[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]

Isn’t he dreamy?

Bioware geeks, rejoice in the resplendent glory of the Mass Effect 2 launch trailer. What happens in it? I don’t fucking know! I try to keep my exposure to everything ME2-relate to a minimum. Having lost my virginity at the age of thirty-nine, that’s right, twelve years in the future, I know a thing or two about waiting. But for those of you gluttons for awesome, check it out.

I’m guessing it’ll make you squirt the fluid happy.

[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]  

Not to call my brother out, but on Tuesday he lied to the faithful OL readers. In the last Variant Covers, Caffeine Powered wrote that this week’s Captain America would see both Steve Rogers and Bucky rocking out in the Star-Spangled undies. Trusting his words, I got all sorts of excited and screamed “TWO CAP’N AMERIKURS!? GAW-LEE!~” into the face of my elderly roommate.

But then I actually read Captain America #602 — and I realized that my a brother is fucking liar! Steve Rogers isn’t anywhere in this dang book!

To be fair, I don’t think Caffeine Powered intentionally misled anyone. Given the current state of the 616, the natural conclusion would be to expect two Captain Americas. After all, Marvel has been pretty lax since bringing back Stevie; yet to be revived in Reborn, he’s been seen chilling with Bucky in Who Will Wield the Shield?, Siege and The Invincible Iron Man. Tack on the fact that the cover of this newest issue features a Captain America rocking the classic/dungarees/belt uniform, and one would be inclined to think that a team-up rests within.

Again, not the case. In fact, Steve Rogers is nowhere to be found in this issue. Brubaker writes him out of the plot by having Bucky explain the absence to Nick Fury;

“Steve’s fine…him and Sharon are just off the grid right now…Staying at her family estate in Virginia.”

What a load of caca. I really hope that all this is doublespeak for some sick-ass secret mission, because if Steve Rogers is actually just hanging out in Virginia, we’re going to have words. Maybe even swear words.

“Don’t get me wrong, Stevie, taking a vacation with a lady-friend is a great way to relax. But since you got shot with that time/bullet/same thing as Batman?/consciousness-transplant bullet, shit’s fallen to pieces. So get your ass out of Jamestown and start cracking skulls!”

Anyways, what is this issue about? Well, even with Rogers out of the picture, the reader is treated to two Captain Americas; Bucky (of course) and William Burnside, the fucked-up, mental patient who was rendered into a Steve Rogers facsimile in the 1950’s. Burnside has put on his own pair of Star-Spangled undies and is soiling the image of the shield slinger as he corrals hillbillies into forming an anti-government militia. Naturally, this inspires Bucky and Falcon to go regulate.

Considering how much shit is going on in the Marvel universe, it might be for the best to leave Steve Rogers out of the title book for now. Truthfully, I’m more than pleased with having Bucky wield the shield and don’t want to see him give it up anytime soon. I know it’s only a matter of time, what with the trailer for the Captain America movie having been officially released, so I’m cool with enjoying James Buchanan while I can.

Bucky’s tenure as the sentinel of liberty is bound to end sooner rather than later. So if this depresses you (as it should), make sure to snag Captain America #602.

[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]

LOST is a perpetually unfolding storyline, filled with constantly shifting lanes of purpose and never-ending chasms of mystery. Yeah, suck on that fucking epic sentence! Oh my god! There are certain moments when the entire show tilts on its axis, veering towards something you never fucking saw coming. And you have to give it up to the writers for continuously having the forceful and ripened genitalia to introduce these paradigm shifts into the show even deep into its run. And don’t pretend you didn’t shit your pants the first time you heard the phrase,

What lies in the shadow of the statue?

The first time you hear it, the dude we know know as Bram, but who for months I could only remember as The Chubby Guy Who Asked That Question, has shoved Miles into his van. Have you ever wanted to get shoved into a van by a bunch of cloak-and-dagger motherfuckers? I have. If you get shoved into a moving van while guys scream shit like “C’MON, C’MON GO-GO-GO!”, you’re probably a bad ass.

So Miles does what anyone would do in that case, he’s really fucking confused, and has no idea what they’re talking about. Chubby Guy turns down Miles’ request for mad money-money, and tells him he’s playing for the wrong team. They then kick Miles out and speed off. Because that’s the second part of getting thrown into a speeding van, you’re then shoved out and left to wonder what the fuck is going on.

