Juxtapose

Luck of the draw or conspiracy? Looks like Nick Fury and Yatterman went to the same school of modeling. You know, I never saw those two in the same room together, ever!

More of Faraday's Journal...

Of course I was thrilled last night to see some familiar images on Lost that we've only seen before in Daniel Faraday's journal. Hanging out at the Hydra station was the map Faraday was using to navigate the island as well as the same space-time map that I've obsessed about... repeatedly.

Here's the original image as seen in Faraday's Journal:

And here's the map that Caesar found at the Hydra station:

I thought for sure that these weren't the same maps with one on lined notebook paper and the other on a clean (and bigger) sheet of parchment. Indeed, as one commenter pointed out, they are one and the same:

I'm going back to revisit the circles of Faraday's various maps to compare them to the new, improved map over at LostMap.Blogspot.com. I'm just not able to line up these as well with this revised map and am wondering if it's the circles or the map that's the trouble:

I think that the layout of the stations probably looks closer to this:

It's remarkable how different the above maps of the island are from the one found at TheLostMap.Blogspot.com. The biggest difference seems to be the placement of the Hydra station island.

It's also been suggested by my pal Jeff Simko that these circles have nothing to do with the configuration of the stations but that they represent the "pockets of energy" that Eloise Hawking is tracking down at the Lamppost Station. This is tougher to "prove" as there aren't too many good screenshots of the world map Eloise is using. Here's one from GetLostPodcast.com with some circles from Daniel's map laid over it:

A better overlay can be seen with Hawking's computer:

Not an exact match... but close at times.

Likewise, an old friend, Terry May, volunteered that these may be tied into the "Vile Vortices". This idea has been kicked around for a while. There are a couple nice write ups about it here: Smoke and Mirrors: Decoding Lost and here.

I also wanted to note that there's an interesting theory over at JackLovesKate.com about Daniel Faraday and Stuart Radzinsky being the same person -- the door map and Faraday's map lining up so well. It's possible though I think Radzinsky is going to show up one of these days soon.

The Sawyer Son of a Bitch compilation:

God's Cartoonist: The Comic Crusade of Jack Chick

Even if you don't know the name, you've certainly seen the conspicuous 3-by-5-inch pamphlets at the local shopping mall, bowling alley, library or phone booth. These so-called "Chick Tracts" are the brainchild of comic artist Jack T. Chick...READ MORE

Buy From Amazon.com

Skullcrusher Mountain by Jonathan Coulton

Heard this song on Sound Opinions this week. It's entirely too cute and reminds me a lot of Dr. Horrible's SingAlong Blog.

Movie Review: Graphic Sexual Horror

Graphic Sexual Horror (Barbara Bell & Anna Lorentzon, 2009, USA)

That there can be beauty found in torture proves to be the troublesome core of Graphic Sexual Horror, a look at Insex.com, a website that pushed the boundaries via its use of extreme bondage and anguish. The brainchild of PD (real name Brent Scott), Insex.com featured a cavalcade of attractive women undergoing myriad torments. These wild scenarios were only limited by the fertile and frightening imagination of PD and his website’s subscribers.

Directors Lorentzon and Bell (author of Stacking in Rivertown) document the rise and fall of the flagitious empire via frank interviews with several key players both behind the scenes and in front of the camera as well as footage that entertained patrons of the website. Though these clips often resembled scenes and a serial killer’s fantasies, the models were stripped of their names, armed with safewords, paid for their trouble, and often sought out PD to session with the ingenious sadist. When things went beyond where they should have, as was apt to happen with such extreme scenes, the results could be fairly scary or fascinating, as shown by the scene of a model reacting adversely to having her face slapped.

Eventually, Insex.com was brought down by a combination of problems inside (PD supporting a spooky drug addict) and out (the Homeland Security office pressuring the companies that provided merchant accounts to the site). During its run, however, the site gave new beauty to agony that shocked some but pleasured many more.

Visit GraphicSexualHorror.com for more information.

