Unearned Suffering

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said that “unearned suffering is redemptive.”  Pain and suffering can take many forms and be caused by any number of  sources.  Sometimes others inflict pain on us, sometimes we do it to ourselves.  A good example is when I happen upon a movie that plain sucks, the plot, the acting, the story, the special effects, etc., you name it, it blows, but once I start watching it, I continue to the end in the hope that it will magically get better by the end.  This happened Saturday.  I noticed that Surrogates was now in the my Instant queue on Netflix.  The kids are away and I could actually watch something that I wanted to watch.  I am sucker for science fiction, so I thought this would be a good choice.  I have been a Bruce Willis fan ever since his days on Moonlighting (FYI- my all time favorite episode was the Taming of the Shrew one), so this was another plus.

About fifteen minutes into the movie, I began to see the error of my decision.  The premise of the movie was awful and really farfetched, the dialog was lame and the editing was atrocious.  But I am a closet optimist (don’t tell anyone) and I stuck with it.  And when it started to get worse, I just couldn’t bring myself to turn it off.  There are 72 other movies in my instant queue that I could watch, but for some OCD-driven reason, I suffered through it.  I even stayed up until 2:30 AM to finish it.

I think in all of my 36 years, I have only turned off five or six movies because they were bad.  Let me rephrase that, when I am taking about watching a movie, I mean that I choose to sit down and watch a movie from the beginning.  There are several movies or shows that may be on TV that I catch parts of but never finish, but only five or six that I have sat down with the intention of watching beginning to end that I have stopped watching.  I am the same way with books.  There are only two books that I have put down mid-way through and never finished.  I just can’t do it, I get a sick feeling in my head, like I am quitting or something.

Unlike the mental pain of watching a bad movie, there is also physical pain.  While weed-eating the other morning, I actually hit my leg with the weed-eater (don’t ask how, because I am still trying to figure out how I could do something so stupid) and left a two inch gash in my shin.  I scared some young woman walking her dog when the string hit my leg and I yelled “Dirty Whore!”  I looked up from my bleeding shin to see her wide-eyed stare and gasping mouth as she hurried her dog away.  Then later that night, I was playing with my daughter.  One of her new favorite games is to pull the hair on my head and act like she is making a pile of the pulled hairs on the floor.  While this is painful in a dull, throbbing way, it was not nearly as painful as when she was grabbing my nose and accidently shoved her thumb into my left nostril and pinched.  She didn’t let go as she pulled her hand away from my face.  Her razor-sharp baby finger nails lacerated the inside of my nose and left my already allergy-beaten nose in a bloody mess.  She smiled and went on with her business as I hurried to the bathroom to stop the flow.

And then there is that deep, soul-wrenching suffering.  That anguish that is so persistent that no matter what you do or where you are, it is always present like a tooth-ache in your mind.  Something so insidious that you often lose your concentration, become irritable and snap at those you love.  This suffering can only be caused by one thing, something so innocent yet so vile, when you get a stupid goddamned song stuck in your head and you can’t get rid of it.

You see, it all started with this:

My wife and I have a habit of being silly, sometimes downright dorky at times.  A few months ago when we harvested our first crop of lettuce from the garden, we started eating a lot more salads.  And a salad is not complete without good croutons.  After working our way through several brands, we found Mrs. Cubbison’s Seasoned Restaurant Style Croutons.  Here’s where the silly (and covertly evil) part comes in.  My loving wife, while preparing salads for the family for dinner, came up with a catchy little ditty.  It goes something like this, “And here’s to you, Mrs. Cubbison, people love your croutons more than you can know. (wo wo wo)  God bless you please, Mrs. Cubbison, restaurant style on salads they will stay (hey hey hey)…” (sung to the tune of “Mrs. Robinson” by Simon and Garfunkel).  There are other lines and various versions of the chorus, but you get the point. 

Now any time that box comes out of the cupboard, I am singing that friggin’ song.  My wife sings it, the kids sing it, I am singing it right friggin’ now.  I catch myself humming it at my desk, in the car, in the shower.  You just want to grab a big spoon and belt it out like you are on stage.  It becomes the punctuation to every sentence, to every thought.  “Oh, it’s Shark Week, and here’s to you Mrs. Cubbison…”  “Well that was a short meeting, People love your croutons more than you can know…”  It’s like an itch that you can’t scratch, like getting a wedgie while standing in front of a lot of people, you know you can’t dig it out, you just have to keep grinning and bearing it.  Like getting a pebble in the toe of your shoe or that bug that gets in the car and flies around your head while you are driving.  When I see homeless people on the street, talking to themselves and swatting at invisible objects, I know that in their minds they are singing some stupid song that happened to get stuck there many years ago that they couldn’t get rid of.

So now you know of my pain.  And it ain’t the least bit redemptive.

Do – Dah – Dippity!

You may have seen this a few times already.  I know that I have seen it at least five times since last night.  It’s the new Kia commercial featuring life-sized hamsters driving the new Kia Soul.  It wasn’t the hamsters that I found interesting, it was that the commercial featured “The Choice is Yours” by Black Sheep.