And once again, I’m like, what the fuck is going on with this show! All of a sudden there are clandestine teams and shit? Who is the Chubby Guy rolling with? And what the fuck is laying in the shadow of the statue? I mean, the statue itself was pretty obvious. It was Taweret, that enormous fucking thing formerly known as The Four Toed Statue after it was reduced to rubble.

But Jesus Christ, once the question is asked, the show tumbles further down the rabbit hole. Or perhaps closer to its true premise, of which I still have no god damn idea. What lies in the shadow of the statue, and what team does Bram consider himself to be working for? There’s countless factions in the show, be it Jacob versus Facob, Locke versus Ben, Locke versus Jack, Charlie versus Heroin, Ben versus Widmore.

If Miles was working for Widmore, and Widmore is against Ben, does that mean that Bram is allied with Ben? Or does it go beyond that, and it deals with Jacob and Facob, and it has been Facob pulling both Widmore and Ben’s strings? I think I’m going to vomit confusion onto the ground and then dance in it.

Just how far does this rabbit hole plummet? Anyone?

My guess? Bram and Ilana and their b-boy posse are rolling with Jacob. Consider this. Ilana recognizes Jacob when he comes to visit her when she’s all blown up and shit. Jacob straight chills in the foot of the statue. And Richard Alpert, who has forever been known as Jacob’s right-hand man is the only man to answer Ilana’s question correctly.

What lies in the shadow of the statue?

Ille qui nos omnes servabit.

Lostpedia provides “He who will protect/save us all” as the translation, but also goes on to elaborate:

Via Lostpedia:

More accurate translations might be either, “That man who will save us all,” or, “That which will save us all,” if the noun in question is of the masculine gender. The Latin word ille does not necessarily refer to a person.

Alright, so I suppose it’s safe to assume that it is in reference to Jacob. But do you think that answers anything? Of course not. What is Jacob going to save them from? Or who is Jacob going to save them from? And are Jacob’s intentions truly pure, or are they merely aligned with him and buy into his propaganda. Who the fuck knows!

But once the whole “What lies in the shadow of the statue” bullshit is introduced, the game got a lot more complex. We’ve gone from a plane crash to two warring deities? Holy good god this is like Spanish Fly for nerds. Just thinking about it makes me gooey in all the wrong (right) areas.

[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]

Desmond Hume getting unstuck in time was one of those episodes of LOST that left you absolutely rocked. It was pure undiluted win. It tugged on your heart strings, it made your mind melt with time traveling insanity, and it features Daniel Faraday rocking out with the mullet to end all mullets.

I remember watching Desmond catapult through time with the idea that they were going to kill off my boy Mr. Hume. Instead, the dude seems to be an essential linchpin in the entire series. He’s a Scottish time-bandit stud, who just so happens to have surfed the slipstream of time and space before being saved by love. Awwww, how fucking cute! No seriously, I shouldn’t act hard. When he finally dials up Penny at the end of the episode, I was pretending to sneeze a lot, because I was a weepy mess.

Penny! Oh Penny!

Desmond gets rocked on his ass when Locke and the Band of Merry Assholes decide to stop punching the numbers into their sweet ass 1982 Apple II or something. The resultant EMP alters him in some way and his consciousness allows him to be hurtled back and forth through points in time in his own life. Sounds awesome, right? I mean, who hasn’t wanted to go back and remember that first awkward kiss, or your first wet dream, or the horrible acne you had, or being dumped by the girl you loved.

Wait a second, fuck traveling through time.

Desmond’s ability to travel through time makes him uniquely equipped for the bullshit that’s going on with the Island. I mean, we have a mass of land that is jumping from point to point in time, just like our boy Desmond. And there’s been more than one reference to him being special. When the Island gets unstuck in time and everyone is jumping around and partying with Mayans and shit, Faraday goes to Desmond and is like, yo bro, you have to remember this shit: if you escape the Island, go find my Mom. She’s going to help you out, even though she shoots my beautiful, algorithm-computing ass before I’m even born.

Why is it up to Desmond? Per Faraday, the rules don’t apply to Desmond.

Whatever the fuck that means.

Desmond seems to be the guy most equipped to sort shit out.   He seems to cage all of his memories in his dome-piece regardless of the where he is in time. I always try and figure this out, usually loudly and during an episode, and it goes something like this:

Wait, so if Faraday told him in the past…why wouldn’t he remember now? Or does he remember now? And wait, if Faraday visits him in 2001 on the Island, wouldn’t he recognize him in present day? Wait, I think I have a nosebleed and uh, wait, I’m so confused.

