Today's screencap(s) of last night's "Lost"

In which there is awesome ping-ponging:

And Lando Calrissian:

Today's screencap(s) of last night's "Lost"

In which Locke is an asshole:

But I cannot blame him because his father is worse:

"THE MAN FROM TALLAHASSEE?" THIS IS SOME CREEPY SHIT.

Today's screencap of last night's "Lost"

In which we enjoy Kate's biceps and shoulders as she straddles a tree:

Meanwhile, what the hell is going on with Locke? Is he an Other? Can it possibly be? I can't wait until next week's Locke-centric foray....

My shoulder is still a little Wii-k

I was not trying to have this blog become all-"Lost," all the time. But it appears that's precisely what's going on. So I shall make an honest attempt to say something non-"Lost"-related here. Whether it is interesting or timely or funny or whatever is another matter altogether.

So....

Husband recently hunted down and purchased a Nintendo Wii, like a voracious lion pouncing on an unsuspecting gazelle at a watering hole. I made a whole lot of fun of him, because, man alive, he is 32 and this device turned him into an obsessed, whimpering mass of jelly.

Then I played with the damn thing, and I had to shut the hell up.

I spent at least three solid hours alternating between bowling, golf and the Wii fitness test wherein you can practice your tennis by aiming at a moving target. By the time I was finished, my right shoulder was weak and the sun had gone down and the dog was hungry and nothing I had planned to do had gotten done.

Ignoring the Wii's own advice to take a break for a second, there, in my dimly-lit living room (who has time to turn on the lights?!), I decided that my Mii and Husband's Mii were not enough. They needed a third Mii to play with. And so I created Tyrone. He wears cool glasses.

The whole thing had me feeling a little like God.

Way to go, Nintendo. The Sony Playstation, in all its incarnations, never left me feeling like a deity.

PS. Can't wait for the Tiger Woods golf game. It is going to be so. Good.

Today's screencap(s) of last night's "Lost"

In which we learn of Chef Sayid's knife skills:

And also there is a pretty kitty:

Today's screencap of last Wednesday's "Lost"

In which it took me almost a week to post this, because the episode was just that boring (except for beautiful Vincent, that good boy):


(I also did not appreciate the way the episode ended with Kate's dramatic "revelation" that Other Alex might be/is Rousseau's daughter. How is this relevatory? Were we supposed to be shocked by this? Haven't we known this for at least a season and a half? I'm just saying.)

Today's screencap of last night's "Lost"

In which Bai Ling has awesome striped hair:

(Thanks to lost-media.com for all the awesome screencaps.)

Today's screencap of last night's "Lost"

In which we confirm that each and every episode should be about Desmond:

Today's screencap(s) of last night's "Lost"

In which we return to disgusting spinal surgery after a brutal three-month hiatus...

...only to find ourselves amidst a rave:

Today's screencap of last night's "Lost"

Enjoy it, because you won't know if Kate runs until February 7, 2007:

Today's screencap of last night's "Lost"

In which Juliet has her own "Subterranean Homesick Blues" / "Mediate" moment:

Please, Locke, hang out in the sweat lodge more often

Because then maybe Lost viewers will get to see Boone's ghost again.

I realize the following observation is neither groundbreaking nor relevatory, but: Ian Somerhalder's eyes are a gorgeous sea of blue in which I would like to swim.

Putting aside last night's brilliant episode's more thought-provoking points, I now prefer to dwell on the purely superficial. Boone was never anything less than pulchritudinous, but he looks better now than he ever did when he was alive and hatch-hunting with Locke.

I am not generally in the habit of posting photos of hot men and then cooing at them like an adolescent, seeing as how I am married and do not wish to upset the unalterable reality that husband is indeed the most attractive man who has ever walked this earth. But really, that can't be his real eye color, can it? J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof clearly are fucking with us, right? Colored contacts? Special effects employed in the service of Locke's fantabulous hallucinogenic trip? Screw all the questions about Benjamin Linus and the Dharma Initiative: I demand an explanation for the cerulean windows to Boone's soul!

Validation

Though my jaw was still scraping the floor following the Lost season finale last week, I was able to post a brief theory on the thrilling notion that love and Mr. Desmond David Hume were the true center of the vast Lost world.

