Underpants On The Outside

Most people think I’m a big ol’ geek, but I would say I’m much more of a dork.  While geeks and dorks both enjoy games involving dice having more than six sides and exhibit the same sweaty panic when faced with sports equipment and girls, geeks are more knowledgeable than dorks.  Geeks read Wired; dorks just look at the pictures.

My friends – now those guys are some geeks, and I say that with all due respect.  Keeping up with the conversation requires applied knowledge of fluid dynamics, nuclear physics, materials science and/or search algorithms… of which I have none. (In an unfortunate coincidence, all of those were classes I was taking during my “weed helps me think” days.)  But while I may be a dork, I’m a chameleon dork: I can APPEAR like I know what everyone’s talking about as long as I nod at the right times and keep an eye out for an opportunity to make a joke involving either the transitive property or “bubble sort.”* 

Which brings us to the good news of today: I have been published on The Science Creative Quarterly (the article can be found here.)  The SCQ is a terrific site for geeks, and I think many of you Underpants readers will enjoy it – the articles are intelligent and funny when they want to be.  But as far as my own article goes, I can only hope you think it’s funny because it sure isn’t intelligent. You won’t know anything after reading it that you didn’t before; you will just be a minute or two older. So yeah… big thanks to the editorial staff for publishing it.

*I couldn’t tell you what bubble sorting is with a gun to my head.  But it sure sounds funny…

I know what you’re thinking: “z, didn’t you say you were done with dry-humping supermodels?  Didn’t you acknowledge that this bit was old and stale?”  Yes.  Yes, I did.  But if you’ve read this site for a little while, you’ve probably noticed I’m not tremendously reliable.  And for the past two episodes, the switcheroos, fake-outs and shenanigans have gotten out of hand.  It needs to be said.

Take two weeks ago.  The episode focused on Jin and Sun.  If I may digress, they’re the island’s Asian couple, and while I’ll admit I’m prone to cheap humor – often resorting to chauvinism, dick jokes and racial stereotypes – I’m still amazed that with all the broken electronics on the island, no one has turned to them and said, “Are you SURE you can’t fix it?”

Sun and Jin have always been a good couple of characters.  Their past is filled with the intrigue of organized crime, an extramarital affair, potentially illegitimate children and class struggle – it’s like Goodfellas, Unfaithful, and Lady and the Tramp all rolled into one.  The episode two weeks ago revolved around Sun’s pregnancy, because if she stays on the island, she’ll die like every other pregnant woman there.  (The island is seriously against unsafe sex.)  Fortunately for her, we find out that she’s part of the Oceanic Six, as her flash forward shows her back in Korea when she goes into labor.  We also see Jin, desperately trying to pick up a giant stuffed panda and make it to the hospital, but nothing can go right for him – his cab drives off with the panda inside and he drops his phone, where it is crushed by a motorcycle. The tension got pretty thick as scenes of Sun and Jin on the island were interspersed with scenes of Sun in the throes of labor and Jin frantically trying to make it in time.  It really seemed like something terrible was going to somebody.  But Sun had her child, both of them were healthy, and Jin made it to the hospital.  The wrinkle was that Sun was in the future, post-island, while Jin was in his pre-island days, bringing the panda to some ambassador as an errand for his boss.  Jin is dead in the future.  (Admittedly, I should have seen this coming.  Several months ago, Daniel Dae Kim, the actor who plays Jin, was caught driving drunk in Hawaii, where the film the show.  He is now the fourth actor on the show to get a DUI, and it would appear that the producers don’t really appreciate that sort of behavior: of the other three actors, two of them had their characters get shot to death, and the third’s character was beaten to death by the flatulasaurus.  I appreciate that they’re socially conscious, but you’d think ABC would start keeping a couple taxis on retainer.)

In a show where nothing is what it seems, even this was intolerable.  For instance, it was a shock to find out that the Others weren’t some tribe of long-lost, backwoods sociopaths who got their jollies from kidnapping – they’re just scientists who masquerade as backwoods sociopaths to give their kidnapping a little more pizzazz.  That was quite the fast one the writers pulled on us, but what’s important is that it moved the plot forward without negating any of the previous material – after all, the Others were still kidnappers.  If anything, the twist made them even more creepy, like some sort of nefarious drama club.

