[via diversitile, click to enlarge]

These things are super hawt. Like, ohmaigawd. Like I said when I was busy gushing over Nike’s Bioshock kicks, I can’t wear these. Size 15 feet. Freakishly large. It’s up to you chaps to buy a set of these, so I can live vicariously through you.

It’s gorgeous out here in Massachusetts. Sometimes, you just gotta drop back and say “What a wonderful day to be alive.” Nothing makes everything seem okay like weathering another dismal winter, and a Spring of flooding that made my room smell like my feet. Mrs. Caffeine Powered and I were grilling a couple of nights ago; okay, she grills and I just run around grabbing plates and setting tables, and I was so thrilled with existence at the moment I took these pictures. It’s amazing how happy sunshine can make the average human being.

Keep Reading »

It’s been a busy five months of blogging LOST, and so tonight I’m treating myself to a Slurpee and a FAMILY SIZE bag of skittles. Yeah dude, I’m living it up! I remember when I, in a moment of caffeine madness, decided that I would post something about LOST everyday for a month leading up to the beginning of the final season. It seemed like such a good idea at the time, and then by day fifteen I was all “Fucking Hell, Drinkwater, what have you gotten yourself into?”

But it’s been a surreal, exhausting, and really, really rewarding trip. There was a pants-filling moment somewhere during the middle of “Remember That Time On LOST When?” that I realized that people were actually reading the bullshit I was churning out into a WordPress document. Like, people expected and actually enjoyed what I wrote every Wednesday. I’ve blathered to Pepsibones and myself for years, but the idea that people were actively engaging in what I wrote was pretty thrilling.

Nothing was more exciting than seeing people post in the comments, even if it was to disagree with me.

I can’t even begin to fathom the amount of hours, hundreds of pictures, and thousands upon thousands of words I’ve gone through chronicling LOST. And really, it’s sort of trippy that not only the journey of LOST is over, but so is this really enormous undertaking that I’ve been carrying for all of 2010. I’m almost sort of bummed that OL didn’t exist earlier, so we could have done this all together for a much longer time.

Every entry was made possible by absolutely, positively, ridiculous amounts of caffeine, the ability to ignore hundreds of pages of grad work I had to do, and the encouragement of an assload of friends, particularly Tommy Rock, who shared my insane passion for the show. Even our darkest moments of abject hate were spurned by what was really an unhealthy love for the potential and highest moments of the show.

In the end though, this is just a formal “Thank You” and “You’re Awesome” to everyone who has read, commented, and shared my LOST recaps with others. As insane as the pressure of having to deliver recaps every Wednesday was, the support and enthusiasm from people who have come across it has more than made up for it. So big ups, and high-fives to all of you who have accompanied me on Oceanic Omega for this redonkulous expedition.

It’s been radical thanks to all of you.

After the show concluded last night, after the screen faded to black for the last time, after the credits rolled, Pepsibones sat on my couch next to me. He was happy, and had enjoyed the final episode. A lot. And so had I. And he rubbed his temples and he said “I don’t want to have to talk to anyone about this episode.” That’s almost perfectly how I feel about writing this final recap of the final episode of one of my favorite shows ever.

As the days counted down to the conclusion of LOST, I began obsessing over the enormity of what Lindelof, Cuse and the rest of the team had undertaken. The show had become nothing short of a leviathan. It was a cultural phenomenon that had snared millions of people along the way, and dragged them along in its wake. The nature of the storyline had sprawled out continuously, from plane crashes to smoke monsters to immortals to alternate dimensions. It grew continuously, exponentially, with every new twist bringing a thousand new questions.

I asked myself over and over again, “How do you end a show like this gracefully?” I flashed back to other epics I had loved. From Star Wars to Lord of the Rings to Battlestar Galactica, and while they’re all close to my heart, all of them are with their flaws. A task of this size cannot be executed perfectly, it’s built into the nature of the undertaking.

The ending to LOST was no different.

And I loved it.

Keep Reading »

Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter’s honor. [Hemingway//Death in the Afternoon]

Holy fucking shit. Apparently animals don’t like being forced to engage in a combat that usually ends in slow, torturous death. The above picture is from a recent bullfight in which the bull, well…he fucking gored the bullfighter. Dude isn’t dead, but he’s laid out in the hospital.

I’m not going to go into some weird hypocritical animal activist diatribe (I’m snacking on a bacon cheeseburger as we speak), but I will say this: try not to fuck with Mother Nature too much.

[primary source]

[secondary source]

[thanks to Tyler for the heads-up]

It’s been nine years since Transatlantic’s first release and the track Stranger in Your Soul still gives me goosebumps. Maybe it’s nostaglia, the fact that progressive music helped me get out of high school without feeling like a total loser. Or maybe I’m a sucker for cheesy lyrics. In either case, I can’t help but smile when Neal Morse encourages me to “Stand up `cause this is your time.”

