The Lingering: Skulldiggery Book 3, by DM Gritzmacher (book review)

Probably your favorite bartender / real estate magnate returns (The Quarry, 2023) in an interweaving blend of eras and narratives.

Almost 44 years ago, Russell Stander found something.  Spending summers of his adolescence away from home and friends in Michigan, and instead a season-long visit to his idiosyncratic, elderly aunt in Western Illinois, Rusty is understandably in search of adventure.  As it turns out, he and his cadre of summer friends find more than they bargain for, discovering a mysterious, abandoned graveyard full of dark secrets. 

Stephen King and Peter Straub described the “dreamlike and slightly unnatural… characteristic of borderlands” in their novel Black House, and DM Gritzmacher’s third installment of the Skulldiggery series takes place just a short way down that most awesome (and awful!) of all American borders – The Mississippi River.  The story hops between the present day, the early 1980s, and the turn of the 19^th into the early 20^th Century, with each of the three eras meandering toward each other as the narrative unfolds.  In our modern moment, we find middle-aged bar owner Rusty returning to the small community of Almore, Illinois with his friend and employee, Tom Secrist, a retired police officer.  In the early 80s, we find the same Rusty, 10 years old (give or take), and a group of four friends wandering through the countryside in search of some fun and some adventure.  And eighty years prior to that, a mysterious figure on either side of the border that is The Mississippi (and the turn of that century on either side of 1900) also wandering that same countryside where the boys find themselves we are witness to a sequence of grisly murders told from the perspective of the perpetrator.

It's part Stand By Me and part In Cold Blood, with a dash of co
smic horror, and a world of related stories swirling all around the edges.

Engaging, leaving you hungry for more.

Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023

ISBN: 9798986638751

Page Count: 259

Publisher: Piqued

Terror | Terroir

 I've recently watched the Jordan Peele produced The Twilight Zone, and thoroughly enjoyed Get Out when it came out a few year's ago.  I've long made the case that horror is as (or more) necessary as terror, in our daily lives, and I think Peele's horror ouvre, as it continues to unfold in front of us, will provide an object lesson for my argument.

The other night, I watched Us, and was profoundly moved by it (and close to bowel-moved as well it was so freaking scary).  It is the story of a fear of an under-class rising up.  But this under-class is not comfortably something other.  Rather, they are us.

The notion is terrifying (as opposed to horrifying).  I do not love the quickly accessible distinctions between the two (including the one in my post linked to above); a more fulsome account, if desired.  The fear of the revolutionary uprising is something that the progressive / liberal-defining bourgeoisie want to mask.  We support (in principle at least) the overthrow of power, and watching these upper middle class families get their come-uppance is, I would argue, a terror movie rather than a horror movie.

But then, Peele does what he has done so marvelously in much of his recent genre work, he extends.  If you relish the terror of bourgeois families at their vacation houses getting terrorized and chased around by unknown baddies, then by extension you will cheer to yourself similar harassed and displaced.  Of course this (generally) does not hold true, and becomes where we enter the horror genre.  The apocalypse for everyone else and adventure / free to wander tale for ourselves is at the heart of the good old 'merican terror story (The Stand, The Road, Revolution, The Postman, et cetera et cetera).  We love these tales of terror as long as we are in the less than 0.6% who get to survive Captain Trips.

In Us, when we begin to see the masses of underworlders holding hands in lines across streets, in and out of buildings and over mountain roads, forming an echo (but what's the word for an echo that's louder - more heard!?) of Hands Across America, the implications begin to be horrifying.  They are coming for all of us: children and adults, black and white, rich and poor.  

For me personally, Hands Across America was already a horror-laden event.  In 1986, my two brothers and I piled in to the family station wagon with my dad, leaving my mom at home, and drove south toward central Illinois to join in the not-so-nationwide chain of humanity.  On the drive down, the three other boys in the car (7, 14 & 40 years my senior) were discussing apocalypse as some kooky preacher on the radio (and billboards I seem to recall) was predicting Armageddon in the coming days or weeks (evidently it wasn't high-profile enough to make this list, unless perhaps my memories are conflated).  My brothers and dad were discussing the concept academically (or at least the childish version of academically; my family, and in particular my dad, are textualist bible-y people, and while they didn't go in for specific predictions of any moment, I do have the sense that they all kind of generally believed in it 'eventually'), and my 8-year-old mind was swallowing it whole, and I was terrified that the end of my existence was mere days away (hours of it to be wasted in the way back of this damned car!). 

