Spoiler warning: If you haven’t seen any of Lost’s third season yet, this post will contain spoilers.  If you are caught up but prefer to not know anything about season 4, even if it comes from the writers and is vague, you might consider this post to contain spoilers.  Read at your own risk.

I think I am now a new level of nerd.  I am blogging about something that happened at Comic-Con.

Lost creators Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse held a panel discussion at Comic-Con, and you can download the audio of the event, if you are interested.  There is probably video of it out there on your tubes, if you prefer.  In any case, I’ll outline some of the things I found intriguing.

• The show doesn’t start till February, but runs for sixteen straight episodes without reruns.  This isn’t new information, though.

• The filming for season 4 starts in a few weeks, giving them a lot more time to work on each episode.  This also means most of the season will be written, and a good deal of it filmed, before the first episode airs.

• Harold Perrineau (Michael) will be returning to the show in season 4, as an actual cast member (i.e. you won’t just see him in flashbacks).  Michael was never one of my favorite characters, but I am hoping this means Walt will be back in some form.  This leaves one to wonder if Michael actually got off the island and is now returning (with help?), or if Ben lied and Michael will, like Desmond, somehow crash back into the island.

• There will be more flashforwards in the final three seasons.  Starting around 22:30 in the audio, they say:

  At the end of season 1 we sat down and said ... this flashback device is not going to work forever.  The minute that we stop showing the audience revelatory moments from these people’s lives, and the minute that it starts feeling like we’re making it up as we go along, ... we knew that we were going to have to switch gears, and the way that we would be switching gears would be with flashforwards.

• The season 3 DVDs come out in December.

• At some point we’ll find out why Ben was heading across the island when he got trapped in Rousseau’s net (which was indeed an accident, not a plot to invade the survivors’ camp).

• They hope to get to Libby’s story in season 4 at some point (they’ll tell it in flashbacks).

• They haven’t told us about Rousseau’s story yet, because they’ll have to reveal other things that they haven’t gotten to.  We should learn about her in season 4 or 5.

After the discussion, they showed a new Dharma Initiative orientation film, for a new station, “The Orchid.”  This can now be seen on the official website.  You can find some discussion of the video, including screen caps of the frame jumps, by navigating your web browser to the destination of this hyperlink.

You’ve seen it way too many times.  Two people who are clearly wrong for each other are supposed to get married.  An elaborate wedding ceremony has been planned, family has come in from out of town, and everyone is excited to wish the new couple well.  Everyone, that is, except one of the two people getting married.  Ten minutes later still no bride.  Or maybe the bride shows up, and as the couple exchanges vows, one of them gets the shocking realization that maybe this isn’t right.  And in response to “do you take this man/woman to be your lawfully wedded husband/wife?” there is a long pause.  The minister will repeat himself, as if somehow he was misunderstood.  Then the bride/groom responds “...no... no, I can’t do this, it’s just not right.”  Suddenly everyone in the church gasps in awe because they didn’t see this coming and honestly they were just there for the free booze.  At this point, either the bride runs out of the church in tears, or the groom scrambles off.  Or sometimes one of them will confess their true feelings for someone else present in the church.

I’m sure you’ve seen a scene very similar to what I’ve just described in countless movies and TV shows.  You may have even read such a tale in a book or two.  It is super cliché, but it must be the first thing they teach you in screen writing school.  Just before they teach you that one bullet is enough to make a Ford Explorer explode.  But does this ever actually happen in real life to real human beings?  I’d say it’s pretty rare.  I’ve never known anyone who’s encountered such a situation.  I’ve never even heard a third-hand tale of someone being left at the altar.  Given how much people like to gossip about the misfortunes of others, you’d think word would spread fast and linger for years.  But the only incident I know of is the runaway bride from two years ago that got far too much media attention.  So I ask all of the writers who read my blog: please don’t write a scene involving someone getting left at the altar.  We are all pretty tired of it.

by now you should’ve somehow realized what you’ve got to do

Nearly a year ago I blogged about the schedule for Lost season 3.  Now the producers have announced that there will be exactly three more seasons of Lost before it ends, each of which will air only in the spring, for 16 consecutive weeks.  I think this is a great step in the right direction for the show.  After the craptacular mini-season aired last fall, Lost lost a lot of viewers.

