Lost Review: Those You've Known

After this post, this blog will become something more than sporadic Lost rants, I promise (if only because season 5 finished Wednesday night). But the finale was on crack, so indulge me for a bit.

Disclaimer: Spoilers ahead. You know the drill.

In the interest of time and my general sanity, I'm going to break this up into various bullet points, because otherwise it'll be a thousand words of me sobbing about Juliet and Sawyer with a few crackpot theories thrown in. Thus, onward!

Nukes: I admit, I only warmed up to Jack's insane idea of exploding a hydrogen bomb at the Swan to neutralize the electromagnetic field that will eventually cause Flight 815 to crash on the Island because I just wanted him to shut up about it. We also find out that Jack the Selfless has a secret reason for wanting to change the future: he wants another chance with Kate, at which I seriously considered throwing things at my television.

Interestingly enough, Sawyer's admittedly very tiny torch for Kate is also what makes Juliet agree with Jack's plan, which also made me want to vomit. KATE IS NOT THAT SPECIAL, GUYS. SHE IS INDECISIVE AND ANNOYING AND SHE AND JACK DESERVE EACH OTHER. Kate is also not helping matters by throwing Sawyer various patented Soulful Glances every other second. Sigh.

Anyway, like almost every one of Jack's plans, the hydrogen-bomb thing fails pretty spectacularly. Sayid gets shot trying to get it to the Swan station, Jack goes on a muderous rampage through Dharmaville in revenge (fun times!) and then when he finally drops the bomb down the shaft, it doesn't explode. FAIL.

Also, Saywer beats Jack up. FINALLY.

Jacob: After years of waiting to find out who the mysterious Island-god-leader-person is, we were introduced to him in the finale's opening minutes, as he watches a ship on the horizon (the Black Rock?) while sitting on the beach. Jacob is more than a little creepy. In this episode's flashbacks, he manages to meet most of Lost's principal characters at seminal moments during their lives to offer a few cryptic asides and then wander off mysteriously. He is also apparently quasi-responsible for Nadia's death, which is unforgivable. Poor Sayid.

Jacob is also involved in a serious rivalry with another ancient Island creepster, whom Entertainment Weekly's Lost expert, Jeff Jensen, is calling "Loophole McNameless." I like it. Anyway, Loophole tells Jacob within the episode's first few minutes that he wants to kill him, and that he will find some "loophole" to achieve it.

"Good luck with that one, kid," Jacob says (more or less) with a smirk. Burn.

Zombies: I really tried to like Undead Locke for a little bit, especially after Undead Alex voiced her support for him a few episodes back. But, seriously. Undead Locke is a bum. He's smarmy, he's annoying, he baits Ben like it's his job (Ben, to his credit, is usually ready with some dry comeback), and he likes reminding everyone that The Island Tells Him Things. Incessantly.

So I was happy but not terribly surprised to discover that Undead Locke is not actually Locke, but probably Loophole McNameless posing as everyone's favorite emo tool with daddy issues (come to think of it, that's pretty much everyone on the island. Never mind). Real Locke is, interestingly, still a corpse. Well done, Ben.

Deaths, maybe: Sayid has survived the Gulf War, two plane crashes, Horace's grass clippers, and life as Ben's hit man/secret lover, only to be (maybe) killed by tiny Ben's drunk father? COME ON.

Moving on. My journalism ethics professor enjoyed reminding us all last semester that, above all, people need to be included. Clearly, Jacob never got this message, because Ben has some serious exclusion issues with him. In a surprisingly poignant sequence just after he and Undead Locke finally meet up with the erstwhile Island king, Ben asks Jacob why he's never bothered to talk to him despite his years of service to the Island.

In this situation, someone like Jack or Real Locke would have maybe thrown a weak punch and then cried. Instead, Ben stabs Jacob, because, like him or not, he always gets the job done.

Most importantly, let's have a moment of silence for the badassery that is Dr. Juliet Burke.

When the future hatch goes haywire after Jack's bomb plan fails miserably, Juliet gets dragged into the electromagnetic drilling tunnel, only to be grabbed at the last minute by a devastated, desperate Sawyer who lets out some Titanic-worthy "Don't you let go"s. Then: she falls down the shaft, Sawyer absolutely falls apart, I nearly cry, she lands at the bottom of the shaft, nearly dies, and then sees the unexploded hydrogen bomb.

