Hiatus

For the next three months, this blog will be on hiatus.

Lot of personal stuff that I'm trying to straighten out.

See y'all in August (I hope!)

Some photos for fun

The above is still the best explanation I have for the last 8 years.



One of the many reasons I love LOST is how visually striking it is. It has a look to it that no other show has. This is simply a picture of Locke amidst the island jungle (Hurley in lower left), and it is a haunting image, simply by dint of composition and color. It is gorgeous, and eerie, and one can practically hear the jungle birds screeching in the lonely distance.



This is from a recent issue of Vanity Fair that re-created classic moments from the films of Alfred Hitchcock with contemporary actors. Above, Seth Rogen (Knocked Up, Superbad) does a damn good job of stepping into the Madison Avenue shoes of Roger O Thornhill (played by Cary Grant) in North by Northwest (1959) (and BTW, one of my Top Ten favorite films of all time). This is the classic scene where Thornhill is being chased across a vast Illinois prairie by the malevolent pilot of a crop-duster. Go Rogen!

Go here to see the whole spread. It's awesome, even if you're not a Hitchcock fan (but you should be!)

And this one is just plain funny.

Truer sentiments rarely expressed better

The Radzinsky Problem

I've been working on this for a while, scrawling down notes, typing up rough drafts, re-watching LOST episodes (never a chore!), and what I'm trying to do is come up with my own theory about some Season Two stuff; namely, going back to the Swan and re-examine its importance prior to the Violet Sky Event.

I have some ideas about Radzinsky, some ideas about Kelvin Inman, some ideas about Charles Widmore, about the blast-door map, the button, the Swan, DHARMA, the Numbers, the Incident and even Libby.

It's coming together and I hope to post it soon.

Hey, it'll only cost 50 million!

A few months back I posted a picture of an island in the Fiji archipelago that I fantasize about owning someday. Hey, daydreams are okay, right?

Anyway, here are some more pictures.

Oooooohhhh, I want this so bad!!

Can you imagine this bad boy all pimped out like a Jonny Quest-meets-Myst-meets-LOST--meets-The Incredibles--meets Jules Verne kind of milieu? Oof! It would be very cool to travel to Fiji and take a day trip to this island and just spend the day wandering across it.

Kanacea. . . .

Tintin movie on the way

Some seriously good news for us Tintin fans.

What? I never told you? Oh, Crom, yes, I am a huuuuuge Tintinologist. One of the first comics I vividly remember reading at the age of 5 was Tintin In Tibet. I've collected a few of the books over the years, with some of my favorites being:


















This one....

















And this one....

And this one.

So, now I read how Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson are combining forces to create a live-action Tintin movie!!! By all Cthulhu holds holy, just think of the geek pedigree that movie will have! Casting so far, as I understand it, has Thomas Sangster (Liam Neeson's stepson in Love, Actually) as the intrepid boy journalist Tintin and the great Andy Serkis as Captain Haddock.

That chortling sound you hear rolling out from the Rockies is me.

Seriously. Follow the link.

I mean this: Go here.

It's priceless. Best line: when Batman greets Robin with "Hey, player, what's up?"

Egad! No post since just before CHRISTMAS!!!

Wow, I knew I hadn't blogged in a while, but it was still a bit of a shock to see that the date of my last post was December 23rd. Bozhemoi!!!

Since then, I was in I Hate Hamlet as the Ghost of John Barrymore and right after that--and I do mean RIGHT after that--I played Cardinal Richelieu in The Three Musketeers. So, yeah, I have been a bit busy with theatre, but now that I am done with shows for a while--at least until summer Shakespeare gets under way--I really have no excuse not to start attending to Station 15.

Here's a couple of shots of me as the evil Cardinal:

Yeah, it was taken in the dressing room, but it was still a way cool picture of three bad guys. From left to right, the gorgeous Kailey Portsmouth as Milady DeWinter; moi; and Ryan Pfeiffer as Comte Rochefort.

And another....

Sadly, I don't have any pix from I Hate Hamlet as of yet. That was an amazing show.

So, for a blog that is purportedly about LOST, I seem to spend a lot more time dealing with other things. Oh, well; some of my favorite bloggers post pictures of their cats, or their orchids, or somesuch thing or another.

I fully plan on writing some thoughts on Season 4, but in short, the show is moving like gangbusters and it is becoming wilder and wilder with each episode. Yeah!!!

I am going to write about some questions I have regarding the evolution of Ben Linus from Prisoner in the Hatch to some kind of multinational power-monger.

