Have you all signed up for Western Civ 101?
 

Peter Ames Carlin - Originally published Dec 14, 2004

You don't have to study philosophy to appreciate "Lost," ABC's fantastic new drama about the spooky desert island travails of the survivors of a plane crash.

Go ahead and thrill to its potent mix of action and mystery. Ponder the characters' lives and the secrets they've brought to their accidental home. Get a charge from its sly humor, and keep track of its many cultural references. ("Star Trek," VH1 and the title of a fairly obscure Pete Townshend solo album from 1983 played a part in the most recent episode.)

But if you really get into it, you should at some point consider the connections between survivor John Locke, a paraplegic until he rose, literally, from the flames of the wrecked airliner, and the 17th-century philosopher who shares his name and, as it turns out, a few fundamental ideas about pre-social man.

Like the show itself, this will leave you with plenty of loose ends to tie together. The moment you think you get it, the next episode will change everything. And that will only make it all seem cooler.

Have you missed "Lost" so far? No problem. ABC repeats the two-hour pilot tonight, followed by several weeks of repeats.
So this is the perfect time to get up to speed. Or, even if you've seen every episode, an excellent time to go back and look for what clues you might have missed the first time around. Either way, let's consider seven fundamental questions regarding "Lost."

* How did they get so lost? The central characters were passengers on a flight from Australia to Los Angeles, which ran into some turbulence powerful enough to rip the whole tail section off the plane. The wounded plane crash-landed on the beach of a remote island in the South Pacific, which, the 40-odd survivors learn from a (briefly) surviving pilot, is so far from the plane's original course (something to do with malfunctioning electronics gear) that the nearest search party will probably be a thousand miles away.

* Does any of this make sense? Not literally, no. The author of the "Ask the Pilot" column at Salon.com has already debunked the "Lost" crash sequence for its vast array of factual impossibilities. But this is a show on which a polar bear can and will stampede through the verdant tropical jungle like a bat out of Hades. And that's before things get truly strange.

* Why should I care? Because once its setting and core mysteries are established, "Lost" combines flashbacks, snatches of dialogue and moments of action on the island to give its characters incredible emotional depth. What we begin to understand is that all of them were, in some spiritual way, lost before they even set foot on that doomed airplane.

In other words, the mysteries they confront are both physical (see also: the polar bear; that creepy Ethan guy) and metaphorical.

* Are you, perhaps, over-interpreting here? No, blast it all. Consider Dr. Jack, whose natural skill as a leader (his super-competence, his emotional detachment, his need to prove himself over and over again) is so clearly fueled by his tempestuous relationship with the father whose alcohol-related death prompted his trip to Australia. Or Sayid, the former Iraqi soldier still reeling with guilt for the crimes he committed while working for Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard. Or Charlie, the faded rock star who had long since traded his love for music for the temptations of fame and drugs. Or Kate, the lovely fugitive who wore shackles on the plane and who hasn't even begun to explain why the marshal guarding her spent his final breaths warning Jack to be afraid, very afraid, of her.

And those are just a few examples. Every character, it seems, was propelled onto that airplane by forces of destiny and desire that are just as recognizably human as they are beyond any human's control.

* OK, that's fascinating. Yes, exactly. And this is where "Lost" departs from virtually every other fantasy/adventure show. For while it's one thing to invent a spooky island stocked richly with unfathomable creatures and inexplicable human presences, it's another thing to elevate it all into a metaphor for the everyday mysteries, horrors and wonders of life in the real world.

* What about this Locke guy? He's not one of the marquee stars: You're not going to find his bald, middle-aged visage on the cover of

The voices are clear and strong, their song crackling with energy. “Early in the morning we’ll be startin’ out, / Some honeys will be comin’ along / We’re loading up our woodie with our boards inside / And headin’ out singing our song.... Let’s go surfin’ now / Everybody’s learning how / Come on and safari with me....”

This is “Surfin’ Safari,” one of the first songs the Beach Boys recorded, in 1962. Compared with the glossy, sex-drenched pop music of the twenty-first century, it sounds impossibly naive, a rattling contraption of tip-tap drums, rudimentary bass, wacka-wacka guitar, and hokey surfer slang. And yet, something vital radiates across the decades.

You can hear it in the music and you can glimpse it on the cover of the album Surfin’ Safari. There you see a cluster of mostly teenage Beach Boys—the brothers Brian, Dennis, and Carl Wilson, their cousin Mike Love, and their neighbor David Marks—perched on a vintage yellow pickup truck that has come to rest on a California beach at dawn, looking toward the horizon. Yes, it’s corny with their matching blue Pendleton shirts and khakis and the awkward way Brian Wilson and Mike Love grasp a board to their sides. But you can feel the anticipation. Something’s coming with the morning.

For the Beach Boys, that dawn held stardom. “Surfin’ Safari” climbed to number 14 on the national singles charts, clearing the way for dozens of bigger hits, “Surfin’ USA,” “I Get Around,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “Don’t Worry, Baby,” “California Girls,” “Help Me, Rhonda,” and other paeans to sun, fun, and romance. And that was just the beginning. In the second half of the 1960s the musical vision of Brian Wilson, the group’s chief composer, producer, and arranger, took on extraordinary sophistication. Even now his most richly melodic, intricately structured songs —“God Only Knows,” “Good Vibrations,” and “Heroes and Villains,” to name a few—touch the horizons of popular music. They also touch the heart of the American dream. Imagining a place where “everybody has an ocean,” “the kids are hip,” and “the girls on the beach are all within reach” merely puts it in the hedonistic terms of teenaged baby boomers.

