815

I didn't notice this the first time around (perhaps it was only visible on HD?) but the good and tech-savvy folks over at Lost Research have uncovered a hidden little something something at the beginning of one of Charlie's lamely executed and decidedly not mind-blowing dream sequences (video here).

Is it too much to ask that next time we have a "psychedelic dream sequence" we get someone who's actually done psychedelics to design the damn thing? At least call in a consultant. I'm pretty sure Aaron Sorkin has some free time on his hands.

Perhaps you were too busy throwing up in your mouth a little bit to notice the background architecture immediately after the Driveshaft diaper commercial scene, but check it out*...



Awesome.

"Pigs on the Wing (Part 1)" - Pink Floyd

*While you're at it, try to decipher what that sign on the building says.

Opening engagement in an island war tonight? We'll see.

This LOST shit is deep. Or not.

In a move clearly designed as a direct message to yours truly, the music-nerd staff of this here Flight815 blog, last week's "The Hunting Party" episode featured a scene with two dorky guys listening to records and talking (rather pathetically, mind you) about girls.

So we've been called out, that's obvious, but in typical LOST fashion the message is cryptic if not downright incomprehensible. Let's examine what we do know.

The LPs:
Geronimo Jackson - Macna Carta
This fictional record by a fictional hippie looking band with an apparent penchant for fuzzy photographs and stupid fonts appears to be nothing more than a red-herring. (It's a good name, though. Geronimo, of course was the badass Apache warrior who fought and evaded the US Army--led by a notorious sadist who would later be on the $20 dollar bill, Andrew Jackson--for years upon years in the mountains that now make up the Gila National Wilderness. It's also suspiciously close to the names of Clyde Geronimi and Wilfrid Jackson, the two gentlemen who directed ABC parent-company Disney's "Alice in Wonderland" and "Peter Pan," both possible LOST inspirations.)


Pousette-Dart Band - Amnesia
Hmm. A reltively obscure 1977 record from a forgotton and pretty terrible AOR/MOR countryish light-rock band. The "depressing" song played was "Fall on Me." (YouSendIt link because there's no way we're wasting bandwidth on this pap.)

Ooklah the Moc - (title unknown)
Contemporary Hawaiian reggae named after the wookie-looking dude on 1980s Saturday morning cartoon Thundarr the Barbarian. These guys started off as a reggae/hardcore band a la Bad Brains, but (no pop, no style) are now Strictly Roots in a Steel Pulse sort of fashion.


Those were the only records we've been able to indentify so far. There were also a couple of covers that somebody ought to be able to identify, a sleeve with the words "???? to the world" and another featuring a photograph of some androgynous looking somebody, along with what appeared to be a LaFace 12" sleeve (the record inside, however, had a red label with yellow print. ARC? Columbia?)

The conclusion one must draw from these obscure titles could not be more obvious; it's a backhand to the grill. These records don't mean anything. We can draw no conclusions about D.H.A.R.M.A. aesthetic values from this stack of dusty grooves. They aren't clues, they're whatever crap some AD dug up at some Hawaiian AmVets or Salvation Army, common dollar bin bullshit.

What a tease. If the fact that there's a local Hawaiian reggae band among the unimpressive bunch wasn't proof enough, the hole in the corner of the Amnesia cover ought to seal it.

Pousette Dart Band? Come now, really? I'm a Seals & Croft fan. I think Fairport Convention kick ass. Hell, I even ----- with some James Taylor on occasion. Pousette-Dart band? I'm not trying to hear that.

Walt's kidnapper, the mysterious and bearded* Other, has made another appearance, this time brandishing a luger and quoting Alvar Hanso and lecturing Jack about letting dudes handle his rare LPs, and we just don't know what to think. Did one of his shadowy buddies shoot Sawyer with a dart or is he actually bullet-proof? Was it badass or tribal council-esque when he yelled, "light 'em up!" and all his folks lit their torches? If he's really a scientist how come he talks like an Arkansas pig farmer? What's his name anyway?

Below are the possibilities we have compiled so far in answer to that final question, feel free to add your own:

• Zeke
• Gerald Degroot
• Boatnapper
• Boatbilly
• Seabilly
• Beardo
• Kurtz
  
• Ruppert from Survivor
• The Other Allman Brother
• Lynyrd Skynyrd's Weed Carrier
• Will Oldham's Fat Bootleg Cousin
• Jake Plummer
  
• Oliver Reed as Vulcan in "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen"
• Catfish

*More information on beards available here.

The song Charlie was singing to at Jin in last week's episode (as Jin toiled away catching dinner in the surf) was a Kinks tune called "He's Evil," all about a smooth talking, con-man, pickup-artist type who is, underneath all that slick, actually evil. An intriguing thought, no? Who could Charlie be singing about? You know what I think, but the possibilities are as endless as the list of male cast-members.

We'd love to share the tune with you, in convenient mp3 format and everything, except for one small problem; it sucks. Ray Davies wrote dozens and dozens of great songs, but he churned out quite a few stinkers as well, and "He's Evil" is down there with the worst of them, Bad Saxophone Solo and all.

Don't fret though, dear reader, we've got something else for that ass, a Kinks song that is actually good. Really good. It's apropos too, being a melancholy yet rousing lament about an airplane (or perhaps it's a spaceship?) flight with an unknown destination. It even begins with trippy jet sounds!

"This Time Tomorrow" - The Kinks

From Flight815 Mistress of Information, J-Shep, the Griff to our Chuck and Flav and X*, comes an intriguing suggestion about the name "Sayid." She points out that the character Sayid shares a name (minus one sometimes vowel) with one Sayyid Qutb, "the founder of radical Islamic fundamentalism as we know it."

