(S09E08) Poor O'Neal. Apparently, nobody clued him in to who the vulnerable members of the blue team were going into last week's elimination. That meant he could sit there at the house a completely and total emotional wreck for the cameras to zoom in on, fretting that his daughter Sunshine had gone home. How much do you want to bet a producer outside asked the blue team to go into the house with Sunshine last to up the emotional drama.Continue reading 'The Biggest Loser' - 'Week Eight' Recap
Filed under: OpEd, The Biggest Loser, Episode Reviews
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Long Nguyen is one of the few photographers who enjoys the opportunity to create stunning images from the desk of his day job.
Photography by Long Bach Nguyen
SACRAMENTO (The Borowitz Report) - Anti-gay California State Sen. Roy Ashburn today demanded a sweeping recall of the vehicle that drove him to a gay nightclub this week.
Sen. Ashburn, a Republican who has consistently voted for anti-gay legislation, said that the car drove him to the club "against my will."
"If we are recalling cars for problems with their brakes and power steering, then surely we should be recalling vehicles that force their drivers to go to gay nightclubs," Sen. Ashburn said.
The state senator said not only did the car drive him to the gay nightclub, but it forced him to enter the club and party there for hours, resulting in his later arrest for DUI.
"I can't tell you what a menace this car is," he said. "It really is the gayest car I've ever seen."
In addition to calling for a recall of the gay car, Sen. Ashburn said he would sponsor legislation mandating that all California vehicles be fitted not only with GPS but gaydar.
In other news, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin offered this appraisal of her standup comedy performance on The Tonight Show: "I was like, I'm not going to quit my day job, but then I remembered I already did." More here.
I was curious about this Big News that some of my favorite search engines now had access to the Twitter “firehose,” so I checked out Collecta for ‘Sarah Palin.’ Here are some of the results:
“Sarah Palin’s new job comes with one tremendous benefit for the public…a remote control…ZAP!!!”
“Earthquakes, Huge waves, Kids on air traffic control, Sarah Palin talk show, what’s this world coming to?”
“Sarah Palin shopping a reality TV show. Show me to a vomitorium.”
“Anyone watch Sarah Palin’s stand up? I was like don’t quit your day job and then I remembered she already did.”
Cute perhaps, but is it news? I decided to put the question to Gerry Campbell, CEO of the realtime search engine Collecta.
Gerry, why should I care that Collecta has the firehose?
Well Charles, as you know, this week it was announced that Collecta and six other companies would get the Twitter firehose… For Collecta that means that we’ll see every single tweet instantaneously. Right when the tweeter tweets it.
It’s called a firehose for a good reason, e.g. Extracting value from it is like drinking from the hydrant itself. Raw messages shooting by to the tune of fifty million a day, streaming continuously in a never ending blast. It takes a lot of focus and expertise to be able to make something useful out of it.
But this is where the metaphor breaks down. Water is water. Undifferentiated. One ounce in the hose is the same as any other ounce.
Messages are different. Each tweet has the potential of being just the one you’re looking for. Just like in web search, the concept of head and tail apply in spades here.
Comprehensiveness is critical in real-time search, just as in web search. Maybe even more so… Unless you’re @aplusk you yourself are a tail-dweller. Don’t you expect to find yourself when you search Twitter?
So what does this mean for Collecta?
Our goal is to have everything on the web that is happening right now. not just Twitter, not just social networks in general. Not even social networks and blogs. We have ten million sites that include traditional news, video, images social messages, blog posts, blog comments… Everything imaginable. And we’re growing that all of the time.
Why? Because that piece of information you want may be anywhere. And that story you’re following may evolve outside one single venue. I can guarantee it probably does.
To put a fine point on it, with the firehose, Collecta remains the single most comprehensive source of timely information in the world. Cool, huh? Try us out when you want to know what that smoke is down the street from you… I bet we can tell you. (True example)
Just as important as having everything possible to pick from and show you, we are also highly efficient at figuring out what NOT to show you.
As our content intake scales, we have more and more images, stories, comments and updates to scan for relevant results for you. In fact, Collecta’s adaptive filtering techniques thrive on huge datasets. We get better and better at delivering high quality trends with more content flowing.