But the episode with Jin and Sun was nothing more than cheaply manufactured drama.  I had just wasted an hour watching two innocuous events that did nothing for the overall plot.  Sun had a baby.  Jin bought a panda.  I ate a sandwich – big fucking deal.  But because they added some quick cuts and ominous cello music, I spent forty-five minutes being nervous. The episode wasn’t ‘Lost’ so much as it was ‘Lost Time.’ (ZING!)

I’m still a little resentful.  This was supermodel dry-humping at its worst: it was intentional. Some gorgeous creature had taken me home, turned out the lights and worked me into a sexual insanity, but at the last moment the lights came on, revealing my dick tucked into nothing more than a well-lubricated armpit.  And in that moment of horrible realization, she started to laugh, because I had just been dry-humped for sport.  (I might be overthinking this.)  That’s just mean.

Then there was last week’s episode, which actually managed to be entertaining despite the fact that it followed Michael.  I hate Michael.  Once his son was captured by the Others and turned into a semi-omniscient weirdo, his character consisted solely of weeping, pouting and shouting, “They took my boy!” anytime someone pointed out that he was being a prick.  The only positive was the he killed the abhorrent Ana Lucia (sucks for you, Michelle Rodriguez – maybe next time you’ll have a designated driver.)

We thought we were done with Michael – after freeing Kaiser Soze, Michael and his son Walt were given a boat and allowed to leave the island entirely.  But he’s back, working under an assumed identity on the freighter that brought the new arrivals.  Here’s a superfast rundown of why:

Mike tries to kill himself because he’s still a weepy little girl. But he can’t, and he’s told that it’s because the island doesn’t want him to kill himself. In an effort to become mortal, Michael agrees to work for Kaiser Soze and sabotage the boat, to foil the plans of the billionaire looking for the island.

Maybe it’s just me, but if I found out I couldn’t die, there would be a bunch of things on my to-do list that would go above “work for man who kidnapped my son,” and “become mortal.”  Things like, “Become famous stuntman,” and, “bang groupies befitting a famous stuntman.” But what do I know?

I don’t know what the term for personifying a land mass is – is it anthropomorphize? Landopomorphize?  Whatever it is, landopomorphizing the island used to be one of the symptoms of Crazy, Stabby Locke, and I for one never thought it was “real.”  Now that sane people are talking about the island’s desires, it’s one more signal that Lost is letting go of any grip it still had on reality.  The island is just a much larger, leafier version of the Narnia closet.  But the episode was still decently interesting, and rating my interest in terms of supermodels, I would give the episode a solid Gabrielle Reese.

But the biggest dry-hump of all came at the end of the episode when I found out there wouldn’t be any new episodes until late April.  Fuuuuuuuuuuuck that.  Lost takes a ridiculous number of hiatuses.  By now I don’t even know what season we’re in anymore. It’s like when you’re in an off-again, on-again relationship and someone asks you how long you’ve been dating, and you say “six months” at the same time she says “four years,” and you suddenly realize the only way either of you is getting out if this is if one of you moves to Canada. 

It’s especially infuriating because the producers said they wouldn’t be doing this bush-league hiatus stuff.  (Well, okay: I don’t actually know that they said that, but that’s what ex-Roommate Kat said, and she’s always right about that sort of thing – she’s the most anal-retentive person I know. In a good way.)  The show may be on a decline, but I still want to watch it – I enjoy it, and at the very least it provides me with a weekly occasion to hang out with my friends, not to mention a terrific source of conversation.  I need my Lost!  I suck at conversation!

For example, I now need to get a month’s worth of small-talk out of my latest island theory: the island is a fully sentient landmass, but it is only a baby island, which is why no one is aware of its existence.  In fact, the island is the illegitimate child of Australia and Indonesia, and while Indonesia insists that the baby is Australia’s, Australia refuses to pay any support, pointing out Indonesia’s loose morals and recent associations with New Zealand and Fiji.  (And we all know how many kids THOSE two have.)

