The Event

I’ve just started watching The Event, the pilot for the latest show to be called the new Lost. So far, so good. It opens with something on a jet plane, kind of like Lost, and the credits indicate a good mix of familiar-but-forgotten names (Joseph C. Phillips, Laura Innes) and the usual suspects (Zeljko Ivanek, who apparently has to be in every TV series). Of particular interest to me is star Jason Ritter, son of John, who looks exactly like his father, if his father had been played by James Marsden.

I haven’t watched TV on TV since Lost ended. I’m a Hulu man, a DVD renter. But my new schedule finds me in a quiet house Monday nights, once the kids have gone to sleep, so I might tune in to this program weekly.

Right after it is the new Hawaii 5-0. That’s a nice bonus. I’ll have to change the channel; NBC just previewed something called Chase that looks really, really excellent, and by excellent I mean crappy.

This all may change in about 90 minutes.

Linus & Locke, Together Again?

JJ Abrams, the current he-wh0-can-do-no-wrong in Hollywood, has a new TV series in the works. Not Under Covers, which is already on the way, or Alcatraz, which is just at the pitch stage. This one is called Odd Jobs, and would star Terry O’Quinn and Michael Emerson as retired government assassins living in quiet suburbia.

Things I like about this:

• Emerson and O’Quinn are tremendous actors, and had terrific chemistry on Lost. However, their final scene together was somewhat lacking, and I felt, watching it, that these two actors, who are clearly friends, had more work to do.
• Old, retired secret agents? That’s been done. In fact, the new movie Red is another take on the topic. And it’s easy to think this could fail, except for the people involved.
• Michael Emerson is very, very funny, and this project is said to be conceived as being on the light side. In fact, O’Quinn came up with the idea as Lost was ending. Giving these two guys a chance to be funny means it appeals to me even more; we had plenty of small tastes of it before.
• Plans call for it to be made for cable, which means one thing and one thing only: boobs. Wait, I meant mature themes and smarter content than you’d find on network TV. Yeah, that’s what I meant.

This show may never be made, but it’s cool to hear the actors involved are still talking about working together. That’s a real treat, and would expose to non-Lost fans the amazing performance power and killer chemistry between two of the show’s heaviest hitters.

Taking A Breather

Give me a few days. I’m working on something new, and there’s a bit of a time crunch. In the meantime, you can look at this for a while.

Later tonight, as you’re lying in bed, unable to get to sleep, you will feel the urge to see this image again, and you will. Don’t feel bad. You are not alone.

I Wore Jogging Pants While Posting This

Alien: The Next Generation

An Inappropriate Conversation About My Religion

My soul brother Greg hosts a weekly podcast about faith, logic and life called Inappropriate Conversations. He’s a Christian, and a pretty devout one, and I like his show because he applies his faith to the real world in a way that allows for the concept of belief over reason, but at the same time doesn’t let that concept dictate stupidity. Koran-burning preacher, I’m talking to you.

I listen to IC despite being a non-Christian, because its sensibilities apply to real life regardless of which church you attend, if any.

So while I was thinking about Greg’s show, I came to that awful anniversary, September 10. That’s the day my 14-year-old son died, six years ago. It’s a day that always finds me struggling, doing my best to make it to September 11 (another fine anniversary) without losing my grip. This is not an easy task, but I usually manage.

Lately, crows have been occupying my field. Many crows. And this matters. Here, I will let my friend Angela explain it:

• “Crows are the Messengers from the Creator and it is likely in your totem also as you are a journalist. Crows can also carry the spirits of our Ancestors or loved ones who passed on before us to bring messages to us from the Spirit World. If you listen carefully you can hear what the Crow has to say to you.”

Angela, like me, is a journalist. We have other things in common. For one, our ancestors were on this continent long before Europeans ever showed up. Our belief system doesn’t have a name, and I don’t like calling it a religion, because it goes beyond that. It’s a pure form of belief that shares a lot with my African forefathers, too, a belief that we, as human beings, know very little about the world beyond our vision. And while there may be something more in the spirit world around us, there are enough signs in the real world to let us know we are part of something bigger.

I am, at heart, a man of science. I like proof. I like evidence and fact. At the same time, I am not 100% convinced I am right in that approach. So that makes me a man of faith. But using “faith” to promote xenophobia, or hatred, or separatism, dismisses what faith means, and makes me a man of angry. This creates the conflict that fires my engines.

When I see signs the way I did today, when I make it through and move on, I tend to lean a certain way.

Faith’s something bigger than we can imagine, something that goes beyond what we can see, feel or hear. That’s the faith that gets me through the woods.

Earlier today, I walked into a secret council of crows in the forest, and they let me pass.

Inappropriate Conversations