Potentially Lame Half-Grateful/Half-Griping Official Thanksgiving-Related Post (with links!)

A few thoughts that rolled through my mind as a late meal from Taco Time rolled through my digestive system at 6AM...

-If my dad's side of the family is the Utah Jazz, then losing both my grandparents last year was kind of like Stockton and Malone retiring.  You knew it was going to happen, and you knew that things would never be the same afterwards.  But thanks to a few draft picks and free agent signings (IE, births to my cousins in Oregon, my sister getting married), the team will eventually claw its way back to contention, even if we miss the playoffs for a season or two in the meantime.

-More than ever, I want the real Utah Jazz to win an NBA title, if only because I never want to hear the folks on the radio have to debate whether our state's first major pro sports title is this week's Real Salt Lake MLS triumph or the Utah Stars' ABA title back in 1971.

-It's more important than ever that we find opportunities to laugh at ourselves.  Fortunately, we have the Internets.

-(WARNING: POTENTIALLY SEXIST COMMENT ALERT) I used to think that the most obvious sign of the Apocalypse was a middle-aged woman driving a white Mercedes SUV.  Now I am more inclined to think it is the blond 20-year-old trophy wife driving her only child around in a black Cadillac Escalade.  (And yes, this observation is at least partially based in petulant jealousy...of the wife, not the Escalade.)

-(MAKE-UP COMMENT TO ATONE FOR PREVIOUS OFFENSE) Men are stupid.

-I made a big deal out of getting bumped from my singles ward at the end of last year.  I think the reason I made a big deal out of it was that deep down I knew how socially dependent I had become on the membership, which was not a good thing.  Now, a year later, I think I have officially passed the point where even if invited, I wouldn't go back.  Because that would kind of feel like going back to Prom.

-Leaving the aforementioned ward may have been a shock to the social system, but the aftermath has reinforced the value of my immediate family and longtime friends.  IE, the people I will still know and love ten years from now, as opposed to ten days from now.  Spending less time at ward activities has meant more time with them, and I'd venture to say it's been time well spent.

-I am very grateful to be back teaching again, in spite of the associated hassles.  Still, it might be time to start putting a few more restrictions on student paper topics.  This was never a problem for my first five years of teaching, until one intrepid student decided to write his division/classification paper on the Kama Sutra.  This semester, of 40 persuasive argument papers, a record seven papers have been written on some aspect of drug legalization, including four that specifically advocate the legalization of weed.

Sigh.

Here is an actual comment I made on one of the aforementioned papers:

"To put it simply, if you want to  overcome the stigma attached to pot, you should probably avoid basing half of your evidence on material from a source called 'Half-Baked: a Pot-u-Mentary.'"

-We're only four episodes in, but I am thankful for the return of "V" to prime time television, if only because it serves to remind me that I'm not the only guy out there who can be suckered into supporting a clandestine alien invasion through nothing more than a pretty face and a tailored jumpsuit.

-I'm very grateful for long winding back highways like the PCH in California and Highway's 32 and 34 in Idaho.  There's nothing like getting a little open road perspective at 70mph as the wind whips through your (imaginary) hair and you drive by some of the great back road icons of Blue Highway America.

-Getting laid off from KJZZ cost me some financial security and the chance to get on TV once a week, but in the time since, I've been able to write a book and develop a new career, neither of which would have happened had I still been surviving on four hours of sleep a day.

-Life will always have its frustrations, and I'll always have plenty of reasons to gripe.  But if you understand that life is about agency, and not about justice, the pill is a bit easier to swallow.  Besides, in the end, if you can still relate your existence to a Fine Young Cannibals song, you're probably doing OK.

Return of the Saucer Lizards

I don't have a lot of regrets in life. Kind of wished I'd played JV Football my junior year at Viewmont. Probably should have worked that Grateful Dead concert the spring before Jerry Garcia died. And there were definitely a couple of girls I should have kissed when I had the chance.

But overall, I'd say most of my regrets aren't connected to any life-changing decisions. Might have had some more fun along the way, but I probably still would have wound up where I am now.

For example, years ago, around the second or third grade, I remember sitting up one Sunday night with my parents watching the first installment of a brand-new TV mini-series called "V." The 'V' stood for 'Visitors,' and the series was supposed to be about some kind of alien invasion. I watched for the first hour, right up until the moment we met the first alien...and saw that they looked completely human.