As the day fast approaches (I have no idea how fast, because I have no idea when it will be) I will endeavor to leave regular updates about the fun/trials and tribulations of planning our wedding. That way, readers can feel like they’re right there with us, which should be particularly helpful for those who I do not like enough to invite. And if any of you think it’s tasteless to name this feature using a quote where Darth Vader predicts the success of the fascist Empire and the Dark Side, well… you probably have a good point.

This weekend, Wonder Woman and I flew to Los Angeles to meet vendors and scout venues. It was a busy Saturday: at nine am we were in Long Beach to meet with a photographer. By noon we were downtown to look at possible venues, crack addicts and prostitutes. By three we were in Playa Vista, by four we were in Culver City, and by five-thirty we were in the Palisades. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Los Angeles geography, let me put it this way: if I could have just added “disarm bomb in Reseda” to the itinerary I would have successfully completed a season of 24. This was especially fun after I woke up Friday morning and the top story on Yahoo’s homepage was “Gas prices in California hit record high.” Bonus.

We did have some luck on our side, as we found our photographer on the first try. Actually, luck had very little to do with it – we found her because Wonder Woman has been tirelessly searching on the internet. I can’t express how much I appreciate her efforts, but I will give it a shot once I get done playing Assassin’s Creed on my Xbox 360.

I just hope she appreciates my own contributions as well. I believe I was particularly helpful during our interview of said photographer. First of all, I doubt Wonder Woman would have noticed that the photographer was pretty hot if I hadn’t pointed it out. I also took the initiative when it came to tactfully asking the photographer the tough questions, such as where her restroom was, and how she dealt with adversity: “What was the worst thing that’s gone wrong at a wedding? Because a lot of things are going to go wrong at ours. Like, A LOT. For instance, what would you do in the event of a grease fire?”

Though I have to admit that by then I was just going through the motions for WW’s sake. I had already decided this woman was the right photographer for us, and no, not because she was cute. It was based on a much more objective standard; one that can be purchased semi-annually from 14-year old girls. That’s right, I’m talking about Thin Mints.

It was the first thing I noticed when we entered her studio: a plate of Samoas, Thin Mints, and one of those other Girl Scout cookies that are bullshit when compared to Thin Mints and Samoas and therefore don’t even deserve names. I felt compelled to mention how impressed I was with her portfolio – shouting, “Sweet! Girl Scout cookies!” as I stuffed two in my mouth just in case they weren’t meant for me – and on the outside chance I wasn’t sold yet, the photographer then said, “Sorry, I didn’t have time to freeze them.” Keep in mind that my love for Wonder Woman was initially based on her refusal to eat in restaurants that serve Pepsi. Suddenly it felt like the photographer and I had grown up together, except I had never actually eaten Thin Mints off a plate before. (My initial reaction: thumbs down. They don’t taste any better, and now you have to wash a plate. Booo.)

Note: some of you may not be impressed that the photographer knew that Thin Mints are meant to be eaten frozen. I, too, once assumed this was common knowledge, but living on the east coast has introduced me to scores of the unwashed masses that eat Thin Mints warm, like peasants and dogs. Believe me, they exist! They also leave their batteries in unrefrigerated drawers, the fools! Nevertheless, we must show pity, no matter how much we are disgusted.

After that the day becomes a bit of a blur, but the bits that I remember only reinforce my already-strong campaign for MVP of this wedding planning process. For instance, I drove us all over the place, and only managed to get us lost in my hometown twice! (National is north of Washington? Since when???)

We’ll be making at least one more trip back there to meet with more vendors, but I don’t want them to read this and think they can plunk down a box of Thin Mints and expect to get our business. No – the bar has been raised, and now my deposit check goes to the first DJ with kosher salami on Ritz crackers. (Turntables optional.)

MVP! MVP!

 Yeah, yeah… I haven’t done this in a while.  Whatever.  Okay, here’s the quickie rundown of the last three episodes.

Three episodes ago: This was an episode all about Kate. For those of you who don’t watch the show, Kate is the hottest non-pregnant woman on the island, and boy does she know it.  She’s got the two best-looking guys on the island wrapped around her finger, and if the island were anything like real life, all the other female castaways would be calling her a slut behind her back and spreading rumors that she has herpes.

