My Thoughts on Lost Season Six Premiere

I'm not one of those people who blog endlessly about every episode of Lost, but I do have my theories. Below are just set of random thoughts about the season six premiers (LA X). This is, of course, going to be of no interest to most of you, but I am bored and avoiding work right now.

----------------

Random Lost Thoughts

Whatever sank the island, it was not the blast from 30 years previous. The presence of the Dharma shark would indicate that the Dharma Initiative still managed to set up shop and perform most of their experiments.  In Season One, the pilot tells Jack that the plane was off course when it hit turbulence by like a thousand miles. In the Season Six premier though, the plane flies directly over the submerged island. Maybe somewhere along the way somebody tried to move the island but wound up sinking? Or, maybe, the alternate realities and timelines started with Ben moving the island, it did appear to sink at the end of season four, and that the incident actually prevented the island from sinking. 

It would be in keeping with Jack's bad decision making. Think about it, his decision not to save the young Ben Linus, figuring that Ben was the cause of all their problems in the future, instead wound up making Ben into the bastard he was as he was saved by being taken to the temple.
My head hurts thinking about it, and I realize it does not 100% fit with the timeline, but I think there some basis for the thinking. So Ben moves the island but sinks it and sends instead. As Jack and company are thrown back in time they detonate the bomb which creates the incident

Did Hurley hear the numbers in the alternate world? Was he in Australia to do a commercial for his chicken restaurants? Outside the terminal Hurley is on the phone talking about Outback Roasters and some beef over the name, presumably with Outback steakhouse. This would seem to imply that despite a different realty, fate still put all these people together.

A lot was made about Jack's hair and it's length (in the premier his hair on the airplane scene is longer, as it is on the island, while in the series pilot his hair was much shorter). I think the producers just took an easy way out on the hair because it would have required the actor to wear wig half the time. Given that they could barely make Jack's beard look real they probably figured they were done with fake hair and would explain it away with some parallel universe mumbo jumbo.

Charlie's hair was also shorter. The Hobbit is in another TV series where his hair is shorter. 

Did anybody else hear jet sounds when Miles was trying to commune with Juliet's body? Did Miles tap into the parallel world? At the time everyone I was watching the premiere with thought, and I agreed, that the weird look on Miles' face as he stared at Sayid's body was because he could not hear or get a read on Sayid. But earlier in the episode Miles tells Sawyer when he is asked to commune with Juliet that "That's not the way it works" implying that it is harder to communicate with the dead that simply tapping into their thoughts. Does Miles now have a conduit into the other universe?

I may be mistaken, but Hurley was not wearing a red shirt in the season five finale. As we pick up the story this season suddenly we see that Hurley is wearing a red shirt. Is Hurley a goner? They have put a red shirt on him before, including in the first season and later in another episode where he imagined killing himself, but now with things wrapping up Hurley may be soon heading for his own date with destiny and may buy the farm before the end of the series.

Anyone who has ever driven out (or been driven out) of LAX can tell you that, in the middle of the day, nobody is going to be able to peel out and make a quick getaway the way Kate's cab driver did. This was like a 24 moment, like when Jack Bauer would tell people he would be across town in 15 minutes when in reality the same drive takes an hour-and-a-half.

The Smoke Monster/ Man-in-Black loves his loopholes. He needed a loophole to find a way to kill Jacob. He also found a loophole around the ash circle of protection. When one of Jacob's bodyguards used a circle of ash to protect himself, the smoke monster found a loophole around that by shaking the room violently until the man was knocked out of his circle.

There you have it. If you're wondering what the image to the left is, it is a graphic novel I wrote some time back for DC Comics. It has to do with the work I am avoiding and, on a very peripheral level, would be something that Lost fans might enjoy. If you like your science fiction with a dose of super-heroes and a dash of conspiracy you should like The Griffin.  Someone on Amazon is selling the book for like five bucks, well worth a look.

If I become a rap or hip-hop star, will I need to change my name?

I've been getting some odd email over the last couple of months. Well, I get odd email all the time, kind of goes with the territory. The thing that made these seem out of the ordinary though was the fact that people kept asking me about hip-hop and stuff like if I was touring or what.

So, today I did some research and Googled Dan Vado Rapper and this is what I found

Seems like there is a young rapper from Brooklyn who goes by the name Vado. Coming from the Italian the word vado means go, in Spanish it means to ford (like fording a river) so the name is I think based on the notion that this guy is a mover, or a shaker, or maybe both.

According to his Facebook page Vado's real name is Teeyon Winfree and he hails from Harlem.

I decided to do a little checking around and see what other things my namesakes are up to. I found


















Anyway, I already knew about the two other Dan Vado's floating around in the world. One I am actually related to (my Uncle's son) and the other is a guy who pops up from time to time and is kind of, well, odd. I guess if you count my uncle (whose name was Danillo and whom I am named after) there are three other Dan Vado's, but my uncles passed away a number of years ago.

I tried to get the Creative Labs people to give me a Vado when they released it, promising to talk it up, they said no. I bought one, it is cool but would have been cooler had they given me one for free, and to be honest the Flip is better.

The image of the El Vado motel is actually the desktop to my phone. There is a town in New Mexico called Vado along what used to be Route 66. The motel is now apparently a crack den that people have been trying to get closed for years but which historic preservationists keep trying to save. Last I heard the place was going to be renovated in some way.


