Sunday In Our Yard

Genre Bending

I came across some recut trailers yesterday. Most were pretty ludicrous, but some were kinda funny. It's easy to imagine Willy Wonka as a horror film, but Silence of the Lambs as a love story & The Shining as a romantic comedy where a son finally finds a good home? Radical.

Scary Mary


Shining


Silence of the Lambs


Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory

Ghosts In The Living Room

2 X Laura



3 X Travis



2 X 2

What Potent Blood

...hath modest May. Almost to an end. These months are flying like none other. Baby is coming. Screws are tightening. Showers are upon us. June and July showers. And showers this weekend that are keeping me from mowing the lawn.



For now I'm compiling a master list, I call it "the A-list", of music, scanning thru the iTunes, now at 57,063 strong, to find only the elite and turn it into a flawless playlist for the roadtrip. The Ohio "Roadtripq" mix had defects, mainly because I lazily dropped full albums that had no business accepting the benefit of my doubt. This time it's a track by track scavenger hunt, choosing choice tunes and reaching back as far as the early 50's for hits. It's gonna be a doozy. I may just drive the speed limit.



As for now, I just sent the little pregnant woman off to work, carrying precious cargo and looking forward to tomorrow. I made her a double lunch, two sandwiches, two oranges, two everything. I got piles of laundry and bigger piles of Law & Order on, but I do hope to get outside to a dry lawn as well. I got it down to 40 minutes now. Going for a record.

Oh, and that's a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote up there. Dunno where I heard it.

BipoLaura

Working For The Week

We built her a cage. Please don't feed the animals.



The past week work has actually been quite the good time. The crew has been widdled down and everyone seems to have been relieved of some excess weight. Now it's just good times and hijinks, when we can navigate the waters of the demon with caution.... don't worry about it.



It helps when I have a delicious meal waiting for me.

Probably my favorite moment of the workweek came during lunch on Friday when we spotted Coralys checking her facebook and I used my eagle eye vision to check out her profile photo and noticed something peculiar. After closer inspection I realized it was what I thought it was. Now, most people try to make their facebook photos the very best representation of themselves that they can. Maybe the photo is a few years old when they were thinner & younger. Maybe it's that one photo that caught you in the right light from the right angle. Maybe it's one that you had your friend photoshop until you looked amazing. Coralys on the other hand, her only requirement was that there was a toilet bowl in the photo. And a toilet bowl with the lid up. I laughed for the rest of the day.

Children's Scribbles: Accurate

Remember how you used to draw the sun when you were a kid?......

Rainbows And A Box of Kittens

Ya know, it would be my luck that my betting buddy would get fired the week of the series we went double up on. Last time we bet $10 a game, and Phillies took 2 out of three. This time we doubled it, $20 a game, which I know was risky, but it was time to man up. And the Mets frigin sweep! $60 for me right? Wrong. Dude's gone and ain't coming to find me to pay his debt. At least we both know what's what. Last time he said "I hope this is a message to the Mets to get out of the way." That was when they took two out of three. Wonder what he thinks now. Guess that's what happens when the bullpen is too far away for the Phillies to steal signs.

27 scoreless innings. Reyes out of his slumber. Angel Pagan is my vote for the All Star team. I like this team. Taking it to the road, where they've been bad. But I feel good. Let's see how long that lasts.

Chances Of Hail

before the storm...






...and during...

Whisper Words Of Wisdom

I've never been a person who needed closure when it came to films and never been wrapped up in a series enough to care, so the fact that Lost didn't really tell us anything other than what we already kind of knew and instead raised a couple more questions, I was neither disappointed nor appeased by last night finale.

So they were dead. And the whole sideways universe thing was purgatory. We had kind of thought the island was limbo, so joke's on us I suppose. The island happened. The crash happened. I don't think they all died in the crash. I think everything that happened on the island, happened. Whatever happened, happened right?

I'm gonna say that the finale made it seem like the the show wasn't about some mystical island at all but instead these individuals and their private struggles with imperfections. While five out of six seasons focused heavily on the strange happenings on the island, around the island, leading people to the island, the island the island the island, the finale seemed not to be concerned with addressing that whatsoever, not explaining a thing. You'd think that the island was the background all along and that it could've been anything really. Almost as if they came up with two show ideas and just squished them together, using one to distract from the other. I dunno. This is giving me a headache.

