10. Hello, I’m the Architect.

It would suck not to get answers to all our 1001 questions about Lost. But it would suck only slightly less to get all our questions answered, one by one, by some random armchair-bound David Attenborough clone, for two hours straight. I have no doubt that there’s a metric ton of exposition ahead… let’s hope the writers handle it with minimal talking heads.

9. Some sort of dumb, dumb Jin and Sun tragedy.

I cannot possibly be alone in my annoyance that Sun and Jin have been running around the island for a season now, just BARELY missing each other. A season ago, when it was revealed that Sun took over her father’s company and was in a position of power, it seemed like they were setting the scene for tragedy… that she would become a villain, and botch her chances at reuniting with her husband. But that hasn’t happened… nothing in either of their stories has set them up for meaningful suffering. If they don’t meet up alive again, at least for a moment, it’ll just be the writers kicking puppies in the face, and making us watch. Not cool.

8. A Jack Shephard surgery scene as pivotal plot point

I like most of the recurring motifs on Lost. Most of them resonate with me, to some degree. Most. But I just can’t take the whole “it’s Jack’s destiny to perform lots and lots of surgery” thing. Not because I’m squeamish, but because… it’s stupid. It drags the show into B-grade medical drama territory. But I’m worried that, in the end, it’s Jack’s destiny to perform a spinal operation on Jacob’s ashes, or remove a gallstone from Smokey. No thank you.

7. Ben Linus, random douchebag, standing around, confused by his lack of importance

Here’s the thing: in previous seasons, Benjamin Linus was part of the mystery. His motivations were unclear, but it appeared that there was some method behind them, some sense of purpose leading him to make what were, on the surface, pretty unfathomable moves. Nine out of ten Ben decisions led to him being beaten within an inch of his life… but it was interesting because of his constant pronouncement that he had a plan. This season, he’s just been a deer in the headlights, making us wonder why Widmore ever gave a damn. Pick it up, Linus! Give us some final insight, some final sense of what made you tick, before the clock runs out.

6. Here Comes A New Challenger

In the beginning, there were the survivors, and the Others. Then there were the Tailies, the main survivors, and the Others. Now there are the Survivors, the Widmore people, the Others, the Dharma Initiative, the Ajira folks, the Candidates, the Smokey-followers, the Dead People Hurley Sees. Rose and Bernard were not wrong to run to the other side of the island and grow beards. It’s damn confusing keeping track of all the factions and allegiances. At this point in the show, we need to start seeing the deeper connections between all these groups. But I’m deathly afraid we’re going to get something else: for example mercenaries in neon-green jump suits, led by Eloise Hawking. By attacking the island, they force all the other groups to unite, without explaining why they were ever fighting in the first place.

5. Jacob resurrection.

Nuff said. This would be awful. (Note: Flash-sideways Jacob, if you’re out there, I don’t mean you. You’re cool.)

4. Which timeline’s real? You decide!

Last week’s Desmond episode quelled some of my fears about this… but since they first showed up, I’ve been a little scared that the two timelines shown back to back in the show would only be connected…. thematically. If this is true, we’ve been watching three months (and counting) of writer’s remorse. They have lost interest in the convoluted crap they crapped out on craphole island, so they’re cutting it in half, and intercutting it with a one-season short story they wish they’d come up with six year ago. Hopefully those Flash-Sideways will start answering questions about the past and present of our show, instead of just providing contrast and tone for the real story.

3. The Smoke Monster is Carl.

Goddamn, Carl was the worst.

The writers have been very careful not to give Smokey a name. Every time some method of addressing him comes up, the characters go to verbal gymnastics to avoid doing so. This is probably being done partially to keep the theory that he’s the devil alive. But I’m increasingly nervous that it means something else: that in one of the later reveals, Smokey will turn out to be someone we know, blown back through time by some sort of crazy flash-sideways accident.

There are a few ways that this revelation could turn out interesting, and about a billion ways it could just ruin everything. The safe money for this scenario is on Aaron. The crazy money’s on Walt (an extreme way to wrap up all his loose ends without actually showing too much of Malcolm David Kelley), or that lab assistant Faraday mentally vaporized through his time-travel experiments, because who really knows her story anyway. But the possibilities are endless, and terrifying.

2. The European Ending

Desmond bites into an orange, stares into the purple sky. “The war is coming, brotha.” Miles and Hurley shake hands for the last time. “Are you ready?” Libby asks. “We have a long journey ahead of us.” Kate’s horse suddenly appears, looks into camera. Cut to black, ten seconds. End credits.

It is my hope that the Lost team understands this: they are not making the Sopranos. I’m not saying it’s wrong for a show to end this way… in fact, I may be alone in this, but I thought the last scene of the Sopranos was sort of awesome (after I had a day to digest it). In some shows, it’s interesting to leave some threads hanging, to allow the viewer to connect the dots. But “what just happened?” does not work well for a show that has spent six years teasing us with the promise of answers. CG budget be damned, I want to see some resolution, happy or not, for this tale.

1. The angel-wizards did it.

But even worse than an artsy, vague ending is an ending which hand-waves all potential questions away with one overarching, mystical solution which solves nothing. This island is the vacation home of God and the Devil, and THAT’S why everything’s so crazy! Did you notice, lots of weird stuff happened these past six years? Must’ve been that ancient Egyptian magic. Go about your day.

I don’t mean to come off like a faith-hater. It’s just that they’ve done a lovely job, throughout the show, of walking a line between the rational and magical… and also between the notion of the authentic experience, and the Long Con. It’s part of what’s made the mysteries so compelling… the sense that these insane phenomena might be outcroppings of some underlying structure. The early part of the season has been dedicated almost entirely to a religious/mystical explanation of events (which, incidentally, explains very little). Because Lost tends towards reversals, this gives me hope that the other shoe will drop someday soon… that the two realities, and the strange characters inhabiting them, will be wrapped into an explanation that brings it back to the decisions of human beings, not the whims of gods.

While not perfect, they’ve set up the pseudo-science of quantum realities and time-travel as a perfect means to combine the notions of “destiny” and “choice”, and a perfect structure to . But there’s always the off-chance that they’ll just continue to ride religion like a broomstick, sweeping all those unsolved mysteries, from Dharma drops to disappearing cabins to Walt, under the rug.

Allright, that’s enough worrying. Lost is on tonight, and I plan to be on my couch, finding out why Hurley sees dead people. Maybe they’re broadcasting, like Desmond’s visions, from the alternate timeline… ah, more theories. What the hell will I ramble about after May?

(Thumbnail courtest of pinkraygun.com)

PS – As I finished writing this, I noticed there was another blog out there about Finale Fears! Since we’ve been on the other side of plagiarism debacles at Popten, I thought it’d be better to share the love, and link you to Paste’s article (featuring some voices that far outrank my own). Enjoy.

