So, Jones is actually Charles Widmore, on the island – in 1954. He appears to be in his early 20′s. So let’s do the math: 2009 – 1954 = 55 + 20 = 75. Widmore doesn’t appear to be in his 70′s. The actor who plays Widmore, Alan Dale, was born in 1947. That would make him around 62. His daughter, Penny is in her mid-thirties (Sonya Walger was born in 1974). Meaning she was born when Widmore was in his 40′s.

Where am I going with this?

Eloise Hawkings, the elderly British lady, is Daniel Faraday’s mother. The recap episode before tonight’s new episode states her name as “Eloise Hawkings” – and I thought, isn’t that interesting, they gave her first name. And she was on the island in this episode. She was the young blond Other that was with Daniel when he was checking out “Jughead”, the atom bomb. Richard called her Ellie (short for Eloise). Daniel tells her she looks like somebody he knew. Daniel also reveals to her he is from the future, and that time travel is possible – something that will probably cause her to study physics (and inadvertently, cause her future son, Daniel, to pick it up as well). IMDB states that Jeremy Davies (Faraday) was born in 1969 and the actress that plays Eloise Hawkings (Fionnula Flanagan) was born in 1941. This would make her older than Widmore (68), but gives birth to Daniel when she is 28. Plausible. Okay, well, both are named for physicists, Hawkings after Stephen Hawking, and Faraday after Michael Faraday.

And to make a further point, Fionnula Flanagan also starred in the movie “The Others”. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

So how does this fit into the story line? Widmore was obviously either the leader of the others, or really, really, thought he should be. I’m thinking he was the leader at one point – then this punk kid Ben Linus comes around and Richard is thinking a change of leaders might be in order. It was Widmore who ordered the extinction of the DHARMA Initiative, then was ordered to move the island by Jacob, kicking him off the island. Widmore is a rogue Other. Hawkings left the island earlier – perhaps as a task force to insure that the island doesn’t become lost, if something disastrous happens to the inhabitants.

Oh SNAP! What if Widmore and Hawkings are brother and sister?? That would make Daniel, Widmore’s nephew, which would explain why he help fund Daniel’s research, and why Widmore knows where Mrs. Hawkings is even though she appears to be on Ben’s side (or more likely, the Other’s side).

Ready for another one?
In Faraday’s first flashback, we see him watching the news footage of the 815 wreckage discovery. He is crying and a woman walks past him and ask why. We don’t see her face, but the Lost creators hint that she is his caretaker. What if this woman is Jill (the woman that Ben meets in the butcher shop) – hired by Ma Hawkings to watch her son? Btw, Daniel is probably crying because he has seen his future, (and possibly death) and the news footage is a harbinger of these events.

More later…

I saw these back in November, but back then I was swimming in MIDI controllers and couldn’t justify another batch. But what drew me to these were their extremely small size and portability. I own a M-Audio Ozone 25 key controller, and that was considered fairly small, but it was still too big to be comfortably thrown into my laptop bag. The Korg Nano series are smaller than my computer keyboard.

I received the nanoPad from a friend for my birthday. I was surprised by the feel of the pads. They are vastly different in feel and action from my Akai MPD24. The pads are made from a solid clear rubber, unlike the MPD24′s hollow grey rubber. The action is far more sensitive, although the velocity of the strikes is narrower – soft strikes are near impossible to achieve. I like the Flam and Roll functions as well at the touch pad. The touch pad works in Reason as a nice Kaoss pad alternative (and far cheaper).

Since I now had the nanoPad, I went ahead and purchased the nanoKey. The nanoKey is kinda weird. The keys are more like computer keyboard keys, yet have some velocity sensitivity to it. Sometimes the keys do get caught on each other, and pressing the keys near the back will sometimes not register the note. My other other issue with it is the lack of a sustain pedal jack, but that’s small potatoes. I do wish the USB jack could be rotated on both so I could place them side by side, instead back and front. I do dig the portability. Since I have both now, I’ll probably finish off the series by buying the nanoKontrol – just because I could use the transport controls (and extra knobs and sliders never hurt). Best of all, all three fit nicely on my desk or in my laptop bag with room to spare.

