March Music Madness!

I have absolutely zero problem admitting that I'm sitting on my couch on a Friday night, drinking wine, ranking players for my next fantasy baseball draft (I'm in two leagues this year), and listening to the radio. March Music Madness has been as fun as anything I've ever done in my career. The music's been great, the callers have been great, and we've broken all kinds of text messaging records. To top it off, the finals (10:30 tonight) will either be Tool vs. Nine Inch Nails (which I predicted on the air earlier) OR Tool vs. A Perfect Circle. I could not be happier. Maynard and Trent, together again. Sigh. Purr. Coo. And so forth.

Of course, the week's events have triggered all sorts of debate. I loooooved this blog entry I found dissecting some of the first round results. There have definitely been some surprises along the way. Check out the bracket to see!

Update, 11:14pm: Treeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeent!!! YEAH, NINE INCH NAILS! <3 <3 <3 <3 <3!!!

Lost: Expose

• What a weird first five minutes. I said "ew" twice (once for the cheesy strip club, once for the old man/young hottie love), cheered once (Nikki's collapse - never liked her), and laughed out loud at "who's Nikki?" I also enjoyed guest star Lando Calrissian - looking great for someone who turns 70 next month!
  
• All the early "look, those two discovered secrets about the island too" footage reminded me how awesome the first season of this show was. Sigh. Boone was so pretty, and Shannon - well, she was whiny and annoying, but she was interesting. And remember when Arzt blew up? Good times. All this nostalgia for the good old days. Smart move, writers.
• The Hurley/Sawyer detective combo is pretty sweet. They've developed a great rapport.
  
• Sawyer mentioned that Nikki and Paulo could have been working with the Others, just like Michael. Who's Michael? Sounds familiar. It'll come to me.
• Paolo had been in the Pearl Station! That's why "THE TOILET STILL WORKS!" It was mildly revealing to see Benry and Juliet spying on Jack and company: "I find out what he's emotionally invested in, and I exploit it," said Benry. Such a bad man. I could have done without Juliet's "he's cute," though. Blah blah blah, soap opera BS, catfight between her and Kate next week, blah.
• Vincent loves the dead. First Roger Workman, now the pretty couple in the sand. Bad dog. (Edit: okay, so it's not as much of a fetish for the dead if they weren't really dead...)
• Oh, Chahhhlie. Did you need to make that confession? And why couldn't Sun have slapped him instead of hot shirtless Sawyer? She's pretty good at keeping secrets from Jin (see: speaking English), so I think/hope Sawyer's safe for now.
• Alan and "12-hours-ago" Paolo have the same beard. Just FYI.
• Holy CRAP! What an ENDING! I suspected that Arzt's spider would play a part, but I was still surprised at how it all played out. I'm so glad they didn't wake up in time to avoid being buried alive. That would have been a cop-out, and those two murdering thieves didn't deserve a second chance.
  
• Overall, I was terribly pleased with this episode, even if it didn't move the plot forward. I was engaged from beginning to end, which is all you can ask from an hour of television. Plus, thanks to Nikki's final words, I remembered that "Paralyzed" by Rock Kills Kid is an awesome song. Good fun all around!

Furry American Hero

Alan and I have been talking about getting a pet for some time now. When I was growing up, I had a cat named Midnight. That little guy brought me much joy. Meanwhile, Alan spent much of his pre-me life deathly afraid of dogs. (Unfortunate story involving a chain, a tree, and a frightened little boy.) So the feline path seemed the way to go... until now. A Maryland dog recently saved its owner's life by performing the Heimlich manuever. It's an amazing story: look at that cute little hero! I can't say that a cat would have been capable of such a life-saving accomplishment. Much as I loved Midnight, he was generally better at snoozing and scratching than using his powers for good. (He was also good at standing on his hind legs and dancing for scraps of deli meat. Memories.) Maybe a puppy is the way to go after all...

