Yeah, it's pretty hot down here, but it's a dry heat

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell - The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Very High
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Moderate
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Very High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very High
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Moderate

Take the Dante Inferno Hell Test

It also features a singer who sounds vaguely stoned and the faint sounds of women squealing, though I suppose that's not what you're looking for

I can't shake the feeling that I'm well behind the times on this, but Pandora: Radio from the Music Genome Project is the coolest website ever.

If you haven't used it, you essentially enter an artist or song, and it spits out an entire library of music that sounds like it. For instance, it asked for my favorite song -- I entered "The Unforgiven" (of course) and was immediately greeted with Skid Row's "18 to Life," a song I'd never really heard before. And it sounded exactly like "The Unforgiven."

I started another "station," this one based on Dave Matthews (of course). Unfortunately, the most "representative" Dave track they could find was a live version of "Fool to Think," which is not of their best. But then it followed it up with an O.A.R. (who?) song that rocked. I notice a "Why is this song playing?" I click and am told, Based on what you've told us so far, we're playing this track because it features mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation, major key tonality, acoustic rhythm guitars and many other similarities identified in the music genome project. Um, whoa.

And it sounded scarily like Dave -- hell, it was even live! And before I could even finish thinking, "John Mayer's coming up any minute now," the next song started, and it was John Meyer. Live John Mayer, even. 'Cause hey, he sounds like Dave.

(Steve and I once had a conversation about Mr. Meyer, of whom I'm not a big fan. Steve is [or was, at this time we had this conversation]. I said to him, "If I want to listen to a drunken Dave Matthews impersonator, I'll listen to you." Steve conceded my point.)

Next will come the Fiona Apple station. Then the Radiohead station. I could spend hours doing this.

In fact, I think I will.

(One quick one, though: on the Dave station, it spits out "Halloween," one of the very finest DMB tracks -- a nightmarish masterpiece. Why is it playing? ...because it features extensive vamping. Hahahaha.)

Weekly iPod Shuffle: 6/3/07

For reasons you don't care about, I'm moving the shuffle to Sunday night. So there.

1. "Cling," Days of the New
One of my favorite bands that has pretty much fallen off the face of the earth. Or so I thought -- Days of the New played at Scout Bar last month. A new album is allegedly coming soon. This particular track is the difficult-to-listen-to closer from the "yellow album," which was their first. Each album is self-titled, see, and identified only by its color scheme. The first is yellow, then green, and then red. The new one is said to be purple. Yeah, it's pretentious as shit. Don't get me started on the chanting choir.

2. "Braille," Regina Spektor
Described to me as "Fiona Apple, but weird (?!)," Regina Spektor fits the description. She sounds more like Joni Mitchell on meth to me, but to each his own simile. "Braille" is a standout song from her first album, 11:11, which is essentially just her in a room with a piano. With her elastic voice and twisty lyrics, she doesn't really need much else.

3. "Now Mary," The White Stripes
I've often said listening to the Stripes is listening to two people go to war with their instruments; the chaotic mess that ensues is beautiful, beautiful music. This song, though, features very little of that struggle. Instead, it's just a sweet, short (1:47) pop song that sounds like a long-lost Beatles B-side. Though the cymbals are too loud. Of course.

4. "Rodeo Clowns," Jack Johnson
The archetypal Jack Johnson track -- laid-back percussion, Johnson's chugging guitar and hushed voice spitting out groovy lyrics as your tension and pain melt in a matter of minutes. I'm still not sure what, exactly, he's talking about here, but it's one of my favorite Jack Johnson songs.

5. "Even Better Than the Real Thing," U2
What more can said about U2 that hasn't already been said? Nothing. No, really, nothing at all. Bono already said it all.

6. "Fix You," Coldplay
I like Coldplay. I've admitted that before, but it feels important to say it once in a while, out loud, to other people. The only way you can recover is to first admit you have a problem. And I do have a problem. I mean, these are perhaps the worst lyrics I've ever heard. And yet, I know them all, sing along to them all, and proudly rate this song ***** in my iTunes library. I...I need help.

7. "Crutch," matchbox twenty
Erg -- uh, hey, heh heh, what's that doing here? I, uh, that's...uh, that's not mine. It was like that when I found it. I only read it for the articles! *flees*

8. "The Colony of Slippermen (The Arrival/A Visit to the Doktor/The Raven)," Genesis
Peter Gabriel has spent his entire career walking the thin line between "gloriously eccentric" and "completely batshit insane." His final album with Genesis, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, skips gleefully into the latter category with this track, in which the rock opera's hero is dressed in white, castrated, and led to a cave, where a giant raven swoops in and steals the hero's removed penis. No, I'm dead fucking serious. And yet, the most pressing question I've always had about the song is, "Why do they spell Doktor with a 'k'?" I'm weird.

9. "Sledgehammer (live)," Peter Gabriel
Speaking of Peter Gabriel's penis. It amazes me that I listened to this song so many times as a child, and yet the sexual nature of lyrics like You can have a big dipper, going up and down, all around the bends/You can have a bumper car bumping/This amusement never ends/I want to be your sledgehammer went flying right over my head. 'Cause it ain't exactly subtle.

