[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.]

Hey Juliet! I like Juliet, a lot. Why, do you ask? Well, let me tell you. For starters, she’s a brilliant doctor who can speak Latin. She can handle a gun, she’s good with cars and she is headstrong. Also, she’s not a promiscuous whore like Julius Peppers With Freckles. And yes, if you really must insist: her cleavage is one of the reasons I pray to Odin every night and gave thanks for high-definition television. She is the belle of the Island, and yet everyone can’t seem to get over their dick-lust for Ole Linebacker Shoulders.

My fascination for Juliet really took off when you realize she’s some special uber-doctor recruited to mend the broken ovaries of lovely ladies on the Island. I mean, up until that point, she was just some beautiful doctor. Full of blond thunder and cavernous cleavage. But then she was recruited by the sexiest man ever, Richard Alpert, for a specific task. Make the shiznit in the ladies’ downlow on the Island start firing again. And also? This changed everything. For starters, it is the first time I can recall seeing the Others in a position of weakness.

For the longest time, they were just really creepy guys wearing beards and trying to kidnap Turniphead. They had an imposing presence. I always got the distinct impression that you didn’t fuck with these people: they were part of some traveling drama theater, complete with fake mustaches, and their equivalent of a guard dog was a ravenous Smoke Monster of doom. They had all the answers!

Except.

Except the the undercarriages of the ladies of the Others rotted at mind-blowingly fast rates. Like, really fast. Juliet checks out some wicked womb and ascertains that the woman is in her 70s. Wrong! Try 26! That’s some accelerated decrepitude. Like, Blade Runner quality rot.

It was interesting, because all of a sudden the Others didn’t seem so invincible. I mean, if they couldn’t reproduce, then what! Sure, they could keep bringing people from off the Island, but is that the answer? Wait, do they bring people from off the Island? Or is that Jacob? Or is Jacob really working with the Others? Or is that a trick?

Wait, fuck. God dammit, got myself into one of those LOST spirals. Did I mention that we don’t know anything about the show? Yeah, I think I did.

Anyways.

So the situation is really dire, you know? And Ben deploys the Right Hand of Awesome to the mainland for some recruiting. You know, the Mayor of Gotham. That’s right, Richard Alpert. He tantalizes Juliet with the possibility of working on the aforementioned rotting womb and uteral lining. Doctors are weird. If you asked me to stare at a rotting womb, I’d tell you to get the fuck out of my face. And then probably ask for the Youtube Link, but still.

The possibility gets Juliet’s own uteral regions quivering with excitement. Unfortunately, Juliet tells Alpy Pooh that she can’t because her ex-husband wouldn’t let her. I don’t know the deal with her ex-hubby, other than he is a complete douche, and also happens to be the head of the research facility where she works. What an asshole.

Alpert is all like, what would it take to get your beautiful eyes scanning the rotting wombs of our women? And Juliet comments she could totally do it if her husband was taken care of, like:

If he were hit by a bus, how ’bout that, that would work.

And you’re like, haha! So cheeky, Juliet. I knew you were beautiful and intelligent, but your wit! Oh, acerbic and dark! Marry me! I’ll print your picture out and keep it my boxer briefs! That’s right, I wear boxer briefs! You think that’s sexy? Yeah, me too. It hugs my bum, but it also shows off my gorgeous quadriceps. Oh Juliet!

And then the next day? That unappreciative dickbag that was her ex-husband but now is a pile of mush on the pavement gets mowed down by a bus. While bitching out Juliet, no less. Karmic karate kick a-go-go, baby!

I mean, Alpert and Ben really wanted Juliet. To the point of using some sort of voodoo to smash a bus into her meddling ex-husband. That’s true ultimate power. And also, it speaks to either their desperation or their coldness. Ultimately you find out that Juliet is taken to the Island, which turns out to be a little different than a remote facility. Because instead of doing research at a facility she’s stuck on an Island with deities and pissed off balls of smoke and hobbits. Talk about getting screwed on a deal.

