I’ve been ambivalent about a TV show before, so I know how ambivalence feels. This is not ambivalence. This is disdain. I’m probably going to miss the show next week and I don’t care. I may or may not watch it later in the week. Who knows? I hope 24 is better tonight, but I bet it won’t be.

This 24 Tag will take you to ALL of the ‘24′ related content on Unlikelywords.

We’ll get going below the fold at 9PM EST.

10:00 PM
-Why would the adviser come up to the President and say congratulations on the unanimous support, and then say “well, almost unanimous.”
-”There are unsecured nuclear materials in play.” That’s how a President speaks?
-Jack Bauer’s disguise glasses are ridiculous.
-No cell phones in CTU.
-The show was like, “OK, this year we’re going to make Renee look more like Lindsay Lohan.” I’ve been making that joke every year, but… Well, does she have so many freckles?
10:08 PM
-I’m really hoping Starbuck gets busted and CTU makes a no cellphones rule for next year.
-Maybe it’s a trap, though I can think of several million ways she could have gotten him busted without going through all this trouble.
10:12 PM
10:16 PM
10:18 PM
-”Where I end up, I don’t care, but this boy is with the angels.”
10:29 PM
-Why does President Hasan have ridiculous glasses as well?
-Here is 24’s annual depiction of torture as bad and evil. To what end does this serve the purpose of the writer’s of 24.
-Now the cousin will get arrested. Watch.
-They leave guns loaded in the evidence room, loaded with water that is!
-Did we figure out what Starbuck would have access to this stuff? All the schematics for the evidence warehouse?
10:36 PM
Oh, it’s a Toyota ‘we’re sorry’ commercial…
10:40 PM
-Well now, this whole scenario was unexpected…
-AHAHAHAHAAAA
-Just to go over that again. Renee got slapped, then full on punched. Then she grabbed the sausage knife and stabbed Vladimir in the eye, then Jack Bauer came in and she stabbed him in the gut and he looked like he was down and out before the Red headed Russian came in and Jack Bauer threw the sausage knife perfectly into his throat. Then Jack Bauer shot through the wall to kill the other Russian. That’s 2 JBKCs giving Jack Bauer 7 for the season. In reality, the sausage knife would have bounced off the wall 2 feet from the Russian. Just saying.
10:46 PM
10:50 PM
-I like how Hastings is like “HE WAS OUR ONLY LEAD.” Basically because he was Russian and there was another Russian… It wasn’t a very solid lead to begin with.
10:54 PM
-Jack Bauer couldn’t have thought of anything else like both of them hiding? Or going out the back? Or anything? This was the best plan? “Have them start tracking me from the air.”
-”The Russians took him, the ones with the nuclear materials.” That was obvious?
-You knew when Jack Bauer specifically mentioned they could track him from the air that that was going to be a problem, right?
10:59 PM

For you a completely shocking 15 seconds of violence might make up for a terrible season, not me though. Maybe this day will only be 12 hours long instead. I can dream anyway, right?

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Hey I’m sure when Peyton Manning was growing up he always wanted to throw the TD pass that gave the Saints a Super Bowl win. Now he has.

Which lead to the return of the Manning Face. Not seen in these parts for several years.

Thanks to Zack for helping me get out documenting the situation.

Via Agent M Loves Tacos and The Daily What.

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.

By le loup-garou via woosk.

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?

“Nothing’s irreversible.” Orly, Jack?

What did I miss?

First, Eggers on the possibility that Salinger continued to write:

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?

Posted 1/29/2010, 8:57:48pm by willowfog

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.

We’ll get going below the fold at 9PM EST.

9:00 PM
-What do you get for the former 24 live blogger who just doesn’t care about 24 anymore?
-You see? You see what’s happening with Starbuck. This is one of the reasons anti-terrorism employees aren’t allowed to use cell phones at work.
9:05
-Yaaaawwwwwwwnnnnnnnnnnnnn.
-You know, Jono and I keep talking about how this season is just like all of the other seasons. It’s not, though, it’s so MUCH more boring. I thought we were going to have something when they blew up a helicopter in NYC on the first night.
9:11
9:15
-This Russian family has 3 different types of accent. Father has thick accent, one son no accent, 2nd son some type of accent…
-I can’t threaten to quit, you won’t believe me, but this season of 24 sucks.
9:23 PM
9:27 PM
-Oh no, we’re going to back to the President Taylor storyline. Where she is mad at a president who is cracking down on traitors!
-None of this makes any sense. None of it.
9:29 PM
-Oh, now President Hasan is acting loopy.
-Why does Starbuck keep taking out her Bluetooth when she needs to talk on her cell phone? DOES SHE NOT HAVE ANOTHER EAR?
9:31 PM
-I hate Chloe.
-They’re DOING THIS RIGHT IN THE PARKING LOT. AND THERE’S ONLY 3 CARS THERE!!!?!?!?! THIS SHOW IS MAKING ME CRAZY.
-Yeah, see, right there, you see that? Arlo looking at Starbuck breaking tons of laws? That’s why none of this makes any sense…
-Er… Did she need to wash the bug down the drain? Why? I don’t understand.
-I really don’t understand anything that’s happening this year.
9:37 PM
9:41 PM
9:42 PM
-So when the President’s top security guy has a problem… He needs to call the President’s daughter…
-This is something of a surprise. In fact I’m more shocked that I’m shocked.
-The Russian’s dad is cold-blooded. And the Russian mobsters are pretty good if they can just find dudes at any health clinic in the NY metro area…
9:46 PM
-Interestingly, they’re both speaking German with an American accent. But, good on Keifer speaking Deutsch for so long…
9:48 PM
9:53 PM
-The thing is… Renee is sort of making sense. Don’t kill the buyer so that we can make bigger deals. But she never said, ‘don’t kill the buyer so that we can make bigger deals.’ This show is awful.
-Jack Bauer gets a JBKC for knocking that dude down. I think that’s #5, right?
-The father shooting the brother just to prove a point is… well, that’s what happens on 24, huh?
9:59 PM
10:00 PM

Looks like Jack Bauer shoots some people next week, or at least shoots at some people… I really don’t remember the season being this bad at this point last year. What is wrong with me? Why am I watching this? Oh yeah, I’m watching it so you don’t have to.

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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.

Via The Daily What

2009-04-09 – Radiohead – OK Computer (Collector’s Edition)
2009-06-01 – The Who – The Who Sell Out (Deluxe Edition)
2009-06-09 – The Rolling Stones – Tattoo You (Remastered Edition)
2009-08-24 – Woody Guthrie – My Dusty Road
2009-09-08 – The Beatles – The Beatles: Stereo Box Set
2009-11-03 – The Rolling Stones – Get Yer Ya-Yas Out! The Rolling Stones in Concert 40th Anniversary Deluxe Box Set
2010-01-27 – U2 – No Line On The Horizon
2010-01-27 – Various Artists – The Best of Chess Records
2010-01-27 – R.E.M. – Murmur – Deluxe Edition

He started cleaning his goddam fingernails with the end of a match. He was always cleaning his fingernails. It was funny, in a way. His teeth were always mossy-looking, and his ears were always dirty as hell, but he was always cleaning his fingernails. I guess he thought that made him a very neat guy. He took another look at my hat while he was cleaning them. “Up home we wear a hat like that to shoot deer in, for Chrissake,” he said. “That’s a deer shooting hat.”
“Like hell it is.” I took it off and looked at it. I sort of closed one eye, like I was taking aim at it. “This is a people shooting hat,” I said. “I shoot people in this hat.”

Also, I didn’t know Chinese Democracy had a song called Catcher in the Rye, did you?