Originally she had a shadowy criminal past that she refused to talk about.  It was one of the show’s few mysteries that have actually been explained, possibly because it was so tame: Kate killed her abusive stepfather and was being extradited from Australia when the plane crashed.  That’s it.  One murder, and a ‘nice’ murder at that. As far as I’m concerned, that’s not exactly supermodel dry-humping caliber right there.  At first it seemed like we’d be dry-humping a stripper in a cop outfit, but then it turned out she was just a meter maid with cleavage. 

Kate walks around half the time like she killed a man just to watch him die, and the other half she seems more haunted than your average ‘Nam vet.  She’s so phony – like those kids who think they’re bad-ass because they once shoplifted a Cadbury Cream egg. [Editor's note: Yes, that was me.  But in my defense, I was fourteen, a straight A student, and I had absolutely no idea what the female body felt like. Kate's in her late twenties and is smoking hot.]

Anyway, anytime they talk about rescue, Kate gets all freaked out, because se’s afraid that when she gets rescued they’ll send her to prison.  But no one has explained why she considers the island to be a better option.  It’s not like she’s getting the chair. True: on the island she’s got her pick of the men.  On the other hand, the only things on the menu are mangos, boar and fish, there’s no kind of medical care, and it rains hourly, so you KNOW she’s chafing all over the place. She has no idea what’s going on, people are dying left and right, and there also happens to be a giant smoke monster roaming around the jungle. What’s the worst thing she has to fear about prison? Is she really that averse to a little cunnilingus?  As an amateur lesbian myself, let me say that it can be quite enjoyable.

That whole episode was kind of a wash. Kate spent most of the episode pseudo-crying.  They did push the Oceanic Six bit a little: in court, Jack tells a story about how there were eight survivors, but only six make it back alive, so now we’re left wondering not only who the rest of the Oceanic Six are (we know five of them) but now we’re wondering who the two that die are.  Again, it’s not exactly supermodel dry-humping.  I’m curious, but I have no problem waiting a few more weeks.  If anything it’s more like dry humping a mediocre-looking girl because you’ve heard she’s into group sex. 

Two episodes ago:  This was a bit of a twister. Desmond (“if it’s not Scottish, it’s crap”) and Sayeed were airlifted to a freighter a few miles off the island. We saw more freaky time effects associated with the island, in particular, one that caused Desmond’s consciousness to travel back and forth in time.  I thought that was an interesting little twist on time travel.  A little way of saying, “Suck it, Newton.  I’ve got some mass you can conserve RIGHT HERE!”

Eight years in the past, Desmond pays a visit to Pehneh (during an “off” part of their off again, on again relationship) to convince her to give him her phone number so that he can call her eight years later.  He tells her he’ll be calling Dec. 24, 2006, and stresses that she can’t change her number.  Once his consciousness jumps back to the present, he calls her from the ship’s radio room, which he and Sayeed had broken into.  What followed was possibly the most ridiculous scene in Lost history.

• Pehneh takes at least 10 rings to answer the phone. The first mystery is: what kind of phone service does she have that doesn’t go to voicemail after four? The second is, what the hell was she doing for so long? Say Wonder Woman had a falling out, and months later she showed up at my door, looking panicked and desperate, and swearing up and down that she’d be calling me on Christmas of 2016. I’d probably set up a reminder in Outlook. I might even invite friends over on the actual night, open a couple bottles of wine, and let them listen on speakerphone. Whatever I did, you better believe I’d have my phone on me at all times. And it was a cordless phone, so even if she was “dropping a deuce”, that’s no excuse.
• When she does finally pick up, she and Desmond spend the next ten minutes telling each other how much they love each other. Yeah, it’s sweet and all, but I kept imagining myself in Sayeed’s shoes: Here I am on a boat miles off an island of wackiness. The boat’s crew do not appear to be friendly, and we’ve just broken into their radio room to make a call for help. Any minute now someone’s going to find us and give us a thorough beat down, I haven’t gotten laid or used conditioner in months, and if that weren’t enough, the guy calling for help is saying, “you hang up first… no, you…”

Here’s my gut reaction: I’m not too curious about the whole time distortion thing.  It’s not like a tropical polar bear, which is the type of phenomenon one really has to explain. When it comes to space-time, things just… happen.  Even Star Trek just shrugs and says, “I dunno, maybe it was a wormhole or something.”  There’s no way Lost is ever going to satisfactorily explain this time distortion, so I’m not going to get all riled up about it. The only thing this episode made me curious about was how Desmond could drop the ball so badly.  There was no real mystery, and while the episode was exciting, the more I think about it the less appealing it seems.  In other words, it wasn’t dry-humping a supermodel; it was more like real-humping a jar of Miracle Whip.