Sarah Palin’s stand-up routine on Leno? Quite good actually. Maybe it’s time for another late life career change. The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Leno-Palin vs. Letterman-Romney www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform Report This Post
Just like everything else on the Web, it’s exceptionally easy to make and distribute video. But making a good one? That’s one of the hardest tasks you can take on.
If you don’t believe, see for yourself — head to any major Web publishers and try to watch more than 15 seconds of their clips. Tough odds.
So I have a lot of admiration for people who are figuring out how to do interesting stuff with Web video.
And I kept that mind last month when I spent the day on a judging video entries for the “digital Ellies” — the online awards the American Society of Magazine Editors hands out each year.
The list of finalists is out now, and you can see some of them below.
The ASME folks have asked me not to talk about the specifics our our discussions (or to identify my fellow judges), but I did want to make one note: Everyone I worked with has to deal with the reality of the Web economics in their day job. So we’re not oblivious to the fact that some of this stuff may not be a practical option for some Web publishers.
You’ll have a hard time selling ads against a 20-minute documentary on environmental destruction in West Virginia, for instance. But we also wanted people to see just how many options Web video offers if you think broadly about this stuff. And we also made a point of including some stuff that a publisher could conceivably use to generate dollars — like interviews with movie stars.
One big bummer: The majority of our finalists don’t allow embedding. So I can’t actually show you their stuff, and will have to settle for directing you to their sites. Apologies. The list of all the digital ASME finalists is here, and winners will be announced March 18.
Reason.tv: UPS vs. Fedex: Ultimate Whiteboard Remix
Oxford American: “SoLost” series
SoLost: Wayne White Goes Thrifting from Oxford American on Vimeo.
Yale Environment 360: Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy
of Mountaintop Removal Mining
National Geographic: Redwoods: The Super Trees
“T”, New York Times Style Magazine, Screen Test series
Just like everything else on the Web, it’s exceptionally easy to make and distribute video. But making a good one? That’s one of the hardest tasks you can take on.
If you don’t believe, see for yourself — head to any major Web publishers and try to watch more than 15 seconds of their clips. Tough odds.
So I have a lot of admiration for people who are figuring out how to do interesting stuff with Web video.
And I kept that mind last month when I spent the day on a judging video entries for the “digital Ellies” — the online awards the American Society of Magazine Editors hands out each year.
The list of finalists is out now, and you can see some of them below.
The ASME folks have asked me not to talk about the specifics our our discussions (or to identify my fellow judges), but I did want to make one note: Everyone I worked with has to deal with the reality of the Web economics in their day job. So we’re not oblivious to the fact that some of this stuff may not be a practical option for some Web publishers.
You’ll have a hard time selling ads against a 20-minute documentary on environmental destruction in West Virginia, for instance. But we also wanted people to see just how many options Web video offers if you think broadly about this stuff. And we also made a point of including some stuff that a publisher could conceivably use to generate dollars — like interviews with movie stars.
One big bummer: The majority of our finalists don’t allow embedding. So I can’t actually show you their stuff, and will have to settle for directing you to their sites. Apologies. The list of all the digital ASME finalists is here, and winners will be announced March 18.
Reason.tv: UPS vs. Fedex: Ultimate Whiteboard Remix
Oxford American: “SoLost” series
SoLost: Wayne White Goes Thrifting from Oxford American on Vimeo.
Yale Environment 360: Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy
of Mountaintop Removal Mining
National Geographic: Redwoods: The Super Trees
“T”, New York Times Style Magazine, Screen Test series
How I used a blog to attract thousands of subscribers my first week.
Why I make six figures and you don’t.
How I quit my day job and now I work all day in my robe and slippers while my wife brings me lattes.
Ever seen headlines like these before? Find them at least a little compelling?
Like every good headline, they exist to attract attention and convince you to keep reading. They’re trying to get you thinking about how to use a tool like blogging to make lots of cash.
But there’s something in those big promises that misses the mark.
Now that I have some experience under my belt as a blogger making an online income, I’d like to talk about the missing ingredient of those pitches.
Lance Armstrong has a great book out called It’s Not about the Bike.
In his case it’s about one of his testicles. To be more specific, the one he no longer has.
The book is about how his bike became a vehicle in a bigger race than the Tour de France or his Nike deal, how his bike is a metaphor for life.
Lance and his tragic disease wouldn’t be famous without his bike. And as an online entrepreneur, you won’t be famous, either, without your blog.
