You are everybody
I really should have gone to work today. As part of my new job, I have to complete a bunch of budgeting spreadsheets for the first time, and they are due next Friday. Of course, I haven't started on them yet. I went in on Tuesday, but of course didn't touch them, and then stayed home Wednesday and Thursday.
On the other hand, I haven't used all my holidays this year, and if I do go in today that's one free day that disappears. And hell.. it's only one day. And it's Friday. Let's be honest, If I was sitting at my desk I would be spending more time playing UrbanDead than I would doing budgets.
I got the Season 1 DVD set of Lost for Christmas (it was on my wishlist). This is the first television DVD set I've gotten. Typically I'm not the type to go out of my way to watch something I've seen before… I'll watch a rerun if it comes on, but you know what I mean. But I really like this set. First of all, most of the first season I watched in Taiwan, downloading episodes via bittorrent, so this is the first time I'm seeing some of it on a real TV. And besides just the fact that I like this show, it's also got a lot of excellent extras and the commentaries aren't bad. Even the menus are gorgeous.
About the commentaries; the information itself (at least on the first disk) isn't all that fantastic, although it's ok, (a lot of “Isn't Matthew Fox fantastic in this scene? Yeah, he really is, and so is Naveen!”) but what's really really cool, and that I have never seen before, is that in a few places, someone will say “Let's stop the film here and I'll show you what I mean…”, and the show stops, and some new behind-the-scenes thing starts that shows you how they were filming this bit you were just watching. And then it goes back. It's awesome.
But watching the first season reminds me and reinforces the idea, and disappointment, that the writers only have the foggiest idea of what is going on in the show. They mention a 5-year arc for the plot, but then they talk several times about how they were going over lines with an actor and from some throw-away line spontaneously come up with significant parts of the story. (Locke's paralysis, for example, came about after they threw in his line “Do you want to know a secret?” just to sound spooky. Then they had to come up with a secret to match it.) At one point about 2/3rds of the way through the first season I had an epiphany of what was going on, in my mind it was this grand good vs. evil thing ala The Stand. And now I wish I had never had this idea, because every episode gets further and further away from that, and it irritates me more and more.
In the commentary for the pilot, right after the scene where Sawyer shoots the polar bear, there's a long conversation about where he got the gun, etc. And J.J. Abrams or someone else comments that this is a typical of the series, that something huge and obvious, in this case a huge dead polar bear, is ignored while they move on to something more important else. And WTF? This is not something they should be patting themselves on the back over. He's right, they do this all the time, and it makes the show weaker.
Anyway… I'll shut up about it. I've also spent the week playing Half Life 2 for Xbox. I was thinking about selling the Xbox, but I'm glad I didn't, this game is great. Now I've got to get back to it. Happy New Year everyone, I hope you go out and do something that wouldn't do.