Worth Your Consideration 013 - A GF5 Linkdump

• The official Website for Nine Inch Nails is getting updated far more frequently these days, now that the band is on tour again. Only trouble is: there is no official archive of the front-page articles that are coming fast and furious. Enter the NIN Blog & Media Archive. It is simply a must-bookmark for any serious Nine Inch Nails fan.
• In other NIN news, Rolling Stone has a full set-list from and a nice write-up of the private rehearsal show I mentioned last Thursday. The setlist that Rolling Stone has up says that the Ghosts songs played were 1, 25, 19, and 31.
• DarkUFO, Ain’t It Cool News, and the Lostpedia Blog have write-ups of the Lost panel held at the San Diego Comic-Con. Among the many teases provided by executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse was a tidbit about the apparently ageless Richard Alpert. It turns out that the number of toes on Richard’s feet may have some significance. You do remember the statue with four toes at the end of season 2, right? There was also a new Marvin Candle/Mark Wickmund/Edgar Halliwax video shown, which was available on YouTube for a short while. That was really interesting, and I encourage you to check it out if you can find it. Apparently, Marvin/Mark/Edgar is actually a guy named Pierre Cheng. And he seems to have a bit of knowledge about his future that maybe he shouldn’t have.
• Also at Comic-Con: the one and only Kevin Smith. Kev was there pimping a bunch of things, but primarily his upcoming film Zack and Miri Make a Porno. News Askew has you covered on that front. The thing that piqued my interest the most was that the clip shown at the convention featured Justin “I’m a Mac” Long and Brandon “I’m Superman” Routh as a gay couple. The casting news on this just keeps getting better, doesn’t it?
• Lastly, AICN gets its second mention in today’s linkdump for providing the trailer to Oliver Stone’s George Bush biopic W. The accents don’t seem right, but the casting seems superb.

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The Dharma Initiative Wants You!

PHOTO: Trip by hawaii, on Flickr CC BY-NC-ND

Lost’s third alternative reality game debuts this weekend at the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con and, as usual, DarkUFO and Lostpedia are the places to be for the latest information.

Here’s a snippet of the on-site report that Lostpedia has up as of this writing:

At the Octagon Global Recruiting booth, fans are given a waiver form and an appointment time by DHARMA staff (all with Australian accents). At their appropriate time, they can enter the booth, which has cameras on the ceiling (these appear to feed outside the booth so observers can see what is going on). With a set of headphones and television equipment, participants are shown images or given a series of questions, and have to say what first pops into their heads. Some of the images in particular are reportedly very bizarre. Questions are then asked such as “You just took away a child’s favorite toy. Why?”

This sounds very bizarre, indeed. I haven’t actively participated in either of Lost’s previous ARGs (Find 815 and The Lost Experience). They’ve always been just way too much for me to keep up with. Have you participated? Will you answer the call of Octagon Global Recruiting this summer? Let us know in the comments. 

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Lost News: More Christian and Widmore Next Season?

DarkUFO has the latest Lost scoopage from Entertainment Weekly’s Michael Ausiello, and it’s pretty darned cool news, if you ask me.

In the piece, Ausiello asks fellow Lost columnist Doc Jensen about what a certain bit of fine print in the contracts of John Terry (Christian) and Alan Dale (Widmore) might mean:

Well, here’s where it gets interesting: In the fine print of both their contracts, it states that Lost has the right to pick up series regular options on both actors for the show’s sixth and final season. For insight into what this could possibly portend for Lost’s endgame, please join me in welcoming the man, the myth the legend, guru of all things Lost, Mr. Doc Jensen! “The prospect of expansive roles for Jack’s maybe-dead dad and Penelope’s dastardly deep-pocketed pop suggests a theory about the Island’s true significance. Here is a seemingly-magical place where the lame can walk anew, the impotent can once more shoot bullets, and anyone can crank on ancient donkey wheels and leap through time. In other words, the Island provides the means for death-spooked mortals to cheat the grim reaper. I’m betting that’s why Old Man Widmore is so desperate to find it. As for Ghost Dad, the Island allows him to stick around in his inexplicable spectral state and might even be facilitating a full-blown bodily resurrection; either scenario represents a violation of the natural order of things. In the end, Jack will no doubt have to convince his father—and possibly his maybe-dead half-sister Claire, too—that they need to move on. Regardless, keeping Terry around portends an emotional climax to Jack’s father issue arc.” Really? You got all of that from my one little casting item? Cool.

I love that there are people out there in the mainstream media who are as nuts about this show as we all are. Stuff like this is what makes the wait from the end of May until the beginning of February much more bearable.

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Worth Your Consideration 007 - A GF5 Linkdump

• News Askew is reporting that NBC will re-air Saturday Night Live’s inaugural episode this Saturday night, an episode which was hosted by the recently departed George Carlin. The classic episode will apparently be aired in its entirety, which, according to News Askew, doesn’t happen all that often on NBC.
• I’m embedding George Carlin’s take on the Ten Commandments above because it’s criminal that I didn’t embed something of his when I posted my initial thoughts on his passing.
• On a much lighter note, Gary Vaynerchuk has posted the episode of Wine Library TV that was filmed in Boston recently, an episode that I made it into the city to see last week. I think it’s a perfect “entrance” episode for anyone who is mildly interested in wine and in seeing what Gary does. There’s a great blend of humor, education, and flat-out thunder here.
• Apple will apparently be releasing a free remote control application for iPhone and iPod Touch users which will allow them to control iTunes from anywhere in their house. This is something I’ve seen quite a few people clamoring for on the Apple boards across the Web. The real key, for me, and for a lot of others, will be if this works with the Apple TV. I loves me my simple two-button Apple TV remote, but it would be nice to have something a little more robust when I needed it.
• Lastly, for the comic book fans out there, be sure to check out Newsarama’s poll of what titles the pros think we consumers are missing. The Walking Dead, which Brandice recommended to me recently is one book that gets mentioned as a must-read.

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Octagon Global Recruiting

Have you signed up with Octagon Global Recruiting yet? They are operating “on behalf of the Dharma Initiative” and “currently seeking volunteers to contribute to an important new research project.”

The Dharma Initiative is a multidisciplinary research collective dedicated to improving the human condition through innovative scientific research.

Our directors are recognized leaders in their fields, with distinguished research histories in a wide range of social and scientific disciplines.

You can sign up to help them with their apparently not-so-silly experiments at OctagonGlobalRecruiting.com. They contacted me by e-mail today, and it sounds like they’re really interested.

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