10. "Bridge Over Troubled Water," Johnny Cash and Fiona Apple
Screw Art Garfunkel -- this is the definitive version of this song. I can't listen to it without choking up. The bizarre, yet inspired, choice of Cash's bottomless rumble with Fiona's airy voice is striking beyond words, and Rick Rubin's simple arrangement has the good sense to get the hell out of the way. I love this track.

Demon Days: Season 3, Episode 6 -- "Nothing Bad Happened Today"

Previously, on Demon Days...

• Dean fell head over heels (or maybe flat on his face) in love with Lucy about seventeen seconds after meeting her for the first time. It took her a little longer to fall in line, but she did. Eventually, he proposed, and she said yes.
• Dan's girlfriend, Hannah, was abducted, turned into a vampire, and then destroyed in an act of mercy by Dan.
• Lucy got stabbed in the back and killed (for a few seconds, anyway) by a crazy Hunter named Hopper. He could do this because of the magic of a mysterious Woman in Red, who has some pretty serious problems with our Hunters.

"Nothing Bad Happened Today"

I don't get many things right the first time
In fact, I am told that a lot
Now I know all the wrong turns, the stumbles and falls brought me here
And where was I before the day
That I first saw your lovely face?
Now I see it every day
And I know that I am the luckiest
--Ben Folds

The last three weeks have been largely uneventful (Willem went back to North Texas to get more explosives -- explosives that actually work as advertised this time; Lucy began obsessively working out), but today is Lucy and Dean's big day, as they're getting married at the ice skating rink. Simon is taking a large part of the responsibility for the event himself -- he's going to pick up their wedding rings early in the morning, and he's arranged for someone to perform the ceremony ("I know a guy," he says). Lucy is nervous and paranoid that something will go wrong to ruin her day, and she's been pleading for a single day unmarred by supernatural horror. Before she leaves to spend the day with her father and Dean's parents, she looks into Dean's eyes and begs him: "It's very important nothing bad happens today." She stops him before he can tell her how futile that wish is.

Dan is awakened before dawn by a call from Bruce, his police contact. Bruce wants his payment for the information he provided during the search for Hannah ("Schadenfreude": Season 2, Episode 12); Dan had promised him his entire marijuana stash, and Bruce wants him to pay up this morning. Dan agrees and heads back to his house to collect it. But while he's gathering the pot together, he's interrupted by a knock on door: an FBI agent named Caitlin Graves is looking for Hannah. It's not part of an official investigation; Caitlin is Hannah's sister, and hasn't spoken to her in years. Now she's like to speak to her again, and managed to track her this address. Of course, Hannah's dead now, but Dan can't explain that to her. So he tells her that Hannah was abducted (true), and that the police haven't found anything (which is true only because they haven't been told to look). She expresses surprise -- kidnapping is a Bureau matter, after all, and she would have known had Hannah been kidnapped. Stuck, Dan expresses ignorance as to why it didn't get back to the FBI. Caitlin says she'll investigate and leaves.

In a panic, Dan returns to Edgar's apartment, where Simon (who has just returned from successfully acquiring the wedding rings), Edgar and Willem are discussing breakfast. Dan asks if he screwed up, and Simon thinks he kinda did -- the agent isn't going to find any police investigation because there wasn't one, and she'll come back to Dan for answers.

SIMON: Why didn't you just tell her she left you?
DAN: ...That would have been smarter.

They come up with a solution, should the agent bother them again: they'll claim Hannah left Dan without warning or explanation, and Dan, in the resulting emotional breakdown, has concocted a delusion in which she was kidnapped. There is little doubt as to whether Dan can effectively portray a mentally damaged man.

Speaking of mentally damaged men, the fun stops when Dean arrives. Dean is worried Simon hasn't retrieved the rings, which is part of the larger worry that something will happen to screw up this day and upset Lucy. He's also resentful as hell that the other Hunters are going to the wedding in the first place -- he can't stand them, remember, and only invited them at Lucy's insistence. (Well, except for Simon, of course; Simon's cool, not to mention Lucy's brother. And Edgar's much better since he quit drinking. And, really, as long as he's not stoned, Dan isn't too bad. So it's really just Willem he can't stand. But I digress.) He's worried that Mikey, Lucy's old friend who runs the skating rink, will pick a wildly inappropriate song for their first dance: when they had their first date, his choice for a romantic skating song was Pantera's "Cowboys From Hell." He's worried that Simon's "guy" to perform the ceremony won't pan out. He's worried that any one of the dozens of supernaturals that want to see the Hunters dead might attack his parents while they're in town. He's about to marry the daughter of the Queen of the Vampires. The guy is stressed, is what I'm saying.

Dean testily asks if Simon picked up the rings, and Simon happily answers in the affirmative, and points to the dining room table where he left them...

...and, of course, they aren't there.

Simon insists he had them, and insists he left them on the table. Odd chirping sounds are heard outside the (open) window near the table, and Dean looks out to see a small, green figure, vaguely humanoid, standing perpendicular to the wall. It's about a foot tall, looks like a Fry Guy, and it's clutching the ring box. When it notices Dean, it shrieks in bizarre gibberish and flees, running across the wall. When Dean shoots it (obviously), it leaps off the building and lands on a passing bus.

Dean races out of the building, the Hunters following. They chase the bus down the street, weaving through traffic to catch up. When they do, Dean leaps from the car to the bus's roof [1] and finds the Fry Guy still holding the box. He starts to close in, but the thing belches an enormous fireball at him and leaps onto a light pole, and the bus zooms away. Dean jumps down into a passing truck, gets back to the car, and they give chase again.

