This Place Is Death

• Random Pop Culture:
• As always, my Lost thoughts below.
• Tonight's episode of Idol had to be one of the worst ever. There were no surprises. None. Everybody you had ever heard of and was halfway decent got in. Anybody you saw for the first time didn't make it in. So the first twelve go next week with favorites Danny and Anoop, among others. I always love the part where they all dance, because so many are so bad at it.
• Oh, and Tatiana goes next week, too. Did you catch the moment tonight when she went from train wreck to pure horror show? That would be when she left the judges' room and was screaming, then (and you could see it clearly in the slo-mo at the end of the episode) stopped and looked to make sure the camera was still rolling, then screamed even louder. It's going to be so fun when she gets voted out because she might break all records for singing and crying at the same time.
• Speaking of Tatiana, here is Vote For The Worst's ranking of the top 36 by worst potential. Total shock that Tatiana is #1 and that Danny is #36.
• Carolina is just way too athletic for Duke. As are UConn and Oklahoma, to name two others. UConn and Oklahoma don't have Ty Lawson though.
• Random Hatred And/Or Love:
• Today was Jennifer Aniston's 40th birthday. Whoop-dee-freaking-doo. Sarah Palin's also. The name sounds familiar -- was she part of some comedy troupe or something? Anyway, Yahoo ran a big thing about the personality-less Aniston in which they referred to Leprechaun as a huge bomb. Leprechaun may be the bomb, but it wasn't a bomb, no matter how little money it made.
• Lost Comments/Questions For The Week:
• There were a couple of questions raised/expanded upon in this episode, but it was all about the answers tonight.
• The monster is not just a security system, but the security system for a temple. Temple to what or whom? Jacob? I do think Jacob is some kind of demon. The ring of sand around his cabin says as much. The best example of this I can think of comes from Stephen King's Dark Tower series (and Lost has all kinds of King references) where the Gunslinger has to go inside a special ring of stones to speak to a demon.
• There was a throw-away line in season one where Rousseau talked about one of her companions losing an arm. Now we know how.
• The French guys were taken by the monster, but they escaped somehow and something happened to them. How and what?
• What's with the wheel shaking around like that? Is it holding time and space together?
• Why was it freezing when Ben went there, but not when John was there? Does that have something to do with the Orchid?
• I'm fairly certain that when we saw Faraday in Dharma garb in the season premiere, it's because they went back in time somehow. It explains why he'd try to change the future by telling young Charlotte not to come back to the island.
• Now we know that Ms. Hawking is Faraday's mother. Pretty obvious all along.
• When Christian said that Locke needed to bring back everyone who left the island, does that include Desmond and Frank?
• Why could Ms. Hawking start looking for the island without everyone there? I'm assuming they all go back, but she was a bit more forgiving of Ben than I expected her to be.