I'm guessing the end scene happens in a timeless scenario, accepting that Kate & Sawyer and crew got off the island and probably died decades later, and then met up with their buddies in pre-purgatory psycho-sideways land in their island age selves. Hurley and Ben and maybe Desmond if he lived were left on the island to protect it from who knows what. That's why Hurley tells Ben he was a great #2. And then people like Michael & Ben & Mr. Eko, all those guys weren't ready to move on so, they didn't. They couldn't let go.

So credit is due for creating this elaborate ruse to throw everyone off the scent and have us all think there was a lot more going on. From the Dharma Initiative to the smoke monster to the whole Jacob/MIB thing, it seems like the more imaginative and therefore make believe part of the story is the stuff we are meatn to believe "really happened", while the sideways world, where people are living normal lives and going about their business is in fact the non-reality where everyone is dead and waiting to be woken up so they can let go. Another interesting twist that I guess we didn't see coming. It doesn't really explain why everyone was so mixed up in purgatory, Hurley was lucky, James was a cop, Locke felt guilty about his dad, Jack had a son. None of this was true in the real, island world, so that didn't really make any sense but.... I need not try and make sense.

In the end they tied up emotional loose ends, reconnecting all the loves with their special someones, having Locke die in a pretty awesome fight scene for TV, and kid of resolving the whole candidate thing. I knew it was gonna be Hurley but after last week when Jack stepped up I didn't wanna say anything. Still no idea what the island is or what's down that hole. Is it hell? Is it the essence of mankind? What does that mean? And it's held in place by a rock? But I guess a bunch of other questions were sorta of answered. Not really tho.

I got a text from my sister halfway thru the finale asking whether or not she could enjoy "The Ending" after never seeing a single episode and only viewing the two hour "catch up" episode prior to the big finish. I'd have to say yes, because apparently, these past six years, all those twists and mysteries, for the most part, had nothing to do with anything and was just meant to mislead and entertain and confuse. While this has infuriated a few people, I think the fact that the writers never intended on explaining these things gets them off. So while it may not have been as entertaining/frustrating/intense/confusing/thought-provoking had you not seen every second of every episode, the overall message can be understood after a quick catchup and watching the finale scene. Once again, maybe the message of everyone in the show "letting go" and moving on is more a message to us to let go and let it be. So whisper words of wisdom...

Put Some Voodoo On It

From the lady tux to the hair poof and the slide step to the cape adorning this is the best live TV performance I've seen in a long time. Watched it like 4 times now.


Yes it may be a James Brown rip-off but, this puppy really kicks in the end there so, eh? And James didn't have P-Diddy cameos.

No Longer Lost For Long

Ok, here's what I wanna know....

What is the glowing light inside each of us?

How did the island disappear?

What exactly was the Dharma Initiative doing on the island?

What is MIB's name?

What's the deal with the Hurley bird?

What do the numbers really mean? They're everywhere!

What's Desmonds deal? Is he the new Jacob? Is he Jesus? Is he the island?

What happens is the smoke monster leaves the island?

How did MIB become the smoke monster? I know he went down into the light, but what happened down there?

Why can't the smoke monster cross ash?

Since when does Jack have a teenage son?

How come the island heals some people and lets others die?

Where is Juliet in the sideways world? (I betcha she's jack's ex-wife)

Who's that chick who raised Jacob & MIB?

What's the deal with the Tawaret statue and who knocked it down?

Why can't women give birth, except for Claire?

What did Jacob make Jack drink?

Who the hell is Pierre Chang really?

Why is the island hidden & how does it move & how did Eloise Hawking find a way back?

Do Rose & Bernard still have a part to play out?

Who asked Locke for help in Jacob's cabin?

Who's eye did Hurley see in Jacob's cabin?

Why don't I give a crap about Kate?

What's the reality of the parallel universe? The island underwater... how?

What was up with the hatch and all those Egyptian symbols that popped up when no one pressed the button? And why was it 108 minutes?

What's Daniel Faraday doing these days?

What happened to Walt? They made him seem so important.

Who is Annie, Ben's childhood friend? Does she become someone else?

What's with the dog painting in Jacob's cabin?

What's going on up in that lighthouse?

