My old roommate Robbie shot a movie in Phoenix over the summer (co-written by Logan Antill). It goes by the name “Couchgarden,” and is sure to be the best film set in the Arizona since Pump Up the Volume (although with admitedly less Sonic Youth on the soundtrack).

Watch the Couchgarden trailer here!

Early this May, the blog “What I Learned Today” posted an insightful article examining American music culture’s controversial adoption of the keffiyah, a distinct checkered Arab scarf. As the garment-of-choice for both militant anti-Zionists like the late Yasser Arafat and not so militant rap musicians like “Meet the Spartans” star Method Man, the popularity of the scarf has raised a degree of National debate. 

I respectfully bowed out of this debate since, despite stumbling my way through Thomas Friedman’s “From Beirut to Jerusalem” this Spring (spoiler alert: Arafat and Rabin make up in the end), most aspects of the Middle East remain a complete fucking riddle to me: Who’s good? Who’s bad? Who do I sympathize with when someone brings up the Lebanon War? What the fuck was the Lebanon War? Sometimes the answers seem at once deathly important and totally meaningless. Kind of like a David Lynch movie, if Laura Dern toted an RPG and midgets were replaced with martyrs.

As a sort of built-in defense mechanism against such heavy debates, I tend to focus on trivial details of the greater story at hand. In the case of Kanye West’s controversial headscarf, I focused my energies on another foreign piece of the rapper’s attire: his sunglasses. The distinctive slotted “shutter shades,” worn by Mr. West during live performances and in the music video for his single “Stronger,” are a relic from a place far more terrifying than the Gaza Strip: the 1980s.

From the moment Kanye first donned them in 2007, the shutter shades were instantly identified as a distinctly ’80s accessory. However, visual evidence of the glasses from the period is harder to come by than I had anticipated. In the end, I was only able to find two exhibits of the glasses from their alleged decade of origin. The first is the1985 film “The Last Dragon,” in which they were worn by the character Sho’Nuff. The second is the music video for Animotion’s hit 1985 single, “Obsession.”

Depressingly, the one ’80s icon I most vividly remembered sporting a pair of shutter shades, Michael J. Fox’s randy “Teen Wolf” sidekick Rupert “Stiles” Stilinski, did not dawn a single pair in the film’s entire 91-minute running time.

He did, however, wear this shirt. Which, incidentally, is far more offensive in my opinion than even the most egregious pro-terrorism scarf…

One relatively minor but incredibly enjoyable duty of my job at a humor website involves coming up — along with a number of talented co-workers — with amusing descriptions of the Internet’s funnier viral videos. 

But a shockingly high number of those videos revolve around a single theme: poorly performed physical feats. And while nothing brings me more joy than watching arrogant attempts at sports and stunts fail most epically (the notorious “Afro Ninja” draws a guttural laugh from me to this day), there are only so many ways you can describe different gymnasts face-planting into different floors before you begin repeating yourself to at least some extent. 

An occasional method of avoiding descriptive redundancy, one first practiced by my office’s senior staff members (and probably based on some comedic principal of misdirection that I’m sure can be traced back to an ancient Greek dramatist whose name I don’t know), is to endow embarrassing videos with deceptively impressive titles. Thus, a home movie of a painful, 75-foot belly flop is titled “Sick Backflip,” and a young man hurling himself face first into a wall is described as having run up it “flawlessly.”

Of course, belly flops and minor concussions hardly need our editorial assistance to make America laugh. But it’s nice to believe the misleading caption adds at least some extra punch to the audience’s initial viewing experience. (I’m reminded of an article by Amir Blumenfeld praising the equally misleading humor so effectively used on “The Simpsons.”)

With this philosophy in mind, my friend and colleague Kevin recently suggested collecting our site’s more dishonestly described videos in a single group. I now encourage you to visit CollegeHumor’s “Misleading Caption” videos: A brief-but-in-progress listing of “incredible” jumps, “graceful” dives, and a number of other “not hilarious” stunts by “talented” individuals. True, their element of surprise may now be diminished for you, but if you’re anything like me or the slapstick-loving individuals I work with, the humor only increases with the utter wrong-ness of our praise.

This weekend, the New York Times took a break from reporting meaningless, trite news items like the Democratic nomination of Barack Obama and the fragile state of the economy to give a report I actually cared about: Patrick Swayze will still be starring in the under-production A&E crime drama “The Beast,” despite being recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

The Times article was filled with the kind of positive sentiments and enthusiastic quotes from friends and colleagues that one would expect to find in a story about any good man battling a disease, but one quote from Swayze himself stood out to me. Not because it was especially poetic or insightful –- at least not in the traditional sense — but because it inadvertently encapsulated the essence of the “Dirty Dancing” star’s entire career. When asked about his upbeat attitude toward recovery, Mr. Swayze is quoted as saying, “I’m a cowboy. I’m a dancer. I’ll beat this.”