Political Comedy at Second City

So this looks exciting: Between Barack and a Hard Place is the "funniest Second City show in years," according to the Trib. Songs about Hillary learning to be likeable and sharing a raft with Al Gore when the ice caps melt? Color me intrigued! I haven't seen nearly enough Second City shows since I've moved here. There was a minute or two where I debated taking one of their improv classes, but then I chickened out. I get nervous speaking in front of people. Sadly, I'm not kidding. Why do you think I crack my jokes in a room by myself every day?

Lost: The Man From Tallahassee

I went out to dinner and then saw Brand New at the Vic tonight. Dinner involved my man, my beloved boss, and an old pal. Brand New involved singing and beer. That's why I'm late with tonight's Lost blog. Many apologies.

• I gasped aloud when Locke stood up in the first scene. Guess giving your kidney to your con-man dad and losing Peggy Bundy really disable a guy. God, Lockebacks make me so sad. TV dinners, no solicitors, receding hairline. Would you want to go back to that life if you were him? "The phone's right over there, John," said his faux-father. "Right by the huge plate-glass window," I said. Damn, I hate being right. 8 stories. How on earth did he survive... and why?
• But seriously, why was blowing up the submarine that important? (Same reason why blowing up the Flame was so important: plot development, y'all.) Is his daddy really that scary? I guess we'll find out soon enough... THANKS, MIRACLE BOX!
• Not all of the others were born here: they were mostly recruited. Yet there's been a colony on the island long enough for a 40-something man to be born there. That man is so important that everyone else on the island qualifies as "my people," but he's not the all-mighty Jacob who made "the List." Oh, and Ben's nurse appears to be the guy who lured Juliet onto the island in "Not in Portland."
• Jack can play the piano, and he can turn on his friends. "I'm not with anyone, Kate." Sure, he'd come back for them. Sure. Loyalty that strong after 80 days? Suuuuuuure. And I'm sorry, but Kate is a bit of a slut for that sweaty hand-touching and those moist glances so soon after bumping uglies with Sawyer in an open-air cage. Decide who you love, sweetie. I can't take the drama much longer.
• Part of me likes Benry Gale. He doesn't f*ck around, that master manipulator. "Are you afraid it will go away, John?" He gets. Sh*t. Done. And seriously, I bet they actually have a pair of hampsters that provide the Others' power.
• SAYID!!! "Because you look like your mother!" Yeeeeeeeeeeeah!!! I bet Alex turns out to be quite the important character. But oh, teary Rousseau. Now there's a moist glance that actually moved me.

So Let's Sink Another Drink

The headline reads: all the pleasure of drinking, without the pain. It's not magic, it's science. The idea is this: alcohol is a "technological throwback," still produced essentially the same now as it was in the beginning. Technological advancements in pharmacology could someday make it possible to engineer instant-sobriety pills, pills that mimic drinking without the after-effects, and even drinks that don't harm your body at all. Sounds like something out of a drinker's fairy tale, right?

Of course, all of these solutions have warning labels, too. If you knew you could be sober in an instant, would you be careful enough about the way that you were drinking? Would it become even easier to be addicted to alcohol without those painful side effects - or could they negate the addictive parts of it with science too? The article is long, and it was published last summer, but it's interesting reading. I happen to like the feel of an adult beverage in my hand, though I'm sure the traditional way of consuming food and drink will be extinct eventually. And the hangover? Well, though I wouldn't miss the way those feel, they do remind you to behave yourself next time. After some thought, drinks without consequences seem like a dangerous idea to me.

On that note, I'm going to go have some wine with dinner.

Brief Thoughts on Year Zero

Tonight I and hundreds of other Nine Inch Nails fans invaded Metro for the Year Zero listening party. One word about the new album: intense. I listened to most of it standing next to my friend Jen; we were standing on the balcony, almost dead center, people-watching. We both agreed that "collage of sound" is definitely the way to describe it. There's a lot of noise on the album, but it's deliberate noise. There's traditional electronic-sounding NIN, but there's a lot of experimental sound too. It's also extremely sexy, in a slow, grinding, dirty kind of way. About a month ago, Trent said this:

A lot of it was improvised.
It is very tedious describing your own music.
It's not just music.
It's probably too long, but it felt like the right thing to do to paint the complete picture.
It will sound different after a few listens.
You can think about it and it will reveal more than you were expecting.
You can dance to a lot of it.
You can f*ck to a lot of it (maybe all of it depending on what you're into).