I don't believe that Jordan Peele tailored his horror story specifically to me, but I am curious (and it's probably too late to note, spoiler-alert) as to what the implications of the film might have been had it not been for the twistNotSoTwist ending.  Would Adelaide's (Lupita Nyong'o) doppelganger (Red), who in fact was Adelaide, have seemingly led the uprising had she not come originally from the top side. Revolutionary artists (or perhaps it's more often horror makers) often wind up creating works that actually make arguments quite the contrary to what they themselves believe or would espouse in the real world.  

• Thus, is the argument of Us that in order to make revolution, the underside need a spark (inspiration or perhaps permission) from a member of the ruling class?
• Just as the hippie horror-makers (Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter) wound up making conservative arguments warning about the dangers of teenage promiscuity...
• And a work of horror fiction as seemingly revolutionary as Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves winds up making a very very conservative argument (albeit circuitously).

It's not to say that it's the fault of these brilliant creators that their works wind up making conservative arguments that they'd rather not be making.  Rather it's the tricksy nature of working in the media of terror and horror and trying to bridge the gap.  It's why a filmmaker like George Romero was less susceptible to falling into the same trap, because he started with the horror and embraced it for its own sake, and the meaning came afterward.  When you try to wield the ephemeral (which is what you're doing when you're creating a work of art), it gets slippery, and doesn't always go where it wants.

It's why when the artistic mockery of religion that is televangelist doomsayers like Jack Van Impe and publishing powerhouses like Joel Osteen and religiosity-based "university" educators like Jerry Falwell Jr... 

• Ply their craft, they wind up arguing against their personal ownership or understanding of church doctrine, and their political and moral arguments (not to mention their continuing calls for their own personal enrichment) wind up making the case for exactly the opposite of their intent.

Tyler Ledger Joker Fi

I went and saw Joker last night - dutifully.  It was violent, very well made, well acted (and heavily acted), wonderfully shot, all like you've heard.

I would also like to submit that it may just be the most thought-provoking piece of cinematic commentary on our current socio-economic condition in decades.

It is a radical film full of radical ideas and radical violence.  Although it saddens me that it is radical to say that the current economic status quo is wildly immoral and that an existential cognitive dissonance is necessary to participate in the system honestly.

The central question of Joker is whether any of the events of the movie actually happened or not within the confines of the fictional Batman universe.  This question is revealed in the final moments of the movie when Arthur is locked up for treatment of his mental illness.  It becomes clear that this moment is chronologically prior to all of the violence that has previously occurred in the film.  Arthur describes all (or possibly just some) of that violence as a "joke" that as occurred to him as we was speaking with his case worker.  When she asks him what it was, he says that she "wouldn't get it".

Source: tvOvermind.com

This 'final reveal' parallels the 20-year-old final reveal of what I consider the last really radical movie focused on these same themes, Fight Club.  In that movie we learn that our previously reliable narrator was actually Tyler Durden the whole time.  (Also, in a partial re-viewing the scene where Lou drops in on a fight club evening, Tyler's hysterical laughter after having his ass kicked by Lou is preminiscent of Arthur's own manifestations of his mental illness).

Earlier in the film, it is revealed that Arthur's mother was diagnosed with delusional psychosis and narcissistic personality disorder (a diagnosis that may be pretty close to part of Arthur's own plus a dash of schizophrenia - which is reified in the moment when Arthur is actually standing in the room as an adult when his mother is being booked into Arkham after abusing him as a child).  While many reviewers have made much of the portrayal of mental illness in the film, I think the underlying argument of both of these movies is that some forms of thought and action (including some violence) that we casually refer to as mental illness are in fact radical responses to the immoral status quo.

To be clear, I am not condoning any real world violence here, but I do think that artistic depiction of radical political violence can pose important questions that perhaps can't be voiced within the current socio-political climate.  Questions like - what might happen if we take the modern-era royalty (i.e. the super-rich) out of power.  In Joker the one piece of violence that we know "really happens" (although perhaps not exactly as we see it occur in the movie) is the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne.  This event is formative to the future Batman, so it has to occur within the larger mythology of the film.

We also tend to forget in our modern and enlightened era how rare it is to have massive social change without violence.  Although the "clowns" in Joker are easily read as violent criminal thugs engaged in looting and riots, they are also the lumpenproletariat activated by their clown prince.  They are engaged in a modern iteration of the French Revolution and their King Louis XVI (i.e. Thomas Wayne) needs to topple.  One wonders what, exactly, this makes Batman in this historical parallel?