I am a cowboy. I am a dancer. With all due respect, the words read like Eagles lyrics. Life-threatening illness or not, these sentences would sound ridiculous coming from the lips of just about any other actor – or person, for that matter – on the planet. (Could you imagine the fallout – and religious implications – of Tom Cruise calling himself a cowboy?) Yet they somehow feel natural when uttered by Swayze, whose roles over the last 25 years have included bouncers, dancers, surfing bank robbers, and a shirtless banker who fucks Demi Moore on a pottery wheel. 

Yes, technically Mr. Swayze does own a ranch and is a trained ballet dancer. But the acceptability of Swayze’s words is about more than that. For the bulk of his career, Swayze has chosen roles so absurdly bodacious that they border on parodies of themselves. In those roles, however, Swayze has never given in to the urge to take them as anything less than serious. Weather he’s killing invading Russians in 1984’s “Red Dawn” or killing post-apocalyptic bandits in 1987’s similarly titled “Steel Dawn,” Swayze has never taken the “Hey, how silly is this movie I’m in?!” approach, as so many contemporary leading men (Clive Owen in “Shoot ‘Em Up,” Bruce Willis in “Grindhouse,” the entire cast of Tony Scott’s “Domino,” etc.) have done.

The surprising sincerity of Swayze’s words reminded me of a 2007 essay by “A.V. Club” writer Nathan Rabin praising the non-ironic “awesomeness” of “Point Break,” a 1991 action film about an undercover FBI agent (Keanu Reeves) who infiltrates a gang of surfing, bank-robbing adrenaline junkies led by a wavy-haired skydiver named Bodhi (Swayze). If that description sounds like a joke, it isn’t. And that, Rabin argues, is precisely the point:

The key to Point Break’s enduring awesomeness is that it plays its premise one-hundred percent straight. If the film were made today I suspect it’d be filled with invisible air quotes and non-stop winks to let the audience know that the filmmakers are way too cool and hip and ironic to expect anyone to take Patrick Swayze seriously as the Buddha of the surfboard set… As “Snakes On A Plane” and “Spice World” both illustrate, nothing kills a potential camp classic quite like constantly letting audiences know you’re in on the joke.

The same way “Point Break” can have Swayze give Keanu Reeves a mid-air high five while sky-diving without a hint of irony, so Swayze can now proclaim with complete frankness that he’s a cowboy and a dancer while coming off as neither pompous, out-of-touch, or joking.

Silly choice of words or not, ironic or serious, I’m just happy to know that recent events haven’t taken the Swayze out of Patrick. Like all his fans, I wish him the best. And though I’m at a loss for the wisest words of consolation to offer Swayze at this juncture, I can borrow a few of the man’s own, spoken in “Road House” when his character, an ass-kicking bouncer with a PhD. in philosophy named Dalton, is asked what he studied in college: 

“Just man’s search for faith,” answers Swayze, “and that kind of shit.”

Although my residence in a state east of the Mississippi may hint otherwise, I’ve never had anything against NASCAR. In fact, since listening to Robert Duvall proudly proclaim, “There’s nothing ‘stock’ about stock-car racing,” to Tom Cruise in “Days of Thunder,” I’ve actually had a degree of respect for the sport Bill Maher eloquently describes as “rednecks drinking beer and watching other rednecks turn left.” (He he also describes watching baseball as “getting drunk on overpriced beer and yelling obscenities at millionaires on steroids.”) 

Despite my acceptance of competitive automobile racing, the sight of an entire aisle devoted to official NASCAR merchandise at Target was enough to stop me and my cart of socks and DVDs as I passed by it Sunday afternoon. And while I know it’s a bit ignorant to associate an individual’s taste in sports with where he or she lives, I feel compelled to point out that this particular Target was in Brooklyn, NY—not exactly the Daytona of the East Coast.

The sight of shelf after blaze-orange shelf of Richard Petty commemorative thermal mugs exposed a perennial truth I often forget, but am usually reminded of on random Saturday afternoons while channel surfing and landing on footage of 200 thousand of my fellow Americans going nuts over high-powered Fords covered in Home Depot decals: NASCAR is fucking huge.

I’m sure this is apparent to many people. It is, after all, the number one spectator sport in the country, and according to a New York Times report, more viewers would rather watch a rained-out race (or lack thereof) than an actual N.B.A. match.

Why? There must be entire books devoted to the U.S.A.’s enduring need for speed, but I imagine it’s some combination of loving to watch shit get built, watch shit go fast, and occasionally watch shit blow up. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with that. Tuning-in to every Sprint Cup rally of the season is essentially no different than me renting “Die Hard” a dozen times (which I have). But then again, there’s no “Die Hard” aisle at Target. 

In the end, I’m actually glad I rolled through the NASCAR aisle. Sure, I’m kind of jealous my own passions don’t have 30 feet of retail space for me to browse, but the encounter served as an enlightening experience on my country. It wasn’t quite an epic Westward journey, but it did teach me something that a Westward journey may have: America is also fucking huge, and most of it likes watching rednecks turn left. Even if I don’t.

