Avengers, be it good, bad, or terrible, is truly going to be something special. It will mark the first time in movie history that one of the grand traditions of the comic book, the all-star superhero team, will make its way onto the big screen. With the exception of Mark Ruffalo, who will be the third actor in a decade to play Bruce Banner/The Hulk, all of the main actors in this movie have already starred in films dedicated to the solo exploits of their respective characters. Marvel has been explicitly building toward Avengers for the past 4 years, but the approach of Captain America got me thinking about how next summer is really the culmination of a decade of Marvel movie dominance.

Since the superhero movie craze really started to build up steam in the early part of the 2000s, nearly all of the successes in the genre (and most of the failures) have been based on Marvel Comics characters. The only notable exception is Christopher Nolan’s reboot of the Batman franchise. Superman Returns and Green Lantern were both considered failures for DC. The Hellboy films have a following (and I’m part of it), but they didn’t set the box office on fire.

This has been a big change of pace from Marvel adaptations that pre-date the streak. In the late 70s, Marvel was best-known as the inspiration for the Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno Incredible Hulk TV series. During the era when the best offerings of superhero cinema were Richard Donner’s Superman and Time Burton’s Batman films, Marvel’s movies served up stuff like this (skip to about 5 minutes in):

As for why Marvel has been so clearly on top in more recent years, there are several possible reasons — there’s the timing of a generation of filmmakers and movie-goers who grew up when Marvel was the best-selling comics publisher; there’s the producers who have a serious plan for what a Marvel movie should be; it’s even possible that the Marvel Universe’s birth in the tumultuous 1960s made it perfectly suited for this past decade of global unrest and upheaval.

Whatever the reason, for a (debatably) grown-up Marvel geek and movie nerd like me, it’s been quite a ride. So I’ve decided to take on a little project over the roughly 9 months remaining until Avengers debuts in May 2012. I am going to go back through the Marvel movie decade in chronological order, blogging my thoughts along the way. I am going to watch the great, the good, the bad, and the awful. There will even be some first-time viewings, as I elected to skip some of these when they were new based on word-of-mouth.

Here’s the roadmap:

• Blade (1998)
• X-Men (2000)
• Blade 2 (2002)
• Spider-Man (2002)
• Daredevil (2003)
• X2 (2003)
• Hulk (2003)
• The Punisher (2004)
• Spider-Man 2 (2004)
• Blade: Trinity (2004)*
• Elektra (2005)*
• Fantastic Four (2005)
• X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
• Ghost Rider (2007)*
• Spider-Man 3 (2007)
• Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)
• Iron Man (2008)
• The Incredible Hulk (2008)
• Punisher: War Zone (2008)*
• X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
• Iron Man 2 (2010)
• Thor (2011)
• X-Men: First Class (2011)
• Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
• Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (supposedly 2011; we’ll see what happens when the execs see the final cut …)

*These are the movies I’ll be watching for the first time as a part of this project.

Obviously this is actually slightly more than a decade; 14 years in total from Blade to Avengers. But for reasons I’ll get at least a little bit into in my next couple of posts, I think of Blade as a sort of prologue and X-Men as the real beginning of the Marvel movie phenomenon. But that’s 25 movies at roughly one every 3 weeks.

I hope at least a few people will read this and decide they give enough of a shit about what I think to follow along (or are at least in sufficient need of an excuse to waste time on the internet). I really hope at least one or two people decide to join me and share their thoughts in the comments.

So until next time, in the words of Smilin’ Stan, “Excelsior, true believers!”

6×01 – LA X Pt. 1
6×02 – LA X Pt. 2
6×03 – What Kate Does
6×04 – The Substitute
6×05 – Lighthouse
6×06 – Sundown
6×07 – Dr. Linus
6×08 – Recon
6×09 – Ab Aeterno

So The A.V. Club ran a Q&A about Drop-Everything Movies, the movies where “it doesn’t matter that you’ve seen it 13 times already, nor does it matter what point in the movie it’s at: You immediately stop flipping to watch ’til the end, even if it’s 4 a.m.”

