Well, do ya?

Doug:
So let me get this straight … We are told Lowell Spinnahss have "developed a well-deserved reputation for being mastahs of novel promotions" and then we learn their "mastah" plan for Matsuzaka promo is to give away … Dice-K Fuzzy Dice?

 

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Doug:
Fuzzy Dice? Fuzzy Dice fercrissakes? How frickin' ingenious.

 

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Doug:
I mean the dude who thought that up should probably go on American Idol because he or she most likely is also blessed with a really great voice in addition to such unparalleled marketing savvy.

 

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Mike:
OK, Simon Cowell, let's hear what you'd have done for a Matsuzaka promo in your hometown.

 

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Doug:
Off the top of my head? How 'bout Mini Gyroscope Night?

 

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Doug:
Or if you really want to push the envelope a bit, how 'bout a giveaway of the mini version of the Japanese Sushi Pillow?

 

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Mike:
Dude, isn't that like, ah, stereotyping?

 

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Doug:
What? Why? Don't the Japanese love sushi?

 

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Doug:
Besides, it's impossible when standing outside of a culture not to make generalizations about it.

 

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Doug:
I mean just look at how the Japanese portray New England. Check out that old lady sitting on the front porch. Is that a stereotype or what?

 

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Mike:
True, the highly ornamental Queen Anne Style house is all wrong. A less ornate Shingle Style is the more the norm in these pahts.

 

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Doug:
Screw that even. If you really want to capchah the flavah of New England you put the ol' lady in front of a triple deckah wearing a nightie.

 

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Mike:
Yeah, then you put a dialog bubble over her head saying "How why ya?"

 

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Doug:
Absolutely. Then a few pages in under the chaptah headed "Avoiding Trouble" you show the same lady with a half dozen empty 'Gansetts at her feet and the voice bubble saying, "What you frickin lookin' at you quayuh? You wanna have a go?"

 

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Author's Notes
No, "Lostaholix" today as I found last night's episode so good, I couldn't get a good sarcastic character dialog going to discuss it.

Comments

[louclinton]

No, "Lostaholix" today as I found last night's episode so good, I couldn't get a good sarcastic character dialog going to discuss it."

Dude, they had me when I saw "Fionula Flanigan" in the main title credits. I'm back in, hook, line and sinkah.

When is now?
Is it all in the past?
Desmond is The Man?

Please keep in mind that the first time we saw Desmond was in season 1 (I think) when Jack was running the stadium stairs and D happened accross him in an empty stadium. WTF was/is/would that be about?

More importantly, Claire chunked up a bit from last season, no? Is she on the Dice-K diet? All Gyro, no balls?

Oh and the korean chic is even hotter speaking spot-on English.

No, I didn't understand a lick of it, but it was good.

lc

[Harwich Rich]

I had that dumbstruck look and was thinking "this is how Lost is supposed to be"

[h.b.]

OMG Fionula Flanigan was so frickin' awesome! (And how cool is it that coincidentally she was in the film "The Others"?)

Desmond has always been one of my fave characters and last night just made that more so.

And so glad we didn't have to endure Jack, Sawyer, or Kate last night. The other characters are SO much more fascinating. (Or maybe not and I'm just overdoses on the the other 3.)

[COD]

My wife and I must have totally missed the boat last night. We both thought last nights Lost was weak. We got some detail on Desmond, but we already knew that he had some sort of weird relationship with space and time. And we still don't know what it is, even though the writers seem to be pointing towards time travel or some sort of Groundhog Day thing.

It seemed like a long trip for the payoff that Dez was protecting Charlie and not Claire.

And from the preview for next week...if you think we are really getting answers to three big questions, I have a bridge you should look it.

[h.b.]

I don't tune into Lost for answers but for entertainment.

Seeing Sawyer and Kate and Jack in cages.. . Entertaining? No so much.

Seeing Fionula Flanigan creep me out and learning Charlie will hopefully die... Entertaining? Hell, yeah!

But I'm willing to grant that maybe I felt this episode was so good because I so disliked most of everything with the episodes on Exile Island with Jack, Kate and Sawyer.

[miketc]

Let me get this straight: hit Desmond in the head, and he time travels?

I always get the most sucked in at the teaser for the following week at the end of the show: 3 big answers next week!

Here's some Desmond questions they won't answer, though:

1) What's going on w/ the final scene last season where Desmond's g.f. gets word of the "disturbance" from that remote sensing station?

2) Desmond was trained in the hatch by the colonel that recruited Said. What happened to that guy?

