Author: King Tom

Relationship Issues

Tonight on 24, we learned the main bad guy is having issues with his girlfriend, who thinks he’s an importer/exporter who is extremely devoted to his work.  

The FBI agent who’s [most likely in the end] a good guy and smitten with his female co-worker is frustrated by the fact that each minute she’s getting more and more like Jack Bauer and less like the bright-eyed by-the-book FBI agent he fell in love with all those years ago.

In the White House, the president is showing some backbone by refusing to negotiate with the terrorists who have kidnapped the first husband.  Meanwhile, upstairs in President Heaven, President David Palmer is looking down on all this and thinking to himself…

 

Continue reading “Relationship Issues” →

King Tom1 Comment

Male Bonding

So the people on the island are flashing forward and backwards through time.  The Oceanic 6 are stuck in 2007 (or 2008).  And I’m watching the show, wondering how an hour can feel like it passed by in 15 minutes.

Tonight’s episode of Lost, The Little Prince, didn’t have a lot of action, but it made up for that with answers and more riddles.  Most of this show seemed to be about groups of people doing things.  More specifically, groups of men.  Locke and Sawyer had their little bonding moment.  Sayid and Ben (and somewhat Jack, when he wasn’t trying to help Kate out) also spent some quality time together.  The most surprising thing in this episode was the transformation of Sawyer into Mr. Emotion.  

First he’s pining over Kate. Then he sees her, but can’t do anything about it. Then he has a heart to heart with Locke.  Then he shares a special moment with Juliet, is shot at, travels through time, and picks up where he left off.  Because he’s an everyman stuck on a journey with a scientist who specializes in time travel and a man of faith, I can actually sympathize with his point of view.  I just hope they don’t make him cry anytime soon.

Continue reading “Male Bonding” →

King Tom

Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before

So on tonight’s episode of 24 (Day 7: 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.), an industrial plant in a small town is threatened.  A remote computer controls the release of toxic gas, but when that system is compromised, the buildup of said gas threatens to explode, putting that town in danger.  Only the brave efforts of one man, who must sacrifice himself to save the day by throwing the manual release lever can save the day…

King Size Homer looks better in a mu-mu than Jack Bauer would.

Continue reading “Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before” →

King Tom3 Comments

If That's Jughead, Is Locke Mr. Weatherbee?

So this is Season Five of Lost–minor action off-island with major exposition on the island, with the audience left to figure out what time it is.

I like it.

Jughead was like a history lesson about the Lost island.  However, this lesson just tells us what happened, leaving out all the names and dates.  The when becomes pretty easy to figure out.  But the who, that’s for us to determine.  The why, I’m sure will be answered later.  But if the who turns out to be who we think they are, then my mind is blown.

Continue reading “If That's Jughead, Is Locke Mr. Weatherbee?” →

King Tom1 Comment

Lost Geeks Are Everywhere

Al Trautwig: Lost fanBack in the day when Yankees games were telecast over the MSG network, my favorite broadcaster who covered the Yankees was Al Trautwig.  Al didn’t specialize in baseball, but covered every sport–he’s done hockey, he’s done the Olympics, he even covered the Jamaican Bobsledding Team.  

Al is a damn good broadcaster.  When he did the Yankees games, he’d appear throughout the game and on the MSG pre and post game shows.  Then the Yankees went to YES, and other than the Olympics (and the fact that I moved out of MSG’s viewing area), I haven’t had much of a chance to listen to Al–until now.

It turns out Al is a Lost geek.  Al has started what looks to be a weekly video blog on the MSG Network Web site where he talks about Lost.  And boy, does he talk–he goes on for seven minutes.  I can’t say I agree with all of his analysis, but it’s solid.  He makes a lot of good points, and isn’t ashamed to hide his fanaticism.  He even plugs Lostpedia, which makes me wonder if he’s an active member of the online Lost community.  If you’re out there Al, you’re always welcome at the Kingdom.

If you’re a fan of Lost, give Al’s podcast a view–hopefully, it’ll show you that we’re everywhere.

King Tom

I Saw The Sign and it Opened Up My Mind

We’ve had a hellacious winter here in central Ohio.

It seems like there was no fall–back in October, the weather felt like it went from summer to freezing temperatures instantaneously.  And in the last few weeks, while it hasn’t piled up, it has felt like it’s snowed every day.

Well, yesterday, we were told, we’d get this huge storm- and for once, the weather people were right.  Had a few inches Tuesday morning, then a brief respite during the day.  But right around 5:00, it started snowing again, which turned to sleet, to freezing rain, and back to huge chunks of white death falling from the sky, which is where we are now.

When The Civee and I first woke up this morning, we figured we’d clean off our car and see how things were. Well, there was a slight problem- our front door wouldn’t open.  The door was frozen shut at the bottom.  After leaving through the other door, we started clearing the ice off our car, which went well until our scraper broke.  After that, we figured someone was trying to tell us something and here we are, looking out the window, watching these huge snowflakes keep falling.

