Category Archives: Rock Band

So, I Guess That’s That

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As I said in this post, for years I have been soaking in a morass of shoddy prose, poorly researched science and arts stories, trivia so trivial it doesn’t even deserve to be called trivia, and mean-spirited, transparently biased opinion from nasty men and women with empathy deficits so bad that I’m surprised they’re not serial killers. And now, I am released.

Though my escape from this quicksand-pit of faux-knowledge has its downside (a very big downside, obviously), it also has a big upside too. I never have to read the Sunday Express ever again, or endure Peter Hitchens’ deranged honking (though his 29th April ode to America was unexpectedly touching, despite some madness breaking out here and there), or stare goggle-eyed with disbelief at Christopher Booker’s conspiracy theories. Even though I’m kinda curious to see who will win the gilded shit-crown belonging to the one-true Glenda Slagg (formerly owned by Lynda Lee-Potter), I’m done with Carole Malone and Allison Pearson, who can contradict themselves every week for the rest of time, for all I care. I’ll also never get to find out if Sam Wollaston ever joins a writing class to jazz up the dreariest “funny” prose in England.


So now it’s goodbye Richard Littlejohn, you blustering homosexuality-obsessed buffoon. Au revoir Julie “Mrs. Tony Parsons” Burchill, with your Martian logic and your reflexive/risible contrarian streak. Farewell Kelvin Mackenzie, you absurd curio from another age. Auf wiedersehen Garry Bushell, and all of your adamant – and unconvincing – denials of bigotry, not to mention your shitty, shitty jokes. Arrivederci Deborah Ross, you solipsistic word-fountain. No tears at our separation, Charles Moore, you inconsequential rattle-throwing windbag (looking forward to reading your missives from jail after your licence-fee martyrdom goes horribly wrong).


Don’t let the door hit you in the ass, Amanda Platell, you repellent, small-minded phony/failure. So long Crazy Liz Jones and your equally awful ex-husband Nirpal Dhaliwal, and extra goodbyes to your attention-seeking, column-filling “feud”, which allowed Fleet Street’s assembled hacks to tongue-bathe themselves for a month or so. Never darken my door again Lowri Turner, responsible for some of the worst journalism in world history.

Take care out there, Catherine Townsend, tawdry fantasist sex columnist extraordinaire. Your increasingly outrageous sexual escapades have been sorely missed. Live long and don’t prosper, Martin Kettle, you laughably biased Blairite. Don’t try to get in touch, Rod Liddle, for I shall not miss you, nor your swinging-dick public image.


Adios Jon “Gunty” Gaunt. I shall not miss your ill-informed ravings, your attempts to become a cross between Jeremy Kyle, Rush Limbaugh, and a disembodied, yapping mouth connected to a bucket full of rattlesnake venom, plutonium, dark matter, pondscum, and dogshit. Get out of my life, Melanie Phillips, and take your defensive, ignorant, and belligerent worldview with you. And Simon Heffer? Forgive me for betraying my coarse manner in this way, but please go fuck your fucking self, you berserk oompa-loompa. It would be greatly appreciated by me and the rest of us here in the 21st century, who are enjoying modernity and don’t need your screaming ab-dabs from the past. Thanks in advance.

Naturally, there were sapphires gleaming in the Everest-sized shitpile. I’ll still be buying the Saturday Guardian, so I’ll get to read Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science column, as well as The Brooker’s Monday columns and Screen Burn (once he’s finished justifying the licence fee with Newswipe, that is). Matthew Norman’s nuclear-level sarcasm will keep me warm, as long as he doesn’t leave the increasingly poor Independent (well done Roger Alton, you wrecked another newspaper). Every Friday I will check to see what’s going on in the brains of Peter Bradshaw (5 stars for In The Loop! Good work, my son) and Nigel Andrews (Two stars? WTF?). I shall keep an eye on Sarah Dempster, who, eve since her tenure at the Scotsman, has been slowly been building a reputation for wit and passion that shames her colleague Wollaston.


I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep reading George Monbiot’s weekly column, simply because I’m already going to be feeling low and though he’s a terrific journalist he can really ruin your day. There’s a very very good chance I’ll keep up with the magnificent Caitlin Moran, still the only journalist who can talk about celebrity culture without making me want to kill myself by dropping 300,000 copies of Top Santé onto my own head (though kudos also go to the highly entertaining Marina Hyde). I was also fond of Jeremy Clarkson’s Sunday Times columns, but that might have been because they were an oasis of vibrant writing in the middle of an Arrakis-sized desert of nothing; outside that arena they might not stand up to scrutiny.