It’s a proud moment for me… ever since I turned ten and got my first NES and a copy of Mario 3, I’ve dreamed about making a console game. I almost can’t believe it’s really going to happen… when I download the game later tonight, and press the start button for the first time, and see the words, “Writing and Additional Design: Jamie Antonisse” I can’t promise I won’t shed a tear.

What’s that? You want to know what the hell I’m talking about? Fair enough… today, February 17th Year of Our Lord 2010, is the release of the downloadable game The Misadventures of PB Winterbottom on XBox 360. It’s a silent-film-themed 2D platformer puzzler about the exploits of a mischievous mustachioed pie thief travelling through time. You know, the usual fare.

It’s been a while coming… I’ve been working on this game ever since I joined a small student team at USC, two and a half years ago. Back then, the game was no more than a series of PowerPoint slides, a twinkle in the eyes of Matt Korba and Paul Bellezza. Matt tells the story of it’s development better than I ever could, and I will refer you to that if you’re interested. For the rest of you, if you own an XBox 360 (sorry Andrew, no PS3 love as of yet), please check the game out… it’s only 800 points ($10), and if you pick up a copy I can promise you’ll be happy you did.

But enough out of me. The best way to explain the game is to show it in action:

The feeling is an unscratchable itch in the meaning-making center of my brain. It’s the feverish, joyous desire to make sense out of chaos. It’s a creative urge to theorize, call the twist, guess the killer, to discover the meaning before it’s handed to you.

Lost tapped into that urge better than any show I’ve ever seen: it’s the great serialized mystery of our time. And with the final season hours away, it struck me: This is it folks. Our very last chance to speculate. To make those wild guesses. To claim, loudly, that “Libby’s not really dead” and “The polar bear is Jacob’s father.” I, for one, am going to take full advantage of this final opportunity.

Here are ten theories I’ve come up with, adding up to one Grand Vague Conjecture about where we’re headed. Most of these ideas border on or occupy the realm of nonsense, and I fully expect 2/3 of them to be shot down THIS VERY NIGHT. But, they’re my best attempt to reconcile the things I’ve seen in a fun, interesting, non-cop-out way. This list is my love letter to you, Lost. This is me at my absolute fan-dorkiest. In the coming months, prove me right, or prove you can do better.

[Oh yeah… SPOILERS THROUGH SEASON 5 AHOY]

10. Libby was a Widmore Girl.

Sadly, I doubt we’ll get much of a real conclusion on this, as apparently there was a Libby episode slated for Season 4 that was cut due to actor/strike issues. But here’s my best conjecture, especially in light of what we’ve seen since. Libby was working for ol’ Chuck Widmore as part of his project to find the island. She sent Desmond on the boat race, and when Hurley got rich by cashing in on the Island’s numbers, she was sent to tail him. During that shadowing, she crashed on the island. Whether she actually managed to send a message back, and play a real role in the freighter’s arrival, or whether she was killed (by Ben’s machinations) before she could, we may never know.

9. Jacob isn’t immortal… he’s just unstuck in time.

I just don’t buy the whole “two angels on a beach” thing in a literal sense. I think/hope it’s a red herring. Sure, Jacob, like Richard Alpert, appears in strange places, all across the face of time. Sure, he seems strangely omniscient. What could explain this? Season 5 can. We saw characters jump from 1950 to 2007, looking exactly the same age. You think they’re the only ones who have experienced that phenomenon? I don’t.

Imagine for a second that Jacob has been jumping through time for quite a while. He’s seen the past, the future… and he’s started to understand a desired pattern. He makes slight moves to affect the course of events. He’s weaving a tapestry out of time.

Having seen the flow of time, backwards and forwards, he would have an incredible perspective on life. No wonder Smokey, in the form of some dark-clothed man, is so desperate to kill him. He wants that knowledge of the future. He wants to know what Jacob knows. But I’m getting ahead of myself… more on that in theory #2.

8. “The Magic Box” is a time machine/teleporter.

Ben Linus, via Wikipedia: “Let me put it so you’ll understand. Picture a box. You know something about boxes, don’t you John? What if I told you that, somewhere on this island, there is a very large box and whatever you imagined, whatever you wanted to be in it when you opened that box, there it would be?”

With what we’ve seen, I think the “Box” is in the center of the (still unseen) temple, and it’s some sort of window, or door, into other times and places. Things from the past, or possibly even alternate pasts, can be pulled through and studied. You know, things like Locke’s Dad.

My guess is that the Egyptian walls and stylings are the equivalent of the beards, a disguise to keep the modernity of the device from being visible to visitors from the far past. I’d guess, at its center, the “temple” is a piece of modern machinery. Only Season 6 will tell, though.

7. Walt was “special” because he distorted electromagnetic fields, disrupting the natural flow of the island.

I had to get my Walt theory in there. No, I don’t think we’ll see the kid again, at least not in a major role. I’m guessing, based on the cameos he had, that it’s a sad case of growing pains. But they have to explain why the hell he got taken, and how he was “special”. Our main clue is the birds, flying through windows. My guess is that this has something to do with their navigation via magnetic fields. Given the strange EM fields through the island, that might mess with whatever is at work below the surface… and it might even disrupt that Magic Box. That would explain why the Others took him, for study (if we take their role as custodians of whatever “it” is seriously) and also explain why they ultimately shipped him back home.

Admittedly, it doesn’t explain why he reads comics about polar bears, or talks backwards sometimes. For that, I’ve got nothing.

6. Hurley is the one who sent the first broadcast of the “numbers”

Before there was Rousseau, there was a voice on the radio, repeating the numbers over and over. Those numbers started a chain of events that drove men crazy, and made one good natured dude an unhappy millionaire.

There’s such a thing as poetic justice. It has to be Hurley himself, broadcasting his greatest fear from the past, that sets it all in motion.

5. As a child, Ben saw himself die.

This is my pet Ben theory. Why are you such a weird dude, Ben? No one seems to believe you’re all that important, and yet you’ve inserted yourself into positions of incredible power. You constantly, CONSTANTLY, get beaten to a pulp, but somehow manage to make it through. How?

Ben, the pathological liar, is constantly claiming that “he has a plan”… partially because it makes him seem special. I think that plan is just another lie. I do, however, believe that Ben has a secret. As a child (perhaps just a little past the age we’ve seen him) I think he watched his future self die.

What would it do to this strange, disillusioned kid, to know the time and manner of his own death? It would turn him into a nihilist… because what’s the point? It would make him deathly afraid of facing the facts straight on… because that one fact is always there, just beyond the edge of his vision. And it would also make him fearless, eerily aware that nothing can truly end him until that impending moment. Check, check, check. Yeouch, Ben… looks like you saw your own death! Sorry bro, that is an unenviable situation.

