In Which We Ask Ourselves How It Is Going To End

When In Doubt, Blow It All Up

by DICK CHENEY

These are lazy days but they make me shiiiiine....

Welcome back to another edition of Ask Dick Cheney. As we approach the duel season finales of Lost and American Idol, it is time to come to grips with the fact that the only pleasures television will afford us this summer is the ongoing spectre of Simon Baker solving so many important cases while seducing the hot redhead on the force in CBS' The Mentalist, and whenever USA reruns The Godfather Trilogy.

you will hook up with the mentalist What cliffhanger will Lost leave us with next week to stoke interest for the show's final season?

Since both Matthew Fox and Evangeline Lilly are incredibly important to whatever meager ratings this show is still managing, we can assume they're not about to be written off the show, or written back to whatever lives they might have led: Jack appearing on Oprah to teach kids how to count calories, Kate getting r'd in the v by the meanest lesbian in the California penal system.

Two people already know what's going to happen to the castaways who have been thrust back in time. One is Richard Alpert, who tells Sun that he watched them all die. Here's hoping it's the end of the road for Jack, but the rest are unlikely to meet a similar fate, or else Richard would be surprised to see Kate in 2006.

The other is Eloise Faraday, who as an aged witch sends Jack to the island where she knows she'll kill her son because what he's doing is that important. Jack trusts her. I don't trust her, but I do want to throw her a hot fuck in both incarnations, so I'll give her the benefit of the doubt.

I was thinking today of the list of passengers on Oceanic Flight 815 that Benjamin Linus provided the hostiles with. Why treat them as he did? More importantly, why treat some of them one way, and others another way? The answer lies in what they meant to the hostiles back when Jack tried to detonate this hydrogen bomb.

If Richard Alpert is telling the truth in 2009, he believes Jack and his friends all died. Since they can't die, they must disappear as though they were dead.

Did you see Joe Biden and Barack Obama going to get a burger? What kind of horseshit was that?

You have to realize that when I came into office, I was met with the tragic realization that we were living in the most flammable service economy ever created. I spent every single moment of my waking life in work or prayer trying to keep American affluence going. There was no time for burgers.

God, TV lately is a barren wasteland from which there really is no return. What are you watching anything good?

Not really, I am bored a lot lately. I really don't care what Jessica Biel's tits look like, or if some Mexicans get the flu. I started watching a lot of Jason Statham movies. It's like watching a penis with a slightly off British accent punch people with the tip of his head only. The plot of The Transporter was the most retarded 90 minutes I have witnessed since The Professional didn't end in a pervese Jean Reno-Natalie Portman sex scene. Also, I saw the new Crank movie, and Amy Smart, betch you should have taken Anna Faris' career when you had the chance.

Was John Locke indirectly giving himself advice that wasn't particularly useful the single dumbest time travel moment in history?

Yeah, it wasn't great, but it beats what recently happened to Dirk Nowitzki. Dude got engaged to his girlfriend (he bought her a $250,000 ring! Stupid!) somebody asked for a background check, and that's when it started getting weird. The universe is meting out lover's karma right now. Every single sex act has a corresponding price.

What was your take on the recent Cassie and Rihanna nudes dropped onto an unsuspecting world? What was your most shocking celebrity nakedness revelation?

Rihanna's molten body is by turns disturbing and erotic. I was never that into her - I find short hair and victims to be a major turnoff. Here's my full list:

Turn Ons                                          Turn Offs

subscription to the Weekly Standard     Children

Barns with a lot of hay in them              Handjobs

Domino's breadbowl pasta                    Congressional resolutions

The corpse of Dan Brown                      Dan Brown

"Jesus to a Child"                                  "Father Figure"

What Kobe Bryant Admitted in Court      What Kobe Bryant Actually Did.

Whoa I'll throw a JK in there for our younger readers. Rape is always wrong, unless consent is given first.

Have you seen the new Star Trek film? Is there anything we can learn about Lost from it?

I went to Star Trek this weekend with the lowest of expectations, given that if I saw J.J. Abrams on the street, I would eat his spleen. If you're a douchebag media fuck who knows about as much about Star Trek as Owen Gleiberjew, you probably loved it. In the end, the script was downright horrible - but what else can we expect from the minds that bring us the weekly borefest that Fox calls Fringe?