I might once have thought he was utterly without merit, but I’ve grown to enjoy Johann Hari’s column; his recent piece on Dubai was chilling, essential reading. I’m also in two minds about Nick Cohen, whose slide into David-Aaronovitch-territory masks the fact that he can still be a fascinating, passionate writer. The same goes for Robert Fisk, whose rage can be intoxicating if you’re not careful. Though I never really realised it at the time, I’ve enjoyed many columns by Deborah Orr, who has quietly been a sane voice in the Indie. Now that he has been (foolishly) let go by the Telegraph and (wisely) snapped up by the Guardian, I look forward to reading more by Sam Leith, who was the only reason to read that dreary Middle England rag.


Other than those examples, it’s a lucky escape. I surely won’t miss the transparent campaign against the BBC by News International’s roster of worthless junk pamphlets, or the woeful research in the Observer, or the Independent’s slide into even more irrelevance than it had already been sliding into. Even better, no more exposure to the most inept newspapers in the world, by which I of course mean the Northern and Shell disasters, the Express and the Star, which pollute the soul more completely than being employed as an assassin by Dick Cheney. Best of all, I can wave goodbye to the Mail and the Mail on Sunday, publications so evil and mendacious that reading them daily is like enduring serialisations of The Turner Diaries and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. With swastika-shaped bells on.


So I can at least rejoice as I fly, like an eagle, out of the lovely old building that has been my workplace for ten years, safe in the knowledge that I don’t have to put up with that shit any more. Long ago I had already begun to realise that I was not reading the credible opinions of hyper-educated denizens of Brainworld, but in fact was enduring the puddle-shallow witterings of a bunch of overworked shlubs whose hectic output was such that they would never be able to keep an eye on their views from week to week, meaning we, the readers, were never sure exactly what their consistent beliefs were. As a result, we could never trust a thing they wrote.

That’s before we get to the piss-poor science reporting (as regularly exposed by my new hero Goldacre), or the generally shoddy practices of many journalists, editors, and proprietors, as revealed by Nick Davies in his superb book Flat Earth News. When I started reading newspapers for a living, I thought I was going to learn a lot about the world, and I did, but only because I was coming at it from such a position of ignorance. If I have learned anything truly substantive since those first few years, it’s because I was intrigued by a subject and endeavoured to find out about it on my own time. Midway through the decade, I realised that trying to educate myself using newspapers was futile.


And so I turn my back on the British press, but not without singling out my other favourite pieces of the past few weeks, written by journalists not included in my Hall of Fame above. I was particularly pleased by Gaby Wood’s article about In Treatment, bemoaning the fact that the UK has yet to pick up this wonderful series. As an In Treatment addict, I fully understand her frustration. When it eventually arrives on TV, please don’t be put off watching it by the absurd protestations of former ITV director of TV Simon Shaps, whose howl of rage at how unfair it was that no one in the UK media press was willing to compare Lost in Austen and Whitechapel with The Sopranos made me simultaneously enraged and amused recently. In Treatment is the best performed, best written, best directed show on TV right now. It would be a crime to miss it.


Also pleasing was this Times blog post that dared to suggest that gaming is not necessarily as bad for kids as studies suggest, if by “suggest” you mean “are often distorted by lazy journalists who understand that scaremongering plays into prejudices and sells papers”. It’s rare that games are treated with any kind of respect, and articles are often written by journalists who know nothing about gaming, so this article from The Independent on Guitar Hero and Rock Band was hugely appreciated. Except for the odd lapse into hand-holding, it’s a fun little piece with a lot of interesting little snippets from programmers and developers, not to mention fans and the obligatory critic. As I fear I will spend my next few days obsessively playing both games in order to drown out the dissonance in my brain at my new situation, it acts as a nice bridge between the two states. Let’s just hope that second state is an improvement over the first.

Lost – This Place Is Death

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::Disclaimer: Yet again my efforts to post this before the US transmission of the next episode failed due to work constraints, so this post about This Place Is Death (episode 5:05) is going out after the US broadcast of 316. I’m well aware that some of this may be already rendered moot, but for the benefit of UK readers, I’m posting it anyway. How committed am I to doing this post properly? Last night I could have watched 316 but chose not to so as not to contaminate this post. Instead, I played Rock Band with Canyon. OMG jumping to medium drums and then stupidly trying to complete Run To The Hills and Vaseline without preparation? Bad move.::

Last year popular internet opinion held that the Juliet-centric episode The Other Woman was a low-point for the show, with flashbacks detailing her time on the island, her affair with Goodwin, and the vengeful nature of Ben. Perhaps it was the melodramatic race-against-time plot that annoyed fans, or the Jack-Juliet love story, or just apathy towards the former Other. Whatever the criticism, it was super-wrong. The Other Woman was misunderstood; not as good as The Constant (which preceded it), but still delivering some fine moments and valuable insights into Juliet and Ben’s relationship. In my humble opinion, last season’s lowpoint was Ji Yeon, and again, even that wasn’t without merit.