Yes, last night was fantastic. I come from a slightly different perspective, since I only started watching season 1 and 2 on DVD over the summer. In every season, you get 2-3 total useless, stinker episodes, then one like last night that makes the whole thing worth it. Last night, I was IM'ing w/ a friend during the ads (try this, they go by faster) and all we said was: "wtf"... "whoa"... "holy shit"... "whoa"...

Lost has to be just a little more like the Sopranos -- I don't expect every story thread to be answered, but you have to wrap some stuff up, occasionally. Next week should be good; then I'm thinking we'll get about 3 episodes of crap.

[louclinton]

1) What's going on w/ the final scene last season where Desmond's g.f. gets word of the "disturbance" from that remote sensing station?

Well last night told us that gf has more money than Scott Bora$$, so she must have caught wind of what D was up against and called in the marines

2) Desmond was trained in the hatch by the colonel that recruited Said. What happened to that guy?

He died or drank himself to death, or scuttled off the island in a boat. Plus, he was the same actor that played the creepy minister in Carnivale, so that was entertainment enough right there.

I agree with the comparison to the Sopranos. Like h.b., I don't expect answers, just tiny mind explosions or recognition or call-backs. The whole Others/Dharma/Shitstorm Island thing doesn't do it for me. And sometimes, they just do things because of practicality (e.g. the actor who played Mr. Eko was apparently not very well-liked, so they offed him with the smoke/polar bear thingy)

I just wish FNL was on at nine, so I didn't have to sit through American Idol waiting for Lost to begin. FNL was exemplary last night.

Finally, remember that I have a friend in real life who has appeared on the show twice: once as the head of the Board pulling Dr. Dad's ticket, and another as the minister in a Kate flashback when she may or may not have gotten married. I'm starting to think that that casting was not just lack of white actors in Hawaii. I'm gonna ask him.

lc

[h.b.]

Lou,

Not 100% positive but I think Mr Eko's character left because he has a family member (mother?) who is gravely ill.

It was the Ana Lucia character played by Michelle Rodriguez who was not liked by the producers (not sure about her fellow castmates) and so was chosen to be scripted as one of the ones Michael shot.

[Rob in CT]

Man, COD and I must be rowing in the same boat. Sorry, but I found last night to be the lamest Lost episode yet. Just didn't see a whole lot added with Desmond's backstory and found the payoff not worth staying up so late.

Truth be told, I was only excited by the fact that mealy-mouthed Charlie might FINALLY bite the bullet instead of continuing to kiss Claire's chubby(ier) ass. Yuk. This keeps up and I'm swearing off "Lost" once and for all.

Bringing it back to the strip at hand, I was interested in the Japanese view of all things New England. Looks more like "All Things Martha's Vineyard".

[louclinton]

h.b., according to Entertainment Weekly (my sole source of information on the outside world, with the exception of this creepy strip), they didn't like the Mrr. Eko character and he was difficult to work with. His parents died in the year prior to his coming on the show, from what I have read. Here is another, totally unconfirmable snippet I picked up this morning in a search:

"Multiple sources tell the magazine that he's become increasingly hard to work with, "refusing to film scenes as scripted, insisting on rewrites and even demanding several times to be released from his contract." When we asked the producers about that report, they avoided the question."

so when the polarbearsmokehisbrother appeared, they were just culling the herd, is how I interpret it.
lc

[h.b.]

Lou,

I'll go with your version. I'd heard the bit I put forth second hand, so it has no claim to veracity.

Meanwhile, in addition to Claire's weight gain, she's also sporting a new hairdo with bangs. Must have been in Dharma shipment, i.e, the Dharma Create Your Own Hair Salon in a Box.

All kidding aside, while it's fun to joke about that stuff, I usually can handle those sorts of continuity issues.

I mean, hell, I grew up with two Darrins on Bewitched and a different Felix Leiter in every Bond film.

[Jarvis Kellogg]

Hart: Regarding the "sterotypical" rendition of the New England house featured on the link in today's strip, it looks to me as though it might in fact be a rendition of one of the many similar cottages which are located in the center of the town of Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, and which are featured in one of the Island's yearly summer rituals, Illumination Night; in that sense, the depiction is accurate, although perhaps intending to be sterotypical nonetheless as well, as those cottages (which are actually quite interesting and charming) are hardly representative of New England real estate in general.
I am a fan of your site; keep up the good work.

[h.b.]

Jarvis,

Yes. Absolutely.

But that is Doug's point in responding to Mike's assertion that Doug is previously saying "all Japanese like Sushi" (i.e, Mike is riffing off the "all rednecks eat possum" "all Blacks eat fried chicken" kind of inappropriate stereotyping.)

Doug is saying, yeah, but wait, we all don't live in Queen Anne style cottages on Martha's vineyard either.

