In Which We Always Pick The Wrong Woman

One Is Satisfying Where The Other Lacks

by DICK CHENEY

So much has changed since we last spoke. Lindsay Vonn broke my heart, but that is neither here nor there. Unlike my probable foe in the 2012 presidential election, my heart may be fucked, but at least my lungs aren't full of tar and bice. So much of what America is about consists primarily of getting a second chance to make the wrong decision.

On The Bachelor: On The Wings of Love finale, my aviator friend Jake Pavelka bonded with a particularly disturbing creature and she took him on a wild ride around the floating mountains. Speaking of which, why were the mountains floating? Wasn't anyone just a wee bit interested in that technology, or did they just have too much fun baking unobtanium into weed brownies?

the weirdest night at the fantasy suite ever James Cameron is so retarded I spent most of Saturday afternoon trying to write a screenplay where Robert Pattinson voices the part of an animated leprechaun who looks sort of like Tucker Max. Such was my desperate attempt to win some kind of achievement award from the MPAA, or at the very least, NAMBLA.

kids, just say no to tenleyThis year's Bachelor finale was looking to be a dud, until Jake and college admissions officer Tenley went for a sail as their last date before the final rose and while on the ocean he told her he wasn't physically attracted to her. To clarify, he explained that sexual attraction and physical attraction are two different things. Marshall McLuhan magically showed up in the boat and explained the error of Jake's ways, after which he, sobbing, dumped Tenley.

there is nothing a man hates more than a woman wiping sand from his face apparentlyWe can have no real sympathy for a creature such as Tenley, although to be fair when Jake was crying and she was crying, I was a bit surprised to hear him say, "I'll never forget you." He clearly stole this from Cesare Pavese, or perhaps Ray-J after he wrapped his sex tape with Kim. But I digress. Jake's chosen partner is a former Hooters waitress named Vienna, which is the name of a city, not a woman.

Vienna is clearly wild in bed; more precisely in one tender moment she informed Jake than he was permitted to defecate at any point during sex, a development he, being a pilot, equated to pissing in the air while flying a plane.

"tenley, we both suck at primetime television. thoughts?"Actually, Jake's conversations with women consist mostly of "I missed you," or "I'm hungry" or "Let's ride in a helicopter" or "I'm not physically attracted to you." He also broke out a personal favorite, "something just isn't right." In fact the immortal Chris Harrison and Jake shared a tender moment onstage gossiping about just this bon mot. Since Tenley never got the explanation she deserved from Jake (instead she made lifelong plans to be his ffffffriend), I'm happy to explain it to her.

Tenley, Jake didn't want to get with you for the following reasons:

1) You seemed sort of high maintenance, maybe not totally, but he didn't like the way you reacted when he said he wasn't physically attracted to you

2) You had maybe a good personality, or a mediocre personality, but caffeine really seemed to perk you up a lot

3) Jake was a little concerned that when he brought up a Dallas friend of his named Mark Bernstein, you sort of cackled and said, "A Jew!"

4) Vienna permit him the penetration of several more orifices than tame college admissions officers like yourself are generally used to

5) Tenley sounds like the name of a Scottish terrier

6) You dressed in Vienna's color on After the Final Rose and everyone was so embarrassed for you.

This was the polar opposite of the all-time greatest Bachelor dump on The Bachelor: Paris, when Travis told Moana that they had a fun fling, but it was now adult time. Still, this was one hell of a finale and I'll be happy to gift the newlyweds a copy of my forthcoming book, Pam and Jim Will Give Birth To Peter Dinklage.

In the far more dyspeptic world of Lost, Sayid also faced a critical choice of woman. He carried around a picture of the girl who married his brother while he was torturing people and being a hero in the war...against the United States. Then he hopped a flight into LAX, went to his brother's house, and caused a lot of unnecessary death.

honey, your uncle's a sociopath, your father's broke, and your mother is Jacob's most feared enemy  As if in answer to my quintessential 'j'accuse Cuse" of being a fervent racist, this week's episode started out ignoring all the show's white characters except Kate, which is something akin to making someone feel tall by surrounding them with short people. A similar strategy led to the creation of Julia Allison's role in Nonsociety.