Being the awesome person she is -- and, after all, there's really nothing left to lose at this point -- Juliet whams the thing (which is rigged to explode on impact) with a rock.

The entire screen goes white.

And that's it.

Here's to season six!

Songs on Repeat: Had A Lot of Things to Say

Like many children who grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, I have spent most of my life relentlessly pretending that I actually live within the city limits, because trying to explain to people that you live in a town that is too small to possess a zip code is just too depressing.

With anyone who lives outside the Philly area, this usually works. But good luck trying to fake street cred in State College, where at least half the population is also trying to pretend they're from my gleaming metropolis.

Thus, the fact that I will actually be living in a city this summer -- I have an internship with MSNBC in New York -- makes me ridiculously, irrationally excited, to the point where I have accumulated a small playlist of songs that remind me of my impending summer adventures.

This includes:
- Pretty much every song ever written by Bishop Allen, for no apparent reason
- "Song for Myla Goldberg," by the Decemberists, which includes the admittedly blindingly obvious line "I know New York, I need New York, I know I need unique New York"
- "Gates of the Old City," by Looker, which reminds my former roommate Heather of Mary-Kate and Ashley and reminds me of Bishop Allen. Double win.
- "You Can't Hurry Love," by the Concretes, which readers of this blog will remember from a past Songs on Repeat post
- This song:



I have no idea why this particular song ("Wires," by Jason Schwartzman's solo effort Coconut Records) makes me think of dashing around New York, but it does. And yes, the band is another gimmicky project of an actor-turned-musician, which usually frightens me (see: Duff, Hilary), but Coconut Records has proven to be appropriately indie enough for me so far.

And there's no denying that "Wires" is catchy as hell, at least in my book. After all, it features punchy guitar chords and a xylophone, which is pretty much all I require of a song. There's also a great part that involves what I think is a Wurlitzer towards the end where everything just sort of soars upwards, and it's lovely. So: cheers for this song, and for New York, where I will be blogging from the Village in t-minus nine days. Score.

Quick blog note: Next up will likely be a LOST review, which I haven't posted yet because I am still attempting to wrap my head around the season finale, which was mindblowing and brilliant and almost made me cry. Stay tuned.

Tuesday Newsday: Taking In the Sights of Your Empire's Colony

Aaaaaand, we're back!

The blame for my complete and utter lack of blogging for the past month falls squarely on the shoulders of a finals schedule from hell, complete with an astronomy exam that literally gave me a headache and an eight-page research paper that had me trapped in front of a microform machine reading Nazi propaganda -- in French -- for seven straight hours one weekend. Whew.

Needless to say, it's good to be back in the land of the living.

And while emerging (mostly) unscathed from the Pollock Testing Center doesn't really match up to snagging an early release from an Iranian prison, I'm sure Roxana Saberi is feeling similar sentiments of relief today as well.

Saberi, an Iranian-American journalist living in Iran, was sentenced by an Iranian court in April to eight years in prison on charges of espionage. She was released Monday after an appeals court reduced her charges -- perhaps due to a letter from Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad encouraging the court to be fair in its decision.

Her release means a lot of things -- a new and hopefully promising development in the U.S.'s dealings with Iran, an insight into Iranian domestic politics, an indication of how the wind is blowing in a country where Ahmadinejad is seeking re-election next month. It's a testament to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's general badassery (she, along with President Obama, has been clamoring for Saberi's release since she was arrested). It's a signal that rational discourse between Tehran and Washington might not be impossible.

But at its core, it's a victory for the free press, especially in Iran, where a journalist can be arrested merely for working without press credentials. In the U.S., we're bemoaning dropping ad revenues and the perils of online reporting. But halfway across the world, Saberi's case shows that getting a byline can get you arrested. It's sobering stuff.

Analysts have cautioned that it's not prudent to read too much into Saberi's release, arguing that her sudden release illustrates the volatility of Iranian politics. And in a country where two other Americans are missing or detained and Iranian-Canadian blogger Hossein Derakhshan is still being held on espionage charges, the battle isn't over. But the case of Roxana Saberi is certainly a good start.

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.