4. The Hatch is constantly resetting a pocket of time to the moment before the nuke went off, to prevent a temporal paradox.

True enough… if the island was destroyed by a nuke, none of what we saw happened. In the short run, that might appear to be the case. But my guess is that they’re not going to jettison the characters we’ve gone five seasons with in favor of some alternate world. My guess is that via some outside force (see below), we instead get the construction of the Hatch, a containment unit that, somehow, prevents a time-ending paradox by moving that bomb backwards 108 minutes, over and over, to prevent it from ever going off. Push the button to save the world, friend.

A grim note to this theory… if it’s true(ish), then Juliet is behind the concrete, in a constant loop, forever tapping that rock against a nuke. Sad.

3. The constantly-referred-to “war” is a fight over the existence of the island.

Now despite what I just said, I’d be surprised if we didn’t see someone step off flight 815 in episode one. Or at least, they’ll butter us up to think that’s what we’re seeing. Either way, my guess is that the question of what it means to “change the past” will be a big part of the last season.

In Lost, there are constantly references to a larger conflict/game being played. I believe that this contest is over the very existence of the Island… this odd place that is situated outside the normal flow of time. It could even be that there are two groups fighting for their own existence: one world without the island’s influence, and one with it. Some of the rules of this engagement are set by the universe: you can’t kill certain people, because doing so would create a temporal paradox (which the universe will not allow, just as it won’t allow births, the introduction of new essential elements, on an island of questionable existence). Other aspects of the timestream are preserved by people such as Jacob, with his lists of people who can and can’t die. This is why children are important, too… for a young person to have formative experiences on the island is to increase the island’s influence on events, to make it more real…uh…

You know what, I’m going to stop trying to explain this one. It makes sense in my head. War between two groups, one wants to remove the island from time, the other (probably the Others) want to use the island for good. Next.

2. The “Smoke Monster” is an AI running on Ashes.

By now, it seems pretty clear that Monstro is connected to something that assimilates the memories of the dead. So that grey stuff, swirling around inside him? I think it ain’t smoke. I think it’s dead folks.

And while I forgot this before, I noticed it on rewatch… the last thing fake Locke (who I believe is Smokey, in some form) does is throw Jacob into the fire. I doubt that’s an accident… I think it wants more ashes for the pile, pronto.

Specifically, in my overactive imaginings, the Monster is an observing AI (or a Wizard-of-Oz-style human-controlled system OPERATED BY AARON Dun-Dun-DUN!) that’s gone haywire. The system is basically a sentient electromagnetic field, crackling across the jungle, that analyzes samples of dead human tissue (the bits of ash), and can then recreate all their memories (and an image of their form).

When Eko faced the Monster and saw flashes of memory, was he seeing his own memories? Or memories OF him from his brother? Same question for Ben, facing the departed (and absorbed) Alex. I’d venture that this creature can only collect (and replicate) the past of the departed.

What’s the point of this? Why would this exist? Well, it could have been put in place to explore objects from the past with minimal invasiveness (via the Magic Box). At this point, however, some Incident made it malfunction. It’s hungering for knowledge… it wants only to gain more memories, and it will kill to do it (see: Eko). However, there are rules (without rules, we get Cyberdyne). There is a list of people it can’t kill. One of these people is Jacob. It desperately wants him dead because of his extraordinary knowledge, but he is on that pesky do-not-kill list. That’s why Smokey needs a “loophole.” It concocts a plan to have Ben kill him, by assuming the form of the known-to-be-dead Locke. Then, at the end of Season 5, it triumphs, gaining all Jacob’s sweet sweet knowledge from across time.

Or maybe it’s just an angry Egyptian god. Please, writers, don’t roll that way. It’s not that I hate Egyptians. It’s just I don’t think they make that awesome a punchline.

1. The island is a huge research station, a temporal experiment, and Locke is its central creator.

OH! Just when you were starting to wonder if I was crazy… I prove that I am, in fact crazy. Seriously, how could this theory be #1 on my list? Because it’s so fucking fun to explain.

The Island as a time-travel experiment, perhaps situated “outside of linear time” somehow is the easy part… it’s the central hinge point of the rest of my recent ideas, and I’ve been buttering you up for it since #10. It’s important to realize that in this theory, the Island was FIRST created in an alternate future… one in which it, itself, never existed, and Oceanic 815 therefore landed safe and sound. The nature of the experiment is to use the island to peer through time, back to the dawn of civilization, even, to see if the past is, in fact alterable. Or maybe just to observe.

But who would be behind this ridiculous project? A bunch of strangers? Too easy, and we’ve had too many mystery men introduced for that answer to have any punch. So let’s have some fun and say it’s folks we’ve seen before, creating an eerie alternate-world familiarity. Faraday? Yeah, he’s probably involved. Christian Shephard, Charles Widmore? The more the merrier! Jacob? Naturally, he’s getting sent back in time. But who’s in charge of it all? Locke, baby. Locke, who would have excelled at science if Alpert hadn’t tried to push him in that direction as a child. Don’t tell him what he can’t do, he’s going to create a time machine goddamit.

Alternate reality Locke as a “man of science,” the ultimate puppet as the man behind his own curtain… I love it. And who is sweeping the floor at experiment central? An alternate reality Ben Linus. A nobody who’s going to set out to become the ultimate cog in the machine. And Jack? Jack, the rebel son, wants the thing gone… he sees it as a problem, and wants to fix it. He’s the leader of the other side. Because let’s be honest, that damn Jack’s got to be involved somehow.

Allright, it’s getting too complex even for me, I’m going to stop myself there. It’s late. I’ll see you all in the comments, for the initial shredding of these theories and hopefully the addition of some new ones. Let Season 6 begin.

Here’s my list of ten (or thirteen) souls have pulled it off in style.

10. Billy Zane – Zoolander

Billy Zane had it pretty easy… he got a lot of mileage out of other folks saying “listen to your friend Billy Zane, he’s a cool dude.” Still, he comported himself in style.

9. Oprah – 30 Rock

Playing yourself as a hallucination takes a special sort of talent. Luckily, Oprah is all-talented.

8. Elizabeth Shue – Hamlet II

In my heart, I’d like to believe that this is a true story, and that Elizabeth Shue only returned to acting to reenact the true story of how she left acting forever to become a nurse. If that IS the case, this gets an immediate bump to #1.

7. Tom Jones – Mars Attacks

It’s easy to forget about this sublime, laser-filled performance from Mr. Jones, because Mars Attacks is not a movie one thinks about very often (unfortunately). The above clip is ok… but the best part is when an eagle lands on his arm, and he doesn’t even flinch.

6. Adam West – Family Guy

For the past few years, he’s played himself… as a cartoon mayor. Well done, Mr. West… I thought your career had peaked after the pilot of Lookwell, but I was wrong.

