COINCIDENCE OR CLUE?
The significance (or lack thereof) of Miles' T-shirt
Last week in my recap, I noted the shark on Miles Straume's T-shirt. But an astute and fashion-savvy reader named Eric Knopp informed me that if only Miles had removed his jacket, we would have seen that there was a whole lot more going on — that the T-shirt, in fact, depicts a shark fighting a bear. Most likely, the T-shirt in an Ames Bros piece (click to see it in full). Investigating Miles' conspicuous apparel led me to one of those great discoveries that Doc Jensen was created for.
As usual, I began with Wikipedia. Inputting the words ''shark versus bear,'' got...nothing. But I did get a suggestion to investigate an entry for ''Bear vs. Shark.'' (Semantics!) This led to a page devoted to a ''post hardcore'' rock band named Bear vs. Shark. A quick scan of their discography didn't reveal any clear-cut Lost links, but I noticed that the band hails from Michigan — and the off-Island HQ for the Dharma Initiative is located in Ann Arbor, Mich. Okay, for certain, that's a total stretch, even by my standards. I was about to give up when I noticed that Bear vs. Shark used to go by another name: Dr. Acula.
Now, ''Dr. Acula'' is an anagram of Dracula. (Lost traffics in anagrams all the time, like the ''Rainier-Canton''/''reincarnation'' anagram from earlier this season.) ''Dr. Acula'' is also a recurring joke on Scrubs concerning a screenplay written by Zach Braff's character. (Last week on Lost, we saw Hurley writing a screenplay for his own version of The Empire Strikes Back. And Zach Braff is a noted Lost fan and serious music aficionado.) (You rolled your eyes, didn't you?)
But the major revelation came in learning that ''Dr. Acula'' is the name of a character in Night of the Ghouls, a long-lost Ed Wood horror flick from 1959 that was discovered back in 1987. Wanna know what Night of the Ghouls is all about? From the Wikipedia entry on the film:
''The plot revolves around a confidence trickster, Dr. Acula (played by Kenne Duncan), who pretends to be able to contact the dead, and charges people large amounts of money to speak to their relatives. The ending involves Acula inadvertently summoning a group of real ghosts, and being imprisoned for all eternity.''
Amazing, is it not? The links are uncanny! No, Miles isn't a fraud — but he does leverage his talks-with-dead-people ability to exploit grieving people for mucho cash. Will Miles' powers backfire on Dead Men Walking Island? Will he cause a quantum catastrophe that reboots time, creating a new history that brings dead people back to life? Will he pay for this time crime by becoming a spectral ''unperson,'' flickering between life and death like a certain cabin-dwelling spirit much talked about on the show but only fleetingly seen? Or...or...(gulp) is the much-joked-about zombie season of Lost actually not a joke at all?!??!
Trust me: You're going to miss this in three weeks.
NEXT PAGE: Corrections, clarifications, and defiant unwillingness to change!
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