As soon as it came on, I started rapping along with the hamsters, much to the amazement of my two boys.  They looked at me the same way they always do when I start acting strange.  My 6 YO had an inquisitive expression on his face, like he didn’t understand what I have become and what happened to the man that used to be his father and the 8 YO had a look of inner turmoil, like he was debating internally whether to run upstairs and tell mom that I am going crazy or just crazy along with me.  They are used to me singing along with heavy metal songs or quoting movies before the actors even say the words, but this caught them off guard.  It was too late last night to prove to them that I knew what this song was, so I waited until today to bring it up on the iPod for them.

But the Kia commercial did more than just prove to my sons that I listen to musicians other than Slipknot and Faith No More, it brought on the urge to listen to some old school rap.  I cycled through the “Rap” playlist on my iPod as we drove around performing errands today.  It brought back a lot of memories hearing A Tribe Called Quest’s “Scenario” - “rrrooaww rrrooaww like a dungeon dragon, change your little drawers cuz your pants are saggin’” and Das EFX’s “Mic Checka” - “I miggedy-make the wonder twins deactivate.” 

With every new song that came on, I did two things, first play the song in fast forward in my head to make sure there were no objectionable lyrics that would further taint the minds of my two impressionable children and second try to recall when this particular song was popular and what I would have been doing around that time.  A lot of it was from the late 80s and early 90s when rap and hip-hop was becoming mainstream in suburbia.  I began to remember spending summers at a friend’s house, swimming in his pool, listening to Rob Base and Slick Rick.  And cruisin’ on High St. in Pottstown in a buddy’s white Dodge Shadow blasting 2 Live Crew and NWA with so much bass the windows would rattle.  And the high school graduation parties with Arrested Development’s “Tennessee” and “Mr. Wendal”.  And how could I forget seeing House of Pain, Body Count and Public Enemy perform live at Penn State.  Ice-T and Chuck D were both taking shots at how white people dance all night long.  Chuck D said at one point, “Y’all too white, if you can’t dance, at least jump in time to the beat.”

I was still into rock and metal back then, but most of my friends were not.  So I listened to hip-hop when I was around them and metal when I was by myself.  It wasn’t until 1991 when Anthrax released the Attack of the Killer B’s album, that I got to bring a little of my world into theirs.  Anthrax partnered up with Public Enemy to do a geared up version of Public Enemy’s “Bring tha Noise”, ala Aerosmith/Run-DMC and “Walk this Way” from five years earlier.  “Bring tha Noise” and Anthrax’s “I’m the Man” got me into a lot of trouble one day when I was senior in high school.  It was a senior cut day which happened to land me and four of my friends at my house at 9 AM.  We started by kicking my dad’s half keg of beer and then moved on to whatever else we could find.  Those two songs were the theme music for all of the events of that day.  At one point I remember sliding down the steps from the second floor to the first on my stomach and then vacuuming up someone’s puke.  There were a few other events that I don’t want to mention in a public forum for fear of any statute of limitations that have not yet expired.  I don’t think my elderly neighbors, at least the ones that were home to witness it, spoke to me for a few years after that.

I don’t know how long my trip down memory lane will last, I am not even halfway through my collection of Beastie Boys, Cypress Hill, Ice Cube, LL and others.  If you have any favs from that era, let me know I will add them to my mix.  For now it will be “back on the scene, crispy and clean, you can try, but then why, cause you can’t intervene.”

King For A Day

And Fan for a lifetime.  Saturday was my big night in Philadelphia, I got to see Faith No More for the first time in over a decade.  The show was PHENOMENAL!  It was everything I had hoped for and more.  We had good seats, we could see and hear everything perfectly.  Mike Patton was the same as always, his vocal range never ceases to impress me.  He was able to do amazing covers of Peaches and Herb’s “Reunited” and the Jackson Five’s “Ben” and still growl the likes of “Caffeine” and “Surprise! You’re Dead!”.  The musical highlight of the night for me was my favorite, “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies.” 

The music wasn’t the only thing I came to see.  Patton, as usual, is just as fun to watch as he is to listen to.  Patton promised that he would “slow dance” with one of the fans before the night was over.  He delivered during “Ben”, when he singled out an extra large fan in the front row and climbed onto his shoulders.  He had the guy carry him throughout the entire song across the front of the stage while he sang. 

Patton didn’t stop there.  During “Just a Man,” he jumped onto one of the rope ladders leading up to the stage lights and proceeded to climb his way to the top.  Judging by the way two stage hands ran across the stage, this was not a planned event.  Patton shoved the mic into his mouth as he climbed and still continued to sing.  He finished from the top of the ladder and after noticing that there was nowhere else to go, said “Kinda got myself into trouble, didn’t I?”  The rest of the band just stared up at him and played “Edge of the World” in striptease fashion as he climbed back down.

The band came out for an encore of three songs, ending with “Digging the Grave.”  It was sad when it was over.  I may never again get to see them perform together again.

I learned a few technical details from the show.  The first is that neither the Flip Mino nor the Motorola Droid are good for long distance video.  The second is that I suck as a camera man.  It didn’t matter, I got to see it live.  Here are a couple of my crappy videos from the show:

You can see the rest of my videos here.  Or if you want to see better ones, you can check out the New Faith No More blog.

Thanks to Mark for coming with me!  I am anxious to see how your iPhone videos turned out.

