Feel free to comment here before, during and after the big game on all things related to the cultural phenomenon that is The Superbowl.

Discussion and spoilers from the final season premier below.

Links and miscellanea

• This video is really impressive. It’s a retelling of the crash of 815, with clips from several episodes edited together so that the crash is viewed in real time.
  
• Evangeline Lily has put herself up for auction on eBay.

Winning bidders will get lunch in Honolulu, Vancouver or Los Angeles and proceeds go to the Go Campaign, a non-profit that helps fund development projects in the third-world. (Link via Jorge Garcia’s blog, Dispatches From the Island, so you know the auction’s legit.)

• Here’s a timely Lost parody song by the Fine Brothers:
  
• These very cool Lost posters make me wish that I had talent in the graphic arts.

  

• The LA Times has a feature about Lost fans who traveled to Hawaii to attend the Season 6 premier over the weekend on Waikiki beach.
• Jeff “Doc” Jensen at Entertainment Weekly says that this scene from the season 1 pilot is worth revisiting in light of the way the show has developed.
  
• Many Lost fans (including myself) managed to avoid watching the leaked first episode before it aired.
• Matthew Fox and Evangeline Lilly are saying that after Lost, they won’t do television again. Josh Halloway says he “plans to pursue film work.”
• Here’s yet another article discussing the religious themes in Lost.

Observations and speculations

• So what we now have is a crisis on infinite earths scenario. Or at least two worlds. Its an alternate realities situation. And while that sort of thing usually doesn’t appeal to me, I’m not all that crazy about time travel story lines either, and last season seemed to work out okay.
• In one reality (let’s call it “LA X,” just like the episode title), everything is right were it was before Oceanic flight 815 broke apart over the South Pacific: Locke is still in his wheelchair, Kate is a fugitive, Charlie a junkie, Rose and Bernard a happily married couple, and Jack a conflicted son hoping to bury his father. Except, something happened to his father’s corpse en route.
• In the other reality, the lostaways who were in DHARMA ‘77 have been catapulted forward to the time just after Jacob was killed.
• So who did we not see on the plane?: Michael and Walt (perhaps for obvious reasons–after all, we can’t have Young Walt back again); Shannon (although we do see her later in a taxi at LAX< so maybe she was on it after all UPDATE: As pointed out in the comments, that was Claire, not Shannon. In the island timeline, Claire is likely dead.); and the Tailies (though, of course, they weren’t in the first season either, so they didn’t appear in any of these scenes). No Nikki and Paolo either. That might have been kind of awesome.
• Who is on the plane who really shouldn’t be there? Desmond. Huh. Remember that Jack and Desmond had met once prior to that time, at a sports stadium (was it the Rose Bowl?), so no alternate-dimension deja vu is needed for Jack to think Desmond looks familiar.
• Rose is reading a magazine named “Weekly Woodsman.” I don’t remember that.
• Sitting next to Locke on the plane is Frogurt.
• LA X Jack seems to think that there’s some sort of significance to the small bloodied spot on his neck, and I agree with him. No idea what it is, thogh.
• When Jack meets Desmond on the plane, the book Desmond is reading is Salmon Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories.
  