It’s an interesting moment, because they realize the Others, or whoever the fuck the ragtag gang being led by Ben truly are, are not omnipotent. Or even really cool. As Ben lies in the hands of Jack who has to salvage his rotting spine – ironic that such a little shit has a broken spine – we’re shown the recruiting of Juliet to save the vaginas of the fairer sex populating the Island.

[variant covers is a comic books column every tuesday that breaks down the various titles coming out that week in the world of hyper-exposition and immortality]

Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Music Box #2

Don’t worry guys, the comic book industry is saved from the precipice of doom. You see, Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Music Box comes out this week, and Jesus Christ, I can’t wait. As I scanned across a barren release list – as usual, your recommendations welcome, I’m comic-curious – I saw this gem. Beckoning to me from across the wasteland. Ian it said. Hold me. Buy me. Love me. I am Jennifer Love Hewtti’s Vaginal…er, Music Box, and I’m here to pleasure your geek senses.

Alright fuck that, what the hell is going on?

The Music Box brings us a unique and amazing story every issue, from time-traveling to chicks kissing guys judging from this cover. I read up on some interviews with Love Hewitt regarding the comic, and this is what I distilled from them: Blah blah, yadda yadda, my name is carrying the title while I still go out with David Spade or whoever.

Not only is the most absurd comic book I’ve seen this side of Tyrese’s Mayhem! comic book, but it also features a relic from my comic book past: Scott Lobdell. Nerds like me grew up on a steady diet of X-Men comic books, and the dude manning the helm was Mr. Lobdell. While I did due diligence and gobbled up the glorious years by Claremont, it was Lobdell who was responsible for the new issues coming out every month. And now? Now the dude is writing a comic that was vomited out of the empty shell of Hewitt’s skull.

How my heroes have fallen. Sure, when I went back and looked at Lobdell’s run on X-Men it was filled with hyper-exposition, countless hanging plot lines, and general blah, but I have a nostalgic love for the guy. He gave me Onslaught, the Age of Apocalypse, and is a big part of the reason I even fell in love with the funny book. I love you Scotty, come back to us.

Action Comics #885

I don’t have any clue what is going on with Action Comics at the moment, but reading through the promo, it says that Nightwing is in the title. What the fuck is going on here? Are we going to get to the point where there’s two Bruce Waynes, Nightwing as Batman, and Nightwing as Nightwing? Or something? I have no fucking clue what’s going on. Dil-Hole is stepping into Superman’s shoes while he is being prosecuted for killing someone, Nightwing is running around while Dick Grayson is Batman and uh, stuff?

Brightest Day

Not coming out tomorrow, but worth mentioning in the comic book world is BRIGHTEST DAY. DC is unveiling their next step in Operation: Fuck Your Wallet. Following up Blackest Night is a biweekly, 26-issue title written by Geoff Johns.   With a gag-worthy tagline, “After the Blackest Night, comes the Brightest Day!”, DC seems ready to drag their universe into something decidedly less depressing. I’m down with that. Listen man, we got enough shit going down in the real world – like Jennifer Love Hewitt writing comics and Conan O’Brien getting axed. Let’s get some happy fluffy bullshit going on in the DC universe.

However, anything that comes out weekly, or biweekly really fucks your wallet in the ass. And I haven’t been a fan of all of   DC’s other attempts at an enormous weekly comic, be it Trinity, or 52, or Money Grab or whatever they’re called. Wednesday Comics was decent, but it was more of an experiment than the aforementioned 52 and gang.