Funnily enough, considering some have branded This Place Is Death a disappointment and momentum-breaker just as they did The Other Woman, this episode was written by the Ji Yeon team of Kitsis and Horowitz, and this Lost fan reckons it’s nowhere near deserving of the criticism, making up for their previous clunker with some bravura setpieces, great character work, and much-needed answers.


Not that it was perfect. The LA scenes continue to drag, even with Ben at his spikiest. Though the reunion of the Oceanic Six originally struck me as contrived, seeing them split up was equally frustrating. At first it was a pleasant “How will they resolve this fine mess?” frustration, but with Eloise Hawking’s announcement that they hadn’t needed them altogether after all, it seems the flapping about trying to get everyone together was for nothing. The best thing about these scenes was Desmond coming face to face with Faraday’s mother, aka Eloise Hawking, and seeing his reaction. It was only a short scene, but the sense it gave me that seismic events were happening on the show, bringing things to a conclusion one piece at a time, was hugely important.


Actually, even taking that great moment into account, I shouldn’t be too hard on the LA scenes. As I said, I’ve not seen 316 yet, so I don’t know how events in that will affect these musings, but there’s a possibility that the whole group was never needed to trigger a return to the island, but it was necessary for Ben to gain access. Now that it looks like only Sun, Jack, and Desmond will be returning, perhaps the island is sated but Ben will be left to seethe, exiled from the island forever. Frustrating for Ben fans, but it would at least save the show from looking like the past few weeks have been a waste of time. (More on that later.)

Even with some award-worthy fanwanking, these scenes were nowhere near as exciting as the island shenanigans, especially when the big reveal was hearing that Ms. Hawking really is Faraday’s mother, as fans have suspected for a while now. That’s fascinating stuff, and promises to make Faraday the most important character on the show, but it’s not a surprise anymore. We’re all beginning to tie the disparate story threads together now, and connections are being made between every newly introduced character and the established ones.


That doesn’t matter too much, as the show still throws curveballs. Charlotte’s revelation, that she had been visited by Faraday during her childhood on the island, was a headfuck, though it makes her affection for him seem kinda creepy. She didn’t have a strong memory of it, so it must have been repressed until her time-jaunting wrecked her brain, but subconsciously she has been acting on it. On a show where characters are haunted by the people from their past, this makes sense. Ben has a fixation either on his mother or the mysterious Annie, which explains his obsession with Juliet. Kate has a problem with bad boys, hence her attraction to Sawyer, but also tried to overcompensate with good men (see her marriage to Nathan Fillion, as well as her post-island fling with Jack). Even Faraday’s affection for Charlotte is informed by his guilt over poor Teresa Spencer, which makes Charlotte’s death all the more tragic.


Yes, just as the Island Six becomes the Island Seven with the return of Jin, the team cruelly reverts back to six as Charlotte succumbs to the brain-melt that killed Minkowski. Just as I had started to like her, too. It’s fair to say that Faraday will now be compelled to infiltrate the Orchid station to try to alter the timeline and save Charlotte, even though he knows this is futile. Here are Charlotte’s tragic final moments, her mind skipping through time, with Michael Giacchino doing his traditional excellent job.

In the past, Lost fans have suspected that Les Besixdouzers were killed by the same brain-melt that killed Minkowski, as Rousseau’s description of their death (from all the way back in season one) was vague enough to be explained by any number of things. This episode, we found out… Well, nothing and everything, really. In a bravura sequence that left us both gasping for air, Smokey returned and terrorised Jin and his French companions, dragging Montand into a group of ruins with such force that his arm is pulled off (a detail from Rousseau’s stories that I had forgotten about), and then, from its shadowy lair (aka a Cerberus vent per the blast door map), imitates Montand’s voice in an attempt to draw in the rest of the group. Here is the awesome scene.

