Benjamin Linus is Tyler Durden.

Everything can be distilled to Fight Club.

Poor Locke…

mea culpa, &tc.  Last week was a bit hectic, so let me kinda give a summary for my 2 1/2 readers, so you don’t think I fell off the end of the world.

work:  last week was our staff meeting, which srsly cuts down on my ability to think outside of work.  It is fun in an exhausting sort of way.  That couple with

church networking: which I’ve spent too many hours working on getting a windows small business server up and running, sorta, kinda, *sigh*.  the hours spent on this has meant less time spent

watching tv: which I haven’t been doing.  I’ve caught up a bit with the reality mix (survivor and the amazin race) and the entertainment mix (idol and dwts), and I did catch LOST (expose) which I thought was wonderfully done, and left some interesting questions and plot devices just lying around the island (spiders, walkie-talkie, diamonds).  But I’m behind on everything else.  Trying to watch The Riches which is good stuff, FX does a good job with the darker dramas, but I’m at least two episodes down, good thing for DVRS.

FPU and Family: We’ve done some work around the casa, last week we (the kids and I) did some yard work, which helped beat back the jungle a bit.  FPU budgeting is in the house, which means we are controlling our spending, and using a plan.  Good discussions at church during the FPU sessions, have realized that we are in the same bag as many others.  Discussions at home on the budgeting planning mix have been mixed, but at least we’re having them, instead of just ignoring the elephant in the room.  It will get better, and our debt snowball has us debt free in 30-36 months.  We can do it faster if we allot some bonus money, or extra employment income.  So it’s all good.

What going on in your neck of the woods?

I’ll have my LOST recap up later, busy with real life work work work.

But last night’s Jericho wasn’t half bad, at least had a twist in it… But I’m losing interest in the show.

America kicked Brandon off Idol, so we have at least one more week of Sanjizzle to snark about.  VFTW is crowing and denying that Sanjizzle was in the bottom two.  Dial Idol had Brandon in the bottom three, so they can crow that they were right as well. 

I’m not going to do a detailed recap, there are lots of other places that recap better than I, and my time and brain power is a bit limited today.

Back to a single Island LOST and things are going back to their normal ways, keeping track of the beachies, and following the action of one of the exploring adventurers.  We’ve lost track of Jack, but that is okay, keep him off the screen a bit, let Fox have a mini-vacation, he’s earned it, just stay away from Thailand, Jack, m’kay?

The Beachies had a good time taking away Sawyer’s stuff, who would have made a terrible king of the flies anyways.  Best line from Sawyer is a time between asking Paulo, “who the hell are you?” and dubbing Sun and Jin – crouching tiger and hidden dragon.  It will be hard to not have the sawyerisms for a few episodes, but my lawd we’ve gotten blitzed by them the last few episodes haven’t we?

Locke, Kate, Sayid and Danielle find the Flame station, and are confronted with the apparent ‘last Dharmie’, which turned out to be bull.  Sayid does a great job of actually, you know, asking questions and getting answers, and for a while it was confirmation city of a bunch of plot points (other rebellion, some sort of submarine, dharma as a project on the island is dead, &tc).  Surprisingly, Sayid sees through the subterfuge and we are left wondering, what if anything Mikhail Bakunin said was true.  Another Dharma computer gets fried, because of the long standing Lost tradition of the main characters refusing to share the tactical situation with others, perhaps an over the shoulder comment of, “Yo! John, lots of C4 is rimming this place, don’t press any buttons, m’kay pal?”  Instead we see the Locke is trying out for the role of the last living Dharma Initiative and does the bidding of the computer, and boom goes the Flame hatch (mixed blessing, we don’t have to endure a season of hatch sitting like last season, but we don’t get to dig into all the juicy Dharma manuals in the basement either.)

Good episode, pace is picking up, and Lost will pick up more viewers as other shows go into mini-haituses, so long as Fox keeps shifting the post-Idol love around hopefully LOST will inch back up in the ratings.

But seriously… Isaac *sigh*  (tip o’ the hat to sister-I-sell-my-books-on-Amazon)

Isaac Mendez You scored 29 Idealism, 54 Nonconformity, 66 Nerdiness

I need painting supplies. Congratulations, you’re Isaac Mendez! You’re a talented, creative, artistic soul with a few demons you’ve been working to overcome. You are really passionate person and you are not afraid to express yourself or your emotions. Your best quality: Creativity and artistic talent. Your worst quality: A possibly addictive or indulgent personality

Kraken – Calamari bars in Aukland brace themselves for a drastic reduction in price.

