1. Considering the countless number of minors whose lives have been ruined by the House of the Rising Sun, parents should write to their legislators to have the place demolished, or at least have its license to sell hard liquor revoked.

2. Proprietors of the House of the Rising Sun should seriously consider adding other attractions to serve a more upscale clientele.

3. Any decent establishment has a good website. It can frustrating for people to google “House of the Rising Sun” only to find out there’s no information available online or even a Multiply site.

4. If you’re “mother is a tailor” and your “father was a gamblin’ man,”  maybe you should’ve done well in school to mitigate the unfortunate circumstances of your early childhood.

5. The “only thing a gambler needs” is not a “suitcase or and trunk” but an awful lot of disposable income to spend, or at least a good credit standing.

6. Mothers should tell their children that anyone who spends his life “in sin and misery, in the House of the Rising Sun” is a total fuck-up.

7. You should go back to New Orleans for wonderful jazz music and authentic Cajun cuisine, not to “wear that ball and chain.” (edg)

… care m-a facut sa imi dau seama ca lipsesc de pe acest blog niste MELODII “grele”, ca sa ma exprim mai “mârlănesc” . Mai exact “Casa soarelui-rasare” (sper ca am tradus bine

si

una care totusi a mai fost pe aici….. dar de mult tare. Este chiar o piesa care mie personal imi place la nebunie.

What is this “house of the rising sun”? One of the lesser known metaphors is that the house of the rising sun is the slave pens on the plantation. Few of us have seen a slave pen and fewer of us have spent time in one. Well, at least not literally. Haven’t we all spent time in the slave pen? Every single one of us has lived in the house of the rising sun since the moment of our conception, that is, excepting the Blessed Virgin. Each of us tainted with the sin of Adam and Eve, predestined to be enslaved to sin, to our own worldly passions, desires, and lusts. From the moment we were born, we were slaves to sin, obedient to the prince of darkness, the devil. Unable to enjoy the love of God as we were trapped in our slave pens. As we got older we imagined that things would change, that with the right age, and the proper freedoms, we would rid ourselves of our shackles, and be freed from the house of the rising sun, to experience true life.

Yet it probably didn’t happen. The more “freedom” we got, the thicker the walls on our pens got. Along with this further enslavement, came the understanding that we could not get out no matter how badly we tried. Our space became more and more cramped, as more sin entered our pens to stay, slowly suffocating us, slowly snuffing out our souls. The reality hit that the house of rising sun in which we lived was becoming darker and darker.

Don’t we know, though, that Christ has come to redeem us, to invite us into a new house? The House of the Risen Son (clever, I know)? Christ has come to set us free, to unite us to himself, to his body, to his house, his Church, the Body of Christ on earth. He has given us the graces necessary to remain in that house, to grow in that house, to become one with that house. He has given us Baptism, Confirmation, Penance, Holy Communion. He has given us the Saints and each other. He has given us guidance in our priests and bishops and in his Word. Yet, there are those among us, myself included, who have all of this, yet still wander back to our old house, back to those slave pens.

Why? Why do we do it? I do not have the answers. I cannot understand after having seen the Lord, having tasted his goodness, having heard his forgiveness, having been sealed with his fragrant oils, having felt those cleansing waters, how I can willingly crawl back into the dung laden quarters I used to live in. How daft can we be? Does not St. Paul say in Romans:

Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and having been set free from sin, have become slaves to righteousness. For just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now yield your members to righteousness for sanctification. What return did you get from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

-Romans 6:16-18, 19b-23

Then again those are those of us still living in the slave pens, who have heard of this better house, who have had the doors of our pens left open, who have wandered outside of the house of the rising sun and into the house of the risen Son, which coincidentally exists everywhere which the house of the rising sun does not. These have seen the glory of God, yet refuse, for one reason or another to see it. These remind us of the poor little dwarfs in The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis, who despite being in a beautiful meadow, truly believe that they are in a smelly stable, and when presented with a flower, believe it is dung. How sad, how pitiful, how unbelievably despairing, that they would prefer the slave pens than the redemption, blessings, and graces of our God and Father through Jesus Christ.