For Cattle and Love Play

No, it’s not what you are thinking.  “Mood’s a thing for cattle and love play,” is a quote from one of my favorite movies.  Moods maybe for cattle and love play, but they are also for music.  I love music.  I listen to music all day long, I listen while I am working, pausing only for meetings.  I listen when I am out doing yard work, driving in the car, making dinner.  And when I don’t have something playing, I usually have a song or three running through my head.  Every time I walk down a long hallway, I hear the “Imperial March” playing in my head.  Waking up everyday triggers a few minutes of “Ugly in the Morning” to come blasting through from my subconscious.  My Pavlovian response to a text message on my phone (i.e. when I get paged from work) is to whisper “I push my fingers into my eyes…” from ”Duality”.  Hell, even the title of this blog is ripped from a song title.  

I listen to a lot of different types of music, everything from Amadeus to ZZ Top, from “A.D.D.” to “Zzyxz Rd.”  I have about 90 GB of music stored in various places, about 20,000 songs.  That’s a rough guess – attempting to remove duplicates, spoken word tracks and audio books from the total count has proven a much more difficult task than I imagined and I didn’t want to spend the time getting an accurate number before writing this.  I have album versions, demo versions, live versions and even cover versions of the same song.  That has something to do with my condition of needing things a certain way.

I do have my limitations, there is a lot of music that I just can’t listen to, like new”er” country (anything written in the last two decades) and anything played on a Top 40 station or any radio station in my general vicinity (the radio stations around me have really began to suck over the past four or five years).  I will be the first to admit that I have some weird standards for music that I like.  First, and probably most important, if you are singing about bubblegum and rainbows and shiny happy people, I probably won’t be listening to you.  That has a lot to do with how I pick what I want to listen to at any particular moment, or rather, what mood I am in.  I just don’t ever get into a mood where I want to hear how happy someone is.  I don’t trust people that are happy all the time.

My week usually progresses from the slow sedate mood of a Monday morning where I listen to mostly classical or instrumental pieces to the frenetic, anger-driven pace of Fridays when it’s all hardcore, like Hatebreed, Sepulture and Sevendust.  On Tuesdays, when I have robotics, I have the urge to throw on some punk.  There is something about being in the middle of 40 kids that makes me want to hear Black Flag belt out “Room 13” (NOTE: this is not the original, but a cover by Corey Taylor, I couldn’t find a decent sounding version by Black Flag). 

Things slow down a bit again Wednesdays and I reach for some classic rock, and by classic I mean stuff from the 60s and 70s.  Thursdays pick up the pace again, and the genre du jour is a mix of the more modern rock with a heavy metal edge, with the blurring fingers of Hammett, Mustaine, Ian and the ilk.  Saturdays mean working out in the yard, so I need something LOUD to overcome the rumble of the various small engines of lawn equipment.  This brings a weird mix of hardcore metal and rap, because there are few things cooler than riding a lawn mower while pimpin’ some Chuck D and Pubic Enemy or killing weeds with Slayer’s “Chemical Warfare” as the soundtrack.

Sometimes the weather or the season gets me in a mood.  Late spring and early summer makes me want to dust off the Zeppelin (by “dust off” I mean, go to Artists, Led Zeppelin and hit play on my iPod).  This past week and for the next few weeks, that is all I will want to listen to.  There must be something in the air (other than pollen) that makes me need Zeppelin playing around the clock.  And it only gets better when I hear one of my boys humming along.

With kids around, I am faced with some challenges.  I always have to be mindful of what is playing when they can hear.  A large portion of my music comes with a parental advisory label attached.  You bet your sweet ass that they will hear and comment on someone singing a four letter word when they are three rooms away with the TV on, but god forbid they would so much as blink when I shout their names six inches from their heads telling them to stop punching each other.  I usually avoid those songs/albums/artists altogether when they are around, but sometimes I just press my luck and spin the volume to 0 when I know something inappropriate is coming.  My ever observant children never fail to say, “Why’d you do that?” 

“Do what?”

“Turn the song off.”

“It’s not something you should hear.”

“Like what?”

“Well, if I wanted you to know what, I wouldn’t have turned it off, would I?”

The other challenge, of course, is trying to not force them to listen to what I want them to listen to.  But it’s not as bad as it could be.  They are into the Top 40 stuff my wife listens to and what their friends at school are listening to, like Black Eyed Peas and Just’, Just’, Justin…  (Blech, I just can’t write his name.  Remember what I said about happy people earlier, well this douche is their crowned prince.  So what if he is only 16 years old, where are his parents?  Shouldn’t they have some sort of control over this child?  Isn’t there a law out there that prevents this shit from being played over the airwaves?  They should have to stick a label on the cover of that album that warns people “Contains lyrics that will make you want to pierce your eardrums with an ice pick after exposure”)

I win some little battles when my 7 YO asks if he can add some songs to his iPod.  He asked the other day if he could have Slipknot’s “Before I Forget” and Helmet’s “Surgery” added.  Or when my 6 YO sings every word to “Umbabarauma” which is mostly in Portuguese, or whatever it is that Max Cavalera is growling.  I guess I will have to be open to whatever they want to listen to.  But that doesn’t mean that I can’t try to help them experience the stuff that I am in to.  I can’t wait to take them to the first concert.

That is all for now, what was to be my Saturday post took a little longer and has now turned into a Sunday post.  I hope everyone’s Sunday is “Easy”.

Lost: The End

By now, I am sure all of the diehard Lost fans have read at least some of the myriad of theories and possible meanings of the last episode of Lost.  I have read quite a few myself (if you want a really good one, try this one posted on Dark UFO).  I have to admit that I was a bit confused by the final 15 minutes of last Sunday’s ending.  Let me rephrase that, I was fine and everything was peachy keen until three seconds after Jack closed his eye for the final time and my wife said, “See!  They were all dead the entire time and the Island really was Purgatory!”

