Lost Weekend

THIS POST CONTAINS SOME LOST SPOILSPORT SHIT, AND MAGGIE SHOT MR. BURNS

Alex's stomach was really bothering him on Friday. He said he had butterflies and he thought it was because he had a tough day in gym and the new teacher yelled at him. We walked Cookie and had a nice talk. I told him he needed to put behind any of the bad things that happen in school the previous day, or week or whatever. Learn from mistakes if you can, but try to leave hard feelings behind and treat each day as a new one. I gave him the old NFL cornerback analogy. Yeah, this coming from someone who held a lot of grudges as a stupid young man.

I need to do my best for this kid. Even if I am not a great example for anything in the behavior department...I need to impart whatever I have and hope that passes for wisdom. Love that kid and he deserves whatever I have to give him and that sure as shit ain't money.

Saturday, no baseball practice for the boy. Let's just say in the line there were no hits and there were no errors, but there were runs. Poor little guy.

No golf this weekend, but I got in some long walks and good exercise working around the yard while KJ tended to the needs of our good soldier. Kim and I watched Up in the Air late Saturday. It was definitely not what I expected and I think that's a good thing.

On the "not what I expected" front, if someone traveled back six years ago, found me and told me that I would've found a Blackhawks game more thrilling than the last episode of Lost I would've thought they were nuts. Funny how things go that way.

I was one of those who praised the way the end of the Sopranos was executed and I won't rehash all the ways I thought they got it right. It's not that the ending of Lost doesn't make sense, it did. It was not a colossal letdown, but they promised so much more with the electromagnetism and the numbers. I mean maybe that's part of the message of the show that you can spend your life studying math and physics but in the end that doesn't matter as much as the fundamental fact of life that we are all finite beings.

I thought it was sweet that father embraced son as Jack realized his fate, but they could have done this story without the other devices that came and now seemingly are gone without explanation. It's not a big deal. It's only tv. It entertained the hell out of me going through it, and maybe that's the point.

I suspected that the promise of the show was greater than the substance when Edmund Burke was hit by a bus. But I stayed, and am glad I did. If Lost missed its mark a bit in the end, it is still better than 99% of the cumswillery that is on network tv and, for that reason, I'm glad I caught every episode. But I am also glad that, even though I saw (for awhile) a "realistic" depiction of the mysterious nature of existence in certain elements of the show, I'm glad I never bought into it to the degree that some did, spending endless hours debating online, or delving too deeply into the mythology of the show. In the end, the fundamental fact of the show is connected with reality, the execution was above average, for tv anyway. It's tv and I learned long ago to separate most of what happens on tv from reality.

Now if I can only get the Dharma Initiative to come to DeKalb to study the mysterious South-to-North properties of the Kishwaukee River, then I can finally shut off the light from beyond the bamboo forest in Byron and maybe we can all get the Hell out of here if we're not already dead already!