What is my point? Where am I going with all of this, these metaphors, and loose correlations with Scripture and novels for children? I guess my point is that we cannot continue to choose to live in the house of the rising sun. We cannot, no matter who we are, continue going back to that wretched place. Whether you are a Christian: Catholic or Protestant, or a non-Christian, but especially us Christians. We know that the things that exist in that pen only bring death. Those of us who have been brought into life have no business returning to that place. It only brings us more sorrow, only weakens the message of our new master to the ones who still live there. If those who live there still see us, who have lived outside, return, they will never believe that living outside is better, and will never come to this better house. And that is a grand travesty.

Aquí estoy con una nueva entrega de esas 50 canciones que hay que oír 100 veces antes de morir y lo hace con un grupazo como The Animals, que encabezados por uno de los más grandes vocalistas de rythm’n blues, Eric Burdon, formaron parte de aquella invasión británica a mediados de los 60.

Some thoughts the song “Spill The Wine” by Eric Burdon and War, featured on the album Eric Burdon Declares “War,” which came out the same year as their other collaborative album, The Black-Man’s Burdon.

When I was a kid, this song only seemed to come on when I was deep in the throes of night, or sleep, or perhaps madness.

Some “interesting” facts about “Spill The Wine” via songfacts:

• This song features a harmonica, flute, and conga drums.

• This is widely believed to be about, or at least heavily influenced by drugs. According to Brown, this song celebrates women: “All ladies are beautiful. You’ve got to look at them. God, I believe, put all of us here and made us all different so we could be like the flowers, you know. Like women. I look at them as beautiful flowers. Even when they get older, the flowers and so on, and that’s what it really boils down to, they can be skinny, big, fat, I’ve seen some fine voluptuous women. And then I’ve seen some that are skinny, and if you look at them, they could be beautiful, depending on personality and stuff.”

• Jimi Hendrix‘ former girlfriend sang backup. Hendrix was managed by Animal’s bass player Chas Chandler.

• The lady speaking Spanish in the background was Eric Burdon’s girlfriend. Says Brown: “We went back there and we put up a little tent, candlelight, and some wine back there. They were behind there, and Eric was doing things to her and making her talk.”

• This was used in the movie Boogie Nights as part of a pool party scene with the porn stars.

• The Isley Brothers covered this in 1971 on their album Givin’ It All Back. 

And that sounds a little something like this:

As a kid, I had the radio on a lot. This was when the radio was better, mind you, and I kept it around like a secret lover or some kind of invisible friend. I’d cheat on it a lot with CDs and tapes and vinyl, a lot, but many a night I spent seized in a radio daze, or I’d listen to it while getting ready for school or for work or a dance or a date or something.

One of the many species classified under the larger phylum “alternarock.”

For most of high school it was the “alternative rock” station for me, but I did flirt a year there with the “alternative rock” station that was slightly harder, which basically meant that I had to put up with a lot of bullshit like “mandatory Metallica” and following up a band like Kittie or Jane’s Addiction with AC/DC. How sad is it that I can’t remember the good songs I got in return from that station? I just remember they played “Bound For The Floor” a lot.

Rewinding the tape back to somewhere in my much younger years when I was a stupid little shit who’d read, daydream, ponder, fascinate, and shit along with the radio, you should probably know I kept floating back and forth between classic rock and Motown. Those were my bag back then.

Hence all of my old school music knowledge/anecdotes being about things like Keith Moon’s addiction to horse tranquilizers or waxing nostalgic about Berry Gordy’s sex habits.

The Who’s “Who Are You?” was about Keith’s tendency to pass on street corners during drug binges only to be discovered by police the next day who assumed he was dead.