Bwah-ctober!

I'm not entirely sure what this post will entail, but as it's the first of the fright month, and I'm watching Alien: The Director's Cut, I might try to make a log of a month in the mostly horrific life of Joel.

That's not to say, necessarily, that my life is a horror, rather I would like to catalog what goes on in daily life, and also what muahCtober has in store this time around...


Monday, October 1

I rode a car and a train today to get to Wrigley Field - a previous site of horror if ever you had to go to the Men's Rooms (troughs still abound today, but they're more a novelty and not the required order of going these days).  The Brewers won first place in the NL Central, and have a break until Thursday.

I watched the last 2/3rds of Alien: The Director's Cut tonight on my return after selling a craigslist couch in the rain.  I've subsequently learned that the director's cut is the less-preferred version of the movie for Ridley Scott, but it was my first time seeing it, so sorta slightly interesting.


Tuesday, October 2

I returned to work a (sorta, not really) hero having played hooky yesterday to help the Brewer's win yesterday at Wrigley!  Now watching ESPN coverage of the next game at Wrigley - the NL Wild Card Game between the Rockies and the Cubs (which is starting to turn a bit horrific with a lot of breaks going the Cubs' way and tying up the game in the bottom of the 8th).
And another very strange break in the 11th where Javy Baez hugged a 3rd baseman possibly planning to make a play as he ran and stopped on his way to 3rd.

Still more baseball to come it seems... I hope they play 24 innings and finish around 4am before making their way North to Milwaukee for Thursday's game.  In the changeovers I am going to watch Ouija: Origin of Evil, which i expect will be really good...
and it's a prequel!, evidently.  Oy I may be in for a rough night.

As it turns out, Ouija  is a clumsy but effective movie...  I will have nightmares tonight, but if i were less susceptible, it would seem outrageous.


Wednesday, October 3

The "horror" of today was (what seems to me anyway) an obscure late-80s movie starring Paul Newman and John Cusack: Fat Man and Little Boy.  I also read "The Cottage of Lost Play" from The Book of Lost Tales Part One.

The night itself was haunting - it was 80 degrees outside in October, and the wind howled all through the night.  We opened the windows and our house was like a wind tunnel.  Later in the night, some of the windows we closed, and then the doors (none of which quite latch) opened and closed throughout the night, causing me nightmares and waking starts and shadowy visions (btw i'm afraid of the dark, so there's that).


Thursday, October 4

Watched most of the Brewers game at SC Nomad, and then Bob Uecker drove me home to watch the 9th (which is starting to turn into a bit of a nightmare...).


Friday, October 5

And so the Brewers go up 2-0 in the NLDS.  We watched the heart of the game at Jalapeno Loco (which is the best Mexican restaurant in Milwaukee, near as I can tell).

Watched some of the other playoff games, but also, mostly, watched Dracula (1979) - a Frank Langella vehicle, I guess?


Saturday, October 6

Played a steampunk adventure of the Oz Squad with the BRP System.  Scarecrow, Tin-Man, Lion, Dorothy & Toto (I played Dorothy, natch) traversed the Enchanted Forest to find the tomb of the Wicked Witch of the West, and bring her broom back to the Emerald City.


Sunday, October 7

Brewers sweep the NLDS over the Rockies after Liverpool manages a 0-0 draw with Manchester City.  Then, The Walking Dead, Season 9 premiers.


Monday, October 8

Doctor Day!  I've never watched a full season of Doctor Who, though I've seen plenty of episodes.  The first episode of Series 11 (2018) premiered last night with Jodie Whittaker playing the 13th Doctor.

On a parallel track, I've been watching Season 14 (1976-7) with the 4th Doctor (Tom Baker).  Since The Doctor travels through time and space, it seems to me fairly arbitrary what order to experience the seasons in...


Tuesday, October 9

Watching the 2017 reboot of Flatliners.  The main difference clear in the new version is that they waste a lot less time assigning immediate motivations to everyone and every aspect.  And everything scaring the shit out of everyone all the time... like non-stop once it gets going.  Just piling on of creepiness on top of sudden jolts on top of grief horror.


Sunday, October 21

Watched a bit of Luke Cage, and listened to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: Show 60 - The Celtic Holocaust and on the plane, Alexander Hamilton, by Ron Chernow.


Monday, October 22

I downloaded Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery on iPhone after vegging out to some SlasherFest on AMC and watching the 2009 Friday the 13th sequel/reboot and parts of Wes Craven's New Nightmare.