Every time Sayid tries to get out, they pull him back in. It was obvious from his return to parallel Los Angeles that all he wanted to do was pack up that bulletproof SUV, move to New York, and intern for Crushable. Eventually, down the road, he wants to rewrite Associated Press articles like the great Alex Balk and hope he can integrate the holier-than-thou attitude over time.

Sayid spent most of the episode fighting the temple's noted samurai, Dogen. It maybe isn't the best idea to leave your opponent in the fountain of youth, but I guess this is all we can really except from Sayid. It's rare that a show can't find anything to do with a character with only ten episodes left its existence, but instead of writing the weird but difficult to avoid french kissing scene with Cindy, the stewardess from Oceanic 815, Sayid had to add to his body count, which has grown so large that he accidentally runs into the guy (Ben Linus) who he nearly killed when Linus was 8 and it's not even a plot point.

Benjamin Linus himself has taken the opposite trip of the meteoric rise of NYC's most highly regarded blogger, and now seems to be as high as 'intern' on the pecking order of Jacob's followers, or as I term them, the Obamapologists. Next week's episode is Ben-centric, and will likely involve Linus reprising his role as high school teacher and teaching civic virtue to the chumps from Starship Troopers (my favorite Verhoeven movie, obviously). 

Sayid's brother borrowed too much money from some shady people, and apparently was so annoying on set that they only gave him two scenes. It turned out the man he borrowed from is Keamy, which makes little to no sense. If - as I suspect - Lost's parallel universe is a training ground where candidates prove their mettle in different ways than they did on the island, Keamy's presence indicates that Sayid may have failed this test.

Evil Sayid is a lot better than soft-spoken Sayid, and they have already done a bunch of episodes where Sayid is revealed as the nicest torturer ever to torture. Next time you triple kill some bad guys, Sayid, it is best practice to blame one or more kills on a hunting accident; it worked for me. One man's lifelong ambition is another man's disturbing reality. I have ascended to the heights of the American political process, but all I really wanted was for people to think my blog was edgy (hence the Alex Balk reference).

Supposedly life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans, and there is no better example of this than Vienna Girardi, who got proposed to despite the fact that she inscribed 'I love you' in mud on Jake Pavelka's stomach. The Man in Black has marshalled the forces of darkness for 2012, and I'm happy to tell you, he's going to get one hell of a fight once I mount a blonde for transportation purposes.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is the former vice president of The United States. You can find his previous Lost recaps here.

"So Light Is Her Footfall" - Air (mp3)

"So Light Is Her Footfall (Metronomy remix)" - Air (mp3)

"So Light Is Her Footfall (Breakbot remix)" - Air (mp3)

In Which Lost Ascends To A Higher Plane of Clear

The Sad Tale of Jack and Bobby Joe

by DICK CHENEY

Hey you guys. As you probably know, I've been in the hospital all week. The docs say I have a case of the owies, and my lifelong love affair with processed cheese has come to an end. I can no longer discern the difference between catheter and penis, flashback and flashforward, Cuse and Lindelof. I am at the mercy of the demons which have come to claim me, and I'm pretty sure I saw Karl Rove hiding in my bathroom reading Joshua Ferris' abortion of a novel.

Let me get to some reader mail:

Chenesies,

You recently asserted that Lost was racist and that Graydon Carter owned slaves. This all seems accurate, but do you also feel Tyler Perry is racist, and where do you stand on The Blind Side?

Lola in Las Vegas

As if you had to ask. The only thing more offensive than Sandra Bullock's neck is the fake horseplay between Simon Cowell and Ellen DeGeneres. (And if you ask me, Kara DioGuardi looks like a really smooth potato.)

I personally think luge and potentially skiing should be shut down for being dangerous. Also, is Al Michaels alive or dead? The result is inconclusive, and potentially relevant to Lost insofar as Al Michaels might be the smoke monster. But in the end isn't the Olympics just a way to get teenage girls to hate their bodies and pad Bob Costas' bank account?

