Jeremy BanthamwhAT THEF**KISGOINGON!

My mind is melting.

The season finale blows open everyone's theories about Lost and, guess what? validates some of mine. Here we go...

1) Please refer to my earlier post. I was half right. Starts with J and ends in -antham. I said we hadn't met him yet and I guess we could have never expected an alias. I was wrong about the character of the person in the coffin. Really, the only thing I was right about was that it wasn't Micheal.

2) Jack is a wreck. I was right about needing to get back to the island.

Let's look at my Hail Mary predictions...

1) Life sucks for MOST people off the island. Kate feels it's best for Aaron but everyone else is not cool with it.
2) Only Sun is back but she is definitely using her dad's company and his connections with Widmore (which were never shown but somehow I inferred) to find Jin and the rest of the survivors.
3) Dead on. Penny found Desmond thanks to his time-traveling call and her subsequent search for him using her father's boat. Word.

So we've learned that immediate predictions are stupid to make and the only way to get a handle on Lost is some long-term thinking. Which I rule at!

Everyone is Lost. Especially Me.

To sum up:

So now Ben controls the smoke monster, the island has been both behind and ahead of "real world" (boat) time, Jack and Claire's dad is alive (or at least in the picture... called it!), and the island can be moved. Also, Mittelos Bioscience is definitely an Others front and apparently has been for at least 50 years. Richard clearly doesn't age.

BOLD PREDICTION:

Jacob is Jack's dad, Christian. Check these screen caps and tell me they don't jive with a script that calls for someone of Christian's description without actually using the actor and blowing the secret early.

Some questions:

What is the significance of the pebbles, the compass and the knife that young Locke chose?

If most of The Others were chosen to be on the island, are most of the main survivors also chosen to be there? Jack's father faked his death, Locke went on walkabout as suggested by the tall dude that Hurley is afraid of in the mental hospital... there must be other connections...

PUSA

Last night Jamie and I went to see The Presidents of the United States of America. I know! Yes, they're still together. This was a show I should have gone to 12 years ago! It was great. They played all the hits and their new stuff was just as fun to rock out to as their old stuff. Every song they play makes you smile and jump around. I didn't get the new album there but I should have. Check out the website and rock out to some videos. And go see them live if you can - this band is still supernova!

Hahaha You Suck Yankees

Thank you, Brian Cashman, for turning down a ridiculous trade for Santana back in the Spring that would have ensured your dominance over the American League for years. Thank you so much for holding on to your prized "prospects" Phil Hughes (0-4, 9.00 ERA) and Ian Kennedy (0-2, 8.37 ERA). I sure hope that you are confident in your decision to hang on to this young "talent" and were planning all along to have one demoted to AAA by May 3rd (Kennedy) and one out until AT LEAST the All-Star break with a broken rib. I hope your new-found dedication to youth in your organization makes you feel like you're really competing with the Red Sox or even the Rays on that front.




See, Cash, the difference between your club and the Twins, Sox,or Rays, is that just having young talent isn't enough. You have to actually develop them. The Yankees haven't developed a player since Jeter and Posada, so I'm sure you've just forgotten how. Meanwhile, the Twins will take a kid who is a terrible first strike swinger, who has raw outfield instincts and who is tied for the MLB lead in steals and turn him in to something a lot like this.

UPDATE: Just wanted to mention that the day after I wrote this Gomez hit for the cycle. Just sayin. Oh, and yesterday I heard PA and Dubay talking about this exact thing with Cashman. I'll get a link to their segment but basically they must have read my post. Just goes to show that unless you play for the Vikes or the Wild those guys won't pay attention to you until they need to fill some time on a Wednesday morning.

Lost: My Brain is Going to Explode

OK. I never posted a follow up to the Lost season premier a few weeks ago, mostly because I'm busy, but also because I've been trying to formulate a counter-point to my friend Dave's theory that the secret of the island involves a parallel Earth.

Basically, I thought that it's the electromagnetic properties that make the island special. Everything going on is tied to the island's extraordinary physical properties. From super fast healing to an inability of people to find it or leave it, to the primary reason of the Dharma Initiative - they're all tied to the island's off-the-charts activity.

Tonight's episode seemed to be a convergence of our two theories with quantum physics as the link. While I'm still not convinced that the island exists on a totally different planet or plane I think that our two theories moved one step towards each other during Desmond's adventure. It seems to me that the properties of the island are so powerful that they can really mess you up on a quantum level if you don't use the right channels to come and go - it's worse to just get the bearing wrong a little and be able to get off the island than it is to sail or fly aimlessly around and never be able to escape the magnetic effects on instruments. People's consciousnesses bounce back and forth between spaces in time like quantum particles and would probably do so indefinitely if the human brain could handle the strain. The quantum explanation is solidified by Faraday, the physicist, being the go to guy to solve Desmond's problem.

