I think it’s impossible not to frame this review in a particular context: this is the last regular episode of LOST, ever. The penultimate LOST episode. The almost-an-end-of-an-era episode. The fat lady is about to sing, and it’s impossible to get past that. But, all that said, I want to take a second to step back and try to see the longview. Have hopes and expectations lined up with reality? Is it going in the direction we thought it would? What’s up?

If there’s one thing that I think every LOST fan can agree on, aside from the fact that the show is awesome, is that we haven’t been getting nearly as many answers as we expected. I think it’s funny, as this debate rages on, that there are those who act like apologists for LOST’s writers. We get the slightest little hint at an answer and they’re all over it to say, “See! We are getting our questions answered!” They work so hard to help us find merit in every episode despite the fact that we’re constantly disappointed. These guys are real troopers and I think we have to applaud their incredible faith. But, guys, let’s be realistic: no one is pleased with the amount of question that have been answered—we’re all disappointed.

But should we have expected more? Did we really think that we’d get all of our questions answered? I mean, deep down inside did we? From its inception, LOST has been about leaving us hanging, about piling on more and more mystery instead of explaining it away. This show has never been about tying things up neatly with a bow, and I don’t think we should expect anymore, not from this final season and, I would suggest, probably not from the finale either. In fact, they’ve so much as told us that they aren’t going to explain it all, that we won’t be left completely satisfied. If we chalk that up to the nature of the beast, then I think we can atleast get on with it.

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In case you thought it was over, it’s not, and it only gets better. Earlier in the week I blogged about Kenny “K-Strass” Strasser. A comedian of sorts who has been going around to local American mornings shows claiming to be a Yo-Yo champion. His tricks are outrageous. He’s awkward beyond belief. And he’s hilarious because he’s got everyone fooled.

Strasser, of course, is not a Yo-Yo champion. You can tell right away, just by looking at him. Everything about him says that he’s putting you on. Well, he’s still going at it.

WGN9, one of the news networks that he duped, was pretty steamed by the trick and did an expose on him. They’ve been issuing takedown notices to YouTube, so I can’t actually link to any of their videos but there is  a clip of his original appearance on their network still available.

WGN9′s expose—of their own guest!—revealed that Strasser was a fake. Well, duh. But they didn’t stop there, they wanted blood so they invited Strasser back into the studio. This time, Strasser appears in a wheelchair with both of his arms in slings wearing a shiny black eye and a neckbrace. When asked about his accident he explains that “some of our Yo-Yos are the size of chocolate chip cookies” and then falls asleep.

With Strasser in the studio this time is Eric Stringer, an individual who Strasser himself called the “Garth Brooks of Yo-Yo” in a previous appearance—Strasser also claimed that Stringer was dead and, on live TV, paused for a moment of silence. Apparently WGN9 didn’t do their research very well because there’s no mention of Stringer’s apparent resurrection. Stringer, who I think is wearing a wig, plays the mature older father figure, despite appearing to be the same age as Strasser, quite well. While the station suspects the Strasser is a fake they seem to have no clue that they’re being had by Stringer as well; sure he can do some tricks but guys, they’re pulling your leg!

Now the brilliant part here is that not only did Strasser dupe this network, but he doesn’t it again because the anchors are taking this serious. They ask serious questions about Zim Zam, about Stringer, and about Strasser’s past as a  Yo-Yo champion. They’re still pushing for actual answers and it just goes to show that they’re still bring strung along. Not only by Strasser but by his buddy Eric Stringer, who is clearly in on the joke as well. And no one at WGN9 is the wiser.

Stringer claims to be the new “spokesperson” for Zim Zam and their Green campaign; a company and a campaign which don’t even exist. He claims he was brought in to “salvage” things and the hosts are just eating it up!

This is comedy gold. The network is obviously playing right into the hands of this clever duo and are about as dumb as a doorknob to the bleeding obvious!

You can watch the interview in its entirety on WGN9′s website which, admittedly, is very lacking in quality but the video isn’t available elsewhere.

Update (10:48pm): I am beginning to love this campy little hometown network. The video clip that played for me immediately following the Kenny clip was talking about a university giving out free iPad “tabloid” computers to all their freshman so that they could “learn even better.” I’m not making this stuff up!

