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Mythbusters co-host and explosives geek Adam Savage chimes in with his review of the Lost season finale. "First things first: the explosives. We blow a lot of things up on MythBusters, so I know from experience that last night Lost missed the mark. The 500 pounds of C4, that whole movie thing about "dummy triggers" and fake tripwires—it's all a load of crap. Nobody does that. At least that's what my friends at the FBI tell me." I've never seen the show, but what comes next sounds like spoilers.

"Would you want to set up explosives so that pretty much anything you did would make them go off? It's just like guessing and cutting one of the wires in the movies: Nobody would survive using that technique for very long, including Keamy and his crew. The whole training of a bomb tech is to work safely with explosives, not dangerously. There are too many ways to mess it up. Also, I'm pretty sure that C4 isn't conductive, which it would need to be to set up its wiring as a resistance feedback loop that could tell if you started to pull out the detonators. And if freezing the battery works, why not just disconnect it? Oh, right, the monitored feedback loop. But wait, C4 isn't conductive ... never mind.

"Though the explosion looked about right in terms of size, it was a bit slow—high explosives happen at over 20,000 ft. per second. Plus, any explosion that you would survive happens silently—you see it before you hear it. But movies and TV never do that. Plus, C4 lets off with a much more concussive ka-whump than they ever are able to show in the movies.

"As to what the heck is going on: I used to think that the survivors were in purgatory, mostly because of "The Man in Tallahassee"—the idea of Locke's father showing up on the island was too bizarre. But after last night's space-time-travel extravaganza, I've given up on the purgatory idea, 'cause you can't get a compass heading out of purgatory—or else the Vatican would have had a cruise line running it eons ago.

"We know that the island has some "interesting" properties regarding time and space. We know that dead people—hello, Christian Shepherd!—can appear for real there. So how about the soul? It's kind of like trying to look for the physics of being in love. (Speaking of which, I loved that Desmond and Penny finally found each other!) Perhaps the writers posit that the island exists on a plane between both space and time, and that this plane, this rift (that causes the weird temporal anomalies, and the polar bears, etc.), also taps into certain sensitive peoples' psyches?" [Popular Mechanics]

Senator Hillary Clinton trails Senator Barack Obama in both delegates and the popular vote. On Tuesday, the last of primaries will be decided in Montana and South Dakota, where Obama is expected to win. "But that doesn't mean Sen. Clinton will be delivering a concession speech next week. The former first lady is favored to win the Puerto Rico primary on Sunday. A big victory there, combined with strong showings in Montana and South Dakota where Sen. Obama is favored, would put Sen. Clinton ahead in the popular vote, according to her campaign, which counts the votes from the disputed contests in Florida and Michigan and excludes caucus states. Most independent tallies of the popular vote put Sen. Obama ahead [...] 'Voting will be over [on Tuesday] but it's very unlikely the nomination will be secured,' says Clinton campaign strategist Geoff Garin." After the jump, just-released audio of Bill Clinton describing his devious plan for Florida and Michigan at a private fundraiser.

"Clinton aides are also quick to point out that after the Democratic National Committee's rules and bylaws panel meets on Saturday to work out a compromise to the long-running dispute over Michigan and Florida, more than 2,026 delegates will be needed to secure the nomination. The two states violated party rules by holding primaries ahead of schedule in January and were stripped of their delegates to the August convention." [WSJ]

Are you among the legions of adoring Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk fans? I'm neutral on the subject, but I do love me some Anjelica Huston, and Sam Rockwell's pretty cool too. Anyhoo... Here's the just-released trailer for the film adaptation of Palahniuk's novel Choke.

Former Gawker editor Joshua David Stein has uncovered a fabulous new YouTube game. Namely, dudes filming their girlfriends playing with a Nintendo Wii Hula Hoop game. Those crazy kids! After the jump, Joshua's, and a lot of people's, fave.

What happened last night on the Sci-Fi Channel's sweaty, greasy, sinewy space ballet that is Battlestar Galactica? As I snoozed in air-conditioned bliss, my liver was good enough to jot down some notes. As usual: Spoilers? Could be!

• "Tonight's movie will be The Glory Brigade. Rock 'em, sock 'em... kisses you never got..." Oh wait. That's MASH. What the heck channel am I on?
• Bleachy Cyclon dying? Again? And Pretty Asian Cyclon shot her? Why?!
• Now Saggyface Actorman is president? How many presidents you people gonna get?
• Oh Pretty Asian Cyclon. You can't go around shooting people in the gut coz you have "visions". No one wants your little high-bread baby anyway.
• "Get her out of my sight!" You know, Miami Vice, you're starting to get on my nerves. And you looked silly being secret ninja man on that other show.
• Great. Old Eyepatchy and Miami Vice babbling at each other again. Blonde Tomboy Space Girl, mofos! Bring her out. Bring her out now.
• Saggyface Actorman and Hollywood Neutral Hunkbot arguing. Kee-righst! If you have a penis, get off my TV right now!
• This is getting to be like Buffy if they did a whole episode with just Xander and Giles and Spike. Except none of those guys suck!
• Only high-breads can find the goo-ship, Bleachy? So you are gonna steal Pretty Asian Cyclon's baby!
• Ew Bleachy! Stop touching Old Eyepatchy! Quit it!
• What's with the fucking leprechaun? No one's got you stinkin' pot o' gold.
• Blonde Tomboy Space Girl! Yaaaaaaay! But, huh? Full dress uniform? No sweaty cleavage or biceps? No greasy hair? You people are killing me!
• And now she's gone.
• Leprechaun speech. I am so out of here!
• "It's got what plants crave. It's got electrolytes." Ha!