*sigh*

I’m going to tell you something, and you’re not going to believe me. I had faith that last night’s episode was going to be good. No, seriously. I spent all yesterday talking with friends about LOST, and I kept saying the same thing over and over again. “Yeah man, I don’t know, I just think it’s going to be good.” It’s faith though, yo. What was it based on? Just pure gut. Call me Jack Shephard. I texted my friend Tommy, I talked to Pepsibones. It was going to be good.

There’s something about being an idealist, or an optimist, or whatever you want to call it. But I always believe the best is going to happen somehow.

And sometimes! Sometimes I’m correct. Usually I’m wrong. But I wasn’t last night. What They Died For was easily one of the best episodes of the season, and it’s probably in my Top 10 of the series. Yeah, I went there. It was one of those episodes where LOST is hitting all its high notes. Ridiculous WTF moments, mythos building, and some emotional bullshit thrown into the mix.

I’ve made my ass-crush for Jacob known all season long. Perhaps it’s because I relate to his unyielding optimism. Despite the fact that he’s watched for centuries as man has let him down, he continues to believe that they have the potential for good. I mean, if he hasn’t been crushed by thousands of years of selfish behavior, how could I let Lindelof and Cuse break me in one week? Call my ass adamantium, ’cause my will is unbreakable.

Jacob sits down the remaining candidates and explains to them what they have to do, they have to kill Smokey. Does this not make sense to anyone else? I have always understood that there needed to be balance on the Island, and if MiB was dead, wouldn’t that throw off the scales just like Jacob did? Intriguing. There’s also always the chance that Jacob is using for the sort of Obi-Wan double speak that has rocked out throughout the entire show.

“What do you fucking mean he killed my father, Kenobi? You fucking liar! Don’t give me that manner of speaking bullshit! Ghostly prick!”

Last week there was a serious wrinkle thrown into the whole “The point of the Island is to prevent him from leaving” bullshit, when that Annoying Mom from Juno told the two Wonder Twins that their job was to “Protect the Light”. I just puked in my mouth a little bit. So maybe, perchance, Jack’s role is to dismiss Smokey and then protect the Honeypot Glowing Vagina at the center of the Island?

Bueller? Anyone?

If anything came out of last week’s train wreck of an episode, it was the humanizing of Jacob, and I sort of dug on that. What I took from Survivor: The Island where all the Candidates and The Lecherous Freckled One sat and spoke with Jacob is that the dude done fucked up by throwing MiB into the Honeypot. Some sort of odd corruption took place when he dinged that donkey-wheelin’ douchebag out and he floated into the light. Smokey was born, and it then became Jacob’s job to protect the light at the center of the Island, and prevent Smokey from leaving.

In a manner of speaking, I am reading the two jobs to be mutually exclusive at this point. Smokey taking off from the Island would extinguish the light, and so Jacob/Jack has the wonderful task of preventing him from leaving, and then preventing anyone from corrupting the light.

Two things:

First off, I dig the human twist to Jacob. There’s something romantically awful about his plight. The guy’s spent thousands of years trying to prevent Smokey from leaving, while living under the notion that he was eventually going to be killed. Jacob is some weird Cain from Cain and Able. A man filled with good, yet charged with killing his own brother and having to live with the consequences. That shit is heavy! Dude needs a hug.

Secondly, how exactly would anyone find the light if they weren’t deserving of it? Isn’t that the general gist of this week and last’s week episode? It seems to be what he told Jack when he totally became THE ONE.

Keep Reading »

[I came across this awesomeness one night via the Facebook of a friend of OL.   Cheers, dude.]

I love Sam Rockwell. I love Sam Rockwell even more after watching what can only be titled the “Sam Rockwell jive” spread across three videos. I had no idea the mean rug he cut in Iron Man 2 was something of a specialty of his. I’ve posted my favorite below, but go here to check them all out.

[images & words is the comic book pick-of-the-week at OL. equal parts review and diatribe, the post highlights the most memorable/infuriating/entertaining book released that wednesday]

Spoilers Ahead. Forreal.

Don’t listen to Caffeine Powered.

Well, actually, you should — he’s a smart guy and is generally on-the-ball with all of the latest news pertaining to comics, video juegos, movies, sports, and all that other shit I live my life by. As the firstborn in the family, he taught me that superheroes aren’t just creeps in spandex and that the entire …And Justice for All album is a goddamn anthem. And so, I tip my cap to him.