Then again, Wrath of Khan wasn't exactly Shakespeare. The new Star Trek film gets so many things precisely right that it's hard to hate on it too much, but hey, I'll try. The positives: the casting, especially of Kirk and McCoy, was actually far superior than the original series. The movie looks great, the sets are awesome, and even though there's no Klingons, the makeup was stellar. The space battles are somewhat fun, although too basic to scream about, considering they have been roundly bested about 500 times by Babylon 5.

can you act...blacker?But that's where the fun ends. I mean, the plot is inexorably, horribly stupid. It's basically the plot of Lost, but not the awesome secret island part, just the what the fuck time travel part they said they would never do.

jim, i think i realized that I'm a woman on the insideI mean, any real fan of Star Trek knows that the time travel episodes were always the worst episodes. Time travel is dumb. I tolerate on Lost because at least they travelled back to a great period of American life. In Star Trek, you just don't need time travel. You already have aliens, space travel, galactc warfare, interplanetary intrigue. In short, you just don't need the stalest convention in science fiction.

So in the end you have what is essentially a terribly plotted pilot for a gorgeous looking restart of this franchise. Was it better than Star Trek: Insurrection? Probably, but that movie was underrated and it cost about $60 billion less than Star Trek. I'm a Next Generation/DS9 guy anyway. Fuck J.J. Abrams, fuck Ruthie, fuck Robert Orci, Fuck Alex Kurtzman for that abortion of a show Fringe, and fuck Leonard Nimoy. If I wanted to see him again, I'd just die and go to hell.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. You can read his last Lost review here. Happy mother's day.

i guess you peaked with munich brah"Recent Bedroom" - Atlas Sound (mp3)

"Winter Vacation" - Atlas Sound (mp3)

"On Guard" - Atlas Sound (mp3)

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 Hurley Wrote The Empire Strikes Back, We Just Know It

Lost: The Asian Wonder Years

by DICK CHENEY

Wow, that Justin Timberlake-with-a-bad forehead dude won the judges' save in American Idol? Is he a rumored Adam Lambert love interest? Stay tuned. Actually, tune into Lost instead, where homosexuality is routinely repressed into a belief that one can communicate with ghosts.

Now let's get to your questions about Lost and anything else on your mind.

Have you seen that show Parks & Recreation? Are there jokes on that show?

The only thing I can focus on when it comes to Thursday nights is whether Jenna Fischer is coming to resemble the creature from The Relic as time passes.

What is that little doctor minx plotting?

Jack is a cat. A black cat with a black heart. Last week he opined listlessly that he felt he returned to the island for a purpose. Since the reason he justified leaving the island to himself was to bang Kate, I can only assume he's shooting for the top. That doctor-loving bastard is plotting some kinda of crazy plan to father one of the castaways. Apparently Entertainment Weekly is reporting that Jack wants to give a Cleveland Time Travel Steamer to Daniel as revenge for something. I have never seen a main character of a show so diminished. This is like when Shaq went from MVP to blogger. Jesus.

Is Miles the worst character in Lost's short history, and where does he rank on the rumored degree of offensiveness to Asians scale?

Conservatively, I would say that the guy who plays Raj on The Big Bang Theory is the most racist depiction on television, but there are several other racist depictions to hang our hats on.

I really wonder why nobody went forward with my idea for The Asian Wonder Years. Considering the rampant displeasures of Japanese internment and anti-Asian affirmative action across the country, the least we can do for the Asian-American collective to to give them a bad-ass voiceover.

was it just me or was the dad kind of a dick and wayne kind of dead sexy?What's going to come of all the Tax Day business? Are the Republicans going to run solely on taxes for the next ten years?

Pretty much. Wouldn't you? I just learned my taxes this year will give homeless people cell phones and vibrators. And while I'm not against the homeless getting laid, I sure don't want to pay for it. The only problem with the tax movement is that about 3% of Americans are paying for the free ride of the rest, while the populace call them fat cats. It's an ironic situation, but it certainly won't help the Democratic Party get votes from the unemployed. They hate taxes, too.

how did this actor not play the one armed man in The Fugitive?Last week's Benry Gale focused episode wasn't given its traditional ripping by you. Did you actually like Ben swearing himself over to John Locke's every whim? Could anyone enjoy the awful makeup job done on 'young' Daniel Widmore?