That said, it’s still not about the blog. Not at all. The day you realize that fact is the day you’ll turn an essential corner toward reaching your goal of making a living online.
It’s about your business.
Your blog and your business are different, yet related, things. The former is a sub-set of the latter. The difference is sometimes subtle, but it’s a critical one.
Your blog is a strategy, a branding and marketing vehicle, a means toward an end.
Your business is the money-making model. A product or service for sale.
Your blog isn’t for sale. It may be of service, but it’s a service you’re giving away for free.
Which means, if giving out free content is all you’re doing, or if your blogging has become the core deliverable of what you believe to be a business, your strategy is upside-down.
When I started out, blogging not only seemed like a good idea — especially with all the voices that suggested you could get rich doing it — it was also incredibly rewarding right out of the gate.
Not monetarily. It was rewarding because of how it felt.
Connecting with people. Helping them. Sucking up all that nice feedback. Participating in a community, being part of a meaningful dialogue.
Those are, and should remain, part of the reasons you blog.
But if they aren’t your real objective, your end game — if making a living is an element you want to add to that mix — it’s time to take stock. Because it’s so easy to get lost in all that community stuff, the warm and fuzzy elbow rubbing, the sense of doing something helpful and worthwhile.
Which doesn’t pay you a dime until you actually sell something.
You’ve been getting up in the middle of the night to perfect a post that will go out via Feedburner at dawn. You’ve sweated the syntax of your opening line and polished those nouns and verbs until you found yourself dreaming of your old high school English teacher.
You really care. You’ve become your blog. Just possibly, at the expense of your business plan.
It hit me recently in a post from David Risley, who is one of those “pro bloggers” who, if you don’t read him closely enough, or if you only hear what you want to hear, could lead you to believe that blogging will be the source of your new income, and sometime soon.
But on this day I did read closely, and what I saw there rocked my blogging world.
David, in essence, said this: blogs don’t make money. Businesses make money.
(You’ve seen that message here on Copyblogger as well.)
Your blog is the face of your business, the voice of your brand, the bait that attracts a following.
And yes, you give away as much as you can with it, selflessly and abundantly.
But until you have a product or service to sell, and until the blog connects to that enterprise in a way that actually begins to generate actual revenue in addition to pumping up your online reputation and ego, your blog is nothing other than you expelling positive energy into the universe.
Or, to put it another way, just so much hot air.
Looking for a free online resource that will teach you to think like a businessperson, not just another struggling blogger? Check out Internet Marketing for Smart People, the Copyblogger email newsletter.
About the Author: Larry Brooks is the creator of Storyfix.com, an instructional resource for novelists and screenwriters. His book, The Six Core Competencies of Successful Storytelling, will be published by Writers Digest Books in early 2011.
After going to many conferences for my day job, one thing I have always stuffed in my bag has been a power strip. As any geek knows, there is rarely enough outlets in the hotel room where you need them. Plus most power strips have all the outlets arranged such that you can’t plug to wall warts side by side. Well, Outlets to Go from Monster Cable is something I’ve always wanted. It gives you a power strip with built-in cord management. Plus a little surprise I will get to later. … [visit site to read more]
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Back in early January, I went to CES and was completely overwhelmed. My constant joke was (and still is) that the so-called booths are big enough to have their own zip code. I took a ton of video footage, convinced I would return home and turn that into a montage that really showed everyone the absolute strangeness of CES.
I failed. I came home, switched out suitcases, and headed back out on the road again pretty soon after returning. However, I discovered a video today from my CES partner-in-crime. I spent most of the event with my friend Jason Griffey, who is Head of Library IT at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga. He’s in the midst of planning a new library building, and the place is going uber-digital. (Someday I should get him to write a post here on digital libraries.) Jason managed to put his own CES montage together and that’s what I’m dropping here.
Enjoy the oddness, the hugeness, and the just plain silly at CES 2010:
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Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.
Our pal, Jenny Hart, of Austin's Sublime Stitching, has a monthly column called "Crafting a Business with Jenny Hart" over on Venuszine. There's a lot of information here that's applicable to any type of crafting/maker business.
It seems to me that somewhere between working average day jobs and having your own successful business, there would be a scary transition. How did you handle that? Any tips for crafty women who would like to do the same but who don't have the courage?