The man whose parents' battle to save him from a nerve disease was depicted in the movie 'Lorenzo's Oil' died Friday at his home in Virginia, having lived more than 20 years longer than doctors had predicted. Lorenzo Odone, who doctors had predicted would die in childhood, died one day after his 30th birthday, said his father, Augusto Odone. Lorenzo Odone had come down with aspiration pneumonia recently after getting food stuck in his lungs, his father said. He began bleeding heavily, and before an ambulance reached their home his son was dead, Odone said. 'He could not see or communicate, but he was still with us,' Odone said Friday. 'He did not suffer. That's the important thing.'" [AP]

Oh man. Not only are the ladies of Sex and the City shallow and screechy and four years older, the fashion icons can't even dress themselves anymore! "[I]n the film the characters are now four years older and, in a disappointing way, their styles appear to have changed into one: the offbeat, orgiastic, do-it-yourself madness of Carrie, the dominant female. It is not only that they now dress alike. In every scene the women are practically coordinated by both color and style, as if they had received a morning memo detailing the day’s dress code. Let’s all wear primary colors to a jewelry auction! Let’s all wear psychedelic hippie dresses on a trip to Mexico! Let’s all wear smart black-and-white ensembles and fur coats to a fashion show!"

"Sometimes the clothes even match the scenery, as when Miranda wears a droopy yellow turtleneck keyed to the blossoms in Central Park, or when Carrie, reading a copy of 'Cinderella,' wears a sailor’s top with red stripes, which echo the dangling legs of a stuffed toy bug on a shelf behind her.

"Now middle-aged, the women seem to be mellowing. As Carrie says, their 20s were for having fun, their 30s for learning from their mistakes and their 40s for buying the drinks. They are still enthusiastic cheerleaders for fashion, but they don’t seem so overcome by a dress.

"Instead, they struggle with losing their identities, as they transition to coupled lives, to single lives and back again, to life on the Left Coast or to life as a mother. Fashion is the metaphor for the struggle." [NYT]

What with the nation struggling under soaring gas prices, foreclosures, and general tedious suffering, The New York Times' Sunday Styles section naturally wants to know how Manhattan's filthy rich are coping with the recession. "NANCY CHEMTOB, a divorce lawyer in Manhattan, has found that her days have become crammed seeing clients, all worried about how an economic downturn will affect their marriages.But Ms. Chemtob’s clients are concerned all the same, she said, because their incomes have shrunk, say, to $2 million a year from $8 million, and they know that their 2008 bonus checks are likely to be much less impressive. One of her clients recently confessed that his net worth had decreased to $8 million from more than $20 million, and he thinks that his wife will leave him. He has hidden their fall in fortune by taking on debt to pay for her extravagant clothes and vacations."

“'I literally had to sit there and tell him that he had to tell his wife that she had to stop spending,' she said. 'He was actually scared she would leave him because their financial situation changed so drastically.'

"Interviews with the people who actually see the bank statements, like divorce lawyers and lenders, say their clients are definitely living on less than they did a year ago, regardless of how expansive the definition of 'less' may be. Hairstylists and private jet rental companies say the wealthy are cutting back on luxuries like $350 highlights and $10,000-an-hour jet rentals. Even nutritionists and personal trainers notice a problem. The wealthy are eating more and gaining weight because of the stress." [NYT]

Joyce Maynard, the writer who had a creepy affair with gross old J.D. Salinger when he was 53 and she a mere 18, is still tattling on the egregiously overrated recluse. And it sounds like he has it coming. "[S]he's taking him on again in 'Going Hungry: Writers on Desire, Self-Denial and Overcoming Anorexia,' a series of essays compiled by Kate Taylor. Maynard, without identifying Salinger by name, discusses the relationship she had after her freshman year at Yale with 'a man who liked that I was skinny and, in fact, taught me new tricks to stay that way. Over the year that followed, the relationship grew increasingly difficult for many reasons, but I suspect his policing of my body and my eating was one of them . . . The experience of having another person - even one I loved - telling me what to eat and forbidding certain foods filled me with frustration . . . '"

"'I started to sneak food. I borrowed the car and went to the supermarket, and then . . . ate three yogurts in a row, followed by a bag of popcorn or half a pack of Fig Newtons," she continues. "And, though I knew by this time how to make myself throw up (a skill the man had taught me), I couldn't get rid of everything I took in. I ceased to be so thin. Maybe I was a normal weight, but I felt gross, unlovable and ashamed.'