6a. Neal Patrick Harris – The Harold and Kumar Cycle

(Thanks Peter, I forgot about this one, but it deserves a place of honor)

5. Garey Busey – Entourage

Garey Busey gets a lifetime achievement award in this category. He is always playing himself, and always doing an amazing job.

4. Larry David – Curb Your Enthusiasm

Larry David has played himself as a total jackass for seven seasons of TV. Though he often veers into uncomfortable amounts of douchery, he just as often makes it work. Highly respectable.

3. Peter Falk – Wings of Desire

This is the only actor-as-himself dramatic role I’ve ever seen work. Yes, it’s a little obscure, and a lot German… but Peter Falk steals the show, simply by being a slightly more ethereal version of Peter Falk. Apologies, Youtube came up a little light on this movie… all I have is the “companero” scene dubbed in Italian.

2. John Malkovich – Being John Malkovich

Come on, you knew this one was coming.

1. Bill Murray – Zombieland

In my mind, though, despite the joy of Being John Malkovich, it’s Zombieland that nailed the perfect as-themselves cameo. This scene takes everything you could possibly want from Bill, concentrates it into four minutes of bliss, and ends it with some mothafuckin Gravitas:

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN AS-THEMSELVES CAMEOS:

Extras

Ricky Gervais’s Extras is the gold standard for the as-themselves cameo… it’s the entire bread and butter of the show. It wasn’t fair to include it with the rest… but here are some sweet sweet highlights:

Kate Winslet:

Ian McKellen:

Patrick Stewart:

(At least 100,000 of the 600,000 views on that last one are probably mine)

And there you have it… as-themselves at their finest. Did I miss any gems? If so, drop ‘em in the comments.

Come with me, friends, to another time. Let’s say 1998ish. Ross and Rachel rule the airwaves, ER is hailed as the Best Drama Evar. As the sun sets on Seinfeld, critics mourn its passing, proclaiming that we’re not likely to see a show of its brilliance ever again.

I watched an episode of Seinfeld yesterday. It’s still funny, despite the canned laughter. But it’s also… quaint. When I think about the strides that TV has made in this intervening decade, my head hurts. If I were to go back and tell my 1998-self that some of the most hilarious, insightful, and involving stories I’ve ever seen would be serialized and pumped into my living room, I’d never believe me.

And yet it’s true. This decade has been a (if not THE) Golden Age for television. When our viewing options exploded into a thousand cable channels, the limitations on what television SHOULD do fell away, and we got some of the best dramas, comedies, dramediodocs and everythingelses of all time.

First off, apologies: here’s a collection of runner-ups for the list.

30 Rock
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Chappelle’s Show
Family Guy
Six Feet Under
House
Glee
Modern Family
The Office
Entourage
The CSI Megacomplex
Firefly
Deadwood

Look at all that quality… that list includes some of the funniest/saddest/craziest/most insanely profitable shows I’ve ever seen. Ten years ago, any of them could have been #1. So what rose to the top (in one TV addict’s unsolicited opinion)? Scroll on.

10. South Park

I’ll admit it… when South Park first started up, in the pre-Butters days, I wasn’t a fan. The art style got in the way of my enjoyment… I couldn’t see why it was so funny to see a cluster of raggy circles and triangles say “ass” twenty times in a half-hour. But over the course of the years, Parker, Stone and team have consistently stepped up their game.

Now even a former hater has to admit… they are satirical masters. From an episode about World of Warcraft created using footage from the actual game, to an insane apocalyptic global-warming parable starring a cast of head lice, they are fearless in their creativity. Added bonus for creating most of their episodes in UNDER ONE WEEK, sometimes incorporating headlines from less than 24 hours before airing.

9. Mad Men

It came out of nowhere. From the setting (late 1950′s New York, in the heart of the budding advertising culture) to the characters (pasty cookie-cutter businessmen and wives who slowly unravel into fascinating, unique individuals) to the network (AMC? Don’t you have a John Wayne marathon to run?), this show was completely original, completely unexpected.

Nonetheless, it’s the most compelling period-piece of the decade… not only because the art direction is amazing (it is) but because it refuses to dumb down the past. Lesser shows will use the social trends of their day as straw men for lame morality plays. Not Mad Men. These dudes smoke incessantly around kids. They ash their Camels on babies… they’re unapologetic, aftershave-scented chimneys. They don’t give a fuck! Because in the 1950′s, no one knew better. And yet seeing those behaviors go unmentioned really nails home both the differences and the parallels between their world (a society on the brink of an immense and undefinable sea change) and ours (ditto).

8. Dexter

A show about a lovable, crime-scene-analyst serial killer… it sounds like a parody of a failed FX pilot. And yet this pitch-black suburban remix of the Batman myth slides into the number eight spot… why?

First, because Michael C. Hall is brilliant in it. He brings light and depth to a character that, on paper, should be utterly hateable. Second, because it consistently balances its drama and comedy better than any other show of its time. Third, because it reaches beyond its concept: if it’s a show about a man who’s afraid to reveal the serial killer inside him, it’s just as much a field guide to the social masks and facades that we wear as we enter adulthood, and the way we deal with them. And last, because it may be the structurally tightest show I’ve ever seen… each of the four seasons is a brilliantly paced self-contained arc. At the end of each, as they wrapped the last loose thread, I wondered “what can they do now?” Then the next season came, and blew me away again.

7. Arrested Development

#7, and we’re already into shows that, in a sane world, would top the list. Arrested Development is the great comedy of our time. There it is, on the table. Why? Let me count the reasons. Will Arnett’s as Job, who has seared Final Countdown into my memory for life, Michael Cera, who before his overexposure was the most painfully perfect thirteen year old imaginable, Jason Bateman as the most entertaining straight man I’ve ever seen, and of course David Cross as the most entertaining “straight man” I’ve ever seen. I could go on to list the entire cast… the ensemble works flawlessly together.

But it’s Mitchell Hurwitz’s stories, with their endless creativity, devices and self-references, that make the whole thing work. The show is so amazingly complex and subtle that half of each episode is told through voiceover exposition… and yet, on each rewatch, I still catch something new each time.

6. Battlestar Galactica

The opening miniseries starts out with evil robots plotting to destroy human civilization. What separates Battlestar from every other sci-fi epic out there? Within the first three episodes, these robots succeed. Damn, I wish I’d thought of that setup.

Among the Battlestar fans there are many, many people who swore they would never watch a sci-fi (or SciFi) series. This show changed our perception of the genre: it’s more about difficult human dillemas than abstract concepts, and more about faith than science. The main spokesman for “rationality” is a narcissistic Jesus-clone who talks to nonexistent supermodels. For that alone, BSG deserves a Nobel prize.