You bet it was scary. Lost sleep, constant worrying, and seemingly endless work at two jobs: my day job and my dream job. It still is scary. But the scary part is different now. Attempts at making bigger strides, having more demand than resources to meet those demands, managing money wisely, and trying to find financial backing and business people in the industry who get the DIY movement (psst ... they don't) to possibly partner with. I've often felt very much like running a successful business is discovering the emperor has no clothes. Only, you're king at your own company, which means you're the one feeling naked.
From: Starting a small business is all about being innovative and savvy and learning from mistakes
What professional advisers should a small-business person hook up with at the beginning?
Every business will eventually need a lawyer and an accountant, but small businesses can often do without either for a while. A lot will depend on the kind of business you're running. If you need to incorporate right off the bat or have copyright, trademark, and/or patent concerns, then you'll want a lawyer right away. Even small service firms are wise to have a lawyer available for assistance with wording contracts, partnership agreements, and so on, though you can get a long way on the advice of books, small-business resource centers (many states have government-funded programs to help entrepreneurs with basic contract templates and such), and the occasional e-mail or phone call to a lawyer just to make sure your T's are crossed and your I's dotted. As for accounting help, if you're like us and start out as a partnership (the equivalent of an LLP in the U.S.), you can probably get away with just having a bookkeeper (which is a lot cheaper than an accountant), but if and when you incorporate, you'll need an accountant for sure.
From: Knowing how and when to hire a good adviser
You can read all of her columns to date here.
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Filed under: Education
Lynda.com is one of the best resources I know of for online video learning. They have courses covering just about anything, from novice topics such as basic Windows 7 skills, all the way to complete programming courses. You pay a monthly fee (starting at $25/mo.) and get access to their entire library of video courses to study at your own pace.Lynda.com video tutorial site now has iPhone app originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Filed under: Education
Lynda.com is one of the best resources I know of for online video learning. They have courses covering just about anything, from novice topics such as basic Windows 7 skills, all the way to complete programming courses. You pay a monthly fee (starting at $25/mo.) and get access to their entire library of video courses to study at your own pace.Lynda.com video tutorial site now has iPhone app originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Launched, I believe, only a few days ago, Twitgift.me, a product of the LAC Project, is a new way to send a real gift to your Twitter friends.
You simply choose a gift (which currently consists of chocolate chip, sugar, or peanut butter cookies), enter your own Twitter ID and credit card information, as well as the Twitter ID of the recipient. That’s it. The recipient gets a tweet notifying them of the Twitgift and they enter their own shipping information and can be waiting eagerly for the cookie arrival.
It’s a great concept. After all, sometimes you’ll discover wonderful people on Twitter, but you may rarely see them and never ask for their mailing address. Now you don’t have to; you can just send a Twitgift when that wonderful person has a birthday, needs a pick-me-up, or is celebrating something.
The cookies cost $19 and it looks like there is around $10 in shipping. Twitgift is looking for more vendors to add, so they won’t be an all-baked-goods type of place (not that I have any issues with cookies!).
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Cheers!
Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.
Glenn Beck: Environmentalist? An interview with Beck in USA Weekend revealed that the shock jock's private views on climate are very different from those he espouses in his day job. In fact, Beck appears not only to be convinced that global warming is real, but that it's a genuine problem.
Kerry Weirdly Upbeat on Climate Bill: "I'm excited. I know that's completely contrary to any conventional wisdom," said Kerry, noting that he and Sen...Read the full story on TreeHugger
I love my Nexus One, and I love my brand-new Core i7 desktop even more. Both devices give me hours of entertainment, not to mention how useful they are in my day job. Despite the affection I have for both machines, I doubt I will own either in three years....
Kevin Rose, Digg's founder, spoke this week at Webstock in Wellington, New Zealand and covered 10 amazing tips for entrepreneurs. They were truly insightful - and obviously came straight from the heart and soul of someone who worked a day job and built his dream after hours. This is our take of what he had to say.
1: Just Build It: You don't need anyone's approval and in fact, you probably won't get it, so don't even try.
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2: Iterate: Build, release and iterate. Make a list of the features you want to create over the next six months and get going! For small companies, once a week; for larger companies, maybe twice a month.
3: Hire Your Boss: Make sure you hire people that you would want to work for, who challenge you and you can learn from.