• Was Desmond really on the plane? If so, that could mean that Operation Jughead reset not just the Oceanic 815’s timeline, but also Desmond’s. (If not, I guess it means Jack is delusional.)
• In the LA X universe, the barracks (aka DHARMAville) are at the bottom of the ocean, like an Atlantis bungalow village. And if you looked very closely, you would have noticed a cameo reappearance of our DHARMA shark swimming near the ruins of the three-toed statue.
• The Island universe begins with the extreme eye close-up of Kate, up in a tree.
• It’s kind of comforting—nostalgic, even—to see Sawyer and Jack as enemies again.
• Another great cameo was seeing Artz again. Immediately following his appearance, Hurley tells Sawyer, “Nothing bad ever happens to me. I’m the luckiest guy alive.” From this, we might infer that the LA X time line does more than just put things the way they were before the crash, as it also seems to have removed Hurley’s curse.
• Sun and Jin appear to be back to the same dysfunction that they had before the crash.
• Locke seems to have lied to Boone about going on his walkabout.
• I liked Lapidus’ line about the Jacob squad: “They say they’re the good guys. I’m not buying it either.”
• When Jacob appears to Hurley, he’s wearing a white shirt, as he was (if I recall correctly) in every scene. The other guy (who some call Esau) is always wearing black.
• Jacob knows that Hurley can see dead people. Unlike what Miles does, he can actually have conversations and walk with them. That seems to confirm that Hurley’s visions are not merely delusions.
• Jacob’s explanation of his death was interesting: “I was killed by an old friend who grew tired of my company.”
• Classic Sayid moment: “Can I be of assistance? Excuse me.” *busts down the restroom door*
• Of course, when I saw Charlie, I assumed that he had OD’d on his heroin stash, but he appears to have attempted suicide by choking. Seems like an overdose would be more pleasant.
• Before Juliet dies, she tries to tell Sawyer, “It worked.” How does she know? Just seconds before that, she was saying “It didn’t work.” Very strange.
• Now we know the nature of the Man in Black. He is the Smoke Monster, and he can, as we surmised, take the form of those who have died on the island (or presumably, those of corpses who are present on the island—think Yemi and Christian Sheppard). What’s more, when he does so he can understand the thoughts of those whose bodies he assumes, just as he knows John Locke’s final thoughts when Ben strangled him.
• Bram was carrying around with him his own personal satchel of ash, which he uses to make a circle of protection around himself. Yet another question answered: the ash around Jacob’s shack was there to protect him from his nemesis, the Smoke Monster.
• The voice overs of the pilot’s voice in this episode appear to have been recorded by Greg Grunberg, who played the pilot in Pilot. Grunberg is a childhood friend of JJ Abrams.
• What was with the big bearded hippy on the plane with the hat pulled down over his face? That was strange.
• Sayid is wearing Horace’s jumpsuit. I either didn’t know that, or had forgotten it.
• The book that Montand, the corpse seen near the entrance to the Temple, had in his pack is Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, in French (“Crainte et Tremblement”). The book is Kierkegaard’s meditation on Abraham’s commandment from God to sacrifice Isaac, and the ultimate concept of faith.
• Just before Jack is ambushed by some Temple-dwelling Others, we hear whispers and see a dark figure in the background. Suddenly, these Others seem more like the Others from Season 1, mysterious and powerful, with ancient dress and eschewing modern technology. And they are barefoot. Very different from the Others in Season 2 and 3. I wonder if there was a conscious decision to return to a more primitive existence. Or maybe it’s a Temple thing.
• Fugitive Kate is a bad ass. It’s nice to have her back. Notice that the Marshall has with him the Haliburton case that figured centrally in a certain episode in Season 1.
• At last, we have a Japanese character, so I can show of my Japanese language skills. Unfortunately, most of what he says is basically the same as the translation in the dialogue. At one point, he says (referring to Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sayid) “It would have been better if they hadn’t come here. We can’t excuse them from having seen this place. Shoot them.” Later, he asks Hurley if he met Jacob, and to prove it. Then he calls Hurley a liar and again tells the Others to shoot them. When the translating Other asks Japanese Other what happened to the water at the spring, he replies, “I don’t know what happened.” Incidentally, the form of Japanese that he speaks, while not exactly rude, shows that he considers himself to be superior to those he’s speaking to—he’s speaking down to them and not being polite in his manner of addressing them.
• Cindy, the flight attendant, seems to have adapted well ot life with the Others.
• When the Japanese Other breaks the ankh? That was cool. We got an answer to the question, “What’s in the guitar case?” The ankh itself was a classic MacGuffin—it was what was in the case, but it was not itself important.
• Sun chooses not to reveal that she can speak English. At this point, in the LA X universe, she has not decided to stay with Jin.
• Jack gives up on the CPR for Sayid awfully quickly. You would think that someone who was drowned for only a few seconds could be revived through CPR.
• The Others in the Temple clearly know that the ash will protect them from the Smoke Monster. But I wonder if Ben knew that. Remember, Ben himself summoned the Smoke Monster to get away from the mercenaries. Now it seems like Ben didn’t know much about Smokie at all.
• The way that the scene between Ben and Esau at the end was very well done. Watch Esau/Locke’s speech when he is sitting down and how the mood changes when he sits forward into the light, then sits back into the shadow.
• Esau tells Ben, “I want to go home.” We have no way to interpret this statement yet. Where does he come from? What does going home even mean for him?
• Do we think that Locke’s knives and Christian’s body ended up in the same place?
• Jack tells Locke, “Nothing is irreversable,” which can’t be a purely medical statement.
• Esau tells Richard, “It’s good to see you out of those chains.” From his perspective, everyone was being held captive by Jacob, and now they are free. Others don’t seem to agree with him on this view. Maybe that’s what he means when he says he is “very disappointed in all of you.”
• At the end of the episode, Sayid returns to life. At least, we might assume that it’s Sayid and that the Smoke Monster hasn’t infiltrated the Temple already.

