"Rock Box" Track of the Day: Iggy and the Stooges, "Search and Destroy"

Song: "Search and Destroy" by Iggy and the Stooges
Released: 1973
Why's it part of the "Rock Box" playlist?: It's featured in the 2010 Lost episode "The Substitute." It also turns up in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
Which moment in "The Substitute" does it appear?: A drunk Sawyer (Josh Holloway) plays it on a record player as he's paid a visit by the Man in Black (Terry O'Quinn).

From the A.V. Club review of "The Substitute":

I know that our Lost creative team never picks any piece of music at random, so what can we learn from Iggy & The Stooges’ “Search & Destroy?” (Besides the fact that it is maybe the most awesome rock ‘n’ roll song of all time?) The song can be read simply as a reflection of Sawyer’s return to an “I hate the world” attitude, but there might also be something to the lines like, “Somebody gotta save my soul,” and, “Baby penetrate my mind.”

Lost, "The End": "I don't believe in a lot of things, but I do believe in duct tape"

As someone who's watched every single episode of Lost since the still-amazing pilot and recapped the series' entire fourth season for another blog (and never got paid for writing those recaps--as Chris Rock would say, what kind of gangster shit is that?), I'm still processing the events of Lost's lukewarmly received and sometimes frustrating series finale. I wasn't expecting the finale to answer every remaining question about the series' mysterious goings-on. How could it do so in one episode, even with an extra half-hour? I just wanted a finale that gave proper farewells to the characters and brought the goods action-wise like those eps when Sayid busted out his badass breakdance fighting moves, and "The End" delivered in the character and action sequence departments. But was all that time spent in the sideways universe during the final season worth it? I don't think I'm completely satisfied with the reasoning for the sidewaysverse. That whole business with the giant cork didn't make much sense either. Bullet time:

-My favorite recurring Lost theme was the conflict between a man of science (Jack) and a man of faith (Locke). The final season resolved that conflict beautifully, with Jack finally accepting Locke's beliefs in the specialness of the island and dying the way he wanted to (which was seeing his remaining friends leave the island safely) in a pitch-perfect final image that referenced the pilot's first moment and showed how much of an influence the Watchmen comic had on Lost co-creator Damon Lindelof.

-I'm glad Ken Leung's Miles, the character who provided the above one-liner about duct tape, lived to see another day. Bloggers like angry asian man and DISGRASIAN were disappointed that their favorite pair of Lost characters, the supercouple of Jin and Sun, was offed in "The Candidate" (some have even cried racism over the demises of the Kwons and Sayid), but I think the death of Miles, the show's sole Asian American regular and one of the few APA guys in prime-time who's neither a martial arts expert nor a coonin' buffoon, would have been a bigger letdown. (Speaking of Asian stuff, spoken-word artist Bao Phi wrote a nice post earlier this season about Lost's huge Asian American following.)

-I was also jazzed to see Miles' fellow freightie Lapidus alive after the submarine debacle in "The Candidate" because Jeff Fahey, who was underused on Lost but served as great comic relief whenever he did get screen time, is a master at making something out of nothing, ever since his laconic turn as the eccentric title hero of ABC's short-lived '90s procedural The Marshal. One of the reasons why the Star Wars prequel trilogy was an epic fail was because it lacked a Han Solo-esque figure who would wittily comment on the mystical goings-on and serve as a relatable audience surrogate. I like to think the Lost creators took notice of that flaw in the prequels, so they gave us not just one Han Solo-esque foil, but four: Sawyer, Miles, Lapidus and the not-as-cynical-or-snarky Hurley.

-The sci-fi geek in me who enjoyed all the time-travel material during my favorite Lost seasons, four and five, was disappointed that neither the nuke in "The Incident" nor the island's funky science was the reason for the sidewaysverse. The afterlife angle pretty much shot down my theory that Desmond or some other character with extraordinary powers created the sidewaysverse to hide his friends in there from the homicidal Smokey. On a superficial note, Sidewaysverse Kate looked slammin' in that black miniskirt.

-So Hurley and Ben are basically Mr. Rourke and Tattoo now? I bet the new island protector begins each morning by greeting everyone else with "Smiles, everydude, smiles!"

-Since when is Shannon the love of Sayid's life? I thought he was into Nadia. Whatever, man. I'm sure the Sayid and Shannon shippers got their panties wet that night. God, I hate that term "shippers." Other terms I hate are "squee" and "bromance." All those terms should be taken out back and shot and given a burial like the one Rick Rubin gave to the word "def" when he removed "Def" from the name of his label American Records.

-Yes! Lt. Van Buren is cancer-free! Woops, wrong series finale.

"The Best of Jimmy J. Aquino on Twitter," Part 3

My archive of earlier tweets from my Twitter page continues.

Previously on A Fistful of Soundtracks: The Blog: Parts 1 and 2.

In a set of tweets from April, I liveblogged 1991's The Rocketeer.