I thought this was an awesome topic for a Q&A, and I noticed in reading professional critics reponses that these movies are not neccesarily what you’d list when you asked someone their favorite movie (although they might be). My personal drop-everything movies are RoboCop and Unforgiven. I asked my Twitter and Facebook friends what their’s were, and here are the compiled responses:

• Elise Carr: “Dirty Dancing. lol I know, I know.”
• Donna Hacking: “Waterboy/Moonstruck”
• Alex Rivera: “Last dragon. Karate kid for some reason. And the Breakfast club.”
• Beth Strobridge: “The Godfather Parts I & II and Drumline. Yeah, I said it.”
• Joe Monzo: “JFK”
• Chris Walter: “Saving Private Ryan, Field of Dreams, Halloween.”
• Andy Willson: “anything with john wayne.”
• Bill Greenwood: “Totally ‘The Fugitive.’ If I see even a second of that, I can kiss my next 2 hours goodbye.”
• Dave Costill: “forest gump.”
• Kyle Taylor: “Goodfellas. Even when it’s censored w/ commercials.”
• Mike Schmidt: “Better of dead and anything with Clint Eastwood or John wayne.”
• Ryan Phillippi: “Rocky 1-4 makes drop what im doing. Along with Halloween, Goodfellas (on dvd lol), ghostbusters, back to the future, n Shawshank.”
• John Kuhlen: “2001 or 2010.”
• Tanya Kuhlen: “Love Actually, Goonies, and The Breakfast Club.”
• Perry Davis: “Shawshank.”
• Joe Posten: “Tombstone, Top Gun, any Kevin Costner baseball movie, Searching For Bobby Fisher…”
• Matt Butler: “ghostbusters… There’s always time for ghostbusters.”

If you are reading this and you haven’t shared your drop-everything movie(s), leave ‘em in the comments section.

July 5-11
S1E01/02 – Pilot, Parts 1 & 2
S1E03 – Tabula Rasa
S1E04 – Walkabout
July 12-18
S1E05 – White Rabbit
S1E06 – House of the Rising Sun
S1E07 – The Moth
S1E08 – Confidence Man
July 19-25
S1E09 – Solitary
S1E10 – Raised by Another
S1E11 – All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues
S1E12 – Whatever the Case May Be
July 26-August 1
S1E13 – Hearts and Minds
S1E14 – Special
S1E15 – Homecoming
S1E16 – Outlaws
August 2-8
S1E17 – …In Translation
S1E18 – Numbers
S1E19 – Deus Ex Machina
S1E20 – Do No Harm
August 9-15
S1E21 – The Greater Good
S1E22 – Born to Run
S1E23/24 – Exodus, Parts 1 & 2
August 16-22
S2E01 – Man of Science, Man of Faith
S2E02 – Adrift
S2E03 – Orientation
S2E04 – Everybody Hates Hugo
August 23-29
S2E05 – …And Found
S2E06 – Abandoned
S2E07 – The Other 48 Days
S2E08 – Collision
August 30-September 5
S2E09 – What Kate Did
S2E10 – The 23rd Psalm
S2E11 – The Hunting Party
September 6-12
S2E12 – Fire + Water
S2E13 – The Long Con
S2E14 – One of Them
September 13-19
S2E15 – Maternity Leave
S2E16 – The Whole Truth
S2E17 – Lockdown
September 20-26
S2E18 – Dave
S2E19 – S.O.S.
S2E20 – Two for the Road
September 27-October 3
S2E21 – ?
S2E22 – Three Minutes
S2E23/24 – Live Together, Die Alone, Parts 1 & 2
October 4-10
S3E01 – A Tale of Two Cities
S3E02 – The Glass Ballerina
S3E03 – Further Instructions
S3E04 – Every Man for Himself
October 11-17
S3E05 – The Cost of Living
S3E06 – I Do
S3E07 – Not in Portland
S3E08 – Flashes Before Your Eyes
October 18-24
S3E09 – Stranger in a Strange Land
S3E10 – Tricia Tanaka Is Dead
S3E11 – Enter 77
S3E12 – Par Avion
October 25-31
S3E13 – The Man from Tallahassee
S3E14 – Exposé
S3E15 – Left Behind
S3E16 – One of Us
November 1-7
S3E17 – Catch-22
S3E18 – D.O.C.
S3E19 – The Brig
S3E20 – The Man Behind the Curtain
November 8-14
S3E21 – Greatest Hits
S3E22/23 – Through the Looking Glass, Parts 1 & 2
November 15-21
S4E01 – The Beginning of the End
S4E02 – Confirmed Dead
S4E03 – The Economist
November 22-28
S4E04 – Eggtown
S4E05 – The Constant
S4E06 – The Other Woman
S4E07 – Ji Yeon
November 29-December 5
S4E08 – Meet Kevin Johnson
S4E09 – The Shape of Things to Come
S4E10 – Something Nice Back Home
S4E11 – Cabin Fever
December 6-12
S4E12 – There’s No Place Like Home, Part 1
S4E13/14 – There’s No Place Like Home, Parts 2 & 3
December 13-19
S5E01 – Because You Left
S5E02 – The Lie
S5E03 – Jughead
December 20-26
S5E04 – The Little Prince
S5E05 – This Place Is Death
December 27-January 2
S5E06 – 316
S5E07 – The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham
January 3-9
S5E08 – LaFleur
S5E09 – Namaste
S5E10 – He’s Our You
S5E11 – Whatever Happened, Happened
January 10-16
S5E12 – Dead Is Dead
S5E13 – Some Like It Hoth
S5E14 – The Variable
January 17-23
S5E15 – Follow the Leader
S5E16/17 – The Incident, Parts 1 & 2

