Looking for something to fill the void left by Lost?

Oh dear Lost-Lovers,

I know your recent loss of Lost is looming; it’s hard to let go of a love so long in lingering. Even when you had begun to think that perhaps it’s time for less Lost; you feel its absence and know that while the drama’s players are now found, you are lost.

I can empathize; I was lured then left by a long-running love once. And I lived to tell that there is hope. That you, too, will find your way to the church and see there all that you loved about Lost.

In fact, what if I told you that I knew where that church was? What if I said its doors will once again open this fall? And what if, over the summer, it were possible to begin to climb your way out of the purgatory in which you now find yourself?

What if you could have back all of what made Lost your greatest love – and more?

Characters that feel like family, unrequited love, death and resurrection, action and adventure, consipiration, mysterious origins, sub-sub-subplots, high-techery, super-suspension of disbelief, familial über-loyalty, double-crossing, triple-crossing, flashbacks, fabulous acting, rich characterization, profound writing, a weekly abandoning of your mundane existence into a world of enigma and possibility, beautiful people, unlikely heroes and likeable/hateable villains – all of these could once again be yours. And then add to that humor, silliness, stupendous non-sequiturs, elaborate covers, spies, and Captain Awesome.

As much as I would love to promise you tropical polar bears, time travel, flash sidewayses (that is the correct plural of flash sideways, right?), immortals, and smoke monsters, you won’t find those here.

And still, you ask, “Where can I find this great hope?”

Chuck.

Mondays at 8:00 pm Eastern on NBC starting again in the fall.

But don’t wait until then to start healing. Get Season 1 on DVD right now and start to fill that life-changing-TV-show-shaped hole in your soul. And don’t do it just for yourself, or for the good of mankind, or to help keep this show on the air for a few more seasons to generate ad revenue for a company so half-witted that it doesn’t know how good of a thing it has going…

Do it for me.

Do it so that next year – right about now – I am not weeping into my Fruity Pebbles every morning wondering what I will do now that I’m lost.

Just like you.

This article originally appeared on Patrol, an independent daily magazine where young writers explore their interactions with art, culture, politics, and religion.

So, here I sit – day of the deadline – starting the second paragraph of a new work that hasn’t technically begun yet since I insist on delaying the actual start of the piece by describing why I’m writing one at all. Rest assured, dear reader (interesting: “dear reader” is deceivingly close to being a palindrome), it was not whimsy which spurred the spurning of a near-finished creation – which was, I believe, quite good. Instead, I am coerced to write this still-not-officially-started column by the weight of a brief moment experienced on a mundane commute home that pressed my soul until I wept. A weight so weighty that if I’d been on a scale I’d have weighed 10 times what I actually weigh.

And now, it has begun.

Lost?

People who are lost find out they are so by one of two ways. They might, after some time wandering off the path set before them, begin to notice the absence of the markings blazing toward their destination. Others only discover their lostness upon arriving, miraculously, back home – or at least on the path toward home. The former, now seeing the imminent danger all around them, frantically search for any sign of what was their guide and inevitably realize how precarious the journey and elusive their safety. The latter are oblivious to that precariousness and move about as though safety were ubiquitous. They don’t understand the narrowness of path and closeness of danger.

I was the latter – until yesterday.

Our deepest – and most painful when unfulfilled – dreams and aspirations for our lives are often formed in youth. I remember the me that I was when I first set sights on the me that I hoped to become. Looking back, I am glad I am the me I am now and not the me I hoped to be in almost every regard. Our lives often travel down paths that wind, climb hills, circle back, and force us to take the long way home.

I do mean paths plural. I have many dreams, many homes at which I hope to one day arrive. A home for work, one for family, one for life, one for the afterlife, and many others. Yet I, stupid little dreamer that I am, had wandered from one of those paths.

I don’t recall when it happened; I think there were signs I was taking misstep after misstep, but they weren’t ever bright enough to signal trouble – to say, “You may never get home if you keep going this way.” I wandered, feeling the whole time a security in the assumed inevitability of my arrival home, unaware that scores of threats to my hopes were amassing all around.

If I’m honest, I knew that something wasn’t right. I knew I wasn’t heading toward home any longer. I just didn’t want to believe it. It’s much easier to pretend that one day all my dreams will come true, even while I’ve forgotten what some of them were, than to pursue them.