I felt shafted. An alien that looks like a human? What a gyp. So I turned tail and played with my Star Wars men for the rest of the night. At least George Lucas knew what an alien was supposed to look like.

The next day I learned I had made a terrible mistake. Every conversation with my friends went something like this:

Me: Hey there, childhood friend.

Friend: HEY JOSH! DID YOU SEE 'V' LAST NIGHT? WASN'T IT AWESOME WHEN DONOVAN SNUCK ONTO THE MOTHERSHIP AND GOT IN THE FIGHT WITH THAT ALIEN AND TOTALLY PULLED HIS FACE OFF SO YOU COULD SEE HIS REAL REPTILE SKIN? THAT WAS THE COOLEST! WHAT AN AWESOME SHOW!

Me: Ugh...

Friend: WE'RE HAVING CHICKEN NUGGETS FOR LUNCH TODAY!

If I'd given the show about fifteen more minutes of my time, I'd have found out that those lame human exteriors were only disguises for a breed of interplanetary space-lizards bent on destroying the human race. I guess I wasn't keen on anticipating plot twists back when I was eight years old.

The next week, I jumped back into the series, then ate up every minute of the follow-up mini-series a year later. They tried to turn it into a weekly TV show after that, though they had to keep recycling the same special effects shots over and over again like in "Battlestar Galactica." It wasn't as cool as "Star Wars," but they had sweet weapons, killer theme music, and the alien leader Diana was the hottest sci-fi chick since Leia donned the iron bikini (even if she was technically a lizard).

Eventually I moved on to GI Joe and Junior Jazz basketball, and "V" faded into the annals of 1980's pop culture. It always held a special place in my heart, even though I got the feeling anyone who wasn't around to see it when it aired wouldn't appreciate it now because of all the low-budget special effects. From time to time I would would hear rumors that they were going to re-boot the series, and my interest was kindled even more when I ran into Donovan himself (Marc "The Beastmaster" Singer) at Comic-Con 2007. He'd also heard the remake rumors, but at the time nothing was confirmed.

Well, now we know the rumors are true. Tuesday night, the lizard-folk are coming back to Earth. I don't know that much about the new series other than the inclusion of Elizabeth "Juliet" Mitchell in the cast, which is cool, and the absence of Singer and Michael Ironside, which is most uncool. But that won't stop me from checking it out.

I don't intend to add any more items to that regret list.

Lost Musings

We're now officially two weeks removed from the "Lost" season finale, "Chuck" has new super-powers, Jack Bauer is probably going to live, and as the NBA Playoffs spin towards the Finals, I am slowly beginning to realize that we're only a couple of weeks off of that horrible stretch of television wasteland known as summer. Never been a baseball guy, and I hate reality television, so I might have to start going outside soon.

But before I give up this season's TV ghost, I have a few observations to pass on about the aforementioned "Lost" finale. After re-watching the finale online and musing over a special "Lost"-themed podcast from ESPN.com's The Sports Guy, I think I can speak with a little perspective on the conclusion to Season Five.

Jacob Revealed

Can't say I was too surprised to see that Jacob turned out to be a real guy, or at least a real humanoid-looking thing with a semi-immortal corporeal form that is nevertheless susceptible to stab wounds and homey campfires. After all, someone said "help me" to Locke when he and Ben dropped by the cabin to say Hi a couple of seasons back. What did surprise me was that Jacob also turned out to be Casey Affleck's older brother the bartender from "Drowning Mona." I haven't been so excited about a casting decision since the Harry Potter folks pegged the Midnight Oil lead singer to play Voldemort.

Smoke and Mirrors

Unless I missed some important detail, or unless the producers are deliberately guiding me down a manipulative trail of heartbreak and falsehoods (very possible), Jacob's bearded nemesis is the Smoke Monster. There are a bunch of little reasons I don't feel like listing here (I really do have a life, people), but the one conclusive bit of proof for me has to be the pictogram in the Smoke Monster's house under the temple, which shows Ole' Smokey squaring off with the Horse-Headed Egyptian Statue-Thing, which turned out to be Jacob's house.

Locked and Unloaded

So John Locke really was dead. That reveal was seriously one of my top-five "Lost" moments. Great stuff. On the downside, Locke just became "Lost"'s ultimate tragic hero, and never really did realize the destiny we all hoped he would. (Well, "we" meaning cool people, not all you haters out there.)

