By Chris Kirkman

“Eggtown” Recap and Analysis …

First and foremost, my apologies ahead of time for the unusual truncation of my sometimes-verbose ramblings. This is a busy week for me and since this week’s episode wasn’t completely filled to the brim with minute details we should go over with a fine-tooth comb, I am just going to cut some of the fat off this pig. I’m sure some of your eyes could use the break.

At any rate, this week brought us “Eggtown,” which has to rank up there with one of the strangest titles in Lost‘s four seasons. What does it have to do with the content? Beats the hell out of me, unless they’re talking about women’s reproductive systems. The episode was chock-full of goodness, though, so let’s get down to it.

Previously, on Lost:

Sayid traded Miles and Kate for Charlotte – a good move on his part, bravo – and managed to get himself a seat on Frank’s chopper. He and Desmond take off, bound for the freighter, but not before Dan enigmatically tells Frank that he can’t deviate from the course heading they used to come in. Oh, and Dan played around with some time-dilation experiments.

For this week’s episode-inspired drink recipe, I got fascinated by Kate’s prison dilemma and, as such, started tinkering around with the idea of teaching you all how to make prison pruno. For the uninitiated, that’s a fermented alcoholic drink that prisoners make from fruit, sugar and ketchup, often brewed in trash bags and kept hidden behind toilets. But, seeing as how I didn’t want any of you to curse my name for all eternity and/or go blind, I decided to play it a bit safer. Thusly, I will share with you a simple recipe on how to dress up even the shittiest box of wine with just some simple fruit and a bit of sugar. In honor of Kate’s motherhood, I call this one … The Songria (get it? Son-gria? Sangria? Oh, nevermind) 1 box of cheap red wine (if you happen to have any generic Dharma brand, that would be fantastic) Some fruit (I recommend a lemon, a lime and an orange, but feel free to get creative) half cup of sugar 1 cup of orange juice 1.5 cups of Cointreau or rum (totally optional – I’m just an alcoholic) Slice up the fruit and throw them, the sugar and the orange juice (and harder liquor, if you so choose) in a large pitcher. Add the wine to fill to the top. Chill for at least 2 hours, overnight is usually best to allow the tastes to mingle. When ready to serve, mash up the fruit slightly with a wooden spoon and give the whole thing a good stir. Pour into a wine glass garnished with a fresh orange slice and present it to your favorite parolee/parole officer. Cheers!

And now, “Eggtown” …

Eye, closed again. It’s Locke. He fixes up some good-looking eggs and melon, grabs Phillip K. Dick’s book VALIS from the bookshelf (we’ll cover that later), and carries it all down to Ben in the basement. Ben disregards the book – he’s already read it – to which Locke replies, “You might see something you missed the first time you read it,” an obvious ploy by the writers to get us to buy Lost Seasons 1-3, now out on DVD and available on
Amazon.com. Well, maybe.

Locke wants information and chooses to get it in the worst way possible – by playing with Ben’s head. It’s not long before Ben has planted doubt, self-loathing and pity into Locke’s ear with his forked tongue, and an even shorter time before Locke is outside the door, throwing that breakfast against the wall same as he was when Ben was down in the hatch two seasons ago. Locke, goddammit, get it together man.

Locke storms out of the house in front of Kate and Claire, who are enjoying a fine cup of Dharma coffee in their Dharma mugs outside their Dharma house. It’s not long before Sawyer comes sniffing around like some old Tennessee hound dog, begging for some scraps. Kate makes short work of the ol’ confidence man, though, telling him they aren’t destined to play house and that she doesn’t trust him.

“This is about the pregnancy thing,” is all Sawyer can add before he has to give it up and head home. Ahh yes, the pregnancy thing. We had almost forgotten about that little nugget from last season.

Flash-present time. Kate’s dressed in some smashing couture and walking the paparazzi gauntlet into a courthouse, escorted by her lawyer. This is probably the first time in the entire series when Evangeline Lilly was able to wear her normal Rodeo Drive ensemble from off-camera. She looks smashing in white, a sharp contrast to the dull gray of the courtroom she’s now standing in. The bailiff reads her rap sheet for about two minutes straight and I wonder how many crimes she didn’t commit before hitting the island. She pleads Not Guilty, of course, and we know she probably wins out somehow, seeing as she was able to drive to meet Jack in that little flash-forward without police presence.