The remains of mankind are constantly faced with Sophie-esque choices… “who should get the last of our oxygen,” etc. Luckily there are fantastically written characters, jaw-droppingly awesome space battles, plenty of spot-the-Cylon mysteries, and Edward James Olmos’ cratery mug to make that heavy moral load not only bearable, but fascinating.

5. The West Wing

Ah, West Wing. You are the Kindest of all shows. You are a warm glass of political milk. It’s an increasingly rare thing to find an hour of TV that is both idealistic and whip-smart, but for its seven seasons the West Wing more than managed the task.

In season one, Martin Sheen/Jeb Bartlett talks incessantly about what he wants to do with his presidency, and he keeps coming back to the idea of “the great debate”. An open and honest exchange of ideas to discover the best possible path for his country. This mission statement may as well have come straight from Aaron Sorkin’s own mouth. The characters in the West Wing are fantastically written and acted, but as they wander the halls, talking at light speed about NEA funding and women’s rights in the Middle East, it becomes clear that the real stars of the West Wing are the issues. The West Wing was comfortable being hilarious, tragic, and everything in between, but it also takes on the responsibility of making us smarter. We need more shows like this.

4. Lost

Lost is my favorite show. Whether it DESERVES to be my favorite show is something that remains to be seen in 2010, when the last season finally hits the airwaves. But for the sake of this list, let’s not debate whether it all adds up or not, or hypothesize about the shape of things to come. Let’s take it as it is, and look at why it warrants a place on this list.

In its first season, Lost was a show about a group of plane-crash survivors. These tattered Gap models used to be the main characters, and the show used the device of the flashback to unravel them piece by piece, and juxtapose who they had become, in thus new, unknowable context, against who they used to be. Make no mistake, this show was utterly amazing. Every new hour added a new human dimension to the proceedings, coupled with some utter smoke-monster mindfuck to make your pupils dilate.

By the time the third season rolled around, however, a clear shift had taken place: this was a show about an island. There were no other central characters, only character-shaped pieces being shuffled around an ornate backgammon board. This, I believe, is the true reason the show lost much of its following: their labyrinthine story began to drive the human element, instead of vice versa.

So we can agree: the show’s not perfect. A good episode’s amazing, a bad episode is… really bad. But even a detractor has to admit, Lost is unparalleled in its ambitions. The plot is the most complex I’ve ever witnessed, weaving endless substories and mysteries across five seasons. Their mastery of the hour-long form is pitch-perfect: though they constantly play with their structure, each episode has a carefully controlled narrative arc. But perhaps most important is the pioneering work they did to poke holes in the barrier between audience and show. An episode of Lost doesn’t end at the confines of its hour-long block: there are a web of literary allusions, clues and meta-fictions sprinkled through each episode, to deepen, clarify, or in some cases, further cloud, the big picture. Lindelof, Cuse and Co. are doing more than just hashing out a series… they’re creating a strange parallel world, and inviting us to buy real estate.

3. The Sopranos

And at last, we get to HBO. The network that led an amazing arms race of quality, reclaiming the phrase “TV Drama” and beginning a snowball effect that took us beyond hour-long conundrums and happy endings, and into the deep end. The Sopranos was their first smash hit, psychoanalyzing the American fascination with mob movies via the fascinating character of Tony Soprano.

As a character study, as a moving oil painting of New Jersey, as a three-ring circus of gruesome Italian-American death rattles, the Sopranos reigns supreme. If you want a grand summary of it all, however, look elsewhere- look ANYwhere. Ten seconds of black screen and silence, ten seconds of nothing on this show has generated a host of essays and commentary smarter than anything I’ll ever write, and totalling more words than I’ll type out in my lifetime. Me, I remember the simple things. The way Adrianna pronounced “Christofuh”. The way Tony was always eating proscuitto straight out of a bag. The way AJ’s eyebrows got more archy and annoying each season (whoops, spoiler). Yep, Sopranos is more than worthy of #3.

2. The Wire

Each of you out there probably either has, or IS, a friend who rants and raves about it. If somehow you’ve missed the gospel, let me tell you now: you cannot top, you cannot stop, The Wire. As Victor said in his Top Ten Storytellers post, this is the great American novel televised. Unforgettable characters, from the secretly British McNulty right down to the openly awesome Omar Little. Dialogue that is culture-conscious and real yet constantly surprises with its cleverness and strange moments of poetry. A constantly evolving story that does these people justice, even if its sometimes painful to watch. These things would have been enough. But David Simon and Co. went beyond a ridiculously good drama… they gave us a show with a mission.

The Wire is all about exposing systems, bringing all the hypocrisies and bureaucracies that make our world grind to a halt run into the cold light of day. Starting with the interdependent drug enforcement and dealer culture as a baseline, they go on to take a hard look at unions, smuggling, politics, the education system and the media that regurgitates and sensationalizes it all. They draw the arrows between them, and they point out the places where self-interest breaks it all down. Of course, spelled out this way, it sounds like a drag… but in my experience, burning through episode after episode in fascination, this correspondence course in the school of Hard Times never felt tedious. It’s one of the few shows that manages to be both brutally honest and entertaining.

Speaking of honest and entertaining…

1. The Daily Show with John Stewart

Yep. Despite the leaps and bounds made in the realm of TV drama, the Daily Show is my #1. Because it takes a true genius to take reality with all its pockmarks and grease-stains, and make it hilariously bearable four days a week. We all know that traditional news media is in a state of utter disrepair… most of us don’t fully trust it any more, and so many of us are tempted to simply ignore the ticker-tape of current events. John Stewart and company spares us that impulse. He coats our medicine in sugar for us… but not before showing us exactly what’s in it.

I know, I know. The Daily Show should not be a primary news source. I know it’s slanted so far left it may as well be lying down. But despite this fact, I think it has served an invaluable function in this decade. John Stewart took a Craig Kilborn show that was basically a vehicle for Comedy Central to dry hump A- and B-list celebrities for 1/2 hour, and transformed it into an amazing, complex constant commentary on world events. The show is scathing and unyielding in its criticisms of the media. But unlike so many parodies, it also provides an alternative to throwing up our hands: John Stewart takes care to bring in genuinely smart people for interviews, from pundits to policy-makers to authors, and while he doesn’t ALWAYS listen, he tries to leave us with a takeaway every time. There’s a little bit of Oprah in him.

I guess what I’m saying is… the Daily Show is going to be remembered as a huge cultural force in the ’00′s. For the vast bulk of this decade, we were stuck with a shrug of a president, and an out-of-touch political machine leading the US towards disaster. John Stewart is one of the few people who FACED that, head on. He used his comedy and insight on The Daily Show as a weapon, and while it’s impossible to really know, I’d like to think it made a real difference.

