This is Michael Schack on Roland’s V-Drums TD-4K, an electronic drum kit that is about $1000. If things turn into a blur for you, watch the higher framerate version on the Roland site, here.

This is my favorite version of CPE Bach’s Solfeggietto so far. Most YouTube videos feature players that just go balls out too fast. There is still an art and a rhythm to it. One day when I have some peace and solitude, I will learn this piece if it takes forever.

Björk talks about her TV. Hey, what’s Icelandic word for “batshit-cute”?

Ok, I missed a post last week, so I’m two episodes behind. Let’s see if I can shoot out some theories and observations…

We’re Baaack! – I’m surprised the Oceanic Six got back to the island as quickly and seemly effortlessly as they did. Although missing from this story is how Sayid, Kate, and Hurley did a 360. I’d like to point out that the plane did land on the runway that Sawyer and Kate were building in season three. The plane did not crash, Frank Lapidus is too much of a badass to let that bird go down.

Paging Ms. Hawking – Yesh, she’s Faraday’s mum. Told ya. I want some confirmation that she was the Ellie on the island in 1954 (the army photo kinda confirms this – but I want a solid admittance).

Charlotte Has Some Chocolate and Checks Out – God in Heaven, why’d you have to kill off such hot snatch? Seriously though, I’m surprised Charlotte lasted this long. Charlotte grew up on the island, no shocker, but was is was that Faraday appeared to her then as grown man (a kinda creepy-scary grown man) and warned her never to return – which I’m sure we’ll see in an upcoming episode. So here’s a paradox – Charlotte told Daniel this happened, so why does Daniel warn the child Charlotte later when he knows it obviously didn’t work?

Locke is Pining for the Fjords – Observe:

Or he could have been juiced up on Medusa spider venom. Co-workers at the office have had enough of Lost’s shenanigans – but I offer this: It’s a fantasy that revolves around fantastical questions – if they were answered all at once, there would be no point of watching the rest of the seasons. On TV, people come back from the dead ALL THE TIME. Frankly, I don’t know why this is the deal breaker – after smoke monsters, polar bears, time travel, ghosts, hallucinations, and freaky prophetic dreams – resurrection is off limits??

Also, you notice that Locke’s injured foot kinda looks like it only has four toes? I think Locke eventually gets tossed back a few thousand years BC on the island and not only becomes the island’s first leader whom the locals make a giant statue in his honor, but also has his consciousness become “unstuck” in time – becoming Jacob.

Trapped in Time – At the end of last episode, we see Jin pull up in a new blue DHARMA van wearing a jumpsuit. Apparently, Locke fixed the wheel and island skipping, but stranded the remaining survivors in 1970′s – the beginning of DHARMA on the island. This explains why Daniel Faraday was inside the orchid station with Pierre Chang (Dr. Marvin Candle). Looks like Chang is going to be the group’s Dr. Emmet Brown (if you don’t know who Doc Brown is, shame on you – go watch all the Back to the Future movies again). Dr. Chang is Miles’ daddy, and knows that cute little red haired girl, Charlotte. So once Jack and the rest of the Oceanic Six show up, everybody is stuck in the age of bell-bottoms and sideburns. Groovy.

And they introduced a new character, Jack’s granddad, Ray. Why do I get the feeling that Ray has been on the island and might show up in the 1970′s? Either as part of DHARMA or as an Other. Maybe Christian Shepard was born on the island as well, an interesting parallel to his drinking and Jack’s.

Danielle and the Smoke Monster That’s a big temple the Smoke monster is guarding. We also get a glimpse into another possible power of the smoke monster – either duplication or mind control. Her crew and her lover all try to kill her and her unborn child, I would think that level of brainwashing wouldn’t suffice. I would go with duplication, just like the smoke monster could create the Horse, Dave (Hurley’s friend), and Eko’s brother, Yemi. I also believe that these “duplicates” or whatever the island does to them, are who the others are. Maybe there are many smoke monsters – either aliens or spirits, that can inhabit the body of the living or the dead.