Dean uses one of his Edges, Muse of Flame, to track the thing to a nearby parking garage. They follow the trail to a small maintenance office on the second floor. Inside, they find the thing...and a young woman Discern reveals to be a werewolf. The thing -- apparently called a "Chenga" [2] -- is her pet, and she can understand its mutterings. She says it didn't have the box when it came inside, though she admits that Chenga are "mischievous" and are often prone to stealing things -- it's their way of "playing."

This Chenga denies taking the rings at first, then confesses. It says that it left them "by the rainbow," and refuses to elaborate. The wolf tells them that this is part of the Chenga's game -- leaving them clues to figure out, a puzzle to solve. Dean ain't having it, though, and uses Insinuate to make the poor little bastard cry. It points out a nearby puddle, and the light reflecting off it, casting a rainbow on the ceiling. The Chenga says it left the box in there, and even wrapped it in plastic to keep it from getting wet. Dean goes to the puddle, and, of course, the rings aren't there.

Across the alley, on the same floor of the parking garage over there, another Chenga is laughing. This one's red, and it's holding a small bundle wrapped in plastic. When Dean sees it, it starts shaking the package at him and dancing, and even does a backflip with glee. The Hunters find all of this absolutely hilarious...except Dean, of course. The wolf warns Dean that the red ones are dangerous -- "Green Chenga are just mischievous, but the Red Chenga are mean." The absurdity of the situation threatening to drive him mad, Dean runs to the other garage.

Simon uses his Edges to freeze the red Chenga in position, and Dean rips the plastic bundle from the thing's clutches. He opens it, but finds only a copy of Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising inside. Upon demand, the red Chenga says that he threw it away...into a dumpster that's now being emptied into a garbage truck.

The Hunters -- well, Dean, mostly; the others are struggling to catch up while laughing -- chase down the garbage truck and run the drivers out, thankfully before the dumpster is dumped. Dean uses Cleave to carve the dumpster open, and the Hunters jump inside, looking for the box. Edgar is left outside as a (ahem) lookout.

Soon enough, the box is found, and the rings are inside and undamaged. They exit the dumpster to leave, only to find the Woman in Red ("The Black Hand, Part 1": Season 3, Episode 1) standing outside, looking at Edgar with curiosity. She expresses simple confusion as to why a blind man would be standing alone next to a garbage truck. She's probably curious about other things, too, but Dean doesn't give a damn -- he wants vengeance (being an Avenger and all), and proceeds to Cleave the woman's face off. The Hunters make their escape.

Back at Edgar's apartment, Dean wastes no time in leaving again, heading to the skating rink well ahead of schedule just to get away from the others. He's not gone long before Evets arrives, eager to talk to the Hunters. They tell him of the Woman in Red's demise, but Evets isn't so delighted -- the Woman in Red is apparently the leader of the city's mages. The Hunters are ecstatic, but Evets warns them of the coming power vacuum that will result from her death. This will destabilize the mages, making them desperate and unpredictable. This could be very, very bad.

But finally, the time arrives, and the whole gang heads to the skating rink for the wedding. Simon reveals that the "guy" he got to do the ceremony is...himself. Several years ago, while playing on a losing baseball team in an independent league in California, he became an ordained minister online (which is fairly easy to do) when the team fell into a massive losing skid. One of their players was an ordained minister; after he left to play for a minor league club, the team lost fourteen games in a row, so the other players pressured Simon into becoming "a man of the cloth," as he puts it. The team won nine straight after his stunt, so it worked out well for everyone.

And the wedding itself is a wonderful affair. Simon is able to resist the urge to do an Impressive Clergyman bit during the ceremony (aside from one line: "Have you the wing?"). Edgar gives his wish that Lucy and Dean stay together forever, than Dean not forget how much he loves Lucy, cheat on her, get framed for murdering his mistress, develop a massive drinking problem and eventually go blind. Mikey's song for their first dance ends up being extraordinarily appropriate: "The Luckiest" by Ben Folds, a great song, but one so syrupy and sentimental it seems written expressly for use at weddings. And during that dance, Lucy has only one thing to say to Dean...

LUCY: See? Nothing bad happened today.
DEAN: ...Yeah. Right.

Footnotes: [1] Yes, thanks to White Wolf's system for jumping, he was able to leap from the car to the roof of the bus. We did the math, and with good luck, maximum effort, and a running start, Dean could jump from the ground to the fourth floor of a building. Yay for goofy jumping systems! [2] Not to be confused with Jenga, the puzzle game, or "Chinga," the mediocre X-Files episode co-written by Stephen King.

Storyteller's Notes: Well, I wanted something less serious, and I got it. It may have been a step too far, but what's done is done. And yes, the Chenga was indeed inspired by the Fry Guys. And Gremlins.

Next week, the aptly titled "We Now Return to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming."

I'd never have the nerve to pull that off

Man, I just love The Onion:

Unconventional Director Sets Shakespeare Play In Time, Place Shakespeare Intended

MORRISTOWN, NJ—"When most people hear The Merchant of Venice, they think 1960s Las Vegas, but it's time to shake things up," said maverick director Kevin Hiles.

Random junk, May 2007

A few brief items too slim to work into a full blog post.

