Here's the Wu-Tang/Beatles Mashup that everyone linked to last week. It got lost in my tabs so I'm just getting to it now. It sounds pretty good and I bet if I liked the Beatles this would have suddenly become my favorite album. The cover art was done by Logan Walters who did the Wu-Tang vs Blue Note album covers from last year. You can listen to the whole album streaming or download it for free and I suggest you do.
Plan B Entertainment, is closing on a deal to option Lewis's next book, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, a chronicle of Wall Street greed and the swollen U.S. housing market. Pitt is also considering starring.
I swear if someone doesn't start making a movie about Liar's Poker soon, I'm going to start typing in all caps. And I'll mean it, too. The fact that it's not a movie yet makes me itchy.
These Japanese hornets have a stinger that's a quarter of an inch long, can fly 25 MPH and travel 60 miles in a day. If they feel like it, 30 of them can take out a hive of 30K European honey bees in 3 hours. The honey bees are pretty much defenseless, except sometimes 100 of them can trap a Japanese hornet in a tight ball that suffocates them. Yeah, these hornets are scary as shit.
Not sure I'm going to recap Lost every week, but I figured I'd give it a shot tonight. There's always so much going on, I imagine this show is one of the harder ones to recap. Oh, if you haven't seen it yet, stop reading now. I'm wondering when questions are going to start being answered at a faster rate than they're being asked...
Some chronological thoughts:
-Now I'm not so sure I'm OK with the show starting off with the plane not having crashed...
-20,000 Leagues Under the Sea!
-I really like the use of the "hear what Kate's hearing inside her head" audio track. Good stuff.
-TWO Jacks!?
-You know that Facebook Doppelganger thing? Well, uh, I think that's going to happen on Lost. Imagine if the Facebook Doppelganger thing was a masterstroke of Lost publicity?
-Hurley sees dead people, remember?
-I TOLD you Hurley sees dead people.
-Imagine if Juliet was dead, Sawyer killed Jack, and realtime Jack was dead for the entire season? That would be weird.
-Well, now. I may have spoken too soon.
-I missed this feeling of watching Lost - the nagging sense that I'm missing all sorts of nuggets.
-But, but, if Kate was actually peeing in the bathroom and there was no one else in there, the marshal would have heard her. Gross, but true. Dumbest marshal ever.
-Wait, that's the flight attendant in the Temple.
-The customs' official assumed Sun spoke English, but why?
-Kate sort of looks like Charlotte in some shots.
So far, I don't like the non-crashers... Their characters haven't been developed and they're boring. Are we supposed to start caring about an all new show, which is effectively what this is. "New on ABC, some peeps fly from Sydney to LA and land with only minor turbulence and some guy almost choked on heroin in the bathroom." Hmm.
Answers
What happened after the bomb? 1 set of people stayed on the Island, but the plane also didn't crash. Jin and Sun are now in the same time zone, by the way. Because the bomb blew the people who stayed on the Island 30 years into the future.
Is John Locke really dead? Apparently, yes.
Who was the guy playing John Locke at the end of last season? The monster.
New Questions
Who are the people in the Temple?
Why was the flight attendant in the Temple?
What's the dust they put on the ground to keep the monster away?
Who/what is the monster?
I'm posting this Dave Eggers remembrance of JD Salinger because it's nice, but mostly because I wanted a place to memorialize the crazy ass 1st comment in case it's deleted for some reason. The world needs to see stuff like this, and I guarantee that every one of you English majors out there has a sneaking suspicion that you had class with the person who wrote this.
Of course, the possibility most intriguing—and fictional-sounding—would have Salinger having continued to write for fifty years, finishing hundreds of stories and a handful of novels, all of which are polished and up to his standards and ready to go, and all of which he imagined would be found and published after his death. That, in fact, he intended all along for these works to be read, but that he just couldn’t bear to send them into the world while he lived.