It’s good to have Lost back. Answers are coming, even though (naturally) more questions are still being raised.

What do y’all think? Good episode? Are we keeping up with everything? How will this dual reality play out? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

I recommend y’all watch the series. Last night’s episode was good enough that it gets my tenative recommendation. We’ll see if it lasts.

NOTE: The post below is (I hope) free of Season Six spoilers. Please try to keep it that way in the comments.

Links and miscellanea:

• One of the challenges of the final season will be satisfying fans who are going to be demanding answers. Producers Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof discuss this issue in a recent interview:
  

  It’s very dangerous to basically create a checklist of answers and then start trying to tick them off, because we want to make sure we’re telling engaging stories. For us really, while the mythology is important, for us it’s a story about these characters. And so most of our focus has been on, how are we going to resolve the character stories?

  We really feel we are very committed to this notion of not stripping the show of its essential mystery. …

  There are sort of fundamental elements of mystery and magic to the show that are unexplainable, and any attempt to explain them would actually harm the show, and in our opinion, the legacy of the show. So we’re trying to find the right blend of answering questions, but also leaving the things that should be mysterious mysterious.

  My nominees for “mysteries” that will not be answered: the meaning of the numbers; the source of the island’s powers; how Claire lost her baby fat so quickly.

• On that note, the creators of this list of “100 questions Lost better answer or we’ll be pissed” are just setting themselves up for disappointment.
• Do you remember Cindy, the Oceanic Airlines flight attendent who we last saw palling around with the Others? She’s apparently working for Bissell now.
  
  I first spotted this while my kids were watching something on Nickelodeon and it took me a minute to place the actress.
• Newsweek has a nice feature story about Lost’s final season titled “The End is Near.”
• As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, the Obama Administration wisely decided that it wasn’t worth pissing off millions of Lost fans and rescheduled the State of the Union address for a night other than February 2. (I enjoyed Lindelof’s reaction: “I’m a lifelong Democrat, but when I first heard they were considering Feb. 2, I was like, ‘That motherf***er!’”)
• This piece from the Onion News Network is brilliant.
  
  Final Season Of ‘Lost’ Promises To Make Fans More Annoying Than Ever
  I especially love that they interviewed Cuse and Lindelof for the piece. That’s quality journalism.
• Michael Emerson (Ben Linus) talks about the end of Lost with TV Guide (without giving anything away).
• And, finally, how do the characters of Lost make PB&J?

I imagine there is going to be a flood of media stories in the coming week. I’ll try to highlight some of the best ones in the first part of next week’s post.

