UConn James

(Kelly's sentence that you quoted pertained to JPL c. 2006, not to TE.) It's a quandry. Don't want to extend him too soon (before he's gotten over the berm) but if he lights it up in this offense, it's only going to get more expensive. This is a crucial year for TE. After the bit of a sophomore slump he had later in the year (I realize it's not all on him, as the OL mismatch against the 3-4 NTs was bruatal to watch but...) he needs to rebound. Lots of QBs have had a cool-down in their 2nd year starting, even the best of the best. It's the showing in the 3rd season that's often makes or breaks a QB. Bear in mind, however, that TE's current salary in a 3rd-round pick contract range is what, 400K? He's been a starter in the NFL for almost two seasons at the marquee position where a lot of backups are making $1-2-3M(!). There's been guys with similar or less impressive stats who were relatively making peanuts and did early renegotiating. Tony Romo comes to mind. There's got to be some antsy-ness to get a new deal on TE's part as well. If he's smart and if he thinks he's going to have a good year, he'll wait until next offseason to negotiate an extension when he has more "hand" in Seinfeld-ese. If there is no contract talk now, it's b/c he's confident, and maybe it's just me but I like to see that. If he has a lot to play for, and when you combine that with other guys who have a lot to play for (T.O.), their game is often elevated. That means good things for the team on the field. But this is the NFL, and I wouldn't blame him for signing a slightly below-market extension for some security sometime before the season if he has a good TC and preseason or toward the middle of the year if he's played well, factoring in however much the team wants to re: OL --- if Trent's personal progression apart from any young-OL mistakes improves.

Doing a bit of reading on imdb.... JJ Abrams' entry reads that one of his trademarks is a "box with mysterious contents." Then, watching the mobisodes for the first time on Youtube.... Then I stumbled on a JJ Abrams' talk at something called TED. If you haven't watched it, take the 18 minutes and do so!

LOST "Spoilers" I really don't consider any of this "spoilers." Vagaries and doesn't tell us anything we don't already know is coming (especially how the last of the O6 got on the Ajira plane), and JG poses an interesting thought about the guitar case. I'm making a decision not to yellow-font this b/c I don't think it warrants it. But If you want to stay absolutely positively 100% LOST-pure, then stop reading now.

Another moment... Dr. Chang: What year were you born? Who's president? Hurley: Uhhh... Something I read in a recap.... The introduction --- Richard Alpert building a ship in a bottle. A clue pointing to a connection to the Black Rock, perhaps? Also, what of Richard's assertion that he saw all of the '77 travelers get killed? Or do they disappear after Jack sets off the bomb, or if he doesn't? We'll see. It's also something to see Jack's transformation. Calls to mind Locke's assertion in the hatch along the lines of 'You believe in destiny, you just don't know it yet.' How much of that was just a comeback and how much was it maybe a subconscious knowledge on the part of Locke? Link My money's on that, too. I'm also reading speculation that Jughead being stored underneath the DI's yellow-house compound might explain some of the fertility issues. A commenter suggests that he thinks Kate is preggers from her and Jack's pre-flight nookie. It would re-create that part of the flight with someone being with child (Claire). I know it sounds a little disingenuous, but that's a thought I've had as well.

My guess would be Butler.

What to make then of the old Porcupine/Porsche joke?

I think it was a misnomer to call FTL Richard-centric, but to be fair, I think most of the big sites didn't have an entry for centricity. The "multiple story lines" are carried, I think, exclusively in the season finales. It seemed to drop centricity with this ep, rather than next week. Doing this picks up the pace of the action/drama, which is probably what makes the finales so awesome --- we get a lot of information and action in a short time-span. But then again, it sacrifices the depth that we get in the flashback/flashforward eps. But any way it comes, I'll take it. Other notes from last night.... It was apparent that Kate is anti-changing the past b/c she wants what has happened to happen. Otherwise she will never have met Jack, Sawyer et al. But more than that, I think, is her realization that if Jack succeeds, she will be carted straight off to a long prison stay. Yellow-fonted for EZC; re: next week's preview. How anti-climactic is it that we're left this week with Sawyer, Juliet and Kate being whisked away on the sub. And then 10 minutes later in the preview, it shows them back on the island holding guns. I watch the previews and usually consider them fair game for discussion, but that gave away too much. So Darlton, that was pretty sh-------. They have to spill Richard's backstory sometime. No one will be satisfied w/o it. I guess they're just waiting, maybe b/c it's going to be that awesome.

Funny, I thought that letting it return to grassland was about as fitting a memorial as there could be. Most everyone speaks highly of the Vietnam Memorial... but when Nightline airs the names of the GWOT dead on Memorial Day, the people who are most ardently in favor of the wars frown on it and iirc they threatened to take legal action against ABC. Looking at cold stone pillar fountains for WWII GOOD. Reading the names of people who actually died in war BAD. Nevermind, $58M when we're in a recession. I realize it's a drop in the ocean, but it's drops that accumulate to form that ocean, you know.

Ben is kind of like Falstaff in that way. He does things that make you not like him, but then he comes out with some great one-liners. "Whaddya think, I'm gonna stage a cooouuup?!?" But I think his funniest scene was w/o words --- where he and Hurley were waiting outside of the Orchid(or was it the Jacob's cabin?) and Hurley had the candy bar. I'm not so sure that we yet get what Locke means in that he's going to "kill Jacob" and we surely don't know why. And I also don't know how much we can associate Jacob with the smoke monster... the monster that was jonesing to pull Locke into the rabbit hole much the same way it pulled the Frenchies under the Temple. The monster can re-animate the dead (Alex in "Dead is Dead"). It remains to be seen what re-incarnated Locke (or Suit Christian or Grunge Christian)... The Island, Jacob or the Smoke Monster? We do not know the relationship b/w these entities, if they operate together (and to what extent) or if they are adversarial. We'll see how strongly Richard/Ben are followers of Jacob vice followers of Locke. ... If there's a difference.

This thread has fulfilled its purpose, no? Shall we hold an un-pinning ceremony?

Hell's yeah. Yeah, in a better world that's what would happen. Losing a team is tough....

Hartford, please?

Ehhh. It wasn't anything like I hoped it would be. I get why people might have called it Richard-centric, but by that same token, it revolved around Locke a lot. Lots of set-up. Next week is going to be pay-off time. At least, I hope it will be, and I expect it will be... b/c this is LOST. And nobody does finales like LOST. Anybody have any questions or was this as straightforward an ep as you can get?

The NFL's standing rule that I was aware of said that each team can have a Home, Away, and one Alternate uniform. However, this seems to be a special year with the AFL 50th. With it, all bets may be off re: how they're going to merchandise the anniversary. From the source upthread and the links, it looks as tho there will be home and away versions of historicals. But, just b/c the Bills' throwbacks are also historicals, one probably shouldn't assume they will be used in future years.

Any profits that aren't sold through the official Bills shop near the stadium is aggregated and shared equally among all the teams. There would be no real increase. Wherever the merchandising money goes... it would still be a net expense. Also, I'm not sure of the mechanics with a league-notified jersey change. Would the team have to purchase the stock of old merch? That's one of the things players have to do when switching numbers ala how Owens had to buy all the stock Hardy #81 jerseys. Does anyone know if the same thing applies to teams?

Aw, shucks.... I find it interesting that no one commented on my thoughts on how the monk (Brother Campbell) --- even tho he was not shown in "The Variable" --- figures into the Eloise Hawking story. (I also think not showing it would give short shrift to just how much EH grieved and agonized about what she (thinks she) had to do.) That was a pretty big part of the episode, I think, and a satisfactory tie-up even if we're never actually shown Brother Campbell talking w/ EH. The 'mystery' of her photo on his desk ain't quite so mysterious now. I figured there would be more discussion about that.... After a week of digesting "The Variable," it's also dawning on me that we don't know exactly what the effects were from Daniel Faraday using his machine on himself. The machine was designed to put future experiences/memories into the subject's consciousness --- hence, why the rat (named Eloise.. hmm) perfectly ran the maze she'd never been put into. We don't know how far into the future that Faraday had put his consciousness, but we know at least that it was Dec 2004, b/c he was crying at the sight of 815 even if 'didn't know why.' Something went screwy, and it'll be something to find out, but his mind may have had a problem either with his time-travel or his manner of death in '77 when he's alive in '04, and just resulted in a fried brain like a computer that can't handle a calculation and reboots bricks itself. This stuff could also get into how Eloise Hawking said to Penny that she 'can't see what happens for the first time in a long time.' Could she have used Daniel's machine on herself, so that she knew the future? Only, her brain didn't experience the bricking problem b/c there was no 'impossible calculation' for it to handle. This is just conjecture on my part. In his notes, too, it's funny to think back on the title of that Desmond-centric ep, "The Constant" wrt to some of my comments upthread, and Daniel's note in his journal, "Desmond Hume ... is your Constant." Desmond is the Constant / 108. Six other people are the Variables / 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42. What this means, I don't know yet.

The freighter captain, yeah. But considering how it may link in with Richard in his centric episode, combined with the fact that the Black Rock is just begging to be revisited in a season where there's been a lot of revisitations from previous seasons.... I think it's pretty likely.

+1 But as I've written before, this probably won't happen until after Ralph sells or dies. Changing the logo and unis full-time is a fairly costly proposal --- new letterhead, new business cards, new stadium signage, changing the field logo (and I believe AstroPlay went out of business, too, iirc, which would make this a little harder/more expensive), media guides, et cetera, et cetera. With 2 games a year, he figures it's enough to give people a taste of the good stuff and not incur expense. Ralph Wilson has a raging case of Old Man Syndrome. He doesn't want to change the decor just so the next owner will want to change it again. And unless Ralph owns the Sourcerer's Stone, this could literally happen at any time in the next 5-10 years. It's along the same reason why he's quashed talk about a new stadium. It's actually easier (and more profitable, b/c it will attract more buyers) to leave things alone, not handcuff the next owner to a new stadium he might not want, and just coast to the finish.

I think it's very good odds that she's always been an outside-Other plant that was on 815. The Tailies assumed she'd been taken... but it's just as likely that she stole away at a convenient time. Bear in mind that the Others appear to have had another plant in Oceanic. The woman at the gate, whom Hurley hugged and picked up when she called the plane back, I believe her name was Jenny or Ginny. She was also the woman at the computer at Oxford in 2007 when Desmond tried to find Faraday. She was supposed to dead-end him, only Des did some peeking for himself. Look at the list at imdb, and it's the same actress. Not a coincidence. A number of off-island Other operatives have been revealed, among them Jill and Ben's lawyer. And not a big leap (especially since she integrated so fast) to the conclusion that Cindy was put on 815 by the Others.

...

LOST 5.15 - "Follow the Leader" - (ABC promo copy) Jack and Kate find themselves at odds over the direction to save their fellow island survivors, Locke further solidifies his stance as leader of "The Others," and Sawyer and Juliet come under scrutiny from the Dharma Initiative. Several places I've looked said it will be Richard-centric. Be prepared for awesome-ness. Yellow-fonted spoiler: With a "Capt. Bird, an honorable ship captain" in the character descriptions, I believe we're going to learning more about the Black Rock.

Dorenbos (the magician), then Schneck where Moorman and Lindell coincidentally upped their performance, then the dude we have now Neill, who has flubbed several snaps. I too was/am hoping that Wood or Levitre could do the LS... but it is something that needs to be practiced, and taking time out of learning their G/C spots --- especially this year --- probably isn't the best idea. Perhaps one of them can pick it up in the future to save a roster spot.

Skeletor Uncloaked, more like.

Why should this be a matter about which Congress can't say, broadly, "Institute a playoff system"? It's what everyone wants, and yet, Swofford, et al refuse to budge from their computers b/c they want to keep their boondoggle going. Boise State is spending $X million, has had three no-loss seasons, and they haven't sniffed a chance at a title while teams that have lost win. What more do they have to do? Why shouldn't Congress be allowed to order a system that is more fair, when those who have run it have broken the public trust? If it were a matter of a product having razor blades in it, there would be no questions. The consumer needs protection. Such a net product in the sports world is a little hard to see. What is the product that sports produces? It produces a feeling and history, neither is a tangible item. I can get it that people are wondering how/why Congress would seek to protect an intangible product. But it is a product nonetheless, and it is tainted. It would have been much preferable for the NCAA to do this on its own, in its own best interests. Alas, the big schools have exerted enough influence to essentially bar inclusion in the championship. An order/threat to play fair has to come from further up. Also, bear in mind that this came in a lull session when most of the Congresscritters were back home. It's not like it held up any important legislative motions or debate.

EW Lost recap Something sticks in my craw here... What Christian Shepard said to Jack about how he had to sacrifice certain parts of the father-son relationship so Jack could become the finest surgeon in the city, etc. Reflect on all of these parents or parental action that have driven them to be the people they are. Some are special, tho, and rather than being some byproduct of circumstance, they were (had to be) specially nurtured to become what they are. What significance do they have? Are they more special? Who is included in this group? Jack, Charlotte, Faraday, Miles (Dr. Chang sent him away not b/c he didn't love them, but in a similar sacrifice so his son would develop his power), and, I would argue, Locke --- in a rather weird sense of nurturing.