Die Hard Year One #4

Friends, your prayers have been answered. How many times during Live Free or Die Hard did you say to yourself, “Fuck, I really wish I could get the story behind the formative years of the American Hero John McClane!” Well, now you can! Straight off the alps of Awesomeness and into your pull list is Die Hard Year One! And this week issue #4 sees the epic conclusion to the first arc! John McClane is stuck on a luxury boat that has been targeted by ecoterrorists! Oh. Snap. Not 1980’s ecoterrorists! I bet they’re dumping a shit load of those old school styrofoam McDonald’s packaging into the ocean! They must be stopped! If there’s one thing that John McClane hates more than having to hop harrier jets, it fascists that don’t respect the environment!

They’re so fucked!

Via Kotaku:

As seen outside the subway station one stop past Kotaku’s NYC office

Amidst the smell of piss and homeless person, awesome emerges in the form of Mass Effect 2 wall ads.

[ source ]

Welcome to the suck! I am willing to trade in Bostonian pride these days for a warmer climate. If I have to clean off my car one more time, I’m going to lose my mind. I never understood why my parents hated the snow when I was going up. You see, snow back in the day just meant snow days. While my parents had to shovel out their cars and endure the elements, I just sat inside eating Chez-Its and playing fucking Toe Jam & Earl. Now I understand all too well. It is a barren wasteland this time of the year. Get me the fuck out!

Starting school in Boston in a couple of weeks from now is going to be glorious. I’m going to have chapped lips and rosy cheeks.

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.]

Yes, John Locke, we are with you on this one. You are peering into the eyes of the Smoke Monster, and more importantly, fudging your poor tired underwear with your bowel linings. This is truth, but it also acceptable. Because as I said, you’re staring at an amorphous cloud of black smoke, capable of replicating human form, churning with electricity, and making your 5.1 system wretch with screeches. The fact that you’re not weeping and shaking uncontrollably makes you a super bad ass.

I can’t be the only one who thought that the Smoke Monster was actually a dinosaur or some sort of beast when it was first teased, could I? I mean, they make it seem that way in the early annals of Season One. The dude mows down trees, has a bellowing roar, and I don’t know. Just generally acts all sort of dinosaur-like. But at the end of the first season, we finally get a glimpse of our boy Smokey, and it was really, really creepy.

While Jack and Locke and That Chick Who Fucked Over Malcom From Firefly walk back giggling to the Hatch with pieces of Artz still down their shirt and in the cracks of their ass, Smokey the Island Bandit runs into them. If I’m not mistaken, Smokey was just going for an afternoon walk when he saw a pack of assholes with bags of dynamite, and thought he should probably ask them what they were up to. Unfortunately, he was speaking only in caterwauls and eerily noises, and the whole conversation just went downhill fast.

Locke is ever the bad ass, and decides he wants to have a heart to heart with Smokey. And that makes sense, since he was down a pair of functional legs prior to crashing on the Island, and now he’s doing the jitterbug with the best of them. Walking towards the noise, you expect Locke to come across some sort of giant, menacing monster. The camera pans upwards, and I was expecting the dude to get eaten the fuck up.

Not so, true believers.

Not so, at all.

All at once Locke gets yanked the fuck off screen by something. If there’s one thing you should know about dinosaurs, is that they don’t have mechanisms for yanking and dragging. They’re more of a brute force sort of creature, and are best at gnashing and mauling. So already, I’m wondering what the fuck is going on. Quickly and very quickly, you’re given shots on Locke being dragged through the forest. And but, for a second, you get a teeny, tiny glimpse of something. And then you turn to your friend, like I did, and you go:

Dude, what the fuck, was that smoke? Huh! Rewind that fucking shit now!

Rewinding proves to be little more than useless, and all you catch is a good couple of wisps.

Ultimately, Locke gets dragged down into some pit. And he’s all like, Jack, let me go! I want to communicate with the Island! And Jack is like, you’re not going to be communicating with anything other than your dead relatives after Smokey The Plume Of Weirdness eats you all up. The Chick Who Has Linebacker Shoulders And Probably Would Have Prevented The Run Better for the Patriots Yesterday gives Jack some dynamite, and they toss it down into the pit that Locke is being dragged into. Kablam! Kapow! Dynamite goes off and makes a rumbling noise! And mind you also this: Somehow Locke’s lower extremities aren’t blown into mush. Those are some appendages indeed.