Back on the beach now. Hey, Sun and Jin are still on the show, look at that! And Jin can speak English pretty well at this point. Quick learner. No time for the Koreans, though, as Jack is back with Charlotte and Dan. Jack then tells Sun that Kate chose to stay with Locke.

Speaking of Kate and Locke, they’re chatting outside Locke’s bungalow now, and Locke has blood on his hands, having just killed a chicken. Yummy. Kate wants to talk to Miles, but that’s out of the question, naturally. Kate starts to protest, but Locke informs her that this is not a democracy.

“So it’s a dictatorship,” sulks Kate.

“If I were a dictator, I would just shoot you and go on about my day,” quips Locke. I don’t know if the writers are trying to make Locke seem creepy, but it’s damn near impossible, no matter what he says.

It takes Kate about two seconds to dupe poor Hurley into telling her where Locke’s keeping Miles. “You just totally Scooby-Dooed me, didn’t you,” says Hurley. Awesome line, says I.

Kate pays Miles a visit in the boathouse, and they do a little negotiating after Miles is done being his snarky self. Miles agrees to tell Kate exactly what he knows about her if she can get him one minute with Ben, which seems like the dumbest deal in the history of dumb deals, but Kate’s desperate.

Back in the present, Kate’s lawyer lays the reality smackdown and tells her that if they don’t cut a deal then she’s going to spend the majority of her life in the pokey. Kate has lost all sense of reality from her time on the island and insists that she won’t do time. In order to do that, though, Mr. Lawyer says that they need to make the case about character – they need to bring “him” in. Absolutely not, says Kate.

“You are not using my son,” says Mama Kate. Wow, maybe Kate really is preggers on the island.

Back on the beach, Jack can’t get a signal out to the freighter and Charlotte and Dan don’t really seem to care, each working, instead, on a refreshing island cocktail at the bamboo bar.

Meanwhile, Kate and Claire are doing laundry. Aaron starts crying and Claire asks Kate is she’d mind picking him up. Kate balks. You’re gonna have to get past those fears and right quick, Mama.

Back in court, Kate’s lawyer has a surprise – Dr. Jack Shephard is now a key witness. He’s clean-shaven and surprisingly sober. Jack takes the stand and proceeds to paint Kate as the holy Madonna of the Oceanic Six, at least until Kate stands up and says she can’t take it anymore. The prosecutor cross-examines and has only one question: Does Jack love Kate?

“No. Not anymore,” says Jack, painfully.

Back on the island, the Oddest Couple – Sawyer and Hurley – are playing house. Sawyer’s reading what looks like Jack Kerouac and Hurley is trying to decide what to watch: Xanadu or Satan’s Doom. Looks like it’s Olivia Newton John night.

Kate is soon at the door and she and Hurley start the outlaw shuffle once again. They share some boxed Dharma wine and Sawyer calls Kate on her bullshit, telling her to be woman enough to admit she wants to use him for something, as usual. Yup, she does – she wants him to help her bust Ben out.

The traveling house tour continues as Sawyer is at Locke’s door now, wanting to play some backgammon. Locke wants to know Sawyer’s opinion – if Locke is doing the right thing, if Sawyer is worried about what might happen. Sawyer admits that he’d be a lot more worried if he was sitting on the beach.

“And the rest of the group, what are they saying?” asks Locke.

“I think they’re saying Baaaaa,” quips Sawyer. “Good thing about sheep – they’re predictable.”

Kate, not so much, James admits as he tells Locke exactly what Kate is planning. Locke grabs a gun and runs to the boathouse to find… nothing. Of course. Sawyer is just a diversion, while Kate takes Miles down into the basement to meet with Ben.

And … we’re in the basement. Kate blows the lock off Ben’s door and throws Miles into the room, telling him he has one minute. It’s quite an informative minute, though, as Miles strikes a deal with Ben: he’ll lie to his employer and tell him that Ben’s dead, if Ben gets him $3.2 million. Quite the specific number, and Ben mentions as much.

“Why not 3.3 or 3.4? And what makes you think I have access to that kind of money?” asks Ben.

