Brandon Otte's Blog

Lost: Deus Ex Machina

I LOVE the Police!

Like Lost, I’ve had somewhat of an extended hiatus recently. I was taking a page from Sam’s book and not posting on account of the vomiting only without the vomiting. I basically just needed some me time, aight? So lay off my back already. I have all sorts of post ideas, but lack the gumption to write and then post them. Maybe later…

I decided to mess with the formula a little bit this week. Since all of about two people actually read the Lost synopses every week, I’m trying to make them shorter. But a lot tends to happen, so I happen to write a lot. On to this week:

- So this was a second week of Locke. Traditionally (as in the one other Locke episode), Locke has given some great fodder to the excitement that is Lost. Before he went all island guru on us, Locke was the fun freaky guy who you didn’t quite know where he stood. Now we know he stands in the middle of boredom town but only when he isn’t creeping everyone and their mother out in dreams or getting even creepier with Boone all alone in the woods out there. But you gotta have faith. And so we hear about three million times this episode. Locke and Boone try to bust the glass but it doesn’t work. So Locke decides to creep himself out in a dream for once and sees Boone being all bloody and a plane crashing. One rotting Nigerian and a drug smuggle or two latter and Boone is talking to someone on the radio of the downed plane when the downed plane goes down. He’s bloody up and Boone breaks down, carries him ala mother bear to Jack and then pounds on the glass. Knock and it shall be opened, so we get some light in the window at the end. Also Locke finds a gun and keeps it, Sawyer gets possible the ugliest glasses ever, beating out John Sagehorn by a mile, and the pregnant lady doesn’t actually have her baby for about the eight week in a row.
- Some Locke backstory: his mommy (he was adopted) comes and pretends to be crazy, telling him all about immaculate conception (!) and leads him to his father who promptly takes him hunting and steals his kidney. That’s love, baby. Then Locke breaks down and we’re left wondering if his mom really is crazy, if that was his real dad, if he was immaculately conceived and why he drives a red Volkswagen. Special side note, my dad said the actor who played the dad was from a show called Adam 12, a cop show. That might actually be important.

Now, for something completely different:
- You think I would be all excited about dead bodies. Its just that I’m not. When I went to see the Ring Two, the theater was full of 8th grade girls who were really terrified of the dead bodies, but they really didn’t phase me. I’ve reached that point in my life where a rotting corpse just doesn’t hold the same impact for me that it used to. Aging sucks.
- While on the beach awaiting glasses, Sawyer was reading “A Wrinkle in Time.” Before, as in earlier in the series, he was reading “Watership Down.” I’m not sure, but “Watership Down” is about survival and safety and all that and “Wrinkle in Time” is about (again, I may be a little off) a government experiment and family and finding their father. Interesting… Characters that read are cool, as are subtle allusions to cool things that may actually apply, but what sort of weird person brought this book selection to Australia? A little odd.

And the Questions:
1. When will the Hobbit find out about the drug plane?
2. Who left the light on for them?
3. How is Boone contacting people with the downed plane’s radio going to come back and bite everyone in the butt?
4. Who is the Nigerian and how did the numbers bring him to the island?
5. What is going to happen with the baby next week?

Glutton!

There’s a form of literature known as magical realism that I recently had to give a 10 minute lesson on in my World Novels class. There’s a couple of things that define magical realism, one of which is a cyclical element to time. See, in the book 100 Years of Solitude (what we’re reading in class) time just keeps repeating itself with different people in the same roles. That’s kinda how I feel right now, only without the being Columbian and without being catholic and without having a sister who flies away while doing the laundry. As soon as I feel like I got things back under control I get bogged down again. As soon as I think I can handle work without making waves for the last 15 days I start to hate my coworkers again. Also, I just went through a whole nother glut of spending. Here’s what was on the buy list:

- Trash Culture – a book on literature and pop culture (for a paper)
- Cultural Literacy – a book for the same reasons as above
- Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs – a book on pop culture (because I lent out my copy and it got stolen)
- Queen’s Greatest Hits
- ELO’s Greatest Hits
- Something/Anything – A CD by Todd Rundgren (because it was listed by Cameron Crowe as one of the 10 best albums of 1972 on Almost Famous. It is quite awesome)
- The Incredibles
- Sugar and Spice (which is on TV as I type)
- Griffinn iTrip FM transmitter for my iPod
- Car charger for my iPod
- A sleeping bag

I don’t know why you might want to know that other than to say that Something/Anything is really REALLY quite good and I enjoy it mucho. Also I would guess that I wanted to tell you that so that you would be impressed. Did it work?