And then we see it: The Smoke Monster. Welcome to the mythos, stalwart mystery of the show.

Smokey wisps and curls away, pissed off that he just wanted to prevent a forest fire, and these pack of digs tried to blow him up. And I don’t know about you, but I sat there with my jaw agape. I yelled in something approximating all capital letters:

DUDE WHAT THE FUCK THAT WASN’T A DINOSAUR WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON I KNEW THIS SHOW WAS COOL AND ABOUT MORE THAN GOLF COURSES AND A HOBBIT ADDICTED TO HEROIN! HIGH FIVE! NO SERIOUSLY, HIGH FIVE

The first time you see Smokey is dope. They took something that ultimately was going to be lame as hell – a dinosaur or some beast-type shit, and so help don’t tell me it wasn’t going to be that – and made it something all the more odd. You could be a dick and tell me they just bought themselves more time to figure out what it was, but dammit, leave your cynicism at the door. No matter what Menacing Monster looked like, it was going to be a letdown to some, and defended fruitlessly by fanboys like me. Instead, they do one better: The make the monster capable of looking like, well, anything.

I certainly wasn’t expecting a ball of smoke to blow up trees, eat people, and prevent forest fires. That’s for fucking sure.

[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 know, you think that a dead guy would be better at hiding. Fuck!

Who, or what the fuck, is Christian Shephard? It’s something I’ve been asking since I saw him walking around the Island all very undead-like. I mean, I know a few things about dead people. For starters, they’re always wearing too much make-up at the wakes. And secondly, and most important to my point: they don’t move or walk around. There is one fable about some Zombie Guy who pulled off this feat, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t more than superstition. So that makes what Christian is doing very, very impressive.

Remember that time during White Rabbit when we saw Christian walking around for the first time? Very cool. I champion anything on LOST that pushes the show into the upper-echelons of oddity and absurdity. So when it happened, you can only imagine how enthused I was. This was prior to the show really losing its mind, so I was excited as all hell. Jack’s dead dad isn’t in his casket, and instead, Jack chases the Decaying Sweaty Papa Corpse through the forest, only to be encountered by the rumbling Oh-Shit sounds of the Smoke Monster coming to rock his ass.

Gulp!

Who or what the fuck is Christian? Dude seems to be the mouthpiece for someone. Is he really working for Jacob? I’m not sure I buy that. By helping Locke leave the Island and orchestrating the return of the Oceanic Six, it would further it seems to serve the agenda of Jacob’s Grizzly Bearded Enemy. And where does Christian dwell? In the shack where Jacob was thought to party, except, PSYCHE, Jacob chills in a giant foot. So what the fuck, Christian, who are you rolling with?

What are you up to, Christian?!

Tell us!

Also, there’s the whole, Facob taking the form of dead people – just look at our buddy Locke straight chillin’ in the casket at the end of Season Five. And furthermore, the Smoke Monster comes about as Jack chases his dad through the garden. Just like how Dead Guy Locke and the Smoke Monster are never very far apart. OMFG, pants-crapifying.   Is Christian the Smoke Monster, who is also Facob? Raise your arms to the sky and repeat after me:

Who the hell knows!

Maybe he is a good guy, rolling with Jacob. Smokin’ cigars and weaving looms and shit. He does seem to have a nice suit at the beginning of the show. When you’re dead, you probably have all the time in the world to work on thread-counts or something.

Yeah, I have no idea what a thread count is, but I know whenever I go to Target to buy a comforter with my girlfriend, a high thread count is important as hell.

I know, you think that a dead guy would have better fashion sense, fuck!