A) Someone else’s vacation about work has me slammed and too mentally run down to want to do more writing. Elise has been even more slammed than I have, so if you have sympathy for someone, direct it her way.

B) Then I got pretty sick this weekend in a generic sickness way (sinuses, headache, sore throat, body ache, etc.). Still getting over that.

C) We’re dealing with a pretty stressful family situation right now that makes it hard to think straight about pretty much anything.

Still, awesome couple of episodes, and I hope to be writing about them and discussing them with anyone interested soon.

Well, moving on …

Wow, where do I start?

It was an episode that actually raised some fresh questions for the first time in a while. What happened to Aaron? How did Sayid come to be arrested yet end up on Ajira? How did Hurley get there? Can Ben actually return to the Island? And did he pull a Manson Family on Penny and little Charlie before doing so?

The overwhelming sadness of Locke’s short suicide note was like a punch in the gut. If only Jack had believed him back on the Island, he never would have had to sacrifice himself.

I’d like to thank the writers for finding a reasonable way to keep Frank Lapidus around as a character. I figured he was done because there was no good reason for him to still be around, but I wasn’t happy about it, because I like Frank.

OK, so my thoughts about the last scene: The Left Behind people must have stopped randomly jumping in time as soon as the O6 hit the Event. There still could have been a delay between when the O6 hit the event and when the woke up on the Island, allowing the Left Behind to get a feel for what year it was when they stabilized before they actually find the O6 again — some time in the 1970s. They are trying to blend in as Dharma workers because Dan wants to get at the wheel beneath where the Orchid is being built. It doesn’t explain the Ajira water bottles being in the wreckage of the 815 beach camp in the future, but its my current line of thought.

Honestly, as much as I liked the episode, my brain is having serious trouble processing it right now … which is generally a sign of an awesome episode of Lost.

I personally like knowing the titles ahead of time; it intrigues me to speculate on their implied meaning. Most of these are confirmed in that they come from IMDB, although the last two come from TV.com and are therefore not entirely out of rumor status.

Beginning with tonight’s episode, the remaining titles are as follows:

5.6 “316″
5.7 “The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham”
5.8 “LaFleur”
5.9 “Namaste”
5.10 “He’s Our You”
5.11 “Whatever Happened, Happened”
5.12 “Dead is Dead”
5.13 “Some Like It Hoth”
5.14 “The Variable, Parts 1 &2″ (total of 3 hours)

If “Some Like It Hoth” turns out to be the correct title of that episode, it officially has my vote for Best Title Ever.

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

Instructions:

1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.
2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total.