Also something particular to magical realism that has taken my life is the questioning of reality: I heard an alarm clock sound the other day and thought I was about to wake up from being awake right now. The whole thing smacked of the Thirteenth Floor.

Speaking of smacking: am I the only one who is sometimes disappointed that life doesn’t turn out more like the movies? Sometimes I’m even kept from doing something because in the movies there’s always some grand romantic gesture and I don’t have a boom box.

Enameled!

Have you seen the movie “FearDotCom.Com”? If you haven’t you should. Tell them Brandon sent you. There’s this scene in FearDotCom.Com, near the end of the movie, where the main heroine heads underground into some sort of water filled tunnel to find some floating dead body or something. I don’t remember exact details mostly because I’ve blocked almost the entire movie from my memory. Anyway, what I DO remember thinking at this point in the movie was that I wanted to find Stephen Dorff and kick his teeth in.

Do you know the scene? There’s a similar one in “Cold Creek Manor,” in case you’re interested. In fact, that same scene is in “Almost Famous” for my mom. I would guess that by about the time Stillwater sells Penny Lane for $50 and a case of Heineken my mom wants to find Stephen Dorff and kick his teeth in.

I’m pretty sure you all know the scene I’m talking about, even if it is a completely different movie for you. Its that scene near the end when you just can’t wait for it to be over but the writer or director or cruel, sadistic warlord of pain in charge of the movie’s flow decides to throw one more obnoxious plot point in for you to hurdle. I have officially reached that scene in my employment at the Avalon Cinema.

Today Chris came in all upset about a high school student in town who had died in a car accident and who she only had an incidental relationship with. Then, when she had milked that she went on to talk about her son and how she bought him a new used car this afternoon because his was starting to run at a less than desirable level. Then she moved on to how her daughter is graduating in May and continuing to live at home while going to grad school and (for about the 8 millionth time) she said she should go look for a husband in the engineering department.

While I sincerely hope her daughter is able to trap someone before they meet her sickly twisted family, I sincerely don’t want to hear about it. Here’s a the kind of personal conversation I had this weekend that made Chris’s tard-tard-tardedness even more annoying: one conversation about a friend who had a miscarriage on her first baby; one conversation about a person who has no idea what they want to do with their life but is at the same time worried that his life might pass him by; a conversation about my future and what I might want to do with it if I can’t find a job; answering the question of what you might think it would be like to lose a close friend or family member and how I’m afraid of that very thing and afraid that I have become hardened enough that I wouldn’t react; the question of where to draw the line between God’s will and missing the point of God’s will. Not that these are overly deep, but they certainly hold a little more water than “snagging an engineer.”

Everything is always so over the top with her it just makes me want to set myself on fire. At the very least I want to find Stephen Dorff and kick his teeth in.

I got some bad news, guys...(!)

The big news in Platteville is this: First National Bank got a new sign that’s red and fancy instead of their former green one.

Oh, yeah, and we’re getting a Super Wal-Mart.

Apparently there is a faction of people in this country who are opposed to not only the building of Wal-Mart in Platteville but also the idea of Wal-Mart in general. I went to the city council meeting last night to cover it for the Exponent and there were over 50 people in the audience, something I can only assume that is unheard of at Platteville city council meetings. Half seemed top be in favor of the proposed public improvement agreement that would allow the building of a Super Wal-Mart just off Highway 151. The development includes a really big Wal-Mart building and parking lot, a strip mall right next door and residential zoning for both single family and multiple resident housing (read: apartments and houses).

One of the opponents of the plan was heard to say “I am afraid of what Wal-Mart will do to this community.” Exqueeze me? Did I miss something here? I know I’m not all up on my current events, but last time I checked Wal-Mart was not in the business of weapon-making and bone-crushing. Are they suddenly going to start raping our wives and pillaging our children? Have we somehow voted to allow some sort of death factory to build just outside our wonderfully pure and clean community? I mean come on people! It’s not as if we’ve allowed the French in…

But I guess there is something to be said for fear of Wal-Mart. How couldn’t we hate someone or something that is the physical embodiment of the American capitalist system? I can’t stand it when people take the same economic system that has helped MY business grow and perfect it to the point that they are an un-stoppable corporate machine. Also, its not as if Wal-Mart means certain death for Platteville. One thing that the audience apparently needed to be reminded of was that Platteville, in fact, already has a Wal-Mart on it’s soil. The economic impact is already there. Besides, to paraphrase from Chris’s dad (the lawyer representing the development) I’m still going to shop at all the other stores in town and any time people come into Platteville to spend their money is a good thing for Platteville.

