I received Douglas Coupland’s Shampoo Planet for Christmas this year. At the same time I received the Talking Heads Greatest Hits record. This is an omen.

Understanding Shampoo Planet, I think, is the same as understanding what Talking Heads were doing back then. It’s about the future. It’s about a time in history when technology, innovation, and invention are racing forward at light-speed. At the same time, things are beginning to decay. Global warming is beginning to catch up with us; toxic waste and acid rain are seaping into the common lexicon. Advertising is everywhere. It’s all product, product, product, and this is called progress—a Shampoo Planet. This is what the Talking Heads are about, in my opinion, and this is what Coupland is getting at too.

This is Coupland’s second novel, following up on his incredibly successful Generation X. It feels like a second novel. It feels full of energy, packed with excitement, buzzy and confident. The novel follows a twenty year-old protagonist, a budding entrepreneur, obsessed with technology, the future, and business. His favourite book, he confesses, is the biography of a successful C.E.O., he expounds his love for things and his shower is a shampoo museum. At the same time, he senses decay all around him. His family is crumby, wrapped up in pyramid schemes and bad relationships. His town, once dominated by The Plants—factories which produced all kinds of wonderfully toxic and terrible things—are shutting down, the government moving in to clean up. He searches for meaning but things are moving so fast.

If I had a complaint about this book it would be about the section somewhere near the end. For the most part, Coupland’s writing style is crisp, quick and future-forward—it suits the plot well. But near the end it gets a bit mushy; the plot moves quickly, but the writing can’t keep up. It feels a bit stretched, but Coupland recovers in a huge way and comes through with a brilliant and honest conclusion to his character’s odyssey.

All told, Shampoo Planet is wholly authentic and that’s its selling point. If there’s one thing that Coupland is very good at, in my opinion, is taking the temperature of the times. Shampoo Planet is that temperature reading. Coupland nails it. Here he’s embedded deep in a culture that he understands very well: it’s the future, then, and it’s a great read.

In contrast to last week’s episode of LOST, this week’s episode, “The Substitute,” actually got down to answering some long-standing questions. Like I had hoped for, this week’s plot focused around John Locke. We learned what happened when Fake John dragged Richard off into the jungle. And we get a glimpse into Locke’s life in the alternative universe. While there’s a lot that can be said about the alternative universe, and the John that lives there—the Hurley that lives there too—I want to focus instead on a pet theory of mine, and run it through a test case.

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State of Play, a review in three parts: it’s a thriller, it’s brilliantly acted, and it’s fun.

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Whew, what a ride. According to the preview trailer for episode 4, called “The Substitute,” this episode will focus heavily on Jacob’s nemesis, as John Locke, on the island.

From the look of things, it’s going to be a very good episode. We see John and Sawyer, never the best of friends, interacting in the jungle; Sawyer with a gun pointed at John’s back, at one point. We see Richard, in the jungle, warning the Survivors that John wants to kill all of them, every last one. It looks like high stakes, and it looks like they’re focusing on what I had hoped they would last week: John and Richard.

Ever since Fake John dragged Richard into the jungle after killing Jacob and Ilana’s men I’ve been wondering what’s up, and waiting to find out. It looks like we’ll finally know.

First of all, it looks like Jacob’s nemesis either doesn’t have a chance to kill Richard, or decides not to, because Richard gets away long enough to warn the Survivors of the nemesis’ evil plan (which apparently is to kill everyone). How Richard gets away, or why he’s let go is still a subject of mystery, as is Jacob’s nemesis’ rationale for killing all of the Survivors. What exactly is his game? I have a thesis going that the entire premise of the show has been Jacob’s nemesis trying to have him killed, but why, after Jacob is dead, would he need all the other residents of the island killed? I have no idea. Obviously that’s his plan, because as soon as Jacob was killed, the Others at the temple began their fortification, but exactly what vendetta the nemesis has to settled, we don’t know.