Anyway. I remember the Animals’ “House Of The Rising Sun” and I knew War’s “Cisco Kid” and “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” The radio loved those songs. And then I heard this song one night, “Spill The Wine,” and it was late at night as my father were driving around, lost in the Hollywood hills, high above the world. It was a mash up by two artists I liked before I knew what a mash up. I was tired, my eyes were heavy, and this song started dictating images to me as I looked down at the world, and I would get lost in the idylls of walking through the set of a Hollywood movie that was packed with mountain kings and a harem of women and wine spilt all about. And I was easily swept away in the mystical and engimatic nature of the song, which everyone assumes the song refers to drugs, which it does in a way, but you have to remember that the prizely grown native drug of California will always be sex, and the song enthusiastically endorses going after that pearl as many times as you can get it. If I had actually known what a clitoris was back when I was a kid, well…

I’ll be upfront right away – I was never that big of a fan of Jin/Sun episodes the first time through. They’ve just never really provided that much excitement for me. That being said, I can appreciate these episodes for what they are.  Jin/Sun bring a soap opera element to LOST that isn’t always there. In the early going, they also provided a great deal of mystery.

Going into House of the Rising Sun, we knew virtually nothing of Jin and Sun. We had seen glimpes of them though. As early as the pilot we knew Jin had a fishing background, and we saw Sun as a typical, subserviant Asian wife. Their original flashes do little to debunk these conceptions, but with LOST there is always something hiding beneath the surface.

The amount of forward thinking that takes place in House of the Rising Sun is probably the most interesting part of watching it in a new context. House of the Rising Sun takes place from Sun’s perspective; many of the events in the episode are revisited in …In Translation from Jin’s point of view. LOST is about the little things, and whether it’s seeing the dog Jin got from the man he would later assault, or Jin’s bloody hands from said assault, it was obvious that there was much more to the story of these two star crossed lovers than met the eye.

Late in the episode we find that Sun is not the resigned woman she’s been painted as so far. Not only does she speak English, but she planned to leave Jin. The contrast of their relationship from the beginning of the episode to the end is a thing of beauty. We see a couple so in love at the beginning – to a point where Jin will sign his life away to marry Sun. By the end, their relationship is in shambles, and nearly broken. But when it comes time for Sun to leave, she just can’t say goodbye to the man she married, whether Jin is that same man or not. And what else is LOST about but second chances?

LOST has also proven to be about time, and the central Island drama involves a special watch. Jin was given the watch to deliver to one of Mr. Paik’s associates in America. The importance of the task would be reinforced by a Paik associate in Exodus. But the watch never makes it to American, and instead finds its way to Michael’s wrist. This would begin a journey that took it through Michael, back to Jin, back to Michael, through a raft attack, an Others abduction, and finally was pawned by Michael in exchange for a gun in NYC. We’re yet to see the true importance of the watch, but judging from the role Mr. Paik seems to play in the large scale plan, we’re sure to revisit Mr. Paik, if not the planned final destination of the watch.

In the midst of the Jin/Sun/Michael drama, we’re also hit with what Cuse and Lindelof cite as one of the earliest example of “we knew what we were doing from the beginning.” Personally, I can cite a few examples of such in the first 4 episodes, but here we’re talking about Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve have prompted more discussion and theories than most other LOST mysteries. Who are they? Many people say Jack and Kate, or Sawyer and Kate. In Season 5 we got an indication that Bernard and Rose may be the fated duo.

I’m not so sure about any of this, and I think we need to take a look at a few factors in the Adam and Eve discovery. First is Jack’s quick analysis of the bodies. He states that for their clothing to degrade, they’ve been there for 40-50 years. With what we now know about the Island and its movements related to time, it’s hard to figure anything out from this time frame. Second is Jack’s dismissal of Locke. When Locke asks “But who were these men?” Jack quickly corrects him with “One of them was female.” But was she/he? Or was Jack just dismissing Locke’s claim? I would imagine it would be hard to tell the sex of a decayed body from a quick once over (although he IS Jack). If they were both male, it opens another set of possiblities – could the men be Jacob and his enemy? Jack and Locke? Maybe even Jack and Christian?  The third seemingly important thing about the discovery of Adam and Eve are the black/white stones. Jack finds these, but we never see what he did with the pouch. The black/white motif is one that has flowed throughout the series.  If it’s still with Jack, we’re sure to see the pouch again this season.