One last photo:

This is from last summer, and I mentioned it in one of my earliest blog posts. One the left of me is my pal Justin, with whom I have acted Shakespeare here for the past two summers. On my right is Justin's friend and fellow grad school classmate Keir O'Donnell, who played the crazy artist Todd in Wedding Crashers, and who also appeared on LOST as Baby Aaron's biological father Thomas in the first season episode Raised by Another.

More posts soon! I'm back in the saddle!

Season Four of LOST coming soon!

It's only a little over a month away. January 31st. Thursdays!! Yes!! One of my days off! I was hoping to have cable and a flat-screen TV for this season, but oh well--maybe later! Trust me, I will find a way to watch the show!

That said--does it look like an incredible season coming up or what? The writer's strike happened just as LOST had eight episodes in the can, so what I'm hoping is that we will have an eight-episode mini-season...the strike will be resolved (in the writers' favor)...production will commence for the last eight episodes of the season...these will air in the summer...the DVD box set for season 4 will come out in December with 16 episodes...and season 5 will begin in January or February of 2009.

That's what I hope at any rate.

Cool LOST stuff.

It's been hard on us LOST-ians these past months.

We've been waiting with the proverbial patience of Job for the 4th season to start, and the Writer's Strike may have an effect on that, but we still wait. And wait. And wait.

Sooner or later, though, we have to resort to any number of things to get some sort of LOST fix. Over on DarkUFO, they've been doing all kinds of things (polls, fantasy leagues, etc.), the 2 minute mob-isodes get critiqued and analyzed to the bejayzus, and me...well, I crawl from site to site, looking for more theories, more analyses, more cool stuff to feed the Inner Geek.

And this is one thing I found:











The Lost Boys, of whom I know absolutely nothing, are clearly some damned fine cartoonists. They do a weekly cartoon based on LOST, and yeah, you kinda gotta be in the know to actually get the jokes, but they are done with such panache, skill and affection that I think even non-LOST-ians would get la frisson au Geek. And when I find that *$%#@ website address, I'll get a link to it for yez.

Can you imagine similar cartoons done for (gasp!) Sex and the City? Desperate Housewives? Grey's Anatomy? Heaven forfend.

We are Geeks and we rule.

UPDATE: Here's the link.

LOST Season 3 DVD coming out soon!

And by soon, I mean real soon!

Here's the plan: Buy the DVD set ASAFP, but don't watch it until December 22!! I won't have rehearsals that day, it's a day off of work, and all I want to do is watch each episode back-to-back, and then feast on all the extras. Mmmmm. Pizza, Mountain Dew and LOST.

Man, it really is the simple pleasures that make life so sweet!

Housekeeping. Literally.

I can't believe the whole of November went by and I only posted ONCE on my blog. Well, "Forum" ended at the beginning of the month, and from there I started immediately on my living room project (my landlord gave me the go-ahead to replace the stained, shabby carpeting in the living room with spanking-new, shiny and aesthetically pleasing laminate wood flooring!), which wasn't completed until this very morning.

I also--and against what I thought was a pretty determined path I was going to follow--went ahead and auditioned for another play...and got cast.

So, I barreled pretty much straight from one play to another. I will be playing the Ghost of John Barrymore in "I Hate Hamlet". I have to rehearse a sword-fight for an hour-and-a-half before the regular rehearsal, which goes from 6:30pm tp 9:30pm. And then, I go to work.

And to top all of this off, the car broke down. In the winter. And my job is 2 miles uphill from where I live. I know, I know, I shouldn't be grumbling. I'm actually glad to be involved in another show, the swordfight is going to look waaaaay cool, the living room is done (so that burden is gone), and sooner or later, the car will get fixed.

It's just that right now...I feel like grumbling.

An Unintended Hiatus

Well, it's been a while.

The last blog I posted was just before "Forum" opened, and that was, what? two, three weeks ago? The show closed last Sunday, and I've been slowly re-adapting to the humdrummery of the night shift.

Not that there hasn't been plenty to write about.

The writers' strike in LA has some quite possibly serious ramifications not just for LOST, but for every TV show, period. I have thoughts on that, but not for right now. Suffice to say, I am with the writers on this (of course!), and I hope they get what they want soon.

I could write quite a bit on how "Forum" went, and I will probably do so. All I want to say is that the cast party for that show was grrrreat! And no, not for what you might imagine was an alcohol-drenched debauch among nubile coeds--nope, sorry. It was just fun. That's all. Simple fun. Belting out Disney cartoon songs, goofing on this, cackling at that. Just a lot of fun.