Doug's point in the end isn't to say it's wrong for the Japanese tour guide book to pick that image just as it wouldn't be wrong for a US tour book about Japan to show a Zen temple or whatever on the cover or wrong for Doug's Sushi Pillow Promo to proceed. (You may disagree with him on the latter.)

He's trying to say that it's natural/normal for one culture to zero in on a myth/symbol aspect of a foreign culture.

For Doug, sushi is very symbolic of Japan.

Again, remember, Doug is the most anti-PC of the gang, so he's going to be piqued by any notion of someone like Mike suggesting "that's not a politically correct thing to say."

[Dave S.]

What I'd like to see is a sword-toting, sushi eating sumo wrester flying a Zero into an aircraft carrier. Now that's Japanese!

It's disappointing to me that Asahi Super Dry is brewed in Canada.

[Pond]

Didn't Desmond kill the colonel when he followed him outside before running back to the hatch to hit the button that had already counted down? It was in the last episode of the second season when he found out he crashed the plane. Am I confused?

I liked the preview to next week with the three questions that will be answered, and they alluded one of the questions will be the meaning of Jack's tatoo. Let me tell you, after two or three references to it in the first season and absolutely no discussion of it since, I'm going to be on pins and needles all week waiting to get that answer.

[Harwich Rich]

Thats OK Dave,so is Fosters. Thats Canadian for beer mate :)

[Dave S.]

I guess you could also say, that's Australian for beer, eh? ;) But is it really? Boo! I mean, I love Canadian beer as much as the next guy, but don't local ingredients count for anything?

[Harwich Rich]

I guess not anymore-thats why I make my own .

[Kaz]

Quality vs Quantity, Dave S.

They couldn't afford to send enough import over here to compete quantity and price with the likes of Bud, Coors, and Miller if they were making it in Australia or Japan.

Then again they can't make it directly in the US because then it wouldn't be an "import".

You all might find it interesting to know that 'gansetts are are the #1 American Macro Lager at BeerAdvocate.com. At least our porch grannies sling'em back with the good stuff.

[miketc]

Pond:

I was thinking about that as I wrote it... my memory was that Desmond didn't kill him, just bloodied him up a bit. But I'm not sure...

[Rob in CT]

Nice link, Kaz. I personally like Narragansett long necks in the summer after a hot afternoon of lawn work.

Was also cool to see my grandfather's favorite - Grain Belt - make the top ten in their listings. I hadn't thought about that brew in a long time. I can still see Grampa sitting under the shade of that Black Walnut tree after a hot day mowing hay on his farm with a six pack of that stuff in a metal bucket full of ice. By the third one, he was usually happy to let me have as many swigs as I wanted as long as Grandma wasn't looking. :)

[BosoxBob]

The Spinners need to find a much better Matsuzaka promotion. I would recommend that instead of the dice, they give away 20 oz bottles of Asahi Super Dry.

[Dave S.]

They could give away boxes of Mr. Sparkle laundry detergent.

[Bushey]

I'm usually just a voyeur here, checking in daily for a laugh and respite from work, but as an architect on the Vinyahd, I can't resist.... this strip is the best. Discourse on beer, links to sushi pillows, and architectural history, each a "Lost" like thread tied loosely to the great mystery: the Sox. Awesome.

H.B., The architectural style is probably better described as "Carpenter Gothic"--similar timeframe as Queen Anne, but associated more with inexpensively built cottages, like those out in Oak Bluffs.

And Dave S., you forgot "burusera" in your eloquent description of the Japanese.

Keep the laughs coming you guys.

[h.b.]

Thanks for the insight on that! "Carpenter Gothic" is a cool name.

I notice, too, that that style seems to be back in vogue. I've seen whole subdivisions in that style. Now that I think of it, the houses on Wysteria Lane on Desperate Housewives, while much larger than cottages, have some of that style.

[mikeya2k1]

geez its like we is flippin channels between lost and this old house... i love this shit!!!

[NYSoxfan]

Meanwhile, somewhere near Deathstar Tampa, the successor to $teinbrenner is hauled in for drunk driving... what are the odds he just left a titty bar?

http://www.pcsoweb.com/Inmate/SubjectResults.aspx?id=1234336

[Rob in CT]

NYFan - Fantastic! How in the world did you come across this one. From the looks of his shit-eating grin, I might suggest it was a gay bar.

Looks like someone had himself a happy St. V day...

[NYSoxfan]

Rob in CT - belated greetings & salutations. The AP story was kind enough to include the link to the actual police report. Looks like he'll have to appear in court on March 15th for a hearing, poor lad...

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news?slug=ap-yankees-swindalarrested&prov=ap&type=lgns