After hearing it, I can say that while it might be tedious describing his own music, he's accurate on all counts. There's a great article here, at MTV.com, that goes into better detail than I can about the new songs. Of the non-leaked songs, I think I liked the angry "Vessel" and "Capital G" the best. I'm pretty excited to hear them again, without distractions. I want to focus on the lyrics next time. The world of Year Zero demands it.

I met a ton of awesome people tonight, too. It's pretty cool to be in a room full of people who feel as strongly about something as you do. Hi to all! The countdown to 4/17 is on!

Quick Weekend Hits

Oops. Meant to post this last night, but forgot. I'm too lazy to edit it, so you get the version I wrote yesterday. :)


Very quick post, as I'm out the door for the start of what's going to be an insane weekend.

1) Gym Class Heroes were great last night at House of Blues. Really fun show. Really fun post-show fight-witnessing at Mother Hubbard's, too. No, seriously. A dude bit another dude's leg while watching NCAA action! Now THAT'S March Madness!*

2) HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY A DAY EARLY! I'll be at Tailgaters in Bolingbrook from 9-11 tomorrow. Come say hi!

3) Nine Inch Nails fans: I have the honor of hosting Chicago's Year Zero listening Party at Metro on Sunday. SO EXCITED SO EXCITED SO EXCITED. 6pm start, but it's first come, first served as far as entry goes. They're capping entrance at 1500. Try to get there a little early. In the meantime, check out my Year Zero blog, and be aware: buying the lithograph and getting your hands on some of the buttons at the party gets you more clues...


*shamelessly stolen from the guy standing behind me when the fight broke out, but I SWEAR I was thinking it. I swear.

Lost: Par Avion

At 8:55, I felt pretty indifferent about watching Lost. I did enjoy this episode, though, and I'm pretty geeked about next week.

• JACK AND CLAIRE ARE SIBLINGS!!! FINALLY, AN ANSWER TO A HINTED-AT MYSTERY!!! OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!! I'm slightly annoying by the dragging-out-the-mystery fact that she didn't want to know her father's name. Too bad moody (but still hot) high school Claire turned her mum into a vegetable. Not a bad flashback, and I did feel a little tug at my heartstrings when she was crying out her guilt. She even looks gorgeous when she's sobbing. I hate her.
• Is the baybee dead? Did Chahlee kill the baybee? Because Claire was doing a lot of screaming about Chahlee being a liar, and the baybee didn't so much as whimper. And that seabird sure was docile and calm. I almost thought that when she lovingly tossed it and her cloyingly sweet message of hope into the air, it would limply fall to the sand, squawk, and die. When Claire told Chahlee that she believed in him, and wouldn't give up on him, and that he's not going to die, I said aloud, "oh, I sure hope you're wrong."
• "The list!" So the Others DID take the "good" people, and they consider our castaways to be flawed... and they knew who they were before they arrived on the island? "The John Locke I knew was para-" said Eyepatch McGee, right before that same John Locke killed his ass dead! Ew, bloody ears and foaming at the mouth. What a way to go. I am disturbed by Locke's behavior of late. Did something happen to him after the hatch ex/imploded? Can't wait to find out how he got "para-" next week, and, maybe in Season 4 or 5, who the list-making man above Benry Gale is.
• Kate getting snippy with Rousseau for not asking enough questions about her daughter is funny, considering how many direct questions people on this show usually ask... though that seems to be changing. And I like it.
• Last week on the Morning Fix, I SAID that I wondered if Jack would somehow become connected with the Others and, perhaps, not want to go back to the beach. AND LOOK! Tossing the old pigskin without a care in the world. That didn't take long. Did he get something like the Clockwork Orange video treatment? Do they serve Kool-Aid at the Barracks? Or did he just miss football too damn much?

