The pause that refreshes

Lisa the Temp:
As usual, it is the temp who gets stuck with the jobs nobody else wants to do, like telling you The Soxaholix are on a so-called temporary hiatus.

 

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Lisa the Temp:
But cheer up, people, you should all be grateful to live in an epoch were medical advances continually leave one, er, agape, sort of.

 

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Comments

[Bob Laden]

I wonder if A-Road is going to undergo that procedure.

[Kluv]

Ach! Just when I come here for my weekly "tell-me-what-I'm-supposed-to-think-about-Lost" fix. Nonetheless, you've worked hard, h.b. You if anybody deserves a break -- it's you.

[mrbandw]

What no 'Lost' banter? Damn! Good episode last night too, except for the dumb frog sub-plot that is...

Hope all is well. Enjoy the break!

[Jennay]

Miss the lost report...maybe you need a fill in blog writer...haha

[Joe in Philly]

The B-story of the frog had better have a pay off. There was nothing new there: Swayer is mean, Hurley is fat and steals food.

What is making me nuts is how the episodes don't connect anymore. They are confronted by the Others. Nothing. Jack says, let's build an army. Boom. Almost nothing next episode. (and how do you build an army without Locke and Sayid is crazy, even for Jack) Sun is kidnapped, almost nothing. Sawyer goes apeshit and steals the guns. Nothing. The show has lost its narrative thread. There's no arc for the season, and barely any for each episode. Watch, next week there will be nothing about the little lame balloon man.

Time to whistle far and wee and hope JJ hears the cries of a disheartened audience and not a tree frog.

[Rooster]

Big fan of your site HB! But I was looking forward to the Lost update today. The frog thing was odd, to say the least. "A" frog woke him up on the beach when the sun was well up in the sky. Then they tracked the frog for what seemed to be quite a ways into the jungle. Was it the same frog they caught as the one that woke him? Did that frog really scamper off into the jungle that fast - did it know it was being hunted? Very strange - a real frog probably would have just sat there.

[h.b.]

Well, it's very interesting (and apreciated) to hear people writing that they were looking forward to a "Lostaholix" discussion.

Truth is, that's what caused my hiatus today. I'd planned on using Lost as the discussion this morning, but so absolutely hated last nights episode myself that I was too damn dumbfounded to give voice to the characters.

I mean, sure, I could have had Bill and Tara riff on how they didn't like the show or, better, had one of them like and one not, but, I just didn't feel it.

I have given up on Lost entirely, but I'm very, very close.

I'm sensing more and more something that some of you have been feeling much sooner and have said as much here: That the writers have no clue where they're going with the story and are just making shit up as they go.

I mean, that's what I do here, of course, but you can't get away with that on a TV drama.

[pawsoxpop]

Well that's what you HAVE to do here since you're writing about what the characters think about stuff that happens to the Red Sox, so you can't really plan ahead because you don't know what's going to happen. Also we don't have to devote an entire hour to soxaholix unless we feel like it -- it takes like 20 minutes to read the entire strip plus the links and usually most of the comments.

[Scott]

That's a sign of true love, when your significant other does that for you. I'm going to tell the GF that she doesn't really love me unless she gets that special surgery and a boob job.
Gotta love the advances of a "modern" society...

[mrbandw]

This season the show started off strong with the tail section story but it does seem to lack a sense of direction lately.

I was thinking about how many people are running around on this supposedly deserted island. There's people popping out all over the place. Next thing you know, somebody's going to go exploring and discover there's a Sandals or something on there...

[COD]

Now that would be hilarious. The whole payoff for the show will be that they were within a 2 day hike of a Holiday Inn the entire time.

[Kaz]

I warned you all. I really really tried to warn you all.

I have a feeling that the title of the show applies to far more than the situation the survivors find themselves in.

[the gorry kid]

They probably ARE within a two day walk of a Holiday Inn. If not a hell of a lot closer--more like a two hour walk.

Gotta live in So Cal like some of us to appreciate the truth of that.

[the gorry kid]

HB: Isn't a hiatus temporary by definition? Can't imagine what a permanent hiatus would be.

And don't apologize for bringing on Lisa the temp--it is Lisa?--every now and then. She's hot.

[h.b.]

re "temporary hiatus"

Yes, you're right. One could argue that by putting Lisa's use of "temporary hiatus" in italics and leading it with "so-called" that Lisa is thinking exactly what you're thinking.

And, of course, this fits in with Lisa's personality/motivation: She's a temp but she feels, no, she "knows" she smarter than than the rest of the Soxaholix (and it was Bill who would have left her the message to pass on) and it's only happenstance (or more probably that she doesn't have the right networking/connnections) that she hasn't landed a permanent, salaried position in the office. Of course, it doesn't help that she's not a Red Sox fan and looks down on baseball in general as a boring bit of "spitting and crotch grabbing."

Truthfully, though, I'm filling this info in after the fact. The use of the term "temporary hiatus" was meant as a nod to TV studios when they put a show on "indefinite hiatus," which is, in fact, a euphemism and does mean a "permanent hiatus" however contradictory that is. (Sort of like when the SCOTUS used the term "deliberate haste" in Brown V. Board of Education, eh?)

Was that too much information? :)

[Jason O.]

I hate to say I told you so, but I did mention a few months ago that these writers needed to take lessons from the ultimate failures of Twin Peaks and the X-Files. It appears they have not.

What about Anderson Cooper's little "quote" on that "blog"? That's possibly the most sanctimonious thing I have ever seen. First, Cooper himself freaks me out...he looks like the mature version of one of those kids from "Village of the Damned."
Second, "let the story reveal itself?" It's amazing how stupid the MSM thinks that we are....is this the same guy who was "letting the story reveal itself" by reporting fro days on the rapes, murders and roving gangs in New Orleans that never existed?

[Bob Laden]

H.B.; don't ever say we Soxaholixs aren't always at your back:

http://adweek.blogs.com/adfreak/2006/02/are_you_ready_f.html#comments

[Bob]

(Jeez, I keep forgetting to get rid of that "it was supposed to be a one-time-comment" Bob Laden moniker.)

[h.b.]

+ To Jason 0:

Yes, you and others are free to say "told you so!"

To be fair to the X-Files writers, they DID have a plan orginally to wrap the show in some number of seasons (I forget how many exactly) but the network cajoled them (perhaps via some fine print in the contract) to go way beyond that since the ratings were so good, and that's why it so bottomed out.

Your description of Cooper is right on. And good point about the Katrina reporting.

+ To Bob

Thanks again for spreading the word about the site on the ad blogs!

[louclinton]

I hope the hiatus is truly a school vacation week, h.b.

As for Lost. Wooof, is what I say. For the last 4 "new" episodes, there have been about 3 seconds of mind bending stuff each week. The rest is just a stubbly According To Jim with about as many laughs.

Last night's 3.5 seconds, to me, were the strange children's story book illustrations that semi-flipped over when Locke JUST punched in the numbers in time (were they ducks or chickens?).

That, my friends, is thin gruel indeed. Not unlike Foulkie saying he will speak on Sunday "after my vacation", or seeing that Sammy RoidSa is packing it in. His act has been tired for 6 years or more.

Finally, on the subject of Truck Day--- The CVS-draped van with the RS logo was typical LL bullshit. I live outside of Boston, and actually was on my way to the Hospital Area on Truck Day maybe 20 years ago. I stopped by. There was a step-van with a bunch of Vinnie Orlando's boys loading it up in the snow. Do you really need an 18-wheeler with strobe-lighting and wraparound advertising to drive 23 hours to Fort Myers? Everything about RSN seems uberinflated.

Yours in JohnNY,

lou