"In her memoir, 'At Home in the World,' the former New York Times writer described how she moved in with then 53-year-old Salinger when she was 18, and how he'd take her into the bathroom, ranting, 'You can't let this junk sit around putrefying in your intestine,' and make her vomit." [P6]

What do you get when you have a local weather man whose last name is Quinn and is quite dashing, plus a local anchor who is perhaps overtired and has gay things on her mind? The answer is revealed in this snippet from tonight's 5:00 p.m. airing of CBS 2 News in New York. Watch the Freudian slippage after the jump.

newVideoPlayer("loni_queer.flv", 506, 423,"");

What do you get when you have a local weather man whose last name is Quinn and is quite dashing, plus a local anchor who is perhaps overtired and has gay things on her mind? The answer is revealed in this snippet from tonight's 5:00 p.m. airing of CBS 2 News in New York. Watch the Freudian slippage after the jump.

newVideoPlayer("loni_queer.flv", 506, 423,"");

• Some nut and his nutty wife are trying to buy the New York Times. We revealed the nuttiness.
  
• Some people are gay, other people are not gay. But at the end of the day, everyone is gay. Also trannies.
  
• Liar!
  
• We met and witnessed the humiliation of Reggie Love.
  
• Also we all did drugs with President Bush and some dude from Wired. Magic fruit! Everwhere!
  
• Also everywhere: bedbugs!
  
• ALSO everywhere: Barack Obama! In dignified black and white.
  
• We were all nice to China. Some people were mean to Arianna Huffington.
  
• Photos of young television stars! Racism! Cancer! Terrorism!
  
• Yes, and that delightful film about those ladies. Just click here. Christ.

• Some nut and his nutty wife are trying to buy the New York Times. We revealed the nuttiness.
  
• Some people are gay, other people are not gay. But at the end of the day, everyone is gay. Also trannies.
  
• Liar!
  
• We met and witnessed the humiliation of Reggie Love.
  
• Also we all did drugs with President Bush and some dude from Wired. Magic fruit! Everwhere!
  
• Also everywhere: bedbugs!
  
• ALSO everywhere: Barack Obama! In dignified black and white.
  
• We were all nice to China. Some people were mean to Arianna Huffington.
  
• Photos of young television stars! Racism! Cancer! Terrorism!
  
• Yes, and that delightful film about those ladies. Just click here. Christ.

We hear that Portfolio senior editor Bob Roe (formerly of Sports Illustrated) was let go today! Editor Joanne Lipman didn't like him! But we're told Roe was "popular and highly skilled." Anyone?

We hear that Portfolio senior editor Bob Roe (formerly of Sports Illustrated) was let go today! Editor Joanne Lipman didn't like him! But we're told Roe was "popular and highly skilled." Anyone?

A pornographer known as Max Hardcore is on trial for obscenity in Florida. The judge originally said that the jury should watch eight and a half hours of his porn tapes, so they could get a complete picture. But she had to reconsider, because the jurors got so squeamish after less than an hour that she feared they wouldn't be able to make it all the way through. A mere 8.5 hours of filth? We call that a "weekday." [THR Esq.]

A pornographer known as Max Hardcore is on trial for obscenity in Florida. The judge originally said that the jury should watch eight and a half hours of his porn tapes, so they could get a complete picture. But she had to reconsider, because the jurors got so squeamish after less than an hour that she feared they wouldn't be able to make it all the way through. A mere 8.5 hours of filth? We call that a "weekday." [THR Esq.]

We'll be laughing at the fools sitting up in 8-story building soon to be built on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg. The site of a former paint factory, it's supposed to be poisonous. Or was. This will also displace many people—well, just one person: Angel Hess, who lives there in his van, called Purple 53, at least part of the year. [Curbed]

We'll be laughing at the fools sitting up in 8-story building soon to be built on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg. The site of a former paint factory, it's supposed to be poisonous. Or was. This will also displace many people—well, just one person: Angel Hess, who lives there in his van, called Purple 53, at least part of the year. [Curbed]

As I spend this last day of being twenty-four staring down, with bleary eyes, the prospect of turning a quarter century old at midnight tonight, I'm finding solace in a few comforting things. Large, earthenware pots full of homemade wines, whole cigarette packs lit ablaze and smoked like pan flutes, and you, dear commenters, who make me chuckle. Yes, it may be an aged and weary chuckle that ominously shakes my frail, weathered body, but it's chuckling nonetheless. And for that I am grateful. I am especially grateful to six of you, who will be awarded with that most prestigious award, a Commie, after the jump. I remember when I won my first, lo those many months ago. Ah, to be young again.