On that note, on to this week’s episode, with a special new feature!

Readers of this space might be aware that as time has gone on, I’ve become increasingly uneasy presenting Lost recaps in the ol’ “Supermodel Dry-humping” context.  Don’t get me wrong: it’s a great image, and has provided me with some great material over the years.  But for the most part it’s stale as fuck. 

Well, it took me a while, but I’ve finally come up with a new way of doing the recaps.  It’s actually pretty obvious, and I can’t believe I didn’t think of it before.  Presenting: A Message in a Bottle: What’s New on Lost!  Each week, I’ll write a recap from one of the character’s perspectives, as if they had left a letter in a – oh, you get the idea. (Please note: any similarities between this and “The Superhero Diaries” are completely coincidental, and are not an indication that my imagination and sense of humor are rather limited.)

Observe…

This week’s author: Juliette

Dear Reader,

I can only hope these messages are reaching someone.  I am trapped on an island, and desperate for rescue. Unfortunately, that’s really all the information I have at this time.  We’re somewhere in an ocean, though there are some serious disagreements as to which ocean.  There are palm trees, and once I’m pretty sure I saw a shark.  Does that help?  We’re also the tropical island with a polar bear on it.  There can’t be that many.

If you’ve received any of my past sea-mails (LOL!), I should say mention that I am even more desperate than usual to get off this island.  It seems like every time I think things can’t get worse, they find a way.  At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if I grew a pair of testicles, just so somebody could come along and kick me in them.

I was once a successful fertility doctor.  I also used to smile sometimes; even laugh on occasion.  Then I was brought to this secret island community to try and figure out why pregnant women always die here.  The only thing I’ve figured out is that it’s really depressing when dozens of pregnant women die right in front of your eyes.

I tried to make the best of things – I started seeing this guy, Goodwin.  Of course he was married.  Maybe my therapist was right: maybe I am always sabotaging myself.  I mean, the most meaningful relationship I’ve had in years, and I find it on an island where sex is potentially lethal.  (If my letters ever make me seem moody, it’s because I take a birth control pill eight times a day.)  I’m turning out just like my mother.

Maybe it was wrong of me to date a married man, but my only other option was this guy Ben.  He had the biggest crush on me, but…ick.  The guy is totally creepy.  He’s got these big buggy eyes, clammy hands, and he always smells like some kind of ointment.  But he’s also the leader of our community, because once he locks those buggy eyes on you, it’s like he’s in your head.  It’s freaky.  He’s like Kaiser Soze.  The only time he ever gets flustered is when he’s around me. See, Ben was raised on the island, and has the type of social skills one usually finds with the home-schooled.  I’m pretty sure he’s a virgin. 

At first I thought it was cute the way he’d get all sweaty and stutter every time I was around.  Like this one time, he actually tricked me into a date.  I thought I was coming over for a dinner party, but he hadn’t invited anyone else.  He made me a ham.  Sure it was weird, but I have to admit, I liked the attention.  A girl likes to feel special, you know?  But when Ben found out about Goodwin, he had him killed.  Then the sick bastard showed me the body, and as we’re standing over it, he tells me “you’re mine.”  What a ladies man, right? I mean, just because I eat your ham doesn’t mean we’re going steady.

How do you break up with a guy when you’re not even going out with him?  I stopped inviting him to the book club – take a hint.  But he just finds any excuse to hang around me.  He even got a spinal tumor, and guess who is the only doctor around here.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he gave it to himself somehow just so that I’d have to touch him.