• At the gas station near where I live (it's the one on 517 and California), I spotted a yellow posterboard sales display behind the counter. It was a simple sheet of posterboard, onto which were glued several boxes of condoms. A simple sales display, set up for easy retrieval and selection. The heading of the display shows a mediocre drawing of a woman and the name Family Condom Center. Uh...huh.
• Another gas station sign, this one a homemade computer-printed announcement at the Shell station on I-45 near work: YOU MUST MAKE A PURCHASE FOR GHANGE. Yeah, too many people just coming in for ghange must have driven them crazy.
• For the last several days, I've noticed the in-store radio at Job Number Two playing Bon Jovi. And not old Bon Jovi, which would be just as repellent but a little understandable and, perhaps, excusable. No, the icky new Bon Jovi greeted me as I attempted to take telephone orders. This horrified me, obviously. Then I realized that they were playing Bon Jovi at the same time every day. And I could correctly guess what the song following it would be. Obviously, they just used the same playlist for all those days (it might be on a CD or DVD or something), but for a minute, it felt very Dead Zone.
• I downloaded a bunch of music from a torrent of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. (If you care, the list is here. With the downloads, I now own 75 of them. I don't know if this is impressive or not.) One of the albums, #67, is Billy Joel's The Stranger, which I had never heard before. I picked it to download without looking at the track listing, so I got something of a surprise when I listened to it this morning: I had heard most it before, it turns out, because of the album's nine tracks, six are in his Greatest Hits collection. Talk about hitting your prime.
• Though it should come as no surprise, I'm pretty sure the entire Beatles catalog is on that list.
• Back to Billy Joel for a second: this is probably the most terrifying album cover I've ever seen:
  
• Spotted on a church marquee: PINE DRIVE CHRISTAIN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL, SIGN UP EARLY NOW. Oh yeah, sign me up.
  
• The electronic marquee at the Helen Hall Library in League City is advertising a hurricane evacuation education seminar. It's apparently titled "Run from the Rain, Hide from the Wind." Well, that's pretty much all you need to know, isn't it?
• Run from the Rain, Hide from the Wind sounds like a Bob Dylan album title.
• When a customer is unhappy at Job Number Two, I like to play a game called "What Would Happen If This Happened at Job Number One?" Case in point: a few days ago, a woman ordered a salad, and remarked that last time she ordered the same salad, the amount of chicken was insufficient. She said she'd complained to a manager, who'd promised to mail her a gift card but never did. My manager simply gave her the salad for free. What would happen if this happened at Job Number One? "That's the way we make it. You want more than that, it's another two dollars. If you don't like it, go away." I told this way to Airfon -- my boss at Job Number One -- and he concurred. "Hell yeah."
  
• In searching for something else, I came across a ticket stub for The Watcher, which I saw at Cinemark during its theatrical release seven years ago. Why I still have it, I have no idea, but it's interesting to note that I've moved four times since then, and it's still here.
• I didn't throw it away this time, either.
  

Well, there's that, at least

So the Astros suck pretty badly right now, huh? Nine straight losses is never, ever a good thing. It looks like it'll take another Miracle Astros Summer for them to even approach a .500 record, let alone the playoffs. And Lance Berkman needs to get slapped -- come on, Fat Elvis! The team kinda needs you to play well to win.

But hey -- there is the silver lining. 'Cause as bad as the Astros are playing, the Yankees are playing just as badly, and they're even further out of first place than we are. Even though Rawga Clemens hasn't made his return yet, the announcement of his imminent second coming was supposed to be the fire the Yankees needed, the spark to get them playing again. According to a graphic I saw on ESPN yesterday, they were 14-15 at the time of that announcement, and they're 7-14 ever since. HAHAHAHAHAHA.

But I must stay focused in support of my Astros. They are the hometown team, right? And I have to support the hometown team.

Though I used to live in Los Angeles...so technically...the Dodgers could be my hometown team. And they're playing great.

Hmm.

How 'bout them Dodgers?

Believe me, Mike. I calculated the odds of this succeeding versus the odds I was doing something incredibly stupid, and...I went ahead anyway.

"Suddenly, I have a refreshing mint flavor."

"You know what my kids would say?"
"'You're not my real father!'"

This is why the internet was invented, friends: somebody uploaded Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie to Google Video. Here it is:



Yes, that's the whole movie, all hour-thirteen of it. Enjoy it, if you have time. (Or you can just go here and watch it, or even download the whole thing.) I wouldn't endorse this sort of thing, really, except the movie is no longer commercially available. So go ahead.

"And then I'll ram my ova depositor down your throat and lay my eggs in your chest. But I'm not an alien!"

The Weekly iPod Shuffle: 5/26/07

1. "Bring It All Back," The Tragically Hip
One of the many superlative tracks from Road Apples, my favorite Hip record. I've listened to it dozens of times, but I'll be damned if I can figure out what Gord's talking about.

2. "Leaves That Are Green (live)," Simon & Garfunkel
Remember what I said the last time Simon & Garfunkel showed up on my shuffle? About how all their songs pretty much sound the same? Yeah. Same here. It's not bad, heavens no. But really, acoustic guitar picking and pretty harmonies with obtuse poetry doesn't always really work.

3. "The Ecstacy of Gold," Ennio Morricone
The finest piece of film composition ever written. This is, of course, from The Good, the Bad & the Ugly, when Tuco stumbles upon the graveyard. It's a magnificent scene, one of my favorites in all of movies, but I can't imagine it working at all without Morricone's perfect score.