I don’t know what the economy is for dead people, but Christian seems to hit hard times on the Island after he dies and shit. He goes from a pretty svelte suit to some shitty dress shirt, and he buttons the top button? What the fuck, Christian! Are you too busy teleporting around time and space to brush up on your fashion sense in GQ? Or do you have some really weird hickey? Tell me dude, I need to know!

Christian seems to be serving some higher-power, whether it is Zeus, or Jacob, or Facob, or whatever. In fact, his entire family seems pretty fucking important. Or maybe it is just a coincidence that his son, daughter, and grandson are all brought to the island. That would be awfully convenient. Or terrible. Actually, awful. Yeah, an entire family marooned onto an Island and caught up in some sort of Cosmic Chess Match between two bored as fuck deities.

The first time we see him though, we ain’t concerned with that. We’re like, hey, White Rabbit! And oh, there Jack goes following him into the woods. Oh LOST, you’re so very literary.

24 kicks off again a week from today. And unlike LOST, which I enjoy because it is bizarre, thought provoking, and mind-bending, I enjoy 24 because it is predictable slop. There was a point where I gave a fuck about 24, and took it seriously. Probably for two more seasons than it deserved. But now I tune in just to see Jack Bauer say shit in a gruff voice, have people beg him to save the day, and then watch him begrudgingly come back and kill four-thousand people.

The last couple of seasons I’ve gave up midway, since they seem to rocket their load off our faces like eight episode in. Question: How do you top an invasion of the White House? You can’t. Why they’d have that happen in the middle of a season is beyond me. Or a nuclear detonation. So I get bored, and then I give up on it, and then enough time passes where I forget how bored I was with the show, and I tune in again. And here I am again.

I have a special incentive this season. Katee Sackhoff, who played Starbuck on BSG is totally joining the CTU gang. It is a cheap ploy, guaranteed to get people like me watching. I mean look at the promo pic; they’re so very Kara Thrace. Pursed lips? Check. Viper Pilot-esque clothing? Check. If I see Starbuck and The Guy from Lost Boys mowing down a bunch of people at the same time, I’m going to rupture the Earth with my fangirl scream.

[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.]

If LOST started off as some drama dipped in a coat of science fiction, or uh, fantasy, or uh, science fantasy, or whatever you want to call it, the opening of the Hatch began the show’s march down the hall towards something more weird. It was the first time we were introduced fully to one of the beauties of LOST, one of the reasons we’re so addicted to it. It’s called, “The answer to your question is two more questions.” How many times has it happened on this show? Something is finally revealed, but it is merely a garden of forking paths, that leads to more questions. And more questions. It also introduces a good example of LOST writing technique called, “You don’t know that what you’re seeing is sort of a big deal, until like two seconds before it is made obvious.”

This may also be called the “Ian can’t put anything together as quickly as the rest of you”, but whatever.

So, Season One ended with Mr. Locke and Mr. Shephard peering into the exploded dome of the Hatch. You can also recall the groan we all had when we realized we were going to have to wait nine months or some shit to actually see what was down there. That’s okay though, since Lindelof and the rest of the writers had even less time to figure out what they were going to say was down there. Build all your big reveals into the back-end of a season finale/season premiere, guys. It gives you tons of time to figure out just what the fuck you’re going to say.

And then Season Two begins much the same way Season One did. With a good lad’s eyes opening. Except this time, the guy isn’t Jack. It’s uh, some guy. And then there is a typical morning ritual going on. Guy gets up, types something into his old ass computer. Okay, that’s weird, but whatever. And then he works on his fitness a little bit, and that’s cool. Eats a shitty protein drink, also pretty standard. His breakfast is a bit different from mine, since he isn’t eating three cold slices of pizza and a Diet Pepsi, but I’m not going to fault him. He jams out to some music, on a record player.

The impression you’re given is that this is a flashback. Between the old Apple computer, and the record player, you’re like, okay, cool. Flashback, who does it belong to? Eh! And then slowly, like rolling thunder, it breaks upon you. Probably right around the time that you see him open up a cabinet with the Dharma logo, and hear an explosion. You realize, they’re inside the fucking Hatch! What?!