Roger Ebert Has Looked Better

Lost Thoughts: (John) 316

A few thoughts:

I'm glad that Kate didn't bring Aaron back to the Island since Claire was pretty clear about that in one of Kate's "dreams" (can we be sure that was a dream or it might have been a "memory" a la Desmond getting a memory from Faraday). I keep wondering if she left Aaron with Sawyer's daughter...

I thought it was a nice plug with Hurley reading "Y: The Last Man" (en Espanol) – "Y" was written by Brian K. Vaughn who has written a few episodes and is now producing the show. This is a great book, BTW. It's about a guy named Yorick Brown (his Dad was a big Shakespeare fan) who is… the last man on earth. The only survivor (apart from his pet monkey) of an "incident” that wiped out all people with a Y chromosome. Ironically, Yorick is trying to get to Australia to find his girlfriend. Kind of a reverse of the 815 flight from Australia.

Thanks to Steve Conroy for pointing this out to me. I love this kind of stuff:

Top 50 Albums

I held out for weeks, so I was on the downside of the adoption curve, for the "25 Things" note on Facebook. Yet, I was an early adopter for the new "Top 40 Albums" one. This is due to me thinking the other day, "I've been meaning to make a list of my top albums for a while..." This confluence of events finally prompted me to do so.

I didn't abide by the rules of the meme (though I tried to), here's my list plus a few others:

1. Public Enemy – It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
2. Public Image LTD – Metal Box
3. The Cramps – Songs the Lord Taught Us
4. Pop Will Eat Itself – This is the Day, This is the Hour, This is This
5. The Pixies – Doolittle
6. Hedwig & The Angry Inch (Soundtrack)
7. Velvet Underground & Nico – Velvet Underground & Nico
8. Komeda – The Genius of Komeda
9. Aphex Twin – Richard D. James Album
10. Soundgarden – Badmotorfinger
11. Bauhaus – In the Flat Field
12. Beck – Midnight Vultures
13. Black Sabbath – Paranoid
14. Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin III
15. Beastie Boys – Check Your Head
16. Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players – Vintage Slide Collections from Seattle
17. Tom Waits – Swordfishtrombones
18. The Smiths – Louder than Bombs
19. The Dwarves – Blood, Guts, & Pussy
20. Babes in Toyland – Fontanelle
21. Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation
22. Nirvana – Nevermind
23. The Sex Pistols – Nevermind the Bullocks
24. The Ventures – Ventures in Space
25. They Might Be Giants – They Might Be Giants
26. The White Stripes – Redd Blood Cells
27. Dean Gray – American Edit
28. The Kleptones – Night At The Hip-Hopera
29. Senor Coconut – El Baile Aleman
30. The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Soundtrack)
31. White Zombie – La Sexorcisto (Devil Music Vol. 1)
32. Devo – Are we not men? We are Devo!
33. Prince – Purple Rain (Soundtrack)
34. Meatloaf – Bat Out of Hell
35. L7 – Smell the Magic
36. Kiss – Destroyer
37. The Crystal Method – Vegas
38. Jane's Addiction – Nothing's Shocking
39. John Linnell – State Songs
40. James Kolchalka Superstar – Money Vs. Robot
41. Arthur Brown – The Crazy World of Arthur Brown
42. Abba – Abba Gold
43. Run DMC – Raising Hell
44. Doktor Kosmos – Cocktail
45. Weezer – Weezer (The Blue Album)
46. Government Issue – You
47. Prong – Beg to Differ
48. Sinead O'Connor – The Lion and the Cobra
49. Lords of Acid – Lust
50. The Doors – Morrison Hotel

My criteria for the above list was fairly simple; albums that never fail to please me.

It's funny to think that when I was younger, I used to judge people quite a bit on what they listened to. "How can you like that band? I don't think I can like you, now." I've grown a lot more tolerant in the years since high school. Even if you like a shitty band... we can still be friends.

The People Vs. George Lucas... Lucas Cheats. Lucas Wins.

This looks like it could be fairly interesting.