I’m very interested in seeing how the whole Sawyer/John thing plays out. Remember, Sawyer doesn’t know that John isn’t actually John but he seems to figure it out, judging by the promo trailer. I’m frustrated by Sawyer, post-Juliet’s dead, and I hope a confrontation with John will shake him back into character. I understand he’s upset and brooding over Juliet, but all the tired mopping around and angst—I want to see the strong, tough, and tender-hearted Sawyer again! I want to see him kick John’s ass, too.

While last week’s episode was good, I really hope this episode moves the plot along a lot more, and answers any of the burning questions we’ve had for years. It looks like it might, so here’s hoping.

Well, this week’s Sunday Round-Up was supposed to be coming to you from south of the border but snow, on that end, has kept us in Canada instead on this Family Day weekend. So, we get to watch Canadian coverage of the Vancouver Winter Olympics and mourn the fact that it’s CTV covering it this year instead of our national broadcaster, CBC. That alone is worth a few words, I think.

Television

Way back in 2005, CBC lost in a bidding war to a broadcasting conglomerate featuring CTV, Rogers and Bell. They were short cash, primarily because of the NHL lock-out that year, which also saw CBC end popular TV shows like JPod. It was a bad year for the CBC, with the loss of revenue from showing hockey matches it couldn’t afford an expensive Olympic bid. So instead, we’re stuck watching it on CTV which, as long as you watch during Olympic Primetime with CBC’s Brian Williams, you’re OK. If, however, you happen to turn on the Olympics during any other time of the day, you’re in for a real treat.

It’s clear that the majority of CTV’s Olympic hosts lack class, taste and are wholly uninteresting. Yesterday’s morning coverage jumped the shark from the moment it began. Case and point: the female anchor soundly muffled up some foreign competitor’s name and excused herself by saying, “Or however you say it.” Tee hee, cute. The male anchor, as if to dig himself deeper into a hole of shame found it necessary to mention the slam poet, from the Opening Ceremonies, and his neck beard every time he could manage it. Even bringing the conversation back to it when it had accidentally strayed. What a winner.

But I think the thing that bothers me the most so far about CTV’s tasteless coverage of the games is the bit we saw yesterday morning in which a man-on-the-street goes around during the Opening Ceremonies, trying to find spectators who are drunk and having a good time. “How many pints have you had so far?” he asks a group of rowdy, obviously drunk Brits. And this is the Olympics that I encouraged all of my students to watch, brilliant.

Film

Although most of this week’s TV viewing will be taken up by the Olympics, I suspect, we have got our hands on a couple more of this year’s Oscar picks for Best Picture and might have a chance to watch them soon. We’ve seen The Hurt Locker, and the next two lined up are Precious and District 9. I’ve heard relatively nothing about Precious, and mixed reviews for District 9. I’m interested in District 9 mostly for it’s South African connection—Maria and I have both been.

What I’m most excited about is Friday’s release of Shutter Island. Hopefully by this time next week we’ve seen it, and can give you a mini-review in the round-up.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Maria’s come to report that CTV’s Olympic Morning has featured a gripping round-up of last night’s parties and a quest to spot George Clooney. Riveting, I must go watch.

If you ever watched wrestling in the mid-to-late 90’s then you might have heard of Dwayne Johnson, The Rock. He was a bit of a dink, kind of full of himself, but a really good wrestler. He has this catch phrase, an insult really, he’d use the term “jambroni”. If you’re a moron, according to The Rock, you’re a “jambroni”—and who better to tell you you’re a moron than a professional wrestler.

That said, whenever the name “Adam Giambrone” came up in the news, the first thing I thought of was The Rock. And the name came up often: as the head of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) that tends to happen. But this week Giambrone’s been in the news for another reason, for being a “jambroni,” as The Rock would say.

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Since, The Hurt Locker is this year’s underdog for the Best Picture at the Oscars, Maria and I thought we’d give it a try this past weekend.

First impressions, going into this film, was that it was going to be a war movie set in modern-day Iraq. I pictured a kind of tactical-based combat movie, with a mix of interesting characters and meaningful drama say, like, Saving Private Ryan. Now Saving Private Ryan is good in its own right, but it’s been done. So I didn’t have incredibly high hopes for this film. But instead, The Hurt Locker was quite different from my expectations and quite good.

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