Tuesday, October 23

I finished Luke Cage, Season 1 while waiting for a plane at La Guardia en route home from White Plains, New York.


Wednesday, October 24

Eli Roth's History of Horror has made its way through three episodes and two monster types - zombies (ep. 1) and slashers (eps. 2 & 3).  I finished up episode 2 today and am digging into #3, with some interest.


Saturday, October 27

Continued watching The Haunting of Hill House and the Harry Potter game after watching Liverpool dominate and getting ESPN Gamecast updates that Nottingham Forest were totally robbed, but got a positive result at Leeds.


Sunday, October 28

Watched a dominant Bear's victory over a bad team.  Looks like they're moving back into first place as I also switched back and forth between some more Classic Doctor Who and 1/5th of the Super Sports Equinox, where the Packers lost.  The Vikes may still have something to say about that first place finish today, and i'm watching some of that whilst also watching the newest episode featuring The Thirteenth Doctor.

And it was a The Walking Dead evening...

Game, Seth, Match

I watched the surprisingly fun The Mummy reboot (or sequel?, i couldn't quite tell...).  It was pretty immediately forgettable, but harmless.  I'm surprised to read that it was so actively hated (except perhaps because it stars Tom Cruise).

Most notable to me was the inclusion of Set (or Seth) as a major player.  Seth was nearly my first name, I'm told - being my father's preference. 

Names have always been of interest to me.  Ever since I read A Wizard of Earthsea, and contemplated the importance of the true name of a thing (or being or person).  In the world of Earthsea, knowing a true name gives you the power over a thing. 

When i was young, i was disappointed in my middle name, Seth...  I kept it a secret when i could (in the reasonless way that kids tend to do).  Joel was a handle I was proud of - rare enough so i only knew a few of them.  It was biblical, meaning "Yaweh is God" (Jo-el), and had a short, simple, and somewhat interesting prophet narrative in there beside Amos.  Seth, on the other hand, was born - seemed like a replacement for his dead brother.  Other than a whole lot of begetting, which led to Noah, his role seemed pretty insignificant in life.

But then i learned that Seth was also Set - Egyptian, exotic... and he was a god of chaos, perhaps not of mischief, but he seems like he would probably get on well with Vodou's Gede (i didn't necessarily know all that when i first learned who my namesake could be).  

John Cusack - AIROAPG

I went last night to see Say Anything in a public venue with (i'm gonna say...) 1000 (300?, i'm really bad at estimating) people.  I've never been one to choose favorites, but the oeuvre of John Cusack's is something worth celebrating.  It doesn't mean that everything he's in or has made is amazing, or even great or even good...

JC said something interesting in the "A Conversation with John Cusack" following the screening.  Tiffany Ogle had the unenviable job of trying to provoke JC into conversation, which he didn't seem inclined to join.  Ogle was asking some fairly banal questions around favorite memories or behind the scene stories of film making.  JC said 2 things that were a bit interesting - that he liked "anything that had worked" and comparing successful film making to a batting average in baseball.

We live in such a quick to sneer culture (a good example was the balcony of the post-Say Anything crowd), and even though film making technologies are less expensive than ever, the risk-taking in film making is at an all-time low.  JC's point was, I think (he needed a lot of interpreting, as he didn't seem inclined to elaborate much at all), that many films made in earlier days would not be made in today's environment.  The larger point was essentially that bad movies - which is to say movies that fail to do something interesting - should be made and the makers and the actors ought not be blamed for doing something that doesn't pull it off.

The act of art-making ought to be a risky proposition.  If you're sure something is going to be a hit, it's probably not that interesting.  Putting something out in the world should be scary - are they going to like it, hate it, get it?

And so, herewith I bestow a new label to my blog - the first in quite a long time - #AIROAPG.  For the name, I owe a debt to Benjamin Katz.  In the comments of this post, will be a retrospective of the complete works of John Cusack.  I've seen many of them previously, of course, perhaps almost all of them, but a fresh viewing seems worthwhile.

On Eco

This morning I learned that we lost a great literary and philosophical mind with the passing of Umberto Eco at 84. 

I have long been a fan from afar of Eco's, never someone I would list as my favorite author, but formative in my early academic thinking, particularly his beautiful book On Ugliness, which is an embarrassment of richness of images and ideas on our relationship with ugly things (death, bodily functions, horror, etc.)

His loss is sad, but go forth and embrace all of his work and thinking...

I'm revisiting my favorite work this morning:

The work is a curation of passages from literary and social theory works alongside beautiful images from classical and modern art, architecture, and ephemera centered on a specific theme.  Eco adds editorial remarks in each section.