Which isn’t to say that the Beach Boys have spent their lives fulfilling the promise of their songs. In fact, they spent decades wandering a morass of family dysfunction, mental illness, drug abuse, and money-fueled power struggles. Brian Wilson was usually at the center of the mess. The chief Beach Boy went from creating one of the rock era’s most acclaimed albums (1966’s Pet Sounds) to shelving its much-anticipated follow-up (Smile, recorded in 1967) and then spending decades as a virtual recluse, haunted by his early success and tormented by subsequent failures. In his absence, the other Beach Boys used his lovingly crafted songs to stoke a touring nostalgia machine.

Yet the decades-old “Surfin’ USA” still brings a charge to the air, and the ambitious Pet Sounds sounds as glorious as the absence of the even more revolutionary Smile has been deafening. Now Brian Wilson’s late-life renaissance has led to his finishing Smile, one of the most hotly anticipated pop albums of 1967 and 2004, a complex, symphony-length ode to America.

“I just got hungry to get better,” Wilson says. it’s early last May, and the founding Beach Boy is sitting in a Beverly Hills deli speaking about Smile and a life that has veered between the magical and the horrific. We’re talking in late afternoon; the dawn ended a long time ago. But as Wilson recalls the standing ovation his long-lost masterpiece received at its live debut in London this past February, his lined face takes on the same wide-open expression it has on the cover of Surfin’ Safari. For a moment his watery blue eyes catch the light through the window, and it’s as if he’s back on the beach, looking out.

 Originally published in People, July 12, 1999

When the Allied armies gathered at the outskirts of Nazi-occupied Paris in August 1944, Ernest Hemingway was a step ahead of them. The barrel-chested 45-year-old author and war correspondent had fallen in with a band of French Resistance fighters and was able not only to lead the way into Paris but also to "liberate" one of his favorite haunts, the Ritz Hotel, where his arrival prompted a riotous two-day party. "We had a hell of a good time," Hemingway told his friend and biographer A.E. Hotchner, "until the rest of 'em caught up with us."

Now, nearly 40 years after Hemingway's 1961 death, the world's writers, fighters and bons vivants are still trying to catch up with him. Though he is almost certainly the most influential American writer of the 20th century--his 27 books have sold tens of millions of copies--Hemingway's powerful works are rivaled by his towering personality. "He was larger than life," says author George Plimpton, who knew Hemingway in the '50s. "He was the only writer who was a star."

As his 100th birthday approaches, on July 21, Hemingway's star is once again on the rise. Along with the annual lookalike and short-story contests held on Key West, Fla., where he lived on and off, the anniversary has triggered an avalanche of Hemingway-focused conclaves, articles, books, films and birthday celebrations in his native Oak Park, Ill., and elsewhere. Then there is Hemingway's own True at First Light, a fictionalized--and already controversial--memoir recently edited by his son Patrick, 71. Some critics contend that Hemingway never wanted it published.

Originally published in People, Nov 29, 1999



It's becoming obvious that John Cleese feels annoyed. For one thing, he can't wrap his tongue around the cybervocabulary he needs to speak in the commercial he's shooting for a California Web site design company. For another, his attempts to focus his thoughts keep getting stymied by the technicians parading through the hallway where the gangly actor currently hunches, muttering. When a woman with a clipboard walks up and catches his attention, Cleese seems to snap.

"This always happens!" he says, his voice rising into the sort of sharp yet perfectly enunciated rant Cleese perfected as one or another of the hot-tempered loons he portrayed with Monty Python's Flying Circus. "I'm running my lines and some idiot comes up and interrupts me! What do you think? That I'm old and stupid? That you're going to bring me to my senses?"

At 6'5", Cleese would look imposing even if he weren't standing with shoulders thrown back and nose aloft. But there's a twinkle in his eye, and just before the woman's expression fades to horror, he clicks right back to British charm. "Hello," he smiles. "What can I do for you?"

What Cleese does when the camera rolls again--capturing his buffoonish reporter character's ill-advised confrontation with the heavy-metal group Metallica--shows his unique ability, first seen widely 30 years ago on the Monty Python TV series, to portray characters torn between social haughtiness and emotional anarchy. Cleese went on to a career whose highlights--Python films Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Life of Brian; Cleese's own sitcom Fawlty Towers; his Emmy-winning guest shot on Cheers; and the smash movie A Fish Called Wanda, which he wrote and starred in with Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline--made him one of the most recognized comic actors in the world. "John's performances were the linchpin of Python," says fellow Python Michael Palin. "He's the headmaster turned naughty boy. And he can get away with anything."

By PETER AMES CARLIN

Published originally in The Oregonian, 2005

Let's say your life is a mess.

Or maybe not a mess, exactly, but not quite what you imagined. You're 22 years old and living at home, with a stupid job, no prospects for anything better and, it all but goes without saying, no girlfriend.

It is the winter of 1985. The world around you doesn't look very encouraging either, tangled as it is in economic recession, Cold War saber-rattling and a popular culture that is defined increasingly by the Twin Dons of the Apocalypse, Henley and Johnson.

This is when some people turn to religion. Others study philosophy or punt everything and apply for law school. You, on the other hand, decide to go to a record store.