Here’s a question for those who don’t want to feed the Wal-Mart beast: do you drink Coke? Pepsi? Shop at Amazon.com? Listen to the radio? Buy brand-name clothing items? Shop at the current Platteville Wal-Mart? Watch TV? Get your news from some sort of major news source? Go to school? Plan on dying? Own a computer? If they answered yes to any of these things they should realize that they are already forking over their cash and commitment to corporate giants. It was great to see one of the opponents leave the meeting to go get a Diet Coke and a pack of Lays potato chips. I almost took a picture.

What irks me most is that this Wal-Mart dilemma is taking the focus off the true global scourge: Oprah. Wal-Mart brought us the magic of the $5.50 DVD bin and continually discounted oatmeal creampies. Oprah brought us Dr. Phil and the idea that we can only read officially sanctioned Oprah literature. It seems to me that, while Wal-Mart is an example of the American ideals of freedom and low, low prices Oprah exemplifies somme sort of big-brother communist state where all our information is controlled by one very wealthy and obnoxious person.

Down with Oprah, up with savings!

Do You know what today is?

Well, Nazi Sam, I was planning on posting today anyway. In part to apologize for not posting, you know, in like FOREVER and in part to tell you

Yes, that’s right, its time for Moped Day, that yearly celebration of all things moped and moped related functions. I myself have planned a moped ride (which has been completed) and almost my entire family (well, at least my immediate family will be there and a few others) is coming down to (track meet) help me celebrate. Excitement!!!

Well, every march fourth (that you Mr. McKegan for marching forth) there is a little thing I like to call Moped Day. I made it all up back in 2001 when I was really excited to finally take the ‘ped out of hibernation and get back on the open road. Since then I have thawed and celebrate yearly with a whole slew of activities that are too amazing and numerous to list here.

I wrote two articles for the Exponent this year about moped day (a hattrick with my news article. Had I contributed to sports I would have been in every section of the paper this week) that pretty much sums up my thoughts on the greatest secular holiday I ever invented (that not only implies that I have invented several secular holidays but also several religious ones as well), so you should check them out here:

http://www.uwplatt.edu/org/exponent/opinions.html

and here:

well, I guess the second one isn’t on the web, but it’s a whole lot less interesting anyway. So don’t bother trying to find it I guess.

I don’t know what else to write, so I’m kinda rambling right now. I guess maybe I’ll tell a little something about my morning so far. I had a lot to do today, so I got up early and made a new “Born to Ride” t-shirt and ironed that on (with less than perfect results). Then I typed a paper and got ready for school. My first class is a wonderfully exciting 8 a.m. business communication course, so I had to leave my house at 7:30 ish. I had been calling the temp all morning to see what I was in for, but thankfully I was in luck: right before I left it went up! 23 degrees, baby! Let me tell you a little something about 23 degree rides for 15 minutes plus on a moped through the country: it is exactly as cold as you think it would be. Then, in my second to last class I started shivering (hours later) and couldn’t stop for like five minutes. So I decided I best skip my last class of the day and… GO MOPEDING! I went with my friend Krystle (she’s a midget) and her moped was faster than mine at every turn! Also, she has a little less weight than I do to haul around. Well, we rode from the school to the M and back. Slightly less cold this time. All in all it was a full rich day. Here’s a fun moped day activity. For more fun, time yourself and post your time on the comments and see who does the best!

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MOPED!

Lost: "Numbers"

or Numb3rs for those CBS fans.

So I came into tonight expecting a lot because of the “scenes from next week” and because Three-Buck Fue said it was pretty good when I saw him at the bowling alley right before the show. And I still expect much after seeing only the first couple of scenes. What are the numbers all about on those papers? And Hurley is a nice guy, man, a nice guy. I like him a lot, but did he rig the numbers for the lotto? I don’t know because he was pretty surprised. And what had he done to put his family “through a lot” recently?

Locke and the baby lady again. I really don’t trust him a whole lot, nor do I trust his plans of building someone. I also don’t trust that there are sometimes random people in the background and they don’t seem to be doing a whole lot besides taking a vacation. Charlie just said loon and I think that’s pretty funny and so are the relatively high quality tents they apparently brought up out of nowhere. Also Huurley matched his shirt with his Hummer. Kudos.