How many have you read? 27

1.   [   ] Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
2.   [X+] The Lord of the Rings JRR Tolkien
3.   [   ] Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte
4.   [   ] Harry Potter series JK Rowling
5.   [X] To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee
6.   [X] The Bible
7.   [   ] Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte
8.   [X+] Nineteen Eighty Four George Orwell
9.   [   ] His Dark Materials Philip Pullman
10.  [   ] Great Expectations Charles Dickens
11.  [   ] Little Women Louisa M Alcott
12.  [   ] Tess of the D’Urbervilles Thomas Hardy
13.  [X+] Catch 22 Joseph Heller
14.  [X] Complete Works of Shakespeare (Most of it, at least)
15.  [   ] Rebecca Daphne Du Maurier
16.  [X] The Hobbit JRR Tolkien
17.  [   ] Birdsong Sebastian Faulks
18.  [X] Catcher in the Rye JD Salinger
19.  [   ] The Time Traveller’s Wife Audrey Niffenegger
20.  [   ] Middlemarch George Eliot
21.  [   ] Gone With The Wind Margaret Mitchell
22.  [X+] The Great Gatsby F Scott Fitzgerald
23.  [   ] Bleak House Charles Dickens
24.  [*] War and Peace Leo Tolstoy
25.  [X+] The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams
26.  [   ] Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh
27.  [*] Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28.  [*] Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck
29.  [X] Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll
30.  [   ] The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame
31.  [*] Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
32.  [   ] David Copperfield Charles Dickens
33.  [X+] Chronicles of Narnia CS Lewis
34.  [   ] Emma Jane Austen
35.  [   ] Persuasion Jane Austen
36.  [X+] The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe CS Lewis
37.  [X] The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini
38.  [   ] Captain Corelli’s Mandolin Louis De Bernieres
39.  [   ] Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden
40.  [   ] Winnie the Pooh AA Milne
41.  [X+] Animal Farm George Orwell
42.  [   ] The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown
43.  [*] One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44.  [   ] A Prayer for Owen Meaney John Irving
45.  [   ] The Woman in White Wilkie Collins
46.  [   ] Anne of Green Gables LM Montgomery
47.  [   ] Far From The Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy
48.  [   ] The Handmaid’s Tale Margaret Atwood
49.  [X+] Lord of the Flies William Golding
50.  [   ] Atonement Ian McEwan
51.  [   ] Life of Pi Yann Martel
52.  [X+] Dune Frank Herbert
53.  [   ] Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons
54.  [   ] Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen
55.  [   ] A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth
56.  [   ] The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57.  [X] A Tale Of Two Cities Charles Dickens
58.  [X] Brave New World Aldous Huxley
59.  [   ] The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Mark Haddon
60.  [*] Love In The Time Of Cholera Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61.  [X] Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck
62.  [*] Lolita Vladimir Nabokov
63.  [   ] The Secret History Donna Tartt
64.  [   ] The Lovely Bones Alice Sebold
65.  [   ] Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas
66.  [X] On The Road Jack Kerouac
67.  [   ] Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy
68.  [   ] Bridget Jones’s Diary Helen Fielding
69.  [   ] Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie
70.  [   ] Moby Dick Herman Melville
71.  [   ] Oliver Twist Charles Dickens
72.  [X] Dracula Bram Stoker
73.  [   ] The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett
74.  [   ] Notes From A Small Island Bill Bryson
75.  [*] Ulysses James Joyce
76.  [*] The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath
77.  [   ] Swallows and Amazons Arthur Ransome
78.  [   ] Germinal Emile Zola
79.  [   ] Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray
80.  [   ] Possession AS Byatt
81.  [*] A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens
82.  [   ] Cloud Atlas David Mitchell
83.  [*] The Color Purple Alice Walker
84.  [   ] The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro
85.  [   ] Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert
86.  [   ] A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry
87.  [X] Charlotte’s Web EB White
88.  [   ] The Five People You Meet In Heaven Mitch Alborn
89.  [X] Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90.  [   ] The Faraway Tree Collection Enid Blyton
91.  [*] Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad
92.  [   ] The Little Prince Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93.  [   ] The Wasp Factory Iain Banks
94.  [*] Watership Down Richard Adams
95.  [*] A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole
96.  [   ] A Town Like Alice Nevil Shute
97.  [X] The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas
98.  [X] Hamlet William Shakespeare
99.  [X+] Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
100. [   ] Les Miserables Victor Hugo

And perhaps the most intriguing part of tonight’s episode is the question of what the Smoke Monster does to people that it doesn’t kill. Is it the same thing that happens to the actual dead bodies? Had Rousseau’s crew entered the same state of existence as Christian Shephard? Presumbly the temple that the Monster pulled the one scientist into is the same temple that Ben had Richard take the Others to when he knew the Freighter Folks were coming.

I loved Ben’s little freakout about how much he’s done for the O6 and how ungrateful they are. It was a nice little character moment for Michael Emerson.

I’m guessing that when we see Locke tracking down the O6 next week, he’s going to be back in wheel chair again because of those broken legs.

So when the Monster comes out of the temple to grab the one French guy, it took on a little more of a shape than it usually has. I thought it looked vaguely like a bear. Did anyone else notice that, and if so, what did you think it looked like?