Or is it an imitation? Jin leaps from that period to a later date to find Les Besixdouzers almost all dead, with Rousseau and her lover gripped with paranoia, convinced that somehow each is a threat to the other. Lindelof and Cuse have, in the past, said that we find out something new about Smokey each time it appears, but this time it’s hard to be certain what is going on. Is Smokey imitating the group or possessing them? Rousseau kills her lover after he tries to kill her, but is his failed attack caused by Smokey possessing him, or is he just mistakenly convinced that it is Rousseau who is possessed? This is the type of mystery that causes schisms in the Lost fanbase, though at least that will be conducted with some semblance of courtesy, and not at gunpoint. Lost fans are better than that.


The attack by Smokey was a superb setpiece, opening with our favourite insubstantial otherworldly Rottweiler stalking Les Besixdouzers in long grass, burbling as it crawls into a flanking position. In previous encounter is has used brute force (or mere curiosity), but here it’s a predator. Of all its appearances, this was the creepiest.


The sequence continues with much hectic violence, and a startling maiming, but that wasn’t the most shocking moment of the episode. Locke’s long-overdue descent into the frozen donkey wheel featured a shot of a compound fracture that upset us so much we had to pause the recording while we recovered. I have a serious terror of broken bones, so this was no fun.


How fucked up has Locke been his whole life? Shot twice, thrown out of a window, broken back, stolen kidney, bullied as a kid, compound fracture, and soon, somehow, death. All because he wants to be a leader of men. It’s like he’s been on twenty hero’s journeys at once. Poor bastard. And then to find out that Jacob meant for him to be exiled from the island instead of Ben. Or was he? Does Jacob even exist like we think he does? Or is this further proof that Jacob is Future Locke, that his exhortation to move the island (by proxy through Christian) was Future Locke’s attempt to alter time by getting himself off the island earlier so as to thwart fate?


Of course, Locke’s trip down the well echoes Locke’s descent into Swan station, not to mention his fall from the eighth floor, his drop from the cliff under Yemi’s plane, and his close call many moons ago, when Smokey tried to drag him into a Cerberus Vent (at the end of season one), except this time he’s falling into light and not darkness. Also, the time-sealed well was reminiscent of the burial of Nikki and Paulo from Kitsis and Horowitz’ Expose. Even better, it was just a chilling visual.


So yeah, the island stuff has been golder than gold, which is bad news for the non-island scenes. The LA scenes have been especially annoying as we’ve spent a long time in murk, waiting for some clue as to what is going to happen next for the Oceanic Six. The scenes in Ben’s van, though they feature a lovely moment with an exasperated Ben flipping his lid at Sun, have been too gloomy to enjoy. Seriously, I can’t even see what’s going on in some of these shots. Is Jack crying? There’s not enough light to reflect off his many many tears.


Still, I can appreciate they’re meant to be a mirror version of the scenes on the island. While Locke descends through light into a place of darkness and further confusion, Jack and the others go through gloom to end up in a place of light and, hopefully, revelation.


Certainly the otherwise expected news of Eloise Hawking’s family ties is still more illuminating than Christian Shepherd’s speech to Locke, with his cryptic comments about sacrifice (plus bonus snark about Ben’s untrustworthiness).


Outside the Church of the Sinister Old Physicist is a large statue of Jesus, which is apt considering it follows one of the most religiously resonant moments in the show so far. Inside the frozen donkey wheel chamber Christian doesn’t help Locke walk to the broken donkey wheel, but convinces Locke he has to do it himself. Obviously this is typical religious allegory, making the lame walk (and not for the first time). However, this time it’s Locke using his willpower to do it, after prompting by Shepherd. Just to drive the point home, Locke’s struggle with the broken wooden wheel echoes Christ’s struggle carrying the cross.


No mysticism is necessary to make this allegory work. Locke triumphs because he has to, with the added plot point that it’s probably because Christian can’t touch him. That seems to be implied, especially as he is unable (or unwilling) to touch the donkey wheel. That doesn’t explain why he can use a lantern on the wall…


…but I’m sure there’s some fanwank that can resolve that. Special kudos go to Terry O’Quinn, who has been given less opportunity to shine in recent episodes, partly a consequence of the focus falling on the many other characters. For us Locke fans, that was frustrating, but his scenes at the well – bargaining with a terrified Jin, accepting a deal with him to lie to Sun, and generally being resigned to his pretty crappy fate – were wonderful.


Even better, his acceptance of the price he has to pay to do the right thing was beautifully played, realising that he was never meant to inherit all of the things he thought were his, and that his legacy, as wretched as it was, was stolen from him by Ben. Yet again Locke realises he is not the man he hoped he was, just in time for Christian to tell him he believes in him.