A priori Observations and Speculations

• Now where (and when?) were we?I must admit, I haven’t put a ton of thought into Lost over the break. In fact, I have to strain a little bit to remember how it all ended up. Even for someone who followed the show as closely as I did, Season 5 was just really confusing. You may recall that the season followed three basic narratives (two of which merged at halfway through the season). In one, we found out what happened to those who remained on the island after the Oceanic Six (Jack, Kate, Aaron, Sun, Hurley and Sayid) left. And what happened was, they (Sawyer, Juliet, Faraday, Miles) skipped through time for a while, discovering interesting things about the island and its history, until finally coming to a stop in 1977, a time when the Widmore/Hawking led Others occupied one part of the island, while the DHARMA crew, led by Pierre Chang and including a young Ben, occupied the other part.
• Meanwhile, John Locke, convinced that he must bring them back, visited each of the Oceanic Six in order to convince them to return to the island. Eventually, Jack, Kate, Sun, Sayid and Hurley board an Ajira Airways flight bound for the island with Ben on board, with a strangled and coffined Locke in the cargo hold, wearing Jack’s father’s shoes. Oh, and Frank Lapidus is the captain. Jack, Kate, Sayid and Hurley disappear from the plane in mid-air and find themselves in the Lost island lagoon in 1977, joining Sawyer (now going by the name of LaFleur, head of security for DHARMA), Juliet, Miles and Jin. Jack becomes convinced, with some help from Faraday, that he must detonate Jughead, a hydrogen bomb buried in an underground tunnel beneath the island’s surface in order to put everything back in place. That may or may not have happened at the end of the season when Juliet fell down the hole and possibly detonated the bomb, making the screen fade to white.
• The other story line began when those Ajira passengers who did not de-materialize (including Ben, Lapidus and Sun, as well as new characters Ilana, Cesar, and Bram) crash landed on Hydra Island (probably on the airstrip that Sawyer and Kate helped build when they were captives there in Season 3). After the crash, Locke appears to be resurrected (although the last episode revealed that whoever it is, it’s not exactly Locke). Ilana and Bram are shown to be among a group of people loyal to Jacob and intent on helping him. (Not-)Locke, with the help of Ben and Richard, leads a march to Jacob’s domicile beneath the three-toed statue, where Ben is tasked with killing (the demi-god) Jacob. We find out that (Not-)Locke is an ancient rival of Jacob’s who has been working for years, centuries even, to find a loophole that will allow him to kill Jacob, and finally he succeeds, through Ben.
• So what does it all mean? Honestly, I wouldn’t begin to presume. It was hard enough just remembering what all happened last season. With any luck, by the show’s end, it will all sort of make sense, at least in a big-picture sort of way. And, in some ways “what does it mean?” is the wrong question anyway. It is a TV show, after all. It’s not a sacred text. (No, really. It’s not. ABC promotional photo at the top of this post notwithstanding.)
• The most pressing question, and one that will have to be answered fairly early in the final season will be what effect did detonating the hydrogen bomb have. Did it really reset everything, making it so that Oceanic 815 lands safely at LAX? There are reasons to believe it did, and yet, that possibility seems absurd, as if it canceled the meaning of five years worth of drama. Surely it can’t be as simple as that‐the time spent on the island by these characters has to have made an impact.
• And even if the bomb is detonated and everything is reset, does that mean that Ben does not murder Jacob in the island’s post-1977 future? That possibility is also highly unsatisfying,
• Who knows? To some degree, we are forced to do a little bit longer what all Lost fans have done for the past five years: trust in the writers to come up with something interesting and entertaining. I know the writers have certainly earned a lot of trust from me, so they have this nice capital reserve of slack to tap into. But even that may have its limits if the answers don’t seem plausible.
• Even still, I’m skeptical. To be perfectly honest, I thought introducing the character of Jacob—not the ethereal, ghost-shack Jacob, but a flesh-and-blood being—and his story so late in the game was somewhat jarring. Maybe it will make more sense in light of things still to be learned, but maybe not.
  Can such a wildly dense and disparate story ever be adequately wrapped up? I’m not sure.
• So what questions should be answered in a satisfying way? Here’s my own non-exhaustive list of half a dozen open issues:
  1. Who are the walking dead/apparitions and what role do they play on the island? There are pretty good fan theories out there, but I don’t think this has been adequately addressed. At times, these beings seem to have knowledge and speak in the voice of the person they appear to be. Other times, not so much. Many of them are clearly dead (Christian, Yemi, Horace, probably Claire.) This has been too much of a recurring happening for vague hand motions and appeals to the mysteriousness of the island. I need an explanation.
  2. What was Jacob’s motivation for bringing the Oceanic survivors to the island? One of the biggest reveals during last season’s finale was that Jacob had been involved all along, visiting and touching each of the character’s lives (both metaphorically and physically). Why? How does this fit into the meta-meta-meta plot that we first learned about in the last episode of the fifth season? (Sub-topic: What/Who is Jacob, anyway? Sub-sub-topic: And the other guy?)
  3. What was DHARMA really up to? DHARMA seems like it was a front organization with several different agendas. Pierre Chang undestood that it wasn’t really all about polar bears and fish biscuits. But what was it then? I’d like to know.
  4. Who is Richard Alpert and what is his role/relationship with the island? Everyone’s favorite ageless, eyelined adviser warrants some exposition at this point, I think.
  5. What exactly is going on between Ben Linus and Charles Widmore? We did get some idea during last season that Ben and Charles are fighting for control of the island and leadership of the Others. It’s also fair, I think to infer that their struggle is a one step removed from the overarching battle of wills between Jacob and the other guy (whom some have called Esau). But I still would like a better understanding of what the Ben vs. Widmore rivalry is all about and who made the rules by which they are playing.
  6. What’s the deal with Aaron? Since Season 1, it has been emphasized that Claire’s son (Christian’s grandson and Jack’s nephew, etc.) has special significance. The pyschic told Claire that he must not be “raised by another” (or “an Other”). The forces battling over the island wanted to either protect Aaron, or return him to the island. Why. (Sub-topic: What’s the deal with Walt?)