Of particular interest is the chapter on the Uncanny.  The thinking on that concept and in that chapter was fundamental in my academic thinking on Gunther von Hagens' BodyWorlds exhibition.  The artistic presentation of death is an exquisite example of Freud's and Eco's discussion of the concept of the Uncanny (unheimlich).  Presenting a thing that is, inherently, familiar (our own bodies) in a way that causes discomfort, uncertainty questioning what we know we know.

I highly recommend picking up a copy.  Go borrow it from your local library!

Environmental Theory

Of late there has been a ghastly pall of fog drifting over the spires of downtown Milwaukee (also, I've been reading some H.P. Lovecraft).

I hadn't given it much thought until

Brooke asked about it this morning, musing (sorry - HP) that the cause had something to do with the lake temperature, and theorizing that this perma-mist would last through the summer until the overall lake temp rose sufficiently to no longer need to release it's loamy essence. 

I said the theory sounds sound. But it certainly looks cool to me. And befitting my current reading. 

Terror and Horror

While re-reading I Am Legend, the great precursor novel to most modern zombie films and fiction by Richard Matheson, the following passage gave me pause:

"'It's horrible,' she said. 

He looked at her in surprise.  Horrible?  Wasn't that odd?  He hadn't thought that for years.  For him the word 'horror' had become obsolete.  A surfeiting of terror soon made terror a cliche.  To Robert Neville the situation merely existed as natural fact.  It had no adjectives."

It was not

*   *   * 

August 2018


This


*  *  *

May 2019

I was going to revisit this last year it seems - it's a concept that I am fond of.  The Matheson quote seems to conflate the two terms, and I think that was why I was interested in it.

I'm interested in what the difference between terror and horror in literature and film and art:

Terror - The literary fear.  A sublime experience of the darker sides of humanity.  An experience of something that scares us, but one which we value - that we take something away from and grow from.

Horror -  The gross out fear.  A scariness that (historically) is assigned no redeeming value.  A 'cheap thrill' of a scary text.  An exploitation of human drives, appealing to the lowest common denominator.

We might think of the distinction of these two as the difference between Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft.  M. Night Shylaman's oeuvre versus George Romero's zombie movies.

In my former academic life, I was much interested in that lower form of existence and what we might learn about ourselves by looking carefully at it.  I took a course called "Art History and the Value of Being Disturbed" and found myself an outsider who some of the others in the class.  They wanted to look at artists like Maplethorpe, Serrano and Ofili and claim disturbance from something that aligned strongly with their political views.  I was looking at Eduardo Kac and Brakhage's Pittsburgh Trilogy and Bodyworlds and trying to look straight at things that I'd rather not.

Extra! Ordinary! Read all About it...

In his latest collection of short stories, Stephen King puts forth an argument for his own brand of "non-literary" fiction.  Full Dark, No Stars is a grim, harsh book.  The stories are, typical of Stephen King, both hard and easy to read.  They are stories of seemingly typical Americans

Source: Inverse.com

*   *   *
February 2019

Uncle Steve is among my favorite people living or dead.  Since starting this post about his really great collection of short stories, i've subsequently read The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, his (i think still) most recent collection.

King is an exceptional short story writer.  He's also a pretty good epicist.  But unlike this latter, the former is exceedingly rare in modern literature.  King's stories are about something.  They are structured and planned and plotted.

As opposed to contemporary (often self-proclaimed) literary authors, King's stories go somewhere.  They begin and end.  They're clean and tight - rarely any longer than they need to be.  They're surprising and sometimes not.  "The Dune" (in TBOBD) is like an O. Henry and M. Night brain baby.

(When i started this place, i was in my 20s and in a work group of 3 Master's students working on their theses.  Jon was writing about blogs, Paul was writing about Bret Easton Ellis {and in part book blurbs}, i was writing about zombies - and around the same time i was re-reading and writing about House of Leaves.  On my copy of HOL there is a blurb by Ellis, which talks about the greats of horror writing, Poe, King... - i forget the rest - bowing down to Mark Z. Danielewski.  As i was trying to write the sentence about "The Dune", i was thinking all of this and trying to make the O. Henry and M. Night figures do the same to the story...

Which leads me to some alternate names for this blog that i never considered before now:

• Life is in the Parentheses 
• Living Parenthetical

)

I think my other most recent reading of short stories was the collection by April Wilder.  I liked some of them, but they are the epitome of contemporary fiction - Seinfeld fiction.  The stories - the ones i like and the ones i don't - wander around characters without knowing exactly why or where we're headed.  

