The Salsa Connoisseur: Trader Jose's "Salsa Autentica"

Think back to the most authentic Mexican restaurant you've ever been to. The one with the least English on the menu, or the loudest telenovela blaring from the TVs at lunch time, or the most actual Mexicans eating there with their families. Remember the salsa that the kindly old woman brought out from the kitchen? Was it some gloppy concoction of beans and corn? Probably not. More likely, it was a simple mixture of tomato, chile, onion, and not much else.

Trader Joe's (or, rather, Trader Jose's) has tried to replicate that, and they've done a pretty darn good job. One thing that you notice immediately about the salsa is its down-to-earth packaging: clear cylindrical jar; yellow top; white, black, and red label. And it tastes good too.

Texture: very good overall. Consistency is smooth and fluid; chunks of tomato and vegetables are small to nonexistent. Thickness is slightly thicker than water. Pours well.

Heat: starts off unassuming and builds to a reasonable heat in a few seconds. Trader Jose describes this as a 5 on an 8-point heat scale, which might be a little much--I'd be more inclined to put it at 4. No argument that it's a solidly "medium" heat salsa.

Flavor: unassuming, tangy, slightly generic tomato sauce flavor at first. Heat and chile flavor builds soon and is the highlight of the taste. Subtle earthy or "harvest" aftertaste. This salsa has only five ingredients: tomatoes, chiles, vinegar, salt, and spices, and that works in its favor.

Available at Trader Joe's; $1.69 buys you a 12-oz bottle (14.1 cents per ounce), which is really pretty cheap.

Definitely recommended, especially for a simple, basic, and cheap salsa that's really tasty. Also good if you don't like a garlicky salsa or an overly onion-y salsa.


Currently listening: "Summersong", the Decemberists

The Salsa Connoisseur: Introduction

If you've ever looked into wine appreciation, then you might agree with me that it's a hotbed of pretension. Terms like "bouquet" and "nose", flavors like "leather" and "tobacco", and phrases like "antithetical to the passion" abound. And recently, this sort of thing isn't even limited to wine--you can see it in other alcoholic beverages (whiskies and microbrew beers are popular), non-alcoholic beverages (coffee), and foodstuffs (often cheese and chocolate).

So if you can take a critical, almost artistic approach to describing everything else you can eat and drink, why not salsa? I'm a huge fan of the "sauce/condiment" category in general, and salsa is among my favorite ones of those. Over the last several years, I've sampled probably dozens of different kinds, and I've identified three qualities that make a salsa good.

First, the perfect salsa is uniform and has well-distributed ingredients. In general, that means I prefer fluid salsas to chunkier ones. I like my tomato to be blended into the salsa--the base for the salsa, if you will--and pieces of tomato should be small to negligible. The perfect salsa should be more viscous than water but never syrupy.

Second, the perfect salsa balances heat with flavor. A salsa should never sacrifice tasting good to get more tongue-scorching power. That said, it should always be spicy enough to convince me that I'm eating a salsa rather than a "dip" or "sauce". In general, this means I prefer salsas in the "medium" to "hot" range, but I'm okay with "ridiculous" as long as it still tastes like something.

Third, the perfect salsa uses sensible, quality ingredients. Salsas today have all sorts of bizarre, eye-catching ingredients, but they can cross over into "gimmicky" really easily. That means I prefer a salsa that has generic but high-quality ingredients to one that tries to throw in fruit but ends up muddling the salsa flavor. And never, ever add sugar.

In what I hope becomes a semi-regular feature in Isoceleria, the salsa connoisseur will review various salsas and treat them to pretentious wine-style reviews in a manner that's only halfway tongue-in-cheek. Look forward to the premiere installment, "Trader Joe's Salsa Autentica", coming soon.


Currently listening: "The Fisherman Song", Mae

Cell Phones on TV: Seinfeld and Harper's Island

There's no question that "The Bubble Boy" is one of the all-time great Seinfeld episodes. Of course, everyone remembers it for the titular Donald, his struggles with George, and George's insistence that the "Moops" actually invaded Spain in the 8th century.

Then there's the Ross family cabin, which every Seinfeld fan knows burns down at some point, but how many Seinfeld fans remember it happened in "The Bubble Boy"? And then there are subplots, minor character details that aren't easy to remember but are hilarious: Jerry's obsession with making his messages on his autographed pictures funny. George's obsession with "making good time". Kramer's obsession with pies.

But I couldn't help think of something as I watched this episode last week. The entire premise of this episode's humor just disappears if Seinfeld were being aired just a decade or two later. "The Bubble Boy" first aired in 1992. But pretend it's 2002, a mere 10 years later, instead. Now, when George speeds ahead of Jerry on the way to the Bubble Boy's house, Jerry can simply pick up his cell phone, call George, and ask him for the directions to the house.

To extrapolate further, what if the episode aired in 2007, fifteen years after it actually did? In that case, Jerry probably would have had a GPS that he could simply program the address into, eliminating the need to call George at all. And if it were 2012, twenty years later, presumably someone would have had a smartphone: type the address into the phone at the restaurant, click the address once you got into the car, and you only need one device instead of two. (By 2012, maybe smartphones will have the capacity for vocalized, real-time updating, turn-by-turn directions, like legit GPS does.)

Then it occurred to me: hasn't someone already covered this, making a list of all the Seinfeld episodes that just get about half as funny if all the central characters had cell phones? I can't find that list, so if anyone knows if/where it exists, please let me know. The closest thing I found is a compilation of why Seinfeld doesn't work with the iPhone. It's a good read, though it's far from comprehensive--"The Dinner Party" (aka the babka episode) immediately comes to mind as an omission, as does just about every episode involving an airport.

The point, though, is a solid one. It took only 10 years to develop a technology that completely changes the comedic landscape of the series. It's taken less than 20 to improve that technology so much that it offers not one, but two or three or more ways around most of its otherwise-funny stumbling blocks.

Another show that has a touchy relationship with cell phones is Harper's Island, a midsummer murder mystery that I've been sucked into lately thanks to one Alex Harkey. I'll talk more about the show in a few weeks, once it's run its course, but for now I'd like to talk about how cell phones change that show.

One of the necessary conceits for any murder mystery involves getting the victims alone for long enough for the murderer to do his dirty work. Of course this in turn involves having the characters "split up", whether it's to do a scavenger hunt, or to traipse off into the woods for whatever reason, or to look for a missing child. One way that characters have been isolated from each other in Harper's Island is through a number of old hunting traps--snares, pits, etc.

At some point, though, if you're caught in a snare and hanging upside down by your foot, aren't you going to pull out your cell phone? Call someone else on the island and say "hey, I was walking alone in the woods--stupid, I know--and I got caught in this trap. You want to come help me?" Harper's Island skirts this issue by explaining that "most of the island doesn't get good reception."

For now, in 2009, we're willing to buy that reasoning. If it were ten years ago, in 1999, it would be especially valid, and there might even be some characters that simply didn't have them. Twenty years ago, 1989, cell phones would have been entirely unknown. What about in 2019, or 2029? I'd bet that twenty years from now, phone technology will have advanced so much that service will be nearly ubiquitous, and that the "bad reception" argument won't carry any water at all.


Currently listening: "Strawberry Fields Forever", the Beatles

Mae: The (M)orning EP

Mae's current project is a completely different mode of song writing, production, and distribution than the traditional EP/full-length record/single we're used to. The gist is this: one song a month, which you can listen to for free on the website, then buy for a dollar. Three times this year--in the (m)orning, the (a)fternoon, and the (e)vening (ie, spring, summer, and fall)--the songs will be compiled onto an EP, along with a bit of extra material.

The other cool thing is that the proceeds from these music sales are donated to causes. And happily they're not political causes, which Mae must have identified as being far too divisive to drive sales. They're causes that actually do good things, like Habitat for Humanity and textbooks for children.

If all this sounds like it might have been an "apology tour" for Singularity, you're not the only one thinking that.

The place where Mae succeeds the most on (M)orning is in its evocation of a mood. The morning is related to hope, awakening, and--probably most importantly to the band--rebirth. We're reminded of those motifs constantly throughout the EP, not only lyrically but aurally, when birds start chirping at every turn.

Those birds are more pleasant than they might seem at first, but the album does teeter on the edge of "gimmicky" through gapless playback and weird sound effects that often end the tracks. But if that's the album's greatest flaw--and it is on (M)orning--then things could be a lot worse.

Mae combines music that sounds like it could have been at home on Singularity in the first two "monthly" tracks, "The House That Fire Built" and "Boomerang"--though they're both a lot better than just about anything from Singularity. "A Melody, The Memory" and "Night/Day" are classic Mae, combining Destination: Beautiful and Everglow cues. "Two Birds" is a curious flute-laden instrumental track that would have been out of place on any of the earlier albums, but inexplicably works in the middle of the morning.

But the track that I'm most excited about, especially if it represents a new direction for Mae, is "The Fisherman Song (We All Need Love)". Right away, it recalls the Beatles ("All You Need is Love") in its title, and that's never a bad thing. It starts off innocently enough with acoustic guitars that provide background to a musician struggling at night to write a song. As the song progresses, the man meets a (possibly crazy) fisherman who gives him some jumpy punk rock inspiration. And finally, in the epic-electric guitar finale, he finishes his song, presumably right as the sun rises ("when the light came on").