And then my friend Dave tells me that it isn’t going to make sense outside of the show, and I need to relax. This usually holds me over to the next commercial break, and then I’m back at it, raving wildly.

But I mean, if someone can alter the course of events, wouldn’t it be Desmond? Faraday says that there are Variables, and those variables are people. If we take it to be more than a throwaway existential moment on the show, it means that someone on the Island has the ability to prevent, or change, or fix something.

Yeah, I have no fucking idea.

But maybe Faraday The Gorgeous Physicist and Desmond the Scottish Wundersexkind can team up to fix reality, right? Let’s say the hydrogen bomb went off, and instead of fixing everything, it just wiped their dumb asses out.

This is what I think happened. As I said, they’re the source of their own misery. They wipe themselves out, and they’re condemned to dying.

Wouldn’t it be within Desmond’s power, during the past, to prevent Oceanic 815 from crashing in the first place? Or the second place? Can’t a man, unstuck in time, prevent the whole clusterfuck from happening? Or at the least altering it in some way? I’m getting that nosebleed again. Good thing I have Diet Mountain Dew as my constant. Stick a sock in my nose and let’s continue on here.

So basically, I’ve said the following: Desmond is awesome, because he has pecs of steel, a sweet accent, and he’s unstuck in time. His total unstuckness is totally important, I just don’t know why. And Daniel Faraday with a mullet makes my groin seethe with sexual inspiration.

Oh you go ahead and brood, John Shepard. I’ve read what sort of shit becomes of you in the opening stages of Mass Effect 2. And thankfully, I’m going to be rocking out with you soon enough. How have you been since our last encounter? I’ve been seeing Mass Effect 2 commercials, and even though they suck, they’ve been whipping me up into a froth.

One fucking week until Mass Effect 2 comes out. Sludging through the original game again has got me excited, and not just for the story but also for the improvements. Like a lot of shit in life, including that chick you hooked up with in a drunken fury, Mass Effect pales significantly when you see her for a second time. Or a third time. But you keep lovin’ her, ’cause she got something special about her.

…Yeah, I have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about anymore.

I’m on a Diet Mountain Dew binge, writing up a fucking storm and hoping to get a chance to cap my characters in the first Mass Effect. There’s a sexy list of bonuses you get for importing that shit. I’m currently level 56, six days to go. Lords of Caffeine and Insomnia, don’t fail me now.

Joe The Barbarian #1

Grant Morrison is one of my favorite bros rocking comics these days. I know he isn’t perfect, but that’s what unconditional love (fanboyism) is about: accepting your crushes with their warts and all. I still have no idea what the hell happened in Final Crisis, aside from Batman getting shot with some lasergun and being transported into the paleolithic age or some shit. However, one of my biggest butt-crushes is dropping a new comic this week, and I can’t help but fap vigorously at the idea of a new title by him.

Joey the Barbs follows a teenage kid thrown into some sort of fantasy world filled with ninja commandos and other absurdity. Whether it is typical teenage escapism, as Joe flees from a Dad felled by the war in Iraq and high school stress, or something more fantastical, I’m intrigued. I can’t remember Morrison writing something from the perspective of a teenager, but my brain is rotting at a ludicrous rate. Morrison’s wonderfully drugs-addled brain is sure to come up with some surreality. Here’s hoping that the plot is as comprehensible as the premise seems interesting.

Mighty Avengers #33

Oh Norman Osborn, you fucking bastard! Would you believe that an Avengers title finds Norman Obsorn being all sorts of dastardly, trying to wield the Cosmic Cube? Yeah, me either. Dude is as played out as Dane Cook, and sucks just as much. But so yeah, the fourteen Avengers teams seem to be grouping up together to try and stop the Iron Patriot, or some shit. Tired of the forty-five Avengers titles? Help is on the way, my dear child. After Siege, Marvel is canceling all the titles, and I assume stripping them down to one or two titles. Which is good, because it’s hard to keep track of what is going on these days in the Marvel Universe.

Even Hitler has no fucking clue what’s going on:

Keep Reading »

[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]

[I tried to do a solid to all of those who haven’t seen LOST yet in my title today. As an aside: Watch LOST, you schmucks.]