And, lo, someone at Entertainment Weekly seems to agree with me:

Call it corny, but I'm nutty for the idea. And I think I'm right. With its season finale, Lost revealed its true identity: It's actually a gloriously old-fashioned, ridiculously idealistic romantic epic. But the Romeo and Juliet of this love story aren't Jack and Kate (but I did love their non-verbal Han/Leia ''I love you''/''I know'' nod-and-blink exchange — a
fittingly coy way to end the show's bad-guy-triumphant Empire Strikes Back season), or Charlie and Claire (that kiss — an abrupt turnabout in their relationship, don't you think?), or Jin and Sun (even though their relationship is Lost's main source of human grounding).

No: The star-crossed lovers of Lost are Desmond and Penelope Widmore, the English heiress whose powerful and possibly Dharma Initiative-connected father Arthur Widmore...seems determined to make sure that his daughter and the lovelorn hatchman will never, ever be together.

I don't know which is more exciting: that someone whose job it is to theorize about Lost has developed a similar view on the subject or that, for the sake of the story's narrative arc (not my own ego), my Desmond-centric theory might actually be true. Like Fox Mulder, I want to believe. I want it to be true that the love between Desmond and Penelope is the show's reason for being.

So if such a theory has enough merit to appear within the hallowed pages of EW, well, hell, my little romantic heart is aflutter.

See you in another life, brother

I am absolutely in love with the fact that Lost seems to have made Desmond the prime mover within the show's fantastically woven web of existential, six-degrees-of-separation drama. It is an utter stroke of genius that a character who didn't even appear until the series' second season -- and only had a part in a few episodes, at that -- has been revealed as the potential cause of both the fall and redemption of our flawed band of protagonists. (That is, if Desmond's failed button-pushing indeed caused flight 815 to crash, and if his turning the electromagnetic key indeed sent a signal to the outside world that will save them all.)

And how brilliant and simple the whole of Desmond's motivation: love. Astounding. Just when you think Lost is trapped under the weight of the elaborate Dharma Initiative mythology and the us vs. them conflict and the mysterious sicknesses/vaccines/smoke monsters -- boom: L O V E. It really is about human relationships after all.

(My awe is aided by the indisputable truth that clean-cut, post-prison, pre-race-around-the-world Desmond is smokin'. I just think it needs to be said.)

It is going to be a long, painful summer.

Looks like Michelle Rodriguez and Cynthia Watros will have a lot of time on their hands to collect DUIs

Lost. Wow.

I cannot recall the last television show I watched where so much jaw-dropping action happened during each and every episode. The X-Files wasn't even this good.

And that Hanso Foundation ad? More references to Bad Twin? Yes, Lost creators, please keep allowing this fictional world to encroach on our own. More evidence, if you ask me, that all the action in this series is unreal -- that human psychic activity is what's moving the plot forward, not polar bears and smoke monsters and menacing islanders.

Is Claire Jack's half-sister, the one Jack's dad was searching for in Sydney? [yes] Is Michael the Others' leader, the one Henry Gale describes as great but not merciful? [don't know, but he is looking rather messianic in the clips for next week] Is the actor who plays Henry Gale the single creepiest human on the planet? [absolutely] Did Michael's brief remorseful look following his shooting Libby signal that she is, indeed, an Other, and that he had made a mistake? [friggin' yes] Do Josh Holloway's abs ripple like a pebble dropped into a flat calm? [so much so it almost makes me uncomfortable]

All I can say is, thank goodness for May sweeps. And curses for the barren, lonely, Lostless summer to follow. Here's hoping Fox brings back Gordon Ramsay for another edition of Hell's Kitchen to attempt to fill the void.

Could it be that it's some sort of mass hallucination?

I am all caught up on my TiVOed episodes of Lost, and I'm thinking that -- after last night's Hurley-centric adventure involving creepy hallucinations of Harry Goldenblatt -- the whole premise might be some kind of collective drug-induced psychosis among the patients at Santa Rosa. Hurley's there. Libby's there. The taking of their daily meds is highlighted in a way that a minor, meaningless detail would not be otherwise. Leonard's numbers are endlessly echoing around the lounge.