It is the same sort of storytelling that they used at the end of Season Three to show the scenes between Kate and Jack. It was a slow build, and by the time you realize what is going on, you come to understand that they’ve been showing you something mind-blowing, you just didn’t realize it. Again, you don’t realize you’re seeing something that is a big deal, until it’s too late.

When I was watching the episode, I had the feeling that something important was going on, on the screen. I mean it was the first glimpses of a season premiere. But even as he worked out and walked around the Hatch, I had no clue that we were getting a glimpse at the inside. And then when I finally realized it? It blew my god damn mind. One of the best things about LOST has been the fluid concept of what the show is about. I mean, it is about a lot of things; time travel, people’s dramas, an Island, a plane crash, destiny, and others. But back then? Back then it was about a bunch of people on a mysterious Island. And now? Now, I have no idea.

The opening of the Hatch was the first time I was like, “Maybe I have absolutely no idea what the fuck is going on, on this show.” And it has been a feeling that has carried through the subsequent five seasons. I mean, sure, I know a lot of what is occuring, but as Pepsibones asked me a couple of days ago,

Dude, so like…We don’t really know what the show is about..or like, who the true players are, do we? No, we don’t? Okay good, I wasn’t sure.

I mean, now we have people in the shadows of statues, we have possible resurrections, time travel, deities. We have vaguely referenced “good guys” and “bad guys”, of which they haven’t all been revealed. We have absolutely no idea what the Island is, who is belongs to, who or what Jacob is or was, and on and on. And all of this stems from the opening of the Hatch; this idea that there are forces at work they we can’t perceive, and all of our static notions about the show are probably wrong.

The Hatch opening was awesome, and it was the first time when they really started rocking out to the idea of answering a question with two more questions. Or three. Yeah, this is the inside of a hatch. It is a modern, if it were the 1970’s or some shit, apartment. But here, have a handful of other questions. Why is this apartment carved into the middle of the ground, who is this guy, why is he typing commands into a keyboard, how long has he been down there? And you just sit there, and you marvel. You marvel because you know they have you hooked by the squishies, and worst of all, you love it.

It’s a formula us fans have learned to loudly scorn, “Oh yeah, here we go, answering more questions with questions!”, but quietly love. Because we’re addicted, and we need to know.

I did it! I finally found a fucking coffee-based beer! After grumbling for weeks, my friendly neighborhood poison-merchant totally fulfilled my wishes! Since I have wanted a coffee-brew for some time but have never taken the initiative to actually search for one, I’m going to take this latest acquisition that God exists and he wants me to be happy. Or, I suppose, that there’s no God at all and I’ve just managed to benefit from the indifferent bastard that is random chance. Either way, I’m drinkin’.

I walked into the store, took a lap, looked at the cooler with disdain, and then began to march out. For a matter of seconds, I was positively sure that I would have to go to *gasp* another store *gasp* for my brew of the week! But as I began my emigration, I could swear that I heard something…

“…over here. right here. yeah, away from the coolers full of labels that change color when cold and the supposed royalty of lagers…come to the shelf with specialty alcohol.”

I paused, second-guessing myself and beginning to finally understand what my friends mean when they say, “You’re fucking losing it.” But then I heard it again, only with a clarity and volume that had only been intimated before.

“RIGHT HERE! LOOK UP, YOU NUMBSKULL!”

As I shifted my line of sight, I finally saw the hyperactive bottle of depressant that had  been beckoning. To my absolute delight, I was gazing at a fat-ass bottle of Cappuccino Stout. “Come here, you little bugger,” I cried joyously. I resisted the urge to shoplift, trading the merchant some baseball cards with slave-owners on `em for the bottle and rushing home.