***

So there you have it. I know, I got a little adjective-rich there, but read over and consider. With all the crap that we’ve been through this decade, our TV’s actually treated us pretty damn well. Now maybe in 2010 we can turn it off for a minute and go outside.

Or maybe I’ll just finish up this Two and a Half Men marathon instead. I hear the MaSheen really brings his A game this episode!

0. Two and a Half Men

Meeennnnnnnnn~

Have a nice decade, folks.

I know we at Popten have a rep for hating on science. But this little theory, perched firmly on the the border between sci and sci-fi, is too awesome to pass up.

If you are a meganerd like me, and the term Large Hadron Collider means something to you, head straight to this article on Fate and the Higgs Boson Particle from the Escapist, or its sister in the New York Times.

For the rest of you, I’ll summarize.

Scientists around the globe been trying, for the past fifteen years, to create a machine that makes a long-sought particle called the Higgs Boson. For crazy reasons, no one has yet been able to flip the “go” switch. Now, a pair of “otherwise distinguished physicists” (<- straight from the NYT article!) are gaining traction on a strange little hypothesis: they believe the universe is literally avoiding possible situations which could create a Higgs-Boson particle. They believe “random” elements of chance disaster will conspire to keep the LHC from ever completing a run. To quote Dr. Holger Neilsen:

“One could even almost say that we have a model for God… that He rather hates Higgs particles, and attempts to avoid them.”

Is this just sour grapes? Are physicists just Monday-morning-quarterbacking this LHC situation? I’m fully skeptical as well. It’s not so much that its illogical… its just that, at this juncture, its damn hard to verify. But I think this is a perfect example of how, in the late 20th and the early 21st, science has ventured into realms that we rational products of public education wouldn’t think of as very scientific. And for me, that’s why the theory is so exciting… if true, it would be the first large-scale demonstration of the time-bending, reality-splitting activity that quantum physicists believe is a very real part of our universe.

Of course, the best way to DISPROVE this theory would be to get the damn thing working. If there’s another freak incident this December, when the machine is turned on again, then I imagine we’ll be hearing a little more from Dr. Neilsen.

PS – Either its Quantum Day, or Wroblewski and I tapped a similar wavelength… DJ Hero, one post down, is an eerily perfect demonstration of this theory!

Maybe we’re trying to show India who’s boss. Maybe we’re just angry.

Either way,
tonight at, 10/9/09 at 4:30 AM pacific, we are going to bomb the moon to see if there’s water in the fallout. Why weren’t we told earlier? Why isn’t this a national holiday?

The whole event bears a striking resemblance to a Mr. Show sketch, right down to the spectator sport aspect. The debris cloud should be visible to anyone looking out their window with a 10-inch telescope. However, since I long since sold my telescope for meth, I’ll be watching NASA’s live feed instead. Here’s the link for that.

My theory is that we are experiencing a test of the emergency social network system. They broke the news today just to see whether we could mobilize the world to watch in 18 hours. Let’s pass this test, America. Let’s all tune in to the opening salvo of our First Lunar War.

Full credit goes to Nick Robison for telling me about this amazing event (and/or making it up).

Allow me to Infomercial you for a second.

Isn’t Gaming a Hassle? Turning on your television, picking up your controller, turning on your console, waiting for a game to load, turning it off when you’re done.

It’s a short-attention span world. We all want distractions, and the easier the better. That’s why there are web games. Little windows, running on Flash, Unity or Javascript. Just another one your tabs, like that Wikipedia page of electromagnetism, Facebook, and those seven YouTube videos of Alizee (look her up, I’ll wait).

I’ll level with you. For a long time, most web/browser games sucked. At worst, they were inbred Marios, bootleg clones of better PC or console experiences. At best, they were banal versions of Solitaire and Minesweeper. The VERY BEST you could hope for was Quest for the Crown (still a high water mark for the soundtrack alone).

But in the last three or four years, something’s happened. Designers have started to figure out how to use these lightweight, quickly-developed experiences for good instead of evil. We’re starting to see interesting short form games, games that provide experiences you wouldn’t WANT on the big screen. The right kind of experiments, and in these test tubes, some wild successes.

These days, I probably spend more time playing browser games than console games. Here are a few of the best I’ve seen – a sampler platter of online awesome. Download a free Flash Player and try them out – it’s a mix, so you probably won’t love them all. But one of these games may just make your day better in five minutes of unassuming play. And one of these games may send you into a K-Hole, an abyss of slack-jawed clicking that will consume a work week or more. I’ll let you figure out which is which.

10. Boomshine

A nice, casual primer… utterly simple, but compelling. Sorry about the ad, dude’s gotta make a buck.

9. Samorost 2

An insane Czech adventure game in a beautiful art style. Samorost 1 is good too… just not as pretty.

8. Exploit

An Atari/Ascii-lookin’ abstract hacker puzzler. Haven’t seen anything like it, before or since.

7. Rose and Camellia

Words ALMOST fail me, but I’ll try. A frenetic Japanese mouse-based action game featuring Victorian women in an operatic slap-fest. It’s basically Punchout: the Period Piece. Isn’t the internet great?

6. Indestructotank AE

But sometimes, in this world, you need more catharsis than even a slapfight can provide. Sometimes, you need to drive an indestructible, gunless tank through an infinite combo juggle of exploding helicopters.

5. Don’t Look Back

This game couldn’t be more different than #6. Powerlessness instead of power, eerie silence instead of kabooms. This is a very hard, very dark retro platformer about… well, about a very old story. Not for the faint-hearted, but a good example of where art games are going (with or without the rest of the world).

4. Bow Street Runner

Yes, that’s a screenshot. A goofy, amazing live action detective adventure in five episodes. Apparently it was a promotion for a BBC show. God I love it, despite its occasional click-everywhere gameplay.

3. Flow

This game is one of the reasons I went to USC (it was a Master’s thesis in the Interactive Media department). A simple, elegant, serene and slightly mysterious riff on jellyfish, pac-man, and self-adjusting difficulty. It just feels good to swim that little guy around. Even after three years, I still find myself occasionally coming back to Flow, just to play for a minute or two.

2. Off-Road Velociraptor Safari

Yes, this is the only non-Flash game on the list. You’ll need to get a free Unity plug-in to play it. It’s worth it, because this little 3D stunt-driving gem is the most insane web game I’ve ever played. Everything in this game, from story to physics, is tuned for maximum ridiculousness. You will feel so wrong, and so utterly right, when you ram that bird-lizard into a teleporter after doing a barrel roll off a 200 foot cliff while listening to Mariah Carey’s “Daydream” album. (That last part is your choice, though, friendo. Why are you listening to that old R&B crap?)

