The River

Since Lost ended on TV....folks have been looking for this Lost-replacement.  Frankly, most of us who were Lost-enthusiasts were a bit hostile over the last twenty episodes and aren't very eager to go back repeating the silliness of the end.  We might all agree that the first fifty episodes were dynamic and epic....but things came to end in such a way, that just makes you laugh mostly.

So came the announcement this week of "The River" being part of the fall lineup.  The basic story?  Some TV adventure host....kinda like a Steve Irwin....has taken his adventure vessel down through the Amazon and disappeared.  The public is convinced he's dead.  His wife won't accept it.  His son is kinda upset.  Then some beacon goes off to say he might be alive and identifies the area.  Naturally, they don't want to tell the Brazilian government who would go in and find the guy in eight hours....go figure.

So the wife gets the son, some adventure show producer & crew, a couple of friends, and a small crew....to jump on a boat and follow the beacon to the vessel which parked in an area of the Amazon that no human has ever been to.  Brazilians would mostly laugh at this moment because there is no such point on the Amazon any longer like that.

The tease of the story is that things start to fall apart as soon as the new folks arrive.  There's no one on the adventure vessel parked in the middle of nowhere.  Some weird creatures appear.  A guy or gal dies in the first ten minutes.....and there's no TV adventure host anywhere around.

What we are expected to do now....is sit through around 100 episodes....100 hours....to figure out what Brazilian monkey creature, or Brazilian wild trans-sexual figure, or amazing Peruvian monkey-lady escapee from a circus has stumbled into this mess.

There will be the fake leads....like six numbers that keep repeating, the written yellow sticky notes that the adventure guy leaves on rocks, the unique body functions of the monkey creature, some voodoo rituals by a lost tribe, a zombie or two, the cannibals who are on a diet this week (for your sake), and the tribesmen who wear only three chicken feathers to cover up their manly situation.  At some point, a pit will be found with dinosaur bones that probably only look fifty years old.  Toss in a time warp, a polar bear appearing out of thin air, some Australian TV adventure show host who appears out of nowhere....a Finnish TV adventure show host who parachutes in with a case of Finnish beer....and some Russian gold hunter who looks like Micky Mantle, and you've got yourself a five-star loser show which will last five plus years.

The neat thing about this?  Every week.....some other new character could parachute into the Amazon rainforest and claim he was sent there by Hulk Hogan to find some long-lost wrestler who wandered into the forbidden jungles of Brazil.

The sad thing?  I probably will watch the first twenty episodes in hopes of a perfect Lost script.  The minute that time travel is suggested....I'll flip over to the BRAVO channel and watch Flip This House.

Today Might Be It

For those of you not aware....today is Judgement Day.

It's been proclaimed by some religious nut group....mostly led by this 89-year old retired civil engineer.  On the inner circle of this belief, I'd say around 100k people worldwide actually believe this is the day and they've tied up their personal situations to agree there isn't much need to plan past Saturday evening.  Outside of the 100k group.....I'd take an educated guess that another 500k think something will happen today.

The problem with these end-of-days announcements....which come every year now....thanks to the internet....is that they come and go.  Aliens didn't land in Bama as promised four years ago.  God didn't pass judgement in 2009 like a number of folks were predicting.

I will patiently and quietly sit by today....waiting for this event to eventually occur.  Pondering upon the topic....if you can't change your destiny....why fight it?  It'd be logical stoic behavior to just it's got to happen and it's best to have a six-pack of Pabst Blue-Ribbon around to mark the hour.

How will the 89-year old civil engineer who predicted this react?  I'm guessing he'll grin for a moment and then kinda admit that he might have overlooked some variables....and then toss eight more years onto the expected date of end-of-times.

When Things Go Wrong

I sat and watched four different news episodes this morning of the meeting between Netanyahu and the President.  The video clips of them sitting there speaks volumes.  The first two minutes, there was a fair comfort level for the President, but you could tell it was draining away.

As Netanyahu went into his lecture, it was then painfully obvious that the President wasn't very happy and must have been expecting some other comment or less than a comment.

This ninety-odd minute lecture given by the Israeli Prime Minister was probably one of those episodes that you'd really prefer to avoid.  Then you have to ask who in the State Department ever gave this advice about the 1967 border line episode.  My guess....no one from the State Department would have been this silly unless they were two years out of Harvard or Princeton.  The top levels of the State Department would have stopped such commentary quickly.

So my best guess is that the President got this 1967 advice from someone who is a "friend" of the White House.  There are around 200 folks who have bought and snuggled their way into being a "friend" of the President.  They get a chance to speak with him at lunches or weekend retreats.  One would guess that this got put on the President's plate, and he just told his inner circle that this was going to be US policy, no matter what.  They turned to the speech-writer and had a speech drafted up like this.  The State Department likely sat there in shock but figured that the President must know something that they don't.

At the conclusion of this meeting....the President likely went into the Oval Office for thirty minutes....took a fair dose of asprin for his headache, and grumbled about how stupid this 1967 border advice was.  The "friend"?  Well....my guess is that he's been quietly removed from the guest list by today, and wondering why this was stupid to suggest.

Speeches over the Middle East again?  No.....even if the President is around after 2012....one must speculate that you won't hear any real Middle East speech again.  He'll talk about Asia, Honduras, General Motors, and possibly even space travel.....but I think you've heard the last of any chat over the Israel situation.