Qutb was radicalised back in the 50s by, among other factors, his attendance in the USA of what he considered a sexually perverse "sock hop," which is a silly and quite prudish reason to formulate a world-view, and his torture at the hands of Nasser's CIA-trained Egyptian prison guards (according to some, at one point they covered him in animal fat and sicced a dog on him), which is a good deal more understandable.

The question is, is our Sayid's name in reference to this man, the mentor of Osama Bin Laden's mentor, or is it merely a coincidence? Why not Sharif? How about Malik or Mohammed, Yusuf or Abdul, Talib or Tariq, Kareem or Khalid? Perhaps it's giving LOST writers too much credit to assume they had a relatively obscure 30 year old Arab political reference in mind when naming their ex-Iraqi Republican Guard/almost suicide bomber/CIA snitch with a thing for anorexic blondes character, but perhaps not.

We can hope, at least. A good dose of old-fashioned anti-American political intrigue would be a nice balance to the new-age fruitiness of the "ghost smoke," and somebody has got to offer a counterpoint to all the bible thumping that's been going on of late. A radical Islamist might be just the guy.

*Shoklee's jersey, unfortunately, remains retired.

While last night's LOST assuredly got the fanbois and gulls going nuts about that long, hard, long overdue look at "the smoke" (and the images contained therein,) we here at Flight815 headquarters are all atwitter about Mr. Eko's "City of God"-esque backstory.

Hard. As. Fuck.

With its dusty, sunwashed vistas, sudden and shocking violence, and Adebisi's giant, swaggering, slow-burning presence, this was clearly the most interesting backstory we've gotten yet. Give us a few more lines like, "You live in a world where rightousness and evil are very far apart... that is not the real world," and we'd be happy if the rest of the season was just further adventures of Eko the murderous Nigerian warlord.

So many questions remain. How did he rise from over-grown young punk to HNIC? Did his brother really have to snitch to the army? Where was that heroin going? Did I really just write HNIC? How'd his gunmen get the balls to to kick Eko out the plane? How'd that plane get from Nigeria to The Island, and did Eko know it was the same place? And finally, how come he abandoned those dapper-ass braids?

Who wants to help us lobby for a spin-off?

First track on the highly essential Houston for Dummies Mix CD from DJs Ayres and JD is an introductory drop from legendary TEXAS lyrical don Bun B. On it he expresses his fondness for the television series LOST, the very subject of this here blog!

We whole-heartedly recommend you go ahead and buy the CD (seriously), but just to whet your whistle, here's a transcript of Bun's words:

This your boy Bun B reppin' UGK for life. Free Pimp C*, baby, and you know we gettin' it in for you square L sumthin' never been nowhere hidin' under a rock on an island like LOST motherfuckers...

He goes on to further extoll the virtues of Ayres and JD's fine compilation, and then Tony Montana comes in via sample on the Geto Boys "Balls and My Word," and that's that.

So maybe it's not exactly a pledge of undying love and devotion, but if we were JJ and Lindleoff and them we'd be honored just to have our name in the big guy's mouth.

Tantalizingly, and in addition to being an excuse for us to hype a dope CD, this raises the face-melting possibility of a heretofore entirely unheard of meaning to the phrase "draped up and dripped out."


*Done.

We're reeling here. This is shocking on so many levels.

Apparently Sayid aka Naveen Andrews, while seperated from his longtime girlfriend, fathered a love-child. Not such a big deal, right? Naveen's a sultry, strapping brother, and he's probably still cashing in weepy groupie residuals off that whole "English Patient" thing. Just, you know, wrap it up next time, dude.

Here's the shocker; the longtime girlfriend he was stepping out on was Barbara Hershey. Who? Barbara Hershey.

You might remember her (if you can get past the image of David Carradine's bulbous nutsack) as the sexy-dangerous title character in "Boxcar Bertha," Martin Scorsese's first movie. Way back in 1973. If perhaps that is a little before your time (Chris) you might remember her in "The Right Stuff," or "The Natural," or "Hoosiers," or a bunch of other stuff from a long, long time ago.

So Naveen likes his women on the experienced side . She's 57. He's 36. Although, in all fairness, more than just well preserved, she still looks pretty hot.

So whatever. It really ain't no thing. It's not nearly as weird as this...



What's going on here, a Mystery Island Ren Fair? Are they selling giant turkey legs? Will Locke run around tossing little foam balls at Eko while yelling, "Spell! Spell! Lightning bolt!"?

Dude.

How long has it been? What's this blog about again?

Seriously, when the people nerdy enough to devote their time and energy to an intertron weblog about a television show actually forget what happened last in said show and aren't sure if they even care it's safe to say you've lost momentum.

Word is LOST execs are panicking over rumors that a guy from one of the many messageboards even went on a date! (In actuality, he sat at home and got totally into "Sleeper Cell" on FX, but he did read Neil Strauss' The Game, which is a start and still has the suits sweating.)

Back to the topic at hand, though, which is... right... LOST. Not that much has happened since that magical November night five weeks ago when Kate's My Little Pony ushered us into these December doldrums.

There is supposedly some kind of website out there where you can get emails from and even chat with Doctor Marvin Candle, but, sorry Doc, we’ve got football games to get hype for.

LOST and its expansive cast were the recipients of many a year-end award (and a couple of other citations,) but strangely, and despite our consistently superior performance in all facets of the bullshitting on the internet game--not to mention the all-powerful presence of phantom member Jon C--yours truly at Flight815 were summarily ignored when it came to 2005 kudos. For shame, arbiters of arbiters of cool, for shame.