So, according to Christian, Ben was lying when he said Locke was supposed to stay on the island. Why would he do that, considering he obviously dreaded leaving it? Admittedly he wanted to terrorise Widmore after he killed Alex, but I suspect Ben always knew he could get back to the island with the help of Miss Hawking, and thus took Locke’s place. This would explain how he can get back to the island and thus sate my Ben fandom (this, in particular, is liable to be proved wrong by 316).


Of course I really want all of them to get back to the island, because seeing them mope about LA is trying my last nerve. The gulf between the incredible island scenes and the prosaic real world stuff has never been wider. When people bitched about the flashbacks in the previous seasons, I guess this is what that felt like. It’s a bit harsh, as the previous off-island was rarely this devoid of incident (at least now Sayid’s not periodically killing people with miscellaneous objects). It will pick up, I’m sure, but for now, it’s becoming a real drag on the show’s momentum.


That said, there was a very interesting moment when Desmond arrives, and Ben’s reaction was one of what seemed to be genuine surprise. This leads me to believe that, yet again, my Sirens of Titan theory is being strengthened, albeit only slightly. In the past Ben has seemed to have been completely on top of everything, but here he is seemingly caught out. Considering this is a man who has only been surprised once in his life (when Bastard Keamy killed Alex), he seems to have an amazing knowledge of what events are going to happen in the future. I’ve always believed he has been able to manipulate people so well because he has seen the future and knows how to move people into position using the things they care about as leverage.


For a long time this has worked, but in the last couple of episodes it has seemingly gone awry. Kate and Sayid leave in a terrible huff (has Sayid discovered that Ben killed Nadia, which is looking more likely with every week?), and Sun looks ready to kill. Only Jack is following him willingly at this point, but then he is on the verge of insanity by now. Unless 316 proves me horribly wrong, has Ben lost his mojo because now he’s off the island he has no way of finding out how best to manipulate people into position?


Then again, this season appears to be about things falling apart. Ben’s plan’s are going awry, and time itself has become a maze for the Island Six. The worst consequence (so far) of this terrible temporal disaster is the sad death of Charlotte. Funnily enough (well, not funnily, but you get my meaning), this week I finally started reading Slaughterhouse 5, by Vonnegut, aware that this season was referencing that book far more directly than before. It is, of course, superb, but one passage in particular made me smile. Last week I talked about Alan Moore’s Watchmen, and Dr. Manhattan’s comments about time being a crystal. Seems he cribbed that from Vonnegut. This passage, from a letter written by Billy Pilgrim concerning his encounters with denizens of the planet Tralfamadore (also featured in Sirens of Titan), is obviously one of the main inspirations for Lost.

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and once that moment is gone it is gone forever.

When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the person is in a bad condition in that particular moment, but that the same person is fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that someone is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is “So it goes.”

Though we’re about to see something like that as Faraday goes into Charlotte’s past to give her that futile warning, I doubt that Billy Pilgrim’s comments about time will be any comfort.


Right, time to wrap this up, by going on and on about a bunch of disparate things, as is tradition.

Jin’s trip through the island interior with Les Besixdouzers brought us to what could be a new location, or one we’ve seen before but not like this.


Are these the Ruins that the Others talked about? What with Smokey hanging out there, surely not. Who would want to go here and risk being yanked about?


Smokey’s hiding place, an ominous split in the ground, looks like it was created by some kind of earthquake. Or maybe I’m just mouthing off.


At the end of the first season, when it tried to suck Locke into the ground, it seemed to make the ground open somehow. That was what I assumed was a Cerberus Vent, the mysterious features listed on the blast door map. This looks nothing like that. Did something happen to release Smokey from the depths? Or should I say, Underworld?


At least, that’s what I thought these heiroglyphs on the side of the building were saying, as that was what the countdown timer in Swan station said. This set of heiroglyphs seems to be saying something else. Something about health. Irony! Speaking of mysterious symbols, what is this on Jin’s t-shirt?


Maybe that’s just what it looks like, but it’s weird anyway. Is this the tinest reference to Communist Russia ever? For what purpose? Someone on this board suspects it’s a costume department thing, and then they make comments about Communism. Yet again I’m way too slow.

Another anagram, a bit more Hoffs-Drawlar than Ethan Rom. Canton-Rainier becomes Reincarnation.