I think this is a song that you can interpret however you need to, in the vein of the best of the songs from The Everglow. You can just listen to it as a story, or it can be a metaphor about reaching out and helping people, simply because it's the right thing to do. Or, if you're spiritually-minded, I think this works as a song about Jesus too. The choice of the mysterious inspirational figure as a fisherman I don't think is random. Neither is the fact that he extols the virtues of "faith" and "hope" before declaring "the greatest of these is love."

That's a message that echoes throughout the EP: "we all need love." It's an exultantly positive message, which we Mae fans all needed after Singularity. Is this new EP better than The Everglow? Even as "close to as good as" The Everglow? Probably not. But it's nearly as good as Destination: Beautiful, and more importantly, it's a positive direction for Mae's music, one that should leave fans optimistically awaiting the (A)fternoon.


Currently listening: "Here Comes the Sun", the Beatles

Thoughts on the Plus/Minus Grading Scheme

Before last Wednesday's Decemberists concert, I talked with my friend Patrick and some of his friends about how their education was going at that mortal and ancient enemy of mine, the University of Georgia.

One topic that came up--and it's come up in conversations with people from other schools, too--is the "plus/minus" grading scale. It's my opinion that the plus/minus system is only moderately beneficial in some cases, but that benefit is far outweighed by prohibitive flaws at both extremes of the scale.

Let's take a student, Steven. He's a good student who does well most of the time, never outright excelling, but never failing either. In a recent semester, Steven took four classes, and he got a B in each one. In two of the classes, he was right in the meat of the "B" part of the curve. In the third, he never really understood one of the units of the class, and he was lucky to scrape by with a B. And in the fourth, he really got into the class and participated a lot, but based on his test scores, the professor couldn't in good conscience give him an A.

Assuming these four classes are equally weighted toward his GPA, he's got a 3.0. Now, what if the plus/minus system were introduced?

The first two classes, Steven would still have B's. In the third, the professor wouldn't want to give him a C, but seeing his poor performance on one third of the class, he feels completely justified in giving a B-. And in the last class, though the professor couldn't justify an A, Steven's enthusiasm might push him up to a B+. So, with the additional assumption that the "plus" is as "positive" as the "minus" is "negative", Steven's GPA is still 3.0.

A supporter of the system would argue that this is exactly why the system is good. There's no net movement up or down, and it gives an outside observer an understanding of Steven's accomplishments that's both more precise and more accurate than the standard A/B/C/D/F system.

But what about shifting all those grades up one letter? Take Leon, who really does excel in most all of his classes. He also took four classes last semester. Leon rode the top of the curve in two of them, getting a solid A in each. He fell a little behind in this third, and after a rough final performance, was lucky to keep his perfect semester intact. In the fourth class, though, Leon didn't merely ride the top of the curve--he was "that guy" that ruined it for the rest of the class.

Obviously, on the standard scale, Leon has himself a 4.0. What about with plus/minus? First two classes, Leon's secure with his A's. In the third class, though, the professor might punish the less-than-stellar finals performance with an A-. But what about the fourth? No matter how much the professor might want to give our man Leon an A+, the A+ does not exist in most conceptions of the plus/minus system.

Steven's grades were normally distributed about "B", so under either grading system, his GPA was 3.0. But even though Leon's grades are normally distributed about "A", when pluses and minuses are added, his GPA drops to 3.925. Therefore, for students at the top of the grade scale, the net effect on GPA is neutral at best and negative at worst.

Now let's take the grades in the other direction. Ronald hasn't been doing particularly well--he got C's in his four classes. We'll say those C's were in the same manner as Steven's B's and Leon's A's--that is, two "middle C's", one "high C", and one "low C/borderline D". His GPA is 2.0 under the standard system. And, because Ronald's grades are normally distributed about "C", and because C+ and C- both exist, his GPA is still 2.0 under plus/minus.

But the fact that C- represents a 1.7 might raise some issues. For instance, what if that C- were in a major class? Most majors require a certain GPA in their major in addition to a certain overall GPA. That 1.7 could have detrimental effects on the major GPA a lot more than a 2.0 could--particularly because 2.0 is a favorite cutoff mark for "passing" versus "not".

For most students, plus/minus doesn't hurt or help more than a tiny fraction of a point. However, it does have the potential to significantly harm GPA of students at the top of the scale (because of the lack of an A+) and students on the brink of passing (because the C- hurts significantly more than the C+ helps).

Is there another argument in favor of plus/minus that I'm missing? Does anyone think it's justified despite these weaknesses?


Currently listening: Handel on the Law (in handy podcast form)

The Hazards of Love, Live

If you're a Decemberists fan, like the new album and have a chance to catch the Hazards of Love tour, by all means do. The format is this: Hazards of Love in its entirety, about twenty minutes' (well-deserved) break for the band, and then roughly an hour of old music too.

I've been a big, big supporter of Hazards of Love since I first heard it, but after hearing this concert, I don't know how you could dislike the album. Most of what I said in my review of the album still stands, with a few new observations.

The band does a wonderful job, as it always does in concert. Becky Stark (of Lavender Diamond, who plays the role of Margaret) is excellent. But it's Shara Worden (of My Brightest Diamond, who plays the role of the Queen) who really steals the show with her stage antics. Excellently cast.


Colin Meloy and Shara Worden, my new favorite person. Who knew the brooding, villainous Forest Queen was so short and cute?

Listening to the album by itself, I've been finding it easier and easier to stop listening after "Annan Water", because the songs seem to get less exciting after that. But remembering the theatrical conceit, of course the songs should get less exciting after "The Crossing", which is the climax of the story. (Specifically, I think it's the cool rock organ/electric guitar bit that really seems like a sonic destination for the album.) Seeing the whole production live, those songs become not only necessary but narratively interesting.

Because the framework of the album is more theater than pop record, this is a collection of songs that really does improve when you see it live. We get scenery, costuming, lighting effects. To carry out the stage performance a few steps further, it might have been cool to do some scene changes--though the background pulled off both "forest" (with green lighting) and "river" (with blue lighting).

This probably strains the upper limit of feasibility, but how about recasting the entire staging to put the band in a pit, orchestra-style? Obviously, the point of the pit is to hide the orchestra, and the point of a live concert is to watch the band. I'm not advocating covering up the band, but maybe there's a spatial organization that creates visual distinction between the "actors" (Colin Meloy and/or Shara Worden and/or Becky Stark, depending on who's important at the time) and the "band" (John Moen, Chris Funk, Nate Query, Jenny Conlee).

And as long as we're going over the top anyway, how about live fireflies?

The rest of the show promised a "tidy selection" of old material, but we ended up with as much material is in Hazards of Love--not that that's a bad thing by any means! The general aim seemed to be to hit a highlight or two from each old album.

If I were momentarily in charge of picking the Decemberists' set list, and I knew that the goal was two songs from The Crane Wife, I certainly wouldn't have picked "O Valencia!" and "Shankhill Butchers". Personally, I'm partial to "The Island", but since that's stylistically very similar to The Hazards of Love, I can understand the not wanting to play it. That restriction probably rules out and of the "Crane Wife" cycle too.

With those constraints in mind, the obvious next choice is "Yankee Bayonet". It's not a song that's easy to perform on tour--you absolutely need a female vocalist to cover the duet part, or the song doesn't work at all. On this tour, though, we have not one but two talented female vocalists, so the Decemberists could have taken their pick--or used them both. I also like "Summersong" a lot, but that one never seemed to catch on with the general fan base as much as I think it should have. Failing "Summersong", I guess "O Valencia!" is an acceptable substitute. I never really got into "Shankhill Butchers", though. I think it's too much buildup, too much brooding tension, and no payoff.

On the other hand, if I had to pick two songs from Picaresque, "The Engine Driver" and "16 Military Wives" would have been up there on my list as well as the Decemberists'. I don't agree with putting politics into music in almost any case, but damned if the Decemberists don't make "16 Military Wives" fun to sing in person. They probably do the "pit halves of the audience against each other" during the "la di dah" bit of the chorus at every show... and it never gets less awesome. (Do they ever perform "The Infanta" on tour? It was the first Decemberists song I heard and still among my favorites.)

The crowd's tepid response to "Raincoat Song" showed how few people payed attention to Always the Bridesmaid. It was pleasant if not particularly memorable. I was surprised to hear "Shiny", which has been around for something like nine years now, and I get the idea it's not oft-performed on tour. Probably the Decemberists just seized the opportunity of "well, we have this steel guitar around, so let's do something with it." I sort of psyched myself into thinking we'd get "California One" too, as long as the steel guitar was just sitting there, but no such luck.

"July, July!" is still one of the most fun songs the Decemberists do, so I was glad to see it show up. "The Bachelor and the Bride" is still not my favorite song, but at least it sounded good. And I wonder if they end most shows with "A Cautionary Song", or if they just coincidentally did at both of the shows I've been to? Those two accordion chords are a darn fine way to end a show.

