Lost: "Dr. Linus" [Spoilers, m'kay?]

I've been a rabid fan of Lost for several years and with the final season upon us, I've been talking about Lost a lot with a few of my coworkers and friends who are nice enough to suffer my rantings. I've been coming in and shooting off an e-mail with notes and questions about the previous night's episode for a few weeks now and figured these would also make good blog posts and maybe elicit some discussion from all 3 of you out there who read my blog.

So without further ado, my notes for last night's episode. To help understand some of my ramblings, any characters name with an "X" after it refers to the version of them in the Flash-Sideways reality (the one where the plane never crashed on the island). I'm also abbreviating Flash-Sideways as "FS" in some places.

• So, it looks like my friend Terry was right after all that the “chains” Richard were in were the chains on the Black Rock and that he was most likely on that ship when it came to the island. Good call. (I'd been thrown by Ilana's reference to Richard as Ricardus and thought that maybe he'd been from the Roman era... not too crazy an idea given all the Egyptian artifacts on the island.)

• I’m sooo completely retracting my thoughts about how the character episodes lined up with Season 1. Ben wasn’t even in Season 1. (There was a theory that the Season 6 episodes were paralleling the Season 1 episodes, at least regarding which character was being focused on... the past 2 episodes have refuted that theory).

• While we’re on BenX, some more hints as to what happened on the island after “the incident”, or at least the hydrogen bomb version of the incident that we saw last season. BenX’s dad had an interesting choice of words, saying “if we hadn’t left”. Seems to imply that there was choice in the matter. “If we hadn’t had to leave” or “if we hadn’t been forced off” or “if we hadn’t been sent back” would have implied no choice. So what exactly did happen after the whiteout that the inhabitants didn’t have to leave unless they wanted to? Does this imply that the sinking of the island wasn’t an immediate effect?

• BenX’s dad isn’t mad at him for killing his mother. Does this imply that there was a forgiving moment at some point after the incident or perhaps that she died in some other way and the alcoholic bitterness never existed. If that’s the case, I’ll wonder again if the incident changed events from 1977 forward only, or if it had further reaching impact in the past.

• While we’re on fathers… BenX didn’t kill his dad and seemingly wasn’t hated by his dad. JackX has a son and is a much better father than ChristianX, though it would seem that ChristianX was still a bad dad. LockeX’s father presumably didn’t factor much into his life, otherwise Helen wouldn’t still be with him. It remains to be seen how he was paralyzed in the FS timeline. Next week is looking to be a Sawyer episode… will we find out that SawyerX’s mother was never conned by LockeX’s dad and both his parents are still alive or died from other causes that didn’t result in him wanting to seek vengeance on “Tom Sawyer”? It seems that all the “father issues” in the original timeline are non-existent in the FS timeline. Though much more pedestrian, the FS timeline inhabitants lives are seemingly better. Lends some weight behind my theory that the FS timeline will become the dominant timeline at the end.

• Exception to the father issue theory would be AlexX… she doesn’t seem to have a dad (RousseauX has 2 jobs) or maybe he’s just a deadbeat. Perhaps since she’s one of the few who had a father that gave a damn in the original timeline, her FS self is the one with father issues? Also her being at BenX’s school reinforces the thought that somehow all the island inhabitants in the FS reality are going to join up at one time in one place like some Close Encounters moment and their gathering will shape the end of the game. Remember that Ben told Lapidis that the island got him anyway? Foreshadowing by the writers?

• Last word on Ben (for now). In both timelines, even though he’s an insufferable manipulative bastard, you kinda feel sorry for him now. It was good to see his “redemption” last night. And was it just me or did anyone else notice the soft focus lens they used on everyone when he got back to the beach after being forgiven by Ilana? It fringed the picture with a white haze. Almost like he was entering some heavenly place. Just coincidence of lighting?

• Curious to find out what’s up with Widmore. Is he going to park the sub at the Dharma dock or the Looking Glass or join up with Locke at the Hydra? Is he bringing Wallace with him? You don’t need a lighthouse if you’re underwater… this could be that “other way” that Jacob referred to.

• For that matter, I’d love to find out about WidmoreX, EloiseX & FaradayX. Also RichardX.