It also become Air Train Nonce. That doesn’t sound so apt. Mind you, it also becomes A Creator In Inn, which is ironic, as it’s sitting next to a big statue of Jesus (obviously a more direct reference than Locke’s imitation earlier), the son of a creator who was born next to an inn. I’m sure that’s what they were getting at.

Is this the first time Jin has smiled like this? I don’t remember him smiling this much when Sun announced she was pregnant. My God, the pretty! It dazzles!


Mind you, even Wrathful Sun could crank out a smile of her own prior to her very short rampage.


See previous comment about dazzling. Are they the most photogenic couple on TV? I cannot even begin to explain how happy I am now that Jin is back. It means there will be a lot less of this nonsense…


…which, while dramatically interesting, shrank Sun’s future plotlines into, “Avenge Jin.” Okay, I’ll admit part of the reason I didn’t want that to happen was that it would rob me of my beloved Ben, but also because Sun was one of the few characters who had managed to survive with no blood on her hands, even if she had seen some terrible things (her lover’s death and Jin’s moral compromise spring to mind).


Yunjin Kim has been great, but I miss the old Sun. Seeing her soften upon receiving Jin’s ring from Ben was wonderful, especially as this deceptively happy moment was in fact a betrayal of Jin, as Ben uses her affection for her husband to manipulate her into doing his bidding against Jin and Locke’s wishes. Oh Ben, you delightful bastard!


Daniel Dae Kim got a couple of lovely scenes as well. His panicky realisation that Locke’s plan would jeopardise his wife who, as far as he knows, is still pregnant, was brilliantly played. Even better, the downcast expression on his face as Danielle and Robert Rousseau discuss their unborn child was heartbreaking. Kudos to the showrunners and writers for engineering that parallel, and also to episode director Paul A. Edwards for the image.


Speaking of lovely images, this establishing shot of poor Charlotte in her final moments was breathtaking.


It wasn’t all pretty foliage and hotties smiling, and not just because Charlotte’s death was so drawn out and traumatic. Rebecca Mader is already pale, but the makeup experts managed to make her look even more deathly. It was horribly upsetting to watch her deteriorate in Faraday’s arms.


On top of that horror, was this the most bloodthirsty episode since the pilot? We’re still not sure how many of the Losties died in the season opener (though it did seem like almost everyone), but this week we saw Charlotte die, Montand ripped apart, Robert Rousseau shot in the head, and two corpses with the same problem.


And poor Nadine died and fell out of a tree. Poor Nadine, whoever she was.


Smokey’s last rampage, when he went to town on Keamy and his bunch of evil mercs, was less deadly than this. Maybe Smokey has mellowed since the 80s?

It’s no secret that I think Juliet is a terrific character, but is she an angel? Her tolerance of Sawyer’s (highly entertaining) meltdowns makes her seem like a saint, but this week her benificent smile prior to Locke’s descent was the calmest thing that happened throughout the episode.


And then, just to seal the deal, she glows!


Is she an angel (by which I mean an actual messenger of a higher being)? Is she dead and we just didn’t realise it? There’s something going on here, I’m sure. Didn’t Cuse and Lindelof say they were going to have a Juliet-centric episode soon, or at least give her more to do after she got sidelined last season?

Speaking of sidelined, is Miles ever going to get to do anything interesting again?


Sure, I get that with the large cast, some characters are going to be sidelined (see also: Juliet, Jack, Kate), but someone as mysterious as Miles needs more to do. It’s a waste of Ken Leung. Of course, having him be bitchy with Sawyer around would be redundant, but then Sawyer has become far more cuddly just lately. If you don’t believe me, check this out.

From grumpy (but secretly lovable) asshole, to the Prom King. As I was saying to someone the other day, every time an episode ends and he hasn’t died, I offer a prayer to Jacob. May my lovely Sawyer get everything he wants, even if what he wants is Kate, this week seen having a real snit just because Ben convinced her she was going to lose Aaron.


Oh God stop overreacting! Ben had good reason to totally con you into a state of huge panic. I think someone needs to head back to the island to get some of that sweet sweet Sawyer-Sugar. They can totally have polar bear sex again! I think we can all get behind that possibility.

In his testy AV Club review Noel Murray complained that the time-jaunting was not used to show us more of the island’s history. It’s rare I disagree with him, but he’s way off here. To be honest, the convenient “landings” will only be forgivable if something is guiding them, so a break from that was a relief. Anyway, the jumping in this episode was obviously meant to show how quickly the situation was deteriorating for our heroes, with the slowly brightening white light now a torrent of crashing imagery and agonised reactions.