Reading between the lines, it seems that the show’s writers always knew where they wanted to take the show to end it, but the networks would (naturally) like to keep the show on the air until it stops bringing in money.  And that might be the best thing for the networks, but it’s certainly not good for the fans or for the show’s story.  To extend the show, the writers would have two basic courses of action: 1) write filler material to go in the middle of the story, to delay the ending; or 2) write the ending, then make up stuff after that ending that you never planned to write.  For a show with lots of mysteries, option 1 is really the only choice, and it seems the network was pushing the writers to stretch out the plot and forget about some things that were introduced in season 1.

The last ten episodes or so of this season have (in my opinion) gotten way better, and I’m looking forward to the next three seasons.

No, and I don’t care.

I’ve been saying it for years, and CBS finally listened:  tribes in the next season of Survivor will be divided by race.  They got the ball rolling when they cast a family of black people with the last name “Black” in The Amazing Race two seasons ago, giving us the great “black family, you’ve been eliminated” line.  Now there really is going to be a black team.  Watch and see if your race wins!

Growing up, some people might say I was a little sheltered by my parents.  Looking back, I would say that I agree, but I don’t feel that it was a bad thing at all.  We didn’t watch all this garbage that is on TV these days.  Then again, I don’t really remember what was on TV back when I was growing up.  However, I do remember one thing that we loved to watch over and over again, and in my opinion this is what really kicked off the “Princess” fad.  My mother would go to library repeatedly to check out the Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre.  This was a series of the old faerie tales that we all know and love, but performed by real people, some of my more favorite movies being The Dancing Princesses, The Three Little Pigs, and of course, The Princess and the Pea.  I tell you all of this background because this past weekend, Kip and I were up in Raleigh visiting with friends and my little sister.  While we were there, Mandy and I watched her copy of Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella.  This prompted me to tell Mandy that what I would really like for Christmas this year, was a copy of The Dancing Princesses on DVD.  She proceeded to say that it was totally awesome.  When we got home, I had to go to BJ’s to get new tires for my car, and while waiting I wandered around the store and found a DVD which was the complete collection of Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre.  Of course I immediately bought and have been watching the movies contained on the six disc set of movies.  For those of you that are unaware of the number of movies contained in the collection, I will quantify it for you; there are 26 faerie tales in all.  And they are all totally amazing.  Kip has been “watching” them with me, but doesn’t seem as totally enamored with them as I am, but he doesn’t seem to understand the awesomenisity of their awesomeness.  He doesn’t realize that growing up watching these movies and totally loving them then has caused me to not care how old they look, or how bad the acting is.  They are the movies that helped to mold and shape my young mind.  I will always love and cherish them for as long as I live.  What is even cooler is that the next generation of little Princesses is going to get to experience the magic of this series as well since my mother wanted me to get a copy of the collection for her to give Peanut (my soon to be niece) for her to watch as she grows up too!!!

I found this to be rather interesting: Lost will be airing without reruns next season.  Another article (can’t find a link, sorry) said they will air six episodes in a row, starting in October, finishing up in November with some kind of mini cliffhanger.  Then they’ll start back in early February and continue to the end of the season without reruns.  I think that’s pretty cool.  I think 24 did something like this too.. but I don’t watch 24 so I’m not really sure.

This past Tuesday was Valentine’s Day, as I’m sure you’re aware.  I suggested to Stephanie that we go out to eat that night.  She said it would be crowded, but I said we’d leave early and get there by about 6:00.  I mean, it was a Tuesday night, and no one gets off work for Valentine’s Day, and who likes to eat that early anyway?  Turns out a lot of people.  We got to The Olive Garden at 6:00, to be told there was a “130-150 minute wait”!  We decided to go next door to the Red Lobster, where the wait was only an hour, then we went to the Toys’R’Us nearby to pass the time.

Now I know what you’re thinking- Kip!  You are SO clever!  I mean, I bet you’re the first person to notice that Valentine’s Day can be abbreviated “VD,” an acronym most of us associate with “venereal disease.”  That is SO clever!  I mean.. wow!

While that is true, I ask you to please refrain from devoting your comments to telling me how clever I am.  I know all about it (I was there when I wrote it).