4: Demand Excellence: Ensure staff are committed to and understand your vision. Passionate, committed staff have a tendency to rub off on people. There is nothing like a new junior developer who runs circles around everyone to get people hyped up and raise the bar! Stay involved in the hiring process as long as you possibly can.
5: Raising Money: The higher your evaluation is, the more equity you have to work with. Beg, borrow and steal. Be creative about finding ways to cut costs. For example, tell the bar you are having a "birthday party" instead of a corporate event (which they would charge you $5,000 for). Rent servers, don't buy them. Don't just take the cash, make sure your investors can add value. Stick with angel investment. Venture capital mean board meetings, which is a huge sap on time and resources.
6: Hack the Press: Hit up the lower-end bloggers at your favorite tech blog. They have just as much opportunity to write about your product as any other blogger on the team. Attend the after-event parties. The same crowd that attends the events also goes to the parties, but the parties are free.
7: Invest in Advisors: Give away a small amount of stock to advisors (which they can vest after a few years) who you can call on in a pickle or for general advice as issues arise. Set the ground rules so you and the advisor know how much time you have access to.
8: Connect With the Community: Hold a live town hall where you can collect feedback and get advice from your users.
9: Leverage Your User Base to Spread the Word: Facebook notifications is a great example of how to do this.
10: Analyze Your Traffic: Pay attention to how people are using your site, and then learn and evolve. Use Google Analytics to understand and track traffic sources and entrance and exit paths.
Photo credit: althecat
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Aspiring Entrepreneurs: Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself http://bit.ly/9brrcG
A month ago in our list of the "Top 6 Colleges with Entrepreneurial Programs" we highlighted the opportunities for the forward thinkers at Babson College in Massachusetts. Babson also happens to be the professional home of Daniel Isenberg, a management practice professor, who recently contributed to the Harvard Business Review's "The Conversation" blog with a post titled, "Should You Be an Entrepreneur? Take This Test." In his post Isenberg provides twenty questions that any aspiring entrepreneur should ask themselves before quitting their day job to make sure they have what it takes to succeed.
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"I've learned in my own years as an entrepreneur -- and now an entrepreneurship professor -- that there is a gut level "fit" for people who are potential entrepreneurs," writes Isenberg. "There are strong internal drivers that compel people to create their own business."
Isenberg's self-examination includes true/false statements like, "I don't like being told what to do by people who are less capable than I am," and "I would rather fail at my own thing than succeed at someone else's." After completing the 20-part checklist, Isenberg gives you the entrepreneurial green light if you answered "yes" to 17 or more of the questions.
According to Isenberg's checklist, the ideal entrepreneur likes to win, likes to "question conventional wisdom", is "rarely satisfied" and gets so excited by their ideas that they "can't sit still". Of course, having some entrepreneurship in your blood can't hurt either; one of Isenberg's signs of an entrepreneur is having members of their family or close friends who run their own business. For his final question, he suggests that a worthy entrepreneur "could have written a better test" than his.
Isenberg warns that while answering "yes" to most of these questions could mean you'd make a good entrepreneur, it doesn't necessarily mean you should quit your job right away. "Do you have debts to pay? Kids in college? Alimony? Want to take it easy? Maybe better to wait," he writes. Finally, he adds that risk-takers and money-seekers do not make for good entrepreneurs.
"People don't choose to be entrepreneurs by opting for a riskier lifestyle," writes Isenberg. "Risk is ultimately a personal assessment: what is risky for me is not risky for you."
Can a simple checklist weed-out the true entrepreneurs with potential from the wannabes looking to make quick cash? Or is there more to one's potential for success as an entrepreneur than these twenty attributes? Let us know what you think makes for great entrepreneurs in the comments.
Discuss
Aspiring Entrepreneurs: Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself
- LouCypherIf you were to break down the entirety of scripted web video into two categories — shows about jobs that stink, and shows that aren’t about jobs that stink — you’d probably have a lot more of the former than the latter. Everyone spends a fair amount of time kvetching about work, after all, and finding a new venue to do so (under the guise of fiction, no less!) is probably a welcome release for most creators. The challenge is making that interesting to the average viewer, especially one who exists outside the specific community in which the job takes place. And that’s where the indie series Jack in a Box really excels.