4. "All Along the Watchtower," Dave Matthews Band
With six, I have more versions of "Watchower" than any other song in my library. There's Bob Dylan's original, the definitive Jimi Hendrix version, and four live covers by the Dave Matthews Band. It's one of their trademark live songs, played at virtually every show they've ever done. This particular version is from Recently, the five-track EP that also featured the original "Halloween" and an acoustic performance of my favorite Dave song, "Warehouse."

(And hey, what the fuck is Dave doing in that new shitty Adam Sandler movie?)

5. "Wasting Time," Jack Johnson
My sister spreads Jack Johnson fandom wherever she goes, like some sort of groove music Johnny Appleseed. It's so easy to do, of course -- Jack's music is so groovy, so laid-back and cool that it gets under your skin and into your system before you even know it's there. His lyrics generally say the same thing as the music: "Chill out. Be cool. It's all gonna work out."

6. "All I Really Want," Alanis Morissette
If I could be said to have a motto, it would probably be made up of lyrics from this song. I don't want to dissect everything today, I don't mean to pick you apart, you see, but I can't help it....Do I wear you out? You must wonder why I'm so relentless and all strung out; I'm consumed by the chill of solitary. Boy, Alanis's career went nowhere and got there in a hurry, didn't it? Too bad.

7. "At the Hundredth Meridian," The Tragically Hip
Probably my favorite lyric of all time opens this song: Me, debunk an American myth? And take my life in my hands? This is one of their very finest songs, and one that I'd recommend to any non-Hip fan who was curious. If I die of vanity, promise me, promise me, you'll bury me someplace I don't want to be.

8. "Takeover," Jay-Z
I'm not a huge rap fan, but I can appreciate the best of the artform, and "Takeover" is right near the top. As far as "diss" songs go, this is one of the most harsh I've ever heard -- Jay-Z takes his rival, Nas, and absolutely shreds him. According to Wikipedia, the song was such a devastating attack that "many hip-hop fans had thought that [it] could have potentially ended Nas's career." And that unnecessary adverb in the quote isn't mine, obviously.

9. "The Fool on the Hill," The Beatles
Another Beatles song that sounds infinitely more interesting with one speaker broken: all you hear are Paul's vocals and the orchestration. This is how the song should been released originally. This rules!

10. "Turn Up the Night," Black Sabbath
This is post-Ozzy, when Ronnie James Dio had taken over Sabbath's vocal duties. Dio is, of course, a far, far superior singer to Ozzy, which means nothing in the case of Sabbath. This song is actually quite good, but it's just not Sabbath without Ozzy.

That's the greatest video game title ever

Surely, anyone who wants to see this has already seen it, but I couldn't resist putting the trailer for the Penny Arcade game, On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One here for you to see. I think it looks fantastic.

Demon Days: Season 3, Episode 5 -- "The Chamber of 32 Doors"

Note: In my recap of the previous episode, "House of Leaves," I made a rather egregious error -- I stated (repeatedly) that Willem and Edgar explored the house as a pair, when clearly it was Willem and Dan who did so. This has been corrected, and I give my apologies. (And thanks to Rene, who managed to spot the error I couldn't, even though he's recovering from minor surgery and is floating on Vicodin.)

Previously, on Demon Days...

• The Hunters found an emblem representing the names of Bazemore's vampire leaders. Later investigation turned up full sets of initials, which corresponded to the initials of four classical composers: Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, and Haydn. Further information lead them to believe Beethoven (LVB) the most important.
  
• Sunday was arrested by her fellow mages for aiding and abetting Evets, her fugitive friend. She was imprisoned in "mage jail" and left there to rot. The Hunters went in to rescue her, but quickly found themselves lost in the space-bending labyrinthine hallways. Lucy and Dean found her, but she was unconscious and unresponsive.
  
• Willem and Dan found a vampire named Victoria (or so she says...) locked in one of the cells. When she told them they need "dead flesh" to open the door to get out, they release her and drag her along. She quickly said too much for her own good, and Dean paralyzed her with a quick staking...but not before she could tell reveal a startling revelation to Lucy: "I'm your mother."

"The Chamber of 32 Doors"

Lucy is, understandably, rattled. When she says that this can't be, that her mother is dead, it's pointed out that so is the vampire before her. She doesn't have long to process the information, though, because Sunday starts coughing -- she's awake. She overjoyed to see the Hunters, though obviously unhappy to hear that Simon is missing and Edgar is blind. And then there are the problems with being stuck in a mage jail.

SUNDAY: I feel...naked. Powerless.
DAN: You don't have your raincoat.
SUNDAY: Yeah.
DEAN: Or your magic.
SUNDAY: Oh. Yeah. That, too.

Sunday does give them some good news, though: she's helped design a few of these mage prisons, so she has a good idea of how to get around. The bad news, of course, is that didn't help design this mage prison, so it's not going to be that easy. She does confirm that they'll need Victoria to open the door, though how much of her dead flesh they'll have to use she doesn't know.

Dean and Lucy reluctantly decide to remove the stake from the vampire's chest. Dean pins Victoria down and patiently informs her of the consequences of betrayal. She swears -- not for the first time -- that she would never betray the Hunters. Never.

