I’m all set for my radio interview with KLVT on Monday morning. Alas, it does not appear that the station streams on the internet.
My outlining and plotting proceed apace on the novel. I finished summarizing the plot of the existing draft as a starting point so that I have all of the old events in mind as I replot it with some significant changes. I’m going to take my time with this–there are a lot of things to consider.
I saw one of these critters on our fence last night. At first I thought it was just a dead leaf or some other yard waste. On closer examination, though, I realized that it was a moth. Huge critter, at least four or six inches across. From a distance, he looked like a flying lime wedge. Turns out it’s a luna moth. Exotic looking. Like something from outer space.
Yesterday was my day for encounters with interesting wildlife. Every year or two we get some sort of critter in our attic, despite all efforts to plug up any entrances. Usually it’s in the fall, when the weather starts cooling off, but this year we heard the telltale sounds a couple of weeks ago. I set traps, but didn’t have any luck until yesterday. When I saw the poor victim, I thought at first it was a Norway rat, the usual culprit, but as I got closer I realized it had a furry tail. Huge eyes, too. The tail was flat. After some research, I figured out it was a flying squirrel, which are apparently the bane of exterminators. Hard to catch, apparently. So I was feeling proud of myself for conquering such a difficult critter, until my wife said, “Flying squirrel? You mean, just like the one on Rocky and Bullwinkle?”
A number of years ago, a friend of ours who was about the same number of years older than us at the time, succinctly commented on the aging process thus: “Shit wears out,” she said. Alas, I am finding that to be true. As I approach 50, I’m all of a sudden feeling my age, thanks to an unexpected bout of lumbago. I’ve been to the doctor a few times this year already (more than I’ve seen a doctor in the previous decade combined!) and tomorrow I get to go in for an MRI. I’m beginning to suspect that this is just one of those things I’m going to have to live with, since the cause of chronic lower back pain is notoriously hard to isolate. Not too keen on surgery, if that option gets bandied about. Where’s Greg House when you need him? Ah, yes, playing court jester at the Renaissance Festival as he was on this week’s episode. After 13 flashed Taub last week, she ended up cramming her assets into medieval garb. A fun episode, and it’s good to see Cynthia Watros as Wilson’s first ex. I see fireworks in the future.
Just when Walt thought he was out, on Breaking Bad, he gets pulled back in again by a sexy new lab. No more working in a Winnebago in the middle of the desert for him. That RV, however, could be bad news for Heissenberg and his erstwhile flunky, Jesse. In fact, when I watched the episode OnDemand, I thought at first there’d been a mixup because the first several minutes of the show were set back int he days when Jesse first acquired their mobile lab. This was an interesting episode. Marie’s insight into Hank (something’s eating at him from the inside and facing death has to change a person) describes Walt’s situation to a tee, and Skyler heard the unintentional message. It made her look at Walt in a different light. However cheery their next meal might have seemed, the director established their schizm by shooting it from an adjoining room so that a wall formed a black panel down the middle of the screen between them. Then, just when it seemed like Skyler was making overtures toward perhaps forgiving him, he does the unexpected. And then there’s Jesse, the new wild card in the equation. I think Walt should sign up for a frequent shopper’s card at the place that repairs his windshields. Apropos of nothing: whatever happened to the subplot about Marie’s kleptomania?
I’m glad they decided not to make Rick’s “rival” the corrupt cop on Castle this week. That would have been too pat, and this show rarely takes the lazy course. That’s one of the things I like about it, aside from the terrific chemistry between the two leads. And I think I’m getting a handle on the two “other cops,” who were almost interchangeable to me prior to this episode, thanks to it being Esposito-centric, in Lost parlance.
Speaking of Lost,
I love the reversal between Jack and Locke. Locke was the true believer, but he’s now dismissed by the MiB as a sucker, whereas Jack is the one who thinks they were brought to the island for a purpose, and he’s willing to jump off the boat (in much the same way that Sawyer jumped off the helicopter, but for a different reason) to support his belief. (I wanted Kate to go into the water after him, but we had to wait until nearly the end of the episode for her wet t-shirt shots.) MiB says that the candidates were trapped on the island before they even got to it, thanks to Jacob, but Jack thinks that MiB is afraid of what the candidates can do to him if they don’t leave.
MiB is certainly fallible. The earlier raid by Widmore’s group took him by surprise, and he didn’t anticipate the bombs launched in his direction last night, either. (I guess they had some leftover explosions in their budget after last week’s show.) And one hopes that Sayid was lying to him about dispatching Desmond. MiB seemed unsure, at the very least. Not confident.
Did anyone else expect Sun and Jin to get zapped by the perimeter fence? I know Zoe gave the order to turn it off, but I still went ZZZZZZT in my head when they ran toward each other. So, near death experiences are confirmed as a way of getting people in the sideways universe in touch with the island world. Sun was terrified of Locke when she saw him. Also, I found the scene of Jack preparing to do surgery on Locke reminiscent of his preparations to operate on Ben at the Hydra station. I read somewhere that the guy who wheeled either Sun or Locke into the hospital was the same one who wheeled Desmond in after Ben shot him.
Locke’s ominous final words: “You’re with me now” make him the final recruit of the title, and apparently confirming Claire’s theory that he had joined MiB whether he liked it or not, just by letting him speak. Of course, Jack has other ideas about this.
Line of the evening (Sawyer referring to Lapidus): “…the pilot who looks like he stepped off the set of a Burt Reynolds movie.” Runner-up (Hurley, when asked what was happening): “People are trying to kill us…again.”
Open question I hope they answer soon: Who is Jack’s wife in the sideways universe? Alas, no questions will be answered next week as we are on hiatus, with a rerun of the Richard Alpert episode.