“Huh what? No, that can’t be, it’s, uh…”  At that moment, six years of facts and figures and theories came rushing into my head.  She went to bed, mad at how it ended and I stayed up for the next few hours working (of course) and in the back of my mind, I recreated scenario after scenario of what I thought had happened.  By morning, I had a clear idea of my “truth” about what Lost really was.  And I also had a few “theories” on why people misunderstood what happened.  I read a bunch of critiques of the last episode and I saw that many agreed, but there were also quite a few that disagreed.

Before I go any further, let me start out by stating what I believe (and what my wife now believes):

Everything that happened in the six seasons of Lost (outside of the sideways/alt-universe of season 6) really happened to the characters.  They crashed on the Island, they fought with the Others, they time traveled, some were killed on the island, etc.  The LA-verse was some sort of afterlife meeting ground where they existed in a pseudo-existence before passing over to their final afterlife.  You could call it purgatory before getting to heaven.  It was Jack’s story of redemption, of finding faith and love and fulfilling his destiny.

With that out of the way, let me try to address all of the criticisms out there about unanswered questions.  Did anyone really expected to get all of the questions answered and delivered with a nice little bow on top?  The purpose of the series was not a science lesson, it was not a spiritual discourse on how to attain enlightenment.  It was a piece of art put together by many people over a long period of time.  It’s purpose was to entertain and move people.  Like any good pieces of art, whether it is music, painting, television or movies, it should cause its audience to think and to feel and to react and, ultimately, tell a story, and I think it accomplished that extremely well.

I also think that the people that really “get it” and like what happened over the past six years and enjoyed the ending (i.e. people that agree with me) are the people that have had experience with this genre before and can also accept that sometimes you just don’t get all of the answers.  I can name countless books and movies, many of which are labeled as classics, that did the same thing.  They told a story and left many unanswered questions at the end.  Is it wrong to do that?  No.  The authors and directors of these books and movies typically “know” or at least have a very good idea what the answers are, but they cannot fit them all into the story.  You would end up reading an encyclopedia instead of being entertained.  They told their story, as much of it as they could in the time allotted.  The reader/viewer/listener has to use their imagination sometimes.  Being spoon fed the answer to life, the universe and everything is usually not an option.  It’s part of the mystery of good art. 

Watch Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001 and 2010, do you get all of the answers?  No.  Were you entertained?  Read Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series, did he tie up every single loose end?  No.  Was it still an amazing piece of work?  Yes.  What about Pulp Fiction, did you ever get to see what was inside the briefcase?  What about Blade Runner and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, is Deckard really a replicant?

Even when someone attempts to go back and fill in the blanks, the result is usually never good, the viewers are never satisfied and the resulting attempts fail to entertain or enlighten.  I can name a bunch of these too.  Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection, both failed at building on the Alien story.  Even the mighty Star Wars saga failed when Lucas tried to fill in blanks with the prequel trilogy. (NOTE: I actually liked the prequel trilogy, but I must admit that it was not as good as the originals)  Try reading the Dune books written by Frank Herbert’s son, Brian.  The original six books by Frank were amazing, award winning works, but when they tried to revisit the story and fill in the blanks, the result was, um, very difficult to enjoy.

If you want all of the answers, read any of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories or something by Tom Clancy.  Certainly don’t cross over into science fiction and fantasy, because your need for all of the facts ain’t gonna be filled.  When you tell a story of another world or something that doesn’t quite fit with reality, you sometimes have to leave some of the facts open to interpretation.

But if you really want some answers, here is my attempt.  There was a really good article written on IO9 about the 50 Questions Lost Really Needs To Answer.  They followed it up with a report card of the results, which I think failed because it didn’t extrapolate what we know, it was based purely on seeing or hearing a solid answer.  I wanted to take a stab at answering them with what I think happened. 