Surely this is self-evident, especially when we see that the frozen donkey wheel is obviously flapping about off its axis (and even though this concept seemed to be verging on ludicrousness before, I now totally accept it. Weird).


That said, we still got some sense of how things were progressing early on. The first time we see poor Robert Rousseau, he’s clean-shaven.


The next time we see him, after Jin has jumped away, he’s got a beard. Or is this Smokey disguising itself as face fuzz?


How long was the jump? A couple of weeks? And everyone is dead? In the words of Ron Burgundy, “Boy, that escalated quickly!” And how far into the future have they gone here, with the Orchid station broken down and dilapidated?


Twenty years? Thirty? Will we see interlopers on the island with Gauss guns and jetpacks? If not, can we please?

Not much Sayid this week, but we did get this.


Even in the murky darkness of Hawaii LA, you know you don’t fuck with The Jarrah.

Now that the Island Six have leapt to a new time period, I guess this is the last we’ll see of the young, non-grungy Danielle.


The Melissa Farman fanclub, the one that sprung up very very quickly through the internet, is in mourning, I’ll bet.

At last! I’m calling that done. Now I can watch 316 and see just how far off the mark I am. Rock Band will have to wait.

ETA: Having now seen the excellent 316 (a good Jack-centric episode; a real rarity), I’m considering renaming this as “Lost – This Post Is Wrong.” I really was off the mark, wasn’t I.

Yes, Yes, I’m Aware I Never Shut Up About Guitar Hero…

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…But Activision just announced that they’re taking the fight to MTV and Harmonix with Guitar Hero World Tour.

Activision Inc (ATVI.O) is adding drums, bass guitar, and microphone to its popular “Guitar Hero” video game, a move aimed at winning away fans of MTV’s rival musical title “Rock Band.”

“Guitar Hero World Tour” will include the ability for two groups of four people each to compete online, as well as let players compose and play their own music.

That’s just super-duper, and I love that they’ve done that. Okay, so it’s derivative, and they remain in the shadow of Harmonix and their incredible innovations, but it’s the only logical move they could make. Of course, this means nothing unless the music choices are incredible.

The game will feature songs from bands such as Van Halen, The Eagles, Linkin Park and Sublime…

Bollocks.

Actually, that is something that can change over time, though I really do hope the song packs come down in price. I resented having to spend literally billions of Microsoft Points (this is a lie) to buy three songs in the fourth Guitar Hero II pack when all I wanted was I Wanna Be Sedated by The Ramones (and OMG, I got 100% on it third time I played it on Medium setting, which makes it the first song I’ve got 100% on! Bless you, you three-chord-playing heroes). Still, there could well be some great finds on there. I’ve been enjoying playing the bonus tracks Mr. Fix-It by The Amazing Crowns, Soy Bomb by Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives, and Thunderhorse by Dethklok, though worryingly they were all on Guitar Hero II (i.e. the Harmonix game). Guitar Hero III‘s bonus tracks are nowhere near as interesting, but then I was less impressed with the track listing on that game already.

What I really want from Activision is to make robust peripherals that don’t cost the earth, thus crushing MTV Games and forcing them to bring the price of the game down so I can get that too. This is the dream, anyway. I have more faith in Harmonix and their skills, and suspect I would prefer Rock Band (especially as you can buy single songs instead of packs full of boring songs you don’t want), but what do I know? I can’t afford Rock Band. Because it is horribly overpriced. And I’m still pissed about it.


Even if Santa ignores my pleas and the price war doesn’t materialise, Guitar Hero World Tour does a bunch of stuff I really like the sound of. Not only does the drum kit look awesome, it does cool things too.

In addition to a newly designed more responsive guitar controller and microphone, Guitar Hero World Tour will deliver the most realistic drum experience ever in a video game with an authentic electronic drum kit. Featuring three drum pads, two raised cymbals and a bass kick pedal, the drum controller combines larger and quieter, velocity-sensitive drum heads with soft rubber construction to deliver authentic bounce back and is easy to set up, move, break down and store.

Even better than that, Activision have responded to one of the pissiest complaints about Guitar Hero and Rock Band; that playing the game is a pale imitation of genuine creation, that mimicking the playing of music is no substitute for making something yourself. I don’t think Guitar Hero and Rock Band stop people from branching out and doing that on their own, and in fact think it would inspire people to try playing instruments themselves (I’ve said this before; please forgive me). Anyway, it’s slightly more moot now.