“Do NOT treat me like one of them,” yells Miles, obviously forgetting his anger management class. He wants his money in two days, but Ben remarks that it might be a little hard to do that in his current situation. Miles agrees on one week to get the money to him, which should be plenty enough time for Ben to be out of chains and running things on the island once again.

Times up, says Kate, and drags Miles back into the hall. She demands to know what Miles knows, at which point he spills the beans that they know everything about her. Miles advises her to stay on the island, just before Locke charges down the stairs and orders her back to her house. Oooh, Daddy’s pisssssssed.

Patsy Cline’s on the ol’ Victrola, so that must mean Kate is decompressing back at home. Locke barges in and wants to speak to Kate about her little antics, to which Kate tells him about the money and extortion. Oh, and he also tells her to pack her bags and get her petite little fanny back to Jack and the rest because she’s not welcome on his island of misfit toys anymore.

Flash-present. Kate’s got a few moments in an antechamber off the courtroom. Her mom’s wheeled in, wearing oxygen and looking like death eating a cracker. They engage in the usual family banter of a daughter who has murdered her mom’s husband and then ran off, got in a plane crash, and then came back several months alive. You know, like most families at Christmas. The long and short of it – Kate’s mom doesn’t want to testify, Kate doesn’t want her to, and her mom wants to see her grandson. Kate’s having none of that, though.

Back on the island – more specifically, Sawyer’s bedroom – Kate has run to James to cry about Locke kicking her out. Sawyer tells her she can stay and they start making kissy faces and then swapping spit.

On the beach now, Charlotte and Dan are playing a little precognition game with some playing cards. He correctly guesses two out of three of the cards and is then interrupted by Jack, wanting to know why the hell no one is answering on the boat. Charlotte – whose eyes look especially radiant by the light of the fire, might I add – tells him there’s another number that they’re only supposed to use in an emergency. Juliet insists that its an emergency, so ol’ Red dials it up and gets Regina. Charlotte asks her about Frank and the others and if they’re safe. Regina is puzzled. She thought the helicopter was with them.

Dun da DUNNNNNNNN.

It’s morning now in the boathouse and Locke has had it up to here with Miles. He has him tied up and hanging from the ceiling by his hands. What Locke has learned is that there is no sense in having rules if there’s no punishment for breaking those rules … and then he sticks a grenade in Miles’ mouth and pulls the pin. Yipes. He’ll be fine if he just bites down on the pin. Let’s hope Miles’ mouth is strong from all that flapping he does.

Bed now with Kate and Sawyer. Sawyer wants some nookie, but Kate has a “headache.” Or whatever. Ugh. Sawyer chalks it up to her worried about the pregnancy thing, again, to which Kate tells him that she’s not worried because she’s not pregnant. Sawyer breathes a sigh of relief, which apparently pisses Kate off and she starts to leave. Then, when Sawyer tells her she’ll be back after Jack does something to piss her off she smacks him. I’ll tell you, if she’s not pregnant, she sure seems hormonal enough to be.

Flash-present once more, courtroom. The DA is perturbed. Kate’s Mom isn’t going to testify. Shocker. Now Kate’s lawyer and the prosecutor are negotiating, until Kate signs off on an agreement for 10 years probation and a promise not to leave the state. Kate, having won her freedom, decides to let her hair down as she leaves the courthouse. Jack’s in the parking garage, waiting for her. They posture like teenagers and Jack tells her that he didn’t mean what he said in the courtroom, which gets him an express invitation back to Kate’s house. Jack’s a little uncomfortable about that, and Kate chalks it up to the baby. It’s obvious that Jack’s bothered by the baby, maybe because it’s Sawyers … but then again, maybe not.

Kate’s cab pulls up outside a house. She goes inside and makes her way up the stairs and into the nursery. There’re monkeys on the wall. And robots. Awesome. A little tow-headed dude is yawning and coming out of a nap. He seems to be about two or three years old. Kate starts crying, and pulls him to her.

“Hey, mummy,” the kid says, sleepily.

“Hey, Aaron,” says Kate. The Oceanic Fifth, says I. Well, holy crap, says America.

Cue the thonk!

Next time: Sayid, Desmond and Frank are in the chopper, headed straight for a big ass thunderhead. Desmond’s screaming, guns are being waved around – yep, must be Tuesday on the island. Oh, and Naomi’s still dead. At least for now. We think.

My, my, what an episode. Although there’s not too much to pick apart this week – no ley lines, or global conspiracies, or amateur quantum theories and time dilation explanations – but it was still a solid episode. I like to call these the character episodes, ones which delve much more into the lives of the islanders and non-metaphysical twists. There were no invisible men, Ol’ Smokey didn’t start grunting and tearing ass through the jungle, and, aside from Dan and Charlotte’s little foray into clairvoyance, nothing supernatural went on. You’d almost think things were normal on the island.

Well, almost.

So, since everything’s pretty straightforward this week, let’s just review, shall we?

Aaron is the fifth member of the Oceanic Six

There were all sorts of twists and turns in “Eggtown” – Kate’s preggers! Wait, no she’s not. Yes, she is, she has a son! Nope, not pregnant – but in the end it didn’t matter because Kate had a son, albeit an adopted one. From the look of things, I’d say Aaron was about two to four years old at the time of the flash-present, which would fit in nicely with it being, well, a flash-present. The main question Aaron’s presence in the Austen household brings up is where the hell is Claire? She may very well be one of the ones left on the island that need the “help” that Charlie mentions to Hurley during his special visit. Of course, she could also be dead, but where’s the literary fun in that?

On the road with God and Olivia Newton John

Speaking of literary fun, we’ve got two interesting books in this episode, plus a cultural reference of the Newton John kind. First, the book that Locke picks from the bookshelf is VALIS, by Philip K. Dick. The book centers around an artificial intelligence that has been placed in the minds of every living human by a machination in orbit in order to control humans. Basically, the book is one of Dick’s many forays into trying to explain his thoughts on religion and the belief that every culture has a God or gods. The book has an interesting tie to the theme of the show in that the messiah of the book is a two-year-old girl that helps the protagonists to understand exactly what’s been going on all the many years. Aaron is probably around two, and he’s also been prophesied about – the clairvoyant Claire visits early in season one tells her that she needs to take care of the baby no matter what.

It’s hard to make out what book Sawyer is reading in this episode, but it appears to be a late ’90s edition of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (I only know because I own that copy). For those of you who have never read it, this book is pretty much an autobiographical account of Kerouac’s trips with his friends as they cross America in the mid-1950s discovering themselves and etching into the cornerstone of the country the mantras of the underground Beat movement of their generation. The overarching themes of On the Road are far too varied to cover here, but I think Kerouac would have found a kindred spirit in Sawyer, who is still searching for his place in the world and within his own heart.

Lastly, we have the early ’80s queen, Olivia Newton John. Hurley tries to decide between Satan’s Doom and Xanadu in his and Sawyer’s Dharma bungalow, but the cheesy pop-opera wins out. For those of you who have never witnessed the wonder that is Xanadu, I can only recommend that the most forgiving viewers try to watch it. The plot involves Muses – yes, those of the Greek variety – that come to Earth to inspire musicians, poets and the like. Well, Olivia Newton John plays one of those muses, only she falls in love with the man she’s supposed to inspire. Later on, Zeus gets involved and everyone ponders the exact meaning of mortal time and it ends with a big musical number, and … well, what does this have to do with Lost? I have absolutely no idea. I just wouldn’t have pegged Hurley as a disco opera kinda guy. What, you expected more? Okay, fine. It has to do with time dilation. Of a sort. By ancient Greek gods. Four-toed statue? There, how’s that for tying things in.

I know that what we’re seeing are flash-presents (or, perhaps, a close proximity), but I find it interesting that the creative team is making all the Oceanic Six look much older than their island counterparts in very subtle ways. Both Jack and Sayid are showing salt and pepper in their sideburns, and Kate’s been made up to look more severe and a bit weathered, as opposed to her normal island glow.

I’m not even going to start speculating on the missing chopper this week. If you want to know more about all that business, check out my musings from the past couple of weeks on ley lines and time dilation. I’m sure I’ll have a lot more ammunition after this week’s episode.

And, that’s about all I have for this week. I’m out of time and my brain is out of space. If I’ve missed something or you want to delve further into a particular topic, send me something. Until next time, keep those brains a-churning.

Namaste.

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Joel Murphy

“That boy was beautiful. Wasn’t no need for y’all to do him the way y’all did.”

- Omar Little

When I interviewed Michael Kenneth Williams in December, 2006, I asked him how he wanted Omar Little’s story to end. Williams, who plays Omar on the HBO series The Wire, paused for a few seconds, then quietly responded, “I would like to see Omar maybe get out the game, go out on the outer islands on the Bahamas, snatch up Renaldo, build a house down there and never, ever look back.”

This was at the end of season four. At that point, Williams had no idea what the writers of the show had in store for his character, but knowing the gritty nature of the show, his storybook ending seemed highly unlikely.

Ironically, when we first saw Omar at the beginning of season five, Williams briefly got his wish. Omar and Renaldo, living off the money from their last big drug heist, are seen cohabitating in an undisclosed tropical location. Unfortunately, word gets back to Omar that Butchie, his advisor and friend, has been savagely killed by Marlo Stanfield, and Omar decides to head back to Baltimore to seek revenge.

Once Omar made the decision to return to Baltimore, I knew there was no chance that Williams’ happy ending would come true. This past Sunday, the event I had been bracing myself for all season happened – Omar was killed with a single gunshot to the head. However, the shot wasn’t fired by Marlo Stanfield, or his lieutenants Chris and Snoop. Instead, Omar was killed unceremoniously by Kenard, a young thug who moments earlier had been torturing a cat in a back alley.

Being killed by a young punk was bad enough, but the indignities continued throughout the episode. Before the police arrived, neighborhood children looted Omar’s body, stealing his trademark shotgun, along with the rest of his possessions. The Baltimore Sun, not realizing who he was, chose to report on a house fire in Charles County instead of on Omar’s death. The final insult came at the morgue, where a careless employee misidentified the corpse and put Omar’s paperwork on the body of a deceased middle-aged white man.

Omar Devone Little was by far David Simon’s greatest creation and was one of the most compelling characters ever seen on television. If he had to die, he deserved a grand sendoff. Instead, Omar was killed by a young thug who was too naïve and arrogant to be afraid of him. His death was senseless and jarring. The writers of The Wire chose to deprive Omar of the revenge he deserved and sought to humble him in death. They showed that, as legendary and as feared as he was in life, ultimately he became just another casualty of a never-ending drug war.

Perhaps I should be upset with the way David Simon and Co. decided to kill off Mr. Little, but I’m not. It’s fitting. Omar already defied the odds and got revenge in the past against Stringer Bell and the Barksdale Crew (he also defied the odds and pushed the limits of the show’s realism when he leapt off a balcony to escape Chris, Snoop and Michael Lee). Eventually, the game caught up with him. He was a legend while he was alive, but in death, he was just a man – one that was quickly forgotten by the world at large.

The Wire itself only has two episodes remaining. While the show won’t meet a grisly end like Omar did, I fear it is ultimately headed for a similar fate. As groundbreaking and amazing as The Wire has been over these past five seasons, when it meets its end, the show will also be forgotten. Robert Wisdom once told me that The Wire would live on, that eventually “it’s going to be taught in schools and it’s going to go to whole other formats that no other kind of television has ever gone to because people are going to discover it later on.” While I’d like to believe him, I think that The Wire, like Omar, sadly will fade away into obscurity, never finding the justice it deserved.

I also fear that no one else will find a way to capitalize on Michael Kenneth Williams’ immense talent, and he’ll spend the rest of his promising acting career playing generic, one-dimensional street thugs. Judging from the fact that the Emmys continue to overlook his work and the fact that most Hollywood writers are hacks, I feel like this is a distinct possibility.

As for Omar himself, I will do my part to make sure he isn’t completely forgotten. Instead of dwelling on the shocking way he died, I chose to focus on all of the wonderful moments he’s given us. From the first time I saw him on screen, brandishing a shotgun while whistling “The Farmer in the Dell,” I knew this character was something special. How could you not love an openly gay stick-up artist who is universally feared by drug dealers, yet loved by the poor citizens of Baltimore for his Robin Hood tactics?

Omar was incredibly loyal to his friends, yet unforgiving to those who crossed him. While the Barksdale crew and Marlo’s people mocked him behind his back for being gay, they were far too scared to say anything to his face. He robbed drug dealers, but at the end of the day, he just wanted to relax in his silk pajamas while eating a box of Honey Nut Cheerios and smoking a pack of Newports.

His courtroom scene with Maury Levy, where he deflected an accusation from the unscrupulous defense attorney that he profited from the suffering of others by saying, “Just like you, man. I got the shotgun, you got the briefcase,” was by far one of the highlights of the series. It was also a great moment in television history.

I’m grateful for all of the memorable Omar moments the writers have given us over the past five seasons. The character was originally supposed to last only seven episodes before being killed off, so I am happy he survived as long as he did. And, even though I’m sure he will be forgotten by the world at large, I am glad that he at least lives on in my DVD collection.

Rest in peace, Omar Little. You were truly one of a kind and you will be missed. Here’s hoping that right now you are up in that big Thug Mansion in the sky, sharing a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios with Brandon. You feel me?

Joel Murphy is the creator of HoboTrashcan, which is probably why he has his own column. He loves pugs, hates Jimmy Fallon and has an irrational fear of robots. You can contact him at murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com.

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Courtney Enlow

This past weekend, my friends threw me a birthday party and the theme was The 90s.

I want to reiterate for emphasis as this is incredibly important. The. Theme. Was. The. Goddamn. 90s. Best birthday ever. And yet, heartbreaking. Because I love the 90s. I deeply, deeply love that decade. I long to wear flowy floral print dresses with hiking boots. I want to turn on the radio and possibly hear Pure Moods-esque Eastern World-inspired Adult Contemporary. I desire to decorate my bedroom in primary color geometric shapes. I crave non-low-rise jeans, perhaps brightly colored (really I do as for those of us with sizeable asses, they were flatter-tastic.) The music was better. The clothes were comfy. There was no Paris Hilton.

I miss the 90s.

Look I don’t want to diss (oh I’m so 90s) the time in which we live. But this decade is the most lackluster time period in history ever. Now this is most likely colored by the fact that one year in, we experienced an incredible national tragedy. But out of tragedy is supposed to come change. Revolution. Out of our tragedy came this ugly political climate and national, nay, worldwide dissatisfaction and apathy.

Now this is not a political column. I don’t feel equipped to really write about the goings on in the world. Not because I’m uneducated or unaware, but there are people that can do it better and frankly, they do what they do and I do what I do, and what I do is rag on movies and pop culture. I’ll stick with that, thanks. But the idea of revolution is not just a political one. And I feel that the 90s was 10 years of revolution in its own way.

Grunge, alt-rock, indie culture, none of this was really “new” as such. But the 90s perfected it all. Brought it to the mainstream. Made it fashionable (not necessarily a good thing) while leaving the perfect pretty princess look “so last season” (a very good thing.) To me this was a decade of meticulous deconstruction. Most importantly, this was a decade with an identity. You know what doesn’t have an identity? If you guessed “this fucking decade” then congratugoddamnlations, you solved that riddle.

I apologize. I’m just lashing out. But seriously people, I had to Wiki just what exactly constitutes “culture in the 2000s” not to mention a better name for “the 2000s.” That’s just stupid. (p.s., all I came up with was the “nillies” and the “aughties.” I say no. I guess I will just never speak of this 10 year period.) And guess what part two? We got a lot of nothing. Emo? Chav? Hipster? *sigh* A full decade of people dressing like made up assholes and expensive white trash. Awesome. And hipster-wear? That’s just 80s clothing made for skinnier people. (Which is strange considering the coke use in the 80s. I guess we just have better, stronger drugs now. Nothing tastes as good as thin feels unless you’re eating it with your nostril I suppose.)

In music we’ve fared a bit better. The early 90s was mostly clean-up from the boy band invasion, a lot of generic euro-flavored pop. Oh and a lot of rap/rock that all sounds the same. I call it “Douchezak.” But then luckily we got ourselves some indie music that became popular mid-way through (though if you were at all cool you knew about them before. *peers down at you from the tops of glasses* </indiebitch>)

Movies? Well. What’s to be said that hasn’t already. Sequels and threequels and remakes, oh my. Obviously we’ve had some great stuff, but for me, my favorite films of the decade were all released in the past two years (No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood and Sweet Land, if you must know.) On a positive note, thank fucking god for Judd Apatow and Will Ferrell. Say what you will about either of them, especially the latter, but they’re geniuses and we were a slipper slope, people. Without them, we were in serious danger of Johnny Knoxville and Sean William Scott becoming actual comedy stars. Thank your various heavens.

I don’t want to completely disregard some of the awesomeness that’s happened in the past eight years. I can’t. Because in television alone we’ve got Doctor (insert your own “fucking” here because I sure do) Who coming back after sixteen years, The Office (both of them. I prefer the US version personally. Don’t hit.), The OC (no seriously, don’t hit), Firefly, 30 Rock and incredible new bands, amazing movies and a lot of other pretty wicked stuff. But I suppose I just look back on the 90s as a time of change. A time before the whole world came crumbling down in 2001. And that’s why I love the 90s so much.

When I was little, my mom used to make these cookies. Peanut butter ones with Hershey kisses in the middle. They were big and fluffy and always delicious. Last Christmas, she made them again. And they were thin and flat. Still good, but not big and fluffy, and maybe not quite as delicious.

“Did you use a different recipe?”

My mom told me no. It was the exact same one she’d always used. She told me the cookies looked the same, tasted the same, were the same. Nothing had changed. They were the exact same.

And I started crying. It was so stupid, but I couldn’t help it.

I think the 90s to me are a lot like those cookies.

Courtney Enlow is a writer living in Chicago and working as a corporate shill to pay the bills. You can contact her at courtney@hobotrashcan.com.

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Ned Bitters

This week’s inductee into the “Overrated Hall of Fame” is … Oscar angst.

The annual post-Oscar bitchfest is in full swing, with self-professed filmophiles gnashing their teeth over who and what won and who and what didn’t. You know these types. Their gripes usually go something like, “The Academy is a joke! How could (insert name of low-budget indie flick with dreadful production values and seen by all of 37 people) not even get nominated while (insert big-budget, big-star vehicle) wins six Oscars?”

I admit to occasionally joining this chorus. I’m an indie freak. I shun whatever middle America deems “must-see.” I have bitched about Oscar results. That dreamy piece of melodramatic dung The English Patient beat out both Fargo and Secrets and Lies? Travesty! Bill Murray’s brilliance in Lost in Translation was bested by Sean Penn’s embarrassingly over-the-top scenery gnoshing in Mystic River? What a joke. You’re telling me that John Travolta’s stylish, philosphical, heroin-addicted hitman lost out to Tom Hanks’s tiresome redneck retard with the “box of chocolates” philosophy of life? Then Oscar is a box of shit.

But sometimes, despite the wailings of film snobs (like me), the Academy gets it right. Big names get beaten by virtual unknowns. The blockbuster fan favorite with the multi-million dollar P.R. campaign loses out to the threadbare-budget indie flick that found box office legs through word of mouth. Let’s take a look at some instances where certain undeserving nominees did not garner that coveted golden statuette:

If Mimicking Is Acting, then Rich Little Should Have More Oscars than Meryl Streep and Katherine Hepburn Combined:

The past three years have seen the Best Actor Oscar go to actors who portrayed famous dead people. In Ray, Jamie Foxx donned black glasses and bobbed and weaved his head, and that was considered genius. Hell, if they ever make Stevie, four fifths of the country could play the lead role, as most of us do a mean Stevie Wonder imitation. Dead-eye Forest Whitaker won for playing a charismatic despot no one remembers and doughy Philip Seymour Hoffman won for playing an opportunistic alcoholic writer that people vaguely remember but don’t really care about.

But other imitators did not win Oscars, nor should they have. Will Smith’s turn as Muhammad Ali required little more than hitting the gym and shunning carbs. He didn’t win. Woody Harrelson sat in a wheelchair, whined and looked grumpy when he played a persecuted Larry Flynt. No Oscar. And Joaquin Phoenix deservedly won jack shit on Oscar night for portraying the Man in Black as if he were a semi-retarded Ritalin addict.

Get Over Yourselves … You’re Still Just Fucking Kids:

Nominees Linda Blair (The Exorcist), Jodie Foster (Taxi Driver) and Juliette Lewis (Cape Fear) were impressive adolescent actresses, but they didn’t deserve to win. So they didn’t. Sure, they gave full grown men shame-inducing hardons with their “Daddy, please love me” skankiness, but that doesn’t mean theirs were great performances. If all it takes to win an Oscar is playing a 15-year-old skank that older men want to fuck like a blow-up doll, then my local mall is teeming with potential winners.

A Catchy, Memorable Phrase Does not an Oscar Performance Make:

Okay, this isn’t always true. I’m reminded of this every time I happen upon Al Pacino’s horrendously bad performance in the dreadfully bad Scent of a Woman. He won that year for one reason only: “Hoo-aaaaaah!”

But sometimes even a famous movie quote can’t help an actor overcome a bad case of the overacting bug that the Academy so often rewards. “Gooooood Morning Vietnammmmm!” Good night, Robin. “You can’t handle the truth!” You can’t handle the Oscar this year, Jack. “I love the smell of napalm in the morning. It smells like … victory.” Sorry Bobby – you don’t get to smell victory until Tender Mercies.

Look Ma! We Progressive White Folk Are NOT Afraid of Big Black Muscular Men:

I’m still shocked that “look how liberal we are!” Hollywood didn’t show enough racially condescending love to Michael Clarke Duncan (The Green Mile) and Djimon Hounsou (In America) to get them supporting Oscars. I was certain that these two actors would win for their Magic Negro roles. (I didn’t coin that phrase. Look it up.) Roles like these allow a still-racist America to pretend we are not racist at all. “Oh, the big colored fella won. I’m glad. He was so good … and harmless. And nice to white people. And he didn’t steal our women with his 12-inch cock and black man’s ability to make love 12 times a day. And he didn’t rob anyone. Yes, give that big black gentle buck an award. But don’t be giving any Oscars to thugs like Ludacris or Method Man. They still gives us white folk the shivers.” Oh please, like your mom or aunt hasn’t thought that.

You’re Going to Die Soon? So Fucking What:

Sometimes, even being an aging acting legend on the brink of death is not enough to earn an Oscar. We saw that this past Sunday when two-feet-and-one-arm-in-the-grave octogenarian Hal Holbrook lost. The same happened to Paul Newman (craggy and tired in Road to Perdition) and Peter O’Toole (age 135 in Venus). These actors might have won if they had had the good timing of Peter Finch, who died soon after his nomination for Network, pretty much ensuring the sympathy vote. I wish I could report that this was the reason for Cuba Gooding, Jr.’s mystifying win for Jerry McGuire, but alas, he is still alive and making movies. But I can always hope.

Fuck Your Affliction:

Oscar has a long love affair with the physically fucked. They’ve twice rewarded blind men (Ray and Scent of a Woman) and three times honored the ‘tard (Shine, Forrest Gump and Charly.) They’ve sent a golden shout-out to the gimp (My Left Foot), the mute (The Piano), the deaf (Children of a Lesser God) and the flat-out crippled (Coming Home). Bony Adrien Brody damn near starved himself into an Oscar.

Yet some actors still couldn’t summon the acting stones to limp, grunt or die their way to an Oscar. Tom Cruise might be the only nominated actor inept enough to lose as Oscar from a wheelchair (Born on the Fourth of July). Leonardo DiCaprio apparently didn’t have the requisite ‘tardness to win for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. Gary Sinise, in what might be the biggest gimp failure of all time, didn’t win for Forrest Gump despite missing not one but – count ‘em – two legs.

Sometimes, Even though You’re a Box Office Behemoth with an Endless String of Smash Hits, and Even though You’re One of the Most Powerful Men In Hollywood, and Even though You’ve Managed to Stay Stunningly Good Looking for 25 Years, and Even though You Can Still Charm Most Americans with Your Unctuous Charm, You Suck so Badly as an Actor that You Remain Oscarless, Proving Yet Again that the Academy most often Gets It Right:

Tom Cruise ain’t won shit yet.

Ned Bitters is, in fact, overrated. You can contact him at teacherslounge@hobotrashcan.com.

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Jeremiah was raised in the deepest part of the darkest jungle. That’s why he smells like adventure. He currently lives in Elkins, WV with his wife, Becky, and son, Isaiah, who is epic and destined to rule the world one day. You can contact him at jeremiahwentz@hobotrashcan.com.