Numbers

Episode #18 is Hurley-centric. We see him win the lottery and then have nothing but bad things happen to him. Through a convoluted route we learn that the numbers are more than likely the reason he is on the island. They are the reason the mysterious “French Chick” ended up on the island sixteen years ago as well. Up until now there have been a lot of little weird things going on on the island and they have seemed just that, but with this development it appears that something really big and metaphysical is happening here.

About a year ago I noticed some wear spots on the Emperor’s top and I thought it wouldn’t be long before we needed to buy a new one and have it installed. Managed to get another year out of it. This past Saturday when I got in the car I could see two pinholes of light coming through the top right where I had noticed the cloth had been worn. I thought for a while I would opt for a vinyl replacement top to save a couple hundred bucks, but decided to go with cloth again this time because of it’s longevity. On previous Miatas I’ve had vinyl and I seemed to have needed a new top about every three years. I use a top (see below.) The Emperor came with a cloth top and it has lasted nearly five.

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Lost In Translation

I had a different image picked for Episode #17, but I swapped to use this one because it is the pose that inspired McFarlane’s Series 2 “action figure” of Sun. The show’s flashback is more about the back story of our Korean couple. I think the show’s writers hit their stride with this episode, the on island story centered on the wife and her feelings while the off island stuff was more about the husband and what was going on in his head. But this married couple is comprised of two people who are not communicating with each other real well, so they don’t know that their problems are so similar that a hug, an apology and some honesty would make their marriage stronger, but instead they end up moving to separate on island camps. While the Sun and Jin story was the main focus of this episode, we also received a lot of interesting developments in a few of the other relationships.

I’m not watching the game, it is too horrific. I’m listening on the computer where it seems somewhat less painful. If the Rays score one more run here in the sixth inning the umpires will invoke the 10 run rule and award the game to Tampa. Once that happens we will have the Rays just where we want them, up 3 games to 1 and over confident. Last year in the American League Championship Series against the Cleveland Indians we were behind 3 games to 1 before coming back to win and then going on to sweep the Rockies winning the World Series. In 2004 the FRS were down 3 games to none to the MFY before coming back and taking 4 straight to get to the World Series. Where they then swept the St. Louis Cardinals.

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Blame Me

I sensed it was over right after B.J. Upton hit the three run homer in the third inning. I turned the game off at the end of the 4th with Tampa Bay leading 5 to 0 to watch an old Law & Order rerun on TNT.

There is a comedian (I say comedian, I think he wants to be considered an impersonator, but of the numerous imitations he does, the only one I recognize is George W. Bush, and that is not very good) called Frank Something-or-other who has a show on TBS that is getting relentless promotion during the baseball playoffs on that network (so much so that in an effort to try and take the edge off, they even filmed a commercial with Frank threatening even more promos if we didn’t watch the show or whatever.) So what do you think happened during breaks of L & O on TNT? Right, I got a couple of Frank TV promos…sigh.

I checked in on the baseball game later via the web to see if I was correct in my gut feeling that the FRS were going to lose, hoping against hope that they had had an offensive explosion and I was way wrong. It didn’t happen, they were losing 9 to 1 in the ninth inning. The official Sox web site put the best positive spin on things they could by trumpeting the fact that the FRS had scored a run in the seventh — the Nation rejoices. Who are they fooling, the headline should have just said, “Red Sox Are Road Kill!”

You can blame me for the defeat though, it is all my fault. When I crossed paths with a fellow Red Sox fan (Hi Jerry) at work today I said, “We’re back in Fenway tonight, home cooking and lights-out Lester is on the mound, we can probably go ahead and chalk this one up in the win column.” We are both old-school Sox fans and are more used to having our hearts ripped out in game sevens than this whole World Series Champ thing, so he smiled, shook his head and replied, “I wish.” I knew the feeling, so volunteered, “Yeah, will probably get our asses whooped.”

Damn if it didn’t happen.

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Outlaws

We watched Episode #16 tonight instead of tomorrow because tomorrow the FRS play game three of the ALDS at 4:30 PM and if the game goes as long as last night’s it will be past my bedtime, leaving no time for TDTVS viewing. In the flashback we learn a lot about Sawyer’s motivation in the flashback and on island we learn that he is not smarter than your average boar.

In between this morning’s cloudy dampness and this evening’s rain we actually had a nice, albeit windy, day and after lunch instead of a bicycle ride around town to pay our bills (that windy thing) we walked.

Right now I’m couch-ridden with Endoftheweekenditis, but don’t worry about me, Dr. Gregory House is on the job.

Started up, went down, still down.
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Rainy Day

We tried to watch another episode of Fortysomething and just couldn’t do it, made it 15 minutes in before ejecting the disc. The humor just didn’t hit us the right way. And just maybe because we were exposed to House first, and although we do know it is exactly the opposite, it seems like Mr. Laurie is an American actor who has adopted a bad British accent to play this part. This screen capture from the show is for my thousands of female and gay readers – Hugh Laurie’s Hiney.

This second screen capture is for the millions of my comic book geek readers – Iron Monger. From a little known 2008 summer film call Ironman that I watched again this afternoon while Donna took a nap on the couch. I even sat through the 10 minutes worth of credits just to see the 5 second teaser of Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury. It was so worth it too, because as the song credits scrolled by, I learned that either Ozzy Osbourne’s real first name is John or there was a terrific coincidence with the songwriter for Black Sabbath’s song Ironman.

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Homecoming

Show #15 was a second show about our favorite recovering heroin addict, Charlie. In the off island flashback he was in full user mode and it wasn’t pretty, but that story is used to set up the reason for what he does on island. When the survivors plot to capture the “other”, Ethan, who had kidnapped Claire, Charlie goes postal and fills Ethan’s chest full of hot lead.

I’m thinking we are going to be 0 for 2 in pre-House Hugh Laurie shows. Earlier this year we tried one of his forays into TV, a sketch comedy show called A Bit of Fry and Laurie and couldn’t get past 15 minutes of it. The other day we received a disc of Fortysomething a newer (2003) situation comedy. He plays a doctor who is nothing like the House character, he is married with three grown sons, seems like he is downtrodden and befuddled (and there is this sort of mind reading thing where he occasionally hears what people are thinking that is out in left field.) There are two more episodes on the disc and we will watch at least one more of them…

I’m not sure what is stupider, the Tampa Bay Rays and mohawk haircuts (both up and down) or the fact that the only place in baseball that fans still do the Wave is Fenway Park in Boston.

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