Audium

Usually Friday nights go: nap/exercise, shower, frantic dinner, even more frantic drinking, bus to some bar or another for continued drinking.

And it's fun. And I have no complaints.

This past weekend, though, after a productive week at work spent reading up on SF-based blogs, I decided something more cultured was in order. A friend and I bought tickets to an appropriately mysterious event at an appropriately off-the-map location called Audium. I knew we could expect an experiment in sound, which was to take place in complete darkness, and that's about all she wrote.

Friday night rolled around, and while I was excited for whatever I'd just paid $20 to attend, a huge chunk of my gut was nagging for a return to my more familiar Friday night shenanigans. The vodka! and the Rock Star! (My gut nagged.) Instead, I silenced it with a slice of pizza in the least shady bit of the Tenderloin our trek to Bush and Franklin provided, and by the time we arrived approximately at Audium's intersection, I would have sworn we were lost had our phones not declared otherwise. And then there it was.

We were kind of being tailed by this awkward hipster kid who couldn't seem to match his pace with ours, resulting in his being right on our asses until we stood directly in front of Audium's entryway. As such, what was already a bit of an ominous moment was made even more off-kilter by the fact that we were flustered by this kid's presence, seeing as he was the only other one in sight on the dark street with us, and we didn't know whether he was following us inside or what, and so instead of taking a moment to orient ourselves we were kind of thrust unceremoniously inside, which to me is a big deal in terms of establishing a mood and a pace. If that makes sense. Fuck, I'm crazy.


The lady in the ticket booth immediately inside the doors was dressed in strange vintage garb that was just a little too costume-y to take her as a serious human being. She looked like a background extra from Altered States, and her mannerisms only confirmed this harsh judgement. Beyond her, around a dark corner, waited the lobby. Honestly, I could have just hung out in the lobby for the entire length of the audio performance and been content: it was stark, smelled like 1973, and featured strangely placed art pieces bathed in moody red and blue lighting. About two dozen other people milled around, waiting, and I immediately wanted to know who these people were and what the fuck they were doing at Audium on a Friday night. Some had on suits! Then I thought about the veritable parade of Friday/Saturday night performances that had taken place here since the 1960s, and how many countless hundreds of thousands of people had been in the exact same lobby, and I felt a lot less special. Still, it seemed as though I'd entered one of those pockets of our current reality that might have a portal to another one behind a curtain in the basement somewhere, if you know what I mean. Let's just say the air was charged.


After a while this old guy in an interesting tweed suit emerged from the pitch-black octagonal doorway that led to the sound theater. He gave a little speech that meandered in a distressingly memorized way, like "oh I'm just giving this off-the-cuff speech for the 4,000th time, let's see how subtly I can veer into a totally controlled tangent." Then we followed him through the octagon into a long stretch of pitch-black hallway, which soon bent back on itself into another long hallway, which then opened up onto the theater, which let's just say a picture says a thousand words:


We all sat down facing each other, and within two minutes the old man had entered a control booth and dimmed the lights lower, and lower, and lower - until I couldn't see a damned thing. In complete darkness, the sounds began. After a while my mind started to wander, and I forgot I sat in a room with two dozen strangers who were all probably unwittingly starting straight at me through the dark. I thought it would be an ideal setting for a pervert to routinely show up at, wait until the lights went black, and then sneak his pair of night vision goggles out from a backpack so he could observe everyone who had no idea they were able to be seen. Then I realized the old man in the control booth must have night vision goggles himself, a suspicion he confirmed when he thanked us an hour later for being "such an attentive audience." Ah!

My only complaint is that the sounds themselves were a bit (read: lot) outdated, and it was kind of apparent that this musical composition of raindrops, laughter, creepy piano riffs, and bouncy-ball sound effects that took place all around us (even in the floor!) were the machinations of a drug-addled ex (?) hippie. But he was nice and gave another little speech in the lobby afterward about how he creates his works (this is his 9th iteration), so I'm going to focus instead on what a wild overall experience Audium turned out to be. Definitely recommended, even if you do feel leaving dazed and confused.

