In Which It's A Question of Who Not To Kill

Ask DC

by DICK CHENEY

I don't what you heard about me...

Welcome back to Ask Dick Cheney. Who else will answer the hard questions about Lost, and other confusing stuff, like why Mario Lopez is now our president and he demands weekly pressers? Someone check Helen Thomas. Is she dead?

When I came into office, the first thing I did was banish Helen to the back of the room. Do you know she was born without human genetalia? Similar situation to Victor Navasky.

Let's get to your questions.

Has Lost now become a can-you-top-this wherein an episode is purely a form to make fun of other writers' plot twists?

Hurley has now lost any connection to the events. He's just along for the ride to make fun of the show. Lost has done things with plot not even Nabokov would attempt. Its latest creation is the plot turn in which a character suddenly realizes he HAS to do something completely nonsensical because it's his destiny.

Hey brainiac, maybe running into the middle of the Hostiles camp and asking for the vagina you came out of before she's given birth to you with a loaded weapon wasn't the brightest idea.

Neither was Daniel's pedo conversation with young Charlotte. Are the writers now just getting high and watching To Catch a Predator?

Did they sound the Adam alarm on American Idol just so now his fans think he's in trouble and start voting in droves?

Even my gay daughter is into Adam. He's kind of like Elvis, but if Elvis was an unemployed loser living in Echo Park. He's everything to me. But really, how can you focus on anything but the abortion of the performance that Jamie Foxx delivered onto the viewing public. He's the anti-Susan Boyle. He's actually becoming less famous as I'm talking about him right now.

jamie, my intuition is that you should never sing againDid Joe Biden see that you were in the running for Worst Vice President Ever and just want to run away with the title?

I resent that, and I wrote a firm e-mail to the person who sent in this question. There were far worse VPs than me. I mean, some of them owned slaves! For some reason, I was never permitted to own slaves. I did briefly toy with going back to that time, but I would have had to pack a lot of Rogaine, and I'm not keen on letting the media into any of my lighter treasons.

Still: "I would tell members of my family — and I have — that I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places now," he said. "It's not just going into Mexico. If you're any place in a confined aircraft and one person sneezes, it goes all the way through the aircraft."

Let's not swear off Mexico so soon. Those people are the salt of the earth.

The White House was forced to issue a statement explaining that Biden really meant to say something completely different, and altogether reasonable:

"On the Today Show this morning, the vice president was asked what he would tell a family member who was considering air travel to Mexico this week. The advice he is giving family members is the same advice the administration is giving to all Americans: that they should avoid unnecessary air travel to and from Mexico. If they are sick, they should avoid airplanes and other confined public spaces, such as subways. This is the advice the vice president has given family members who are traveling by commercial airline this week. As the president said just last night, every American should take the same steps you would take to prevent any other flu: Keep your hands washed; cover your mouth when you cough; stay home from work if you're sick and keep your children home from school if they're sick."

What would be the appropriate rejoinder to J.J. Abrams if I were to see him on the street?

After this mind-numbing Jimmy Kimmel appearance, I would say a dickslap™ or maybe just a circumcision.

There's so many things I want to say to you, J.J. First off, who the fuck is named J.J.? 10 year-old boys and Harlem Globetrotters, mainly. I can't believe you did that to Star Trek. That was so, so stupid. You shouldn't have done that. This is like The Phantom Menace all over again. He's now not just ruining television shows that he's created; he's ruining other people's television shows.

What do next week's promotional photos tell us?

Somehow, Jack is back.

As Bill Simmons put it the other day: Fox has dueling "Guys, this is stupid, can't we just fast-forward to 2009 again?" and "I should be getting huge paychecks to star in crappy romantic comedies" looks on his face." This is sad but true. Let's just throw him into the 24 universe and never speak again of him on Lost.

On the other hand, maybe we can just fuse him together with Patrick Dempsey.

Who else can they kill to drive up ratings for season finale?

We can only hope they kill off Jin finally, as his sole function now is to contribute a line about how he'll do whatever it takes to get back together with Sun. This is so we can sob for realsies when he finally gets back with Sun, stroking her hair, we'll be like, "He talked about this in many previous episodes."

We can only pray they kill Kate, as she speaks solely in backstory, addressing Jack as "past partner" and shooting darts into Juliet with her doe eyes. Meanwhile Sawyer and Juliet are holding hands like bros. That's your girl, James. She's not your bro.