 IO9‘s 50 Questions

1. So the island is the place with the glowy light that's inside all of us. Does this mean the Island's alive? People talk about what the island "wants." What do they mean? Is the island Eywa? – The Island represents some spiritual power, probably related to some deity-like being.  It keeps the balance of good and evil in the world.  Having just seen Avatar the other day, I would agree it is sort of like Eywa.  You could also call it The Force (for the Star Wars fans) or Ka (if you have a read a Stephen King book in the last 10 years).
2. How come the island heals people? Why does it heal them selectively? – If you do what the island wants, it rewards you.  If you have something that island wants, it protects you.  If the island doesn’t want you there, it doesn’t let you come.
3. Who was the woman who raised Jacob and the Man In Black, and how did she get there? – She was another protector of the island, she was probably not the first and definitely wasn’t the last.  She got there the same way everyone else gets there.
4. If Jacob was a Roman, why is he so into Egyptian gods? – I don’t think the Island follows any specific mythology or religion.  Since the majority of religions stem from the same ideals, the spiritual practices on the Island are just another example of an amalgamation of peoples’ beliefs and their search for answers to life’s mysteries.  Many religions and mythologies deify natural phenomena, like Thor being the God of Thunder, so the island’s inhabitants selected a god from their beliefs to represent what was going on.  And whatever the beliefs and heritage of the inhabitants of the island had, they built and used symbols that they were accustomed to represent that.  So somewhere along the line, there were probably Egyptian inhabitants there, along with Romans, and eventually Christians, Muslims, Hindis and Buddhists.  Every inhabitant of the island related to it in terms that they understood, so a Christian experiencing the island related it to stories that they heard from their religion (i.e. like my theories on Lucifer, Job, etc.) while an Egyptian would use something like Taweret.  I think the protectors of the island, like Jacob, knew its true nature and realized that it didn’t need a name, but went along with what everyone else wanted to call it.
5. What was with those Egyptian symbols that appeared in the Hatch when the countdown went past 108 minutes? That didn't seem like the Dharma Initiative's style. – See #4.  That probably stemmed from something that MIB created to try to harness the island’s power and was never “translated” out of what he or a previous resident did.  Newer inhabitants of the island took up where the previous or older residents of the island left off.  This is similar to using Greek symbols to represent scientific and mathematic concepts.  Why do we do that?  Because that’s what the guys who created them used and we just carry on the tradition.  We could always use different symbols but then our common language would fall apart and we wouldn’t be able to communicate effectively.
6. Jacob told Alpert some previous visitors to the island had built that Taweret statue. Did he tell them to build it? Why Taweret? – see #4 and #5 above
7. Is Jacob bringing people to the island, as the Man In Black suggests? If so, then who was bringing all those people to the island before Jacob did it? Why does Jacob want to bring so many people to the island? What was he trying to prove to the Man In Black? – I think that one has been pretty sufficiently answered by the show itself and doesn’t need anymore.
8. Why did Widmore bring Desmond to the island? What's the sacrifice Desmond has to make? – Again, answered by the show.
9. Why was Charlie fated to die, exactly? What did Charlie's death accomplish, in the end? – I haven’t really given much thought to this one, so I am not sure how to answer it. 
10. Was that the Smoke Monster telling Ben and Locke to move the island, back in season four? If so, why did Smokey want the island moved? What did moving the island accomplish exactly? – This was probably an attempt to destroy the island or set in motion the MIB’s plan to get off the island.
11. Why was Libby in the same mental hospital as Hurley? What's her deal exactly? Why was she in Australia? – Beats me, maybe she went through a tough patch in her life and had a mental breakdown.  Isn’t that what happened to most people on the show in one way or another.
12. Why did the Smoke Monster kill Mr. Eko? Why did the Smoke Monster leave Rousseau alive after killing or "claiming" the rest of her expedition? – Mr. Eko probably was getting too close to the truth of what the island really was or to what MIB was trying to and the MIB knew it.  It looks to me like MIB eventually claimed Rousseau anyway, or at least he got her to do what he wanted
13. Who made the Rules? Like, what's preventing Smokey from killing the Candidates directly? – The island :)
14. What was so special about Walt? No, really. They made a big deal out of it and everything. – Walt was probably more open to the power that the island emitted, similar to Desmond’s resistance to it.  Hurley and Miles also had some weird abilities, i.e. talking to the dead.  Maybe Walt was of a similar vein, but because he was young, he was more powerful. 
15. Jacob was immortal, right? So what made him decide he needed to start doing such a huge head-hunting search for his replacement? – I don’t think Jacob was immortal, but rather he wouldn’t die of old age or at the hands of the MIB.  He probably had a few other abilities that helped keep him alive too.  He was eventually killed by Ben, so that rules out the immortality thing.
16. Why is Aaron so important? Why wasn't Kate supposed to raise him? – Aaron may have been important because he was a child that was destined to be born on the island.  The island may have only allowed “special” children be born, such as Aaron, Jacob and MIB.  It could also be that the MIB could possibly take control of newborns in the same fashion he could take over the dead.  Kate was needed as a candidate and therefore shouldn’t raise Aaron.  Jacob said that he had to remove her from the list because she became a “mother”.
17. Why isn't Kate a candidate? – see #16
18. What was the Dharma Initiative really up to on the Island? What was their ultimate goal? Why did the Hanso Foundation regard the Dharma Initiative as a failure? – The Dharma Initiative was there for the same reason as everyone else, to harness the power of the island, and also serve as sort of a protector.  Some of them were eventually corrupted by the MIB.
19. It seems like everyone who was a passenger on Oceanic 815 has numerous connections that they don't even know about. Like Jack and Claire being half-siblings, and Sawyer's ex-girlfriend helping Kate confront her mom. What caused this excessive degree of synchronicity? – This is probably the work of Jacob and/or the island in drawing the candidates to the island.
20. What really happens if the Smoke Monster leaves the island? – The end of days
21. In the "flash-sideways" universe, the island is under water. When exactly did this happen? – I think this is a metaphor for what life would have been like if the island had never existed in the Oceanic passengers’ timeline.
22. How/when did Roger Linus and Pierre Chang get off the island before it sank? – a boat, or maybe a plane, does it matter?
23. Why did Ben and Widmore hate each other quite so much? Why couldn't Ben just shoot Widmore in the face that one time when Ben came into Widmore's bedroom? – They both wanted to be top dog on the island, having two power hungry leaders will always lead to contention.  Ben didn’t shoot Widmore because he wanted Widmore to experience the pain of losing his daughter, just like Ben did.