• That’s not everything—in fact, it’s not even close—but it’s a really good start. Of course, there are other things that I’d like to know and that I suspect will be answered along the way (e.g., Is Juliet dead? Will Kate ever find true love? And, most importantly, just what do the rest of Jack’s tattoos mean? Okay, maybe not that last one). We’ll probably learn some more about the Black Smoke Monster, the Temple and the island’s mythology (although I imagine this is an area that may not be fully explicated).
• I really think that those who watch every episode this season with a checklist in hand will be running the risk of missing out one what Lost really is: top-quality entertainment and storytelling. On some level, even if the finale is less than wholly satisfying, those of us who have watched for the last five years should acknowledge that the show has been a really, really great diversion. At a minimum, Season Six promises nothing less.

Please use this thread to post your thoughts and feelings about the upcoming final season of Lost. But do try to avoid posting spoilers.

A good family board game can be particularly difficult. It needs to be complex and difficult enough to hold the attention of teenagers and adults yet simple and easy enough for young children to grasp and have a chance at. (Basically not Scrabble, but not Candyland, either) If this includes preschoolers, it helps if the game has no reading requirements (i.e. language independent. Which, coincidentally, also helps a game be published in many different countries when only the rules need to be translated:) Rattlesnake is just such a game

Rattlesnake is a dexterity game (meaning the main device driving the game is somehow manipulating it physically) comprised of a small board with numerous cartoon snakes on it in five different colors, a six sided die with a snake of each color on each side (blue being doubled) and twelve very powerful oval shaped magnets (rattlesnake eggs!). The magnets are divided evenly between the players and on their turn a player rolls the die and places one of their eggs on the corresponding colored snake rolled.  Once this is successfully done, their turn is over. If at any time during their turn they cause an egg to roll off the board or clash together, they must pick those up and add them to their allotment. The player who gets rid of all their eggs first is the winner.

