Thoughts on Lost Finale Without Having Discussed it With Anyone

Please feel free to post on top of this post as soon as you want to. I haven't really put too much thought into this. I liked the finale. I'll say that first because immediately after thinking that I liked it, these thoughts came into my mind.

You know, I never thought to take the numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42 and put them together for no reason. That string of numbers meant absolutely nothing to me until you guys spent like two seasons going on about how they were all important. If they really weren't all that important, then you shouldn't have brought it up in the first place.

Now, they did answer this question, albeit not actually on the show. Something about the numbers being the roots of the Valenzetti equation, which describes the end of humanity, and the purpose of the Dharma Initiative being to change the roots of that equation. They were unsuccessful, by the way. The whole plot line with the Dharma Initiative was essentially dealt with online and never really on the show. I have to do like extra credit work in order to understand the story you're trying to tell me.

I feel like they got in over their heads with the whole island thing. After the first episode we knew that there was an island that had a bunch of mysterious properties. After the 120-something episode run of the show we don't know all that much more about it. Something to do with electromagnetism relating to a light. I don't know how or why it's there. And not for nothing, but there wasn't a smoke monster trying to escape the island until Jacob created it. Why would it have been bad if Jacob's brother had left the island? In particular before he turned into the smoke dude. And it's all "How do you know that when you hook up that wheel and then run the water into the light that it's going to work?" and then the answer is, "Because I'm special, mother." So if Jack didn't put the cork back in, the island would have definitely been destroyed, but would that also have meant that the whole world would be destroyed? I didn't get that sense from the MIB when he talked about leaving. Although if it wouldn't have destroyed the world, then they should have just left it out.

Given that they never really told us anything about the island, what would have made for a really interesting show would have been to explore the roots of the Dharma Initiative, the Valenzetti equation, how they found the island in the first place, the efforts to change the factors, their ultimate failure, and the consequences of that failure. That story in conjunction with the Others already being there and serving some alternate and opposing function on the island were the most interesting story lines.

If my job was to protect the fate of the world and then I was hiring my replacement, I would be sure to explain the whole job to him. There's not really room for on the job training.

I figured it out, I think. Jacob had Asperger's syndrome. If that motherfucker had any social skills whatsoever, all of this would have been avoided. All he needed to do was explain himself clearly to one person at one point. Richard, maybe. Or Ben. Widmore. Jack.

So going into the light would be worse than death, and turned Jacob's brother into the smoke dude, but Jack just died. Desmond was special, fine, but Jack?

Ben, really? Out like a lamb.

So is Claire not evil? And who the fuck was that Japanese dude talking about evil people? Sayid wasn't all that evil at the end of the day, either. Again, why even bring that up? Looking back, when Ben said to Michael that the Others were the good guys, I guess he was right, but they clearly didn't know what they were doing.

I feel like the flash sideways was really successful. The dead thing was interesting. If it had been an alternate timeline after the bomb blowing up, I think that would have been interesting, too. In fact, there would probably more material to explore in that scenario, but given the show's capacity for doing too little with too big a story, I'm happy with this one. It's not like Michael was the only one who killed some people. Why doesn't he get to go to the party? It's because he's black, probably.

I feel like when they first conceived of the show they wanted the island to be purgatory and everyone would get their own personal reckoning at some point. But when all the fans guessed that the island was purgatory and they were like, "No, that's not it," then they had to come up with a new plan. But the in the end they came back to that with the flash sideways.

I don't need you to spoonfeed me, but if you're gonna open this can of worms, at least give me a lid so I can contain them once I get them back together. You raised all these questions, not me. What are you, Socrates now? At the moment, from my perspective, the island serves absolutely no function. Everything would be much simpler if it just wasn't there, Occam's razor style. I could be wrong, but I don't get the feeling that all the pieces of the puzzle are on the table. After a bit of perspective you realize that The Sopranos did give you what you were looking for, you just didn't realize it. When you take a step back from it, Pulp Fiction turns from a phrenetic mess into a fascinating tableau. I don't get that from Lost. Again, I don't have that perspective, but I don't see where the explanations are coming from. They seemed to go out of their way to not explain things.

I do think this is one of the better shows on television in the last little while, but that, I think, comes with a certain responsibility to live up to that. At the end of the day the arc of the show for me was this: Season 1, awesome; Season 2, good; Season 3 and 4, awful; Season 5, really good; Season 6, averaged to good, but with a huge standard deviation ranging from bad to amazing; Finale, about what I expected. I'll have more to say about this, most likely.

I Discovered Manny

I can't help myself. I know it's wrong, but there's something I really love about Manny Ramirez. I know he quit on the Red Sox. I know he likes to beat up 65 year old dudes. It's just that...well, I can't explain it. I think what I like most about him is that he genuinely doesn't give a fuck. About anything, it seems. I imagine that Manny Ramirez is a lot like Forrest Gump or a caveman or some such thing. At any given point in his head he's just thinking things like, "See ball. Hit ball." or "Food good. Eat food." or "Long hair cool. Grow hair long." Plus, I still contend that he made the greatest play in the history of baseball.