Sunday remembers an, um, interesting way to navigate the prison. She has Dan put his face against the wall, and if he detects an odd feeling in the fillings in his teeth, then they're onto something. When he does so and detects an odd vibration, she happily leads the group in the right direction.

She tells them that in order to get back to the front door, they first have to find the chamber of 32 doors -- a final test they'll have to pass before reaching the end. One of the doors in that chamber will lead to the entrance; the other 31 lead back into the chamber itself.

Along the way, Lucy tells Victoria she can't be her mother. Victoria responds by reeling off Lucy's birth date, birthplace, birth weight, and even that she had a red birthmark on her left shoulder. "I don't know if it's still there," she says, though both Lucy and Dean know that it is. Lucy's rather tepid response is, "You could've gotten that information anywhere."

"Even the birthmark thing?"

The next puzzle room they find isn't the chamber of 32 doors, but it's a new room, and that's a good sign, Sunday tells them. Luckily, the puzzle isn't that hard -- it's a take on the old counterfeit coin puzzle, which they solve fairly quickly. They move on, with Lucy still glowering at Victoria when she gets the chance.

As Sunday pauses to determine the next route they should take, Dean talks with Victoria. He asks why she never returned to her family after her Embrace. She tells him he didn't have a choice, which he thinks is nonsense. "You wouldn't understand," she says, and Dean confirms that he doesn't. Lucy grills her for information regarding the night of her death, and Victoria has all the right answers. Lucy grows more uncomfortable.

Luckily, Dan gets a strange feeling in his fillings -- "You taste tomato soup. Good tomato soup, with cheese" -- and Sunday leads them on to the next puzzle. A door with no handle; the handle hangs above the room on a string. The floor is covered with sand, and six faucets line the walls. Lucy digs a bit into the sand and finds a drain buried near the door. Dean's idea is to shoot the handle down -- "You're going to shoot a string?" "...No!" -- but Dan has a revelation while building a moat for his sand castle (yes, he built a sand castle). Digging trenches into the sand, they lead water from each of the faucets to the drain, and the handle drops to within reach. (Ah, diverting water to open a door -- it's like Myst all over again.)

The next room is filled with fire. Dean pulls a fire extinguisher out of his bag and puts out the flames long enough for them to get to the other side. In the next room, they find no puzzle, but they do find a crazed mage out of his cell. He's got a gun, and he's decided to use it to shoot imaginary people sitting the corner. Dean takes no chances and simply shoots him.

The key to the next room's exit is guarded by a fierce lion, but Second Sight reveals the lion to be fake, so the key is easily retrieved. Sunday feels they're getting close to the exit.

The Hunters continue to idly chat with Victoria. When someone mentions "Mozart," she is puzzled for a moment, then remembers -- "Oh, right, the composers." Since she's from out of town, she doesn't exactly understand how it works, but says those aren't their real names. They simply noticed the coincidence and, at "Beethoven"'s insistence, starting referring to themselves by those names. She can't tell the Hunters who the composers are or where they are -- "I work for the Queen," she tells them. The Queen, apparently, is the most powerful of the city's vampires. She says that the Queen might be one of the composers, but she's not sure. "You don't ask the Queen for her name."

The possibility of Victoria betraying them comes again, and she denounces it again.

VICTORIA: If you knew anything about me--
LUCY: That's just it, isn't it? I don't know anything about you, do I, Victoria?
VICTORIA: That's what I mean. That's not even my real name, it's--
LUCY: Shut up! Shut the fuck up!

Finally, they reach the chamber of 32 doors. As Sunday described, it's filled with doors -- but only ten of them are at ground level. The others are built into the wall high out of reach, with no apparent access. Hanging from the ceiling is a small bowl-shaped disc; directly underneath it on the floor is more Greek writing. The Hunters still can't read it, and neither can Sunday, so they turn to the cryptography expert -- Victoria tells them it reads "440."

This is useless nonsense to them -- 440 what? There are only 32 doors, after all. After watching them futz around for a few more minutes, Victoria lets out a pointed sigh and gives them an answer: "It's a frequency." She stands in the center of the room and sings: a solid, true note, unwavering and in perfect pitch. Certainly like the kind of singer Lucy's mother was reputed to be.

DEAN: It's getting harder and harder to believe she's not telling the truth.
LUCY: ...Yeah.

The bowl above them (a magical microphone?) picks up her note. The room starts to shift around them. The doors shift around the walls like turtles in the ocean, with one door finding its way to the floor...and then onto it, ending up at the very center of the room. When it's opened, they realize they're standing above the chandelier in the entrance chamber. Lucy is worried about leaving without finding her brother, but Sunday assures her that the seals preventing her from using magic are weakest at the entrance -- if they can open the door, she should be able to use her spells to determine if Simon's still in the house.

They climb onto the chandelier and find the switch that lowers it to the ground. Back at the front door, Victoria removes her own flesh -- she rips off her right thumb and drops it onto the scale. Sure enough, the door unlocks and pops open. But the second it does, both Sunday and Victoria call out, "Wait!" Thanks to their supernatural powers, they've both detected the presence of a horde of Kindred waiting for them outside. (Yes, it's now nighttime, though they don't think they've been in the house long enough to get to sunset.) What's more, Simon is outside, facing all 30 (!!) of them single-handedly, holding a pistol up and challenging them to a fight. Even more surprising, they look out the door to see their old nemesis, the Stinger, leading the vampires. Guess they didn't kill him, after all. Victoria (using her vampiric disciplines to read the minds of the attackers outside) tells them that the vampires put a tracking device on Dan's van (again!) and followed them here. "They don't even know I'm in here."