I actually thought I had come up with a clever way out, but you’ll have to bear with me for a second:

A plane recently crashed on the island.  There were several survivors.  One of them, Jack, is a spinal surgeon.  (And he’s totally hot, too.)  Ben came up with a plan to manipulate Jack into operating on him involving kidnapping, extortion and death threats, which as you’ll remember is also how he asked me to be his girlfriend.  But while Jack was staying with us, I befriended him, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping for more.  Mom always wanted me to date a doctor.  I told him to kill Ben, and I even tried to imply that there would be a little “somethin’-somethin’” in it for him afterwards. 

The problem is Jack’s kind of an idiot.  Dreamy, and with the best of intentions, but an idiot none the less.  He screwed up my plan, saved Ben’s life, and even managed to throw me under the bus by letting Ben know I had conspired to kill him.  Way to pick the winners, Juliette! Of course, now that he betrayed me I find him even hotter.  Thank you, deep-seeded father issues…

A couple days later, Ben hit me with some knockout gas and when I woke up, everyone was gone except for Jack and another of the survivors, Kate.  She totally thinks she’s hot, but it’s just because she’s skinny.  I don’t know why Jack can’t see that she’s a total slut.  He’s such an idiot.  She probably has herpes.

Anyway, everyone I knew was gone, so I had to latch on to Jack and Kate and follow them back to their camp.  Plus, it really seemed like Jack and I were hitting it off.  It’s also given me the opportunity to realize that when you’re stuck on an island, you shouldn’t take things like indoor plumbing for granted.  Palm fronds make for poor toilet paper. 

And then things got really weird.  Some scientists just arrived from a freighter.  We thought they were here to rescue us, but that’s definitely not the case.  Rescue workers don’t bring gas masks.  Two of them disappeared into the jungle.  Jack and I set out to find them, and already I had a bad feeling about this.  Jack seems to think he’s some kind of master tracker/woodsman, even though from what I hear he never even got past Cub Scout.  I’m not much better, but I had some outside help: as I was walking through the jungle when my ex-boyfriend’s wife appeared out of nowhere and told me that the scientists were going to one of the power plants on the island in an effort to kill everyone.

I’m not crazy, I swear.  This shit is actually going down.  Seriously, send help.  How many islands can there be, anyway? 

Where was I?  Oh yeah – Jack and I were trying to catch up to the scientists.  But guess who decided to show up all knocked unconscious?  That’s right: Kate.  She’s like, “Ow, those mean old scientists knocked me on my head, I’m helpless, and apparently allergic to sleeves because all I wear are low-cut tank-tops…” The whore.  Oh, surprise surprise, Jack stays back to help her.  Don’t mind Juliet – she’ll go take care of everything.  She always does!  Always trying to fix everything and everyone! 

When I caught up with the scientists at the power plant (nicknamed “The Tempest”, because we’re very mysterious around here) it seemed like they were attempting to release some kind of deadly gas. At one point I might have been curious as to why there was a large store of deadly gas on the island, but after all this time I just take this shit in stride.  Then again, I didn’t even have a lot of time to think about it.  As I was attempting to stop one of them, the other snuck up behind me and hit me.  But I managed to stay conscious, Kate! I’m not gonna take a sucker-punch like some little bitch – I turned around and kicked that motherfucker’s ass!  Hellz yeah!

But here’s the thing:  both of the scientists swore that they weren’t trying to release the gas; they were trying to make it inert.  And for some reason, maybe the fact that I had just taken a blow to the head, I believed them.  Whatever they did, it sure didn’t seem to have any negative effects.  But that’s not important.  Back to Jack.  So I was all pissed off at him for staying with Kate.  I even tried to break it off with him. I told him that Ben would try and kill him if he knew I liked him.  I don’t even know if it’s true, but I didn’t want to sound jealous.  But then he kisses me!  (It was totally hot!)

What should I do? I mean, I think he likes me, but he’s going to have to do something about Kate if we’re going to move this relationship forward. 

Anyway, please send help. 

-Juliette

1 Beach Road

Island City, Island

My second officially published Superhero Diary went up over at Crave Online.  To be clear, I’m getting paid to be a comic book nerd.  AND I occasionally have sex! 

I’m living the dream, one day at a time.

P.S. (Technically this counts as my post of the week, but I will try and get some nonsense about a supermodel up before tonight’s Lost.  No promises though – I have some very time-consuming sandwiches in my near future.)