Upon recent watch, House of the Rising Sun contains so much more than it did at first viewing. Obviously this is a result of all the information between then and now. Still, I found it very interesting that an episode that I didn’t enjoy too much on first viewing had so much more to watch for now. Going forward I think this is something I’ll encounter more, and makes rewatching LOST such a great experience.

Random Observations

- There is also a line from Michael – “Time doesn’t matter on this damn Island!” How wrong he was – time, as Dr. Cheng once said, IS the essence. We now know that time, and the Island’s movements have much to do with the Orchid Station. It’s been pointed out elsewhere, but I think it’s interesting to look at the Orchid Station logo and the Paik Heavy Industries Logo.

Orchid Station

Paik Heavy Industries

They are EXTREMELY similar. Whether Paik and his watch are related to the Island is yet to be seen, but we do know they are related to the Hanso Foundation. We’ve heard Paik speak of Hanso to his associates in D.O.C. and Hanso/Paik were also connected during The Lost Experience game. The Hanso Foundation is also very similar to the Orchid.

Hanso Foundation

- Numbers Alert: It’s been 8 days (11 hours) since Charlie played his guitar; Sun was suppoed to leave the airport at 11:15.

- As per Lostpedia, this episode contained the first use of the “whoosh” both into and out of the flashes.

Lost Season 1 Episode 6 House of the Rising Sun

Alternative:

Underbara kvinna! Hon är/har för mkt av allt – love it!
Och hon är tamejfan ett geni – “i will always love you” och hennes egen themepark “Dollywood”

The most familiar opening ever?

Congratulations to Maud Newton for winning the Narrative Magazine Annual Fiction Prize for her novel excerpt, When the Flock Changed.

Former Animal superstar Eric Burdon talks to Bradley Mason Hamlin about writing, filmmaking, shady record deals, and more at Mystery Island.

 On the House of the Rising Sun musical arrangement, Burdon says, “We didn’t have the time or the space to put the name of everyone on the credits. M.J., our inventive manager had a plan or maybe he and Mr. Price had a plan. ‘Lets put Alan’s name on the single for now and we will sort it out later, we’re all good friends here!’ Star-struck, drunk & stoned–we went for it in a hurry. There are many stories in the rock and roll business but this one takes the biscuit; it was the first of the great rip-offs and stands in history as that.”

 On writing, Burdon says, “Since the early days I used to write about my experiences while on the road and about life in general. I would dress them up with collages and photographs. When I met Nina Simone she took a look at one of my journals and she told me, ‘You are a music historian.’”

I recently reread Bergman on Bergman: Interviews With Ingmar Bergman by Stig Bjorkman, Torsten Manns, and Jonas Sima, translated by Paul Britten Austin.

In the February 24, 1969 interview, Swedish film director Bergman balks at questions that are more like statements, explaining, “Every time you’ve put concrete questions to me I’ve tried to express myself in my own way and give you an answer. But when Torsten delivers a little lecture – however interesting I find it in itself – and then leaves me a wide field to expatiate on, I feel depressed, because it isn’t a concrete question. For me my work, or whatever you like to call it – these thirty films – are something solid, something I’ve made. So I must have concrete questions if I’m to give you concrete answers.”

That sounds like something Jeff VanderMeer told me early on when I interviewed him for Literary Kicks (his statement didn’t make it into the interview. Maybe it should have – it’s actually kind of instructive).

I’m notorious for multitasking, though I have been known to get stuck in certain loops, like my papercraft obession. I can’t help it, I love making things.