The end of this season is a slow build towards the detonation of a hydrogen bomb, which will effectively alter the timeline and prevent any of Lost from ever happening. Is this the secret wish of the show's producers, kind of like killing off the whole show — we can return them to the lives they might once have led. It's a morbid thought if you're Locke though. He may not want to let Jack alter the future like that. I smell a power struggle.

What would you do differently from Barack Obama if you had rightfully taken the Republican nomination for president in 2008?

Oh, I could never be president. When you're the president, you can't tell people to go fuck themselves.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording.

lost: where it's okay to be a pedo"Blood Red Moon" — The XX (mp3)

"VCR" — The XX (mp3)

"Teardrops" — The XX (mp3)

In Which We Are Not Related To The Next American Idol Adam Lambert

Camptown Races

by MOLLY LAMBERT

Saying that American Idol sucks is nothing new. It's not that it sucks. It's not that it hasn't produced a solid winner since season four's Carrie Underwood, and that nobody has even come close to matching the American Dream come true talents of Kelly Clarkson. Its suckiness is part of its entertainment value. It is often a train wreck, and that can make for compelling television. But most of the singing sucks. Most reality television sucks. That which doesn't is generally maligned.

But on Logo, RuPaul's Drag Race has done the ultimate in redeeming camp by rescuing that most oft-maligned television genre, "reality," from the trash bin it's been slowly crawling out of. Drag Race demonstrates that reality tv has not only entertainment value, it can be a completely uncynical exercise in positivity. Idol is supposed to be like that, about the triumph of the human spirit [as Susan Boyle showed Simon elsewhere], but it still just comes across like a karaoke contest with product plugs.

Idol contestant Adam Lambert in drag

What's weird is that I love Drag Race for all the reasons I find Idol embarrassing. Both are about Camp with a capitol C, but where Drag Race wears these references proudly, Idol is cloaked in Simon Cowell's agitated straight guy's laddish homophobia. The constant digs at Ryan Seacrest's sexuality, calling him a "sausage dog" et al, seem at odds with the show's sensibility, which is otherwise very gay-friendly and generally styled like a bad seventies variety show. [To be fair Simon also hates (pretend hates?) women]

more fansecrets at Fan Secrets

Yet Simon seems as enamored of Adam Lambert as the rest of the judging panel. And still I hate him. No, it is not because my last name is Lambert. It is hard for me to explain because it is hard for me to understand. Why do I hate Adam Lambert, so campy and flamboyant, so utterly musical theater in every way, but love the contestants on Drag Race, who are actually drag queens? I really have no idea.

I think it's because I hate his patented "sing the song the opposite of however it's originally sung" thing that seems to trick the judges. It can't be because I hate flamboyance and camp, because I love a video of Cher singing in a giant shoe as much as the next Jesus Christ Superstar enthusiast. Maybe it's his faux-modesty. His stupid outfits. His cheesiness. His shrieking voice. 

Who do I like? Why Allison Iraheta of course. The scrappy No Doubt singing teen with the Manic Panic'd hair. Yet I know that she is destined for failure, and that Adam Lambert is going to win. Certainly he is better than some of the other male contestants. Danny Gokey makes my vagina retract inward in horror. Kris is cute but otherwise sucks at life. Matt is infinitely forgettable. Anoop can actually sing but happens to have come to the show at a time it trends towards rock and not so much to the boyband type singers of yore. 

I loved Scott MacIntyre until I found out he was just pretending to be blind, like Julia Louis-Dreyfus on Arrested Development. Speaking of Arrested Development, the new Fox animated show from Mitchell Hurwitz called Sit Down Shut Up sucks. It really sucks. It reminded me of late nights on Comedy Central when nothing was playing but reruns of Duckman.

Since I know Adam Lambert is going to win, I have started trying to get used to it. I think he just embodies several things that evoke strong reactions in me: Los Angeles 80s hair metal, musical theater showmanship, MySpace hair, cabaret, guyliner.

My roommate Jess thinks I am just mad because he has my last name, and will soon become the most famous Lambert since Christopher Lambert, the Highlander. Maybe she is right. If there's anything that can make me like Adam Lambert, it's knowing that he starred in the musical version of The Ten Commandments as Joshua opposite Val Kilmer as Moses. He might be growing on me. 

