Tonight's LOST: I can't really review LOST objectively since I'm more concerned with where the story is heading than the quality of each episode. That said, I enjoyed tonight's episode, but it's getting really jarring to jump back and forth between all the different plot lines. I always want to see a likable Locke, and by and large that's what we got tonight. Keamy is the new villain that I love to hate, and he's 100% loco crazy to boot. I hope Ben gives him what for. The most fascinating part of tonight's episode for me was not even the strong clues that Claire is dead or "beyond" or something, but Ben. He's playing a man who believes he has gone from chosen to rejected. We know in the future he regains some of his poise and self-confidence, but right now he is almost as aimless as Locke season 2. You can see just how weary trying to be the "chosen one" has made him. Also: please, please, let Desmond be alive and well in the future!
30 Rock: Very funny, but I was hoping they would take the whole "Producers" parallel thing with Matthew Broderick further. They can ham it up for an "Amadeus" parody, why not this? Also: I'm glad Liz isn't pregnant. Not because it would have been Dennis's, but because I am sick to death of sitcom pregnancy.
The Office: Excruciatingly embarassing. Like every episode. But I couldn't look away. Also, score 1 point for me because it's obvious they are setting up tension for Jim and Pam. I totally called that it would be about her desire to be an artist.
And now for something completely different:
Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut: I just read this one. It was like Slaughterhouse 5 in that they shared a dry, caustic style that I take to be vintage Vonnegut (although I grant you I've only read those two books). I guess I would say he's like the anti-Thomas Hobbes: life with authority is nasty, brutish, and short. And still meaningless. I don't believe that, of course, but then I do think we try to ascribe meaning to the random too often. We can't know what God is doing sometimes, and there's no point insisting we understand when we don't. Otherwise you might end up justifying tragedies instead of helping the victims. Humanism is a fully sensible idea, and far better than materialism, sensualism, power-mongering, or any other worldly end, even if it is (as is often the case) carried out in heaven's name. Although I would add that the most fully human being ever is Jesus, and that if we take Him for our leader, and follow His example, our ideas will be humane. So we will fulfill Kilgore Trout's tombstone inscription: "We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane." Although his other inscription is my absolute favorite:
SOMEBODY
[Sometime to Sometime]
He Tried
[Sometime to Sometime]
He Tried
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