So for all you fine folks out there, I give you a roundup of the latest things I’ve made!

To kick things off, I present you with two more members of Aido’s Monkey Army, complete with personas:

The Mad Scientist

I’m really pleased that I managed to get the lab coat mostly right! Oh, he’s totally crazy.  You should see some of his experiments.

Mutant Monkey

The very first of the Mad Scientists’ experiments. Whether the experiment was successful or not remains unclear, as a 3 tailed monkey could prove to be quite useful for certain missions.

Next, I have some vinyl art for you. Not much but there will be much more on the way!

House of The Rising Sun

I found a vinyl EP of the Animals singing “House of The Rising Sun” in a charity shop. It’s a track that I’ve always loved ever since I was a kid listening to my Dads’ records but I don’t have a record player so I decided to turn it into art. I painted a (modern) New Orleans skyline against a rising sun. I’m still unsure as to whether it’s finished but I’ll update again if I do “finish” it.

Vinyl Heads

A simple piece but I like it nonetheless.

Next up, still on the stencil theme:

No Face from the Studio Ghibli movie "Spirited Away

Flying Towards The Sun

The Great Wave of Kanagawa

Credit where it’s due, the link for this template is here!

Tak's SIIR (Standard-Issue Information Retrieval) robot from the cartoon "Invader Zim"

A piece of jewellery next:

Blue Beaded Necklace

And finally…

In case you’re wondering what this has to do with my blog, I made him play the piano.

See? I’m constantly making things!

Let me know what you think of them in the comments, cheers!

Curiosa historia para una canción versionada por cantidad de grandes artistas pero de autor desconocido. No obstante una de las más conocidas, por no decir la mayor de todas, es esta versión de ‘The animals’ que hizo famoso al grupo. Si me parecía una gran canción, escucharla en la escena final de la que para mí es una gran película como ‘Casino’ es espectacular.

Título: ‘House of the Rising Sun’

Grupo: The Animals

Momento: Escena final de ‘Casino’

It’s hard to hear any version of the House of the Rising Sun without flashing back to my days in New Orleans, walking through the thick humid air at night and drenched in a kind of sweat that somehow feels just right rather than totally miserable like it does most other places in the world.

Everyone knows this song, thanks to The Animals making it a hit back in 1964, but according to Wikipedia “the oldest known existing recording is by versatile Appalachian artists Clarence “Tom” Ashley and Gwen Foster and was made in 1933.”  At the time it was known as Rising Sun Blues.  It’s said that the song was adapted at some unkown date from an old English folk song dated around the 17th century.  The BBC has a nice history of the song here.

It’s been covered many many times, and below you’ll find just a few of them.

Summer Song Of The Day: Here Comes The Sun

The Media Blog has an excellent spot in the sun this morning… Just what I needed yesterday on a long driving day. A big can of energy drink. But why would that make it into the Sun Lies? Surely there can&t be any hypocrasy going on …

A Green Design Blog, Sustainable Design Blog, Future-forward design for the world you inhabit – your daily source for innovations in sustainable architecture and green design for the home.

Our sun does not radiate evenly. The best known example of radiation fluctuations is the famous 11-year cycle of sun spots. Nobody denies its influence on the natural climate variability, but climate models have, to-date, not been able …

The war in Afghanistan is the defining action of Mr Brown&s administration, just as the war in Iraq defined Mr Blair&s. Now the first round of the.

Ideas for saving money in Portland, Oregon, and beyond.


san diego chargers cheerleaders
bluegrass cellular
choti bahu 19th august
choti bahu 18 august
San Diego Chargers Cheerleaders are hot!
Kimberly …
don hewitt dies
megan wants a millionaire ryan jenkins
barney frank nazi

Vad vore jag utan Bob Dylan? Han är verkligen min idol. Nån annan som gillar honom?

Vem är din favorit artist?

“I can hear you singing to me in my sleep.”