Someone also wrote to tell me my rhetorical questions are weak. I told her that the rhetorical question is the ideal device for manipulation of others, for it offers a heady uncertainty and a skeptical jauntiness that offends the other party, provoking them into action, positive or negative.

don't eat milanos in front of me when u know my diet is gluten-freeThis is the relationship of Jack Shepard with his parallel universe son Bobby Joe (was that his name? It is what I shall call him). Bobby Joe wishes Dad/Jack could understand the new music the kids are listening to; Chopin and probably "How You Remind Me" if his son's dramatic piano recital wasn't interrupted by more "candidate" tomfoolery. The idea of Jack being a dick to his son like his father Christian Shepard is a true story from Matthew Fox's childhood. You can see him with his real father in this archival photograph:

Later in the parallel universe, Jack brought home a pizza for his boy and then acted like it was a special prize. It's a pizza, Jack, it's not your son's reward for loving you. I hope it was gluten-free, you asshole. Perhaps Jack is Hurley's real father, and Bobby Joe is Hurley before calories became something of a way of life. Jack trying to raise a son is a hilarious process, since unlike candy machines and directional lighthouses, you cannot just smash your son to bits when you become frustrated with him.

david you're so angry but you're really good at the piano there budI guess Jack probably wanted a son who was more into Driveshaft? In any case, it was jarring to see Jack mournfully staring out at the ocean, for some reason nostalgic about the son he never had. Fortunately this flashsideways ended on a high note, with Bobby Joe and his daddy riding off together on a tandem bicycle.

oh hey guys - didn't see you through my tearsiesBack on the island, Jack and Hurley are running into Kate. Accidentally. In the middle of the jungle. The ensuing encounter is so painfully awkward, especially because Jack can tell from Kate's slightly ammonia-based hormonal emission that Sawyer has recently left the general area. Jack doesn't trust anyone, he's been a lone wolf for too long. It's good to know you can still run into old friends on the island, even ones who hate your new friends. It's like the fucking Senate.

abc accidentally signed this actress and she will be the new ShaftI have no idea why the parallel universe Jack also had to find out about Claire Littleton, except that they'll be meeting up to talk about when Aaron should start hating his uncle. Actually, this is only important in that candidates (Claire included) appear to be the ones who have survived into the alternate universe. So far, it is definite that the following people are candidates: Hugo, Sayid, Sun, Locke, Shepard (Christian or Jack), Claire, and that Boone and Charlie and Rose were candidates.

I wish I could go back to 1995, when did you order the code red jokes were still in vogue Hugo Reyes is actually looking somewhat svelte these days. He's proved he's a lot more open to the power of suggestion than Jack is, although he did stand up for himself against a samurai. Since I have spoken fluent Japanese since the War of 1812, I can reveal that Dogen told Hurley, "You're lucky I have to protect you. Otherwise I'd cut your head off," indicating that Dogen has also received messages from Jacob, probably handwritten, probably love letters.

"your son brings a slight tremor to my testicle jack, doctor mister jack shepard"
Somewhere in the jungle - forgotten by Kate Austen, his dead best friend Charlie and his loving wife - Jin learned a lesson that James Caan did awhile back - never piss off the crazy woman who tends to your injuries. The show needed a wild card, although why this had to be achieved by sacrificing the sex appeal of Emilie de Ravin to a mysterious "infection" remains to be seen.

I like your voodoo Aaron, and I think Kate will tooFortunately, I have had time while under doctor's orders to prepare this Hot Emilie de Ravin Memorial Gallery. No doubt Barack Obama will find the time to do an interview with Katie Couric about this important cultural event, since he does an interview for the Super Bowl, the Westminster Dog Show, and every time he jerks off watching Undercover Boss.

The guy in the hospital bed across from me has a very predictable political perspective, but he did come up with this theory: what if the Adam and Eve in the caves are actually Jacob and the Man in Black before they were fighting over the island? I thought about this for awhile while amusing my nurse with a yogurt moustache.