I guess the thing foremost in my reveries (concerning this blogsite) is that when I began this blog 3 months and change ago, I intended to write about LOST a lot more than I actually have been. To be fair to myself, this is one looooong hiatus before the fourth season starts (IF it starts, due to the strike). I scour the Internet looking for something, anything, related to LOST. I have found some really cool sites, but they all seem to be suffering from the same malady as me; hiatus uninterruptus.

Well, if it comes to it, I can always change the name of the blogsite from Station 15 to Kyle-topia.

Tomorrow I plan to do a few more posts. I have a very busy winter looming ahead of me, so I want to articulate what some of my winternial challenges will be. I have started writing my alternate history, The October Tsar. If I want to be successful between writing a book and going to the gym, I have to apply the same sort of discipline that I use when I make sure I go to rehearsal every day.

AND...in addition to all that, I have been (happily?) coerced into auditioning for I Hate Hamlet, quite possibly to play the part of John Barrymore's ghost. AND, my pal Lauren (who played Philia the Virgin in "Forum") is going to direct The Three Musketeers for her senior project. Can anyone say...Richelieu? Mmmm, perhaps.

(Sigh)

Gonna be a busy-ass winter. But I guess it could be worse.

More "Forum" pictures

EVERYBODY OUGHT TO HAVE A MAID!


PSEUDOLUS TRIES TO SCAM MILES GLORIOSUS



FUNERAL FOR A FAKE VIRGIN




COMEDY TONIGHT!!!

"Forum" opens Thursday

You gotta love sophisticated comedians like me and Nathan.

I Think I Figured It Out

Don't ask for a full explication as to how I arrived at this deduction (if you want well-thought-out LOST theories, go to EYE M SICK and feast on the writing therein!), but I think I finally figured out what the Lost Island Smoke Monster (aka "Cerebus") really is.

Here's Smokey....






And this is what's behind all the smoke....





Yer welcome. I know this was puzzling the frak outta people.

"The Golden Compass" points to December

It's coming....





It's almost here....






About six weeks away....

December 7, 2007.

(Oh, please, Mighty Crom, let this movie refrain from being Suckfest '07! It looks so good, and has such a great cast. PLEASE let it be as marvelous as it looks like it will be!!)

I want to buy this island someday!

It's called Kanacea, and it's in the Lau Archipelago of Fiji.

It's only $45,000,000. Only $44,999,999 left to go!

Ahhh, but to buy it and totally pimp it out in a Bond villain-meets-Myst kind of way. Killer robots don't come cheap, you know. Plus all the henchmen to hire, and the underground lair to construct, and the sharks with frickin' laser beams attached to purchase and train.

I can finally come clean; I want to be Dr. Evil. I already have the cats.

The Actor's Life For Me

God, do I love theatre!!! Giggity!

"And what will you name it then? Conjugia?"

Saw Elizabeth: The Golden Age last night. Fan-TAS-tic. What a treat it always is to watch a movie that respects your intelligence, and assumes you don't need a car chase every five minutes to hold your interest.

They might just as well send the Best Actress Oscar over to Cate Blanchett's house right now. I can't see anybody giving a better performance. The real Queen Elizabeth I was mecurial, vain, flirtatious, witty, generous, devoted, arrogant, beautiful, frail, politically savvy, gracious--on and on, a mass of grand contradictions, using what aspect of her personality she needed at the moment to accomplish what needed to be done. And Blanchett captured that personality dead on.

There are swirling, poetic images throughout the movie. The image of Elizabeth in her night-clothes standing on the cliffs of Dover watching the vast Spanish Armada burning in the dusky, distant English Channel is one I will never forget. And Cate Blanchett is surrounded by a terrific cast; Geoffrey Rush as Sir Francis Walsingham, her chief spymaster; Jordi Molla as Philip II of Spain; Samantha Morton as Mary, Queen of Scots; Clive Owen as Sir Walter Raleigh.

The movie was one of the most determinedly accurate historical epics I've ever seen. Yes, there's always going to be a certain amount of telescoping events for dramatic effect, but by God, the filmmakers got so much right!

One of my favorite little scenes involves Dr. John Dee, Elizabeth's astrologer. Dee figures prominently, though not explicitly, in the book I'm working on, so it was cool to see him in the movie. The actor playing him, David Threlfall, looked exactly like John Dee. Spooky.



John Dee

Go see the movie immediately. And the title of this post is one of my favorite lines from the film, but I won't explain it.