Latitude

It's here...

Kind of. I have to admit that when the creative team behind the Jejune Institute self-combusted last year, I didn't give much thought to what Nonchalance's next massive project might be simply because I didn't think there would be one. Sure, I'd take dates on late-night detours down side alleys in the Mission to check out a relic or two from the former experience, though that was about as extreme as I thought my immersion into a fabricated alternate reality was ever going to get again. But then this website arrived, and it's already hooked me:

http://thelatitude.com/

I'm not titling the link because I think its more mysterious as is (as if my preferences even make a difference to you all). Also, I keep bringing this up, but I wish the big button that you're clearly supposed to push at the bottom of the page had "conceive" correctly spelled on it. Perhaps the typo is part of whatever insane game Jeff's cooking up next... but it probably isn't.

Regardless, I've sent an email into the "inquiries" address listed, and will be keeping everyone who reads this informed of any minute update. And by minute, I mean minute - though a little bird tells me nothing will be officially happening until much later in the year.

Commence speculating. Now.

A Storm of Swords

Another landmark reached over this past holiday weekend was my officially cracking open book III of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, A Storm of Swords. I spent all summer re-reading Infinite Jest, and it looks like I'm destined to spend all fall/winter/spring creeping through this epic fantasy tale, which for the most part I have no problem with. My one concern to date is that each book seems to be following a longer page count / smaller font trend, and I'm thinking it might be one of those paradoxical situations where the closer you get to an exact measurement of something, the clearer it becomes that exact measurements don't exist. Make sense?

Some thoughts:

- Everyone in the Middle Ages (especially in made up fantasy worlds) is totally okay with dying. Peasants, knights, whores, chefs, small children, kings... they all run with a sort of eager fervor into the sharp end of a sword whenever one presents itself, which is frequently. I get that unless you were born into royalty, life was almost uniformly terrible. Still, though, it's as if these characters (and thousands of unnamed extras) are lacking some crucial brain function that says, "hey, wait a minute, I'm like 23 years old and I have all this stuff going on in my life... maybe I shouldn't jump in front of this angry knight's battle axe." But no, every last one jumps, and as such the reader is treated to epically gory paragraphs detailing severed limbs, mangey dogs munching on spilled entrails, crows pecking out eyeballs before the fresh corpse hits the ground, etc.


- I still have no idea what a mummer's farce is, but it's fun to refer to literally anything preposterous that happens in real life as one. Example: "If Sean even thinks I'm going to meet up with them at the bar at this hour, he's living a mummer's farce." Or: "Did you see the price of that enchilada? What a mummer's farce!"

- George R.R. Martin employs a ripple effect to fantastic use: he features dozens of main characters, the actions of each affecting everyone else uniformly. I'm almost tempted to think the only sane approach to writing such a HUGE story in this manner is by coming to terms with the fact that you have no fucking idea where each book is going to end, and then just writing in a very cause-and-effect type manner until you get to scoot from your desk, put your hands behind your head in a gesture of exhausted satisfaction, and just hope it all makes sense. Except for each book ends so cohesively I don't know how this could be the case. I'll resist making giant LOST comparisons... for now.

- If I was a character I'd totally still be alive, Tyrion and I would be best friends, and I'd eventually gain back Winterfell from Theon via some sort of sexual conquest. Assuming Theon isn't dead and someone else isn't claiming Winterfell... the end of book II got confusing.

- OR I'd be a total bitch locked up with Sansa in King's Landing, crying and asking where all my friends went (news flash Sansa: they're dead, yo!) and trying to be a good little boy so that blah blah blah. Basically, Sansa sucks but I could totally see myself going her route. Sad, but true. 2012 is also the year for embracing sad truths.


PS: Just Googled Theon Greyjoy to include an image of him, then realized he's kinda ugo. Goddamned HBO. These casting directors need to recognize a potential sex symbol when they read one.