One thing that absolutely deserves mention is the Decemberists' improv theater. You've got Colin Meloy on stage, backed up by Jenny Conlee on accordion and Nate Query on bass. Chris Funk, John Moen, Shara Worden, and Becky Stark are standing in front of the stage, and Colin Meloy starts making up a story about trains and gypsies. In true "Whose Line" style, the actors and the music change in time with what Meloy calls out. The result is something profoundly entertaining and something that gives further proof--as if we needed it--as to the Decemberists' artistic mastery.


Currently listening: "Don't Bring Me Down", Electric Light Orchestra

Response to xkcd 588

I'm not really sure about all this discussion going about this comic on at the forum. Like almost everyone there, when I was in high school, I saw pep rallies as a colossal waste of time. But I never found them as particularly offensive either, which seems to be a minority viewpoint among the xkcd fans.

In the comic, Randall suggests that pep rallies are actually a vehicle of hatred, and at least a plurality of xkcd fans enthusiastically support this notion, with the argument culminating in one poster describing pep rallies as an "Orwellian channeling" of hatred. But I think anyone who thinks that the point of a pep rally is to encourage "hating the other school" is missing the point of the pep rally. Opposition to the "other" school is merely the most convenient commonality shared by all the students of the "one" school.

So if the pep rally isn't designed to foster hate of the other school, what is the point of the pep rally? I'd say it's much more about having pride in your own school. It's about community and finding common ground. That's something a sociologist might describe as a "solidarity ritual". What happens in the "ritual" (ie, the apparent hatred of another school) isn't nearly as important as what happens to the participants of the "ritual". In a pep rally, that effect is to achieve some sort of unity with their peers.

The comic itself raises the issue that school district assignment is not by choice, that it's essentially an arbitrary grouping based on where you live. An earlier poster expanded on that argument, saying that having pride in one's high school might make more sense if you'd chosen your high school based on some distinguishing characteristic. It's true that high schools, unlike colleges and corporations and nations, do not--and cannot--distinguish themselves from peer institutions through philosophical or operational differences. But that is not a reason that you shouldn't be able, and encouraged, to take pride in your school.

This comic, and the discussion it's spawned, touches on two important points about the American educational system. The first is that primary and secondary (and to a lesser extent, post-secondary) education is designed not only to educate, but also to socialize. It's an important mission of the school system that much of the fact-oriented, left-brainy xkcd community either doesn't recognize or has chosen to ignore. Once you do reach an organization that you want to have pride in--be that a college or corporation or anything else--these pep rallies have given you a social education that has enabled you to have that pride.

The second issue is the often-fractious nature of high school social grouping. Virtually everyone in our society has been in high school at some point, and yet there are wildly diverging opinions about whether the "Saved By The Bell" depiction of high school social structure is accurate or not. Many of the comments on this comic were not actually comments on pep rallies. Instead, they were used to dovetail into complaints about the high school social order, for example, "these cheerleaders would in real life never talk to me since I was a huge nerd, why should I listen to these people who treat me and the majority of the rest of the students poorly?" These complaints are worth hearing and probably valid, but here they only serve to confuse the issue.

What about those jocks, though? Aren't they the most likely people to develop a genuine hatred of another school through a pep rally? Maybe they are, and I'd argue that they're missing the point of the pep rally as well. But pep rallies are not--nor are they designed to be--"Orwellian". They're not "tribalism", nor a conspiracy to divert discontent away from your own school's administration. They're certainly neither "creepy" nor "fascist". They're a legitimate and necessary function of secondary education. And for students who actually try to get something out of them, they can be valuable ways to build some connections with peers and pride in the local community.

Besides, who didn't like getting out of class for an hour?


Currently listening: "The Next Episode", Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg

Crossword Conundrum

One more observation from my recent trip to London: foreign crosswords are really, really hard. Of course a crossword in a foreign language is going to be tough--I took a couple semesters of French, plus I studied abroad in France for three months, and I couldn't even conceive of trying a crossword en Francais. In fact, the very prospect of having to link a word by "e accent grave" is terrifying.

But crosswords in English, that's a different story. I've grown to be a pretty enthusiastic crossworder, and I've found through four years of engineering school that the daily crossword is the best way to keep my verbal mind sharp. My classmates evidently agreed with me, and before the end of my undergrad career, we turned the crossword into a daily post-senior-design therapy session.

At the very end of the semester, a handful of crossword teammates and I finally reached our goal of completing the Friday crossword in under 10 minutes, and that was at least as big an accomplishment as finishing the senior design project. So by this point, I actually consider myself not only enthusiastic but also reasonably adept.

All of that confidence in my crosswording abilities turned out to be completely moot once I reached jolly old England, and I found a few reasons why that's the case.

Clue formatting style. American crosswords, like the USA Today crossword that's become pretty much the gold standard in American crosswording, have clues that are phrases as opposed to words, quips or clever statements as opposed to synonyms, and typically three to six letters as opposed to anywhere from three to twelve.

Vocabulary. Say you had the clue "Fast food (8)", and you knew the last letter was "y". This would be immediately recognizable to an English crossworder as "takeaway". But an American puzzler would have a hell of a time trying to figure out how that "y" fit as the last letter of "carryout".

Grid layout. The American style crossword grid makes each word highly dependent on other words: a five-letter word is almost always going to intersect five other words. The British mode is sparser, making elusive clues more difficult to decipher because you have less help.

Want an example? Check out a Guardian crossword as opposed to a USA Today one.


Currently listening: This is the Life, Amy MacDonald

Non-Lost Season Finales

Believe it or not, I do actually watch a little television that's not Lost. With the spring television season having just ended, there's plenty of finales to talk about.

24 is still my second-favorite show on television, and more than anything, this season has been about bouncing back from the abysmal season 6. Really, any season that focuses more on Audrey freaking Raines than on Jack Bauer is doomed to fail from the start. Heck, season 7 even kicked off with a movie called "Redemption", which was always a title as much about the show itself as it was about Jack Bauer.

The first half of season 7 did in fact look like it was going to redeem the show from the sixth season. Of course, we knew that the shady Sangalans weren't going to be the endgame... but I think the season might have been improved a bit by making Jonas Hodges the endgame. Jon Voight played the role of the evil, slightly cracked-up mastermind better than most in the show's history.

Instead, we got a jumbled "shadow organization" of private military people, a la Quantum of Solace, which reduced the impact of what happened in the last few episodes. Still, the resolution of "good Tony/evil Tony" made some sense, once we realized he's just crazy and and willing to play both sides to get some revenge.

I liked the finale for the most part, with Renee Walker turning ever more Jack Bauer-ish, and Jack finally boosting the Bauer Count, including a quality scalpel kill. Very nice! At this point, it's obvious that Jack Bauer isn't really going to die, particularly since he has a contract through the next season at least. Is it too much to ask for Kim to be killed/incapacitated in the process of saving him so that she won't be on the show anymore? Probably.

And oh, was it good to see Olivia Taylor get what was coming to her.


House kind of got on my nerves toward the end of that last season, to tell the truth. I did not like Amber when she was a fellowship applicant. I did not like Amber when she was Wilson's girlfriend. And I especially did not like her when she wasn't even real, but inside House's head. Am I in the strong minority here? Does everyone else in the House fan base love her?

Either way, I hope that season 6 gets out of House's subconscious. This show is and has always been about House and his eccentricities. We're perfectly willing to accept a Vicodin addiction if it means more quips and insults. I realize that the show needs some directional mobility, that it needs overarching plots and stories to keep each episode from being a curious one-off. In the past, though, this has always been much more successful when it involved an application of House's character, not an alteration of it.

Nevertheless, there were plenty of good episodes this season, particularly once you disregarded Amber. It was nice to see more Chase and Cameron, and I can't help but wonder how the "star billing" is going to look on this show next year--if I were Olivia Wilde, I'd find it a little odd that I got more screen time yet less credit than some other other actors.


Thank you, The Office, a million times, for "snapping out of it" and returning to the usual frivolities of Dunder Mifflin. "Cafe Disco" and "Company Picnic" were exactly the right way to end the season: thematic episodes that showcase the excellent characters and situations (this is a sit-com, after all), rather than trying to tie it into "real life" somehow. Even the "Michael Scott Paper Company" arc eventually avoided the unwelcome emotional seriousness that plagued the first two thirds of the season.


Even though on some level, all the CSI's and Criminal Minds are basically the same show, I enjoy them all (except CSI Miami, which I never really got into). Finales were largely good, with the device of "mysterious shooting with two seconds left in the episode" overused and not particularly impactful... but I'm sure everything will sort itself out over the next seasons of each show.


Currently listening: Abraxas, Santana

More thoughts on travel abroad

There sure is a lot of Eurotrash in London. There's a lot of Eurotrash everywhere in Europe, to be sure. I mean, you can't really escape French people in France, or Italians in Italy. Turns out you can't escape them in the UK, either. How do you identify Eurotrash, or distinguish it from ordinary Europeans? Four easy steps!

