubt there are people who have yet to see last week's episode, but if you haven't, stop reading, for obvious reasons.

Our episode opens with Dharmaville in disarray. Horace, acting like the crochety old woman he is, is yelling at everyone; the flames are dying down from tiny Ben's hippie-van-on-fire diversion; and, of course, Hero Jack has Important Questions for Everyone.

"If he was locked up, how did he start the fire?" he asks, directing several piercing gazes at Horace and managing, miraculously, to come across as both mind-numbingly dull and in cahoots with the enemy. Nice one, Jack.

Horace just flips back his flowing locks, shoots off a condescending remark about how it must have been an inside job, and looks grumpy, as usual.

Meanwhile, Kate meets tiny Ben's loser dad -- who is one of those people you could feel bad for until you catch a glimpse of tiny Ben's taped glasses and bruises, and then you hate them again -- and Jin rolls in with a dying tiny Ben in his arms.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaand we're off.

Juliet tries to operate on tiny Ben, but her forte is babies, not tiny dying future megalomaniacs, and so, naturally, she sends Sawyer to ask Jack for help. As much as I hate Jack, there are several things he is useful for, and one of them is saving people from imminent death (sorry, Boone).

But we're dealing with New Jack now, the one who seems to have forgotten all about the seminal moment that was his "live together, die alone" speech in Season 1, the one who only recently shaved the Jeard, the one who, apparently, couldn't care less about DYING CHILDREN.

Dying children, Jack! You once pumped your own blood into a tool who ran a wedding business! For shame, sir.

Instead, Jack decides to make sandwiches while Hurley and Miles have one of the more amusing conversations in recent Lost memory, in which Miles tries to explain time travel to Hurley, who espouses the well-regarded "Back the Future" theory of time travel, which is basically that when you change the past, you cease to exist.

Miles, obviously an adherent to the Daniel Faraday school of time travel theory, tries to tell him that what's going on is All Part of the Plan, because you can't change time. There is really no point to this conversation except to allow the audience to feel better about themselves for asking the same frantic time-travel questions last week, but I adored it, mainly because Hurley worrying that he will disappear is just. too. cute.

Meanwhile, Kate yells at Jack about tiny Ben, Jack whines about how he already saved Ben once and how Kate still doesn't love him, Kate gives him a Look, and Jack returns to making sandwiches and whines that he can't fix things and that the Island will take care of everything. (Juliet also yells at Jack as he gets out of the shower and gives him a very critical once-over. Burn.)

Actually, Jack's moaning about how The Island Will Fix All is rather Lockian, come to think of it. Perhaps if Undead Locke ever gets back to 1977, they can build a smoke hut and drug people together.

In the face of Jack's crushing lack of any sort of common decency, Kate and Juliet decide to be awesome together and take tiny Ben to the Others in hopes of getting him fixed. As Kate prepares to cross the Hostiles' truce line, Sawyer shows up, hair blowing in the wind, and offers to help.

After some posturing by a group of Hostiles, Richard Alpert emerges, eyeliner gleaming, and agrees to take tiny Ben, but warns that he'll lose his "innocence" (?) and all memory of the event.

Which leads to this episode's shocking-but-kind-of-predictable conclusion, which is this:

a.) If Jack had agreed to operate on tiny Ben, tiny Ben would have lived without having to be magically cured by the smoke monster or whatever Richard Alpert is planning to do to him. Therefore,
b.) if Jack had cured tiny Ben, tiny Ben would not have "lost his innocence" and become the skeevy little creeper we all know and love. Ostensibly,
c.) if Ben was not so evil, he would not have given the Losties so much trouble. Ergo,
d.) everything that happened to the Losties at Ben's hands is entirely Jack's fault. (And maybe Sayid's. A little.)

To quote my fellow copy desker and Lost addict, one Brandon B. Taylor, I can't believe I once believed in Jack. Sigh.

Some other points:
- Horace continues his tradition of stating the obvious when he discovers keys left in the lock of Sayid's empty jail cell: ""He didn't break out, somebody let him out." O RLY?
- The flashback this episode is about Kate and Aaron, and what happened to Aaron before Kate left for the Island. It's sad and sweet and actually managed to win back a lot of my respect for Kate, which is nice, because I've been annoyed with her for a while.
- Sawyer tells Kate they would "never have worked out." HE CAN BE WITH JULIET FOREVER NOW, HOORAY.
- We also find out that Sawyer told Kate to find his daughter Clementine just before he jumped off the helicopter last season. My love for him knows no bounds.