That’s it. That’s all their is to it! However, because the magnets are so potent, the snakes are so well strategically placed and the board is so small, it makes for a challenging and very entertaining time. You’ll end up laughing most of the time as you watch aecen magnets shift and waddle as someone tries to insert their eggs ever so carefully. A full game can take up to 15-20 minutes but most are under 10 and many are under 5. The great part is I have yet to find any hardcore complex gamer or 3 year old kid who doesn’t enjoy a round or two of this game. It also makes for a good filler between longer, weightier games to mix things up or when you’re waiting fr more players to show up. So, if you’re for a goofy game for the whole family, just for the kids or to play between your rounds of Settlers of Catan, get Rattlesnake. It’s allure is magnetic!

Number of players: 2-4 (or possibly teams)

Playing Time: 15 minutes

Suggested Ages: 5 and up (Publisher says 8 and up)

All images courtesy of Boardgamegeek’s database

Brendan Benson is a different sort of cat. He has a pretty folkie image, plays an acoustic guitar a lot, lives in Nashville. But every now and then, he picks up his electric guitar and reminds you that he grew up in Detroit and hangs out with Jack White.

Benson’s latest album, My Old Familiar Friend (released August 2009) bridges that gap somewhat, letting us see both sides of his personality, but always edging a little more toward the pop/folk side of the spectrum.  Seeing Benson live reminds you why The Raconteurs works so well as a side project for both Benson and White: instead of pulling in different directions, they blend together and create something better than either one have separately.

Now that Benson is touring behing his latest album, I understand that White is working on a new White Stripes album.  After that's finished, maybe we can get some more of The Raconteurs.  In the meantime, I do enjoy Benson on his own.  He is a very good songwriter and enjoyable to see live.

For those who haven’t seen the DVD and will watch it tonight (or delayed on some DVR), here’s a place to discuss it.  Here’s the conclusion of what I concluded in that older review:

Overall, I enjoyed the movie – enough so that I look forward to the series.  There are a few discrepancies – for a series set almost 60 years before BSG, some of the technology seems more advanced than what BSG had access to, and some of it seems to have hardly changed at all.

The character dramas are compelling, though.  This is a very different series than the BSG that just ended.  It’s Dallas and the Sopranos set in space, as I said above.

The only sour spot is that Ron Moore (once again, as in the New Caprica storyline) seems to justify suicide bombing as a legitimate means of social protest.  However, as this is only the pilot, it’s hard to see where he is going with this underground monotheistic cult, so I will give him the benefit of the doubt and hope that as the series progresses this will be addressed.

A highly recommended view, though it’s not for kids.  I’m sure the edited for TV version will be more family friendly, though.

As I read the book I kept wondering how it’d be handled as a movie.

I didn’t know as I read it that it was shortly to be released as a movie. I felt like there were numerous ways the book could be portrayed—it could be a creepy thriller, or it could have a sort of magical, mystical feel. I was happy when I saw previews for the movie that it they’d gone for the magical, mystical feel. And I was hopeful that they’d change what I objected to in the ending of the book.

They did.

The story is about a girl who is murdered when she is 14. The story is told from her point of view, after she’s dead. The portrayal of what her afterlife is like is simply gorgeous in the movie.

I’m a sucker for a gorgeous movie.

It’s also a sad movie, since the story deals with how her family copes with their grief over her murder. But there are creepy elements thrown in.

I was happy they left out the part of the ending I considered lame, but there were things about the book I like more than the movie. In a book you get inside the characters’ heads and emotions a lot more than you do in a movie. The way each character deals with the loss of Susie is really what I loved about the story. And you lose a lot of it in the movie.

That said, I think it’s going to join the list of my all-time favorite films. It’s definitely a “chick flick”—as my daughter and I were leaving the theater, an older couple were walking ahead of us. The woman said, “I loved that movie!” and the man said, “I thought it was horrible!” She said, “I knew you’d hate it.”

(I should also add that I’m a sucker for either Wahlberg brother. When I tried to explain to my daughter after the movie who Marky Mark was, she looked at me like I was insane.)

I kind of like it.

The Cast – top notch. Chi McBride is always great. I like Mark Valley, who played a supporting role on Fringe’s first season (and married co-star Anna Torv), a lot and think he’s well-cast as Christopher Chance. Jackie Earle Haley is good too, having recently resurrected his career with an Academy Award nomination and a stint as The Watchmen’s Rorschach.

