With Me Hanging Round on the Street or Here on the Beach

Part III (Luke's Response)

I'm curious for your thoughts on an idea. It's the classic solo vs. community issue.

Can a man stuck alone on an island live a deep life or does a deep life require others with which to engage and share?

If You Ever Change Your Mind About Leaving, Leaving Me Behind

If you want truly insightful commentary on LOST, you probably need to go here, but if you want stick around these parts, I'll try to share something with you that came up during a conversation with this lady last night.

For those readers of this here blog that don't follow the exploits of Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Desmond, et. al., I should probably begin by telling you what makes LOST so unique in my mind (at least today) is something that is not directly tied to the content of the show.

About two years ago, the producers of LOST sat down with the ABC execs and negotiated the show's timelime. Collectively, they sat down, etched out the show's date of death, and decided that the show would run for six seasons and then shuffle off this mortal coil.

Presumably, the producers pushed that agreement on the execs due to a number of factors, but the one that makes the most sense to me is that the writers and producers of the show needed some sort of borders, some type of deadline for dealing with the ever-increasing number of questions and loose ends that characterized the first three seasons of the show. They needed to know how much time they were working with in order to establish some semblance of direction and purpose in the show's final three seasons.

With that framework in mind, a lot of people that I have talked to are of the opinion that this will enable the writers and producers to weave all of the storylines into a seamless whole that will leave currently confused viewers and followers of the show with a satisfied feeling sometime in May of 2010 when the show wraps up its run. For the most part, I have to agree with this perspective, but there's a nagging part of me that thinks there's going to be some major questions that remain unanswered when the screen goes black in 2010, and strangely enough, I'm quite okay with that.

It seems as though all of the great works of entertainment, whether they are found in film, literature, music, or television, have a common thread of ambiguity, mystery, and uncertainty running through them that provides a much deeper level of enjoyment and satisfaction than could ever be found in shallower fare that yields easy answers and simple solutions. The fact that Cormac McCarthy never actually tells the reader who Anton Chigurh is or where he came from is much more frightening than if McCarthy had devoted a large portion of No Country for Old Men to Chigurh's backstory.

If it's true that we are simultaneously afraid of and fascinated by what we do not truly understand, here's one man's vote that LOST leaves a few loose ends lying around in late May 2010.

Make a Desperate Move Or Else You'll Win

I had a conversation this past weekend with a couple of friends on the merits of 24 versus Lost. I had to admit to both of them that I was not the best advocate on behalf of 24 due to my admitted Lost-homerism, but as I began thinking about truly engrossing seasons of television, a specter loomed in my past.

We've all had those times where we've been sucked in by a guilty pleasure television show whether it is American Idol, MXC, Project Runway, or The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. Okay, maybe that last one is just for the geriatric readers of Running Down a Dream, but you get the idea.

I'm sure this will all be dredged at some point in the distant future when I'm up for a job promotion/election/audition for world dictator for life, but I have to come clean. During my sophomore and junior years at ACU, I was a diehard, I mean diehard, fan of The O.C.

There, I said it. Does that mean I watched the entire series until its bitter end?

No.

Honestly, I have no idea how the series ended, but I can assure you of this: those first two seasons (particularly the first) were riveting television. I'm sure that part of the appeal is the legend that I have constructed in my mind, which may or may not bear an accurate resemblance with reality, but I've almost consciously avoided re-watching the show simply so I can remember it the way it was and not necessarily the way it is.

Perhaps it was the fact that we treated the weekly airings of the show as events where we would go to someone's house off-campus (obviously a big deal if you've lived in the life of an ACU underclassman) to watch the show. I can still remember the echoes of Jeff Buckley's cover of "Hallelujah" drifting away as the image of Seth Cohen's sailing voyage to Tahiti flickered across the screen at the end of Season 1. No one moved for about a minute as we all wished Seth well, and then shamefully remembered that he was no more real than the Texas Rangers' World Series hopes.
You can laugh at all of this and dismiss it as the quasi-sappy ramblings of someone who enjoyed a ridiculous primetime soap opera about the life of the beautiful people in Southern California, but I bet if you took some time, you could remember a television show, or season, that meant something special to you, even if you cannot place your finger on the exact reason why.
Plus, it allowed Alan Dale to continue honing his chops as the "evil father figure" Caleb Nichol, which he has now reprised as Charles Widmore on Lost.

That's almost worth the price of admission itself.

Secretly, I Want You Buried in the Yard

I'm not sure who this Jason Hunter fellow is, and from the level of detail it could be a Lost staffer writing under a pseudonym, but he's basically written the Lost Theory-manifesto to end all Lost Theory manifestos.

Lost: A Theory on Time Travel

Based on the fact that 1996 is one of the key years in Hunter's "Time Loop Theory" related to the island, perhaps he can go back and remind a 12-year old Justin Scott to enjoy the only playoff victory in Texas Rangers team history a bit more.

Oh, he should also remind me that Independence Day was the last good movie Jeff Goldblum ever appeared in. Just to think, my friends, after Jurassic Park there was so much promise. So much promise.