Created by Marcie Hume and Michael Cyril Creighton, Jack in a Box tells the story of Jack (Creighton), an aspiring actor whose aspirations have been dampened over the past several years by his low-level day job in a Broadway ticket office — leaving him a cupcake-devouring, chain-smoking shell of a man who never misses an opportunity to get even the smallest amount of petty revenge on the world.
The jokes are relatively particular to the New York theater scene as a result, but even someone who couldn’t find 42nd Street on an NYC street map will enjoy the bitchy way in which Jack deals with annoying customers and actors who are much more successful than him, just as long as they’ve ever attended a theater production or worked a job they honestly didn’t care about getting fired from. The budget is clearly low but the production values manage to be relatively solid despite that, and Creighton, as the writer and lead, gives the show a clear voice that has found some audience — with relatively minimal distribution and promotional push, each episode has earned over 1,000 YouTube views.
Over the nine episodes released since the show’s premiere in July 2009, Jack’s quest to escape the box office has escalated. But no matter what he does, his fate seems sadly sealed, a profound warning to those who might give up on their dreams — or just “put them on hold” for a little while.
The most truthful moment of the show comes in Episode 3, where Jack’s job performance is brutally evaluated by his boss Becca (Beth Cole). When she critiques his goofing off, his inability to show up on time and his bad attitude, he asks her if he’s ever going to get health insurance. She says no, he replies that in that case, things are never going to change — and then the two of them go smoke a cigarette, together resigned.
SAI is reporting that AOL wants to create a massive network of local news sites and is recruiting writers to populate these sites. AOL wants to expand its Patch network from 30+ sites to “hundreds.”
Obviously this would mean lots of page views and a bona fide local ad network. The questions that arise, however, include:
A recent MediaWeek piece celebrates an existing version of this plan in Examiner.com:
Consider startup Examiner.com, led by former AOL Digital Cities exec Rick Blair. The company has tapped a staggering 29,000 writers, including former reporters, bloggers and passionate locals, in 240 U.S. cities. Blair says that Examiner.com now reaches 18 million unique users. But the majority of its writers are part-timers. “We tell people, ‘Don’t quit your day job,’” says Blair.
Most of the content flowing through Examiner.com (by my assessment) is crap content. It’s aimed at generating page views for ads.
Yet if it’s all about page views and “shelf space” (SEO) for AOL and not about quality the effort will certainly fail.
The following is a Recap of Lost Season 6, Episode 3 entitled “The Substitute”, originally airing February 16, 2010. If you haven’t seen the episode, or plan on renting the movie The Substitute with Tom Berenger, don’t read, on, cause this is full of spoilers of both. Mostly the latter.
LOCKE: NEW-THOUSAND AND FOUR
This week’s tale opens on a still-paralyzed Locke who grows a little overconfident, falls on his lawn, gets nailed by sprinklers, and submits the tape to Lostmerica’s Funniest Home Videos (but loses to “Baby Plays The Spoon”). In this reality, with some encouragement from his wife-to-be Helen, Locke resumes his day job at the box factory, but is immediately confronted by his boss, Dr. Douchebag (he’s a doctor in Douchebag), who quickly gets him to admit that he didn’t spend any time in Australia on actual company business, and when Locke begs him to accept his apology without explanation, his boss fires him way too happily.
While pulling out of the parking lot, Locke confronts a van driver and yells at him “You’re a worse parker than the owner of this loser company!” but UHOH, it’s Hurley, who owns the company. The exceptionally sideburney Hurley laughs off Locke’s faux pas and recommends him to the Temp Agency he owns, which is managed by Rose for no damn reason. Rose then sets Locke up substitute teaching at a school, where he encounters Ben Frickin’ Linus, the teacher of such unpopular European history classes as:
- Charlemagne Is Coming To Kill Everyone On This Continent
- You’ll Just Have To Trust Me, Renaissance
- Now Your Ancient Greek Friends Are Safe
- Murder Class
Perhaps the budding teachers’ lounge friendship between Ben and Locke in some way impacts Ben’s later speech about Locke being “A man of faith… a better man than I’ll ever be… I shouldn’t have murdered him”? They could just be two separate destinies playing out in mirroring ways, but I’m throwing my money on a convergence here (Eventual Convergence Of The Two Realities is the current odds-on favorite in Las-t Vegas).