Haven’t watched Survivor yet, fear not it is still in the queue.  Busy night, had to accept the accolades of my lessers at our fantasy football celebration banquet (Pizza Joint Carmine’s on Coit & Campbell was selected as the location for the festivities).  Then made my bible study to hear about the Labor sphere in the Truth project’s worldview (kinda stuffed it into a capitalist frame, not sure that isn’t entirely eisegesis at bit on the host’s part… but it was a good session).  Made it home in time to queue up two shows to watch with Ang, two of our favorites to watch together.

Grey’s Anatomy

Great episode.  The last two were great, the first of the three-epi arc was ‘meh’, but this last one, great.  I really doubted that Mere would die, though they kept that possibility open as long as they could.  Stacy called the fact that mama-dith was the one that would die.  Which kills the drudging background stomp of mommy-issues.  If dark&twisty Meredith can overcome the death of her mother, then mer-der has a chance at summ-seth bliss.  Great cut at the end of the McSteamy/Montgomery-Shepherd-Montgomery Celibacy Challenge, McSteamy might win the 60 day no sex race, as Alec keeps edging into the center of MSM’s radar screen.  Great parts: Alec’s shoulder squeeze on Izzy when we knew Meredith was safe.  Every scene with Coach Taylor.  Denny rocked the show.  Christina’s announcement about her nuptials to Burke, seconds after she knew Mere didn’t suffer too much drain bamage.  Chief rocked his parts, and his admission to dying his hair for the ladies.

The OC

Fitting ending.  They certainly could have kept the storylines going, making a 6 month jump in the show, but this episode hit all the marks.  The Summer-Seth relationship, and the meta from ‘Briefcase/No Briefcase’ and The Valley was just the right touch.  What new show will keep us informed of the 5 new seasons that the Valley has won?  For most of the show I was waiting for a commercial plug from Fox for a new show starting next week called TheUC, set in Berkeley, California.  The boys trying valiantly to get Ma and Pa Cohen’s old house was great.  The last montage was awesome and allows us fans to cherish the show more fore giving us a nice package tied in a bow.  Seth letting Summer go follow her passion.  Julie Cooper graduating from college with her two beaus and her remaining daughter wearing ‘Team Julie’ tee-shirts.  Sandy Cohen teaching!  And the last scene with Ryan paying it forward to another misplace youth.  I’ll miss the show that gave us Chrismuhkkah, but it was a nice finale, that celebrated the good points of the show.  (and only gave us a glimpse of Marissa, and totally ignored Oliver and Theresa)

Remember DialIdol had the low down before the show last season, lets see how the dialing program will work with a full field of competitors.

But first, you have to measure the VoteForTheWorst effect, which can be strong early, and it appears their first victim will be Antonella (please say it ain’t so!). But Stacy says that there will be some announcement on the show, perhaps the producers trying to protect the vaunted Idol ratings against… well *never mind* there are now shows to compete against Idol, at least not on Wednesday night… but let’s hope the announcement is the Antonella will get the boot and we won’t have her around for freaking ever.

I say that because in my unscientific poll of blogs that wrote about last night, Antonella was universally hated, but DialIdol has her at number two, firmly ensconced between Lakisha and Melinda.

DialIdol predicts that Paul Kim and Nicholas Pedro will get the boot. (Maybe Shanjaya is getting some VFTW love?) along with Amy Krebs and that other girl who has two A-letter names. (I forget her name, because according to DI, she didn’t get one stinking vote… OUCH!)

Update: DialIdol got Amy and Paul right. Rudy and Nicole also get the boot, they were within the margin of error, but still without the VFTW effect, they should have stayed and Antonella and Sanjaya left… but *sigh* there is always next week.

and now with the freakshow finished we get to see who made the cut.  I’m with others that think the final two chosen should have gone the other way.  Sundance didn’t perform well in Hollywood, and if he can’t handle the dim lights of auditions, then hows he gonna handle the blaring bright lights.  The final girl contestant is a Jersey girl twit from what we’ve seen of her, though I do remember her thinking her dim-watted friend was the better singer.

My votes so far (and I’ve never actually voted, my wife doesn’t let me dial the phone) are going to Chris Sligh , the surprisingly chubby curly haired guy that auditioned in Birmingham.  Anyone that lists fellow idol contestants as their musical influences is someone that isn’t so influenced by “The Show” to resort to fan-boyish fantasies.  He kinda reminds me of John Popper from Blues Traveler.  None of the girls really grab me as anything special so far.  Let the obsessiveness begin.