Intrigue

The other night I found myself ordering a Super Taco at El Rancho Grande, the local mexican food joint that's open well past midnight and features a kickass salsa bar. The Super Taco was fantastic, but is not the subject of this post.

On my way out the door, I took a moment to examine the flyers and neighborhood postings taped to the wall. My time with Nonchalance taught me to demonstrate extreme curiosity regarding walls covered in flyers, as they're a super obvious opportunity for an intriguing mystery to begin taking shape. How else these days could anyone looking to screw with people address an audience with complete anonymity? It can't be done any other way, I tell you.

At any rate, I quickly spied a nondescript sheet of paper taped near the bottom of the collage of colorful ads for guitar lessons, used furniture, and Spanish tutors. This piece of paper was plain white, and featured a totally normal typeface that read: "Help Pan with the MAZE. Helen wandered into the MAZE weeks ago. She hasn't been seen since. This MAZE needs our attention. For more information, please contact Pan." The bottom third of the flyer was devoted to tear-off tabs that all sported the slogan "Help find Helen" alongside a web address.


I was floored. Clearly this was the start of some brand-new mystery. Who was Helen? Why was MAZE capitalized every time? What did any of this mean? I grabbed a tab and started walking home, super anxious to look up the website and fall into another grand adventure.

Fuck, I love adventures.

But it turns out I was kind of drunk (hence the Super Taco at 1 am in the first place), and in the course of gesturing wildly to my fellow drunkards on the walk home, the slip of paper with the address escaped my jacket pocket. I realized what had happened after it was too late, and no amount of googling the relevant keywords revealed anything useful. I went to bed a sad man, and awoke having completely forgotten the incident.

On my walk to the coffee shop that next morning, I found myself practicing a routine eyes-to-the-ground maneuver in an effort to avoid contact with a crazy guy yelling at a bus on the street corner, and at the exact moment of looking down I stepped over the scrap I'd dropped the night before! Normally I don't pick anything up off the ground in this city, but such is my ravenous hunger for intrigue that I lunged for it. Triumphant, I marched to Cafe Abir ready to be blown away by whatever lay in wait.

As it turns out, "Pan" referred to the small Pan Theater in the East Bay, the MAZE is the humorous nickname its volunteer workers have given the series of hallways you have to navigate to reach the stage, and Helen is a poor elderly soul who got lost in the hallways on her way to view a performance this past holiday season. The whole effort that necessitated the flyer in the first place is an ongoing grassroots attempt to raise money to demolish the hallways and erect a new theater entrance that minimizes patron hassle/confusion, and that's the extent of it.

I was mildly crushed. I mean, I wanted to trip into a hallucinatory world of sleuthing, and instead got to feel bad for this crone Helen. On the other hand, I had to applaud the Pan Theater people for creating a flyer so nondescript and intriguing that I actually took the time to look something up that ordinarily wouldn't have piqued my interest in the slightest.

This is the future of advertising: subtle trickery. I can't wait until the day that mysterious opportunities left and right end up leading participants to the new flavor of Doritos in the chip aisle at Safeway, or a website for the redesigned 2013 Nissan Xterra. Let's hear it for creative duping!

The Third Space

definition: Any place in the world that is neither your home nor your work. The Third Space is also mostly open to the public, and is generally hurried through by robot citizens so as to avoid close inspection of its intriguing alleyways and trap doors.

When it gee-wowed me: Again, during my stint as a copywriter for Nonchalance. Those people are obsessed with the Third Space, and I have to say I'm now pretty into it as well. Case in point: during Phase One of the Games of Nonchalance, a player finds himself sitting in the reception area of a 16th-floor office space in downtown San Francisco. Suits hurry by. Important-looking people whisper together urgently on their way to the elevator. All the furniture is dreadfully void of character. The player feels like he doesn't belong here. "Is this right?" he thinks. "Don't I need some kind of clearance to be sitting in this reception area of the 16th floor of this random downtown building? Am I going to be arrested?"