24. Why did Widmore order Keamy's gang to kill everyone on the island except for Ben? Especially since Widmore is so keen for Locke to lead the Oceanic Six back to the island a few years later. And why exactly is Widmore so keen for the Oceanic Six to come back to the island? Because they're Candidates? Or some other reason? If he is keen for there to be Candidates on the island, why did he order Keamy to kill them all? – Widmore admitted he was wrong for having done that and that Jacob came to him and showed him the error of his ways. 
25. After Richard Alpert met Jacob and Jacob explained the island to him, why didn't Richard repeat that explanation to everyone he met? – He didn’t explain it because most people would not have understood it.  He had to get the people to do what was needed by putting things in ideas that they could understand.  Walking around telling everyone that the island was some sort of spiritual power source that kept the world in balance and prevented evil from taking it over probably would have landed his ass in a Looney bin and we could have watched him not age in a padded cell.
26. How did Richard and the Others decide whom to recruit from among the various people who came to the island after that? What was the deal with all those lists? The lists weren't lists of Candidates, since the Others didn't try to recruit Sawyer or Jack. So what were they? – Jacob must have provided Richard with the lists or Richard might have come up with them on his own.  The lists contained people that had to be removed from the island and also people that were needed to influence the real candidates. 
27. Why did the Incident in 1977 leave the island's women unable to give birth? What's with the huge importance placed on fertility on the island, what with the Tawaret statue? Why are so many women separated from their babies? – See #16
28. So why was Widmore unable to return to the island? And then why was he able to return to the island after all? Also, why did turning the donkey wheel mean that Ben was unable to return to the island, except with the Oceanic Six? – The Island only brought people there that it wanted.  It didn’t bring Widmore back until he could bring Desmond with him.  It didn’t bring Ben back until he brought the candidates with him.
29. What was the deal with that brand on Juliet's lower back? The cross/asterisk thing? – tramp stamp?
30. Where did that supply drop come from? You know, the huge pallet of food and stuff? – the Others, Richard’s people that lived off the island.  Widmore’s people maybe.
31. Who built that weird Dharma Initiative door that leads to a stone wall? Did the Others put it there as part of their fake village? – no idea, but does it really matter?
32. Was Rousseau "claimed" by the Smoke Monster the same way Claire and Sayid were? – I would say “yes” and “no”, see #12
33. What was the Sickness that the Dharma Initiative was vaccinating people against? Is it similar to the Smoke Monster "claiming" people, or something else? – One way to control a group people is to unite them against a common foe.  It may have been the idea of Richard or someone that propagated the idea that there was a sickness on the island that made them go insane, instead of revealing that it was a mystical smoke monster attempting to control their minds.  It probably worked to keep the island’s inhabitants from getting to the real truth of the island.
34. When the Smoke Monster told Sayid that he could have Nadia back from the dead, was he referring to the "flash sideways" universe, or something else? Or just lying? – I think the Smoke Monster told a lot of lies, he even admitted it to Ben at the end.  He could have been telling the truth, but only part of it.  Maybe by destroying the island, the MIB would have released all of the souls in hell/purgatory and Sayid would have been reunited with her in a sort of hell on earth scenario.  Or maybe he planned on Sayid dying, since he was a candidate.
35. What was the deal with Pierre Chang having so many wacky pseudonyms? – Really, who cares?
36. What were the Others having Kate and Sawyer build? Was it really going to be a runway? For what? – Probably for the Ajira flight.
37. So if the hydrogen bomb going off caused the "flash sideways" universe and prevented Oceanic 815 from crashing, how did it change Hurley's lottery numbers, or make Sawyer a cop instead of a con-man? – I don’t think the bomb did any of that.  I think the bomb brought everyone into the same timeline or current day.  The LA-verse was timeless and was always there, we just never got to see it before.
38. Is Ji Yeon the "Kwon" who's a candidate? – No.  But she might be now that her parents were killed and she is alone.
39. Who's the mother of Jack's son David in the "flash-sideways" universe? On a related note, where's alt-Juliet? – Answered.
40. What happened to the body of Christian Shephard on the "flash-sideways" Flight 815? – Answered.
41. Come to think of it, what happened to Christian's body on the island? – Eaten by polar bears, consumed by the MIB, or something similar.
42. Sayid was "claimed" by the Smoke Monster, but he still had free will afterward. What did that being "claimed" thing mean anyway? – Claimed meant under the influence of MIB, but not in total control by MIB.  They were promised something by the MIB and sworn their allegiance to him.  It was probably a lot like Jacob’s marking someone as a candidate.  The candidates obviously got some sort of protection since the MIB could not kill them directly. 
43. What does god need with a starship? I mean, why does Locke need an airplane to leave the island? – I think he needed the ability to free himself from the island, regardless of what the form of transportation was.  MIB was sustained by the power of the island, he could not leave it unless the island was destroyed and that power unleashed.  Jacob on the other hand was still a living being and could come and go as he chose.  He could probably use the power of the island himself to travel in time, teleport off the island and return the same way.
44. Why are the Numbers so important? I get that each of the Numbers corresponds to one of the remaining Candidates as of a while ago. But that's just another instance of the Numbers popping up in relation to something. Why these numbers? Why were they powerful long before Jack, Hurley, et al. came to the island? – This was probably one of the many ways of attracting people and candidates to the island. 
45. And come to think of it, what was the point of having someone broadcasting the numbers over the radio over and over again for years? – see #44
46. If Jacob is dead, and his ghost is wandering around talking to Hurley, what's with the little kid version of Jacob? Why can only certain people, like Sawyer, see the little-kid Jacob? – They can see him when he wants to be seen.  His spirit lingered on until his body was completely destroyed.
47. Who was Juliet inviting to coffee? What sort of coffee? Can I come? Will there be biscotti, or madeleines? – Sawyer.  Juliet was dying and was seeing into her afterlife. 
48. Why can't the Smoke Monster cross a line of ash? What about the sonic fence? – The ash probably represented a magic circle similar to what is used to contain demons in many occult rituals.  The sonic fence disrupted the smoke particles or something similar.
49. So the Man In Black can't leave the island. But Jacob was wandering off the island all the time, buying Louis Vuitton luggage, touching the Oceanic Six and various other people, and stocking up on Flannery O'Connor books. At one point, Jacob opened a dance studio in Newark. What gives? – See #43
50. When Ben took Locke to Jacob's Cabin, there was a weird telekinetic storm and Locke heard a voice saying "Help me." Was that Jacob? Or the M.I.B.? What sort of help did the voice have in mind? More importantly, what's with the dog painting in Jacob's Cabin??? – This was the MIB, he was locked in the cabin by the circle of ash.  He couldn’t appear in a physical body because he didn’t have one to inhabit at the time.