- Semisonic

The other day I was talking to my friend Spam online about seduction.  The conversation was going normal enough until he mentioned that his favorite “makeout” album involved Jewel.  This threw me for a loop, because when I think of Jewel I think of whiny girls with guitars singing about angst and evil men.  As a woman, such thoughts do not usually make me want to stick my tongue in some dude’s mouth.  Jewel makes me want to cry; Jewel wants me to punch the men who have hurt me.  Unless I’m trying to have angry revenge kissing I don’t understand the use of Jewel.

But this brought up for me what had always been an interesting question… to have or to have not music while making out?  A guy I knew, we’ll call him Santa Monica, had spent hours on what he would call a “sex mix.”  I never listened to it (thank God), but I knew some of the songs on it.  One included the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Down Boy” from their EP and I believe a Kills song was on there like “Tape Song.”  These are certainly sultry songs, and “Down Boy” is one of my favorites, but again… I think that leads to rather passionate, angry, making out.  Now of course you want passionate, but I’m not so sure about the anger.

How can music so easily change a mood?  In a recent article by Scientific American, scientists explore what it is about music that “moves us.”  One passage states:

“Instead of facilitating a largely semantic dialogue, as language does, melody seems to mediate an emotional one. When a composer writes a lamentation or a toddler exuberantly bangs out a rhythm on a pot, that person is not only revealing his or her own emotional state but also causing listeners to share those feelings.”

Well, this makes sense then why a dude or dudette would want a “makeout mix,” we’d want someone to feel those same “I like you/I want to kiss you” feelings as us.  But again, everyone has different taste in music and I, for one, can learn to love a song I never used to love because of the feelings I had for the person who was sharing it with me or the situation we were in, not because the song is particularly good.  (Interpol’s “No I In Threesome” is an example of this.)

Anyway, I’m no academic.  So I decided to take my question to the streets.  Below is a conversation with good old Vince, the standard interviewee in these blogs:

cafevince: um
cafevince: first of all I haven’t made a mix since like freshman year
cafevince: I guess I have playlists
cafevince: none of those, however, are specifically for making out
SpookyEmyII: do you have selective songs you play though or an album?
cafevince: absolutely not
cafevince: I have to say that nearly 99.99% of my making out is spontaneious
cafevince: meaning there’s really no place for advance planning and putting on mood music
cafevince: is this something others do?
cafevince: wait so you would get back to his place, and then he’d pop in the cd and you’d know it was “makeout time?” Or you’d start making out and he’d interrupt to pop it in? Like how does this even work?

I’ve bolded above what I think is important.  Now, we’ll take words from a woman, Callie:

Narrow lapels, terrible sixties videoing, three (or maybe four) chord lead guitaring, horribly staged walks around the stage by singer and guitarists.

Nothing can hide the genius of Eric Burdon.

In my opinion, the Animals are the ones who do this song the best. It’s really a great song, awesome for jamming along with a guitar too.

Eric Burdon’s voice is just perfect for this song. Enjoy.

The K9 unit of course, curse you.
Wind and rain to wash your brain,
Winter, snow-the vile outlaw.
Snow-man, snow-man, snow-man…

Episodes five through eight of season 1 of ABC’s hit television show Lost first aired from October 20, 2004 until November 10, 2004.

Plot Synopsis

After Oceanic Air Flight 815 tears apart in mid-air and crashes on a Pacific island on September 22, 2004, its survivors are forced to find inner strength they never knew they had in order to survive, but they discover that the island holds many secrets.

Initial Reaction

In Week 2 of my Lost Rewatch, I’ll be reviewing “White Rabbit,” “House of the Rising Sun,” “The Moth,” and “Confidence Man.” We’re still in the set-up phase of Lost, with each episode focusing on one of the characters in more detail, revealing a bit about their backstory. Since the Pilot, so far we’ve had a Kate episode and a Locke episode. This week, we focus on Jack, Sun and Jin, Charlie, and Sawyer.

Ah, simpler times… when the survivors’ only concerns were things like “food” and “water,” and not “the end of the world” and “time travel.” It’s kind of fun reliving these days, knowing the other events taking place on the other side of the Island during this time.  Right now, Ana Lucia and company are getting attacked and kidnapped daily by The Others.

In-Depth Discussion

In White Rabbit, Jack things he is going crazy as he continues to see his dead father walking around the Island. Boone almost drowns as he attempts to save another survivor who swam out too far. Meanwhile, the water supply has almost run out, as people weren’t conserving it before because they thought they’d be rescued by now. Locke and Jack have their first discussion of many over the nature of the Island and their destiny. Jack eventually finds some caves with a fresh water supply.

In House of the Rising Sun, we see why Jin and Sun’s relationship is on the rocks.  Jin had to work for Sun’s dad, who is involved in some very shady dealings, in order to be able to marry Sun. On the Island, Jin beats Michael up and is handcuffed to some wreckage. Sun reveals that she can speak English to tell Michael it’s because of the watch he is wearing. Jin was supposed to deliver the watch to someone in America for Sun’s father, but Michael found it in the wreckage. Meanwhile, Jack decides to try to get some survivors to move to the caves for shelter and water, and Locke discovers Charlie’s secret drug addiction.

In The Moth, Locke helps Charlie get over his drug addiction by using a metaphor of a moth struggling to get out of its cocoon.  Charlie, feeling left out and useless and going through withdrawal, accidentally gets Jack trapped in a cave-in. He eventually digs Jack out and throws the last of his drugs into the fire. Meanwhile, Sayid and Kate are on a mission to triangulate the French distress signal, but fail to do so when someone knocks Sayid out. In the flashback, we see how Charlie’s brother was partially responsible for his lapse into drug abuse.

In Confidence Man, we get our first glimpse of Sawyer’s past life as a con man, but he chooses not to go through with it when he finds out the couple he was cheating has a son. On the Island, suspicions turn to Sawyer for knocking out Sayid, and for possibly withholding asthma medicine from Shannon. Sayid turns to torture to force him to cooperate, but it is all for naught, as Sawyer was just messing with everyone and never had the medicine in the first place. I love how Sawyer goes out of his way to prove to everyone that they are just as bad as anyone else, and takes pride in knocking people down a peg or two.

Casual Observations

• I still believe it’s a very important point to note that Christian Shephard’s body was not in the coffin Jack found in the cave.  Is he being reanimated by some force? It’s quite different from the “fake Locke” scenario, as Locke’s body was present along with his double.  It’ll be interesting to see what this is all about.
• Jack makes his famous landmark speech in which he solidifies himself as the leader of the survivors, saying, “If we can’t live together, we’re gonna die alone.”  This will be a theme throughout the show.
• In House of the Rising Sun, we see the infamous corpses of “Adam and Eve,” the source of infinite debate amongst fans of Lost. These were a male and female corpse found in the caves, carrying a white stone and a black stone for some reason. Jack estimates they’ve been dead for 40 to 50 years or longer. Damon and Carlton have stated that in the end, fans will be able to look back to this episode and realize they had a plan from the very beginning of the show. Since then, fans have made wild speculations as to who these two are. With the time travel element on the show, it could be anyone.
• Jin’s broken handcuffs will remain on him throughout the series until well into Season 2, when they make it back to the Swan station. They use tools there to cut the cuffs off him. Very nice continuity.
• We now know that it was Locke who knocked out Sayid before he could get the French signal. It’s awesome that even as early as this episode, he was doing his part to keep everyone on the Island where they belong.
• In this stretch of episodes, we see the origin of the amazing run of “Scott and Steve” jokes, where two of the background extras are constantly mistaken for the other one.
• We first discover the contents and meaning of Sawyer’s letter in Confidence Man, and we now know that Jacob gave him a “little push” to actually write it, lending him a pen. We also know that “the real Sawyer” is actually John Locke’s father, and would later be strangled by Sawyer.