Hurley New Groove – the only reason Hurley would have a guitar case is to have a lifetime supply of stashed twinkies and ho-hos to enjoy on the island.

Kate is Preggers – My friend Erika offered up this juicy bit: If the passengers of Ajira Airlines 316 are trying to recreate the conditions of the first 815 crash, then we can surmise the following:

• Jack is Charlie the junkie. Also Sawyer the letter carrier.
• Locke is Christian Shepard the dead guy.
• Sayid is Kate the fugitive.
• Hurley is Charlie the Rockstar (guitar case).
• Ben is Locke the cripple. Also Hurley the late passenger.
• Sun is Sawyer the avenger, and Rose the ring bearer.
• So would it make sense that Kate is now pregnant, taking the place of Claire? Wouldn’t that drive Jack bananas, since she’s obviously going back for Sawyer and has had enough of Jack.
• Or another person that’s as pregnant as Claire was is none other than Jack’s ex, Sarah. Ben could have easily put her on the plane in coach. Now we have some sort of weird love pentagon happening: Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Juliet, and Sarah. Freaky, eh? And do you think that Juliet will take Jack back after he ditched her on the island and shacked up with Kate? That’s going to be an awkward confession.

So here is my new theory:

• The island is actually the upper part of a giant inter-dimensional spaceship. The smoke monsters are the ship’s passengers subjugating the locals and treated like gods. The ship is powered by exotic matter, which gives the island it’s powers.

Mysto and Pizzi, two young producers from New York make the Geico’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” remake of Rockwell’s 1980′s song. The vocals are Renald Francoeur, doing both the Rockwell lyrics as well as the Michael Jackson hook line. It looks like they’re producing the entire song with an Open Labs NeKo, an insane piece of hardware (and insanely expensive). You can download the entire song over at the Geico website. While I dig the song and the way they lay it down, guerilla-style… Lose those stupid looking sunglasses while indoors, will ya?

• Jin – Yay! Jin is still alive! Apparently, he has been unconscious while drifting on wreakage from the boat explosion.
• Danielle – Jin doesn’t know Danielle’s fate. He also hasn’t been in many scenes with her, so while he knows of her, he hasn’t crossed paths with her. Since we know that Danielle comes to the island in 1988 (or so we think), we know that Jin is skipping through time on the same track as the rest of his group (Sawyer, Juliet, Charlotte, Daniel, and Miles). Also, notice that her crew is listening to the signal from the radio tower – the same one that she will travel to and change to a distress transmission that the lostaways discover in Season 1. This means the tower was broadcasting a similar countdown before Danielle’s crew arrived. We also know from a previous episode that the message that drew Danielle to the island repeated Hurley’s numbers. We also know that Danielle kills her team due to them being “infected” with some sickness, before Alex is born and that she travels to the tower while still pregnant. A week after Alex is born the Others will take her. I’m not sure if we will witness all these events.
• Ben – What is Ben’s plan? He admitted trying to take Aaron from Kate. Was it just a ploy to force Kate back to the island? And if the lawyer represents Oceanic Airlines and Ben, wouldn’t that infer that Ben controls Oceanic Airlines? And if that was the case, wouldn’t that also mean that Ben might be behind Flight 815 crashing? Maybe with the Smoke Monster help under his control?
• Sayid – Don’t mess with Sayid. Ever. He killed a man with a dishwasher.
• Sun – Sun is a little hot for revenge. Is she going to try to kill Ben? Did Widmore send the gun inside a box of chocolates?
• Sawyer – Sawyer sees Kate help Claire give birth to Aaron in one of the time jumps. Notice, however, that he does not reveal himself to them because the island won’t let him. Also, is Juliet going to make a play for him? Really? Are chicks just naturally drawn to rednecks?
• The Outrigger Chase and Ajira – Okay, here is my crackpot theory of the week: When the time skippers come across their wrecked campsite – they discover a water bottle from Ajira Airlines. My theory is that this is in the future where the Oceanic Six have already come back to the island, via a plane hijacked from Ajira Airlines – landed on the small islet that the Hydra station was on (remember the runway that the Others made Kate and Sawyer work on?). The Oceanic Six then took two outriggers to their old camp. Sawyer’s group comes across the outriggers and steals one, thinking it’s one of the Other’s outriggers. The Oceanic Six, thinks the Others have taken one of their outriggers and chases after them, shooting at them to make them stop. Get it? The people in the other boat were the Oceanic Six.