In the days leading up to the show’s season 4 finale, I wrote about the great Jack Vs. Locke conflict around which much of the TV show “Lost” revolves. In the days (or day) following the finale, however, my coworkers and I fittingly found ourselves in the throes of our own civil strife not unlike the divided camps of the mysterious Island itself: those who had watched “Lost” the night before, and those who planned to watch it later. 

The two biggest innovations – technical or creative – in recent television history are probably Digital Video Recording and the rise of complex serial dramas like “Lost” and “The Wire.” Shows are denser and more addictive than ever, and we can watch them whenever we please. It’s a great time to own a television. If TV is cocaine for entertainment junkies, then we’re living in the 1980s.

But the convergence of these innovations has had an unintended consequence. One that could send offices across the country into bloody battles by the water cooler. Now that half of a given show’s fans are watching the latest captivating episode as soon as it airs, while half DVR it and catch up a day or two later, the risk of inadvertently revealing “spoilers” (i.e., major plot points of an episode) to friends or colleagues, or of overhearing one yourself, is greater than ever. And with the newest serial dramas relying on twists and bombastic endings, the stakes are higher, too.

This is precisely what happened the morning after the “Lost” finale at my office. Half the office (including myself) had been fortunate enough to tune-in for the climactic final 2 hours of the show’s fourth season the night it aired. The other half were cursed with prior obligations, but had digitally recorded the show, or planned to watch it at ABC.com.

But not until after work.

The result was a palpable tension floating through our hallways and between our desks. The Last-Nighties (those who had watched it the night before) huddled in one corner, whispering our thoughts on Jack’s actions, on Locke’s fate, on the future of the Island. We kept our voices hushed, lest we accidentally reveal the episode’s outcome to one who had DVR-ed it – a cardinal sin amongst TV junkies. So extreme was this office division that myself and a small expedition of fellow Last-Nighties chose to eat our lunch in a soundproof glass conference room, where we could scream about the Others and the Smoke Monster to our hearts’ content. 

I realize now this would not be an isolated incident, but was in fact a result of a larger trend. When “The Sopranos” premiered in 1999 (before the rise of DVR) television was socialist with its distribution of new episodes—everyone who watched knew everything that had happened to Tony at the same time. By the show’s finale in 2007, however, television had become capitalist—those who tune in quickest are rewarded with information other fans may not yet have.

I am, of course, by no means a Marxist. But if I were, I would warn the capitalist pigs to give in to DVR and abandon their quest for episodic superiority. Break free, friends! You have nothing to lose but your remotes! 

The withdrawal-inducing absence of a new “Lost” last week allowed me to take a deep breath and focus on an element of the series that I’ve always been intrigued by, but that usually got pushed aside to make way for the fresh input of the night’s episode: The difference between the show’s opening and closing title graphics.

“Lost” has been praised for the minimalism of its opening “credits” (or lack thereof): After a tense opening scene, the screen cuts to black with an ominous THUD. The show’s title blurs into frame on an angle in smooth, white block letters that glide past the camera as spooky, ambient noise echoes.

But then, fifty-nine minutes later, as “Lost” hits its nail-biting, cliff-hanging final moment, the screen thuds back to black, and the title returns for the show’s closing graphic, only this time with a much, much different look. The moody music and blurring are gone, and the smooth font is replaced with a modern, “extreme”-looking typeface.

The jarring distinction of the two graphics has always baffled me. One is an elegant and cryptic riddle of an opening; the other looks like it belongs on a can of Sparks energy drink. When I thought about it during last week’s “Lost” draught, however, I realized there might be method behind the madness of the show’s dueling graphics. Each “Lost” title card, it occurred to me, represents one of the show’s two contrasting philosophies.

Those two philosophies, as most fans probably know, are the philosophy of reason, represented by the skeptical doctor Jack Shephard, and the philosophy of faith, represented by John Locke, who maintains the Island has a mystical purpose and that their crash was the result of fate. The show itself has made numerous allusions to this conflict, including the title of the season 2 episode, “Man of Science, Man of Faith.”

With its slow, calm tone and mysterious nature, the opening graphic is more in touch with Locke’s faith-based philosophy, while the practical, closing graphic is far more man-made and closer to Jack’s real world point-of-view. If the opening graphic is Locke, calm and mysterious, then the closing graphic is Jack, desperate and logical. If the opening graphic is Ben, the closing graphic is Juliet. If the opening is the Others, then the closing is DHARMA. If the opening is Jacob, the closing is Widmore.

In short, the opening wants the castaways (and by association we the viewers) to explore the Island and its mysteries, and the closing wants to get us off the Island and away from its dangers. The opening is the epoch of belief, the closing is the epoch of incredulity. It’s a closing of science, an opening of faith.

So we see that, like everything else in the narrative Escher drawing that is “Lost,” even something as seemingly trivial as the show’s graphics are in fact as woven into the show’s fabric as the number 42. The only question is, should Jack, Kate, Locke and the rest of our beloved Oceanic survivors follow the philosophy of “Lost“‘s beginning? Or its ending?