1. Desktop Tower Defense

If you have never played this game before, I’m sorry. To a certain type of personality, a builder/tweaker, Desktop Tower Defense is digital crack. I’ve played this game more than any other online game, just TRYING to beat that 55th level boss (thankfully missing in the latest version). This is my online strategy game of choice, a near-perfect blend of watching and acting, of order and chaos. This is war, you vs. the ever-advancing hordes of little anthropomorphic cartoon shapes. This is the fortunate truth: a little screen on a firefox tab can draw you in as easily, and as completely, as a 15 million dollar AAA game.

So there you have it, ten console games I’m proud to have played. As it turns out, there are at least ten more high-quality games I had to leave off to make this work, so if there’s demand, I’ll be back in a week or two with a redux. Til then, enjoy, and don’t forget to tab back to PopTen once in a while.

Full story here.

Thanks to Belinda, our international correspondent, for the scoop.

Big. Fucking. Deal.

I was on Facebook, updating my status. I heard about it via Twitter, and quickly started looking for #gmailfail. At first I couldn’t believe it, but a quick google search confirmed my suspicions. Gmail was down. And according to the page, it wouldn’t be back. For at least thirty seconds.

Where were you when it happened? America wants to hear your stories.

I’ve heard it said that going to film school is a surefire way to kill your love of films. To some degree it’s true: when you sit down and analyze the oft-repeated patterns that constitute movies, its hard to see Shakes the Clown as the masterpiece you once knew it to be. But there is a different joy that comes from deep analysis: the joy of understanding those patterns, and the crazy references and connections that stitch every piece of fiction together.

For all you that wish to go beyond armchair analysis, and stare deep into the self-referential abyss… good news! There’s a wiki for that!

TV Tropes is a comprehensive cross-referenced, self-referential index of patterns in fiction.

From television to literature to comics to film, TV Tropes is a mapcap attempt to codify all the tools, maxims, archetypes and morals that emerge from our media. After catching wind of the site from XKCD, I spent an afternoon digging through the labyrinth. Be prepared… this is the realm of the media geeks. This site is unapologetic about speaking its own language, and there are no shortages of manga and Buffy references in their lexicon. But once you embrace the footnotes to old episodes of “Angel”, you’ll find some hilarious an/or illuminating patterns that apply to Moby Dick and Herman’s Head alike.

Listed below are a few of the most interesting examples I found:

1. Lampshade Hanging
A well-worn but awesome trope… and a comedy standard.
2. Rule Of Cool
Required reading for anyone working in SciFi (or SyFy).
3. Genre Blindness
See: Every girl, ever, in a horror movie.
4. Science Is Bad
A heroic rant about the second most pervasive theme in modern media.
5. Fridge Logic
A nice writer’s shorthand for a common issue.
6. Hanlon’s Razor
I love this one. Originally a programmer’s maxim, it’s the cause of countless movie misunderstandings.
7. Mr. Exposition
As good a place as any to start when going through their insane (but awesome) index of character archetypes. See also: Meta Guy.
8. Air Vent Escape
‘Nuff Said.
9. Heroic BSOD
Man, this happens ALL THE TIME in cartoons! I wish it happened more in real life.
10. Broken Aesop
G.I. JOE!!!!!

And just for good measure:
11. Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu
12. Viewers Are Morons

If you find other gems, post ‘em in the comments!

Fig. 1: The Baja Fresh burrito, apparently my spirit animal.

When Belinda alerted me about this random free burrito promotion on Facebook, I realized… I KNEW IT WAS GOING TO HAPPEN.

Yes, last night I had a dream. I haven’t eaten at the Baj* in years, not since being converted to the SoCal combo of Chipotle and Actual Mexican Food. But in my dream, I was eating a chicken and rice burrito, and it was all too familiar.

My dream-logic thought process:

BRAIN: I think this burrito is from Baja Fresh. How did I get here?

BRAIN: Man, this burrito isn’t that bad. I can really taste the guacamole. It tastes like Green.

BRAIN: Damn, this burrito is taking forever to eat.

It was at that point that I realized the burrito was regenerating at the back while I ate the front. I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book of burrito tricks. Yet, like Sisyphus, I persevered, chowing down on this ever-expanding tortilla. And, like my fan-fic version of Sisyphus, I ultimately triumphed. I was just finishing the last bite of the beast, just savoring that last taste of Green… and then, as I do on so many mornings, I woke up. Sweating, jaw aching, no memory of my conquest.

This trivial, forgotten dream came rushing back to me when I saw that Baja Fresh coupon. I thought maybe it was destiny. Then I read the fine print.

“Not valid in… USC… LAX… and New York”

What does it mean? I may never know. But it’s time for lunch, and I’m making myself a sandwich.

*Super-popular nickname for Baja Fresh.

Everyone knows how Star Wars treated its Stars… it’s become textbook, the vicious cycle of epic movies. The lead character (Skywalker) sacrifices their career for the cause. One supporting character (Leia) goes on to do other small parts, but never again rises to fame. And one supporting character (Han) breaks out into super-stardom, and gets his/her own fedora.

Daniel Radcliffe is Luke Skywalker for sure, that’s a gimme. He’s destined to do a cartoon voiceover or two after Harry Potter, but not much more. Truthfully, at this point I’m not even sure if he’s a bad actor or not… my expectations for his performance were so lowered by the third movie that I now congratulate him whenever his voice changes pitch. But no doubt, when people see him on the screen, they’ll think “Potter”. Don’t cry for him though, it’s allright, he’s going to make a trajillion dollars on Movie Seven and live on a pile of gold for the rest of his life, occasionally climbing down to do some experimental theater.

Hermione was amazing as a child actress, maybe the only good thing about the first two movies, but the teens weren’t kind to her. Don’t get me wrong, she’s stunning. But in movies three and four, she fell victim to the worst adolescent habit, the Eyebrow school of acting. Whenever she had a potentially good scene, she’d send it north to her eyebrows, and they’d do an interpretive dance while the rest of her face went on a coffee break. She’s gotten better now, and I think she’ll go on to do other good things. Sort of like Carrie Fisher did. Or Billie Dee Williams. Hmm, let’s hope she does better.

But really, we all know that Ron is the show stealer. If there is a Han in this bunch, it’s him. The dude makes it work. He carries you through the dull February months of the Hogwarts semester. I don’t know what it is, but the dude is truly watchable. He doesn’t have the Ford swagger (who does?), but here’s the litmus test: would he have improved Transformers 2 if he had been the lead? Even without having seen it, I can give an unequivocal “yes”.

Of course none of these kids hold a candle to Alan Rickman. But what can you do.

That’s about all you need to know about Harry Potter Six. Go see it, if you’re a reader. Hogwarts looks pretty.

Here are the top ten words that come to mind when I think of the icon we lost today.

* Yes, it’s a typo… and yes, I’m keeping it.