Anyway, it's a small world. I listened to a little of Vado's tunes on his web page, but not being the target audience I can't tell you if it was any good or not.  Neither am I the target audience for the Vado Hayride album, but you gotta love an album with song titles like Lookin Better Every Beer and You Don't Have to Go home Honey But You Can't Stay Here.


 I do know this, I am no longer the Vado with the corner on cool.

Neil Young feud with Lynard Skynard and it's place on the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brian Finale

Last night Conan O'Brien closed an ugly chapter in late night television history as he closed out his run on as the Tonight Show host after a paltry seven months behind the desk. O'Brien took the classy route out, given the opportunity to say anything he liked about NBC he chose not to bag on them but instead thanked the network for taking a chance on him and for 20 years of mostly good times.

But Conan's last show may help close a debate that has nothing to do with the Tonight Show, NBC, Jay Leno or anything else. Conan may have given rise to another opportunity to discuss an old chestnut of whether Neil Young and the members of Lynard Skynard had some sort of feud going on and whether there is still some sort of division there.

Conan's last musical guest was Neil Young who came on and sang "Long May You Run" a song which according to Neil Young is about a car and a girl but when you hear it feels like it about so much more. Later in the show after Conan gave his farewell speech the stage curtain's opened and Will Ferrell, dressed in full southern rock regalia led the Tonight Show band on what may be the best ever version of Lynard Skynard's Free Bird I have ever heard (full disclosure here, I was a teenager in the 70's and every fucking cover band on the planet was doing Free Bird back then, I learned to loathe that song).

Now you may or may not know but there was a much ballyhooed alleged feud  between Neil Young that came about when Neil released the songs Southern Man and Alabama. Both songs painted the southerner with a pretty wide brush, perhaps too wide as it seemed that Neil (who is Canadian) was basically saying EVERY southerner was racist and responsible for past transgressions which the average southerner had nothing to do with.

 Skynard, led by front man Ronnie Van Zant released what is commonly known as a response song called "Sweet Home Alabama" which has been in subsequent years seen as a defense of racism and a condemnation of Young and people like him. Young is called out in the song with the lyric "Well I hope Neil Young will remember/  Southern Man don't need him around anyhow".  "Sweet Home Alabama" was labelled a racist song and Skynard as a band were tagged as being a bunch of ignorant bigots themselves. They didn't help dissuade anyone from that notion as in concert a Confederate flag would unfurl behind the band as they played the controversial song.

But, were they and was the song racist? Van Zant seemed to confuse the matter. In one interview the Skynard lead singer is quoted saying "We wrote Alabama as a joke. We didn't even think about it - the words just came out that way. We just laughed like hell, and said 'Ain't that funny'... We love Neil Young, we love his music..." but in another interview with Rolling Stone he said "We thought Neil was shooting all the ducks in order to kill one or two," in essence supporting the notion that southerners did not need some Canadian guy telling them what was wrong with their world.

The meaning of Sweet Home Alabama continues to be debated, with people mostly taking whatever view they are predisposed to take. For my part I have no real opinion, I think the song is not for me and while it could be racist it also might not be and we can't condemn the song or the band based on how people interpret it or use it. Remember when Ronald Reagan used Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" during his campaign. Springsteen objected not just because he did not support Reagan and did not give the campaign permission to use the song, but because whoever decided to use the music obviously missed the point of the song and did not listen to the lyrics beyond the chorus. Neil Young himself had a song sort of adopted by people for the wrong reason with "Rockin' in the Free World" as it is often quoted in a sort of jingoistic way when the real meaning of the song was criticism of Bush the First's social policies.

If there was a feud between Young and Van Zant and the other members of Skynard it was either over-blown or patched up.  For his part Young was quoted saying about Skynard and about the song "Oh, they didn't really put me down! But then again, maybe they did! (laughs) But not in a way that matters. Shit, I think Sweet Home Alabama is a great song." In the same interview in Mojo Magazine Young says he was going to give the song Powderfinger to Skynard along with a couple of other songs.

Van Zant for his part admired Young and often wore Neil Young t-shirts when performing. The shirt that Will Ferell is wearing during his cover of Free Bird is the same Neil Young shirt that Van Zant wears on the cover of Skynard's 1977 album Street Survivor. The singer also wore the same Neil Young shirt (which was the cover of Young's Tonight's the Night album) on tour.

The stories get weirder and stranger and not really verifiable. Neil Young claimed that Ronnie Van Zant was wearing a Neil Young shirt when he died. It as rumored that the Skynard frontman was also buried in a Neil shirt and that fans had dug up his grave to try and verify the fact. While Van Zant's grave was desecrated police said there was no evidence that the coffin had been opened.

So, there on the Tonight Show you have Neil Young paying tribute to Conan, then going off to perform on the Haiti telethon all on the same day that he found about the death about longtime friend and producer Larry Johnson. That is a class act and a pro by definition.

Then on comes Ferrell complete with pregnant wife and adding the like of Beck and Ben Harper to the Tonight Show band to perform Free Bird, a a Lynard Skynard song about someone escaping a relationship that is going nowhere and was probably doomed from the start. Sporting long hair, Tonight's the Night t-shirt and pulling out a cowbell during the solo. Behind the entire band was a giant American flag (as opposed to the Confederate battle flag that Skynard would have used) and it almost seemed to fly in the face of of the whole Young/Skynard thing. I mean Conan O'Brien is a savvy guy with a good knowledge of his music and pop culture history. No way would he have okayed something that might have offended Neil Young.

As much s I can't stand Free Bird, it was a perfect way for Conan to go out.