1) Cigarette in hand. I mean, that one should be a no-brainer. Forget carbon dioxide emissions, the Kyoto Protocol ought to deal with the perpetual cloud of cigarette smoke that Europe is choking under.

2) Tight jeans. Especially around the calves and ankles. This one applies to men and women!

3) General rudeness. Loud conversations across a train car, no heed paid to other pedestrians, ignoring the clear (and multi-lingual) instructions to "keep moving" in the chapels in Westminster Abbey.

4) Blatant tourism. Not that we Americans aren't guilty of this--we are, far more often than I'd like us to be--but Eurotrash take it to a whole new level. Please, stop holding up traffic on the Tube to consult your "Londra" guidebook.


In England, the English is largely very good, as you might assume. Sentences are concise but complete, and always informative. "We're working to renovate the escalators for this Tube station. These repairs will last until late 2011." That, as opposed to what you'd see on, say, Marta: "ESCALATORS UNDER RENOVATION", without the luxury of punctuation, let alone a verb.

There's a handful of linguistic anomalies that the Brits are fond of, though, that don't make too much sense to me. For example, see how I used "that" in that last sentence? It's a relative pronoun, designed to introduce the clause "the Brits are fond of". There, "that" is the "correct" pronoun to use, because it's a restrictive clause. The information is necessary to make the sentence make sense. In Britain, however, "which" seems to be used for any relative clause, regardless of restriction. "That" seems to be reserved for a demonstrative pronoun. And that's sure not what I learned in high school English class.

But one thing I do remember learning in high school English, that I thought completely insane at the time, is the use of singular nouns that "act" as plural. "The family are coming to dinner", as opposed to "the family is coming to dinner." Apparently, because "family" is understood to contain more than one person, it's treated as a plural noun.

"No, nobody talks like that," I remember complaining back in high school. We use "family is", because we're talking about only one family. "Families are", for more than one family, and "members of the family are", if we're concerned with the individuals more than the group.

Turns out that people do talk like that--just not often in the United States. You hear it the most in talk about sporting teams. Here, we'd say "the Braves are looking to do better than 4th place this year," but "Atlanta is". In Britain, you get "Chelsea are looking to place well in next year's Champions League." So maybe this actually is correct English--but it's completely alien to American speakers, and I don't think it makes a great deal of sense anyhow.


The British culinary tradition is much maligned--and really, I can think of few things less appetizing than a giant pile of peas next to my sandwich--but English breakfast really ought to be regarded along with the best cooking in the world. Toast (and the Brits do love their toast), eggs, "bacon" (which is more a slab, like Canadian bacon, than the crispy strips that we're used to), sausage (which I think is required to come along with every meal), coffee or tea, juice. That part is expected.

Then you look to the other side of your plate and notice... baked beans? Mushrooms? A tomato? What trickery is this?

Delicious, is what it is.


Currently listening: "Klavier", Rammstein

Lost Speculations and Observations, "Everything That Rises Must Converge" Edition

And here are five plots that, in my mind, have risen and must converge before the series finale next May.

1. The Richard Alpert backstory. Who is he, what’s his allegiance, when and where does he come from, and why is he ageless? Of all the recurring characters, Alpert is by far the most compelling—actually, I find him more interesting than half the main cast—and the one whose mystery is most central to the mythology of the Island. I’d absolutely love to see a Richard-centric episode in season 6, and I think it’s entirely possible. Even though he’s a recurring character, we’ve had recurring characters have centric episodes before (Rose and Bernard), and it’s clear that Alpert is way more important than those two.

Current theory: Richard, in addition to being the “Panchen Lama” of the Others, is also the high priest of whatever supernatural power is venerated at the Temple. More and more, I like the idea that we shouldn’t consider Richard an “Other” per se at all, or at least not a member of the Others’ hierarchy. Instead, he’s a mediator between the Island and its people, or an emissary from the Island to its people. Therefore, while he’s not one of the Others, he has a great deal of authority in what they do and license to ignore their leadership.

Timeline of reveal: The Richard flashback episode, if we get it, is likely to be a mid-season 6 episode. That way, Richard’s goals and motivations are set for the battle in the grand finale. Or, he might pull and Eko and die in his own centric episode, and precipitate the events that lead to the last battle.


2. Structures of the ancients. Most intriguing are the Frozen Donkey Wheel, the Statue, and the Temple. We’ve visited the Wheel twice without knowing really anything about how it works or who put it there. The Statue is production gold: it has no lines, can be represented easily with a scale model, and has shown up a total of three times in a hundred hours. But it has spawned more theorizing and discussion than probably half of the main characters. And we’ve seen around, outside, and under the Temple, but never the structure itself.

Current theory: These structures all seem to have been built by the same people, with the shared hieroglyph motif, general ignorance about their origin, and apparently ancient construction. There’s quasi-canonical evidence that the Statue is Taweret, which I’ll conveniently ignore, continuing to believe it’s Sobek, until Carlton Cuse tells me otherwise. The Wheel, I’ve got nothing.

But I’ve heard an interesting theory on the Temple that unfortunately I can’t take credit for. What if we’ve been thinking about the Temple’s time frame all wrong? We think it’s very old, mostly because the wall around it is designed to look very old. But we also know that the wall and the Temple itself aren’t necessarily related at all. Maybe the Temple is actually very new, or even futuristic? Then, the wall isn’t to protect the structure from outsiders at all, but to protect people from seeing what they’re not supposed to see of the future. There’s little evidence on the show to support this, but I love the theory because it turns so many assumptions on their head.

Timeline of reveal: The Wheel is a series finale issue, I’m sure of. The Statue has probably been “revealed” to the extent that it will be, but I believe we’ll revisit it. The Temple I can see being revealed mid-season 6, possibly serving as the setting for some of the series finale action.


3. Resurrection. What are Christian Shepherd, John Locke, and for that matter Alex Rousseau and Yemi? Who does the Island choose to resurrect, how does it happen, and why? When you’re resurrected, are you actually alive again, or are you in some sort of limbo-undead state? What sort of abilities do you gain? We know that Locke and Christian both seemed to know things they had no idea of after the Island brought them back. Finally, can you be killed (again) if you’ve been brought back?

Of course, the confirmation of Locke as a manifestation of Jacob’s enemy raises yet more questions. Can you be resurrected at all, or does this mean that every instance of resurrection or “I see dead people” is actually the Enemy?

Current theory: Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse have more or less directly—as directly as they’re capable of, at any rate—confirmed that Christian and Yemi are actually manifestations of the Monster. Add that to the decidedly Smokey-ish noises when we saw Christian at the Barracks, and that theory seems good. The idea of why you’re “resurrected” is more interesting—and far tougher to explain. If we know for sure that Locke is Jacob’s enemy, and we know for (somewhat) sure that Christian is the Monster, then maybe all those entities are one and the same.

Timeline of reveal: Explicit confirmation of “Locke” as Jacob’s enemy should come pretty early on. Christian, and all the other supposedly dead people, might come further along, but I doubt that we’ll get the final Monster reveal until the very end.


4. Cataclysm. We’ve seen hints of a volcanic eruption for several seasons, and now there’s the looming threat of a hydrogen bomb. Several season finales have been described as “seismic” or “explosive”, and yet nothing until Juliet detonated Jughead’s core. Even that didn’t necessarily destroy the Island, especially if you believe “whatever happened, happened”.

Current theory: I find it entirely plausible that the volcano already exploded, sometime way in the past. But I think there’s going to be something equally as disastrous that happens at the end of the Island’s timeline, say in 2008, that kills everyone on the Island and destroys the Island… unless, of course, Desmond saves the day.

Timeline of reveal: The first half of season 6 might be about the cataclysm happening, and the second half about Desmond and company working to prevent it.


5. Desmond saves the future. There’s been a whole lot of emphasis placed on Desmond being “special” and being able to change the future. Desmond’s unique talents are the Chekhov’s gun that has to be used before the end of the show. Eloise said so, Faraday said so, and the failsafe key pretty much said so too. We don’t yet know exactly how he can manipulate past events, but that would seem to imply that Desmond has a bit of time travel left in his future.

Current theory: Desmond keeps his promise to Eloise and stays off the Island… until something very, very bad happens there. Then, because he’s such a stand-up guy, he returns per Eloise’s prediction to set things right.

Timeline of reveal: I can see at least the first two thirds of season 6 being about what Desmond is doing to try and prevent something terrible happening in the Island’s future, setting up the events for the series finale. Desmond might not even be in the first ten or so episodes of the season, only rejoining as a regular toward the end.


To wrap up this year's Lost coverage, what are your thoughts on episode titles for next season? I like "... Love" for the Sun/Jin centric reunion episode, "Progress" for a mid-season revelatory episode, "The Candidate" for a Lapidus-centric, "The Equation" or "The Numbers" for the Desmond-centric episode that finally establishes the Valenzetti equation as Dharma's mission on the Island (ie, another follow-up to The Constant), and "It Only Ends Once" for the finale. But my most brilliant suggestion--one that might actually come to pass--is "... At Sea" for the (possibly Richard-centric) Black Rock episode. You heard it here first.