King Tom

The First Husband Hulks Up

I’ve noticed a regular occurence throughout my years of watching of 24–one hour is a bit slow, setting things up.  I think the hour is a disappointment, even if it’s full of exposition and witty one-liners (“I’m a stay at home mom”). Then all of a sudden, after the episode, as I watch the previews, my mind is blown and I think the next week can redeem the show I just watched.

This week was one of those weeks.

To be honest, this hour had its moments.  Chlöe and Bill rescuing the redhead.  Jack and Tony taking down both groups of bad guys.  The reveal of Henderson (RoboCop) being behind Tony’s reseurrection. And the first husband hulking up out of his drug-induced paralysis to take down the evil secret service agent (or, more accurately, take him over the railing and onto the table below, using the evil agent’s body to break his fall).  Actually, with all due respect to Jack, that was the moment of this episode- making the first husband’s storyline worthwhile.

The rest of the hour seemed like it was sitting around and talking.  The FBI is still boring and full of unsympathetic characters (the one FBI agent with any likability whatsoever is out in the field with Jack).  The White House drama is okay, but to be honest, we’ve heard it all in some form of another over the past six years.  And if the cabinet invokes the Twenty-Fifth Amendment for a third time on this show, I’m going to walk away.  

Overall, this season is average, but I’m waiting for it to go somewhere.  Am I alone?

King Tom

Holy Shat!

While I enjoy Star Trek, I wouldn’t consider myself a trekkie.  I’ve never seen more than two episodes of Boston Legal.  And I’ve never watched TJ Hooker or Rescue 911 without falling asleep.  That said, I consider myself a fan of William Shatner.  

I recently started reading Shatner’s autobiography Up Till Now.  Its a good book-everything is colored by Shatner’s personality.  The man has led a fascinating and full life.  

I’m finding out all sorts of things I never knew before, such as the fact that Captain Kirk (well, actually William Shatner, but the story sounds better if I use the name of his most famous character) saved Odd Job’s (actually actor Harold Sakata, but see the previoius parenthetical) life while working on the film Impulse.  From the book:

Harold was a huge man with no neck, he was just shoulders and a head. In this particular scene he chased me through a car wash and I managed to escape by climbing up onto a roof; when he walked by below me I threw a lasso over him and yanked him up. As he’s being strangled I jump off the roof, hit him serveral times, then escape.

The stunt coordinator rigged Harold with a harness under his shirt which was connected to a steel cable…We practiced it several times, rope, pull, up, looks good. Then we rolled cameras.  I dropped the loop over his head and yanked him up. I jumped down to the ground and looked at him dangling three feet in th air, struggling to get loose. He was making terrible choking sounds. Boy, I thought, I hadn’t realized he was such a good actor. He sounds like he’s really choking. I punched him rat-tat-tat in the gut a few times and took off. And as I started running a thought struck me: Wait a second, he’s actually choking…I yelled “Cut! Cut!” and ran back to help him.  Harold weighed about three hundred pounds but somehow I managed to lift his body enough to reduce the pressure, enabling him to breathe, and then held him up until they cut him loose.

So if it wasn’t for Shatner’s Kirk-ian quick thinking, Harold Sakata, one of the best things (along with Gert Fröbe and Sean Connery) about Goldfinger, would have died in a cheap action flick.  

The book is chock full of other interesting tidbits, one of which has greatly increased my understanding of the song Rocket Man.  I’m familiar with Shatner’s musical career.  I’ve heard The Transormed Man.  I’m a huge fan of Has Been.  But I’ve never seen, or heard his earth-shattering rendition of Rocket Man.  After watching it, I’m stunned.  First of all, I never realized the lyrics went “burning out his fumes up here alone.”  I always thought it was just some random nonsense riffing by Elton John.  Second, the guy who wrote the song, Bernie Taupin, is also responsible for bringing the world We Built This City.  If anyone deserves to be locked in a booth listening to We Built This City for 24 hours straight, it’s him. 

And now, for your viewing pleasure, I give you William Shatner’s rendition of Rocket Man:

King Tom

I Wish I'd Read That Book By That Wheelchair Guy

After eight months, Lost picks right up from where it left off with two new episodes, Because You Left and The Lie.  The show which seemingly juggles genres finally started probing two issues that it had hinted at in earlier years–time travel and (well, for the first scene at lease) the workings of the DHARMA Initiative.

It’s great to have Lost back, and it was great to end the hiatus with two episodes.  The shows were good, but a little disjointed.  The one drawback to having characters in different locales is that it’s hard to get a good narrative going when you’re skipping story tracks like a record (or the inhabitants of the island tripping through time).   I like what’s happening on the island.  Ben’s attempts at getting everyone together is interesting.  Sun and Kate on the other hand, are kinda boring.  The only possible redeeming quality of that storyline is that I don’t trust Sun at all, so Kate deserves what’s coming for putting her trust in Sun.  

And Ben has 70 hours to get everyone back to the island.  What is this, 24?

Continue reading “I Wish I'd Read That Book By That Wheelchair Guy” →

King Tom