While my first instinct was to crack the bottle open and begin guzzling the week away, my sensibilities prevailed. I decided to approach the Lagunitas Brewing Company’s limited release as a nightcap, waiting until later in the evening to enjoy. Therefore, I passed the time by going out to eat with Mrs. Krueger. While I enjoyed myself, I knew that there was a mission at hand; the beer I drank with my steak and the coffee I drank with dessert were merely teases of the greater objective. And so I headed home again, this time fully prepared to experience a combination of my two favorite beverages.

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.]

Charlie: You’re insane mate, Superman can fly around the entire planet in the blink of an eye!

Hurley: Dude, if we’re going by a pure foot race, Superman would get dusted by the Flash.

Charlie: Well, why would the MAN OF STEEL, agreed to a sodding foot race?

Hurley: Uh for charity, and Flash would totally win, cause he can like vibrate through walls and stuff

One of my favorite bits of dialogue in all of LOST is when Hurley and Charlie got into a debate over who was faster – the Flash or Superman. It spoke to me in a volume of ways, because I am a geek of the highest rank. Throughout my life, I have engaged in countless arguments over trifling things like this. Who is faster, the Flash or Superman? What’s the coolest X-Man’s power? Do you really think Batman could beat Superman in a fight? You do? Dude, Superman can move so fucking fast, he could punch Batman’s head-off before Batman could even measure a thought. What, you think Batman would win anyways? Oh, that’s true. I suppose Superman always holds back, and that’s what condemns him to losing. But if he wanted to? Yeah dude, he could punch Batman’s head off. He’s fast, really fucking fast.

But?

Not as fast as the Flash. Yeah, I’m with Hurley on this one.

What the fuck does a hobbit know about god damn Barry Allen?

The episode featuring this conversation was written by Brian K. Vaughan. You may known him as the dude behind Y: The Last Man and other comic books. It seems fitting that a guy who wrote comic books would interject some of that nerdery into LOST. I mean, it doesn’t seem out of the realm of something for Hurley to be discussing. The dude was the owner of the issue of JLA that Walt uses his Prepubescent Voodoo on, and he’s also seen reading Mr. Vaughan’s Y in the airport prior to his return to Doom Island.

The dialogue serves two purposes, though. Not only does it reignite the engines of nerdfroth and debate amongst comic book geeks about who is faster – again, it’s the Flash you assholes. Seriously, Superman is fast as fuck, but he can’t leap forward in time or vibrate molecules like Barry or Wally. The real debate is which Flash is fastest. And I’m going to tell you the truth, I have no idea. I’ll leave that question up to other flocks of nerds. But secondly, the dialogue serves as a nice amount of relationship building between Hurley and Charlie.

When Charlie dies at the end of Season Three, no one feels it harder than Hurley. And let me tell you, when Charlie returns at the beginning of Season Four and tells Hurley he has to go back? I was trying to keep from weeping in front of friends and family. It decimated me, like the big over-emotional lug that I am. And it was this type of conversation that really built the friendship between the two of them. You felt that there was an actual palpable loss, not that it was some throwaway tug on your heart strings. Or maybe you did, and I’m just a weepy mess.

Seeing the two of them shoot the shit as they walked through the forest sold me on their friendship. I mean, as I said, that’s what friends do. They talk about stupid shit. They run their mouths and make one another laugh and engage in pointless arguments. The scene opens up with the two of them, already in the middle of the conversation. Amongst all the epic journeys and the WE HAVE TO GO HERE AND SAVE THIS THING AND STUFF, you don’t really get to see the relationships much. Well, outside of flashbacks. And maybe Sawyer and The Promiscuous And Unfit Temporary Caretaker of Aaron boning in polar bear cages. But aside from that, it was nice to see this dialogue. It was great fanservice to the huge portion of the LOST crowd that were geeks like me, and it also helped add to the emotional resonance of Charlie’s death in the forthcoming episodes, and its effect on Hugo.