Currently listening: "The Sun and the Moon", Mae, from The Everglow

Sport in the UK

And they do call it "sport" there, rather than "sports"--you're looking at the "sport" section in the newspaper, the "sport" segment on the evening news, and so on.

The Brits are as into sports as we are across the pond--but it's entirely different sports. Instead of baseball, football, and basketball, we're looking at soccer (except they call it "football"), cricket, and rugby. Football of course takes the lead for the majority of the year... and it is pervasive.

The stereotype of the English soccer hooligan (I think there was even a Saturday Night Live sketch called that), like many stereotypes, comes from somewhere. Unlike most stereotypes, though, it's almost completely grounded in reality. Everyone has their team and a handful of bitter rivalries that go along with it, and everyone is sucked into the drama of the Premier League.

And after having been in London for only a week, the drama already got really, really compelling. Think the BCS, except stretched out for nine months, the top few teams earn the right to play football against colleges from all across North America for the continent champion... and the bottom few teams have to play against high schoolers for the next year.

If you're not familiar with "relegation" and "promotion", it's a fascinating concept, essentially allowing the most podunk club team in the middle of Wales to become the champion of all of Britain in the span of a few years. It also means that the consistently underperforming teams better re-evaluate their game plan the next season when they're playing in a lower league. If we did this in American baseball, the Nationals would have been bounced to AAA a long time ago.

It's a system that creates interest on all levels of the system, on the top and the bottom, and also seamlessly integrates the national system into an international one, with the top handful of teams earning bids into some sort of super-complicated pan-European system that an American doesn't have any hope of deciphering. It's tough to say if American sports would improve by adopting the system... but I'm sort of glad it's not used here, because I for one would waste a lot of time absorbed in the rankings tables.

Also incomprehensible to any American is the sport of cricket. If anyone can explain how a "two-innings" game is supposed to last five days, please do.


Currently listening: "This is the Countdown", Mae, from The Everglow

Lost Speculations and Observations, "H-Bomb" Edition

If you missed the last Lost finale post, and you're into this sort of thing, check out the Loophole edition, which focuses on the mythology of the season finale.

One of the reasons Lost is so, so good is that there's so much going on at any given time. Mythology, plot, characters are all critical to making this show excellent, and they're all quasi-independent enough to talk about by themselves. I'd like to talk a little about characters in this installment of the finale post, because I think Season 6 is going to have to make a few critical changes.

The biggest character-y surprise from the finale was the lack of a major, impactful death. Important characters dying has been a fixture of season finales past (eg Charlie). Plus, people far more acquainted with spoiler sites than I am were convinced that there was going to be a "major" death in the finale. Sure, plenty of people died, particularly Dharma employees who has the ill fortune of assignment to the Swan station. But I can only count two characters whose names we knew that actually kicked the bucket: Phil and Jacob.

Sure, we'd gotten to know Phil, and he was in as many episodes as Horace, and we even saw a hint of development in his character. However, he was so unimportant to the scheme of things that his death could hardly be considered major. As for Jacob, while his death is undoubtedly hugely important to the scheme of things, we hardly knew the guy, having just met him two hours ago... so as a plot point, his death was major, but as a character point, it lacked impact.

Now, half of our main cast is certainly on the line for having maybe died, with Juliet's death looking the most probable. You don't sit at ground zero of an atomic explosion and live. Then again, I'd argue that you don't sit fifty feet above ground zero and live, either, unless there's some weird "electromagnetic anomaly" business going on.

Really, the Juliet ambiguity is quite clever from a production standpoint--apparently, Elizabeth Mitchell got some major role in a pilot for a new television show, and her role on Lost could change dramatically if the pilot gets picked up and lasts a while. If this means she can no longer be on the Lost cast, then of course she died after being so close to a massive release of energy. If she can still be on lost, then of course the "fluctuations" caused by Jughead and the strange matter pocket saved her.

If Juliet needs to die so Elizabeth Mitchell can move on, though, then the main cast is going to need a little overhaul. We'd be down to two female main characters, Kate and Sun, against about a dozen male main characters, and the last thing Lost needs is to turn into as much of a sausage fest as Georgia Tech. Claire coming back holds some promise--and the producers really need to address that story, but that's still lacking. Combine that with Ilana apparently being a lot more important than we thought, and I can definitely see her joining the main cast.

Speaking of the main cast, major gripe with the finale: no Desmond? What the hell? Every season finale to date have featured all the (living) main characters. Desmond's utterly embarrassing lack of screen time has been the one knock on the otherwise fantastic season 5. Eloise as much as told us, halfway through the season, that the Island was not done with Desmond. This had better come to fruition before the end of the series.

Pleasantly, Jack is no longer my least favorite character, having regrown most of his lost backbone and seemingly left "wussy" mode. He hasn't recovered all the way: the worst scene in the finale was his fight with Sawyer, which didn't seem to have much of a point. It almost seemed like that fight was really over Kate, which made my hate it even more. I really, really like season 5 Sawyer, and it made me care about his character for the first time in the series. I only hope his character stays that interesting to the end.

I still like Miles, and I still like Sun, and I've been satisfied with their screen time this season. Definitely looking forward to the Jin-Sun reunion, which I have to assume will happen toward the beginning of next season. I really want to see more Frank and more Richard, and I could do with a little more Charles Widmore too.

To end, the biggest thing to speculate about: who will the next important "group of people" be in season 6? We had the mid-section survivors in season 1, the tail section people in season 2, the Others in season 3, the freighter people in season 4, and Dharma in season 5. Maybe more of Jacob's people, such as Ilana and her ilk?

I'll finish up the season finale discussion in a few days with the "Everything that Rises Must Converge" edition, describing what I perceive as the most important plot points for the last season.

Currently listening: "Suspension", Mae, from The Everglow

Rapid-Fire Airplane Movie Reviews

Review: Gran Torino

The remarkable thing about this movie is that half of the main character's dialog is either "grrrr" or some manner of ethnic slur--and Mr. Eastwood's character sure knows a lot of those. The movie starts with Eastwood's character Walt absolutely despising anyone who isn't like him--and that extends to his white family, Southeast Asian neighbors, Mexican neighbors, and pretty much everyone else. So it's predictable in the sense that by the time everything is said and done, you know he's going to come around and be okay with at least some of the minorities.

Over the course of the movie, we see how he gets there, and how he actually manages to bring about some positive change in other people's lives, too. I suppose I can buy that seventy-plus years of bigotry vanishes over the course of just a few months, mostly because I can't buy that someone is that ridiculously bigoted in the first place. Sure, there's plenty of grizzled old dudes who don't care for the fact that their neighbors are Asian, but is there really anyone who would go so far as to throw away their gifts for no real reason?

Without giving away the ending, I'll go ahead and say that the best line in the movie comes at the end, when Walt forbids someone from painting "any of those stupid flames" on his car, or putting a "gay spoiler" on the back. It's a good movie overall--a classic tale of redemption that's nothing we haven't seen before, but well enough acted and presented that it doesn't so much matter.


Review: Quantum of Solace

Daniel Craig's new interpretation of James Bond surprised and impressed a lot of people in the last movie, Casino Royale. Gone, or at least postponed, were the days of the ultra-suave, super-sophisticated Bond, and we got a rendition that was a lot more relateable in terms of emotion. That made Casino Royale a good movie.

The other thing that made Casino Royale good was that it made sense. The whole way through. You could follow the plot, you knew who the characters were, and there was an acceptable level of doubt about who was up to what. Quantum of Solace decided not to follow that approach. Confirmation of who certain characters are and what they're doing comes way too late in the movie to help it make sense. Worse, even after watching it, I'm still not sure what the Bond Girl's involvement in anything is. (Is she Russian? South American? Something else entirely?)

Chances are good you expect certain things from a Bond movie, like exotic locales, explosions, chase scenes, and banter between Bond and his superiors. We get all that, no doubt about it. The issue comes in whether we get anything beyond that... and Quantum of Solace doesn't so much deliver.


Review: Slumdog Millionaire

I was a little skeptical of this movie at first, mostly because Indian cinema and I don't so much get along, but it turns out this movie was a lot less Bollywood than I might have thought. No spontaneous bursting into song (or dance), no characters who find out they're inexplicably related at the very end of the movie (hey, this isn't Lost here), and no four-hour duration.

The coolest thing this movie does is to use an interesting temporal structure, explaining how this poor kid from the slums knows the answers to all these trivia questions. Turns out he's had some ridiculously bad things happen to him in his life, and those moments just happen to coincide with the questions he gets asked. Fate, or something like that.

It has its flaws--notably, the main character Jamal is utterly unlikable and devoid of personality for the first third or so of the movie. And, as Ken Jennings pointed out before the movie was even released, the "trivia game" backbone of the movie is weak: some of the early questions seem impossibly hard, while the last (20 million rupee) question is comparatively stunningly easy.

However, the movie has way more going for it than wrong with it. Slumdog Millionaire manages to use the "flashes through time" device without confusing us, because both of the timelines move linearly forward, and that's a credit to the movie in and of itself. But it does a lot more than that, featuring characters you find yourself caring about and a few powerful redemptive moments.