In other news, I mailed off the Nielson Ratings packets this morning.  If you’re curious how the system works, I’ll give you a quick rundown of the things I found interesting (see also Stephanie’s previous post on the same topic).

• They first contact you by phone, ask you a bunch of questions, the last being if you’d like to participate.  After you say yes, they tell you they’ll pay you fifteen bucks.

• Then they send you a TV Diary for each TV in your house.

• That $15 they send you is in cash.. like, a Lincoln and a Hamilton.

• The diary is a grid, with columns for each person in your house on the right.

• Recording in the diary can be a little tedious.  You have to record the channel call letters or name, the channel number, the name of the program, and who watched it.

• If a program was DVR’ed (as most everything we watch is), you have to list the date and time that it was recorded as well.

• Sweeps week runs from Thursday through Thursday.. so we had two Thursdays to record.  Makes sense I guess, since Thursday is the most watched TV night.

I enjoyed being a datum.  In fact, I generally do.  People will call me on the phone and ask me if I’d like to participate in a survey.  “I’ve been waiting my whole life for this moment,” I always tell them.  Well maybe not, but I should try to remember to do that next time.  It’s just refreshing to know that a dataset reflects me, because a lot of times you hear statistics and think “Where did they get these numbers?!”  Especially for something like TV, that matters, unlike irrelevant things like psychology.  However, I was disappointed that we were selected during Olympics week, as many of the shows I normally watch were either reruns or just not aired.  But there is a spot at the end of the diary for comments, and it asks you to list any shows you normally watch but didn’t get to during this week.

People can come up with statistics to prove anything.  Forty percent of all people know that.
  --Homer Simpson

About four weeks ago, I got a phone call that I wouldn’t normally have even answered, but I was in a good mood that day.  As it turned out, the call was from the Nielson Ratings people.  The woman asked me if I knew what the Nielson Ratings were, and I said yes.  She then asked me a bunch of other questions about what kind of shows I watch and how many tv’s we have in the house.  My favorite question was when she asked if we had DVR.  I answered yes, and then she proceeded to clarify that she meant the device that digitally records shows off of tv, and not the hardware that simply plays DVD’s.  While I could have replied, “Is that the thing what plays them small shiny discs?” I composed myself and simply said that I knew what DVR was and that I was sure we had it.  The last question she asked was to see if I was interested in being a Nielson Family for a week and filling out a booklet reporting what shows I watched and the times that I watched them.  I thought this was entertaining due to the sheer volume of shows that I watch everyday as I am currently not employed with nothing else to do.  (If you wish to remedy my lack of employment, please feel free to contact me.)  The woman told me that I would be receiving a booklet for each tv we owned in the near future and that we were to record our show schedule starting February 9th.  By this time, Kip had gotten home from work.  He was confused by the strange look on my face (amusement) and the things I was saying on the phone.  He was especially startled when I got off the phone squealing because the last thing the lady said to me was that in appreciation for our participation in the process they would be mailing me $15 with the booklets.  I was excited because that is like “free money”!

Well, three days ago the booklets arrived, and to our surprise the $15 included was not in check form which we both expected but in the form of a ten and a five!!!  So it really was free money!!  We have officially started recording the shows we watch.  The only problem I have with this whole process is that the Olympics are this week, which means all of the shows that we normally watch are doing reruns this week.  So it isn’t like this is an accurate account of the shows we normally watch.  But I can’t complain because I got $15 for watching tv!!

In the interest of giving my loyal fans some new blogopodian content, I’d like to state, for the record, that The Colbert Report is awesome.  I would have posted this two weeks ago, but I wanted to give it a little time to see if the rest of the show would be as awesome as the first two episodes.  Well they have decreased in quality just a little bit, but they’re still really funny.  The level of arrogance is one I’ve only seen matched by Maddox.  The other night he had a segment where he said Rosa Parks was overrated.  That’s the kind of statement that you’d expect from Maddox.  Now I’ll make a little prediction about the show:  I think that eventually he’ll get rid of the “I’m going to walk to the guests instead of the other way around” thing.  Sure, it was really funny at first, but it will get old.  It’s like South Park killing Kenny each episode.  After a while it stopped being funny, and they wisely removed it from the show.  But I digress, and I need to be coding right now.

Other broadcasters read the news to you.  I promise to feel the news at you.