So that’s it.  My final Lost post.  I might write something else when the DVDs come out in August.  I here there will be an additional 15-20 minutes of epilogue.  I doubt there will be another show like this for a while.  I am sure I will find something else to occupy my time, right now it is watching the complete Battlestar Galactica series.  Well, it will be when Netflix decides to start sending me the DVDs again.  I’m sorry this post was so long, but the word count is divisible by 18, which is always a good thing.

My Kingdom for a Do-rag

Bret Michaels, former Poison front man, current contestant on Celebrity Apprentice and do-ragged man-whore host of the Rock of Love, suffered a brain hemorrhage last Thursday.  He was immediately rushed to an undisclosed hospital where doctors had to perform a radical new doragectomy procedure to remove the damaged brain cover and replace it with a new bandana.

An source from inside the hospital, who wishes to remain anonymous, confirmed that Michaels is in recovery now, but has suffered severe brain damage, but neurological reports show that this will not effect  his song writing nor his attraction to skanky women.  “The doctors removed half of his brain and as soon as he was stitched back up, he asked a guitar and a group of women with self-esteem issues to assist in finding his true love,” the source commented.

Another hospital insider commented, “I feel sorry for Mr. Michaels, but after ruining Kiss’ Rock and Roll All Nite, there wasn’t much the doctors wanted to could do.”

A recent development happened earlier today as Department of Defense records were uncovered that show that Michael’s signature bandana do-rag is, in fact, a secret military research project.  The bandana is a new space age polymer that is being developed to be used for multiple military and civilian purposes.  Mr. Michaels was an ideal candidate for the experiment due to his rampant scalp deterioration from years of Aquanet abuse.  The bandanas in use by Mr. Michaels are constructed with several neural receptors, transdermal drug delivery systems, and blonde hair weaves. 

According to the records, the neural receptors are designed to track brain wave activity during song writing and composing to determine what causes horrid songs like “Unskinny Bop” and “I Want Action” and prevent them in the future.  The transdermal drug delivery systems were originally intended to delivery medications that could be useful on the battlefield in military applications, but for Mr. Michaels, are delivering antibiotics and fungicides to combat his frequent STD flair-ups.  The blonde hair weaves are to look cool coming out from under a cowboy hat.

NOTE: I have tried hard to be nice but I can’t stand it any longer.  I don’t like Bret or his music or his recent comeback into the media spotlight.  Seriously, he sung “Unskinny Bop”, if that is not hemorrhage worthy than I don’t know what is.

Anyway, gotta run, it’s a Woot! Off.

Tuesdays Are Good

This is a day late, but it was only because I have been busy with work and home life to write until now.  Tuesdays are turning out to be one of the better days of the week.  Anything that follows Monday has to be good.  The morning started off as every other, get up, get kids to school, etc.  At 9:40 AM, a reminder popped up from the Outlook calendar on my work PC, a Google calendar event on my home PC, and a reminder on my Droid. 

What could be so important that it would warrant three separate, redundant alerts?  Billy Gould (@mrgould) and Roddy Bottum (@roddybottum) tweeting the fan club presale link and password for the July 3rd Faith No More concert, of course.  Credit card in hand, I waited for 10 AM to roll around so I could get my tickets.  I got four good seats at the Mann Center in Philadelphia.  Three friends and I will be seeing Faith No More for the first time in over 12 years!  Since I am getting older, I opted for assigned seating instead of the lawn, these old bones need somewhere they can rest every now and then.

Could the day get any better?  Why yes it can!  Shortly after ordering the tickets online, an email popped into Gmail mailbox.  I was being notified that Blockade Billy was officially released and I would be receiving my 1st edition hard cover edition shortly.  This book is extra cool because it is being published by Cemetery Dance, a small publishing company from right here in Maryland.  We are practically neighbors, the company is based less than four miles from my house.  You can read more about Cemetery Dance in an interview of Richard Chizmar by the Baltimore Sun here and also in an interview at Lilja’s Library.