Here is a brief character rundown of the first two Lost episodes of season 5, “Because You Left” and “The Lie”:

• Marvin Candle – Okay, he knows a lot about the island’s powers. He also talked briefly about the Arrow Station and it being a place to run strategic missions against the hostiles. It was also clear that he stopped the tunneling to the Donkey Wheel of Time. When it’s clear that a tunnel was constructed from the Orchid station. Is it Daniel that finishes the job? The drill bit melted while drilling – does Marvin lose his arm by getting too close to the island’s magic sparklies? Or will we see what “incident” caused the passage way to the Swan Station concreted off? Hey, do you think that the Lostaways are skipping in around in Time every 108 minutes?
• Daniel Faraday – Desmond is his constant. This we know. My question is that Desmond was in the hatch for three years with Kelvin. Kelvin was killed at the same time flight 815 crashed. So was Desmond alone in the hatch when Daniel knocked? If so, does that mean the newly crashed survivors are up the beach? Hopefully we’ll get a better sense of exactly when the time skips are taking them. 3 years forward, 3 years back? But it looks like Sawyer and Juliet are attacked by soldiers in very old uniforms. Like 1930′s. Yeah, and I’m almost certain that Ms. Hawkings is Daniel’s mother. But she’s in LA, and Desmond is on his way to Oxford.
• Jack – Jack really doesn’t do much in these two episodes except be all emo about how miserable he is. I wonder if they are going to continue with his drug problem.
• Hurley – Poor Hurley. He’s such a good person that he can’t live with the Lie. He also makes two mistakes that will cause problems. First he listens to what Sayid said earlier, and runs from Ben, AND gets nabbed by the cops – something that dead Ana Lucia said NOT TO DO. Second, he blabs the entire true story to his mother – and a consequence of this is that his parents are probably good as dead. He should also probably work on his Hot Pocket Kung Fu.
• Kate – Kate is back to what she does best – running away. I think that Claire’s mother, Aaron’s grandmother, is trying to get back Aaron – tipped off by Ben. He probably knows that putting pressure on Kate will force her to return to the island.
• Locke – You think that Richard would have given the heads up to Locke before the island started skipping. As a supposed leader of the island, shouldn’t he be the first one to know what the hell is going on?? And Richard gives him the same compass that Richard showed Locke when Locke was a little boy. Anybody else catch that?
• Sun – Sun has her hate on. It’s hard to tell if she’s telling Widmore the truth. She obviously blames someone for Jin’s death. Something wasn’t right when she was talking to Kate. It’s already established that Sun is a liar on many occasion. I guess only time will tell. And would her baby daughter have to return to the island?
• Ben – Ben is being a dick again. I’d like to know his true motives for getting the Oceanic Six back to the island. It looks like he’s getting help by a few people, but we do not know who these people are or what they’re doing off the island (or whether or not they’re actually from the island). Theory: That box that Ben pulls from the Hotel’s vent is filled with Medusa Spiders – the same venom that was used in the darts that were used on Sayid. I assume that was Jeffery and Gabriel that were killed by Sayid, the same two that Jill told Ben were fine (a lie?).
• Sayid – Probably the most humorous part of these two episodes, Sayid pulls a “Weekend at Bernies” and plays paralyzed throughout both episodes. Again, Medusa spider. Those that need to return, may not go willingly.
• Ms. Hawkings – This was a pretty good shocker. The return of Ms. Hawkings. Her last name isn’t a coincidence. Seems like she can write out complex equations on Faraday level. I’d like to know exactly who she is and what’s her role in all this. Obviously she has good knowledge of what’s going on and can appear in other people’s past (Desmond) like Richard did with Locke.
• Sawyer and Juliet – Shirtless Sawyer is not a happy camper. Not a lot happened to these two, other than they experience some wrinkles in time. We are left with them being attacked by some 1930-40′s era soldiers, lead by some british punk named Jones. Most of the soldiers were taken out by Locke, but I think Jones is just knocked out by Juliet.
• Charlotte – I hope we get her back story before her brain melts.
• Miles – Here’s a strange theory. What if Marvin Candle’s child, shown at the very beginning of the first episode, was actually Miles? I enjoy his character, and hope they expand his role.
• Frogurt – Well, he got some fire, didn’t he? And the red shirt was a nice touch. That’s how you treat a “non-starring” survivor.
• Desmond and Penny – Okay, so we know that when a “change” occurs in time, it literally comes to the person at a later date. But why does Desmond suddenly remember this happening at this point in time? And do you think that Desmond tells Penny about his romp through time?
• Widmore – I think Widmore was the previous leader of the island, before Ben. He didn’t have a lot to do with DHARMA, and was probably the one who ordered the killing of the entire DHARMA population on the island. There was probably a power struggle between Ben and Widmore, in which, somehow, Widmore was kicked off the island. But this doesn’t jive with the existence of Penny, who’s in her thirties, at least. When was Widmore on the island? Back in the 1940′s? Was he part of the troops that came to the island. We know he has some military background (from his speech to Desmond when Des was trying to get a job). Is he the bad guy? Or is Ben? Or are both of them bad guys?… Ow, my head.