• The number 6 keeps appearing. 6 numbers, Oceanic 6, 6 candidates (6 seasons?). Strange that Ilana would say that there are 6 candidates left when she knows that Locke is dead and believes that “Kwon” means either Sun or Jin but not both. Who’s the 6th? Wallace?

• I would have liked more of a soliloquy moment form Jack last night. His conversion from man of science/fact to man of faith/hope was almost too sudden. It would have been nice to have heard a little more of his reasoning about why he’s suddenly putting his life in Jacob’s hands. It wasn’t as bad as some of the sudden character changes in Heroes that drove me away, but it was close. A few sentences about not being able to explain all the crazy things he’s seen would have reinforced his conversion. Saying that he’s decided that he wants to either end it by dying or end it by finding out why Jacob chose him but either way he was tired of the game and wanted it to end… that would have been good too. I’m waiting to see the “Let go and let Jacob” bumper stickers.

What’d I miss?

Blog Update

I've been reprimanded for not updating my blog. So here's an update.

It's sunny out today, beautiful weather.

I feel good and the family is fine.

Happy, Mike?

Renaissance Babies

Today, we took Connor to the Charlotte Renaissance Festival. It's 20 acres of shops, food and characters with 6 stages offering constant entertainment. It's only the second Ren Fest I've ever been to. The first was in Laguna many years ago and we didn't stay there long, so I really can't say how they compare against one another.

Along for the ride were our friends Mary and Eric and their daughter Lila who was born 3 months ago. My sister's family was also there. The original idea was for us to all meet up and hang out together, but Francine got there before us (we were late) and between juggling babies, lunch and too much noise to hear your cellphone most of the time, we only bumped into Francine, Rob and Sam a few times.

Everyone had a lot of fun. We started the day by feasting on turkey legs and "Steak on a stake" for lunch. Eric and I shot crossbows and tried our hand at the thing where you use a huge mallet to try to knock a slider up a rail to ring the bell... whatever that's called... the only sign on the thing was "Play at your own risk". Misha and Mary took Connor though a maze and found a "gold" coin which was really plastic and a gimmick to get kids to run through the maze since you got to keep all the coins you could find. Connor wasn't too thrilled with the slide you had to go down to reach the exit though. Then, there was the Fudge vendor (yum) and the mead from ye olde pub (yum) and we wrapped the day with the Petting Zoo (stinky and oddly overrun with spiders). We all returned to the car tired and ready to go home.

I think I still smell a bit like dirt and Turkey Leg.

Some pics from the day:

Connor and Lila arriving at the Festival


Eric and Lila. She got lots of compliments about the cute hat.


Misha and Connor. I was taking this sideways and couldn't see the LCD so the composition's off, but I still like the shot.


Connor and Sam ... um... hanging out... (sorry, had to)


The petting zoo was a hit until we got swarmed through the fence by sheep.


"Oyez! Oyez! King Connor and Queen Lila decree that the day is over!"

Election 2008

I've been getting a lot of e-mail from friends about the upcoming election. I have friends on both sides of the spectrum and some in the middle, so it's an interesting array of messages that I find in my inbox these days.

What's concerning to me is - both in these e-mails and in conversations I've had and overheard recently - there's more pertaining to race and gender than the issues. I worry that as the election draws nearer, it will become more and more about race and gender than issues, and that's somewhat frightening.

Let me try to sum this up for everyone that's been inspired to vote based on the race or gender of the candidates:

It's not the history that will be made by either party on 11/4/2008 that's critical to the future of our nation, it's the history that will be made after 1/20/2009 that will matter.

Study the issues. Learn about the candidates. Make an informed decision.

We're all counting on you.

Go west young man.

We just got back from Los Angeles and a faster-than-it-should-have-been tour of family and friends. In hindsight, we wish we'd had a few extra days to spend, but given that this was our first trip out of Charlotte since Connor was born, we wanted to be as non-disruptive as possible to his routine.

We flew out on Thursday and Connor was great on the flight. He had a few moments, but his ears didn't seem to bother him and he slept for most of the flight (props to my wife for holding him both times and allowing all the blood to drain from her arms so he wouldn't wake up.) At one point a woman suggested that we let him run around the cabin a bit to calm him down during one of his little fits. Yeah... lady... he ain't even crawling yet... Must be all that hair.