Eventually, Locke works up the courage to call Jack’s office for his free spinal miracle, but when the receptionist he totally has a crush on picks up, he hangs up really quickly. (A friend of mine imitated the receptionist saying “Hm.Guess it was someone who could walk.”) He explains to Helen that he’s been fired, and reveals his luggage bag that’s full of knives (You call those walkabout knives?? the Australians would have asked him), and admits that he argued and argued about trying to go on the walkabout, just as he argued with Rose at the temp agency, uttering a memorable Locke refrain about not wanting others to “tell me what I can’t do.” Put a bookmark in this one! We’ll come back to it. Literally stick one into your computer right here ——>
This reality’s Locke — unlike some other Lockes…COUGH…BAD MONSTER ONE– finally accepts his situation, and Helen obligingly rips up Jack’s business card. Locke then tells Helen, “I think I’ll start training for that Ironman now,” and Helen gives him a weird glare, then gets the joke and they laugh together. Freeze frame. Credits. LOST.
After The Jump, Pantsless Sawyer, Number-Lovin’ Jacob, and Locke’s Choose Your Own Adventure Game:
SMOKEY’S RECRUITING, AND IT AIN’T FOREST FIRE RELATED
The Lost producers employed the Beetlejuice cam for the second time this season, giving us a first-person flyby view of the Smoke Monster’s trek across the island (carrying beat’d-up Richard), pausing briefly to listen to The Stooges’ “Search And Destroy” (which is kind of what the smoke monster does = !!) before finally dropping Richard to ask him some questions. SMOKE QUESTIONS. Locke tells Richard he’s surprised that Jacob never told him that Original Recipe Locke was a “candidate” — a term we’ll come back to later — and Richard is moderately shocked by the news:
New Locke’s train of thought is derailed when he happens to catch a creepy ghost child off in the distance who reeeeally looks like he’d pass a Jacob Maury paternity test. When the kid vanishes, Locke decides to return to the Dharma barracks to retrieve Sawyer, who’s so broken up over Juliet’s death, he’s getting drunk three rooms over from the record he’s playing on repeat (we’ve all been there). Sawyer seems remarkably unsurprised to see Locke, as he like the rest of us clearly can’t be shocked by anything this show does anymore, but Sawyer fails to kick Locke out of the house, because Locke reminds him it’s “not his house” (and while we’re at it, that’s the company’s computer, James — cool it on the Twitters website.)
Locke explains that he’s “recruiting,” and that if Sawyer comes with him, he’ll answer “the most important question in the [whole wide] world,” which ends up being “Who shot J.R.?” and pisses off everyone who’s still only on Season 2 of the Dallas DVDs. Actually the question is: “Why are you on this island?” To which Sawyer issues the weightiest, most important scene-ending line of the season: “Well I guess I better put some pants on.” Note that I didn’t need to change that into some lame joke, because it’s that.
Not long after recruiting Sawyer, however, Locke sees the Jacob-child a second time, as does Sawyer somehow (aye chihuahua! I’m trying to say this more often), and takes off after the kid, trying to get him off his dang lawn. The kid cryptically issues a reminder to Locke, “You know the rules – you can’t kill him.” to which Locke responds, “Don’t tell me what I can’t do!” (Did you bookmark the screen where I told you to?? If so, your monitor’s all kinds of broken.) Upon first hearing this kid-quote, I assumed he was referring to Jacob, because he really looks like Jacob and we already know that New Locke couldn’t physically stick the knife into Jacob himself (See: Season 5 Finale cold open). The statement makes a lot more sense if it’s referring to Sawyer, thus confirming Richard’s warning to Sawyer that New Locke wants “everyone dead”, but since he can’t “kill” them we can assume…
1) New Locke is trying to kill the remaining “candidates” by turning them against one another or using a proxy like Ben, AND/OR…
2) New Locke needs all of the candidates to be dead for him to be able to “go home.”
Again, I’m sticking to my assertion that New Locke isn’t some textbook, unambiguous villain, but those are two pretty shady numbers with one-sided parenthesis after them, if they’re indeed true. My Jacob-isn’t-auto-good theory found some support in Dark Locke’s later assertion that Jacob knowingly manipulated the Oceanics to get them to the island, which we already knew from his “Just a little push” vignettes from the Season 5 finale, but which we’ve never heard described with a connotation of deliberate selfishness or manipulation. The 24 “He was evil too!” twist is coming.