Well, no. Turns out a huge portion of the world is open to everyone, all the time, always. Aside from the obvious sidewalks, parks, freeways, alleyways, and public restrooms, you've also got entire skyscrapers, hidden parklets, back stairwells, parking garages, cemeteries, churches, and office building hallways that are all designed to give off the impression of exclusivity, when in fact they're anything but. The best part is that no one can really do a goddamned thing about you being in any of these places.

That security guard at the front door? Yeah, he's totally useless. Go ahead, ignore him.

Anyway, Nonchalance's games and projects are all intended to make players more aware of this great big beautiful public space around them, to have them step out of their regularly scheduled walk to work - even if only five feet in the wrong direction - and examine that one alleyway with that one giant cat spray painted onto that one lonely wall. If you've never noticed it's there before, it's because you're not letting the world thoroughly batter your senses with stimuli. You've let the man tell you that your place is this one stretch of line between Point A and Point B, and god help you if you ever try and shake it up. I mean, holy hell, you'll probably end up murdered or raped if you step out of line. Or worse.


And who knows what you'll find if you follow the alleyway to the lonely cat. Mystery and intrigue lurk behind every corner.

Conclusion: Nonchalance also champions Pervasive Play - a term coined for taking this newly reclaimed Third Space and turning it into one giant adult playground. After all, what happened to the world between ages 9 and 30 that made it so uninteresting? More appropriately: what happened to you? The next wave of totally immersive entertainment would be foolish not to maximize Third Space use. It's free. It's near-limitless in size. And it has so much hidden potential just waiting to be discovered.

Interactive Narrative

Definition: the intersection of storytelling, visual art, and interactivity.

When it gee-wowed me: During my several month stay at Nonchalance headquarters. I would sit every day at the office facing a fantastic map on the wall. This map visualized the entry points, segue ways, and end points of each of the three phases of the Jejune Institute - the interactive narrative game that, in this humble blogger's opinion, is trailblazing in the realm of immersive media.

I could trace, for example, a curling arrow from an icon that read "flyer with phone number" in the bottom left corner of the map, to a "Jejune Institute Orientation Meeting phone message" icon. This same icon was also reachable by two other arrows, which directed players from "graffiti art with phone number" and "Dolores Park radio transmission", respectively. In essence, a willing participant could access the phone message from one of three distinct entry points to the game, and also have no idea that the other two existed. Then, once the phone message was digested and curiosity actually led a participant downtown to the orientation session, literally so many variables for alternate modes of play presented themselves that how and what a person explored within the game's narrative became their own prerogative. Indeed, from the "Orientation" icon, the map on the wall became an intricately linked labyrinth of possible paths of narrative travel, some dead-ending, others leading a player to the very heart of the game.


And I think the dead ends are what made the Jejune Institute so special. Consider, for example, the elaborate backstory constructed for the purely fictional Hip Hop Shoe Repair, itself a now-decrepit, in-story hangout for the fictional characters who used to populate the Mission. When they track it down through various means, players come across a chained-up newsstand on Valencia Street that apparently doubles (in-story) as the Shoe Repair stand. Whether or not you are then supposed to glean anything meaningful from the structure in order to advance your own narrative is a question that took me and my intrepid partner about twenty minutes to determine.

Was the newsstand actually a piece of the puzzle, or was Nonchalance's goal of reclaiming the Third Space (more on that at another time) as an adult playground actually working? Because when it comes right down to it, you really start to appreciate a chained-up newsstand the more you look and realize how beautifully random and absurd its existence is. Here I was seeing an unremarkable little detail of the city in a brand new, devastatingly exciting light, and it made me want to treat every object I passed with the deserved level of reverence.

Though the scrutiny ultimately led nowhere, the experience of the narrative turning literally everything into a potential clue for our discovery was a feeling of real-world excitement no single-medium-bound story could ever replicate. The more you looked, the more you noticed the stuff around the city that really was an element of Nonchalance. You also started seeing everything that wasn't in the same mysterious light. And everyone knows mystery is what makes the world go round.