When Michael shot Ana Lucia, I could literally feel my asshole unclenching and fluids beginning to leak out. When he then spun around and shot Libby, my mouth opened and I couldn’t believe what had just happened. It was one of those moments when you praise writers for having serious balls. And I also resented them for significantly bumming me out. Hugo’s date with Libby was interrupted by gunshot wounds, and as the blood spilled out and the episode ends, you’re left there trying to comprehend what the fuck just happened.

The entire episode is excellent, and it is wrapped around the push and pull of relationships between children and their parents. There are several threads running through the episode with this theme. We have Christian Shephard, running from his confrontation with Jack. We have Ana Lucia, deserting her mother, incapable of facing a parent and the shame they have for letting them down. And we have Michael, who in a desperate move to save his son sells his soul to the devil. Or at least Benjamin Linus, who seems close enough to El Diablo for me.

At the forefront of this episode is Ana Lucia and Christian Shephard, and their inability to deal with their mother and son respectively. While Lucia has fled her mother from guilt, Shephard’s storyline is an inversion, and he can’t deal with the shame he feels for firing Jack, despite his son’s correct condemnation of his lifestyle. And what is most telling is that both of these characters are ultimately condemned to death for their inability to change their ways.

We got Christian Shephard straight chillin’ in Australia, trying to see his daughter, who just so happens to be Claire. Having fled both sobriety and his family out of guilt, he seems to want to make it up through a proxy, his illegitimate daughter. Who may or may not be carrying some sort of Satan-spawn to term. The dude rolls up in the middle of the night, banging on the door completely shit-faced. I’m not sure what continent this is a good tactic on, but just like in North America, the dude gets shoved out the door by Claire’s aggravated mother.

What I’m wondering is, where was the koala bear? Aren’t they standard protocol for individual protection?

Shephard takes this shit hard like woah, and eventually spirals into his drinking binge that will kill him. There’s a moment, a CROSSROADS if you will, where he could have saved himself. Lucia is all like, Christian, don’t go into that bar and get hammered again. You’re just hiding from your troubles and you smell like piss and vodka. And instead of confronting his baggage, he turns to her and comments, I SAY TO THEE NAY. Except he didn’t say that, because he isn’t Thor. Unfortunately.

Actually, who the fuck knows, this is LOST.

Then there’s Ana Lucia. She was suffering some serious shit over the fact that she totally PEW PEW‘D some guy who tried to kill her when she was a cop. Dude was rigor mortis, and instead of dealing with the guilt she had over her Mom knowing she totally ventilated a guy with her bullets, she fled. Physically and emotionally. Totally deep, man. She takes off to Australia with her buddy Christian “I’ll Be Walking As A Ghost Soon” Shephard.

You think Ana Lucia is going to do a solid, and right her ways. I mean, she sees what a clusterfuck Christian is for not dealing with his problems. She’s getting ready to return to LA with him, save for the fact that he’s encased in pine. So she calls up Moms Lucia and is like “Yo, I fucked up, let’s be friends again and watch The Fast and the Furious”, and her Mom is like “Solid, let’s do it. I’ll bring the popcorn, extra butter, I know. Love you!, ttyl.”

But then! Then the fucking plane crashes. You knew that already.

Ana fucks up and is sentenced to death when she fails to move beyond her desire for vengence. You think she’s done gone and been good when she can’t bring herself to kill Benjamin. I was like, hey personal growth! Well played, girl. Did I mention I think you’re so sexy with your curly hair? And I dig how strong you are and how you can probably take me in a fight, pin me down, and then take advantage of me.

But instead, she gives the gun to Michael. And we know how it goes from there! Blam, blam! Everyone thinks you died because you got a DUI in real life Ana Lucia, but at least your death fits thematically! Blam, blam! Ana Lucia’s death stems from her own ability to move past her faults. Which is a decent message, but it means I’m totally fucked. I can’t stop swearing, passing gas in public, and overeating. I wonder what sort of death I’ll have on LOST.

It’s interesting though, since Ana Lucia does resolve her parental issues. If the plane had just landed, maybe she wouldn’t have regressed into a vengeful chick. Who knows.

And then there’s Michael. Unlike Christian who can’t face his son, and Ana who can’t face her Mom, dude just wants his fucking kid back. Snagged by the Others, who appear to be pederasts or harvesters of uber-children like Walt, he is on a one-man machine to get Walt back. Maybe he’s trying to make up for the fact that he’s been an absentee Dad and shit. Or maybe he saw Taken – don’t give me that it wasn’t out yet, we’re time-traveling hurr on the Island – and was really inspired by Qui-Gon’s performance. Cutting a deal with the Devil, he blows away Ana Lucia, after her gluttony for vengeance gifts him the gun, and releases good ole Benjamin from captivity.