It Makes Me Feel So Fine I Can't Control My Brain

Congratulations to Mr. Andrew Tuegel for correctly naming "Read My Mind" by The Killers as the Friday Song of the Day. Sam's Town may have been a sophomore slump for the Las Vegas-quartet, but "Read My Mind" is everything that I love about the Killers rolled into one tune.

Perhaps some of you out there scoffed at the legal system when the D.C.-based administrative law judge sued the Mom and Pop* Korean dry cleaners for tens of millions after they allegedly lost his pants. Some of you also scratched your heads when a federal inmate sued his fellow federal inmate, the infamous Michael Vick, for allegedly aiding and abetting the subversive activities of Al Qaeda, but a suit filed recently in the U.S. District Court in Honolulu may take the proverbial cake in the realm of legal oddities.

"Asking a Judge to Save the World, and Maybe a Whole Lot More" by Dennis Overbye in today's New York Times.

More fighting in Iraq. Somalia in chaos. People in this country can’t afford their mortgages and in some places now they can’t even afford rice.

None of this nor the rest of the grimness on the front page today will matter a bit, though, if two men pursuing a lawsuit in federal court in Hawaii turn out to be right. They think a giant particle accelerator that will begin smashing protons together outside Geneva this summer might produce a black hole or something else that will spell the end of the Earth — and maybe the universe.

Scientists say that is very unlikely — though they have done some checking just to make sure. The world’s physicists have spent 14 years and $8 billion building the Large Hadron Collider, in which the colliding protons will recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for clues to the nature of mass and new forces and symmetries of nature.

But Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.” Their suit also says CERN has failed to provide an environmental impact statement as required under the National Environmental Policy Act.

This quarter in Natural Resources Protection and Water Law, we've frequently discussed that the National Environmental Policy Act is an effective tool for environmental protection groups that want to counteract forestry operations in southeast Texas, increased cruise ship traffic in Glacier Bay, Alaska, or mining in Montana, but using it as a tool to put the brakes on a super-collider (operated by a European research institute in Geneva no less) that will allegedly create earth consuming black holes?

Me thinks someone has been watching a bit too much Lost.

Current Reading

The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty

*Not to be confused with the Mom and Pop shoe-repair shop that Kramer ruins on Seinfeld after noticing that their wiring is faulty.

There's a Page Back in History

I'm not sure which blessed soul took the time to construct this multi-viewpoint perspective on the crash of Oceanic Flight 815, but the editorial board of Running Down a Dream salutes that person without reservation.

There is Not a River Wide, Not a Mountain High, and Neither Sin nor Evil Could Change What I Feel Inside

If Matthew Fox in a shaggy beard doesn't get you fired up for January 31 and the 4th Season of Lost, well, honestly, I don't know what will.

Perhaps this video might do the trick.

Current Reading

Winning with Integrity: Getting What You're Worth Without Selling Your Soul by Leigh Steinberg

Time In the Forest to Dig Under Rocks

Congratulations to Ms. Heidi Hipp for naming "Gimme Shelter" by The Rolling Stones as Wednesday's Song of the Day. Heidi, thanks for reading all the way from China, although I guess reading this blog in China is not really any more taxing than reading it in Belton. Thanks nonetheless.

What in the name of Stephen Hawking is going on with Lost? In the Season Two finale, the writers dismissed the oft-repeated theory that the castaways were trapped in some sort of purgatory, but just when a new theory dies out a new one is born. Here's the new conspiracy theory that is sweeping the internet: The Island either contains a black hole or something very similar to a black hole.
Last night's episode did nothing to either confirm or deny this rumor, which of course is a Lost hallmark, but many are latching on to this new theory. They point to the fact that one of "The Others" was seen reading Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, which was opened to the page discussing black holes.* Second, the matronly figure who spoke to Desmond in a portion of last night's episode was conveniently named Mrs. Hawking. Also, the bizarre electromagnetic pulse that was released when Desmond turned the key at the end of Season 2 was never explained, but many think that his release of the energy built up in the Hatch has somehow enabled him to see the future, past, and present simultaneously.

There are times when it seems that the show has spun so far out of control that the writers honestly have no idea what is going to happen next. These threads will pop up in one show, entertain us for a time, and then disappear, never to be seen again. It's almost as if the writers are trying to see how far they can possibly stretch the number of storylines in one show before the viewing audience begins to revolt.

I honestly have no idea what is coming on the show, and when I look at some of these Lost websites I am amazed at people's level of devotion to the show. I consider myself to be a fan, but I'm not even close to these people's league. These people are actually finding "Paul is dead" hidden messages in the show. For instance, look at the following quote from a Lost fan who played a scene from last week's episode backwards:


"Listen closely or you might just miss the voice repeating this cryptic message: "Only fools are enslaved by time and space." (Nevermind the creepy screeching noise that sounds suspiciously like a jet engine.)"'


I'm all for following things with zeal. I thoroughly enjoy it when people fervently support the things that they enjoy. This just seems like a little bit much, but it does make me think. If Lost has these kinds of eerie messages, what could we find in something like Sesame Street, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, or Oprah? The possibilities are endless my friends.

*What type of lives do people lead to have enough time to view TV shows in that much detail? It might be the same people that Triumph met in the Star Wars line.