Victoria tells them they'll never make it out alive, that there's too many of them, but offers a solution: "Trade me." It's unlikely to work, but they dragged her all the way from Nevada to Bazemore for a reason, and it must be a pretty damned important one. The Hunters aren't interested, though, and come up with plans of their own. Sunday's magic is still a little weak thanks to her imprisonment (and because she's lost her raincoat, which she uses as a magical focusing tool -- this was implied in the episode itself, but never stated directly), so she can't help, but the Hunters have it covered. Willem gives Dean some of the explosives he bought from the North Texas Militia, and the Avenger activates Hide and sneaks out.

In the few minutes that follow, words are exchanged between the Stinger and the Hunters, as he asks to come out and fight. Dean sneaks into position and lobs grenades, hoping to mass damage, but unfortunately Willem got ripped off -- the explosions are fairly weak and inefficient. Dean still has Hide activated, though, and walks through the vampires undetected, hoping to get to the Stinger...but then one of his wasps lands on Dean's face and stings him, and the Stinger locates him more or less instantly.

Things are bad and getting worse, as now Dean is in the middle of a couple dozen vampires with machine guns. He manages to use Respire to weaken the Stinger and take him hostage, but it's still a no-win. When the Stinger starts to heal his damage, Dean uses Cleave to kill him once and for all, but now he's lost his hostage.

Out of options, Dan takes Victoria's advice. He grabs her, holds a gun to her head, and drags her outside. She calls to the Stinger's second-in-command, a muscular Kindred named Adam -- "You! Adam, right? Let them go, and they'll let me go. Please. Please."

Adam thinks for a moment, and then...agrees? The other Kindred lower their weapons, which Dean promptly collects. The Hunters demand a car, and Victoria demands one for them, one with no bombs or tracking devices -- "A clean car!" Adam provides a car for them, which Dan inspects and finds to be clean.

Victoria is released. Simon sees her, and later dialogue makes clear that he recognizes her as his mother. The Hunters and Sunday get into their car and start to make their getaway, but the car is halted by a pair of blood-juiced vampires the size of bridge support columns. "Kill them!" Adam cries. They start to exit the car to fight, but--

VICTORIA: Wait!
ADAM: For what?
VICTORIA: Let them go.
ADAM: Huh?
VICTORIA: Let them go.
ADAM: I...I don't think that's wise.

And a new facial expression comes across Victoria's face. One of rage. One of disdain.

VICTORIA: I don't think I asked for your opinion, did I? Did I?
ADAM: ...No.
VICTORIA: Let them go! Now!
ADAM: ...Yes, Queen.

And the hulk Kindred let them go.

DEAN: Dammit! Dammit! Dammit!

They had the Queen of the Vampires in their grasp, and...

They return to the hospital, where they find Evets and Edgar playing Pictionary. Evets is beyond relieved to see his friend alive again, and volunteers to take the entire group out for a celebration at a place he knows downtown. (He gives them all a ride in his massive Hummer. "I can't believe they keep finding you," Simon says.)

At the restaurant, they cap the long, long day by gorging themselves on every kind of food imaginable and listening to bad karaoke. Simon explains that when he stepped through the door everyone else did, he wound up on the roof at night. When he jumped down (injuring his ankle in the process), he saw the vampire army and pulled his gun. A few moments later, the Hunters exited the house behind him.

They ask Sunday about the Man in White they met during the subway incident, but she has no idea. Dan also tells her about Faith, the woman in white who was looking for her, but Sunday also has no clue -- "I don't know anyone named Faith." Lucy asks Dean when he wants to get married, and he says he's waiting for her. "I could go tomorrow." He also states conclusively that there will be no open bar, much to Dan and Willem's dismay. Lucy says she wants to do it very soon: she wants "just one day" where they don't have to worry about any of this supernatural nightmare. "I wouldn't count on it," Dean responds. (You can always count on him for some good-natured cheer, huh?)

Simon goads Lucy into singing some karaoke. As she performs her song (Sarah McLachlan's "Building a Mystery," which could be interpreted as a song for Lucy's soon-to-be husband, if you read the lyrics), something that Victoria said occurs to Sunday. "That's not even my real name..."

SUNDAY: Simon? What was your mom's name?
SIMON: Victoria.
SUNDAY: And that was her real name? Not a stage name or anything like that?
SIMON: Well, yeah, it was her real name. It wasn't her first name.
SUNDAY: What was her first name?
SIMON: Lucia. That's where they got Lucy's name.
SUNDAY: Lucia...Victoria...Belmont.

LVB.

Storyteller's notes: Yes, children, he planned the whole thing like that! You'll remember, way back in the sixth episode, Lucy could lift the curse Sunday placed on Edgar. Why? Because she's the daughter of the Queen! Man, I've been waiting for this reveal for a long, long time. In your unoriginal note of the week, "The Chamber of 32 Doors" is a song by Genesis. (Written and sung by the band's original lead singer, Peter Gabriel, whose "Kiss That Frog" directly inspired the frog episode and indirectly inspired the chronicle as a whole.)

Next week we submit to my sappy nature and give the Hunters a little break. Yes, it's time for the obligatory wedding episode, entitled "Just One Day."

Yay!

Blogger has (rather swiftly) answered my concerns, got into the code, and fixed the problem: comments are now perfectly easy to get to, as you might see at the bottom of this here post. Thanks a million, Blogger tech people -- you guys rock.

Man, with this thing fixed, and last night's Lost finale, and last night's hella-cool Hunter episode (recap coming tomorrow), this has been a bitchin' couple of days. And I'm now off to a midnight show of the new Pirates of the Caribbean. Surely, the trend must continue, yes?

That sound you heard was my jaw hitting the floor

"We made a mistake, Kate."

So. Lost. The season finale. "Through the Looking Glass."

If you're curious, I won the bet, but only because of a prearranged tiebreaker. We each got exactly one death right.

But the episode...my god. Two of the most extraordinary hours of television I think I've ever seen. Charlie the hero! Ben the...good guy? Maybe? We don't know! Walt's back (or is he?)! Locke the even-more crazy man! You can't kill Patchy! "Good Vibrations" is the key to rescue! Hurley saves the day! Sawyer goes all dark and evil (more than usual)! Jack admits his love for Kate! Alex finds out who her mother really is!

Wow.

And that was all before the big finish -- the last five minutes, which Lindelof and Cuse have been calling their "rattlesnake in the mailbox," for how quickly and completely it changes everything about the show. How unexpected, how cunning, how evil it is.

And they were not kidding. Not at all.

In the space of a single conversation, a simple exchange of words with two characters we already know, they turned Lost inside-out. Sent it "Through the Looking Glass," if you will.

Wow.

But it's being ruined by stupid people who are reading waaay too much into a comment Jack makes, in one of his flashbacks -- erm, uh, "off-island" scenes. A comment that's perfectly understandable, considering that he's drunk and on drugs and emotionally distraught.

He tells someone to go get his father, "the chief of surgery," and that if Jack is "more drunk than he is..." at which point he trails off. Of course, Jack's father is dead, and so can't be "gotten" from anywhere, and is probably not drunk.

Jack said this, of course, because he's drunk, on drugs, and emotionally distraught.

But not to hear Lost fans tell it. Most of them understand, but some are quick to jump out and start spinning theories about time travel and wormholes and alternate universes.

Guys: calm down. You're ruining this beautiful moment. And you're going to be disappointed when the truth turns out to be far, far simpler than you think.

Man oh man, what a spectacular finish to the season. How long until season four?

...February? Seriously?

...Huh.

*looks at watch*

As promised, Mr. Steve

I said I'd get ti for you, Steve, here it is: the new Rambo trailer.



You gotta ask yourself, do you really want to watch it?

I should just go ahead and give Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof my credit card number, it'll be easier that way

So, how much of a Lost whore am I, really? I bought Bad Twin, the awful novel "written by" one of the survivors of Flight 815. I've purchased both seasons of the show available on DVD. I bought several episodes from the iTunes store.

And now? Now, what have the nefarious Lost creators offered me to deprive me of funds?



That's right, bitches: Lost the frickin' video game. For the iPod!

Hey, it was five bucks. I'm all over that. Haven't played it yet, but odds are it'll suck. I mean, it almost has to.

Yeah: whore.

Don't fear the reaper

Last week, I posited my picks for the five future corpses on Lost. They were off-the-top of my head choices, not something I put thought into. But now, Airfon and I have decided to make a friendly wager out of it: we each pick five, whoever gets the most right wins. A Quizznos sandwich is on the line. My honor will not be defeated!

The really glorious thing, of course, is that Lost is so batshit crazy that it could be anybody. Hell, I've rethought my picks three times while typing this far.

So here's your dead pool, for real this time, for tonight's massive season finale, "Through the Looking Glass":

Sayid. Hasn't done anything interesting since the second season, and it's time to either give him a serious role or kill him. I'm voting "kill him."

Charlie. If they go through all this "You're gonna die, Charlie" stuff and then don't kill him, it will look kinda ridiculous. Then again, that would be the kind of swerve they get off on.

Bernard. Hasn't been seen all season, then pops up again in a prominent role in last week's episode? That's a coincidence. Sure.

Jack. Hey, one of them has to be truly shocking. Plus, Jack gets flashbacks in this week's episode, and he tearfully says "I love you" to Kate in the trailer. I doubt he'd do that without an imminent bullet to the face.

Jin. Same reason as I said before -- angst, baby! And hey, the new kid just wouldn't be a Lost character if it didn't have some daddy issues.

Those are my five. Of course, Desmond could go. Or Tom. Ben. Or Hurley. Or Sawyer -- Sawyer could definitely die. Rose. Claire. Mikhail -- Patchy could eat it, for sure. Sun. Danielle. Alex. Karl....

There are a lot of possibilities, is what I'm saying.

If they had a church, I'd nail my letter to their door

Okay, so it appears that it is possible, after all, to leave me comments. In order to do it, you'll have to go to the post page of whatever post it is you'd like to comment on.

Where do you find the post page? Look at the "Posted by J. Walker at x:xx" text following each post -- click on the time. There you go!

Yes, this is inconvenient as hell, both for you and for me -- I have to sign in and flip through my "Edit Posts" menu to see if I've any comments. But this can work for now, if you want to give it a shot.

I've just sent a e-mail to Blogger. They should be getting back to me anytime now.

*checks watch*