I came across this brilliant individual on the Intertubes this morning and I just had to share.

Kenny “K-Strass” Strasser has been making the rounds on local American morning shows claiming to be a Yo-Yo Master with a non-profit organization called Zim Zam, LLC. The catch is, he is anything but proficient with a Yo-Yo. Strasser is a prankster and comedian of the highest order, it would seem.

A quick YouTube search reveals a plethora of appearances by K-Strass on the sets of unsuspecting morning news programs. Once on camera K-Strass is an awkward looking guy in green shorts, a white t-shirt with suspenders, and a yellow hat. He looks nervous, but I suspect that it’s all part of the act. The tricks K-Strass performs are hilarious. His special, the “Blue Flying Angel” involves him twirling around two handfuls of four Yo-Yos each—in one appearance, losing grip on one of them in the process. His tricks are clearly below amateur and don’t even involve any real Yo-Yoing, but  he passes them off as genuine routines.

But his tricks aren’t the real trick. When given air-time K-Strass does anything but Yo-Yo, instead he talks about his failed marriages, his childhood and being spanked by his father, and even takes calls on his cellphone twice during one appearance. In one appearance he requests a “second of silence” after the loss of a supposed close friend, the “Garth Brooks of Yo-Yoing.” And, when he showed up for an appearance on another local morning news show, he told the hosts that he brought his Yo-Yos, but forgot the strings—instead describing the tricks he would’ve performed.

K-Strass is a master comedian and is already drawing comparisons to the late Andy Kaufman.

Here’s a clip of K-Strass from one local morning show:

And it’s not just pulling pranks, K-Strass, in my opinion, has reached the height of hilarity after an appearance on a local NBC station. Perplexed by his performance, the station was prompted to do an investigation segment on their own guest to find out who Kenny Strasser really was—something you think they’d do before having him on the show.

Strasser even remains in character under investigation.

Unfortunately, the station involved has pulled the video off of YouTube but as the NBC report suggests, that this might all be part of some kind of documentary that’s under production. I would love to see all the behind-the-scenes finagling of a guy pretending to be a Yo-Yo champion, and scamming American morning TV. Five stars.

This week’s episode of LOST, like the earlier Richard-centric episode, was entirely a flashback. I don’t think we saw any of these kind of episodes during earlier seasons so it’s pretty neat to see two in the final run. Like Richard’s episode, “Across the Sea” did a lot to move the good vs. evil plot forward and reveal to us a bit more of what the island is really about. Do we come away really knowing anything new? I don’t know, I’m still on the fence about that. But it was a solid episode with lots of information and a lot of intriguing developments. An enormous 2,200-word essay is below the break…

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Someone I was talking to last week predicted that LOST would end with a twist. The twist would be that there was going to be another season. How I wish that were true! With only two episodes remaining before the 2-hour 2.5-hour season finale, I feel like we’re wringing our hands in desperation, wondering what to do next, once our beloved television program ends. I think maybe we’ll join a cult.

But in all seriousness, LOST has become more than a mere television show for those who have remained faithful through all six seasons. It’s become this wild journey, this all-consuming mystery—it’s taken on a life of its own. I remember sitting on the bed with Maria, my wife (then girlfriend), in her dank basement apartment—student housing!—in Waterloo going through the first season of LOST on DVD. She was sick that weekend and we had nothing to do so we watched LOST, which we heard from friends was good. The apartment was later gutted after being plagued by plumbing and mold problems and I did develop a significant mold allergy later that year but was it worth it? I’ll leave that to you to decide.

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Damon Lindelof, one of the talented writer’s for TV’s LOST sat down with The Hollywood Reporter this past week to talk about the show’s 2-hour finale. The full text and video interview can be found here, and I thought I’d spend a few minutes going through the cliffnotes, and adding some of my own ideas and wild theories.

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This is one of those episodes of LOST that moves so quickly you barely have time to catch your breath, and when our normal LOST viewing party was canceled at the last minute we rushed already breathless to plunk down in front of our TV, just in time. I don’t think we ever really caught our breath until the credits rolled. Despite a pattern of only answering approximately zero to one question per episode, the pace of this week’s “The Last Recruit” was indeed staggering, and a lot went down even if we didn’t learn a whole lot about the over-arching plots.

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