Anyway, this has been the week of Manny for two reasons. First was the ongoing saga of his re-donk-ulous contract negotiations with the Dodgers where they just went around in a big circle and the news media reported all of it for some reason. Second is that a book about his life has just recently been released.

All this reminds me of a story. The story is less about Manny than about a guy I work with, but it's pretty good. You've got to understand a little about this guy for the story to make sense. He's a Jewish conservative from Ohio. Translation, he's a walking paradox, and he's paranoid about everything. He's the type of guy who talks about conspiracy theories with genuine seriousness. He's also really into sports and betting on sports. A couple years ago he handicapped the Kentucky Derby to the first four places and won thousands of dollars. Anyway, once you get this guy started, he doesn't stop. If you bring up a topic that he's interested in, then the conversation is over and you have to listen to his whole conspiracy theory about Barack Obama or Jews from Brooklyn or the state of education.

So one day he was in the room when I was talking with someone else about baseball. Somehow Manny came up and that got him started. Here's his story: "I used to work at Goerge Washington High School (in Washington Heights. Manny's alma mater). And I really liked baseball, so I used to go to a lot of their games. One game, I was behind the backstop and I could see all the catcher's signs. So I started yelling out what pitch was coming. I'd go 'fastball' or 'curveball' on every pitch. After the game some people from the other team started chasing me and were going to beat me up. I ran all over and somehow got away from them (I forget the details here). Another time there was a playoff game and the other team was really good, so they had some scouts there watching the game. I started talking to a couple of them and they said they were there to see guys from the other team. Eventually I started talking to the scout from the Cleveland Indians and I said to him, 'You know we have this guy on our team, Manny Ramirez, who's pretty good. I think you should take a look at him.' He had never even heard of Manny before, but wouldn't you know a few months later he gets drafted by the Indians. And the guy had never even heard of him."

So there it is. This guy discovered Manny Ramirez. This guy is responsible for his success. Never mind the fact that Manny was an all-city player for 3 years and the player of the year in his senior year. Oh yeah, did I mention that he hit .615 in his senior year and had 14 home runs in a protracted high school season? Nope, it was all this guy.

Sanjay Gupta can smoke my cock

So CNN’s Sanjay Gupta is gonna be our new surgeon general, eh? Color me unimpressed. (A tannish/beigeish shade, sort of a cross between dry sand and sand that was wet like half an hour ago but is pretty much dry now. So, basically sand-colored, I guess.)

The Gupe (as I'll be calling him)? Not a big pot fan. And his reasoning is even weaker than your mom's. Quoth the Gupe:

"[M]arijuana isn't really very good for you."

[Insert blindingly obvious well-neither-are-alcohol-or-cigarettes-or-a-thousand-other-things-and-they're-not-illegal spiel.]

He then begins quite an impressive list of reasons why, in fact, marijuana is good for people:

"True, there are health benefits for some patients. Several recent studies, including a new one from the Scripps Research Institute, show that THC, the chemical in marijuana responsible for the high, can help slow the progress of Alzheimer's disease. (In fact, it seems to block the formation of disease-causing plaques better than several mainstream drugs.) Other studies have shown THC to be a very effective antinausea treatment for people--cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, for example--for whom conventional medications aren't working. And medical cannabis has shown promise relieving pain in patients with multiple sclerosis and reducing intraocular pressure in glaucoma patients."

That's a fairly convincing series of arguments for legalizing pot, at the very least for medical purposes, right? Right? No?

"But I suspect that most of the people eager to vote yes on the new ballot measures aren't suffering from glaucoma, Alzheimer's or chemo-induced nausea. Many of them just want to get stoned legally."

:-( 

That's right, fuck all those goddamn sick people. We can't be turnin' all of society into hippies and wastoids, now can we.

"Why do I care? As Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, puts it, 'Numerous deleterious health consequences are associated with [marijuana's] short- and long-term use, including the possibility of becoming addicted.'"

Nora Volkow is this luscious beauty, for the record:

KILL IT WITH FIRE!

So yeah, take what "she" says with a grain of salt.

"What are other health consequences? Frequent marijuana use can seriously affect your short-term memory. It can impair your cognitive ability (why do you think people call it dope? [Ed. note: Duh, because it’s doooooooooope!]) and lead to long-lasting depression or anxiety."

Or it could, you know, not. It could just feel awesome while I watch my new Pineapple Express DVD sitting on my couch not side-swiping children as I rush back home from happy hour. Maybe the consequence is that it enhances my creativity, so I sit down and write out 5,000-word blog posts on why tigers are way bad-asser than lions, but a liger is like the One Ring in Lord of the Rings – it rules them all. Number four on my Sweetest Big Cats list would have to be the black panther. ‘Cause, man, you can’t like see it when it’s dark.