The Plots – ridiculously over-the-top, stretching all logic and violating basic science in the name of fun and profit. In this week’s episode, Chance decided that he needed to turn a airliner upside-down so that he could increase the airflow through the bottom section of the plane to put out a fire “like blowing out candles on a birthday cake.” I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t work. In fact, I’m sure that would just stoke the fire more so that you’d end up with a giant fireball in no time. On Sunday’s episode, in less than ten seconds, Chance made a make-shift parachute out of some tarps and seat-belts and used them to jump out of a bullet train speeding at 200 miles an hour through a tunnel. Yeah. And yet, this show has sort of a guilty-pleasure, retro feel to it that makes it seem worthwhile–sort of like ironic fast food. I didn’t realize it was based on a comic book until I saw the DC credit at the end, but now I know, it makes a lot of sense. If you are the type of person who likes to find plot holes you will either: 1) hate this show because it defies common sense in every way; or 2) love this show because you will be constantly busy finding new and preposterous things to critique.

The Production Values – pretty good so far. They are somewhere between top-flight ’80s action movie and a recent direct-to-video feature film. Lots of stunts and stuff blowing up, lots of fights and mortal peril, good deadpan humor and the requisite glib one-liners. (If anything, the show should work on maybe being a little bit more tongue-in-cheek, which would be easier if the score wasn’t quite so solemn and serious.)

Human Target could lose me, but so far, I’ve been entertained. Each episode is its own self-contained story, so nothing here requires much of an investment. At most, you may find yourself craving handfuls of popcorn and mouthfuls of soda.

Hey! Your tape.  lt´s good.

I know. We made it. 

I  mean, it´s rough, but, unbelievably, it shows promise.  I’ll put out your record.  Any profits we split down the middle after I recoup expenses, okay?

Whatever.

                                                      -High Fidelity

The brave new world of the music business just gave us another interesting peek behind the curtain through this open letter from the band OK Go.

As anyone knows who has not been living under a rock, it’s getting more and more difficult to make money in the music business. That’s not just a problem for labels (who have been scrambling to reinvent themselves or dying a slow death for years) it’s a problem even for bands, not to mention all the other marketers, distributers, promoters and producers that used to get paid by the labels.  Used to be that bands celebrated signing a deal with a major record label.  That was how you knew your ship had come in. 

 Of course, it didn’t always work out that way, but typically the record label was willing to pay advances to artists and pay for all the expenses of recording, producing, marketing and distributing the album and take the risk that they would get paid back, plus a nice profit, through the sales of the album.  A lot of artists complained about the percentages that the labels made on album sales, but the percentages were high because the label was taking most or all of the financial  risk.

Well, many had pronounced that business plan practically dead.  Interestingly though, it’s not completely gone.  From their letter, it’s obvious that Ok Go (and presumably other bands) apparently still get many of their recording expenses paid up front by labels  like EMI.  EMI, being EMI, can apparently still afford to front a lot of expenses, at least for proven bands, on the assumption that enough people are still paying for music from traditional sorts of outlets, like record stores (really?), Target, WallMart etc. and less traditional ones, like band websites, iTunes,  Amazon, etc., that they will be able to recoup expenses and make a profit.

There are a lot fewer labels that are able or willing to do that, however, and they’re asking for a lot more for it, like revenues from YouTube(?).  It’s news to me that YouTube can actually generate revenue for a label, but apparently it does.  However, (and here’s the tricky part) not when the video is embedded on other sites  (Huh).  What that means is that OK Go, because their video is (rightfully, let’s face it) owned by the label who paid for it, can’t let people embed their YouTube video on their blogs or facebook pages or other sites. 

But how does the letter end?  With an embed code for the video (see below)!  Something tells me EMI (and their lawyers) haven’t got this brave new world all figured out just yet.

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.

Is all of this good or bad for bands, consumers, and music in general?