The problem with not getting to write the blog until a couple of days after the episode is that things become a little more jumbled in my head, and I start to think more about the preview for next week than the actual episode. Also, while I didn’t think the episode was bad, it just wasn’t as chock full of mythology as the previous episode. Although I suppose more actually happened.

Obviously the biggest revelation is that Jin is still alive and is with Rosseau’s crew 16 years before the 815 crash. I have mixed feelings about Jin’s survival: I like the character, but I thought the death was interesting in the way it developed Sun. Then again, it probably would have proved difficult for the writers to get Sun back to the Island any other way.

Speaking of trailers for next week: Could Ben know Jin is still alive because he met him 19 years earlier? How much might Ben have known about his own fate the entire time if that is the case?

Is Ajira Airlines the way the Oceanic 6 get back to the Island — another plane crash?

So, overall, decent episode, but after “Jughead” it doesn’t inspire a lot of thought.

When Dan talked about burying the h-bomb, I found myself wondering if that was what was behind the concrete in the Swan Station, but it seems like it would have to be something more than that. Perhaps it was the h-bomb, but exposure to the natural electromagnetic properties of the Island transformed it over time?

Richard’s eyeliner: Just from the ABC makeup department or a reference to the ancient Egyptian style? We know Richard is very old, and Juliet said that “Richard’s always here.” Also, hieroglyphics have been seen on the Island. Then again, I could be reading all kinds of significance into something that’s just part of TV makeup.

So Charles Widmore was one of Richard’s Others in the 1950s. At some point he leaves the Island. A falling out with Richard? Does Widmore move the Island? I’m leaning toward a falling out with Richard, both from the evident conflict in tonights episode, and from the fact that Richard’s Others were in conflict with the Dharma Initiative. Widmore was certainly one of the powers behind Dharma, so right now I’m thinking he moved the Island, so he couldn’t go back himself, but he funded the Dharma Initiative and sent them there, at which point the disagreement between Richard and him continued by proxy. Ben assisting Richard in the Purge is the beginning of the Widmore/Linus conflict. Just a vague framework of a theory.

And yes, Elise and I both totally went “Awwww!” when Desmond said their son’s name was Charlie.

Time travel makes a great storytelling device. It puts Locke in exactly the same position as the audience: He knows he will be dead, and he knows it is part of bringing the Oceanic 6 back to the island, and he knows that it is to stop something horrible. But he doesn’t know anything else, because he is experiencing events in a different order than Richard. Clever.

Things I’d be willing to bet money on: Sun is the one who hired the lawyers that come to see Kate, Ms. Hawking is Dan’s mom, and Miles is Dr. Chang’s (aka Candle, aka Wickmund, aka Halliwax) son.

I still suspect that the Island may move in space as well as time. Since Dan and company may be moving in time independent of the Island, its hard to say.

The normal rules of time travel don’t apply to Desmond–is it beacuse he was born special, destiny or what have you, or is it because he will turn the key in the Swan Station and become unstuck in time himself, therefore exisiting outside of the normal rules?

Neil Frogurt clearly learned nothing about wearing red shirts during his time on the Island. The flaming arrows assumedly come from the Hostiles pre Dharma Purge?

So is Locke pretend dead, or is it just important that nothing happen to his dead body before it gets back to the Island and he pulls a Christian Shephard?

Grant Morrison’s Doom Force #1

Grant Morrison was writing a now-legendary run on DC’s Doom Patrol in the early ’90s that was full of legitimately edgy, weird ideas with some really cool art while most of mainstream comics was obsessed with “dark” superhero books full of ridiculous violence and terrible artwork that all the 13-year-olds of the time thought was cool (and yes, sigh, I thought that crap looked good at the time too). One of the worst artistic offenders was Mr. Rob Liefeld, who had become something of a superstar in the field despite knowing nothing about perspective, anatomy, or how to draw feet.

So for a one-shot special, Morrison hilariously parodied all of the terrible conventions of the time. Anyone who was reading superhero comics in 1992 can appreciate Doom Force as one of the funnier things ever. It probably doesn’t work as well for an audience not in the know, but if you are trying to put together a truly awesome comics collection, then you are in the know, and you need a copy of this book. It probably wouldn’t hurt to get Morrison’s seriously great Doom Patrol run, either.

Possibly the funniest thing about Doom Force was all the fan mail Morrison recieved from people who didn’t get the joke and thought the writer and DC were finally doing something “cool” with Doom Patrol.

When I go looking for an album on my iPod, 99% of the time I start from the “Genres” menu. Genre is the one bit of metadata I almost always need to edit on a newly added album, even if everything else there is correct, to keep the genre names in line with my own scheme of classification. The thing is, the larger the collection becomes, the more I feel the need to subdivide my own genre scheme. Initially, pretty much anything related to rock music went into one of four categories: Alternative, Metal, Punk, or just plain Rock. Then Hard Rock entered the scheme, to classify things that dwell in the fuzzy spaces between Rock and Metal. Alternative spawned Indie and Punk spawned Emo. Clearly, Prog needed to be distinct from plain, old Rock. To further ease finding things, any band still in Rock that was predominantly active pre-1980 was split off into Classic Rock. My most recent subdivision, Post-Punk/New Wave, was another split from Alternative.

So for those of you keeping score, now a “rock” song on my iPod could be: Alternative, Classic Rock, Emo, Hard Rock, Indie, Metal, Post-Punk/New Wave, Prog, Punk, or Rock.

One might be inclined to think that everything on my iPod is “rock.” One would be wrong, since I’m working with more than 30GB of music at this stage.

Which brings me to the part I need help with. Hip Hop is currently a single genre, and it is without a doubt the most unwieldy, long genre list on my iPod (although Alternative is pretty bad too, thanks to the tons of single songs I bought to fill out my “W-DRE” playlist). So I need to subdivide Hip Hop. My question is, how? Should I distinguish East Coast from West Coast? It seems there should be a Gangsta Rap genre. Is Jay-Z Gangsta Rap or just plain, old Hip Hop? Is having a Concious Rap genre too pretentious? Should it be Alternative Rap? And what defines Old School? Is it relative to the listener? Obviously Run D.M.C. is Old School, and I feel fairly confident that Public Enemy is too, but what about Dr. Dre? I mean, his best recordings are old, but does that make him Old School? Is KRS-One Old School or Alternative/Concious?

And, the most embarrassing question of all, if Linkin Park is Hard Rock, should Reanimation go with the rest of their albums, or should it be Hip Hop?

I’ve realized that as much as I love hip hop, I’ve listened to far, far less of it over the years than I have all of the various permutations of rock. Making those distinctions between subgenres of rock isn’t always easy, either, but I generally feel more confident about it because I know more trivial minutia about rock’s evolution and the various movements, especially those that would be considered somehow “alternative” to “mainstream rock.” So I’m asking for input, either in the form of answers to the above questions or opinions about hip hop’s various subgenres in general.

Of course, I never posted my thoughts about the excellent season finale. I’m not going to right now, either, but it will happen at some point.

Other things that will also be covered at some point this summer:

iPods as the Ultimate Nostalgia Device
Watching the Twin Peaks pilot in 144 inch HD
Mongol, officially the most awesome foreign film since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
The addictive glory of the Spore Creature Creator

4.11 — “Cabin Fever”
I missed my update for this one, and considering that “The Constant” during aired during a multi-week period I had to cover in a single post, I’d say I’m in the habit of forgetting to blog about the best episodes of the season. The return of Richard Alpert and the inference that the Island has been looking for John Locke since his early childhood made for some great mythology clues. Is John a reincarnation of Jacob? Or is he Jacob, after some time travel goofiness?

Claire raises the question of what “dead” really means on the Island. Is she dead because she is in the cabin and seems to understand what is going on, or has she just been informed of something and gotten stoned since the last time we saw her?

4.12.1 — “There’s No Place Like Home (Part 1)”
The Oceanic Six return home, and questions as to some incongruities in their story are deflected by Oceanic’s lawyer. Sun buys half of her father’s business, and gets all bad-ass. And we’re finally going to see the Orchid Station! There’s not a lot to say about the first part other than that it was a very enjoyable setup for the two hours that are coming this Thursday.

Let me say, right now, that while I expect the ending to be very cool, I’m not expecting it to be anywhere near as huge of a reveal as the flash forward at the end of Season 3. That’s a once-in-a-series reveal that I only expect to be matched by the series finale.

I think there was a high creepiness factor, something that the show does really well when it does it. Hurley was downright disturbing, and Christian Shephard’s appearance was an awesome tense/scary scene. The smoke alarm going off right before Jack sees him was a nice touch. Was it just the battery, or was it something else?

Of course, Rose vocalizes one of the big questions of the episode. Why can Jack get sick? Personally, I think the healing has something to do with moral judgments the Island is making, and I also happen to think that Jack is (or at least can be) a really bad person. He’s a borderline violent alcoholic and an obsessive stalker-type. Of course he can get sick.

Then we have the matter of Claire and Christian disappearing into the woods together. I’m sure we’ll get some answers (or at least some clues) about that this week.

Rousseau is really dead? I’m shocked by that, I truly thought they were just messing with us when she got shot. It still doesn’t rule out finding out more about her past, though, since the whole living/dead line gets a little blurry on the Island.

The rules: bold the books you have read, italicize books you’ve started bu not finished, strike the books you read but hated (likely for school), add an asterisk* to books you’ve read more than once, and underline those you own but still haven’t read yourself.

1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (236/9040)
2. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (211/8954)
3. One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (183/11970)
4. Crime and punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (176/10686)
5. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (162/12137)
6. Catch-22 a novel by Joseph Heller* (158/10885)

This requires a little explanation. I read this when I was 18, really liked it, then decided to reread it a couple years ago during one of my winter breaks from school. My level of appreciation had grown considerably, but I never finished the reread (I really should have another go at it).

7. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien (155/8789)
8. Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra (152/6654)
9. The Odyssey by Homer* (136/10953)
10. The brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (136/7174)
11. Ulysses by James Joyce (135/6254)
12. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (132/6267)
13. War and peace by Leo Tolstoy (132/5952)
14. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (124/13764)
15. A tale of two cities by Charles Dickens (124/7460)
16. The name of the rose by Umberto Eco (120/7705)
17. Moby Dick by Herman Melville (119/7719)
18. The Iliad by Homer (117/8723)
19. Emma by Jane Austen (117/8948 )
20. Vanity fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (115/3827)
21. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (114/7115)
22. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (110/4806)
23. The Canterbury tales by Geoffrey Chaucer* (108/6164)

I don’t know anyone who has actually read ALL of them … besides, it was unfinished.

24. Pride and prejudice by Jane Austen (108/18291)
25. The historian : a novel by Elizabeth Kostova (108/6444)
26. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (106/8595)
27. The kite runner by Khaled Hosseini (106/13571)
28. The time traveler’s wife by Audrey Niffenegger (105/11412)
29. Life of Pi : a novel by Yann Martel (105/12689)
30. Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies by Jared Diamond (104/7492)
31. Atlas shrugged by Ayn Rand (102/5984)
32. Foucault’s pendulum by Umberto Eco (101/5616)
33. Dracula by Bram Stoker (100/6873)
34. The grapes of wrath by John Steinbeck (99/7811)
35. A heartbreaking work of staggering genius by Dave Eggers (97/6451)
36. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (97/9127)
37. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (97/5565)
38. Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books by Azar Nafisi (96/4404)
39. Middlemarch by George Eliot (96/4159)
40. Sense and sensibility by Jane Austen (96/8591)
41. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (95/5166)
42. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (94/11616)
43. The sound and the fury by William Faulkner (94/5042)
44. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (93/12421)
45. Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle I) by Neal Stephenson (92/3525)
46. American gods : a novel by Neil Gaiman (92/10317)
47. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (91/8869)
48. The poisonwood Bible : a novel by Barbara Kingsolver (91/7459)
49. Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West… by Gregory Maguire (90/8905)
50. A portrait of the artist as a young man by James Joyce (89/6646)
51. The picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (89/7165)
52. Dune by Frank Herbert* (89/9221)
53. The satanic verses by Salman Rushdie (88/3250)
54. Gulliver’s travels by Jonathan Swift (88/4857)
55. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (88/5358 )
56. The three musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (87/4127)
57. The corrections by Jonathan Franzen (84/5066)
58. The inferno by Dante Alighieri* (84/5873)
59. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (83/4377)
60. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (83/5794)
61. To the lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (83/4608 )
62. A clockwork orange by Anthony Burgess (83/6754)
63. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (83/4735)
64. The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay : a novel by Michael Chabon (83/5956)
65. Persuasion by Jane Austen (82/6478 )
66. One flew over the cuckoo’s nest by Ken Kesey (82/5908 )
67. The scarlet letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (82/7746)
68. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (82/4436)
69. Anansi boys : a novel by Neil Gaiman (81/6534)
70. The once and future king by T. H. White (81/4293)
71. Atonement: A Novel by Ian McEwan (80/6966)
72. The god of small things by Arundhati Roy (80/5508 )
73. A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson (79/6266)
74. Oryx and Crake : a novel by Margaret Atwood (78/3975)
75. Dubliners by James Joyce (78/5530)
76. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (78/5384)
77. Angela’s ashes : a memoir by Frank McCourt (77/6349)
78. Beloved : a novel by Toni Morrison (77/5523)
79. Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed by Jared Diamond (76/3822)
80. The hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo (75/2520)
81. In cold blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its… by Truman Capote (75/5473)
82. Lady Chatterley’s lover by D.H. Lawrence (73/3169)
83. A confederacy of dunces by John Kennedy Toole (73/6061)
84. Les misérables by Victor Hugo (73/4693)
85. Watership Down by Richard Adams (72/6255)
86. The prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (72/6361)
87. The amber spyglass by Philip Pullman (72/6644)
88. Beowulf : a new verse translation by Anonymous* (72/6349)