Review: Best in Show

I love the mockumentary style--see Spinal Tap, the Office, etc. And Best in Show is one of... well, the best. I'd already seen this movie, several years ago, and the good news is it's still as funny as ever.


Currently listening: "Cover Me", Mae, from The Everglow

Lost Speculations and Observations, "Loophole" Edition

In "The Incident", we're subject to the usual gamut of Lost emotions. Awe, when we realize who we're seeing back in the 1800s. Confusion, any time Ilana and Bram's people show up. Disgust, every time Jack talks about Kate. (Or maybe that's just me.) Admiration, when Miles puts himself on the line to help out his dad. But I'm ashamed of one particular emotion I couldn't help but feel about an hour and forty-five minutes in.

Sympathy. For Ben Linus.

In the last few episodes, we've seen the entire mystical facade surrounding Ben evaporate. It's taken no longer than half a season for him to go from master manipulator who singlehandedly convinces half of the Oceanic Six to get back on the plane to empty deposed leader who has no idea what's going on. Even Sun has caught onto his game: "Do you really expect me to believe that?" when asked about the Statue is met with a dejected "No, I guess not."

Not too long after that, Ben and Jacob finally have a heart-to-heart chat, apparently for the first time in their lives. And it's clear that Ben really isn't as special, as crucial to the Island, as central a cog in the "whatever happened, happened" scheme as he thought he was. Nearly everyone important got a Jacob visit earlier in their lives... except for Ben. All of the other leaders of the Others, presumably, have met the man, except for Ben. And Ben, the Island's undisputed master of getting others to do his dirty work, is manipulated himself by (ostensible) John Locke.

And as dirty and evil and foul that many of this actions have been, I couldn't help but feel terrible for the guy. To add to his misery, I think that killing Jacob just might have been the very worst thing he could have done for the Island. Enter the Statue, whose foot we first saw exactly three seasons ago, and whose face we finally see for the first time. Whose face is that exactly? I'm putting all of my chips in the Sobek pile.

Why I think the Statue is Sobek: ankh in the left hand, check. Alligator head, check. However, that can describe any of a handful of Egyptian deities. The much better evidence comes from comparing Jacob to Sobek. I'll quote liberally from the Wikipedia page about Sobek here, emphasis mine. "Sobek's ambiguous nature led some Egyptians to believe that he was a repairer of evil that had been done, rather than a force for good in itself."

"Ambiguous" certainly does describe Jacob, but then again it describes about half of the characters on the show. The idea of Sobek as a "repairer of evil", though, is fascinating. When did Jacob show up to the 815 survivors in the past? Pivotal moments, yes, but pivotal moments that all followed some evil that had befallen them.

Jack had just been embarrassed during surgery (ironically, by the man who claims to speak on Jacob's behalf thirty years later) and to top it all off, his Apollo bar had just gotten stuck. Kate was just called out for trying to steal. Hurley was falsely imprisoned. Jin and Sun had been married--not exactly evil, but the tribulations they went through to get there could have used some "repairing". In this manner, Jacob's visits to the 815 survivors seem to be exactly in the function of "repairing evil".

"He was seen as a more primal god, eventually becoming regarded as an avatar of the primal god Amun, who at that time was considered the chief god. When his identity finally merged, Amun had become merged himself with Ra[...]" So Sobek is an avatar or Ra. Remember the tapestry that Jacob had spent hundreds of years weaving? Happy people worshiping none other than Ra.

"Going to Duat to restore damage done to the dead". Duat is the Egyptian underworld, where all sorts of fun stuff happens, like hearts getting weighed against feathers. I've been saying for a couple of years now that the Island represents the Underworld. What if Jacob urged the 815 survivors to go to the Island so that he could help them, undo the rest of the evils that they'd experienced?

The other significant thing that happens in Duat is Ra, whom Sobek is an avatar of, battles Apep, the snake demon of chaos and darkness. Light and darkness, white and black, the abstraction of all of the conflicts in Lost ever since the first season. And apparently Jacob and his "nemesis", if their old-school hand-woven garments are any indication.

If Jacob is effectively an avatar of Ra, the Egyptian sun god and the upholder of order, then who is his nemesis? It makes a lot of sense that he'd be an avatar of Apep. Then the whole perspective of conflict on the show changes. The central conflict is still "good" against "bad", white against black, but it's no longer our people against the Others or Dharma against the Hostiles. It's not even Ben versus Widmore as I claimed a few months ago. The Island then becomes the battleground of deities, which has apparently been going on for five thousand years.

This conflict does recall Ben's and Widmore's, at least in one respect. The combatants live by some code of "rules", which includes not being able to kill each other. Enter the "loophole". Apep can't kill Ra, but he can sure manipulate some mortal into doing it for him.

These revelations raise three more questions about mysticism on the Island. First, what is Christian? I'd say that he's Jacob's Locke: a dead man who acts on behalf of some greater power. Or, maybe Jacob and his nemesis actually take the forms of Christian and Locke. (Then, what implication does that have for the rest of the dead people that have shown up on the Island, like Yemi and Dave?)

The second question is what's the deal with the Monster? Jacob's people apparently have knowledge and control of it (eg, when Ben summons it), but Jacob's nemesis acting as Locke does too (eg, when "Locke" takes Ben to get his judgment). Possibly it's supposed to protect the Island, keep the battle of deities out of the sight of mortals. Or, maybe it acts as a mediator in the conflict.

Third, where does this leave Richard? Is he on Jacob's side? On neither side? Actually on the side of the nemesis, leading Ben to kill Jacob? There's no way to answer any of that for the time being.

Final observation: Ilana has emerged as a potential power player in the conflict as well. She's clearly on the Jacob side of the conflict, but how and why, we don't know. I can see her joining the main cast next year, particularly in light of what may or may not have happened to Juliet. But more on that in the "H-Bomb" installment coming up in the next day or two.


Currently listening: "The Ocean", Mae, from The Everglow

Lost Speculations and Observations, April Edition

The press release for "The Variable" promised that Faraday would "come clean" about what he knew about the Island. After watching the episode, I'm still leaning toward him knowing "not a whole lot". At least we know more about how a few things work after watching it.

Widmore is Daniel's father, which isn't really a surprise by this point, seeing as how we've gotten the parenthood "surprise" for Miles and (sort of) Charlotte and (once already) Daniel earlier in this season. Intriguingly, that makes Daniel and Penny half-siblings, with Penny's mother presumably the woman who Widmore fooled around with off the Island, much to Ben's dismay.

But if parentage has gotten to be a bore lately, death never is. And Faraday's looking pretty toast... shockingly, shot to death by his own mother. "Hi Mom," you can almost imagine him saying, "you haven't given birth to me just yet, but you will soon enough, and when I get to be an adult, I'm going to time travel so you can shoot my adult self." It's a wonder Eloise isn't a lot more screwed up than she actually is, knowing that she shot her own son.

Big question here: why is Eloise so insistent that Daniel go back to the Island, knowing well her past self is going to shoot him--and also knowing well that she can't do a thing to stop it?

Like most of the episodes this season, "The Variable" flirted with what's turning into a major theme: can you change the past to affect the future? Time and time again, the answer turns out to be "no". Sayid thought he could by shooting Ben; didn't work. As soon as Daniel starts questioning his own theory and getting notions about detonating Jughead to prevent the Incident, he's shot in the chest for it. Still I maintain that there's no mystery here at all; the only character who can really do these things is Desmond. And at some point, probably because he knows about a calamity that's about to strike the Island, he'll bring himself to go back and set things right.

Let's talk about our favorite Scotsman for a second. Owing to Desmond's "special" nature in being able to change the past, I have no doubt in my mind that he's the "Variable" that the title referred to. Remember Eloise's comment on Desmond's condition? "I have no idea" how he'll turn out. The great Ms. Hawking, temporal policeman and oracle, for once is at a loss. And that scares her. He's the one actor who's not just a cog in the great machine, not just another piece of determinism that Eloise can smugly predict.

In that way, Desmond represents the free will that Daniel was so quick to cite just before his death. I, for one, will be really disappointed if he never exercises it before the story ends.

Yet again, I'm reminded that I really can care about relationships and love stories on this show. Every time I see Desmond and Penny, I'm touched. Theirs is the most sincere, genuine relationship on the show--by far--and I still maintain that their reunion at the end of Season 4 was one of the best moments of the entire show. They still love each other and care for each other, three years later in real time, and a season later in show time. It's almost like the Desmond-Penny relationship is a "constant" of its own, one thing that we can always count on even when everything else is going to hell.

Of course, "The Variable" is the episode most on my mind, because it's the only Lost I've gotten in the past two weeks. It's almost tough to remember "Dead is Dead", which I think is the most mythology-saturated episode the series has thrown at us so far. More Monster and Temple that you can shake a stick at, and even more in the accumulation of clues that Monster and Temple and Island are all bound, somehow, to the underworld. Recall the engraving of Anubis kneeling before the Monster and tell me you don't want to know what that means.