Bugs In the Way I Feel About You

I'm not on the air today because we're having a BIG! IMPORTANT! MEETING! I'll be back tomorrow. I still got up early this morning to enjoy a leisurely cup of coffee and my usual pre-show reading routine. There's a Sun-Times article today about the return of the cicadas, those chirping, noisy insects that only surface every 17 years. The cicadas should make their triumphant return in June, unless we get an early blast of the wet and warm weather that draws them out. They'll buzz for about a month, mate, and go back underground. According to one biology expert, you can even eat them if you find one! I'll pass.

The article caught my eye because it reminded me of Lucas, one of my favorite geek movies of all time. In the movie, it's the once-every-seventeen-years return of the locusts that interests our quirky hero - until the pretty redhead catches his eye, and then the sensitive football player catches HER eye, and then... the fight for love is on. I suspect they used locusts instead of cicadas because a) it's easier to draw a parallel between the boy and the insect when their names sound similar and b) it's hard to get teen actors to say cicada correctly.

If you've never seen it, you really should. I was the type of girl who preferred the geek to the jock, so I have a soft spot for Lucas and his plight. Basically, I was Winona Ryder's character with longer hair, and I was in choir, not the band. (Her first movie role, by the way.) There are a lot of high school movie cliches. But there's also a young Jeremy Piven and possibly the best Slow Clap moment in film history. Just writing about it makes me want to throw it in my Netflix queue right now. ...and now I have. Better move it right to the top.

300: A Review

Like Braveheart, but more badass. That's how I've been describing 300. Thanks to Justin at Regal IMAX at Lincolnshire, I got to see it in glorious detail last night - and get a tour of the projection area! (300 is 4.5 miles of film when shown on an IMAX screen. Fun fact!) Sure, it's short on plot, and the narration is way overdone. It's also visually stunning, surprisingly moving, and a lot of bloody fun. I mean that literally, not because I'm trying to sound British. Spears through mouths, flying limbs, decapitated heads, that sort of thing. The film was color-treated in such a cool way; it's part of what kept the movie so true to the graphic novel:



See; slightly glossy, slightly faded, beautiful light, just gorgeous. The actors are all gorgeous too: obviously, the Spartan soldiers are all perfect male specimens, and Queen Gorgo and the red-headed Oracle are smoking hot ladies. Xerxes, played by Rodrigo Santoro, is arresting as well. Who? He's the new male castaway on Lost, the one who's best known for assuring everyone that the toilet in the Pearl still works. I wouldn't have believed it was him if I didn't stay to watch the credits. And if I didn't stay to watch the credits, I wouldn't have overheard a girl saying, "if the king took 300 men with him, like, they should have called it 301." You just can't make this stuff up.

300 is sexy, it's violent, and it's really entertaining. I enjoyed it greatly. The end. Enjoy the rest of your weekend...

Good Friday? GREAT Friday!

1) Alan and I are headed to Lincolnshire in a few hours, where thanks to the kindness of a certain Justin, we've got opening night tickets for 300 at the IMAX theatre! Everyone who called in today said that it was amazing, beautiful, awe-inspiring, and so on. I can't wait. Full review once we return from the suburbs.

2) Finally, finally, FINALLY: starting on March 15th, Q101 is going to be streaming online. It'll only be during the workday for now - 8am to 5pm - but that means you'll be able to hear all of my show. It's about time. I know it's been in the works for a while, and various things have held it up, but seriously, it's way past due. I'll post a link once I've got it. Happy Friday indeed!

Lost: Enter 77

I'm pretty glad this episode didn't suck. I was worried after the last few weeks. There was just the right amount of levity mixed with suspense and action. I didn't want to kill anyone or break anything. Good times.