And now the CRAZY! Excuse the length, I quoted the entire thing because I was terrified it would some day disappear. Maybe crazy isn't the right word... No, it is.
I'm sure this is an inappropriate venue to air these grievances, but after wading through a few 'vexing' remembrances, it looks like I'm going to set my thoughts down in writing, and the foot of this graveyard seems as safe as place as any to plant a sword - no one to kill: everyone’s dead. I may get long-winded, so I'll offer up the point from the get go: the moral of this probably-never-to-be-posted internet comment is do not let middling twits near the obituaries of great men. It is fashionable to dislike Salinger and acceptable to regard him as a demigod. Those who dislike him seem to take offense at his Sincerity (properly capitalized, framed by generous margins), or claim acumen that sees through his characters' adolescent whining and precious fragility. Those people, I find (and I mean this strictly as an insult), generally have not read Proust and do not like Shakespeare. And then there are his hopeless devotees, not of the assassinating sort, but of the I Am Holden Caulfield, lead eastward by the promise of his brilliant figure type (you can provide the hyphens yourself). These people, I find, generally have not read anything - maybe Lolita, which they mispronounce [Loll- as in lollipop, see: Strong Opinions] and never finished. All of this is to say that like select canons before his, Salinger’s work frequently attracts readers ill-equipped to understand it, which, as both Proust and common sense tell us, is symptomatic of genius. Not of talent, mind you, not even of tremendous talent, but of that most rare and dazzling gift afforded only a handful since creation – the ability to render black and white in color, to settle the darkness without reference to history or constellation, to provide not only essential information about the nature of existence but also a reason to exist. Salinger was a genius. That’s not something to be said lightly or proudly, because it is a terrible and humbling thing to behold: genius is the perpetual state of the terrifying sublime, to behold the mountain and feel small, to register the universe and feel unreal, to witness the passing of the mountain and universe, (I told you I’d get long-winded, but I didn’t say I’d get kooky, clerical oversight, apologies) to, in short, understand that you will die, to know that the conditions of this world are hilariously insignificant and to, therefore, reorient yourself to what is nameless and highest and most frighteningly joyous. Man is not the mountain. I don’t care why he retreated into seclusion; I know there’s no convincing the self-righteously blind that the stars are real and furious and gorgeous. No one should hold out for insight: all I expect is some courtesy. You like his dialogue? I like your shoes. What of the soul?
I spent 15 minutes looking for this scene from 'Groundhog Day' so that we could all enjoy Ned Ryerson together! Now I'm gonna have to go watch it again. "Don't drive angry" is another classic scene, amirite?
Last week was a snoozer, hopefully we'll get something better tonight. Actually, I have little faith I'll be at all interested this season. The story arc is set (4 more hours until a showdown at the pier, where disaster will be narrowly averted, at which point a bigger threat will be identified). Remember a couple seasons ago when they set off the nuke in California? That's the last time 24 surprised me, though I suppose the attack on the White House was unexpected. But only because it was so far out of the realm of possibility as to be absurd.
This 24 Tag will take you to ALL of the '24' related content on Unlikelywords.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer recently got a Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin & Hobbes, to answer a couple questions by email on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the comic strip ending. It's believed to be the only Watterson interview since 1989, as Watterson has turned into the J.D. Salinger of the comic world. I've now got a new goal. See below and click through for examples of the wit that made Calvin & Hobbes a favorite.
What are your thoughts about the legacy of your strip?
Well, it's not a subject that keeps me up at night. Readers will always decide if the work is meaningful and relevant to them, and I can live with whatever conclusion they come to. Again, my part in all this largely ended as the ink dried.
...
How soon after the U.S. Postal Service issues the Calvin stamp will you send a letter with one on the envelope?
Immediately. I'm going to get in my horse and buggy and snail-mail a check for my newspaper subscription.
In the Esquire article about Roger Ebert a few weeks back, Ebert mentioned his interview interview with Lee Marvin as one of his favorites, and now they've republished it online.
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