I have some more general predictions regarding some things we've seen.

1. Dharma has set up other facilities around the world to try and harness this type of phenomenon in the past. This is what I think they were showing with the polar bear fossil in the desert.

2. The Others are a counter-foundation/conglomerate dedicated to the preservation of these spots. Remember that Hanso, Paik and Widmore formed Dharma. Just who formed the group that Ben works for is unclear but the conflict between the two that exists below the public consciousness is clear from Sayid's episode last week. A good place to start is to figure out exactly who Richard, the guy that recruited Ben as a child, is and look out for his company, Mittelos Bioscience (the company that recruited Juliet).

I'll think of more I'm sure - we're watching tons of old episodes to pick up stuff we missed. Whatever happens, however the season turns out, we're going to be fucking blown away and no one will have seen it coming.

UPDATE: I must be totally addled - Dave is right. Widmore and Paik so far have nothing to do (that we know of) with Dharma. I have no idea what episode I thought I saw that in. If I could do one of those strikethroughs I would, but I don't know how. Crap.

DOUBLE UPDATE: In your face, Dave! Did you see last night's episode? Widmore! Boo-ya!

The Moment of Truth

Last year I posted a little recap and some predictions about the next season of Lost. Finally, in 20 minutes, we'll see how accurate I was. Tomorrow I'll post a recap of the first episode of the fourth season and some adjusted predictions and we'll agree that yes, I am the coolest person you know.

Morales Takes Manhattan

I haven't posted about our New York City trip yet! Crap! This post was half done in my drafts box until I noticed it today. Finally, you get the stunning epic that you deserve.

Jamie and I went to NYC in December, right before Christmas and right after I took over at Harvey's. We stayed in the Flatotel, mostly because it was an awesome deal on Orbitz, it was in Midtown, which I liked, and Jamie saw it on America's Next Top Model. It was nice.

We did a lot of walking around, looking like tourists, gawking at all of the buildings and all of the famous crap we saw. The first day we hit Midtown and Times Square, only a couple of blocks from the hotel. It was, of course, crazy busy. The highlight was seeing Flavor Flav running around in the street like an idiot after his limo. I could have seriously mistook him for a crack head except for his giant clock swinging around his little neck. So that was awesome. The first day we took it easy, went to the Museum of Natural History and just kicked around Central Park a Little. The first night Maria and her boyfriend Joel took the train out from Philly and took us to dinner. I seriously have already forgotten what the place was called but it was really nice of them to pay for it. Sarafina. That's what it was. Moving on...

On the second day we decided to explore a little bit and swung over to Park Ave, stopped at Rockefeller Center and checked out the huge tree. At Park Avenue we saw a movie being filmed, hung out for a while, and ended up seeing Joaquin Phoenix. We stopped to window shop like a block away from the set and he must have followed us or something because he was right next to Jamie when we stopped. He's really really short. Then we swung down to Chelsea, the Village and SoHo and did some serious hardcore shopping. The coolest store ever is Brooklyn Industries. We spent a ton of money on ourselves and then took a hardcore nap. Friday night we met up with Mike Sacks, a fellow former living Field Secretary and he showed us a few bars and his tiny-ass apartment. We also saw these dudes who were McLovin clones at the last bar we were at. It was sad.

Saturday we hit Central Park and checked out their little-ass zoo. We also checked out the Apple store that's underground - the storefront was a big clear cube with the Apple logo on it. Like the future! We took it easy because the night would be a long one. Saturday was our big date night. For cocktails we hit One If By Land in the Village - a restaurant in Aaron Burr's old carriage house. The place was decked out like it was Fezziwig's or something, lots of garlands and lights everywhere. For dinner we hit Gotham, which was as good as expected. After dinner cocktails brought us to The KGB Bar, a super cool little place covered in old propaganda and portraits of the great minds of communism. This also happened to be where the Santa bar crawl was for the moment, which was great because I was wearing my red suede jacket. Afterwards we went to a comedy show at the Comic Strip, where Seinfeld is always performing in the intro to the show. Super funny, but the highlight was Rich Voss just destroying this drunk bitch in the front row who wouldn't shut up. It was classic. By 3:00 we were back at The Perfect Pint, our favorite Times Square Bar, singing Mariah Carey Christmas carols and pounding more beer. Ill-advised indeed. By 4:30 we were passed out with our street vendor gyros still in hand.

Sunday before flying back we hit downtown, saw Ground Zero, struggled to not punch the people who were selling pictures of the site to tourists and headed to Wall Street. We checked out Trinity Church and found the lost treasure of the Templars in the basement and then jumped on a plane and headed home. The End.