Molly Lambert is the managing editor of This Recording. She tumbls here.

"The Tracks of My Tears" — Adam Lambert (mp3)

"Black or White" — Adam Lambert (mp3)

"Mad World" — Adam Lambert (mp3)

In Which Lost Violates Its Own Inner Chi

The Dumbest Professional Killer Alive
by DICK CHENEY

The dream. Every night it's always the same.

I'm a little boy walking through my hometown. My dick is super-huge, because in my dreams I'm always well-endowed. I'm trying to walk home, but I keep finding the same street at the end of wherever I go. A man finds me there. He's wearing a mumu and he smells like a skunk masturbating. He tells me that I'm going to be the vice president one day, and that I'll run the whole world. And then he shoots me in the face.

he can't say he didn't see this coming

This dream is reflective of reality: some enterprising hippie is always going back to try and save the future. But lately, it's not just hippies killing me in my dream. And no longer are people telling me I'll be the vice president one day.

setting the record for interminable press conferences...this guy

The people who kill me in my dream now say one thing: "If it wasn't for you, we wouldn't have elected him." "Who?" I say. "Obama," they answer. At first it was 60 Minutes. Then, he started guesting on Heroes and The Office. Pretty soon he was on television three times a week. Three times a week turned into every night.

Like Benjamin Linus, our president can't get enough of his own press. And someone is trying to travel back in time to ensure I never exist so that Obama won't get elected. It's the perfect plan.

I know what Sayid Hassan Jarrah is going through. I too have many lives on my conscience. Families without homes, because their president is addicted to watching himself on TV. I have half a mind to go back in time and prevent myself from ever existing. One thing and one thing only stops me: Faraday said you can't change the fucking timeline.

Where is Faraday? Who knows. He's probably doing yeoman time travel work. I half expected him to pop up during Adam Lambert's phenomenal rendition of Smokey Robinson's "Tracks of My Tears" on Idol last night.

"I brought you some chicken salad...unless you are planning to kill me later on perhaps?"

You can't change the timeline, and yet young Benjamin Linus sits dead somewhere in the jungle. There are only two possibilities. The first is that Linus somehow weathered a bullet to the heart, and is still alive. The second is the possibility that Linus dies in every version of the timeline.

"I'm doing a blond now"

Let's take possibility one. Having lived through these events, it's possible that the elder Linus made his way off his sick bed on the other island and was able to communicate with his young version of himself, and ensure that he wore some kind of protection from Sayid's killing bullet. This would allow him to live to a ripe old age.

The second possibility is that Linus dies. Since we meet Linus later on, it's possible that the two Linuses are not one and the same. We believed that the older man was Benjamin Linus, but he could be Henry Gale for all we know. We have no proof that the two are one and the same, except the show's POV storytelling. Taking Benjamin Linus' name and place within the Dharma Initiative would be a clever way for the hostiles to infiltrate Initiative if they knew what had occurred. With the Senior Linus dead, there would be no one to refute this.

Either way, one thing is for goddamn certain: you cannot change the timeline. (The next episode is even titled "Whatever Happened, Happened.")

Then again, Sayid always was one to learn things the hard way. This is approximately the 8,000th time he has slept with a woman on Lost only to find out she was deceiving him in some way. This time it was somehow more forgivable, because honestly who could believe that a bounty hunter could be that foxy?

In Dharmaville, things are getting a bit on the edgy side. LaFleur and Juliet had a good thing going, and the only one of the castaways who seems amply satisfied with his new digs is Hurley, and that's just because of proximity to the cafeteria.

the fucking tater tots here are out of this world you guys

Presumably Jin was driving the van around because he was finally looking for Sun. Once again instead of finding Sun he finds Sayid. The only screen time Jack Shepard can manage is when his wet hose is flailing around. His meek little firefighting smile is just about the saddest thing we've ever seen.

Where is all of this going? I'm going to put myself out on a limb and guess that when the Dharma Initiative gets dumped into a mass grave, it's the Losties writing the check. They're going to win this war for Benjamin Linus, and they're going to complete the Swan station. The only question is, what is going to motivate them to take the lives of Horace Goodspeed and Co.? What is going to end female fertility? What is going to put a premium on young children, and what is going to bring the Losties back to the future?

I have but one answer for you.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording.