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Ilana Is Hot

Oh, hi. If you know what that headline means, you must watch LOST. Well then I'll get right to it.

Tuesday's episode was one of the best in a while. Locke episodes tend to be the best. I liked Jack episodes for the first two seasons, but unless the writers have something up their sleeves, the Jack and Kate episodes have lost relevance and stopped being compelling. The previous week's Kate-centric hour was awful. Awful. Evangeline Lilly is just so super hot but can't seem to act a lick. We've seen that occasionally the writers or producers or whoever will throw in a filler episode, but this is the final season and we do not have tolerance for such nonsenorystupidwasteness. Anyway, one of the worst episodes in a long time was followed by one of the best. I don't feel like trying to break down the meaning of who did what or appeared to whoever or was reading what book. If you're really into the show, you've checked those things out already. I'm mostly just here to bitch. I hate the clip show moments that emerge from time to time, and there were two such examples Tuesday night. First, when Locke pulled out Jack's crumpled business card, we were shown an up-close view of an uncrumpled version. I know who's card it was. Why show it? Shit, reward me for hanging in there with the show instead of wasting seconds showing me what I already know. The second example was the visual recap of everyone Jacob had visited before they came to the island. I know. I watched the show. Again, why remind me of what I already know? Were these two things an effort to get those late to the party a summary? One thing about people who watch this show is that they know it. Can the people who are just beginning to watch or those who have returned after a hiatus really be helped by a thirty-second face montage? Of course not. So stop wasting my time with this bullshit. My guess actually is that the show simply came up short and the director needed a few extra seconds of filler. I really have no problem with that.

Aside from the Kate episode, I am not disappointed in the least in this season. It used to take half a season to get as much information as we got Tuesday night, so I'm happy.

We're Tryng To Get Back At It

After a year-long hiatus, we'll see if the MHR outlet lasts more than a few days. Welcome back to us, I say.

The Super Bowl of Sunday Posts

It's stupid that the Daytona 500 is referred to as "The Super Bowl of stock car racing." It takes place at the beginning of the season and requires no playoff to get in, really - okay, maybe qualifying counts, but that's a stretch. And don't you know youre competition has a long way to go when you have to make it analogous to a much more mainstream event in order that people recognize it's a big deal. No one says "It's the Daytona 500 of curling." The 500 should be more appropriately called "The Opening Weekend 49ers/Cardinals game of stock car racing." I'd buy that and could at least respect the honesty.

I'll admit I love stock car racing though. It started in the 80's when my dad pointed out that Bill Elliot was beating the shit out of everyone, so I checked it out and was hooked. I've found myself becoming more and more interested come each February and this year I have been paying attention to Daytona talk since November. I watched the 24-hour race two weeks ago, qualifying, several practice sessions and the Nationwide race on Saturday. As the season progresses my attention wanes a bit, but I'll usually try to make sure I'm available to catch most of each weekend's race. The point is, I like to think I'm slightly better than the fan who watches one football (Super Bowl) or baseball (All-Star) game each year then talks as though he knows what's going on. Having said all that, there are still some things I don't get:

- I can't explain what the fuck wedge is.

-Where did the Darrell Waltrip boogity thing come from? It's getting to Chris Berman canned crap level. How does this signature call nonsense keep happening in sports? Whether is Dick Enberg or Marv Albert or Berman, guh. It's akin to seeing adds for new John Travolta movies, at least in that I scream "How does this keep happening?!" at the television.

- There seem to be way more cautions than when I was younger. Obviously safety is a major concern, but does the race really need to stop because a piece of tire is sitting on the apron a mile-and-a-half behind the pack?

For the most part coverage is great, and if there were ever a competition in which sideline, or pit, reporters were a benefit, it's stock car racing. But the lingo still gets a little overwhelming. It's like watching Firefly, in which most conversations sounded like a mixture of Cockney rhyming slang and something from "Deadwood." I doubt the average football fans recognizes a Tampa Two when a commentator refers to it, but football is not efforting for mainstream recogniztion the way NASCAR is.

Olympic things -

I love the Olympics, winter and summer. The opportunity to host the games is not about money, but instead it is a chance to show your country's stuff. Yep, I know the winter Olympics takes a hit because of the elitist nature of the events, but it still involves athletes who have trained harder at their events than I will ever train for anything and a host country putting a lot of hope and joy into sixteen days.

-The Opening Ceremony was amazing. Seeing Canada trot out the likes of Steve Nash and Wayne Gretsky and the national pride surrounding the whole production, as well as the visual boner I got from watching the whole spectacle left me stoked I was able to see it. I'm a sucker for that stuff. Sarah Mclachlan was great and you're a hard-hearted and cynical doucheclown if "Hallelujah" being sung the day an athlete died din't get to you.

-Apolo Ohno's soul patch matters. Sorry, I meant to put a ? instead of a . Apolo Ohno's soul patch matters? I had a girlfriend once suggest I grow one and things were never the same. Jay Marriotti's take is funny when he writes, "a night when he fought off two South Koreans who knocked each other out." That's actually the opposite of fighting someone off. That's sitting ringside, watching two guys beat the hell out of each other, then climbing in the ring and raising the belt for yourself while they're still on the floor with blood all over their faces. Yes, truly magical.

-I'm dreading the period of time in which figure skating is taking up my television space in place of something not obnoxious. Obviously the debate between sport/not sport will always happen, but I'd like to think a sport requires that the unkowledgeable fan knows the winner without a judge telling him who it is. I know figure skating is hard and I can't figure skate as well as they do and figure skaters are better at figure skating than I will ever be at anything, but replace figure skate (ing) with jackhammer (ing) and figure skaters with jackhammerers (?) and you understand my issue.

New Post?

Yeah, it's been awhile. I'm the only one who's going to read this. I've got a year's worth of vitriol stored up, buuuuuuut I think I'll just stick with a gripe at a time.

What the fuck is this "NFL Nation Live" bullshit on ESPN.com? Stupid.