If Christian and Ana could be condemned for fleeing from their problems, Michael seems to be battering into them with a head full of steam, fuck the consequences. I’d call the killing in cold blood, but Pepsibones disagrees, and we had a conversation that went something like this:

Me: I’m Michael, blam blam! I kill you in cold blood

Bones: It wasn’t cold blood

Me: Sure it was, he killed her

Bones: But it wasn’t in cold blood, he had a reason

Me: It was cold blood!

Bones: What’s “in cold blood”?

Me: Whatever he did! So there!

Bones: No, no, no

Me: Christ, you’re going to kill me in cold blood, and be like, “I did it for your Uncanny X-Men collection”

Cold blood or not, it was jaw-dropping, and it finished an episode which explored the relationships between children and their parents, and once again called on the LOST coda of people serving their punishment for an inability to face and conquer their own flaws.

I have nothing to say. I am awaiting the great deluge. The next couple of weeks see me starting graduate school, trying to pretend I have time for Mass Effect 2, while also spending time I don’t have playing Mass Effect 2. The grind of writing a daily thing about LOST is beginning to wear on me. If you’re ever considering writing about something everyday, for a month this is my suggestion: don’t. It isn’t like I hate it, but waking up knowing I have to rip something out of my ass that isn’t my finger is daunting.

Monday Morning Commute. Every Monday I’m going to detail the various things I’m either currently or will be watching, reading, playing, and listening to in the next seven days. It’s Monday. You’ve got a long week of school, work, or compulsive masturbation to get through. Tell me the arts that you’re indulging in, to stave off suicide

Keep Reading »

[Remember That Time On LOST is a daily post running the entire month up until the season premiere of LOST on February 2nd. I’m going to just pick something awesome, noteworthy, or ludicrous about LOST when I wake up that morning, and hopefully get you geeks talking about it with me.]

Sometimes there are just random cool things on LOST that don’t bare any hyper-analysis. Or so you think. Take for example the case of Sawyer getting shit-faced in a bar with Jack’s Dad, Christian. At first blush, it doesn’t seem like anything more than a cool coincidence. But if you talk to people like my insane, brilliant, socially-disruptive brother Pepsibones, their chance connection is one of the focal points of the show.

Sawyer and Christian are just straight-chillin’ in a bar in Australia. Christian would later go on to be impersonated by the Smoke Monster, or at least walk around as a corpse, depending on your perspective. Sawyer ends up being a lover, a helicopter-diver, the head of Dharma security and more. But for that moment, they are none the wiser of their fates.

The two of them talk about a variety of things, from the Red Sox never winning the World Series, to Jack. And little did either of them know that they were going to be on Oceanic 815 together, one of them a corpse, the other one a sexy brooding dude bent on killing the man who wronged his family. It’s an enormous confluence of coincidences. Christian is there in Sydney, because his daughter is Claire, who will also be on the plane. Sawyer talks about Jack, and will end up being both his friend and adversary on the Island.

What are the chances?

Pepsibones believes that one of the themes running through LOST is the concept of interconnectedness. The theory that everything is interwoven, and it is the links between all that is connected that makes it interesting. I could be wrong. I think I was halfway to the bathroom and hopped up on six Diet Mountain Dews when I had the conversation with him. I’m sure he was blasting some sort of music and trying to concentrate on grading papers.

Christian and Sawyer drinking in some bar in Sydney is perhaps chance, but it also ties into the tendrils that jump from one character’s fate to another’s throughout the entire show. Everyone is connected through some means, it seems. Sawyer talks to Jack’s dad, but he is also hunting down Locke’s father. Boone is related to Shannon, but he also walks by Sawyer in jail in Australia. Sayid fought in the Iraq war, and so did Kate’s step-father. Kate is friends with one of Sawyer’s would-be cons whose child he also fathered.

It goes on and on and on.

Remember that time on LOST when Sawyer had a drink with Christian Shephard?

In a show whose meaning really hasn’t made itself apparent, it is by sifting through the strands that connect the characters that you can create your own meaning from it. Christian and Sawyer share a drink, Jack and Desmond bump into one another, and Desmond just happens to be the Guy Unstuck In Time, perhaps the answer to everything, the savior of all.

What is LOST all about? It seems up to us, following the strands from one storyline to the next.