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I've been rewatching Rocketeer as research for uh... something. Last time I saw it was when it aired on Disney Channel in the early '90s.
4:31 PM Apr 25th from web

3 Disney employees need to be pimp-slapped: Miley the racist ho, the equally racist Joe Jonas and whoever handled Rocketeer's DVD transfer.
>4:33 PM Apr 25th from web

It's nice to finally see Rocketeer in WS, but Disney's transfer is so janky I had the same expression I get when I hear Miley Cyrus sing.
4:34 PM Apr 25th from web


The Rocketeer DVD's non-anamorphic, grainy transfer doesn't do justice to Hiro Narita's cinematography and Jennifer Connelly's cleavage.
4:36 PM Apr 25th from web

Why do many of my favorite actioners (Rocketeer, the original Taking of Pelham, Johnnie To's The Mission) get the crappiest DVD transfers?
4:37 PM Apr 25th from web


Billy Campbell--TV's go-to guy for middle-aged scumbags when Eric Roberts is busy acting in rap videos--looks like he's 12 in The Rocketeer.
4:39 PM Apr 25th from web

I forgot that Locke was in The Rocketeer. Because it's a Disney film, Terry O'Quinn's Howard Hughes doesn't collect jars of his own piss.
4:42 PM Apr 25th from web

Though I think Timothy Dalton is underrated as 007, @nathanrabin is right on about him being more compelling as Neville Sinclair than as JB.
4:47 PM Apr 25th from web


One of the funniest scenes in Rocketeer is when Neville tries to spit game at Jenny, and she notices all his lines are from his movies.
4:51 PM Apr 25th from web

Jennifer Connelly's Jenny Blake: hottest-looking film geek ever.
4:52 PM Apr 25th from web

A lot of H!ITG!'s in The Rocketeer: Margo Martindale, Jan from The Office singing at a '30s club, Midnight Run "Hopalong Cassidiche" guy...
4:59 PM Apr 25th from web


Am I the only one who thinks Rocketeer--which tanked in '91--has aged better than the more popular actioners from that summer (T2, RH:POT)?
5:01 PM Apr 25th from web

In Living Color did a then-amusing Latino version of Rocketeer after the film came out. I remember his leafblower doubled as his jet pack.
5:03 PM Apr 25th from web

@pfunn If there'll ever be a Rocketeer double-dip, it needs an extra pointing out each of the film's countless references to Old Hollywood.
5:12 PM Apr 25th from web in reply to pfunn



A couple of clickworthy pieces on The Rocketeer, by @nathanrabin (http://tinyurl.com/d35dvz) and Scott Tipton (http://tinyurl.com/dah5o6).
5:14 PM Apr 25th from web

In his obit for Dave Stevens, @evanier said that after Rocketeer tanked, DS lost interest in doing more Rktr comics, which was unfortunate.
5:16 PM Apr 25th from web


The Rocketeer got me pumped over IDW's Rocketeer reprints, which I'm dying to read b/c I want to research more about Dave Stevens' creation.
5:18 PM Apr 25th from web

From April '08: A FISTFUL OF SOUNDTRACKS: THE BLOG: What if Rick Berman continued making #StarTrek movies?: http://tinyurl.com/cznosm
2:38 AM May 6th from web

I was searching my parents' garage for some old Starlog issues that contained articles about The Rocketeer and Gerald Fried and...
10:16 AM May 8th from web

...in my parents' garage, I stumbled into some '80s G.I. Joe comics by Larry Hama, whose work all of us Secret Identities creators admire.
10:17 AM May 8th from web

A fistful of classic Larry Hama G.I. Joe comics = some kickass bathroom reading. (Tweet number 300. This! Is! Cobra-la-la-la-la-la-la-la!)
10:19 AM May 8th from web

Among the G.I. Joe comics I unearthed from the garage: G.I. Joe #61 (July 1987), which has a dope Mike Zeck cover: http://tinyurl.com/p8nkqq
10:21 AM May 8th from web

G.I. Joe #61 is about the rescue of a U.S. reporter accused of espionage, an eerie precursor to the imprisonment of Laura Ling and Euna Lee.
10:22 AM May 8th from web

G.I. Joe #61 makes me wish for a special ops unit to sneak into North Korea and get Laura Ling and Euna Lee the hell out of there.
10:22 AM May 8th from web

Though I enjoyed Abrams' #StarTrek, I'm sick and tired of time travel and madmen trying to destroy Earth a la Khan, Kruge, Soran & Shinzon.
10:14 AM May 12th from web

Trek VI & Casino Royale proved you can have villains who aren't concerned w/ global domination & yet it still feels like plenty's at stake.
10:16 AM May 12th from web

An article from my past as a journo: De Niro and Brando sleepwalk through The Score: http://tinyurl.com/ocp3yv
10:24 AM May 12th from web

Favorite #StarTrek in-joke: Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" during prepube Kirk's joyride is a nod to Shatner's TAS "sabotage" pronunciation rant.
3:26 PM May 12th from web

Why so few Filipinos during JJA's #StarTrek? "Must have been a Pacquiao fight going on that day," jokes @moonielantion: http://bit.ly/xKLUv
3:28 PM May 12th from web

To be continued.