The game’s innovative new Music Studio lets players express their musical creativity by giving them access to a full compliment [sic] of tools to create digital music from scratch, utilizing all of the instruments, and then play their compositions in the game. Music creators will also be able to share their recordings with their friends online through GHTunes where other gamers can download their unique compositions and play them.

I’m outrageously excited about that, even though I expect any compositions would be pretty unadventurous just because of the limitations of the soft/hardware, but it still appeals to me.


It links in to something I’ve been planning on blogging about for a while now, which touches on Be Kind Rewind, Video Sniffing, Rocky III, and Lewis Hyde’s The Gift (a frustrating book that killed my enthusiasm 20 pages in, but still applies). In time I will, I’m sure. Before that, we hope to have a look at the various season finales that have been piling up over the last couple of weeks, if we can ever get this goddamn laptop to work long enough to write anything substantial. Apologies for any future Blog Slowdowns.

Adventures In Awesome: Want! Now! (1)

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Note the (1) after the title of this post. I get the feeling I’m going to be doing this a lot, so totally plugged into the consumerist mindset am I. Every so often I rail against it, that ever-present unblinking pyramid eye that represents The Market, a monolithic soul-crushing generator of injustice every bit as invisible and dependent upon blind, unquestioning belief as all the myriad Sky-Gods of religion, and I worry that I’m nothing more than a brain-washed lever-pusher whose interaction with the economic machine amounts to little more than me chipping away at my own soul and handing over fragments of myself in exchange for fleeting moments of joy. It makes me sick to my guts. And then Activision announce (a month ago, but hey, I’ve been busy) they’re releasing Guitar Hero for the DS, and look at the plastic rhythm-game pretty! ::enthusiastically pushes lever::


So purty! It will also include a special stylus pick to strum the screen, and other features include autograph signing in mid-song and using the mic to blow out onstage fires. And yes, it’s all gimmicky surface stylings on a simple rhythm game, but it’s the inventive use of the unique features of the DS that make it such a desirable object. The track line-up isn’t announced yet (Nirvana and OK Go have been suggested, but that might be misreporting), and there will only be 20 songs, but I’m happy. I just hope the Guitar Grip peripheral fits into the clunky old non-Lite DS I have.

One thing I especially love about this is that it could be released at about the same time MTV Games finally releases the European version of Rock Band. Now, I’m angry that Activision have cynically blocked the patch that allows Guitar Hero peripherals to be used with Rock Band, and it’s often little shitty manouevres like that that make me doubt the logic of allowing The Market to do what it wants. I mean, if the Market is the democracy-generating, self-regulating, benevolent and incorruptible God of Love that credulous evangelists like Thomas Friedman want you to think it is, how can Activision’s mean-spirited anti-consumer move be good for anyone other than Activision’s shareholders? Consumers get shafted, and somewhere in the world some corporate butt-nubbin gets to buy himself a brand new golf bag. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo. Here is an accurate visual representation of the actual relationship between The Market and the consumer.


And yet, I can’t help but congratulate Activision on possibly spoiling MTV Games’ rollout by bringing out a sensibly priced mini-alternative to Rock Band Europe, which is sickeningly, prohibitively, unfairly expensive. Even with Amazon knocking the price down, it’s £40 for the game, and £100 for the peripherals (without Amazon’s reductions, that’s an RRP of £180!). That was the game I’ve been looking forward to most. Even more so than Lego Indiana Jones, Gears of War 2, Ninja Gaiden 2, Okami for Wii, and Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution put together. Even more so than the summer cinema releases that make me so crazy with anticipation. However, I think I’ll pass. In the US the same game costs $148 (Amazon price). Convert the bucks to quids, and you’re looking at £75.14 (£86.31 if you go by the RRP). Here is an accurate visual representation of the actual relationship between MTV Games and my soul’s finger.


Thanks for the assist, Johnny! I will say this, though. Harmonix, thank you a million times over for inventing these magnificent games that have given me and Canyon and many guests to our home so much joy (and yeah, your interpretations of the game are more fluid and intuitive than Neversoft’s commendable but slightly inferior adaptation), but why, how, why, why, why, how, why?!??!!!?! Is it just VAT? Is that responsible for a £100 mark-up? How can that be possible? I tell you, if there was a computer game made where the player has to throw rattles out of prams, I would buy that instead as a protest. Instead, Activision get a few more of my pounds. Guitar Hero On Tour FTW!

(P.S. Sorry about linking to that appalling book earlier. If you followed that link and were tempted to buy that inept pamphlet, ignore that, go here and do your brain a favour by buying Thomas Frank’s One Market Under God.


It’ll change your perception of the world for the better.)