The Incident

Most people I've talked to or listened to seem to be really confused about what is going to happen as a result of Juliet setting off the nuke at the end of the finale. But it seems pretty obvious to me. The whole show has become centered around the whole funkadelic relationship between electromagnetism, time travel, and...well, yeah, that's really about it now. So unless I'm smoking some serious doobage here, the bomb is just going to send Disco's Lost Generation forward in time to meet up with the rest of the survivors. I don't know how it's supposed to do it, but it just seems like the ideal enigmatic plot device to get the whole band back together, and I really can't see a satisfying end to the show that won't do that somehow.

Immortal Eyeliner

Just gotta say, Richard Alpert rocks. Though he seems a little more in the dark than I always thought he was. I always thought he had a more omniscient role on the Island, always being around and all. Kind of thought he was in some different species like Jacob or something. Now it turns out he's more like one of the Three Nephites. But that's cool too.

Go Linus

Also gotta say, the Benjamin Linus character just keeps getting better. I honestly though that the way things were working out, Ben was going to be out of storyline rope, but now his role has just taken a huge leap in importance. At the same time, I'm still kind of confused as to how Ben rose to power in the first place. In some ways, it seems like much of it was a result of the interference of black-shirted/bearded/smoke monster/bad guy, but if Jacob was still giving Alpert directions when Ben was running the show, I wonder why he didn't just blow the whistle right then and say, "Ben's a weasle; go get that Locke fellow...I like the cut of his jib."

The South Pacific Triangle

On the other hand, as The Sports Guy noted, the Jack-Kate-Sawyer love triangle has lost a lot of momentum, at least in terms of being the central conflict of the series. The story is still evolving, and I still think that those three are among the few characters that are basically immune to pre-series-finale deaths, but there have been stretches lately where no one really cared what was going on with Jack and his daddy issues, or Kate and hers. In fact, Sawyer was really the only one of the three to have any kind of cool evolution this past season, and it was a great one. Sports Guy has a tough time accepting the conversion of Sawyer from con-man to loving Dharma-daddy-o, but I don't. To me, Sawyer has always been "Lost"'s own Han Solo: aloof, non-committal, selfish, manipulative, and at times given to do bad things. But all of that anti-social behavior doesn't come from his true nature, it comes because he's fighting it. Deep down, Sawyer is a good guy, and always has been.

Adam and Eve

Someone told me a while back that they thought Rose and Bernard were going to turn out to be the skeletons in the caves that Jack finds back in Season One. I still think this is a good idea. For one thing, the skeletons had the two stones that were black and white. For another, it stays consistent with the idea that the Island's middle-aged lovebirds really aren't all that interested in whatever else is going on around them. So maybe the Nuke Effect won't reach Rose and Bernard, and they'll get to stay in the 70's with all that precious polyester.

Where's Hanzo?

Can't say it's the most important unsolved mystery on the show, or that it's really important at all, but I'm wondering if Alvar Hanzo is ever going to show up in more than a few grainy university office shots in those Dharma instructional films. It's been cool to see Miles' dad play a real-life role-and to find out that he's a big Willie Nelson fan-but I can't help but think that Hanzo has some deeper connection to the whole story.

Death on a Stick

About ten minutes before the finale started, my buddy Jared took a poll to see who was going to bite the big one, since rumors had been flying that at least one or two major characters were going to meet with oblivion. My picks were Miles, Sayid, and Juliet, the rationale being that "Lost" has proven to be willing to kill off characters if they are

A) Peripheral and sympathetic (IE, Charlie, but not Jack, Kate, Sawyer or Locke),

B) Done with their story arcs (see Eko, Michael, Boone and Shannon)

C) Not connected to a hugely sympathetic love story (therefore, Charlie is game, but Jin-Sun and Desmond-Penny and Hugo-VW Bus only get threats)

or D) they are involved in some sort of offscreen drama (see Libby and Anna-Lucia's DUI...though the timing suggests they may have picked up the DUI in the midst of a post-death celebration party).

As it turns out, I was right...kind of. Sayid was bleeding to death while Juliet was busy setting off the bomb at the bottom of the bottomless pit she'd just fallen into and Miles was saving his previously estranged father which represented the close of his daddy issues which would make him expendable as the only person on the entire show that didn't have them anymore.

Yeah, so there you go. Until February 2010, kids.

Ugh.