We Are Stardust; We Are Golden

I was planning on writing a post tonight about studying for my imminent and massive astronomy test and how astro always sends me on a massive philosophical kick about what it all MEANS, which got me thinking about Dylan "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" Thomas, who in turn got me thinking about poetry in general, which usually always brings me back to my favorite poet of all time, the great John "No Man Is An Island" Donne.

I want to marry John Donne for many reasons. For one, he spent most of his life madly in life with his wife Anne and wrote gorgeous poems for her. Secondly, he was sort of a poetic Renaissance man -- his work ranges from intense theological musings like "Batter My Heart" to still-fairly-bawdy love poetry for Anne like "To His Mistress Going to Bed," which requires no explanation. Ernest Hemingway owes him big time for his "for whom the bell tolls" sermon. And just look at his picture. He's adorable.

He was also a sucker for ridiculous puns and metaphors, which makes a lot of people want to tear their hair out but which I absolutely love. This is especially evident in my all-time favorite John Donne poem, "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning," which I am posting in its entirety because it is awesome.

As virtuous men pass mildly away,

And whisper to their souls, to go,

Whilst some of their sad friends do say,

"The breath goes now," and some say, "No:"

So let us melt, and make no noise,

No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;

Twere profanation of our joys

To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears;

Men reckon what it did, and meant;

But trepidation of the spheres,

Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love

(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove

Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refin'd,
That ourselves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,

Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,

Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion,

Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so

As stiff twin compasses are two;

Thy soul, the fix'd foot, makes no show

To move, but doth, if the' other do.

And though it in the centre sit,

Yet when the other far doth roam,

It leans, and hearkens after it,

And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must

Like th' other foot, obliquely run;

Thy firmness makes my circle just,

And makes me end, where I begun.

I still get chills when I read this poem, usually because of the last line, which gets me every time. Donne wrote this for his wife just before he left on a trip to France, to make her feel better about him leaving, which is just. too. adorable. I can just imagine Anne making lunch or something and finding a little note from John Donne on the counter, and instead of getting some sort of generic "Love you, see you in a few weeks, take care of the kids," she gets the best poem ever.

Forget a red, red rose -- Donne compares his love to gold, to the planets, to geometric compasses (who even thinks of that?). In anyone else's hands, it might have been ridiculous, but John Donne makes it work. Working in some awkward puns ("And grows erect, as that comes home"?) could have gotten really awkward, but John Donne makes it work.

Also significant is the fact that he never published a poem during his lifetime, which means that this was meant pretty much solely for Anne. Writing a love poem for your wife is one thing. Writing a thorny, complex poem that employs one of the most famous metaphysical conceits of all time for your wife indicates a huge level of intellectual respect for her, which was kind of in short supply in the 16th century.

When you're studying astro at highly unreasonable hours, it's fun picking out Donne's little astro references, too -- "trepidation of the spheres" refers to planetary motion, and "dull sublunary lovers' love" has to be one of my favorite phrases ever. Overall, well done, Mr. Donne.

(And yes, I acknowledge that John "I Write Puns In My Sleep" Donne is probably rolling in his grave over that one.)

Lost Review: Building It Up to Tear It Down

I have been heinously behind on blogging/homework/life, but this is no matter, as I have recently caught up on Lost and am subsequently shell-shocked by the insanity that was this past episode. Seriously -- it's turned one of the central tenets of the show upside down, and I have no idea where it's going next, but good god am I excited to see what happens.

Spoiler alert: anyone who hasn't seen last week's episode yet, stop reading now.

Our episode opens in Tikrit, Iraq, which is apparently the hometown of Sayid, who earned a place on my "generally awesome people" list very early on. A father is urging his pathetically obese son, ostensibly a young Sayid, to kill a chicken for dinner; pathetically obese kid refuses, tears spilling down his pudgy cheeks; I begin to worry that all of Sayid's credibility has been destroyed forever; and then ACTUAL YOUNG SAYID, who is much cuter, appears on screen and casually snaps a chicken's neck while his fat brother looks on, shocked.

My relief that Sayid was not the playground loser in his youth is boundless.

And we're back to the present (or, in this case, 1977), where a captured Sayid is lounging in his Dharma cell, refusing to eat or speak. Although I kind of understand (Dharma-brand beer has to be terrible), this will not last long, and it doesn't, because 12-year-old Ben Linus shows up with a sandwich and a book and a terrified-but-hopeful look in his eyes.

Tiny Ben is awesome and sad; he's just desperate for a friend, and it's pretty much the most adorable thing ever. If he'd been born in Britain, he might have grown up to be Harry Potter. Instead he just gets to be one of the best villains ever (Ben totally beats out Voldemort in my book).

Horace, the leader of the Others, shows up and tries to force Sayid to talk while waving a pair of grass clippers. Sayid shows no emotion, and rightfully so, because aging hippie men with dumb hair and lame grass clippers are quite possibly the least threatening things in the world.