I preferred the relaxing veneer of young Ben Linus: all it takes is a little more hair in the right spot. My daughter's always trying to get me to dye the grey like Keith Hernandez. What she doesn't realize is that when you accidentally, I mean "accidentally" kill a guy while hunting, it helps to have wispy gray hair flowing off your confused scalp. It reminds me of the episode of Seinfeld where Uncle Leo steals books from Brentano's, except with murder.

Linus' entire set of reveals was of course ludicrous, although at least we got to savor the burgeoning hotness of his daughter one tragic last time. Most insane was his visit to the docks where he was 0/3 in killing people Desmond Hume loves! Ben, you've gotten so tame/lame. Talk about fudging your way out of a plot jam. How much more awesome would it be if he just blew Penny and her British-accented son to blue hell and was like, Desmond, you r not kewl to me dawg.

Will the undeniable fact of Adam Lambert's aggressive, exciting homosexuality tarnish his journey to win the competition?

I think it purely depends on what direction he goes in for paramour. I think Hugh Jackman would be a realistic, meaningful choice as an other, while Randy Jackson would rattle a lot of cages in the Los Angeles-area down low community. Maybe Lindsay could postpone her inevitable suicide for a semester and try to turn him straight again. (We were all straight once, even Kevin Spacey.)

fuck jack, marry daniel, kill kateWhy did they build the hatch in the first place?

For the first time, we saw the hatch being constructed. Why you would spend that much time to place an experimental station in that location with that kind of shielding remains to be seen. We did learn 2 (two) things:

* Horace Goodspeed has more up his sleeve than was previously thought, and it's a while until 1992 comes and all these people die in the purge.

*Horace Goodspeed gets amazing island ass.

"haven't you always wondered why you're asian and on a television show"?What is the desire of the faction opposing Widmore that kidnapped Miles in Los Angeles and survived the crash on Hydra Island?

Led by Bram, these fellas would at first seem to be caught up with Ben. However Ben takes no note of them on the flight or the events that followed the crash. He in fact simply cold-bloodedly murders the French dude from Spartan and generally goes on about his business. So who else would have reason to stop Widmore from 'winning'?

These folks seem to originate from the future rather than the past. They're concerned with the island in 2009, not in 1979.Or perhaps they are concerned with both. The only coalition I can think of with that narrow an interest is Jews — that's correct, Bram and his buddies seek to recolonize the Is-land into Is-rael. Those darned Jews couldn't just be satisfied with a small outpost among angry Arab nations in the middle of the desert. They heard there was a temple and a lot of shiksas on an island, so they dragged their Ethiopian friends with them. Seriously though some have suggested George Lucas is after his Empire script and that actually kinda makes sense.

dammit ellen bernstein, you were adorableWhy did the Temple allow Ben to live while killing off such supernumeraries as Mr. Eko and Danielle's hot French boyfriend?

It appears the Smoke Monster takes the form of whatever hot piece is most relevant in your life. Should I have been lifelessly dragged into the temple, I no doubt would have seen my tragically hot girlfriend Ellen Bernstein angrily asking when it would be her turn to receive oral during our undergraduate years.

But seriously, this suggests that the sickness was no sickness, and the island wanted Danielle and her burgeoning child dead, as Widmore suggests to Ben. Therefore by allowing Alex to be killed, Ben was actually serving the island. Now he has a genial position at Locke's side that he will eventually turn against for his own selfish reasons, if Ilana and Bram don't kill his ass first.

Is there anything you want to tell Lost before its 100th episode in two weeks?

The greatest science-fiction-series-ever talk has been thrown out the window, a development that seemed impossible once Locke found Desmond Hume in the hatch. Then came some rather gay choices and a Michelle Rodriguez DUI. But it's a long hard road, one that seemed almost impossible after the intolerable seriousness of the series premiere back in 1987.

Lost has turned into a comedy, but a fairly entertaining time travel comedy that has erased all my positive memories of Red Dwarf. Fortunately I can re-remember those memories on YouTube, and anyway Lost is better at distracting me from the fact that my taxes pay for social programs. Lost, you did it. Congratulations.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording.

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baby your love is just the salt in your eyes