Well, I Don't Want To Contradict Myself

• Random Pop Culture:
• As always, my Lost thoughts below.
• From Chloe's "I'm a stay-at-home mom" to great acting by Cherry Jones, in going from panicky to in control and back to panicky, to the great fight between the First Gentleman and his secret service agent and so on and so on. It's official: 24 is back.
• Tonight's American Idol spent the first seven minutes dealing with the Osmond kid. A freaking Osmond kid on a show about undiscovered talent. And I'm not sure that Hugh Laurie gets seven minutes of consecutive face time on his own show. With one night left of the auditions, so far my favorites (and I'll point out that I was on Archuleta from the beginning last year) are the widowed music teacher, the one chick that Simon loved tonight (Megan?), and the last chick that Simon loved tonight (Rose). I'm actually getting pumped for Hollywood week.
• Sunday's Flight of the Conchords has to have been one of the two or three funniest episodes in the show's run. Usually, it's so dry that you just chuckle every so often. During this one, I was laughing out loud non-stop the entire episode.
• Keep forgetting to mention that I despise the Volkswagen ad where the guy says at the end that he thinks they were in a car commercial. So freaking jive. It's why I won't do a "best of" post or give myself an award at the end of the year (re-running an essay doesn't count). Once something starts referencing itself for entertainment, you're on a one-way, er, street to Jump Street. Shark Jump Street.
• Little Known Fact: 21 Shark Jump Street is actually Richard Grieco's home address.
• Random Hatred And/Or Love:
• I worked from home today. The street was so icy that the neighborhood prostitute got two minutes for hooking instead of the usual thirty days. But then President Obama has to go and do this? Dude, lay off, you get to work from home every day.
• It was so icy that the Russian judge only gave me an extra point for my car having a double axle. The street was so frozen that Arnold Schwarzenegger came by to get off a couple of one-liners. There was so much ice outside that Robert Van Winkle was even shovelling my walk. Well, that's not saying much since he actually mows my lawn during the summer.
• Lost Comments/Questions For The Week:
• A weird no-Oceanic-Six-to-be-found episode. We learned a few things, but they brought up a few more questions too. A weird set-up episode like this one that will make a lot more sense later always makes me scared that Lost is like Syriana -- nobody actually gets it, but everyone says they do so they don't look stupid.
• So Ben didn't go to London last week, he was in L.A. the whole time when he went to see Ms. Hawking (since we're assuming she's Faraday's mother). That means that she was in L.A. working the whole time to find the island. Because Ben knew that he would have to get Jack and company back at some point?
• We now know something about Widmore's history with the island. He doesn't like taking orders much. Was he always one of the Others or did he join up like Ben did? He did seem to have quite the weakness for Penny when Desmond was talking to him in 2008, even though Penny didn't think he would.
• If Richard was so in control of the Others, has he always been that link to Jacob? Was he just using Ben and now Locke as figure-heads? Would that surprise anyone?
• Cool bit with Locke giving 1954 Richard the compass and telling him to visit after Locke is born, which of course Richard did in an earlier episode and tested young Locke with the compass.
• So I'll piece it together a little from my perspective... The Others bury "Jughead", the hydrogen bomb, which is the famous power source. And it's very likely Faraday that invented the time machine (with some ugly mishaps with his test subjects, such as Teresa Spencer, who may have been the girl Ellie from the island). In fact, it could be his hurting of Teresa that makes him so sensitive to Charlotte's woes.
• Going by that, does Daniel, or someone else, build the wheel to harness the energy of the bomb? Does Dharma build the Orchid because they know that's where the power is?
• What the hell does any of that have to do with a bunch of people on a plane from Sydney to Los Angeles that crashed on a tropical island (see my earlier Syriana comment)?