10.Graceful

9. Idealistic

8. Ambivalent(In its original definition: holding two contradictory and opposing positions.)

7. Ambitious

6. Intense

5. Insane

4. Narcissistic

3. Enigmatic

2. Tragic

1. Genius.

At E3 2009, Microsoft unleashed a demon.

A week has gone by, and for people like me (gamers) the words Project Natal already mean something. If they don’t mean something to you (or if you missed Vic’s earlier post), let me try to sum it up: it’s a game platform where you don’t need a controller. You just sit (or stand) in front of the screen, and move, and things happen.

More on Natal, and plenty o’ other stuff, after the jump.

A video’s worth a thousand words, so here’s Microsoft’s pitch:

Now here’s what I think is interesting. There were two distinct responses to Project Natal. One was the nerdgasm: OMGOMGZOMGOMFGQOMG!!111!1. And let’s be honest, if this does a quarter of what Microsoft says it does, all those 1′s are warranted. We are staring down the barrel of some severely 21st century shit… even if we have seen this kind of motion capture before, we’ve never seen it outside a carefully controlled, very expensive box. Natal is going into thousands of homes. That’s something to get worked up about, right?

But some folks, such as Tycho from Penny Arcade, had a very different reaction to Natal. He’s pretty eloquent when he wants to be (which he usually does) so I’ll just quote him directly below:

“In general, the freaky-deaky augmented video mechanisms presented by Microsoft and Sony are inert for us – that is to say, we have no reaction to them whatsoever. Absent anything beyond minigames and puppet shows, I don’t know how to contextualize this technology. I can’t be certain that it has ramifications of any kind for the games I like to play, the ones my friends like to play, or for the games that built this industry.”

That’s a hell of a lot of syllables that, at first glance, seemed to add up to three letters: “meh”. But the more I thought about it, the more I started to agree with his reaction. I’m impressed by Natal. But at this point, I’m with him. I’d rather see another great game experience than another “new way to play”.

The big companies are following the Wii in an attempt to find the next great controller… and it’s all happening because the big companies want to “open up the market” of games. They want the young girls, the senior citizens, the obese, the Zoroastrians… any demographic that, for some reason or other, has been turned off by digital interactivity. So they’re making simulations: bowling, tennis, golf, power walking, that look like real activities, and that control like real activities.

That’s interesting to me, but as Tycho said: these virtual approximations aren’t what drew me in to this industry… and I think we’ll find, they’re not thing that will keep people interested once the novelty wears off. If you REALLY want to go bowling, you’re going to pick up a bowling ball, not a shiny white remote*.

Eventually, the industry is going to be left, once again, with the gamers. The folks who nearly pissed their pants with excitement watching the trailer for The Wizard back in 1989, and their ever-expanding progeny. It didn’t take much to get us hooked. Two buttons are enough… hell, one button has been sufficient in some cases. Since I first started playing games, I’ve just wanted to jump into another world. I wanted to find something completely beyond the realm of the real. The less I had to think about my arms, legs and face while I was doing it, the better. Just as long as I could immerse myself in the puzzle of the next moment: how to get Mario through World 8-1, or open the book of Atrus, or beat up some street punks as an insanely buff elected official named Hagar.

What I ask for is, in some ways, a trickier proposition for the Microsofts of the world. I want new stories, new places. I want new things to do, not new ways to simulate my commute. Furthermore, I think I’m not alone among gamers in wanting more experiences with depth, where what we do feels important and interesting (and hopefully, more strategically deep than swinging our arms and hoping for a hit).

The thing from E3 that got me most excited isn’t likely to revolutionize the realm of controls. It’s just a new game from a very talented team, who are making their fantasy duet of “Ico” and “Shadow of the Colossus” into a trilogy.

*****

*If they’re physically able, of course. But games for disabled folks is a whole ‘nother tangent.

But I have come back bearing gifts, in the form of the spectacular time-waster, an online gladiatorial combat simulator called MyBrute.

What’s so great about MyBrute? For me, an Interactive Media grad student who’s been studying game mechanics for the past three years, its precisely the fact that its NOT a game. You type in a name, you give your character a cool haircut, then you get them into a fight and watch 30 seconds of melodrama unfold.

And you know what? It’s awesome. For a few minutes, you love that little Brute. You yell at them when they throw their weapons away and go bare-knuckle against an armored amazon. You cheer when they dodge a hammer blow and return fire with their ninja stars. You watch them grow and gain new abilities, and even though you’re not doing a damn thing except pitting them against fighters with especially douche-chilling names (e.g.: Art of Erection, Buttlinda), you feel invested.

Sometimes, less is more. Because its both random and visceral, MyBrute serves many functions: its a pet, a social site, even a horoscope: when you start a day by watching a surprise come-from-behind victory, you know things will go ok. As an added bonus, we in the IMD have found that mano-a-mano Brute fights are WAY superior to rock-paper-scissors in deciding personal arguments.

It’s a roll of the dice… but hey, its entertainment. I’ll see you in the ring: http://jamie-antonisse.mybrute.com.

But I can contain myself no longer. Choose your destiny:

My good buddy Adam costars as the dry-humping antagonist… but that’s purely incidental. What I dig is the first attempt to make an interactive movie using only YouTube and embedded links.

As we all know, interactive movies were not the amazing theatrical slam dunk Christopher Lloyd thought they would be. They relied on handheld voting devices in a darkened theater: they were expensive and clunky. This model, however, makes them easy to produce and almost trivial to play.

Could YouTube be a place for this form to grow? Is this a potential comedy goldmine, or will the novelty wear thin? What do you think?

I don’t usually post music (there are other, wiser PopTenners manning that department) but this falls into my area of expertise. Give it ’til the one minute mark to see why.

I can’t think of another video that manages to be both infectiously happy and apocalyptic. I dare you not to walk with a bounce in your step as you imagine those flashing bulbs making craters.

As an added bonus, looking up this song I discovered that Royksopp are fellow listmakers. Here’s one from their side of the looking glass: the top five most villanous movie names.

(Thanks to Asher, game engineering wunderkind and keeper of a damn trippy homepage, for the find.)

Sometimes, YouTube is too longwinded.

Sometimes, you just need a video to slam you into the wall and drive away before you can see the license plate.

Behold and rejoice in the occasional genius of five second films. You may love it, you may hate it… but you will definitely not be bored.

Nine more gems after the jump.

An early fave –

No way –

Best Ending Shot –

Runner-Up: Best Ending Shot

Five more seconds of your life –

Blowjay.

Origins: I found out about five second films when a friend sent me this link during an IM conversation. I think it was his way of telling me the conversation was over. Easily the best e-card I’ve ever received.

No one else seems to think this one’s funny.

And for the old school fartmatchers…

(Amazing)

(Thanks Mike)