So my original idea that he had some idea as to why they were on the island may not be entirely correct, but he could have been just unsurprised that bad things were happening to him. Or he did, I don’t know. I can’t really tell and that’s half the fun about Hurley. He’s this enigma on the island. Dave asked me the other day why I was so interested in him (it was more of a “I don’t understand why you like Hurley so much.”) By the way, Hurley owns a controlling interest in Locke’s box company. Good for him.

Hugo?!? Where did he get the numbers? That’s a pretty good question.

So I think Hurley is the most interesting because he’s the only one I can’t get a grip on the character. Jack is the good guy, Sawyer the bad guy you love to hate, Locke is the creepy guy etc. I know Hurley is the comic relief, but (spry? Hurley just called himself spry) I don’t know anything else about his role on the island.

I really like this idea that Hugo is a harbinger of bad luck. Hurley was in an insane asylum and he got the magic numbers from a guy who really likes connect four and the repeated numbers. He’s a pretty great guy, this Leonard. He apparently got the numbers from some Sancooly (spelling?) and Hurley has now “opened the box.” I don’t know what that means, but it certainly doesn’t sound good.

That bridge brings up an interesting point: what about Ethan? Is his “team” still on the island? I think so. And Hugo doesn’t seem to be having a whole lot of bad luck now that he’s on the island. I’d say its because he got away from the numbers, but I don’t think that’s true. What it think is true is that Leonard somehow got the numbers from Rousseau (the French woman on the island). Sam Toomey. That makes a lot more sense. So this Sam got the numbers from the static on this remote Pacific outpost and they were repeated in this strange message. And now Sam’s wife is a pirate and an angry one, too. Hugo Reyes, by the by, is Hurlley's full name. Keep a watch out for that in other episodes.

Locke is doing his best to be the creepiest guy ever possible by making glue and using it to make his own deadly trap. Now I bet he’ll give Claire some mystical explanation of how she can get her memory back... and there it is. That’s so nice and vaguely evil of him.

So back to the big guy: I’m guessing Hurley is the main link on the show. That’s why I can’t quite place him: he’s the glue made from rendered animal fat that holds the whole deadly trap together. He was in the video of the Korean. He owns Locke’s box company. He probably had something to do with Sawyer, Kate and all the rest. Heck, he is the reason the plane crashed (his bad luck anyway) and now he’s all about some bad luck numbers that are on the island with them. I’m also guessing he’s the link I’ve been waiting for with the psychic (The psychic who told Claire that her plane was going to crash had to find out that her plane was going to crash from a second source because he saw a future in which Claire kept the baby and THEN told her to go on the plane [that’s my contention anyway]). He’s the main reason everyone is there and he is the reason everyone on the island is linked. He IS the connection.

The French lady doesn’t even know! I want Hurley to get the answers he’s looking for because he is the only character I legitimately care about (I'm interested in the rest, but I care about Hurley). The numbers brought Rousseau to the island as well! And the radio tower is by the black rock that hides Ethan’s clan (or so I suppose). The numbers ARE cursed and all Hurley needed was for someone to believe him. I BELIEVE YOU HURLEY! Good job keeping it from everyone else, though, by the way. Keep that international man of mystery vibe going is always a good idea.

Locke talking to Claire about the baby’s future? That can’t be anything but BAD foreshadowing. Locke didn’t answer whether he believed in luck. But he does believe in making Claire a cradle and being spookily jerkstorish AGAIN. I’ll reiterate: Locke and the baby=not good at all. Remember how he was in her dream with one black and one white eye? And how the psychic told her SHE had to raise the baby and no one else. Hurley is worth $156 million? Box companies are worth a lot, I guess. But the door in the floor has the numbers on it, eh? Hmm. Mom says it’s almost like a ship is under the island and that ship is connected to the cord that goes into the ocean. That’s interesting but I'd say there's a little more to it than that. but no one seems to want to know where the cord comes from or where the radio tower is. If I was on that island I'd be 1) dead or 2) looking for the radio tower.

4-8-15-16-28-42

Questions from this week:
1. What are the numbers and where do they come from? The door or whoever is under it (or whatever I guess)?
2. Is there any significance of the pregnant lady rerun and the Hurley episode appearing so close together when Hurley is often around said pregnant lady (I'm probably reading too much into that)?
3. How come the French woman lets everyone go?
4. Locke is creepy and annoying most times, no question there.
5. How is Hurley connected to all the others (including the Korean, who we already know is indirectly connected somehow) and why was he in Australia?