Claire is now a heartsick puppy. For some reason she is captivated by the idea of reclaiming the child she had already promised to abandon. Like Jack, she is traumatized by hanging out with their father, who has presumably vacated the premises of Jack's corpse now that the Man in Black inhabits Locke's carapace. Sometimes I try to explain Lost to myself and I just cry for hours on end.

it didn't work out with libby, but he found something else on the island with three holesWhile I'm off my feet recovering from God's attack on my heart, I plan to rewatch the entire series from beginning to end, stopping only for mere moments when my cravings for Space: Above and Beyond become too prescient for me to ignore, and occasionally choking myself a little during the really epic parts of either show.

i just came by to pick up my paycheck for this episode, carry onIf I was to review all the seasons of Lost, it would go a little something like this:

Season 1: It's all boring backstory until somebody finds a hatch

Season 2: The show's undeniable best, with the introduction to the Dharma mythology and Michelle Rodriguez

Season 3: Maybe the show's worst season, as it took five episodes for Jack to do surgery on Ben for no real reason. Evangeline Lilly started looking like Kermit the Frog around episode six. The names Nikki and Paulo will haunt me all of my daze

Season 4: The freighter season was pretty entertaining, but we haven't heard the word Widmore in awhile so what was the point? The Oceanic Six make The Candidates look lame in comparison, unless they are possibly the same thing

Season 5: Easily the most confusing season of television ever with four different time jumps and eighteen different deus ex machina, I loved every second of it

Paul Wolfowitz's theory is that it's only mere episodes before Kate will die, forever binding Jack and Sawyer to one another and they will become the new Jacob and Esau, respectively.

But look, if Kate Austen can be a candidate for something, why can't I? This is why recent days have me pondering the feasibility of a 2012 presidential run assuming Don Cheadle doesn't want it more than God wants to stop my heart from beating.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is the former vice president of the United States. You can find his review of previous episodes here.

"Transmitted to Fulfillment" - Haunted Ghost (mp3)

"Artschool Asshole" - Haunted Ghost (mp3)

"Nightwalkers" - Haunted Ghost (mp3)

In Which He Is Now The John Lennon of Domain Names

The Man Who Could Not Usually Be Silenced

by DICK CHENEY

Lost

Season Six

I heard last week's episode was focused on Kate. I was on Fox News during the original airing. I drunk gchatted some peeps later that night after a case of Buffalo Trace and a prostitute named Susquehanna. The only one up at 4 am is Charles Krauthammer, and after busting his chops for being in a wheelchair like Locke and Magic Johnson for a week in the late 1990s, I asked him if Kate ran from her problems for the entire episode. He typed "lol" and then excused himself to empty his bedpan.

Charles Krauthammer jokes aren't how I made my reputation - Lost recaps with read-between-the-lines political coverage are. Let's face it - I could write a more coherent argument than Glenn Greenwald just by using the frontal lobe of my brain.

I guess I'm just caught up in the critics of my evil deeds, like New Locke, a.k.a. the Man in the Black. The writers of Lost asked themselves, "Would it be cool if we created a NEW major antagonist of the series in the final season of its existence?" They answered yes, and recast Locke as the villain in the saint's body. At least the Borg had a shiny-looking cube.

It's difficult to enjoy the inspiring story of Locke getting fired for cause when I have nightmarish flashbacks to Sawyer showing Kate the gay wedding ring he bought for Juliet in last week's episode. This week, Sawyer pretended that never happened, while still cracking wise by drinking himself to death in his underwear.

In the meantime, New Locke found a boy in the woods who looks like young Jacob. Revolutions have been started from less, I think this is basically how the careers of Charles Manson and Bob Dole began. Everywhere I go people ask me how I got my start in politics. "I was in the jungle," I tell them. "I ran out of food and water. I saw Satan, and sold him my soul. Now I've come to take yours." And I then bring out these creepy fake teeth that I have to replace the lack of my not having real teeth anymore and scream like Chunk in The Goonies.

I really don't understand what happened to Lost. You have these iconic characters, and yet all you can find to do with them is go to some weird cave on the side of the island and look at "candidates" for the island's savior. That may be how the Democratic Party chooses gubernatorial candidates, but it's a far cry from a political process.

Lost is trying to move back towards the simple pleasures of its first season. Although this current one has suddenly vaunted itself into the competition of suck, the first season was actually incredibly slow and deliberate about what it hoped to accomplish. The larger vision of the island that was developed in the ensuing seasons is totally obliterated by the character-based stories the show wants to return to.

