Lost Prepremiere

No, I don’t know what’s coming in Wednesday’s premiere of Lost, but I
confess that I’m distracted by how much I’m looking forward to it. And
Steven Johnson’s

entry
yesterday along with ABC’s commercials roil my anticipation even more.

The genius of Lost is that its mysteries are fractal: at every scale —
from the macro to the micro — the series delivers a consistent payload of
confusion. There are the biographical riddles: why was the beautiful Kate
accompanied by a federal marshal on the flight? There are geographic riddles
(“why have the rescue teams missed the island, and why does it appear to have
a history of attracting castaways?”) and historical ones (“why has that SOS
signal been playing for so many years?”)

Since last season’s

finale
, I’ve been imagining what’s next: will the back-stories continue as
before? how long will the cliffhangers linger (esp. Walt’s fiasco)? new
characters? new/resolved riddles?  No mystery about what I’ll be doing
Wednesday at 8 p.m. EST.

Hurley’s Jinx

I’m wading through the shallows (where the heck are the depths?) of a draft
I’ll be stammering through for a colloquium Friday afternoon, the same draft
carrying forward to CCCC in San Francisco two weeks from tomorrow.  But I
did break for Lost.  Tonight’s Hurley-centric episode turned open
the millionaire’s jinxed numerology.  I was tempted to post the string of
digits here, but I passed on that idea for fear that, well…I don’t really need
to be engulfed by a sphere of bad luck.  The same string that landed him
the lottery mis-guided a cruise-liner crashing on the island in question, which explains
the odd electrical torture episode involving Sayid a few weeks ago.  None
of this makes any sense if you haven’t been following
the series
(why haven’t you been following the series?). But Hurley’s one of the more
engaging characters, and, consequently, I found his episode satisfyingly
smart and entertaining for lots of reasons, like when he declared himself "spry"
and sprang away from the trap-trigger, releasing the swinging spindle of thorny
death, just to name one.

Added: Nixlog’s gone and done it.