We landed in LA, rented a car, swung through Carl's Jr. for a Western Bacon Cheeseburger (Hardee's doesn't sell them out here despite being Carl's Jr. in alsmost every other conceivable way), drove to San Diego, checked into our hotel and had dinner with some friends at a Mongolian place we used to frequent. Yup, we're crazy, but it was fun and it proved to be better than trying to go to dinner with them on Friday night.

Friday we swung past our respective previous offices. We started the day at my wife's company's San Diego office where she had been working before we moved and she said hello to all the people still there and got to meet several new employees who only know her as a voice on the phone. In the afternoon we dropped in at Sharp HealthCare to visit my ex-teammates at Central Materiel Management. (Yes, "materiel" is spelled correctly, look it up.) A lot has changed there, but a lot has stayed the same. All in all a rather surreal event. We closed the day with dinner at Souplantation (which our friend Don astutely dubbed "Everything but the meal") because the nearest Souplantation in NC is almost 3 hours away (and fresh corn on your salad is not worth the price of gas to get it.)

Funny story, we actually looked into setting up a Souplantation franchise here in Charlotte with the equity from our place in San Diego, but all of their restaurants are owned and operated by the company so all we could do was send them e-mail begging them to consider opening one locally.

Saturday we drove up to visit Misha's Grandma and Uncle in Burbank. It was great to see them, especially since we weren't able to fly out to attend her 90th birthday party. Afterwards we went to her mom's house where her mom had hired a professional photographer to take pictures of Connor in a 150 year old Christening gown that Misha had been photographed in as a baby. They even used the same chair (though it has been reupholstered since Misha's photos.) The pic was one that Larrian's been eager to get since before we got pregnant, so we couldn't refuse her. Other poses were taken with Connor in his diaper and a cute outfit. The final pictures came out great, though the photographer's a bit on the pricey side so we're not sure how many we'll end up purchasing.

Sunday we drove up to my parent's house but stopped by Eden Memorial Park to visit the graves of my Aunt Bernice and Uncle George. Aunt Bernice passed away last April, right after we arrived in Charlotte and we weren't able to fly home for the funeral. She was an amazing lady, full of more life than most people I know, and with more energy than the average 25 year old. It was a great loss and since we were back in town and had the opportunity to visit her grave, I didn't want to pass it up.

Later that morning, we got to my parents house which was in the final stages of preparation for Connor's naming ceremony. A Jewish boy is usually given his Hebrew name at his Bris, but since we had him circumcised at the hospital and didn't have a formal bris, we wanted to have a get-together at my parents to give him his name and introduce him to friends and family who hadn't had a chance to meet him yet.

We gave Connor the Hebrew name "Chaim Zohar". "Chaim" means "Life" and "Zohar" means "Light" or "Brilliance". We felt this was a fitting name as he is the brilliant light in our lives. "Chaim" is also the masculine form of "Chaya" which was my grandmother Irene's Hebrew name and whom Connor's middle name "Raine" memorializes. The ceremony was very nice (albeit a bit sweaty since it was outside during a heatwave) and was conducted by Rabbi Don Singer who also married us back in 2006 so it was nice to have him also conduct this ceremony. A real Circle of Life moment. It was also great to see family and friends, though the afternoon went quickly and I would have liked to have been able to spend more time with everyone.

Then, Monday, we packed it all in and flew home. Another rather uneventful flight (except during taxiing to the runway when the turned off the air and Connor went nuts) and we got home late thanks to a delay in LA, but it was good to be home. A mixed feeling somewhat because it would have been good to spend more time at each our destinations. We were so rushed at times that I'm getting tired again just writing about this trip, but we managed to get it all in and then some, so all-in-all a smashing success.

Connor's First Playdate

Connor had his first playdate today. Yeah, I know he's too young to actually play with another child, but it was a nice opportunity to spend some time with a couple we met in our childbirth class with whom we've become friendly.

Funny story about that... we actually ended the class without getting their contact info and regretted not asking them for it because they seemed like "our kind of people". (Ok, so they were the only other Jewish couple in the class... but it wasn't just for that reason.) We figured we'd probably see them at Babies R Us at some point as we'd run into other classmates there and were already spending a lot of time there before Connor was even born. What we didn't figure on was the wife going into labor 5 weeks early and them ending up in the room next to us for most of the time we were in the maternity ward. And just think, if we hadn't complained so much about our first two rooms, we might never have bumped into them at all.

So back to the playdate...

We all met for lunch at a local Macaroni Grill since it's an equidistant point between our respective homes and then afterwards we all went back to our place. Our family room is littered with a jumper, an exersaucer, 2 gyms, a swing and countless toys, so there was plenty to keep a small platoon of infants happy for at least 30 minutes.

Connor and their daughter got along well (when we placed them near one another). There were some pretty funny moments like when we put them side by side and Connor grabbed her pacifier, pulled it from her mouth, looked at it and then tossed it away. That's my boy, already impressing the ladies with his smooth moves... Um, yeah.

So it was fun to see the kids interact in their own toddler way and fun to spend time with friends who've been mostly phone friends until now due to all our hectic schedules. It'll be cool to start hanging out with them more often as we discover more of the things we have in common (aside from the obvious on the parenthood front). For instance, Jeff's a big Star Wars fan and is actually spending Father's Day at Disney World for their Star Wars weekend. Maybe I'll be able to tag along next year...

Big week for Connor

Connor had a very big week this week.

He was watching me the other day as I was drinking a glass of water; staring intently at the glass as I raised it, drank, and lowered it, then staring at me until I drank again. So I asked him if he wanted some and put the glass down near him. He pulled it in and I guided the rim to his mouth and he started gulping at the air until I was able to tip the glass enough to get some water to him. A little sputtering, but I was quite astonished by the whole event and how he's really starting to try to mimic us.

Connor also found his feet this week and he's starting to sit up with less support. If you put him in his very reclined buzzy chair, he ends up looking like he's doing crunches, trying to sit up.

We also went out to Bark In The Park this weekend which is a half day event sponsored by the Mecklenburg County Park & Rec. (LA's in LA County, San Diego's in San Diego County... Charlotte's in Mecklenburg County... go figure) We took the pugs and the stroller, but we had to park so far away from the park in the lot of a local church that by the time we had walked back to the park both the pugs and I (pushing the stroller) were ready to go home. But we stayed long enough to see Pam, our friend and realtor, who was there working a booth to help a friend. It was quite an event, and I'm sure one day we'll go back and have a lot of fun once Connor gets older, but not for several years.

BTW: I've been promising you some photos. Here's the latest batch that we've put up online.

I'm excited to see what the coming week holds.

Twitter... twitter... twitter

My friend Mike got me started back again on Twitter. I'd first heard of it over a year ago and signed up on a lark but only posted once and then let the account sit idle. Sometimes if things seem really cool I like to get in early so I can reserve the nickname I've used online since my college days: DixonHill.

If you haven't heard of Twitter, it's like a blog, except your entries are limited to 140 characters. So you really can't say that much except for "Going to bed" or "having trouble figuring out how to install my dishwasher" or "really hungry" or somesuch blabber. As such, it's basically a stream-of-consciousness what-are-you-doing-right-now view into the lives of other tweeters (those who use twitter)

Anyway, I'm out there in the twittersphere again now, tweeting from time to time. You can send in tweets (updates) via Instant Messenger or your cell phone, so that makes it easy to shoot off a casual tweet from time to time when the urge hits you.

Twitter also actively tracks your "followers": people who have "subscribed" to your twitter stream. If you follow someone, on your main page you'll see all of your posts and all of theirs, in the order they're written. Strangely enough, I seem to be attracting followers. Not sure if it's because I have anything interesting to say or just because I've got a bunch of SciFi and Disney stuff in my profile.

Anyway, if you're curious or bored, check out my twitter page to see what I'm up to: http://www.twitter.com/dixonhill

Art Sale!

My friend Meredith and her husband Sean in Los Angeles are art distributors who represent several up-and-coming artists. I do their web design on the side (http://www.thehowsecollection.com).

Anyway, they're selling off some of their older Amy Lynn originals at amazing prices. One of my favorite pieces is on the block: "Speakeasy"...


... which was featured in the dorms on the recent season of Hell's Kitchen along with another Amy Lynn piece called "Mix & Mingle".

Here's the link to the originals that are on sale:
http://web.mac.com/sean311/iWeb/Site%2072/sale.html

If you get a chance, check out the pieces and pick one up. I'm a huge fan of Deco so these really appeal to me. (We're probably going to get 1 for ourselves.)