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.)

Songs on Repeat: Love Ain't Far

As much as I hate to admit it, I am a secret Motown junkie. I adore the Supremes, I am a sucker for the Temptations, and Martha Reeves is one of my personal heroes.

I attribute this mild obsession to something akin to Stockholm syndrome — back in the day, I rode an hour-and-a-half-long bus to high school every morning, and my bus driver, Socks (who is another story entirely), insisted on playing our local "oldies" station, Sunny 104.5, over the bus radio. At full volume. For the entire ride. After months of attempting to fight the powers that be (earmuffs, headphones, and various pleas to turn down the music proved futile), I gave in. I can pretty much sing the entire Sunny 104.5 repertoire from memory now, which is kind of pathetic.

Thus, when I found a song called "You Can't Hurry Love" by a Swedish band called the Concretes, I went in expecting some indie cover of the Supremes' hit. I couldn't have been farther from the truth.



There is no reason, really, why I should enjoy this song as much as I do. It has about three lyrics, it's over in two minutes, and it's mildly repetitive. But it's catchy as hell, man, and as far as my repeat songs go, that's usually all that matters.

Of course, now that I've spent several paragraphs waffling about my minor Motown obsession, I feel I should include a video of The Supremes' seminal "You Can't Hurry Love" as well.

Tuesday Newsday: Aspirations Wrapped Up In Books

As weeks go, this one hasn't been the best for the newspaper industry, and it's only Tuesday. The Chicago Sun-Times filed for bankruptcy today, and according to a Monday rumor, the venerable New York Times will soon be eliminating its City section and regional weeklies.

Newspapers need money, but more importantly, they need buyers -- people willing to invest time and energy in reenergizing and reinventing the business model that so many have failed at. So, in lieu of giving in to the man and accepting bailout funds, here's a solution: let's buy them ourselves.

At least that's Andrew Dunn's plan. Dunn, a journalism student at the University of North Carolina, runs the Web site Let's Buy A Newspaper, where, since January, journalists have been pledging money to -- you guessed it -- buy one of the country's various struggling papers. The now-defunct, almost universally beloved Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Rocky Mountain News were once first on the site's list of potential purchases. That list now includes papers like the Miami Herald and the San Diego Union-Tribune.

On the site's "About" page, Dunn admits that he started the site on a whim when the news broke about the Post-Intelligencer but would be open to following through on the experiment if enough pledges come through.

Yes, only $28,000 has been pledged to save newspapers that are asking for hundreds of millions of dollars. Yes, the site might be a little too idealistic for its own good. Yes, there's almost no chance that Dunn's endearingly bare-bones site will actually manage to buy a paper of its own.

But at the same time, click around the site and you'll find a bunch of concerned, intelligent journalists discussing new practices in newsroom management, laying out a business plan and outlining a payroll for 20 reporters and seven editors. It's kind of like playing house -- what would we do with a whole newspaper of our own? -- but already, contributors are putting forth ideas about investors, advertising and potential locations. Reporters and editors from publications as venerable as the New York Times and as small-scale as college newspapers are pledging $50 and $500 and $5,000 if the project gets off the ground.

Maybe it's wishful thinking; maybe it's a shot in the dark. But that's what new media is about: taking a crazy idea that just might work and seeing where it goes. At the very least, Let's Buy a Newspaper is bringing together print journalists across the country to talk about the future and share ideas in a time when ideas are all we have left.

And if the whole thing does work out, they can have my $50, any day.

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.

Sunday Nunday: This Is How I Am Repaid?

General life rule, whether you're Catholic or not: don't mess with nuns. If you do, they have various options for vengeance at their disposal. They can pull a John Paul II and just instantaneously forgive you, after which you will be so riddled with guilt that you will actually ask for punishment, or, failing that, they can always go old-school and whack you with rulers or make you stand in a trash can or something. (True story: that actually happened to a family friend of ours in the 60s.) Either way, it's not a good situation.

Scamming nuns is never a good idea, because not only will the nuns ultimately have their revenge, but the world will generally agree that you are a horrible human being. Rip off a nun and you've pretty much consigned yourself to a life of slapping orphans and scaring old ladies, because what else is left, really?

Thus, if this Chicago couple is indeed guilty of what the FBI says they are, I fear for their future. In 2004, according to an FBI affidavit, Angela Martin-Mulu and Edward Bosire turned up at a Carmelite monastery near Milwaukee and told the nuns there they were homeless Kenyan refugees who needed food and money, adding that they would be killed if they returned to Kenya. (The two immigrated from Kenya in 1999 and recieved political asylum in 2007.)

The nuns understandably took pity, because they are adorable, and gave them more than $800,000 over three years. Even worse, the money came straight from their personal health fund, according to a Sister Mary Agnes.

So if the couple are guilty (they were indicted by a federal grand jury recently and face up to 20 years in prison if convicted), they didn't just steal a fortune -- they stole it from a bunch of Carmelites who couldn't pay for health insurance. Low point, kids.

To top it all off, the FBI says most of the money was spent in casinos, which makes me want to bang my head against my desk. Gambling with nuns' money is practically asking to be struck down by lightning.

There's not really much I can say about this situation other than "well, that was dumb." And there's no word on what the nuns think about the whole thing, but personally, I'm hoping they break out the rulers.

Songs on Repeat: Sun Been Down for Days

At approximately 36 seconds into Wilco's inimitable "Hummingbird," there's this awesome little cello part that gets me every. single. time. It's only a few measures long, but it's absolutely gorgeous. Sometimes I just play the first minute or so over and again, because I am admittedly kind of pathetic.

Oren Lavie's "Her Morning Elegance" features a little cello riff early on, too. And maybe I'm just a sucker for what is arguably the best instrument ever (I haven't picked mine up in two years, but I'm not ready to say I used to play it just yet), because iTunes informs me that I have played this song 30 times since Sunday night, and that's not counting the play count on my iPod.

Usually my repeat songs of the week are sort of pleasant little things that I decide to start out my mornings with, but this one's different. It's minimal as anything -- those fantastic cello sections nearly drown out the muted organ and xylophone in the background -- but it's one of those songs that just works. I can't explain it.

Also, the music video is pretty much one of the most adorable things I've ever seen. It's probably one of the reasons I can't stop listening to the song.