The Dharma people really have gotten to be my favorite slew of supporting characters we've seen so far. Radzinsky in particular is excellent. Yeah, he's a douche, and yeah, he's directly opposed to our people's interests, but his personality is spot-on and Eric Lange is doing a wonderful job. I was excited that we'd get to hear more about Radzinsky mostly because of his tie to the Blast Door Map. Turns out he's awesome even without the mythology tie-in, and I'd put money on us getting to see how Radzinsky ends up exiled to the Swan for fifteen years by the end of the season.

What else are you looking forward to for the finale? I still won't spoil the title, though I think Faraday made it perfectly clear where this storyline is headed when he described what was going to happen "in a few hours". Do you think we'll get to see the Sun and Jin reunion? (I think yes.) Jughead exploding? (Probably not, but what an awesome cliffhanger that would be!) Find out "what lies in the shadow of the statue"? (Again, probably not, but I assume we'll at least find out what Bram and Ilana are up to.) Better understand resurrection on the Island? (Possibly we'll head in that direction, but I think the exact mechanics are a season 6 issue.)


Currently listening: Paste Magazine sampler, Volume 52

Cool Toys and Crappy Music

Review: T-Mobile G1

The best thing about the G1 is that it doesn't have a queer name. "Rant". "Chocolate". "Instinct". Come on, are we naming phones, or are we listing off verbs and nouns that we know? Back in my day, phones had good old robot names like "SGH-T309".

And let's not even discuss the perplexing and ambiguous "wireless" that mobile phone service has come to be known as. Lots of things are wireless. My mouse, for instance. My laptop, with respect to the internet. The commercials for various multimedia companies (I'm looking at you, AT&T) are proud to proclaim that they feature "television" (noun, no ambiguity), "internet" (noun, still no ambiguity), "home phone" (noun, even less ambiguity), and "wireless". This is an adjective, not the name of a service.

(It's like how the oil industry won't stop using "caustic" to describe sodium hydroxide, even though they know as well as the media companies that using an adjective by itself to describe a product is stupid.)

The second best thing about the G1 is that it's neither an iPhone nor a Blackberry. I can therefore have a device that's very useful and very entertaining but not figure on the douchebag scale either at the "hipster" end or the "senior vice president who thinks he's more important than he actually is" end. (Okay, okay, not everyone who uses an iPhone is a hipster. You'd best start checking your scarf habits though.)

The third best is that it tells me, depending on the season, the Braves, Tech football, or Tech basketball scores--as they happen, or as often as I'd like. And the location of the nearest Starbucks. And I can play Pac-Man. And stream Last.fm.

The general consensus is that the G1 has several unique advantages over its "smart phone" competitors: the keyboard is good, the trackball is useful, and built-in Google functionality is handy. It carries a few disadvantages, too: the software library is smaller than, say, the iPhone's, it's sort of big and heavy, and the battery life ranges from tepid to abysmal depending on how you're using the phone.

But this is the best toy I've gotten in a long, long time.


I have a new "least favorite musical artist", and her name is Lady Gaga. Remember when the worst thing we had to contend with on the radio was Fergie, or Katy Perry? "I Kissed a Girl" sounds like musical genius now. I promise, if I hear this "Poker Face" business one more time, I am going to turn off the radio no matter where I am. "But sir, you can't turn off the radio to the entire Target." Watch me.


Currently listening: "Shambala", Three Dog Night

Quick Lesson In Driving

If a traffic light is not working at a 4-way intersection, you treat it as a 4-way stop. You do not have an excuse to blow through the intersection. You still must use your turn signal. Take turns, and do not pull out in front of another driver. If there happens to be a pedestrian in the crosswalk, he has the right of way, just as if he had a "white man walking" sign. Therefore, please be kind and do not honk at him as if he were jaywalking.

It'll make 10th and State a much happier intersection, I promise.


Currently listening: "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", the Beatles

Lost Speculations and Observations, March Edition

First off, Ben Linus isn't really dead, of course. "Whatever happened, happened." But a good question to ponder is this: if Desmond had been the one to shoot Ben at the end of "He's Our You", would Ben actually be dead, screwing up the entire timeline? I have to say yes; Desmond, after all, is special, and can affect the past.

While this scene was a complete shocker, it only elevated "He's Our You" from an average episode to a good one. "Namaste" was generally dull. So most of this post originates from "LaFleur", the best and most mythically-intense of the episodes this month.

In the first four seasons of Lost, the operative question was always "where?" Charlie’s question "guys, where are we?" summed up the central mystery to Lost for two-thirds of its run. "Who?" came up a lot too—it continues to—especially when a new character is introduced and all those pesky inter-character relationships are getting developed. But physical place and the relationships between different physical places motivated all the action, whether that meant getting from the outside world to the Island, getting between places on the Island, and eventually getting from the Island back to the outside world.

When we watched Ben turn the Frozen Donkey Wheel, we knew it was going to change the way the show worked, but only now that we’re more than halfway into season 5 do we actually appreciate how drastic that change was. Even the idea of what "moving the Island" means has changed: back in season 4, everyone assumed that meant "move in space" to a new "where". Just half a season later, that notion seems antiquated. Even the old question of "how do we get to and leave the Island?" has been so thoroughly de-mysticized that it seems trivial.

That’s because now the operative question on Lost is "when?" Several characters have already mirrored Charlie’s season 1 inquiry and asked "when are we?" The important mysteries on the show now revolve around when events took place, rather than where. Granted, time has always been important to the mythology. The distinguishing narrative device for the first four seasons was the flashback (and then flashforward), a clever method of telling stories from different timelines without having to contrive ways for all the characters to show up in those timelines.

But the Island has much more history than just what the Oceanic 815 survivors can hope to tell us. Therefore, the new mechanic of time travel is an even more clever way to reveal fragments of the Island’s history. And by all accounts, that history goes back longer than anyone could have imagined when we saw 815 go down. The biggest and most mysterious evidence we have of ancient habitation of the Island is a handful of Egyptian-seeming artifacts.

Egyptology has been sneaking its way into the Lost mythos with all the subtlety of a Sayid Jarrah torture routine. The first glimpse we got of it, ironically, probably had nothing to do with the truly ancient construction we see later. That was way back in the days of the Swan station, when some hieroglyphs showed up behind the countdown time cards in the Swan. Creepily, the translation of those glyphs is either "cause to die" or "underworld", suggesting that Dharma at least knew that bad things would happen if you didn’t press the button.

But whether or not Dharma knew how the Swan really worked, it seems increasingly unlikely that they knew how the rest of the Island worked. For a while, Dharma seemed veiled and downright mystical; now that we’ve gotten more insight into how they operated, I think they were mostly as in over their heads as everyone else who’s ended up in the Island. The few exceptions might be Dharma’s leadership, people like its founders, Gerald and Karen de Groot, and its financier, Alvar Hanso. But for most Dharmites, I doubt they actually understood how deeply significant the choice of hieroglyphs actually was.

The rest of the Egyptian influence has been revealed in relatively quick succession, at least for Lost. Toward the end of season 4, Ben summoned the smoke monster from behind a hieroglyph-marked door; at the end of season 4, Ben turned the hieroglyph-marked Frozen Donkey Wheel, and toward the beginning of season 5, poor Montand got to make a visit to the smoke monster’s lair (presumably the Temple), which was brimming with hieroglyphs too.

And then, "LaFleur" gave us a two-second glimpse of a massive statue, about the same proportions as our old friend the Four Toed Statue probably is. If it isn’t the same one we saw before, it almost certainly dates from the same era and serves a similar purpose. But the most mythologically intense moment of "LaFleur" was the frame or two where we could see what the statue was holding. It was an ankh, the Egyptian symbol of eternal life, the same symbol that Paul had on his necklace. Egyptian deities, in particular, were often depicted as carrying anhks in their hands by the loop.

Which deity did that statue represent? I can’t help but hope it was Horus, given the emphasis on Horace in that episode.

Some people seem to think that Richard is an Egyptian. Maybe he's an Egyptian deity himself. Maybe he's dead and in the same state of unlife that Christian and presumably Locke are in now. I still like the idea that he's doing creative time travel. I like the "Richard is Egyptian" theory, but it does raise some questions, particularly concerning all of the Others' flawless English and the fact that "Richard" is as English a name as you can get.

(To speculate idly on season 6, that will be the season of the questions "what", as in "what is the Island?", and "why?", as in "why are these people here?". In other words, we’re going to see the Island become important not as a point in space or a point in time, but as a unique rational agent, with an agenda and abilities all its own. A character, maybe, rather than a setting.)

Most Lost-geeky observation of the month: the indirect mention of the deGroots in "He's Our You". "Either we decide, or we call Ann Arbor and they decide for us", declares Horace in the debate on what to do with Sayid. Ann Arbor is home to the University of Michigan, which is where the deGroots did their doctoral work and dreamed up the Initiative. While this might just be an Easter egg for those of us "lucky" enough to remember that trivial detail from the Swan orientation, I can't help but hope we see Gerald and Karen in an coming episode.

Gripe of the month: where in the heck is Desmond? After he walked out of Eloise's "here's how you get to the Island" party early, declaring boldly that he was "done with the Island", we haven't seen any of him at all. Eloise's rebuttal that "the Island isn't done with him" is starting to look more and more like a fabrication.