Meanwhile, back in Dharmaville proper, Sawyer and Juliet share a sweet little moment in which Juliet laments the fact that Jack and company have returned to the island and pretty much ruined everything. Sawyer is adorable and reassures her and DAMN IT I WANT SAWYER AND JULIET TO BE TOGETHER FOREVER, the end.

In an effort to keep this life intact, Sawyer storms into the cell where Sayid's being held and tries to formulate a plan to get him to join the Dharmaites. Sayid refuses; Sawyer warns him that he could jeopardize everything he's worked for.

"I've built a life here, and a pretty good one," he says. I melt.

The flashback for this episode, by the way, is Sayid-centric, focusing mainly on what happened to Sayid after he stopped killing people for Ben. At one point, Ben finds Sayid in some third-world country, where he is building Habitat for Humanity-esque houses to atone for his various Ben-fueled sins or whatever, and tries to convince him to kill one more person for him.

There is only one significant line in this scene, and it's this:

Ben: "You're capable of things that most other men aren't." SAYID/BEN 4EVAAAAA

The rest of the episode (except for the end -- wait for it) does not require too much commentary, but there are a few choice moments, including:
- Everyone tells Sayid he's going to be tortured for information, but the Dharmaites' version of a torture man turns out to be an aging hippie (surprise!) who feeds Sayid some drug that makes him tell the truth. Coupled with tiny Ben's striking resemblance to a certain boy wizard, the truth serum has convinced me that Lost is pretty much Harry Potter in the South Pacific.
- Sayid slurs to everyone that he's from the future, and torture-man utters one of the best lines of the episode: "Maybe I should have used half a dropper? Oops?"
- Horace spends the entire episode trying to make scary faces but usually ends up looking like a grouchy old woman, which is what he is. I really, really hate him.
- Hurley has apparently been assigned to kitchen duty and, predictably, looks adorable in an apron.
- Tiny Ben gets slapped around by his loser dad and ends up with a giant bruise and taped glasses. I just want to give him a hug.

The rest of the episode is pretty uneventful, until the end, which is honestly one of the most shocking developments I've ever seen on Lost.

The Dharmaites, against Sawyer's advice, take a vote to kill Sayid because they think he's a Hostile; in response, tiny Ben pulls his first badass move of the episode and SETS A VAN ON FIRE, sending it careening through Dharmaville. While everyone is fighting the flames, he breaks Sayid out of jail and the two go running through the forest, trying to find Richard "Permanent Eyeliner" Alpert and the actual Hostiles. Jin finds them, tries to convince Sayid to come back, and a desperate Sayid knocks him out and takes his gun.

Adorable tiny Ben, impressed with Sayid's moves, says something adorable and chipper about how awesome Sayid is. Sayid looks up, agonized.

"You were right about me," he whispers. "I am a killer."

And he whips out Jin's gun and SHOOTS TINY BEN.

And that's it.

I can't even begin to imagine what this means for the show -- does Ben not exist anymore? Has Sayid changed history entirely? Has a hole been ripped in the space-time continuum?

I get where Sayid is coming from -- if you had the chance to kill random evil masterminds before they could actually become evil masterminds, wouldn't you? -- but it's still one of the show's most mind-blowing conclusions.

Actually, I think Ben will survive and grow up to be the skeevy little creeper we all know and love, and that his preternatural knowledge of the Losties likely stems from the fact that he knew them all when he was 12 and figured out who he was supposed to become. I have no idea if I'm right. But I can't wait to find out.

Lost Review: Ancient Commonsense

Note: As a Lost addict whose copy desking usually interferes with actually watching the show in real time, I will be posting sporadic episode reviews as I get to them. Disclaimer: I take no responsibility for confused readers who don't watch the show. It's far too late for you now.

I have been waiting for the big reunion episode for ages, ever since our six erstwhile castaways left the island at the end of Season 4, and we finally got the goods tonight. Sawyer was appropriately stunned, Hurley was big and cute and hug-ful, Jack did this whole awkward handshake thing, and our own Mistress of Meaningful and Poignant Looks delivered with various regretful grimaces and a desperate and sad hug. If Sawyer leaves Juliet for Kate, I will destroy my television.

And then comes Sawyer's big reveal: thanks to the island's time-hopping, he and Jin and Co. have been stuck in ... wait for it... 1977 ever since Locke left. In keeping with tradition, everyone drops what they're doing, makes scared faces, and the camera zooms meaningfully in on Hurley.

"Um... what?" he asks, staring around apprehensively. Somewhere in the great VH1 Has-Beens episode in the sky, Charlie "Guys... Where Are We?" Pace is smiling.