Tuesdays are also my short day at work.  I get out at 3 PM so I can head over to the elementary school to run the Robotics Club.  As I pushed my hand cart down the hall to the media center to start setting up, my good day started to crash.  I saw a whole line of kids standing at the media center door that were not my robotics club kids.  As I got closer, I realized with horror that the media center was completely occupied by photography equipment.  Today was spring picture day.

I parked the cart by the door and tentatively walked in.  I made eye contact with one of the photographers.  I explained my situation, she explained how long it would take them to break everything done and leave.  45 minutes.  I understood that there was nothing that I could do about it.  I was not about to rush these women or give them attitude, they just spent 8 hours taking pictures of an entire elementary school, I could tell by the sweaty faces and thousand yard stares that they were not to be trifled with.  Put simply, with indifference to you Kent, it’s like lasing a stick of dynamite.

I refused to let this set back ruin my day.  What were we going to do with 40 kids between the ages of 5 and 11?  As part of the agreement with the school, we weren’t allowed anywhere else on the premises.  The kids could sense my distress and fear.  Snap off the lights, instantly freezes kids in a school setting.  Sucked for the photographers, who now were groping around in a dimly lit library, but there was a building crisis that needed to be averted.  We gathered the kids in the only open area in the library, a 12” X 12” walled off section used for reading circles.  I distributed some of the WeDo kits to the children and explained that the quieter and more well behaved they were, the quicker the ladies could clear out and we could get to business. 

To my amazement, they did just that.  They all sat down and started working.  I only had to use my Taser two or three times (Just kidding, I did not tase any of the children.  I may want to at times, but that was one of the rules I had to agree to before assuming leadership of the club).  The photographers broke everything down and left in 30 minutes, I think they were a little afraid too.  Every time I made eye contact with one of the photographers, they gave me a look like “You volunteer for this?  God bless you, you crazy sonofabitch.”  We all relocated to the tables and computers without any major issues, except for a few damaged robots.  Hey, they are Lego, they snap right back together.

To top everything off, Tuesday is also Lost night (post forthcoming).  Being the pessimist that I am, I don’t expect things to go my way, but today was one of those pleasant surprises.

Reunited

I know some of you maybe expecting a Lost post, but I had to talk about something else first.  Did you have one of those days that you don’t expect to be anything special, but that keeps on getting better as it goes along?  Today was one of those days.

Tuesday are always busy days, today was nothing different.  Just after getting back from a cold bus stop, I saw some interesting news on the inter-webs.  On Monday, Faith No More played their first concert on American soil in almost 12 years.  Faith No More is a band that I have been a fan of for the past 20+ years.  I wasn’t able to get out to San Francisco to see their concert.  And I won’t be able to get to New York to see their show there either.  But someone posted a picture of t-shirt that gave me some hope.  Should I put any hope in a t-shirt?  I guess it doesn’t hurt anything.

I had a lunch scheduled with a bunch of people from work.  We meet once a month just so we can prove to each that we really exist and that we are really something more than voices on endless conference calls. 

Most of us live/work in the NJ-PA-DE-MD area and we pick somewhere close enough for us all to get there.  Today’s lunch was special because a friend and associate from Atlanta would be in Baltimore for the week and was able to come.  Most of us haven’t seen him in several years, the last time I had gotten to see him was nine months ago.  We are a close knit team, some of having worked together for over 11 years now, so it is great when we can get together and relax, shoot some shit and have a good time.  We had a great lunch with great food and great conversation.  We also got to plan a dinner for Thursday night which had been cancelled but is now going to happen.  The day was working out pretty well.

I headed over to Robotics Club after lunch for our first meeting after spring break and I had a great time with the kids.  I got to spend much of the two hours instructing the kids on the Scratch programming software and watched them take the simple instructions and make some very cool games and interactive animation.  My own two boys are part of the club and I got to spend a lot of time with them, watching them build different things using Scratch.  Even my 5 YO was able to work on his own after a little introduction on how it works.  I finally felt like today, after all of the previous weeks, the kids were actually learning something.  It felt good.

After dinner, homework and showers were completed, the kids and I resumed watching Tin Man.  They were curled up next to me on the sofa, almost ready to fall asleep.  Life is good.

After the kids were in bed, I laid down with them for a couple minutes.  I pulled up Seesmic on my Droid and saw something amazing.

I have been a fan of Faith No More since I heard Epic for the first time.  My sister took a friend and I to their first show in Philly for my 15th birthday.  They opened for Billy Idol on his Charmed Life tour.  I will never forget the effect that FNM’s music had on me.  Every song was something different, from the rap-like Epic to the crooning of Edge of the World, and any band that can deliver an awesome cover of Sabbath’s War Pigs is a band for me.

Over the years I have sought out anything I could find of theirs until they finally broke up in 1998.  I was overwhelmed when I heard they were getting back together and touring again.  I was a little dejected when I heard that they were only playing a few dates in California and a show in New York.  It is difficult to rationalize stealing away to California or New York for a few days and leaving my wife and three kids alone.  But if they come to Philly, well, that’s a different story.

If anyone is interested in going with me, tickets go on sale on 04/20.  I have a reminder already scheduled and I am already following Roddy and Billy on Twitter so I can get the scoop on the pre-sale.  I haven’t been to the Mann in years, but every show I have seen there has been excellent.

So today turned out to be a great day for reunions.

To get the latest on FNM, you can go here and here.

I will end with some of my favorites of FNM.

Easy:

Midlife Crisis:

Caffeine:

And my favorite FNM song: