Sure, it’s a little more mundane than my past looks, and yes, it is very, very white. But I’ve always said my theme is a reflection of my mood. I’m feeling very minimalist lately.

As for the new logo, I really liked that image. The little blue guy is definitely blocking the kick. To me, however, it still looks like the little white guy has hauled off and kicked the other one in the junk. That made me laugh really hard. I’m not sure Keith Haring would be terribly excited to know he inspired an image of a guy booting another guy in the jimmy… but hey, that’s art, right?

I hope to update the site more frequently as well. So those of you who were shocked to see two posts in your feed reader – both in one month – beware. I’ve got some stuff on my chest I need to get off, and this is where I do that.

#5 Drew Carey – One of America’s jolly fat men, Drew Carey had a huge smash with The Drew Carey Show, but like most got his start doing stand up.  While he sold out to take Bob Barker’s place hosting The Price is Right, he’s still funny.  If you don’t believe me, visit Showtime on Demand and watch the episode of The Green Room with Carey.

#4 Adam Sandler – America’s favorite egg-shaped head also leans right.  Like many Republicans in Hollywood, he’s not overt about the lean, but he’s still funny (Little Nicki aside).

#3 Owen Wilson – Wilson, like our number two funny man Vince Vaughn, is unquestionably funny.  If you don’t buy that, rent Wedding Crashers or Zoolander again.  Wilson and Vaughn reportedly crashed a Texas Young Republicans event while in DC filming Wedding Crashers.

#2 Vince Vaughn – Arguably, Vaughn should be number one on this list.  Most people would probably put him there.  While I have been a big Vaughn fan since Swingers came out, if we’re talking political humor, I have to give the top spot to someone who covers it a lot.

#1 Doug Stanhope -  Stanhope probably isn’t everybody’s first choice, but he’s definitely mine.  This riff on the pledge of allegiance is a classic example.  As he says, good products sell themselves… So here’s my argument for Doug.

Honorable Mentions:

• Robert Downey Jr. has said his personal challenges forced a change of political views and he’s now a Republican.
• Bill Engvall, Jeff Foxworthy and Larry the Cable Guy – I’m not a fan of redneck humor, but they make a lot of people laugh.
• The Rock – Tooth Fairy was unintentionally one of the funniest movies ever. (It still counts)

I could go on… John Ratzenberger, Larry Miller, Penn & Teller etc.

Olbermann hasn’t been funny since he left Sports Center, so I’m guessing he didn’t take his writers with him.  For him to make ridiculous blanket assertions is really kind of weak, as this list demonstrates.

Take, for instance, my recent retweet about a Bertolli’s ad campaign.  @LowbrowKate tweeted the following.

Marissa Tomei is WAY to good for this: http://intotheheartofitaly.yahoo.com/

I couldn’t agree more.  I have been a fan of Tomei since My Cousin Vinny.  She’s way to good an actress to be shilling frozen Italian food in webisode format.  But look at the rest of the cast and you will see the star of the short lived MTV Sports – none other than Mr. Dan Cortese.  So I added some commentary on my retweet.

RT @lowbrowkate: Marissa Tomei is WAY to good for this: http://bit.ly/aFCSJF | Dan Cortese makes sense, though. He needs the work.

Well last night I got a reply from Mr. Cortese (which has since been removed).  Here’s the screen grab from Tweetdeck.

I couldn’t help but have some fun with Cortese.  My reply back?

@dancortese1 No offense, dude. You were great in Veronica’s Closet.

Where else but social media can a two-bit political hack and a D-list TV star interact so freely?

God bless the Internet.

(For the record, I had to Google Cortese to find something he was in other than MTV Sports. I don’t recall ever having seen Veronica’s Closet.  He has apparently done more stuff recently.  Frankly I am jealous that he got to travel through Italy with Marisa Tomei.  Back in the early 90s, many a guy I know would have traded a left testicle for that opportunity.  Way to go, Dan!)

After six years of great foreplay, #Lost becomes an inconsiderate lover – rolls over, turns off the lights, leaves me unfulfilled.

What has been so great about the show, and the reason I have been such a dedicated fan, is the fact that the show often left me feeling…  off.  It often wasn’t until I had spent some time discussing it (usually with my friends Paul and Anne), that I found deeper meaning in the show.  Sometimes I was introduced to someone else’s theories, which forced me to reconsider my perspective and brought me to a new way to see each episode and each story.

It’s fitting, then, that last night was the same.  Immediately after the show, I sent Paul and Anne a message about my overwhelming sense of disappointment in the show. My take was that those who found love or peace on the island made out fine, but everyone else got screwed.  Further, I wanted more answers than the show was willing to provide.

But like almost every other episode, it was the discussion with friends that changed my reality.

Paul pointed me to a post by Doc Jensen.  It contained a simple throwaway sentence that began to refocus my thinking.

Some people think [the sideways world is] an illusion like The Matrix, or a group delusion, or even ersatz pocket universe created by The Monster’s magic designed to give himself a happily ever after — a twist on Joseph’s theory. This theory differs from the more conventional and commonly held theory that the Sideways world is the next life epilogue for all the Island world castaways — that after their death, the castaways will be reincarnated into the Sideways world.

The post was actually put up before the show aired, and it turned out to be quite prescient.  What struck me, however, is that they were both right.  It was a next life epilogue, but at the same time it was also a group delusion.  A next life born from the shared connections of the castaways.  Still it seemed out of place.

I have seen some on Twitter, and I made this point to Paul, that they all were dead all along, and the sideways world was all that mattered.  But then I realized that’s not quite the point.  Everything that happened on the island was the real story, and the sideways world matters hardly at all.

Climbing Jacob’s Ladder

In retrospect, there are two movies I believe Lost has drawn heavily from for inspiration.  The first is Heaven Can Wait (the Warren Beatty version, not that Chris Rock aberation.)

In Heaven Can Wait, Beatty “dies” and is brought to a weigh station.  His escort explains that the weigh station isn’t the final destination, but a gateway to the final destination.  The rules of the weigh station are a collective vision based on Beatty’s idea of the afterlife, and those who share his idea of the afterlife.  In this was, the sideways world is exactly the same. It is a world the castaways created through their shared experience, and where they meet to move on.  It is “their” weigh station – the implication being different groups of people share different visions, and create different worlds.

The sideways world, is the weigh station for this particular group of friends.

The second movie is Jacob’s Ladder (which Jensen mentions in his post.) If you have never seen the movie, I highly recommend it.  I also recommend you do so before finishing this post because the rest of it deals with similarities between Lost and Jacob’s Ladder.

In the movie, Tim Robbins plays a soldier who underwent medical testing during his tour.  His platoon were hopped up on drugs to make they hyper-aggressive.  The film deals with the mystery of those drugs, Robbins discovering the nature of the drugs, and finally coming to the realization that his fellows turned on each other.

The movie jumps back and forth in time between Vietnam and modern day.  As it does, it follows multiple different story lines in which different lives seem to be coalescing.  In the end, however, it turns out that Jacob died in Vietnam, and the entire mixed up world of the modern day was simply his mind trying to come to terms with how he died.

Lost is, if nothing else, the story of how Jack died.  It is his journey.

You Were An Awesome Number Two

If you assume that the entire story, from beginning to end, has been Jack’s story, in much the way Jacob’s Ladder was not a story about Vietnam or the drugs, but Jacob’s death, things begin to fall into place.  A few scenes in the finale provide great clarity.

The two scenes that stand out the most to me were:

• Hurley, seeing Ben outside the church, tells him “You were an awesome #2.”  And Ben replies that Hugo was an awesome number one.
• Christian comments that some died before Jack and some died years later.

We saw Hurley ask Ben to be his second.  The line at the church conveyed a sense that is exactly what happened, and the two worked well together.  That clearly has to have happened after Jack’s death.

The appearance of Boone and Shannon indicates that Christian was correct that some died before Jack.  The presence of half of the Ajira Six – Claire, Kate, and Sawyer – loop in those who died much later.

Jack’s last view was the Ajira flight carrying the six off the island.  Reunited with him at the party, Kate tells Jack she has missed him, implying it has been some time since they saw each other.  It has, because she lived well past him.

As for why Kate doesn’t look 80, or 90, or however old she was when she died, that simply doesn’t fit with the way the rest remembered her.  This was, after all, a collective vision, and they saw each other as they knew each other on the island.

The Unanswered Questions

For three years now, Paul and I, like many others, have discussed and debated which questions Lost needed to answer.  Today there are countless people who really want to know where the four-toed statue came from.  Who built it? When?

I have come to accept that questions like these are only questions for rabid fans.  The questions that were going to be answered were the questions important to Jack’s story.

While that may irritate some, it makes perfect sense from a storyteller’s perspective.  In any story, there will be things that are important and things that aren’t.  When telling the story, you want to paint a picture. You may mention that someone is wearing a red shirt.  Unless the story you’re telling is Star Trek, that detail is likely irrelevant.  To ask why a red shirt and not a blue shirt is to miss the point – it’s not about the shirt, it’s about the man wearing it.

The writers of Lost understand that, no doubt.

Dungeons & Dragons was a tool of Satan. Heavy metal music was a tool of Satan. Alcohol was the Devil’s elixir. It seemed like just about everything you might enjoy doing was a tool of corruption placed on Earth by Satan.

You just don’t get that much anymore. I mean, in some pockets, I’m sure those charges are still leveled. They just don’t enter the mainstream consciousness the way they used to. Video games are allegedly bad, but not because they’re a tool of Lucifer, they’re bad for much more concrete reasons. People rage against video games because they claim they rot the minds of our youth or they lead to school shootings, or they’re a gateway drug to heroine. They are no longer simply written off as a tool of the dark arts.

In some ways, that makes me kind of sad. Satan is no longer the guilty party in any activity today’s youth engage in. I actually miss a world where every issue was discussed and debated in terms of Satan’s presence. Even if you partook of the devil’s playthings, there was a certain comfort in knowing it was all part of a great cosmic Yin & Yang. Now we have scientific studies of kids who go on to commit crimes and whether too many hours spent playing Sonic the Hedgehog was to blame. It has become all too sterile, and it’s just not the same.

It will be sold via the Xbox Live Marketplace for about $15.  They hadn’t given out a release date, but yesterday they said March 3rd.  So don’t call me that day, I’ll be shelling some krauts.

It may be interesting to draw that analogy out a bit further.  It occurs to me that your ISP (and most other companies, frankly) are very much like your significant other.  And on a certain level, that has serious implications for consumer satisfaction.

When you are dating, most of your friends will never hear about how great your bf is on a daily basis.  When he screw ups, however, you’ll tell all your friends.  You’ll tell just about anyone who asks.

That’s actually very similar to your ISP.  Typically, most ISPs have tremendously reliable service. When that service fails – on the voice, video, or data side – you’ll tell everyone.  If the repair guy is late or doesn’t show, you’ll tell everyone you were stood up.  If he tracks mud on the floor, you’ll tell everyone he was a slob.  If it isn’t resolved when he leaves, you will tell everyone he left you unsatisfied.

Since everyone has similar experiences, they’ll commiserate, tell you that guy is just no good for you, you deserve better, it’s just a shame that there are no decent guys is no competition in the ISP marketplace.

A week later when you are browsing freely, cuddled up watching TV, or talking to your mom back home, will you mention that they’re taking care of you today? Will you talk about all the great things they do for you? All the great places they take you?  Probably not.

Most of your friends will eventually grow to think your boyfriend is a big douche who’s always running around and never makes you happy.  How many of them have ever heard you say anything good about your ISP?

The fact is, like relationships, telecom can be messy.  You may not always get what you want.  You may feel you just can’t count on them.  You might think you’re putting a lot of yourself your money into the relationship, and they just take you for granted.

But like relationships, we’ll get through this together.  Let’s just get a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, browse the web, or just settle down to watch Sleepless in Seattle OnDemand.

At dinner Tuesday night, I was discussing those points with a bunch of guys I consider to be very bright technologsts. One of the guys at the table argued the iPad isn’t meant to replace a laptop for business use, it is meant as a consumer device – a user friendly extension of yourself, I suppose. I agreed, explaining that the iPad is useless as a mobile office solution because it is limited in applications to what is web based, or what is available at the app store.

I like using Office, I really don’t like OpenOffice/GoogleDocs. I’ve tried them and found them incredibly wanting. Say what you will about Microsoft, they make a hell of an office product. (Don’t get me started on how inferior Entourage is to Outlook, though. That’s another post in itself.)

But here’s the problem, as I explained to them. The iPad isn’t really a good platform for personal use either.

What do you use a personal device for?

A personal device, especially one expected to become the standard for such devices, needs to have a lot of capability for personal media.

The iPad is clearly based on the assumption that everything is in the cloud. That’s not the case for most users, though. Most users still install applications, download mp3s, play DVDs, etc. With only 16GB on the low end device, the amount of space available for any of that media is minimal. Even at 64GB, the iPad is seriously underpowered for storage compared to a 160GB to 250GB netbook – especially at two or three times the price.

Assuming you want to get everything online, you still have the problem of actually achieving that. Since the iPad doesn’t do Flash, you’re going to have problems with a staggering number of websites, especially if they use it for video delivery. Flash is installed on the overwhelming majority of computers. There is rampant talk of HTML5 replacing it, and many big names are looking at implementations to replace Flash, but there are significant hurdles.

George Ou at Digital Society (of which I am a Director), looked at YouTube’s implementation of HTML5 and found it lacking. In addition, you have the issue of battling codecs that has made adoption by browsers inconsistent.

Assuming the iPad only allows Safari, and since Apple has significant concerns with the lack of patents on the Ogg Theora codec, it’s possible that some site video won’t work even with HTML5.

Absent a reliable streaming solution, and without enough storage space to handle stored media, the iPad falls short on the media front.

What is the iPad’s Value Proposition?

The other problem with the iPad is the fact that it is unlikely to function well as a standalone product. The lack of any type of drive prevents the direct install of applications and requires the iPad be connected to something else. So now you have to shell out the $500 to $700 for the iPad, and you still have to have the $300 netbook, or the $1,000 laptop to connect it to. The iPad was billed by Jobs as an intermediary device with the best features of a smartphone and a laptop. However, since it is far too large to hold up to your ear, and way to underpowered to replace the laptop, you have left neither of those behind, and instead spent $600 for a device that does little the other two don’t.

If you will still need a laptop/computer as well as a phone, there is a serious question as to what the iPad gives you that makes it a unique value.

When the iPod came along, most people were still listening to CDs. The value of the iPod was in a) the storage capacity to keep larger amounts of content with you at any time, b) a menu system that made accessing that content quick and easy. While other mp3 players were in the market, the iPod made digital music easily accessible. The best mp3 available offered significantly less as a value proposition.

Similarly, the iPhone put more power in the phone. The Blackberry was the smartest widely-deployed smartphone available at the time of the iPhone’s release. Yet the iPhone rose quickly to dominance because it gave you more power, more capability, and more storage at a similar price point, and in an easier to use package.

The iPad Has None Of That

A few years ago I helped organize an event at which Marc Andreessen spoke. He had requested a white board for an audience participation event. With almost 800 people in the room, that just wasn’t reasonable. So I arranged with a Dell sales rep the use of their first tablet. We connected it to a projector, and turned Andreessen loose.

Midway through his remarks, he started talking about convergence, and the tendency to take things that work perfectly well on their own, and jam them together. He commented that his first cellphone was a brick – big, bulky, heavy. But he had just gotten to a very small, very lightweight phone, and now here come smartphones to make us carry the brick again.

Then he held up the tablet and said, “A paper tablet is cheap, you can get it wet, you can use it in broad daylight… this thing has none of that!”

And that’s the problem with the iPad. It’s not robust enough to be either a business device or a consumer device. It relies on Apple’s closed architecture, has far too little capacity, and limits your ability to consume the media you want as you choose. Further, it has far greater limitations than a netbook, but at a substantially higher price point.

A netbook has similar battery life, but also allows you to add your own software. A netbook has a larger hard drive, and doesn’t require another more expensive computer to run. A netbook costs half, but does twice, as much. Are they perfect, no. Will they get much better over time, yes. But I would still pit even the worst one against the iPad.

The iPad simply doesn’t offer any value compared to what else is on the market. Cheaper, but more powerful netbooks, or slightly more expensive, but far more capable Macbooks offer much more. Even the iPod Touch and iPhone give you most of the same functionality, but with a smaller screen at half the price. There is simply nothing that differentiates this product. And that’s the fundamental problem with the iPad.

First, let me say that in the 10 years I have been in DC I have never seen a crowd like that trying to get access to their elected representatives. The lines to get into the House office buildings literally wrapped around the buildings like a nightclub rope line. Several of the buildings stopped letting people in, so people familiar with the HOB system were telling those turned away to go to another building, then enter the basement tunnel system to get to their representatives.

On some level it appalled me that the US Capitol was telling people they were not allowed to go inside and see their members, but the sheer volume made me understand it simply from a security perspective. I would say, however, that I did not get the sense from anyone that they would have turned violent. In fact, everyone I saw or talked to had a very sunny disposition. Given their agitation that was remarkable to me. There was no “mob rule” that escalated the anger at all.

I would not, however, say that there was no anger. There was, in fact, plenty. What really struck me about the anger, however, was its direction.

This was not a Republican crowd. This was an American crowd. The people I talked to were just as angry with the right as they were at the left. They were just as happy to disrupt the normal cycle of business in Congress for both sides. When men and women in well tailored suits walked past the crowd of people in jeans, dockers, polo shirts, and jackets, they were subject to mocking and derision without regard to what party they may belong to.

The suits, for their part, looked none to pleased. They were scowling at the crowds as they walked by, and seemed disdainful of the effort by the crowd to make their voice heard. That seemed true universally among what were clearly the DC class.

It became very clear to me that this crowd wasn’t anti-Democrat, anti-Obama, or in any way pro-Republican. It was simply anti-Washington. It was a crowd incensed at what it perceived to be the arrogance of DC. I heard time and again as people passed by, or chattered in line, the refrain that these were people happy to come remind Washington that the rest of the country is watching and demanding respect.

When I returned to my office, I saw a reference to Ramseh Ponnuru’s column in Time magazine titled “The Rebirth of the Republican Middle“. In it, Ponnuru argues that the results on Tuesday were less about party than they were about people clamoring for ideas and results. Deeds in VA clearly had no ideas. Corzine in NJ clearly had not delivered results. Hoffman in NY seemed ill-prepared for the local issues. Ponnuru argues that the lesson for Republicans is to run campaigns based on a message of specific achievable fixes for what ails us.

I assume that the upper case “R” in the title is due to a style requirement at Time magazine. I assume that because Ponnuru’s column specifically goes on to state the question of whether the GOP is too conservative or not conservative enough is really secondary. Ponnuru’s focus on ideas and solutions has no partisan stripe.

However, based on what I saw yesterday, I do believe that there is a republican wave in the sense that people feel government has gotten too big, and ignores them freely. Democrats didn’t get elected because people felt Washington was too small. They got elected because people felt that Washington, under the GOP, was unresponsive to “we the people”. The Democrats have proven that they’re no better. Now is the time for candidates to run on making government work, not simply adjusting its size.

You may have the flu if you have some or all of these symptoms:

• fever *
• cough
• sore throat
• runny or stuffy nose
• body aches
• headache
• chills
• fatigue
• sometimes diarrhea and vomiting

*It’s important to note that not everyone with flu will have a fever.

Very helpful. If you sometimes get fever, but not always, and you sometimes get diarrhea and vomiting, but not always, that leaves:

• cough
• sore throat
• runny or stuffy nose
• body aches
• headache
• chills
• fatigue

In other words, the Swine Flu could look just like any other non-specific illness. That’s not terribly helpful at all. Maybe the CDC should provide more of a narrative description:

On Day One, you will notice giant red spots on your forehead. Those will grow into huge sweaty red welts. The coughing will be uncontrollable, and you’ll wish you were dead. Then the real fun will start….

At least then I’d know what to look out for. Instead, I have non-specific symptoms and no real way of knowing whether I have the Swine Flu without a tedious trip to the doctor.

So I did a little digging and found some more useful information. I dug through blog post after blog post and compiled these actual, specific symptoms from first hand accounts. If you have any of these, seek medical attention immediately

Swine Flu Symptoms

• An urge to watch Babe and Charlotte’s Web over and over again.
• An overwhelming sense of cannibalism from eating bacon.
• Smelling like Des Moines, IA.
• Random snort and oinking sounds (separate and distinct from your normal Tourette’s).
• Developing a random stutter.
• Falling in love with frogs (or general inter-species romance).
• A tendency toward Stalinism.

So there you have it. An actual, helpful list of warning signs. Now you can consider yourself prepared.

P.S. (For those who missed them, the stutter joke is a reference to Porky Pig and the Stalinism crack is a reference to Animal Farm.)