And we're off.

Sawyer, who is awesome, manages to get the returned castaways into the Dharma Initiative by passing them off as new recruits who've just arrived on the island via the initiative's sub. They all get flower leis and "Namastes" all around (the entire Dharma Initiative are secret hippies, for serious) and job assignments. Jack gets "Workman," which basically means "glorified janitor." Score one for Sawyer.

Sawyer also gets major points for a confrontation between him and Jack, when Jack, apparently dissatisfied with the fact that Sawyer has pretty much saved them all from death by Dharma, stops by his house to complain. "Where do we go from here?" he whines. Sawyer says he's thinking about it.

"It looked like you were just reading a book," Jack counters brilliantly.

Sawyer, who is pretty much my favorite person in life right now, puts down his book and straight-up OWNS Jack with a little-known fact about Winston Churchill (he read a book every night, even during the blitz, because he said it helped him think better) and a legitimate analysis of Jack's leadership style, which is that he has none.

"Back when you were calling the shots you pretty much just reacted. See, you didn't think, Jack. And as I recall, a lot of people ended up dead," Sawyer drawls. "So I'm going to go back to reading my book and I'm going to think. 'Cause that's how I saved your ass today." BAM.

Jack tries to fight back with some lame stuff about how he got everyone off the island, but Sawyer is a piece of ownage and Workman Jack leaves dejectedly. It's Sawyer time.

And then Kate and Sawyer exchange this little look, and Kate looks weirdly disappointed, and Sawyer looks weirdly guilty, and if she somehow destroys the competent awesomeness that Sawyer and Juliet have going on, I will break things.

In other news, we find out that Sun, undead Locke, and Ben are stuck in 2007, which poses some problems. And Jack's undead father has shown up again, which should be interesting.

Other notes:

- Sun proves her awesomeness once again and knocks Ben out with an oar. Sweet.
- Sayid is also in 1977 with the Dharma kids, but he had the misfortune of getting picked up by some legit Dharmaites before Sawyer could find him, so he's in Other jail right now for being a suspected hostile. Sad face.
- At the risk of sounding ridiculous, I'm kind of mad Jack and Co. are back on the island, because Sawyer and Juliet are ADORABLE, and everyone seems to have made a little home for themselves where they are. Seriously, all they have to do is avoid Ben's giant Dharma extermination in, say, 1990-ish, and they'll be fine.
- Juliet and Kate's first exchange in the Dharma processing station was crazy tension-filled. If Kate tries to come back to Sawyer, I am fairly confident we'll see another Kate/Juliet mud-wrestling showdown.
- Tiny Ben shows up! He is still appropriately creepy. I am so glad he's back.

And, lastly, your Sawyer one-liner of the evening:

After a Dharma Initiative member suggests that they kill Sayid: "Well, I appreciate your input there, Quick Draw, but I wanna talk to him first."

They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!!

I planned to write a post tonight about a fantastic article in the New York Times today on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's last issue (absolutely heartbreaking, by the way), and I probably will by the end of the week.

But after abandoning about fifty halfhearted attempts at a staggeringly brilliant and insightful piece on the state of print journalism, I turned to my latest means of procrastination: watching old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Hulu.

I confess: Buffy is kind of my favorite thing ever. The first six episodes of the first season are pretty standard fare: mildly silly serial episodes featuring an incredibly young Sarah Michelle Gellar fighting off laughably ugly vampires, witches and their ilk. The music, clothing and hair are wonderfully 90s-tastic, the one-liners are appropriately witty, and the characters are surprisingly endearing.

Otherwise, though, Buffy was kind of a guilty pleasure of mine. Until tonight.

I just finished watching episode 7 -- where Buffy, the Chosen One, uber-vampire slayer and all that, realizes that she's in love with mysterious bad boy Angel, who just happens to be a vampire. But! Angel has a soul! And a conscience! And he doesn't eat people! (And he is really, really hot.) The whole episode adds a huge new level of depth and danger and conflict to the show, while staying true to its quirky, likeable roots. There's a reason why Buffy is a cult classic, after all, and that really comes through in this episode.

Joss Whedon, the show's creator, said that the first season of Buffy is "high school as a horror film." In the Buffy world, a controlling mother isn't just an annoying helicopter parent; she's a witch who possesses her daughter in order to relieve her glory days. The quiet girl everyone ignores literally becomes invisible. The meanest kids in school might actually be demons. It's campy and ridiculous a lot of the time, but at its core, Buffy is really about issues that everyone who's ever been a teenager has faced: figuring out who you are, taking on frightening responsibilities and trying to stay sane through it all.

And have I mentioned how attractive Angel is? Because, seriously. Dayum, grrl.