OK, I may not have read the translation listed here, but I’ve read Beowulf multiple times by multiple translators.

89. A farewell to arms by Ernest Hemingway (71/5121)
90. Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance : an inquiry into… by Robert M. Pirsig (71/5554)
91. The Aeneid by Virgil (71/5057)
92. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (69/4625)
93. Sons and lovers by D.H. Lawrence (69/2563)
94. The personal history of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (69/4310)
95. The road by Cormac McCarthy (67/5097)
96. Possession : a romance by A.S. Byatt (67/4127)
97. The history of Tom Jones, a foundling by Henry Fielding (67/2131)
98. The book thief by Markus Zusak (67/3552)
99. Gravity’s rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (66/3260)
100. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells* (66/3046)
101. Tender is the night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (66/3128 )
102. Candide, or, Optimism by Voltaire (65/5083)
103. Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro (65/4317)
104. The plague by Albert Camus (65/4610)
105. Jude the obscure by Thomas Hardy (65/2944)
106. Cold mountain by Charles Frazier (64/4160)

This was probably the most action-packed episode of Lost ever. It was hard not to enjoy it. We now know that Sayid and Ben’s connection was forged over Nadia’s death. We also know that the Ben/Widmore conflict is some sort of sinister game to the two of them, albeit one in which they both seem truly invested in the stakes.

Ben can summon/control the smoke monster, although it still doesn’t mean he was lying when he told Locke that he doesn’t know what it is. He may have no idea what it is he’s controlling. I’ve got to say, the monster’s attack was one of the coolest scenes in the history of the show.

Alex’s rather brutal death scene helps undermine any sense of “safety” for the characters going forward.

There’s not much more to say that springs to mind … the episode was a great way to come off of hiatus, fun and fast-paced.

We know time flows differently on the Island, but until we know just how differently, I am going to remain bothered. What gets me is that without knowing exactly when it is Michael and Walt get back to NYC (somehow), Michael then gets in his car accident, recovers, has his exchanges with Tom, travels to Fiji, and reaches the Island all in the space of, what, 3 weeks? Michael’s mother says he was gone for 2 months, putting his return at the end of November. We know that the Kahana arrives at the island before Christmas. I know time tends to get compressed in the name of storytelling, and generally that’s fine, but this episode was really pushing it to me.

One of the other things that initially bothered me about the episode could turn out to be an important point. I’ve assumed that Ben’s people, when leaving the Island, use the sub. But with communications being down, Tom couldn’t have used the sub. Even if Ben was lying to most of his people about the communications, hence why he is talking to Michael from his basement, he still couldn’t send Tom on the sub as that would be a give away. So was Tom teleported off the Island? There was a suggestion in “The Other Woman” that the whispers in the jungle have something to do with some sort of movement, could this also reach off the Island?

Generally, though, the episode is pretty good on its own. Tom is a fun character in it, and Michael doesn’t have to spend half the episode screaming “They took my son! WALT!!!” I doubt Rousseau is dead, or at least I doubt we’ve seen the last of her. Carl, much as I loved it when Ben talked to him this season, was a non-character plot device they were stuck with, and killing him off was wise.

I’m very excited about 4.9, “The Shape of Things to Come,” which is supposedly a Ben flashback.