Why does the smoke monster make a sound like a rattling chain?

I thought Sayid was "claimed" by the smoke monster so why'd he save everyone from the bomb in the submarine?

What's up with Jack's tattoos?

Where'd Vincent go?

Why polar bears?

Is this as simple as good versus evil?

Considering that there is no way in hell they will be able to answer all of these questions tonight I'm just gonna sit back and enjoy the show and hope they answer at least one, and I hope it's not where Vincent's been all this time.

Meryl Gets High

After watching It's Complicated today it's official. Spicoli is out and Meryl Streep is now my favorite onscreen stoner. First she plays a writer who gets high for the first time in Adaptation and does nothing but stare at her feet and try and get people to recreate dial tones, which is spine-tingling and today she gets high with Steve Martin and goes to her sons college graduation party. Classic move. Plus it makes for hilarious movie scenes.

Let's All Believe

"I don't laugh at people any more when they say they've seen UFOs. I've seen one myself!"

-Jimmy Carter

This weekend I decided that I believe in aliens. This is the danger of watching the History Channel all day.

Reason #1

The Piri Reis Map is a map dating back to 1513 drawn up by a Turkish military admiral named Piri Reis. It's considered to be the oldest map showing the Americas but also depicts the coastline of Europe and northern Africa, and while they're not prefect fits they are frighteningly accurate. While it's interesting that it shows the mythical island of Antillia the real suspicious landmass is found down at the bottom of the map. A landmass that with reasonable accuracy shows the coastline of Antarctica, and not the Antarctica we see now covered in layers and layers of ice but the actual Antarctic coastline found beneath the thick layer of ice.

Whether you believe that to be Antarctica or not, which won't officially be found for another 308 years, it's still an alarmingly accurate map of the world as seen from space. Pretty sure there were no flights back in 1513, especially out of Cape Canaveral.

Reason #2

The pyramids had always been a bit of a mystery, how were they built etc etc. But forget that in order for "what we know" to be true each rock would have had to be cut, moved and placed each in 9 seconds, the part I found curious is their positioning.

The Great Pyramid itself resides directly along the longest longitudinal line and latitudinal line, therefore making it the exact center of all landmass in the world. Also, each of its four sides align almost precisely with the four pints of a compass even tho a compass wasn't invented yet.

Another coincidence is how the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan, two of the world's largest and most famous pyramids which are separated by a sea share the same exact perimeter. Not so much a coincidence. Kind of like how a modern day house builder will stick with one design & layout and repeat it over and over again. Only this was ancient times and no one was commuting from Egypt to Mexico with floor plans.

Reason #3

And finally there's Tiahuanaco. Defying modern dating techniques this Bolivian city is estimated to be over 17,000 years old, which makes it the oldest city on Earth.

The sculptures and architecture in the main city are enough for most people to ask questions about the possibility of their existence, but the real goldmine falls right outside the city limits.

Puma Punku.

Unfortunately all that's left of this temple complex is ruins, but is believed to be built in and about 14,000 years ago. The mystery surrounding Puma Punku is not really what is was, but how it came to be. There's a few problems with common sense answers. Where to begin?

First off, most of the blocks at Puma Punku are around 250-300 tons with one alone weighing 450 tons. These blocks had to be pushed or pulled (or levitated) 10 miles from the nearest quarry near Lake Titcaca up a steep incline to the plateau where they now lay in a heap. Engineers of today say we would have trouble doing that nowadays. This was done before the wheel was invented and there are no trees to roll them one like believed to be used in Stonehenge. Curious.

Problem number two. Once they got these massive boulders up the hill they were laid out in such a complex design that it resembles a puzzle, with each piece interlocking and fitting together perfectly. There had to be some sort of planning or writing or knowledge of design here, and once again, we're talking about stone age people here.

Problem number three is the quality of the workmanship. These blocks were cut, and cut with such precision some with perfectly chiseled 90 degree angles and others with grooves that run perfectly straight and precisely the same depth from one end to the other. Add to that that the rocks are all granite & diorite and the only thing hard enough to cut these is diamond. So I guess these cats also had diamond tipped tools.



There's some more convincing "evidence" like Easter Island & the Nazca Lines and such but I doubt anyone's even read this far so I'll cut my losses. So I believe in aliens. Oh well. Whatcha gonna do about it?