• Hey, it's Sayid! I remember you! He wants to have a rational conversation with Locke about what to do next? That has no place here on the island. See? There's a cow. That's not rational! Wait a minute... EYEPATCH MCGEE!!! And he is the "last living member of the Dharma Initiative!" Except that he's not. He's just a one-eyed guy who makes bitter tea, thinks computers can cheat, and loves sprightly gymnasts.
• I totally knew that the Flame was going up in flames, and not just because Alan said that out loud as soon as the C4 was discovered. No, I knew when there were ROWS and ROWS of binders that CLEARLY held important information about Dharma, like "Food Drop Protocol" and the vaguely intriguing "Operations Manual." No WAY Lost lets this crew have any quality time with reading materials that would ANSWER QUESTIONS. Instead we get to wonder for weeks about the "the purge!" Great!
• Oh, and we also get to wonder why Miss Klugh showed up spouting Russian and asking to be killed. She had potential to be awesomely evil, as evidenced in her time last season with Michael and WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALT. Now she's dead. What did she know? Why would she rather die than be captured? I think she said "you know the rules," right? Is that an Others thing, or did the actress who played her get a DUI in real life?
• So in our flashback, Sayid is... just a cook. Nope. A cook who gets his ass beat? Nope. A cook who used to be a torturer in the Republican Guard! This ain't new, y'all. "I cannot admit to something I didn't do." But he CAN lie about torturing a woman until faced with that most terrifying of all interrogation techniques, cute-furry-cat exposure. Why wouldn't he admit to the truth initially? Unless... he didn't do it, and he just said what she wanted to hear so it would stop, which is why torture. Doesn't. Work.
• Once again, it's WAR GAMES Y'ALL! What is wrong with Locke? Leave the freaky cheating computer alone! Is it really that important to play chess when he's supposed to be investigating every nook and cranny or guarding the highly dangerous Russian? I know he's supposed to be too-trusting, super-gullible, etc., but a strange Asian man asked him some questions about "Hostiles" on a computer monitor, and he answered them without hesitation. I hate what's happened to his character.
• But I LOVE Kate away from her men. Kicking, punching, taking aim. Thattagirl.
• Back on the beach... did the hatch explode or collapse? Great question. It sure did LOOK like it collapsed, as Sawyer pointed out to Hurley, but lo: there's a ping-pong table from the heavens! "I ain't gonna lose," said Sawyer. That's how you knew he was going to lose. No nicknames for a week? Thank goodness there's a week until the next episode! ...oh wait, they mean island time. That could be months! At least Sawyer once again has porn to keep his tension level low.
• Othersville = the Barracks. Quite the military-sounding name for such a cozy, book-club-oriented community, don't you think?

Coffee: Not So Hot After All?

I'm a big fan of coffee. (You've heard this before... oddly, almost exactly a year ago!) The pink and orange Dunkin Donuts' sign always warms my heart. I just don't feel right without a cup or two in the morning. Common, right? WELL. A bunch of Brits now say that it's not the coffee itself perking me up in the morning... it's that drinking my medium french vanilla with milk and sugar just counteracts my WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS from not consuming caffeine overnight! Says an expert: "that alertness you feel is you getting back to normal, rather than to an above normal level." I'm an addict! It's all in my head! Coffee is SATAN!

Well, I don't know about all that. I've read enough about caffeine to believe that it has plenty of benefits AND drawbacks, just like anything you ingest. I'd imagine that it takes more than my cup or two per day to experience such severe withdrawal that it truly impacts my performance as a human being. And besides, anything that boosts my sex drive, as you see in the sidebar of the article I linked to, is definitely worth consuming on a daily basis! Am I right or am I RIGHT? Oooh-oooooooooh! Ahem.

Shut the F--- Up, Ann Coulter

I hate to give her any more attention. That's what she wants, after all. But Ann Coulter has a history of saying vicious things to get press, and she should be stopped. I'm not saying that because I don't believe in free speech: after all, my job partially consists of speaking my mind freely. I'm saying it because the more that people abuse our right to free speech - and abuse each other - by being hateful and ignorant, the further we get from the ideals that gave us that right in the first place. If you haven't heard over the weekend, here's what she did, here's a way you can make your voice heard without just complaining about what a stain on society she is, and here is a vintage f-bomb-filled video about what a stain on society she is, just for fun:





Henry Rollins is awesome.

Update, 3.6.07: Look, the plan is working!