But on Tuesday, Caffeine Powered wrote some pretty hurtful things about time travel. I won’t quote him verbatim, but his general argument is that between comics, television, and movies, time-hoppin’ has become pretty played out. I won’t deny the fact that it’s become almost ubiquitous, an apparent necessity for any franchise with even the slightest of science fictional properties. And maybe I should be a bit more pessimistic, pissed off that one of my favorite plot devices has been misappropriated as a plaything for retard America.

But I’m still pretty stoked on time travel. And I guess that’s why Caffeine Powered and I are the dynamic duo of nerdcore brothers; between the two of us, we’re bound to be digging some shit that the mainstream doesn’t talk about at the dinner table.

So while big brother is approaching The Return of Bruce Wayne with cautious enthusiasm, I have a nerd-lust that defies physics. One issue in and I’m already a total believer in this miniseries. Yeah, Grant Morrison’s last attempt at a big event was a total mindfuck and he’s been known to get kooky from time to time. But he’s been kicking ass ever since that last debacle and I’ve been questioning reality on a daily basis.

So what do I make of a time-lost Batman blindly stumbling through the centuries? What if he’s not sure how he came to be in his current predicament? What if he has to fend off the enemies indigenous to each era? Well, I think it sounds like a damn fine comic book.

And, so far, it is.

The first issue of The Return of Bruce Wayne sees Gotham’s favorite son chilling in the prehistoric times of cavemen. These cave people are just like us — they divide themselves into rival tribes, fight one another for arbitrary reasons, and occasionally smoke cigarettes. Of course, Brucie (despite being too messed up in the brain-piece to even feign coherence) aligns himself with the sympathetic Deer People. They recognize him as one of the “shining ones” and believe a fallen rocket ship to be his; they treat him with reverence and wished their Old Man lived long enough to have a conversation with him. So when the villainous Blood Mob comes to fuck shit up the Batman has to come to the rescue.

He isn’t completely successful, but he manages to defeat their chief…while wearing the hide of a giant bat as a damn costume. It’s wonderful.

Throughout the entire ordeal, Bruce never really gets to speak (again, he’s still woozy from being shot through time). While I can see fans griping about this, I like where Morrison is headed; rather than relying on the exposition of a super-detective, the reader gets to experience the comic from the perspective of the time’s natural inhabitants. So in this issue, Bruce Wayne’s journey is described through primitive speculation. For instance, notice how the leader of the Blood Mob announces his arrival;

THE CHIEF WHO SCARES DEATH HAS RETURNED!

CONQUERING CHIEF SAVAGE BRINGS GIFTS FROM THE FORBIDDEN LAND!

A SKY-CART OF THE BRIGHT ONES!

FOUR SCALPS OF DEER WARRIORS!

AND A MAN-GOD WHO CAME FROM ABOVE TO CHALLENGE ME!

Could this come off as hokey? Sure. But Morrison’s script is backed up by the more than legit art of Chris Sprouse and Karl Story. This speech is accompanied by a two-page spread of Blood Mob revelry. We get to see skulls impaled on spikes, fires being danced around, and a close-up of a savage snacking on a huge hunk of…heart? brain? I’m not sure, but it’s something fleshy and gross.

Seriously, this art is beautiful and I think that a great deal of credit should be awarded to Karl Story’s colors. During the introduction to the Deer People, the skyline is painted with shades of light red and pink, offering a sense of liveliness and fading hope. But as the interlopers make their way into camp, Story shifts into dark grey, dark blue, and good `ole black; only fire brightens up these panels and it adds dramatic tension. By filling in Sprouse’s pencils, Karl Story deftly sets the unspoken tone for The Return of Bruce Wayne.

By the issue’s end, Batman has fended off the bad guys, saved a young member of the Deer People and unknowingly shifted forwards in time. Right after Bruce hops ahead on the timeline, Superman, Green Lantern and Booster Gold pop into the prehistoric era. They’re dismayed to realize that he is no longer there. In fact, their disappointment takes a turn for the ominous as they discuss the necessity of finding their comrade;

Green Lantern: Batman has no memory of who he is. He has no idea what’s happening to him.

Booster Gold: What chance does he have? Even he can’t make it.

Superman: You are joking, right? He can survive anywhere. Anytime. Surviving is what he does. But if he survives this, if he does the impossible again…If Batman makes it back to the 21^st century on his own…everyone dies.

Oh shit! Hey Booster Gold, why don’t you shut the fuck up?!?! Fucking dumb-dumb.

The Return of Bruce Wayne is over-the-top, filled with shit I’m not sure I quite grasp yet, and serves as the beginning to the unfortunate end of Dick Grayson’s reign as Batman. With that being said, the book still works. And it works well. If you give me time-travel, caveman beatdowns, and the goddamn Batman I’m going to enjoy it.