Not unlike these blog posts i suppose.

Lo-Fi Authenticity: a review of Paranormal Activity & Capitalism: A Love Story

*Note: This entry went unfinished for a long time (currently writing most of it 13 January 2010), so it isn't very well thought through or specific... but that shouldn't do much to the credibility of RNJ as it is already in question (see rest of blog).

The fairly simple premise of both these films gets carried through to their structure and feel. What you've got here is a couple movies about terror (as opposed to horror) and an amateurish, 'thrown-together' feel, which makes the terror feel real.

Perhaps the best scene that tells this story is when Micah leaves a Ouija Board on the coffee table and (SPOILER ALERT!) the 'cursor' moves a little bit, it starts spelling something out, then starts on fire. This is a cliché more often than not, but it works because it looks like it HAS to be real, because there're no 'special effects' in this movie (because it looks like a home video, see).

What, you may be asking, is the distinction between terror and horror. Well, Ann Radcliffe thought that terror is the sensation of feeling immanent horror. Horror is actually experiencing the event.

***

I remember when I first conceived of this post and it was going to be so good... so interesting.
Sorry about that.

Oh, and there was a great parallel to Capitalism, but by this time it's pretty well gone, so... yeah, the economy is horrific... so that's that.

At least i'll be gone by then...

I went to see Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth this afternevening & it was, i think, the scariest fucking movie i've ever seen. It's one of those movies that you see and you think, just what is it, that i think i'm doing here? Al Gore, who is decidedly not a scientist (but is a pretty damn smart guy), dedicates his work to solving Global Warming... Me, i dedicate my work to thinking about zombies & corpses... I suppose it all amounts to the same

I'm also currently reading Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. Both of these texts are of the life-changing sort... at least in their textio-mission statements are concerned. Inconvenient Truth first and foremost is a work that wants to convince all viewers (and by extension [six degrees of it, seemingly]) the world needs desperately to sort this whole "we're all gonna die" situation out, but is also, in the end a 'what-can-i-do' today sort of conclusion.

Dawkins - who i've never read before, but loved for quite some time (via Douglas Adams) - creates a text whose stated goal in the first chapter is to convince agnostics that they should entirely abandon the idea of an active, interested God & that believers should similarly abandon their faith in the face of such absolute improbability of the existence of God. I'm not too terribly far in, as of yet, but the project seems to surround first breaking down "logical" arguments for the existence of God and then constructing the vast improbability of the existence of God (versus the odds/likelihood of a Darwinian-style natural selection of the universe).

Now i've just witnessed the Bears come back from a 23-3 deficit near the end of the 3rd Quarter and if i were more desperate to find God in the world than i am i'd say the victory was a minor miracle (a miracle in the tradition of the unexpected parking space close to the destination - which, as Dawkins points out takes the space away from someone else), because they were terrible offensively & scored 3 defensive/special teams touchdowns to win the game in the 4th Quarter. I'm sure there's some amount of 20 years of suffering (20/40 what's the difference) neccesitating great glory and happiness in the land to come (by which of course the first 6 weeks of the 2006 season)

Anyway... point being (was, beed?) a movie & a book that everyone needs to experience. Go now... you here four hours, you go now!

What the hell is down there?

So, yesterday i hosted my own private Lost party. And man, i just cannot believe it. What a cliffhanger, so many unanswered questions, who will live, who will die? What's with Walt? And what the hell is down that hatch?

That's right, i am still catching up and just finished season 1 of Lost. My current theory is that there will be a House of Leaves tie-in episode where Locke will climb down and run into Stephen King wandering the halls of the house.

Lost is an amazingly remarkable show, though, i think they do miss artistic opportunities by tying everything up together to neatly in a tv-shaped package. The flashbacks in any given episode invariably tie-in to whatever will happen later in the episode (those of you who often experience flashbacks know this is not the way they function in real life) & there are just too many damn cliffhangers, which i understand is a part of the medium itself, because of its serialization, but still, sometimes it seems like Dan Brown is a guest creative director on this show.

But, all in all, it's just too good to be true. Well written, good looking television that's popular. After finishing Season 1, i so desperately needed to know what was down there, i bought the first episode on iTunes... but then episode 1 had such a cliffhanger... well, it's gonna get worse before it gets better.

Anyway, happy Thursday everyone & know that you have my love & support in coping with your summer Lost withdrawl.