Time travel has been a staple of Science Fiction since (and maybe before) H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine”. There are many different variations, and Lost is exploring a few of them. Here is a primer for those who have trouble keeping straight the possibilities…

There are three main theories about time travel.

One is a Straight Path or flow, there are no branches or alternatives. Events happen in a certain order and there is no way to change it.

Another is the Wide Pipe theory – things happen in a certain order, even though time can be manipulated in subtle ways, larger events will always happen as expected.

The Time Tree – time is continuously branching and creating alternate timelines. These timelines can exist simultaneously and can be jumped from one branch to another, up and down the tree. Changing events simply creates another branch. There are infinite timelines branches from every little event that happens in time. A butterfly that is killed by a time traveler in prehistoric times will drastically change the rest of history. This is known as the “butterfly effect” and was featured as a plot device by Ray Bradbury in his short story, “A Sound of Thunder”.

Now to confuse the reader even more is the concept of personal timeline; a time traveler will usually be conscious of experiencing the difference in time as he jumps. If a traveler goes back in time 20 years into the past and stays there for 2 years, then returns to the future at the same moment he left, he would physically be 2 years older, since his personal timeline had not been altered.

Standard Time Travel
A person simply goes back (or forward) in time, and then comes back to his present time without any repercussions. Time is represented as a linear path, and the traveler is able to jump around. Simple, right?

Time Twins
Time twins is when a traveler goes back in time and visits his past self. In a straight path timeline, both versions will remember meeting each other. The past self will know that one day he will travel back in time to meet himself. Some variations of this scenario includes a stipulation that time twins cannot come in physical contact with one another or else risk in both disintegrating on a molecular level (identical matter cannot exist on the same temporal plain).

In a Wide Pipe timeline, if a person travels back in time and tries to visit his past self, and has no recollection of this happening, he will be prevented in actually meeting himself. The very nature of the wide pipe will prevent this from happening.

In a time tree timeline, a person will be able to meet his past self, without the traveler having recollection of this. This is due to a new branch being created. Unfortunately this is not without it’s drawbacks. Since a new timeline branch has been created, the traveler is now in a different timeline, and will not be able to travel back to his own time unless he is able to jump between branches. Also, his past self is doesn’t have to travel in time from the future, and the two twins can exist and grow old on this new temporal timeline.

Consciousness Time Traveling
A traveler travels in time only through his mind – most cases back into the mind of his past self to relive certain points of his life. Sometimes it is the mind of another individual in the past.

In a straight path timeline, the traveler will only be able to experience his past without being able to alter events – most likely traveling to a point in his past where he was unconscious for a period of time (allowing the traveler to take control of his past self’s body without effecting the past self’s consciousness).

In a wide pipe timeline, the traveler takes control of his past self’s body but is still restrained by the timeline events. He would be able to alter smaller events, but the ultimate outcome would still remain the same.

In a time tree timeline, a traveler can inhabit the body of his past self (or anybody else’s) and is free to alter time, since the timeline would branch anyway. Like in physical time travel in this scenario, the traveler would return to a different future, unless he is able to jump back to his original branch.

Fortune Telling
Bringing information back into the past is another example that marks the differences of these time travel theories.

If a traveler goes back and warns of, say, the 9/11 attacks. Two possible outcomes can occur. The first, under the straight path timeline theory is that no body would believe the traveler, or the natural order of events would prevent the traveler from achieving success, and the events would occur as they happened. A similar outcome would happen under the wide pipe theory – except that while a traveller can successfully warn of the impending attacks, the attacks (in some shape or form) would still occur.

In a time tree timeline, the traveler successfully prevents the attacks and a new timeline is created. This new timeline however, is not the same one the traveler left – and will not be able to return to it, since the traveler never had the desire to time travel from that timeline to change something that never happened.