Now that we've found out Hurley is Rose's boss, I have come up with some other ways the cast can be suprisingly connected with each other in parallel Los Angeles:

- Claire makes a young mother faux pas and asks Walt to babysit for Aaron

- Sun gives Charlie a massage complete with happy ending

- Boone appears in a not-very-well-received adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' The Rules of Attraction

how was there no 'bueller' joke associated with this flashforward?- Kate sells her revolutionary book concept, Eat Pray Run

- Shannon explains the concept of thetans to Sayid before he joins Scientology

- Juliet commits the classic screwup by transferring Miles' domain name to a big corporation without notifying him and then lying about it

Seeing John Locke teach his fiancee about how there are no miracles recalled the brilliant lessons of George Bluth. Every time Katey Segal's face gets in my face, I can't get what she did to John Ritter out of my mind. Who knew that Married with Children would spawn three successful careers, one major eating disorder, and one complete failure? Speaking of weird casting, putting regulars from Lost on every other failure of an ABC show is wrong in so many ways. If they try to recast Michael Emerson as one of the guys with the girl in the pizza place, I'm going to have to commit an unrelated murder on whoever thinks Better Off Ted is funny.

harold and richard, get off this show and head to white castle guysThe only show I can really watch and enjoy besides Lost is of course Archer, where H. Jon Benjamin is doing a virtual clinic in how awesome he is at voice acting.

So far Aisha Tyler and Jessica Walter are underwritten and annoying, but it's comforting to find a show that's honest about its objectification of women instead of just putting Evangeline Lilly in a wife-beater for the better part of five seasons.

"wait a second - does the doc have a higher number because he's kewter than me?"The parallel universe Los Angeles is likely to ensure what we should already know by now - even in this wonky version of the future, the names written on the wall of the Man-in-Black's masturbation cave were headed for the island even if Oceanic Flight 815 never crashed at all.

You're probably wondering why I've been in the news lately. It's partly because I saw Sarah Palin reading off her hand and wanted to make the save, and partly because if k.d. lang is confident enough to look like that in public, so am I.

A young tumblr's story has recently inspired me to speak out. The man who created pitchfork.tumblr.com had it stolen away from him. Tumbledore's fight to become the Yoko Ono of domain names has already embarrassed one really insecure tumblr "director of outreach." Her outreach is about as effective as Ari Fleischer was at hiding my more profanity-laced e-mails, and her memoirs about this incident on a rival website leave something to be desired. A lot of hurt feelings hopefully won't mar the fact that my favorite blog in the world is located on tumblr, and also my second favorite. Never hire an oversharer to do what an undersharer can do just as well.

you hurt the feelings of a beautiful young tumblr in the prime of his tumbling. all he wanted was to post pics and songs for uWe now all tenderly await meaghano's memoir about her customer experience with tumbledore, replete with a raunchy sex scene where she dry humps a printed out e-mail. With a little luck this can turn into something Don King can really get behind.  Hopefully I will read about meaghano and tumbledore's 2012 nuptials in an elaborate NYT wedding profile where instead of them posing together, their websites pose for a series of photos. The initial enmity between the two melted over a series of e-mails and meet-ups at Pinkberry. The two quickly found they shared a grudging respect for Choire Sicha, and neither knew how to pronounce his first name.

tumbledore claims nothing! it is you who have to answer for your sins!!!Young tumbledore demonstrates a devil-may-care attitude that Sawyer would do well to follow. At the very least he won't have to do awkward rope ladder stunts with a former paraplegic and he can focus on having heart-to-hearts with Richard about how new Locke wants to kill his friends. The island's jungle has turned into more of a sausagefest than Gawker.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in an undisclosed location. He is marketing a line of "Free Tumbledore" tee-shirts that you will be excited to hear about in the coming daze. You can read his review of the Lost premiere here.

"Killing the Ghost" - Matthew Ryan (mp3)

"Jane I Still Feel The Same" - Matthew Ryan (mp3)

"They Were Wrong" - Matthew Ryan (mp3)

Ryan's incredible new album, Dear Lover, comes out this week.