May 2010
25 posts
“[Betty White] got in super-early on Friday, worked all day, then went to bed at about 12:30. She’s 88-and-a-half! So the next day I said, ‘How are you doing? Did you get some sleep?’ And she said, ‘Oh, I don’t need sleep. I just went to my hotel and had a cold hot dog and a vodka on the rocks.’ Which was exactly what I wanted Betty White to say.”
—Will Forte (via apsies) (via generic1, meredithbklyn)
“In the end, I’d point to Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Marvel Comics… all the popular serialized entertainments that have sought to divert and provoke on the installment plan. Lost brought back the thrill of big stories told in tiny pieces. Like I said, it’s too soon to say what Lost’s legacy will be, but I have a strong feeling that people will still be watching it years from now, and introducing it to newcomers, and starting arguments all over again. And I think the images of Hurley, hatches, Smoke Monsters and Sawyer will be pop-culture touchstones for a long time to come. These are the new myths. Now it’s up to us to misinterpret them.”
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“The End” | Lost | TV Club | TV | The A.V. Club
First and foremost, if you watch Lost and don’t read the AV Club recaps, you’re crazy. Second, this is going to be a post about Lost, so if you haven’t seen it, please don’t read this. Though I’m not actually going to talk much about the episode.
I’m pretty sure, at some point, that my sports metaphors are going to run out. Maybe they already have. Maybe every time I talk about the Mets and the NL East win, everyone around me is only thinking “Jesus Christ, you like sports, we get it.” Maybe this is the most irritating thing about me. But I did it last night, and it seems to be the only way I can synthesize how I feel about the end of Lost, so I’m going to do it again.
Let’s say the Mets win the world series. They scrape into the playoffs, scrappy bunch that they are, and they make it to the end. And we watch every single champagne-in-the-locker-room celebration on their milestones. We scream and we text our friends and we repeat refrains of “THIS YEAR IS OUR YEAR” as long as someone will listen to them. You won the division, you won the league. You’re here. And it’s game seven, and in game six they were real shaky and you just know this is how it ends, but then David Wright slams a two-run walk-off in the bottom of the ninth and he’s running home and everyone scoops him up and they basically beat the shit out of each other because WE WON THE WORLD SERIES.
So you scream and yell and shotgun beers or whatever it is you do when your team wins the World Series (as you can tell by my previously painted recap, I have no idea what this feeling is actually like). And you can do this because next year? Next year there’s still going to be baseball. You get to celebrate because we’re about to do it all over again and we know it’s good.
I will never see another episode of Lost.
You have to understand, while it’s probably pathetic and stupid, I have spent hours - days - of my life sitting around a table, laying in bed, writing emails, inside my own head, asking all the questions. From “Why the fuck is there a polar bear on a deserted island?” to “A glowing cave? Are you fucking serious?”, I have invested. I wanted to know all of it. And this is a genre I couldn’t give a fuck less about if I tried. Science fiction? Mystery? Don’t give a shit. Give me the answers and give them to me straight, I don’t like guessing games.
Oh, but I do. I wanted all of it. After every episode, preaching to everyone who might possibly listen to me, “Okay, I know this is REAL stupid, but let’s see if this idea gets us somewhere…” And it never did. And we were always wrong. Aside from the prediction that Juliet was going to be Jack’s ex-wife, I can’t remember getting a single thing right in six seasons of this show. It might have been a waste of time. It probably was. But oh, god, it was so much fun as it was happening.
I wasn’t one of those Lost fans that got instantly hooked. I became a Lost fan because I thought it would help my job - a job that I ended up quitting because it wasn’t right for me anyway. I worked with a couple of rabid, crazed Lost fans that would spend their lunch hours doing the exact same thing I described above. And I mean every. single. day. They were basically my bosses, and they invited me out, even though I couldn’t participate in the conversation. So, I started watching Lost. I wanted to be able to talk to them about it. They both said the same thing: “Oh, man, I was hooked from the first episode. Shit was crazy! I’ve never seen anything like it.”
I did not feel this way. I didn’t care about the entire first season. Stranded on a rogue island? I bet. Smoke monster? That thing looks stupid. I didn’t think the acting was very good and I thought the script was pretty terrible, but I watched it because I wanted so badly to understand why everyone else in the world loved this show. So season one is ending, and I honestly believe I am not invested in this story, and then? Well, then we blow open the hatch.
What is in the hatch?!, I find myself screaming.
So I instantly started season two. And it was over. I was a Lost fan, in the most god-awful way. I spent an entire Sunday in bed to watch the entirety of season four.
Watching Lost started as a very solitary experience for me, at a very solitary time in my life. It ended, for me, at my favorite bar with about 40 other people that were as creepily invested in this show as I was. It will probably be remembered as one of the most surreal experiences of my life - a crowded bar that’s dead silent, watching six years wrap up.
Everyone keeps asking if I was satisfied by the finale. I guess I was. I got things that I wanted. Most of my questions didn’t get answered, but for some reason, I don’t really care. I want to know how a person gets sucked down into a magic glowing cave and turns into a big smoke monster, but I can live without it. I am satisfied with the way it wrapped up. This wasn’t my Sopranos. But I am definitely, definitely going to miss it.
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Saturday I went to brunch with some friends. Brunch is incredibly important in San Francisco because it’s acceptable to drink during daytime when you’re at brunch. Luna Park has bottomless mimosas for $9. That means for someone like me, brunch is essentially free.
Brunch goes from 1:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. After the eating part, you go to Valley Tavern and sit on the deck out back and have a couple of pitchers of beer. Maybe 6 pitchers. I’m not sure. My bar tab was $68 before tip.
Then you go to Rosamunde on Mission because it’s 7:00 and you haven’t eaten in over 5 hours now. So you get a sausage and, oh yeah, more beer.
Then you go to Clooney’s because it’s the only place you can think of that won’t be crowded. Other people are joining your group, people who haven’t been with you since 1:00 p.m. and are therefore more qualified maybe to tell you the next day that you looked like “a mess” when the New People saw you at 9:00 p.m. Even though New People could have lied.
You know what’s good then? Shots. Shots and playing Styx’s “Mr. Roboto” on the Internet Jukebox. You know what else is good then? Leaving.
” —40 going on 28: How to Do Brunch Successfully in San Francisco
This is not me. But, I mean, it could have been. This is the primary difference between New York brunch and San Francisco brunch. New York brunch is that thing you do at 2:00 because you’re hungover and want to pretend to be a viable member of society. San Francisco brunch is about giving up on sobriety and health and sustainable lifestyles. And I mean that in the most loving, honorable way possible.