Paradox: Kill The Parents/Self
A traveler travels back in time to kill his own parents (or ancestor). This isn’t a true paradox (in my opinion) since the only way it can occur is in a time tree timeline scenario. A traveler cannot achieve this situation in a straight path or wide pipe timeline, since it would not be possible, a branch would be created if that ever was to happen – no matter what.

A wide pipe timeline would simply prevent this type of event occurring.

Furthermore, if a traveler is able to kill one of his ancestors or alter a situation in which breaks his ancestral line – he would not disappear – like in “Back to the Future”, since a new timeline branch is created, in which his future self was never conceived. Even if he killed his past self – he would not disappear or blink out of existence. He has merely created a different timeline in which his past self was killed.

Also, on the notion of death – it is possible to die while back in time in any timeline theory – since death is on a personal timeline. If you time travel back to say, 1955, and someone kills you, your corpse will continue on and an earlier version of your self can come across it.

Paradox: Time Created Objects
In a straight path timeline, if your future self appears to you and gives you, say, a baseball, then later in life, you create a time machine and travel back in time to give your past self that same baseball, you’ve just created a time object. This is a true paradox, since that baseball only exists in the time loop – it has no origin or no end, other than existing in this loop.

On the contrary, an object that is brought back in time and left there, would not be considered a paradox, simply because that object has a natural origin and an eventual end.

Paradox: Father and Son
Another true paradox is the parent child paradox in which the child is his/her own parent. Again, this only works in a straight path timeline. A traveler goes back and time and conceives a child which is the traveler himself.

Other Types of Time Travel

Tangent Universe – As shown in “Donnie Darko”, time exists in a straight path but an abnormally breaks the timeline into a tangent universe, which is temporally unstable and will eventually collapse upon itself. The only way to correct it is to fix the abnormally and put the universe back on it’s original timeline.

Focused Isolation – As shown in “Somewhere in Time” in which Christopher Reeve travels back in time to find his true love by isolating himself in a hotel room and believing he is back in the early 1900′s. His physical body is transfered back in time since his mind believes he exists in the early 1900′s and willfully forgets about the future.

Unstuck in Time – As written in “Slaughterhouse Five”, a man is unstuck in time while kidnapped by aliens. He relives events in his life out of sequence, including his own life, but is unable to alter it. The book uses the device of four-dimensional space/time, in which time is able to exist at any point at the same time.

Third Person – As shown in “It’s a Wonderful Life” and written in “A Christmas Carol” in which the traveller experiences (or is shown) different past and future events from a perspective outside his self, but does not interact with these past and futures.

I’ve given up on making the comic until I get my new MacBook Pro. SketchPad Pro can’t seem to handle a large resolution file even though my current laptop is 1.5Ghz and 1.5GB of RAM. Drawing in Photoshop is also tedious, as the graphics processor can’t seem to keep up with my pen strokes. *Grumble*.

Recently, I’ve been watching all the Logic tutorials around the web, Apple.com has a few and is a good introduction to what Logic is. Lynda.com has a rather in depth one. And there are a few tidbits around AudioTuts.com. When I finally buy Logic Studio, Sweetwater.com gives a 7-day training pass to tutorial website, Grooveboxmusic.com, as well.

I’ve also started an illustration, but like the comic, I need more power to finish it. I had this up on my facebook account, but didn’t want to show it here on the blog until I finished it. Oh well…

And here is a color test. I haven’t finished inking it, but I wanted to see how the line work interacted with the color. I’m going to make some adjustments.

Yip yip yip yip yip yipyipyipyipyipyip.

When my dreams have aliens in them, they always look like these guys…

Regina Spektor has a wee bit of competition. I just bought Kate Nash‘s album Made of Bricks on iTunes (also on Amazon). It’s bouncy and at the same time on the bitter side. After about 2 hours of listening to it, I just wanted to eat ice cream and hate on men. She also has a wild potty mouth, which works with her British accent. Something about women belting out tunes while on the piano. Good times…

And here’s one of her on the keyboard…