OH BEE-CAVE!!!*
*Denotes topical, unpainful reference.
Locke and Sawyer repel down a series of broken Donkey Kong ladders to yet another hidden corner of the island, a secret cave featuring a balance scale and two rocks — a white and black one — tipped slightly towards the black side. New Locke picks up the white rock and whips it into the ocean. OH MAN did you notice that the white and black rocks are kind of like the white and black Jacob / Other Guy??? The producers originally wanted Locke to throw the white rock into the camera and for it to suddenly cut to 3-D and the rock to come out of the screen and say “REMEMBER IT’S LIKE JACOB” but they went with the subtler approach. The two pals then proceed into the Kave Of KandidatesTM.
Before we get to the cave, a quick story: Back before he followed the show, my friend Mike had a running joke where he’d tell Lost devotees the “rumor” he’d heard that in the upcoming season finale, the characters come across a temple with stone statues of all the plane survivors, and the statues of the characters who died on the island had crumbled to dust! Lost fans, immune to deeming any possible suggestion ludicrous, would inevitably reply “Wait, what? Where’d you hear that??” to which Mike would respond, “Nah, I’ve actually never seen an episode” and we’d all laugh at the genuinely dashed hopes of the Lostie in question.
So what was our big reveal this week? A cave featuring the names of all the Oceanic Survivors (and presumably all past islanders) scrawled into the rock, with the names of those who’d died crossed out. Basically, it was 3% less ridiculous than the joke prediction of my friend who’d never watched an episode.
The starting lineup for your 2010 Cavetown Nameroos:
23 – SHEPHARD8 – REYES
16 – JARRAH42 – KWON
4 – LOCKE15 – FORD
The numbers are there because “Jacob likes numbers.” If that doesn’t get explained further, it’ll officially go down as the funniest lazy loose-end wrapup of the final season.
Locke explains to Sawyer that the names are “Candidates” to take over Jacob’s cushy job of Executive Consultant – Island Operations, and that Sawyer has three choices. He can…
1) Do nothing. The Kunu / Forgetting Sarah Marshall approach.
2) Accept the job and become the new Jacob. Sawyer would have to shorten and highlight his hair, improve his candy retrieving ability, and become the island’s “new protector”, from, as Locke not-unbitterly puts it, “Nothing! Cause it’s an island and who’s gonna destroy it, the Island Punchers?? Charles Widmore? I don’t even know who the Island Punchers or Charles Widmore are, so don’t pick number two unless you’re totally gay!” I though it was a childish comment too.
3) Just go. “We leave the island, and never look back, together.” Dark Locke is apparently offering Sawyer the opportunity to ride off into the sunset together, couple from Out Run style, and endure just one awkward plane ride in exchange for finally going home, which, as Locke said to Ben earlier, is precisely what he wants (which may or may not require the killing of everyone).
But is Sawyer ready to go home? “Hell yes.” LOST. Questions will be answered indeed! The question of “Is Sawyer hell yes ready to go home” just was.
LOSTDS AND ENDS
– Sun whining about Jin is totally the new Michael whining about “MY SON!”
– Speaking of those two, which “Kwon” is a candidate? Even Dark Locke doesn’t know. It’s usually a good sign when the supernatural, all-encompassing island beings aren’t even sure what’s going on with the show.
– Why was Kate not a candidate? Can she run as an independent? ON THE SEXY BALLOT! That’s a thing.
– I assume the episode title “The Substitute” has nothing to do with Locke’s substitute teaching profession standing as a metaphor for the once-human island entity’s embodiment of Locke’s body as well as the eventual human substitute for Jacob, but is actually a reference to the movie The Substitute, in which Tom Berenger beats the crap out of a dude with a Jai Alai helmet. Ben, I’m looking in your direction.
– Widmore, anyone? Desmond, anyone? Show?
– Basically, if this Jacob replacement candidate thing does end up being the crux of this final season, it means the entire show Lost has been about a group of tropical island castaways being filmed competing to win a title. It’s an awful lot like that popular, long-running CBS reality show, The Benefactor with Mark Cuban.
Episode thoughts? Theories? Favorite / Least Favorite Parts? Cave Explanations? Candidates? Recruiting? Goin’ Home? Please comment away.