Conclusion: The more irrelevant detail an interactive narrative provides, the more meaningful and immersive an experience it weaves. I am reminded of Roland Barthes' essay "The Reality Effect," which explores referential and aesthetic restraints in literary narratives. Put very simply, the more meaningfully random the descriptor, the more tangible the experience. Without Hip Hop Shoe Repair, the Jejune Institute still would have kicked ass - it just wouldn't have kicked ass so fully. A newsstand is a newsstand unless it's a clandestine hangout.

Awesome Advertising

I won't be watching because I don't have cable, but something tells me Spike TV's Scream Awards aren't going to get any better than this, anyway:

DHARMA

Crave the Mystery...

With the series finale of LOST looming (God, do I talk about anything else these days?) and my bizarre thesis project finalized to the point where I no longer have any hulking workload to cower behind, I'm finding myself more and more contemplating my need for mystery.

Like, I'm just not a happy camper unless I've something to puzzle over, to form theories about, to think and rethink until I end up twice as confused as when I started. Mystery, for me, is one of those compelling forces (along with sex and spicy food) that keeps me going. After all, who actually likes reaching a novel's final page? Don't we all long to be back at the beginning as soon as we realize the end is in sight? Is any of this normal? Does everyone enjoy not having all the answers? What would any of us do if we got them?


I'm not sure - obviously. What I do know, though, is that this interest is widespread. Thanks to JJ Abrams (above) - whom I believe is Hollywood's single greatest young asset - television and film are beginning to embrace the question mark. LOST, Fringe, Viral Marketing, the Super 8 trailer... all purposefully enigmatic. All utilizing media in innovative, downright revolutionary style. Mystery is cool again, and its 21st-century format is being branded in the guise of whole new concepts - none of that who-shot-who bullshit.

We, my loyal readers, are living and breathing in 2010: a decade in which humankind has reached the point of exhaustion in its successful search for answers, and we're ready to be baffled again. We have Wikipedia. We know why things are melting just as precisely as we know why other things are exploding. We understand the widespread hate that grips the globe, the impending exhaustion of fossil fuels, the convecting of gases in our atmosphere, the nation's reliance on increasingly synthesized food, the fact that Iron Man 2 can rake in over $100 million in 48 hours at the box office while simultaneously several thousands of children died of hunger in Africa - and several dozen more perished in our own country. We've reached the point where we don't want any more blatant answers. What we want are more thoughts that defy both rational explanation and solution. If there's no clear path of action, then we don't really have to do anything about it... right?

Now, that last paragraph was a bit of a bummer, and I'm not implying the mystery provided by corporatized entertainment is any kind of appropriate remedy. What I am saying, though, is that America's sort-of collective consciousness is veritably gasping for air at this point. Those who aren't living in complete denial need something to distract from the painfully obvious truth of our current situation, and that thing is as easy to come by as a single compelling thought that holds no inherent, gloomy conclusion.


I present, then, for your keen perusal, the following fantastic links:

Super Cool Mystery House

Real-life DHARMA Initiative

That last one is courtesy of my good friends in San Francisco, and I plan on checking out The Jejune Institute myself in less than two weeks! I promise a full report following the adventure. Which brings me, of course, to my second favorite topic behind mystery... me!


I've recently decided I'm much too boring a person, and that in order to make my twenties (or, the 7.2 years of them that remain...d-yikes!) truly 'zing' I need a whole new set of mysterious affectations to keep people guessing. After all, who doesn't want to make friends with the weird guy at the party? As it stands, my one idea (a perplexing little slogan) turned out to also be the name of a Northwest hipster/rapper (Mad Rad), so I'm back at square one. Feel free to lob suggestions! I should warn you, though, that I draw the line at facial hair, cryptic tattoos, voluntary amputations, and any organized religion, new or otherwise.

I can only hope tomorrow's horoscope will promise something along the lines of a treasure map soon making its way into my grubby little hands. Until then... Iron Man 2, anyone?

I kid.

"Happily Ever After"

Thank God (read: vast, incomprehensible algorithm of sorts) for this latest episode of LOST. As much as I'm loving season 6 (because how could I not?), something had to happen to usher in the series' conclusion. Something big. Something game-changing. And when an episode's dually written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse (LOST's show runners) and directed by Jack Bender, you know it's not gonna disappoint.


The big beef LOST naysayers have had with this current season is its seemingly irrelevant sideways timeline. And I kept telling these people the same thing: obviously with a show this precise in its execution, it's GOING to have some relevance. What was witnessed in "Happily Ever After" is not only proof of that relevance, but proof that the sideways reality is getting f**king exciting!


I've had a good long while (six years, now) to scheme and plot an appropriate ending for what is arguably network cable's most daring endeavor (Twin Peaks gives LOST a run for its money in the "what the hell?!" department), and the thing is, my brain's incapable of coming up with something truly kickass. I just can't fathom it, which is why I (and, I'm assuming, so many others) was so concerned the writers get it right. They've got a LOT riding on these final six episodes, and the implications of island world and alternate world colliding (or bleeding together, or willingly pairing up, or whatever) in my opinion really do constitute the ingredients for a decisive, thrilling end.

There's also Jacob and the Man in Black to consider, though, and how their argument fits into DHARMA/electromagnetic activity/parallel realities is going to need some explanation. But that's what's going to make these last ones fun. Forward ho!

I'm running this post short because I'm being whisked away to Portland in about fifteen minutes... may update in a few days.

"Everywhere You'll Find Pieces / Of Cupid and Comet"

Everything's just a bit chaotic right now, so I thought I'd title this post with a song lyric from one of Weird Al's finest - the North Pole's been bombed by Santa, you know.

But where was I? Oh, yes, chaos: literally mentioned less than a sentence before I asked where I was. Apologies all around. Turns out AJ Evert has found his breaking point, and it has sprung from where the following collided: 20 credits, a thesis to write (let's hear it for eight pages into draft two!), and no clear idea of what's happening after my life runs head-long off the cliff that's designated (symbolically, for now) by July 22, 2010. Don't even tell me it's almost less than five months from now. I said don't!

Currently, though, I've got lots of happy little things going on. Like perpetual rain. And all my visitors come... and gone. And the new neighbor who enacts intense, eerily-soundtracked, Lynchian confrontations with strange women in the red-carpeted stairwell of my new apartment building - all visible through the peephole in my front door! And an Astronomy midterm on Tuesday (for which my mental roll-call of awful goings-on honestly JUST reminded me about), which should be a cakewalk since I've managed to wake up for class approximately three times so far this term. And sober Saturdays. I've finally had to resort to sober Saturdays to start getting crap done.

And that makes me a Sad Panda.


But on the other hand we've got the new season of LOST, which impressed me to no end by not making me choose which path I'd rather the creative heads have taken - reboot or no? - by giving us viewers both options at once! Now that it's happening, I can't see it having gone down any other way. Seriously, is there anything more delightful than parallel dimensions? Other than fudge? And Weird Al? (I kid. But only kind-of.) My only concern at this point is that I feel like season six is playing out like any other season - albeit a much more exciting one. I mean, we're only 14 episodes from The End. Shouldn't these characters be putting meaning behind every last step as they march through the jungle? Shouldn't their faces look more pensive, more this-is-it-y? Shouldn't the score pulse its way melodramatically through each and every scene? Yes yes yes! So why isn't it happening yet? I want me some climax!

In other news, Season three of Strangers With Candy is (so far) more gut-splitting than seasons one and two combined, so at least one show knows how to up the ante while the ante still needs upping. Or something like that.

And I wonder why I can't write my thesis?

Some Thoughts on LOST...

