“it’ll come back to you.”

Halfway through our phone conversation, mapping the day, that the bus would deliver Pete from our nation’s capital to East Broadway, and that I would take the train and meet him, he appealed to me, “I must find a shop to buy gold fronts.”
“Cheap ones or expensive ones?”
“I’m serious.”
“I know.”
“Any kind.”
“I got you from plastic to platinum.”
I have now viewed the entire first season of Lost. What I like about it: Allegory. Fantasy. Written by comic-book fans. References bits of philosophy, of math, books and pop culture (is Walt the reincarnation of that kid from Twilight Zone: the Movie? the writers are fellow nerds of the right age, methinks yes)–but it’s also creating its own mythology, its own archetypes even, conjured as the show unfolds. The writers complicate the story by using simple, broad elements (like the hatch) and letting the characters react–it’s great mystery writing. Great character development. Great conflict resolution. Plus, who doesn’t love exploring the time-tested friction/overlap between science and magic, between reason and faith. Or government and god. I haven’t read any of the Lost fanblogs–well, maybe I’ve snuck peeks at Flight 815— so surely you’ve heard this already, but this is my initial impression of it.
Now if any of you Lost fanatic/math geniuses would tell me ’bout the godforsaken numbers, I would be pumped.
In other news, I am thrilled to be panelizing at the Center for New Words Women, Action and the Media Conference at MIT in Cambridge at the end of March–keynote speakers Maria Hinojosa, Farai Chideya, and Caryl Rivers!!–generally diagnosing what it means to be feminist and politically engaged journalists in 2006. My panel is called “Beyond Bust and Bitch: Feminists in the Mainstream Media,” during which I believe I will be talking with fellow feminist writers, including Marisa Meltzer, Kara Jesella, and Rebecca Davis, about applied feminism in the mainstream media.
At its most basic level, this means that I discussed “Wait: the Whisper Song” approx. 472 1/2 times in 2005. At its broadest, it means that in the wake of the third wave and the era of Alito and Dowd, we existed uncomfortably like bacteria, attached ourselves to any buoy we could find, and fought with our minds. Sign up now, the panel roster is inspiring nine-million.
p.s. how amazing is caryl rivers’ photo? I want to take a series of contributor photos holding nothing but ancient office equipment.