The voice speaking to Pierre Chang (Marvin Candle) is undoubtedly Faraday’s.

We were treated to two episodes of Lost last night – together they made the two hour season premiere. There is a lot to cover, so this post will be light until I’m able to grab the episodes on iTunes today and rewatch them a few more times and take notes.

I have a quick theory that a co-worker inadvertantly came up with: Mrs. Hawkings (previously seen during Desmond’s “Flashes Before Your Eyes”, in which she tells him he can’t marry Penny after he time-travels after the Swan Hatch implosion), is Daniel Faraday’s mother. Who else can jot out equations such as those?

Oh, and Ana Lucia told Hurley to STAY AWAY from the police. Big dummy.

More later…

Just remember where we, the American People, came from…

If we can make out of pink cowboy bellbottom outfits, we can make it through anything. Be strong America, and rock’n'roll forever…

Here’s one of Charlie:

Continuing Lost characters in Sketchbook. These were done on my intuos tablet at home, hence the crisper lines. I also hook my laptop up to a 22″ monitor.

Ben, Locke, and Hurley. I want to sketch Charlie, Juliet, Sayid and some others, but I need to figure out proper grouping of three’s.

Here’s a quick sketch I did in Sketchbook:

Just when I thought I was about done with hardware controllers for my music making, this comes along:

Akai has released a hardware controller for the software application Ableton Live. Live is sort of a DJ/Live Music audio workstation – a lot of it’s functionality is geared towards live performances. I don’t gig, but my god, LOOK AT ALL THOSE BLINKY BUTTONS!

A lot of things are being released at Winter NAMM ’09. M-Audio has a new version of their Axiom controller line, the Axiom Pro. Good thing I read about this before I bought a plain-jane Axiom (on my future wish list). This one seems more advanced (hence the “Pro”) but I hope it doesn’t cost too much – otherwise I will be going with the Edirol PCR-800.

On a related note, I’m still saving up for my MacBook Pro – the good news is that I can custom order my laptop at Sweetwater.com (not the restaurant). I’m ordering through there because I have an undying loyalty to that place. Their sales engineers are the most helpful and well informed group of salespeople anywhere. So I buy through them whenever I can. I’m looking to take the top MacBook Pro model and upgrade the hard drive to 7200rpms (from the standard 5400rpms). That, along with everything else maxed out, should give me complete freedom with graphics, illustration, and music. The bad news is that I’m going to have to wait for my next paycheck cycle.

Last night I had Live open and had a simple software drumkit loaded. Granted, it was a synth drumkit using the Operator instrument, but playing a simple groove ate almost 50% of my CPU. That shouldn’t be happening. Yeah, I need more juice.

Also, US Airways is now offering ferry service across the Hudson.

I should be their head marketing director.