Before we have our collective mind-grapes blown next Tuesday. LOST has been with me - and reshaping daily my perceptions of the extant universe, creative storytelling, symbolism, time travel, effective characterization, and, of course, the need in our lives for mystery - since my sophomore year of high school, which was, like, a long time ago.

Consider: My cousin Eilean freshly married. It's a chilly night in early-to-mid November, 2004, and she's being a good sport about babysitting Sean and I while my parents are someplace vaguely exotic (Mexico? Las Vegas? Florida? Any which way, they came back with Kahlua). I don't really appreciate The West Wing, which is her favorite show, so I'm hesitant to try this new "mystery-drama thing that's really intriguing." Yeah, right, Eilean. But she turns it on anyway, probably out of a desire to keep me shut up between commercial breaks - I was a gabber then. Turns out what we were watching was the broadcast debut of episode 1.11 (this is how episodes are numbered, as I would come to discover), "All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues." Well, Charlie was hung by a madman who hadn't been on the plane. And then at the end Boone and Locke unearthed a piece of metal... and began digging. If I had known how much longer I'd have to keep watching for that piece of metal to make any sense, I probably would have stopped. But I didn't, so I kept going. Even after Eilean gave up somewhere around Season 2...


Consider: Me trying to hook Curtis on the show. We camped out in Wal-Mart's (yeah, it still had a hyphen back then) DVD section until midnight, when an annoyingly skinny girl with dyed red hair wheeled in a dolly of new-release boxes. "Waiting for something?" she asked. I nodded, then said "LOST." I was very, very embarrassed to not only be at Wal-Mart, but camped out in its DVD section at midnight on a school night. We watched episode after episode until neither of us could keep our eyes open. "I should get some sleep," I said. "I've got to orient Freshmen EARLY tomorrow morning." Literally five minutes later, before I'd even put my head on a makeshift pillow, Sean entered the room. "AJ. Get up. We have to go to school." True story.


Consider: Losing faith during my freshman year in college under the false belief that season 3 was going nowhere. I stand before you now fully willing to admit that I was dead wrong, and I find solace only in the fact that Jack Shepherd is also a symbol for lost faith. Plus, now he lives in Bend.


Consider: How the hell this thing's going to end! I don't predict any outcome in which I'm even the slightest bit disappointed. I mean, I'm now a straight-up believer in the brilliance of LOST. It's shown me time and again that the crazier shit gets, the more it knows what it's doing. Already I feel a little hole in my heart where LOST belongs, because although I'm SO STOKED for a brand new season I'm also sad that this is, in fact, the beginning of the end. It's like Harry Potter 7 all over again, and I can't decide which has been a more formative experience.

Is it a sign of extreme nerdiness that my friends and I actually debate that very topic? And that some of them instead opt for Lord of the Rings?

This Might be the Post...

... That jumps the shark for a lot (read: like, two) of you, but I'm prepared.

I admire Moby's ambient music almost as much as David Lynch's directing capabilities, so even if this Moby song has no words and is kinda creepy - and even if David Lynch's accompanying cartoon illustrations make it only that much more disconcerting - I'm down to watch it a few times. It's like that one time Gucci paid Lynch millions of dollars to create a minute-long ad for their perfume... and then I sat on youtube clicking "repeat" all night.

At any rate, here you go:

Oh, wait, the video's embedding has been removed... by request. Fuck you, Moby! (I don't believe David Lynch would ever sabotage his work like this... the guy just wants it seen so bad.) Anyway, the video in question is "Shot in the Back of the Head." Youtube it yourself.

As a consolation prize, here's Lynch's Gucci ad, instead.

But wait! There's a catch (I really should look these things up ahead of time before beginning to post): Seems the audio has been removed from all online versions due to a copyright infringement, so if you want the full effect you're gonna have to blast Blondie's "Heart of Glass" from another source while watching it. If you've got the time and the ninety-nine cents for iTunes, it's worth it...


Aaand as it turns out the song doesn't match the video... must've been edited to fit. What a total waste on my part. Sorry...