Perhaps other characters are institutionalized, too. It's not like life has been trauma-free for any of them: Jack has father issues and a messiah complex. Kate is responsible for the death of her childhood love, plus she killed her fake-real dad. Locke has extreme daddy and abandonment issues, not to mention a serious inferiority complex and fleeting paralysis. Ana Lucia lost her unborn child and murdered to avenge that loss. Sayid saw his relatives gassed, lost the love of his life and was forced to do all manner of unkind things. Sawyer's parents were killed in front of him, turning him into a predatory loner. Charlie has a serious drug habit, combined with the humiliation of being a member of Driveshaft. Jin is a reluctant gangster. Michael had his son taken from him and then got hit by a car. Really, any of these things might be enough to put these people over the edge. And I'm willing to bet that those characters' backstories that we don't yet know are disastrous as well. You know Bernard once accidentally killed someone with a dental drill.

I generally believe that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Rather than surviving a horrific plane crash and landing on a mysterious island with smoke monsters, hatches and Dharma Initiative-branded ranch dressing and sharks, I find it much more likely that these characters -- whose stories and lives are so interconnected that even Kevin Bacon is jealous -- are occupying the same institutional space, taking similar mind-altering medications and having related hallucinations within their own fragile psyches. They're working into each other's dreams/nightmares, with the island as their gigantic therapist's couch. Which explains why each of their personal demons just happens to be there: Kate's horse, Jack's dad, Hurley's food, Charlie's Virgin Mary heroine stash, the remains of Eko's brother, Sun's pregnancy test.

Of course this theory is just that, and will evolve as May sweeps approaches. But for now, there's no way this story is "real."

Desire to blog remains strong despite recent shift in priorities

So it's been awhile since I've posted on this here blog, and I hear that my reader (singular) has grown tired of clicking on his Sympathetic Weather bookmark only to see the same ol' languishing page. I've been rather mercurial over the past month(s), what with a family emergency that has yet to sink in (bad) and the purchase of and move into our first home (good). February and March were at once tragic and exhilarating, despairing and hopeful. It's hard to blog at such times, let alone care about The Bachelor: Paris and Best Week Ever and Obi-Wan Kenobi and all the other crap to which the 'Weather is dedicated.

But it all just goes on, and so must I. The dot-com don't stop for nobody. However, I don't really have anything to say at the moment:

1. I am five episodes behind on Lost and Desperate Housewives (thank God for TiVo).
2. I have not watched The Soup in ages.
3. I have no idea what Martha Stewart is making that I should be purchasing, beyond Blueprint (my trial issue -- yay! -- should be in the mail).
4. I have not purchased tickets to the INXS show in Cleveland in May, even though I was willing to drag husband to Detroit to see them in February.
5. I haven't watched Rachael Ray open a store-bought pound cake and call it a "recipe" since at least '05.

Instead, given my status as a new homeowner, I'm now focused on a completely different set of things:

1. Oak leaves do not decay in any sort of timely manner, and must be raked in spring if the prior owner failed to do so last fall.
2. 10%-off Lowe's coupons do not apply to Fisher & Paykel or John Deere products.
3. In many cases, lamp shades are more expensive than they should be -- worse even than king-size bed sheets.
4. Old English Scratch Filler is a miraculous product.
5. We have two water meters: one to measure indoor use, one for outdoor. Sewer usage is based on the indoor meter reading.
6. Even after I remove the dead battery, the smoke detectors in the house keep chirping. Just like what happened to Phoebe that one time on Friends.
7. Pedestal sinks are somewhat impractical.

I need to find a way to reconcile these varied interests and foci so that this blog remains fascinating and not weighed down by tedious tales of painting shutters or re-keying dead bolts. Perhaps there will soon be an episode of Lost where Hurley begs Sawyer for a bottle of Milsek from his stash, because Locke asked Hurley to polish the stainless steel appliances in the Swan Station. But Sawyer won't relinquish it unless Hurley promises to spackle, tape and otherwise prep his tent for a new paint job. (Sawyer wants to create interest by painting an accent wall in his tent, making a focal point that draws the eye when you enter the space.) Hurley obliges, and is inspired to reupholster his salvaged airplane seat with cotton matelasse that he found in Ethan Rom's craft room in Caduceus.

Someone please alert J.J. Abrams and HGTV. If you thought Bad Twin was a brilliant if manipulative marketing ploy, just wait until the island-themed home makeover spin-off.

Ah, it's good to be back.