Yup, 30 years ago Star Wars came out. This is my obligatory blog post on the matter. Please send George more money, there’s still portions of southern California he doesn’t own yet.
For some context on the opening, read this.
My initial reaction…
Well, the story I mentioned earlier just went down the memory hole: Aint it Cool News just deleted the whole thread for the Lost finale spoilers… looks like users started to post the full spoiler in the message board and they pulled it. The story WAS here: http://www.aintitcool.com/node/32639
Initial reaction? It’s their site, they can do what they want… but I’d have posted the spoilers anyway.
In fact, here they are.
WARNING, you may not want to read this.
Seriously.
OK, here goes….
Episode 322 FINALE “THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS”
First, the deaths. A bunch of Others get killed when they try to raid the camp. This includes Friendly, who Sawyer shoots in cold blood — and also the other new tough guy Other (I think his name is Price) who gets run over by Hurley in the van. And Charlie dies. He unblocks the jamming signal in the underwater station but drowns when Mikhail uses a grenade to blow it up, killing them both.
Another big moment is when an old favorite of the show returns. Locke is just about to kill himself in the Dharma grave pit that he fell into after Ben shot him when he hears a voice telling him not to. He looks up to see…WALT!! Walt helps him out of the pit and then disappears. No sign of Michael, and there’s no explanation about where Walt has been or what happened to him or Michael.
Locke then makes it to the Radio Tower — and gets there in time to kill Naomi just before she makes the rescue call. He throws a knife straight into her back. Jack can’t understand what Locke is doing and tells him that he’ll have to shoot him to stop him from making the call himself. Locke threatens to kill Jack, but then backs down. Jack makes the rescue call — and someone on the other end answers.
The story on the island ends with help on the way. Or maybe not. Ben has told Jack that Naomi and her people aren’t who they say they are — and just before he dies, Charlie sees a transmission in the underwater hatch from Desmond’s Penny — who, contrary to what Naomi has said, denies that she knows Naomi at all!!
But the HUGE TWIST of the episode — in fact, probably the huge twist of the entire series — happens in the flashback. They start by showing that Jack is totally fucked up. He’s popping pills and suicidal. The first flashback shows him about to kill himself by jumping off a bridge — only a car accident nearby causes him to stop, and instead of killing himself he fins himself helping the accident victims. But he keeps spiraling. He sees his ex-wife at the hospital — she’s pregnant with another man’s child. He goes to a funeral of a person that we never discover, but whoever it is, his (or her) death rocks Jack hard. He steals drugs from the hospital and is caught by the new doctor in charge. And all the time, he’s constantly on the phone desperately trying to contact somebody.
And the last scene shows us who…he goes to meet the mystery person, and it’s the last person on earth we would think…it’s KATE! And it’s now that we realize that for the first time in Lost history, we haven’t been watching a flashback. We’ve been watching a FLASH-FORWARD! Yep, that’s right. THEY ACTUALLY SHOW THAT JACK AND KATE MAKE IT OFF THE ISLAND. For some reason, this has been the cause of Jack’s spiral. He tells Kate they have to go back to the island. She refuses and drives away. The show finishes with Jack screaming “We have to go back!!”
The site Aint it Cool News got a lot of readers ticked off yesterday. They posted an article that referred to a detailed spoiler report from a “spy” they received on the season finale of Lost, but did not actually post the spoilers. AICN “made its bones” by spoiling movies and TV shows and that’s what many users (including myself) go there for. The talkbackers called their non-posting (and subsequent talkback edits) a “cop-out” (and far worse – lots of potty-mouths there).
Well, information yearns to be free, and this blog claims to have the spoilers for Lost that AICN referred to (and have been deleting from message threads). If true the finale is TRULY a “game-changer” and I completely understand why Drew (Moriarty on AICN) would not want this out. If these spoilers are true the producers are truly taking the show in a brand new direction next year, and if I were them I’d want to keep the secret as long as possible.
So, that being said, DO NOT READ the spoilers unless you just can’t wait. And, let me tell ya – like when I read Galactica spoilers for that shows season-ender a couple of months back, I regret it now. You probably will too.
I can’t not link to this, being a huge Prisoner fan… The first episode of The Prisoner, using stuffed animals.
Fantastic.
A repost from my old blog, but still appropriate and helpful, in my opinion…
Here’s some helpful hints that my wife and I learned from our recent trips to Walt Disney World:
ASK FOR UPGRADES AT CHECK-IN. This has worked for us about 1/3rd of the time. Sometimes the upgrade is a better view, other times it is an entirely better room.
Also, if you can afford it, upgrade, at least once, to a concierge suite (if available). We did this our last trip to Disney (for one night) and it was worth it. We had a great view of the Wishes Fireworks and also got free liquor and snacks that day (the complemetary cordials helped me get through watching the Atlanta Falcons choke against the Saints).
GET FREE BIRTHDAY PINS. If you are traveling to WDW for your birthday (which I did last year) go to the front guest relations of every park and tell the cast member it’s your birthday. They’ll give you a free pin, customized to the park. If you are ambitous (like I was) go to every park during your stay and get all four pins. Nothing makes you feel better than having lots of people tell you “happy birthday” throughout the day.
GET THE DINING PLAN. Disney offers a dining add-on to most of their vacation packages which costs $37.99 per day for adults and $11.99 per day for children. DO IT. We have used it for two vacations and if we had paid out-of-pocket for the meals we had it would have cost us $2400 to eat over 11 days – not kidding. Since we got the dining plan as a FREE promotion for our last trip we only spent around $800 (for our first vacation) and we did not have to prepare a single meal. Which leads to the next hint…
BOOK VACATIONS USING PROMOTIONAL CODES. The primary reason for our last trip was we had days left over on our tickets to the parks and we found out about the free dining promotion. Look at sites like Mousesavers.com and go off-season using a promotional code. Not only will it be markedly cheaper (sometimes hundred of dollars cheaper) but it will be less crowded.
Joseph Dickerson is a User Experience Architect focused on improving the usability of on-line and mobile applications. With over a decade of experience in software design and user research, Dickerson has made it his mission to make technology easier for people to use.