Finally, I know that some people are so spoiler-averse that they don't even look at the titles of upcoming episodes. (Like knowing that episode 8 was called "LaFleur" would have given anything away at all?) The title of the last episode of this season is awesome in its simplicity. I won't give it here, out of deference to those spoilerphobes, but if you can stomach it, take the half a minute on the internet it'll take to find the title of 5.16 and 5.17.


Currently listening: "Sonne", Rammstein

Pretty Whistles Meet Prog Rock: The Hazards of Love

Review and Discussion: The Hazards of Love

Is it a good sign that the Decemberists' latest album takes such a long time to digest? I think yes, even though it's more than a little daunting at first. There are characters to follow, plot lines to keep track of, even literary devices that you never thought you'd see again after freshman English.

And in many ways, although it's far different in character from most of the Decemberists' earlier works, it's exactly the logical place for them to have gone next. For those fans that think the prog-metal vibe is new, I'd encourage a listen to the 2004 EP The Tain, based off the Celtic epic Tain bo Cuailnge. The good news is that you don't have to be able to pronounce that to enjoy retelling of the story, which essentially describes a bunch of Irishmen fighting over a cow.

Even those more recently converted to the Decemberists' fanbase might see strains of works they know. The band's most recent recording, The Crane Wife, has moments of Hazards-like character throughout, particularly in the three-in-one song cycle "The Island".

Where "The Island" was loosely, maybe only thematically, connected, Hazards has all the internal consistency you'd ever want or need from a rock album. And where The Tain was content to borrow a mythology, albeit an obscure one, Hazards jumps right in an makes up its own. The result is something that seems more like it ought to be on Broadway than a CD.

In other words, we've got ourselves a rock opera.

A rather heated debate seems to be focusing around whether you can enjoy this as individual songs, or whether you need to take it holistically and evaluate the entire album, and I'm coming down on the side of "entire album". The Decemberists encourage it too, it seems, with the exclusive use of gapless playback: for any given song, while the "during" might be the most important part, the "before" and the "after" are critical too. That's not to say you'll get nothing out of listening to one song at a time, for example if one comes up randomly in shuffle mode, but it's a lot mroe enjoyable to press play at the beginning of track 1 and not touch anything until the end an hour later.

There's good reason for that. Yes, plot and characters are part of it, but there are some impressively-crafted themes, foreshadowing, irony, and witticisms that you might miss given only a song or two. And you'll want to appreciate them.

All of this literary business is fine and good, but what about the music? Is the album worth listening to? Is it what we've come to expect from the Decemberists? Mostly yes. There's a much wider variety that you might have gotten on, say, Her Majesty. And at first, it may seem completely off the mark from what we might have expected, but with a closer examination, it's completely understandable. That's exactly the sort of direction that's nice for a band to head in once they've gotten to the point of five full length albums.

My comments on the album, in generally chronological order.

The album starts with an instrumental "Prelude"--think of it like something that would play as the opening credits roll and we see gorgeous, sweeping shots of the Queen's domain and the Annan Water. The real action starts with "The Hazards of Love 1", with the curious subtitle "The Prettiest Whistles Won't Wrestle the Thistles Undone". Literally, that's saying "if you’re caught in a prickly plant, it doesn’t matter how nice a sound you make, it won’t disentangle you." More abstractly, "if you go about a problem the wrong way, it doesn’t matter how hard you try, you won’t solve it." That's actually a major theme of the album, though we hardly recognize it as that at the very beginning.

There's a male voice yelling something between "The Hazards of Love 1" and "A Bower Scene", but I can't figure out what it's saying or who it is. Could it be Margaret's "irascible blackguard of a father"?

One of the album's biggest successes is its use of voicing to distinguish the characters. Margaret's soprano, which we first hear in "Won't Want For Love", the Queen's alto (which we hear later on), and William's tenor are always in about the same range, and though I might have liked a baritone for one of the major male characters, it makes it very easy to distinguish whose point of view we're hearing without having to see the characters.

This successful character distinction isn't just in the voices--there's also some nice leitmotif in the background music. The few seconds of banjo in "The Queen's Approach" foreshadows her driving metal theme in "Repaid" and "The Queen's Rebuke".

"Won't Want For Love" is my favorite track on the album. Given my love of indie bands with soprano girl singers, this probably isn't too shocking.

"The Hazards of Love II" and "Isn't It A Lovely Night?" are both very nice songs, but they're too close together on the album. It makes sense in the narrative why they are where they are, but with every other pair of songs marking a stylistic shift, it seems odd to have the two most down-tempo, emotional songs next to each other.

Two songs that do follow each other are "Isn't It A Lovely Night?" and "The Wanting Comes In Waves", which feature an interesting major/minor inversion. "Waves" is not exactly a reprise of "Lovely Night"--there are a few true reprises later on--but it sounds sort of similar. Speaking of "The Wanting Comes in Waves", being sort of a music theorist, it bothers me that I can't figure out what the meter is in that song. There's a lot of weird rest and upbeat business, that's for sure.

"Repaid", the second half of "The Wanting Comes in Waves", sets up the backstory between William and the Queen, though it's not fully explained until "The Queen's Rebuke" later in the story. That's excellent storytelling, something that you'd see in a real musical or opera. And "Repaid" is an excellent cliffhanger to the intermission; the action picks up an indeterminate amount of time later without having to give the details of what happened in between. It sets up the second half of the album--call it "Act II"--well.

Apart from being a terrible person, the Rake--or more specifically his song--has the most clever foreshadowing and irony in the album. The Rake expects that we'd think he'd be "haunted" by his despicable actions. That's meant figuratively enough, until he actually is haunted by the ghosts of his dead children toward the end. And he "reckons his curse" is having those children, but eventually they'll literally curse him, not just offend him with their presence.

"The Wanting Comes in Waves" is formally called a reprise when it's repeated at the end of the album, but "The Abduction of Margaret" is a also reprise of "A Bower Scene", and "Margaret in Captivity" is a reprise of "The Hazards of Love 1". Both of these juxtapose willing vs. unwilling love. In "A Bower Scene", Margaret "withdraws to the taiga"; in "Abduction", she "falls prey to her abductor". "Margaret in Captivity" is a whole lot worse: "The Hazards of Love 1" described her quite amicable meeting with William, while "Captivity" describes her rape in the Rake's fortress.

"The Queen's Rebuke" is really cool, and I love the narrative/mythological role it plays, but I'm not crazy about the super-distorted guitar solo in the middle of it. One of the things that makes it so important is that it describes a limit to the Queen's power. She has a way around the Annan Water--allowing the Rake to fly over it--but even she can't make the water less "wild".

Where's the climax of this story? I tend to think it's "The Crossing", where I imagine the Rake (helped along by the Queen's fell forest magics) flying over the Annan Water and William arriving just too late to do anything about it. William knows that Margaret is somewhere across the water, but does he actually know she's in the Rake's fortress? I don't really think so; instead, I see Margaret escaping from the fortress and her and William reuniting.

I see the Annan Water as a symbol of both separation and of powerlessness versus fate and nature. Both songs that feature the Annan ("Annan Water" and "The Hazards of Love 4") switch to acoustic and mention lyrics like "rolling only where [the river] takes us". Neither creature of the forest--William or his mother--can best the Annan, though they both find their ways around it. (William's gets him in a bit more trouble.)

How does Margaret escape? With the help of the ghost children, of course. Some people have advanced the theory that the children aren't meant to represent Charlotte, Dawn, and Isaiah, but I don't but that for a second. The first child, a girl, specifically mentions getting fed flowers (ie, foxglove); the second, another girl, mentions drowning; and the third, a boy, mentions getting into a fight. Somehow, they distract the Rake for long enough to get Margaret out. Ghostly powers, or something.

Finally, reunited though they are, William and Margaret must face the music. William is at a lose-lose: he's promised both the Annan Water and his mother his life. And I think for that reason, William was completely fine with making his deal with the Annan. Better dead with his Margaret than alive but completely in his mother's grasp, right?

If "the prettiest whistles" are one of the themes of the story, what's the other? It's a lot more direct: "these hazards of love". For Margaret (toward William), it’s being put in the position of caring for a strange beast-creature, leading to her being outcasted then captured ("The Hazards of Love 1"). For the Queen (toward William), it’s jealousy ("Hazards 2", when she sees how much William loves Margaret). For the Rake (toward his bride), it’s children, who then haunt him ("Hazards 3"). And for William (toward Margaret), it’s the deals he has to make with his mother and the Annan Water, which lead to his death ("Hazards 4").

I don't think this album tops Wincing the Night Away, and I don't know if anything will ever top The Everglow. But I like it a whole lot. And it's one that I can see myself becoming fiercely protective of. There's people out there who don't like it, who give it bad reviews, who call the prog/metal flavor "out of place", who see a rock opera these days as "indulgent".

They're wrong. They're boorish. And they wouldn't know good storytelling if it hit them in the ear. The Hazards of Love is something we've seen a hundred times, but the Decemberists have made it relevant and excellent.


Currently listening: "Futures", Jimmy Eat World