In that frame of mind I sat on a crowded subway biding time until my stop.  I would alight there and go about believing that I was still on course. But that’s not how it happened.

Halfway home something happened – something so powerful it really did bring tears to my eyes. (Which were fortunately hidden behind dark sunglasses. Always a wise choice on crowded trains. You never know when you’ll have a “moment.” And then it gets all weird when people notice and you feel their awkward body language of not knowing whether to say something. And you have to tell them that you’re fine and they don’t really believe you because you’re whimpering like a baby. Anyway. Sunglasses are good to have.)

In my headphones, instead of the usual rotation of podcasts, I was listening to an old favorite, a group a friend recently mentioned was terrific when he suggested we start performing one of their tunes. I remembered how much I enjoyed them a decade or so ago and thought it would be fun to reminisce.

What I wasn’t prepared for was to hear the source of one of my dreams. To be reminded of why I decided to play saxophone, why I love music at all, why I studied it and still hope to “make it.” It’s not surprising that hearing music from my youth showed me how far astray I’d gone from the simplicity of my hopes and the purity of enjoyment of music that was once mine. What was surprising was the group that made me cry in public was Supertramp.

It’s almost too absurd to be true.

I loved Supertramp once. Their songs bellowed from the car stereo (back when I had a car).  I didn’t really know or care why I dug their groove then. I just did. And it was inspiring. I wanted to make music that gave others that simple – and simultaneously profound – satisfaction of relishing living.

I’m not saying that I don’t make that kind of music now. I certainly hope I do. But I had gotten caught up in the intelligentsia; in the constant analysis and dissection of music; in the reduction of the transcendent to the calculable, the concrete.

Something important happens when one falls in love with music – music which needs no justification. There’s no list of historical, theoretical, or philosophical reasons to prove why this music is “good.” It’s good because it is, and you know it instinctively.

Listening to them now, I understand why their music is compelling, why I loved it then and still love it today. I can see the stuff of which it is made, how it holds together structurally. I can hear why it is interesting.

But I don’t need the why anymore.

I had forgotten that I once enjoyed music beyond a cerebral appreciation. That I had set sights on a home where I loved the music I listened to and loved the music I made -  just because.

I didn’t even know I was lost.

Supertramp showed me the long way home, the same way they did fifteen years ago.

Story. That’s why people watch the Olympics. It’s certainly not the finer points of curling technique or the joy of seeing the best athletes in the world excel at doing what so many of us try to do better every time we strap rifles to our backs, slip on our skis, and head out into the hills for a causal afternoon of recreational alpine snipering.

We watch to see the grandson of WWII veteran drape his grandfather’s military burial flag over victorious shoulders as he celebrates gold. We cheer for the figure skater who overcame all odds to return to the ice for one more try for a first medal before retirement. We marvel at the skier who achieves heights none before have. We weep with the snowboarder seeking redemption for past bravado whose chance melts like the snow that slid her into disqualification.

We celebrate dreams come true and mourn those that don’t. We need their stories. It is story that informs our humanity and gives context to ebb and flow of life.

But sometimes rather than discovering story, we are deceived by mirage. All the trappings of story are laid before us, but the closer we get, the more its substance unravels, and we are left feeling hollow.

Such a tale was Avatar. A grandiose, colorful candy shell – with little inside. Imaginative and yet somehow uncreative. It was pure entertainment – a predictable pleasure delivered in a predictable manner.

I did like Avatar and enjoyed the experience it offered. It was spectacle, and I was entertained. It was a visual feast as promised, but a feast of little more than cinemagraphic cotton candy. In the end, I left the theater hungry (and not from consuming too little popcorn). I left feeling like I could have been changed. I left wanting to have been changed. (I also left the theater with a bladder as tired, sad, and bloated as its closing theme song.) I wanted real story, not recycled characters and cliched plot points covered in impressive technology and slick imagery.

Telling a meaningful story involves risk. And many aren’t willing, or able, to take on such risk artistically – risk that the story exposes the heart of the teller, risk that the market won’t respond and will thereby close doors to future creative opportunities. But with little risk comes little reward. (Unless the reward hoped for is little more than heaps of cash. Entertainment can yield lots of that.)

What I wanted from Avatar was risky storytelling: a bold attempt to challenge our preconceptions about life and existence, to leave us wondering if the worldview we held complete still has room to grow. If our eyes can see things afresh. If compassion can increase and love deepen as our humanity is filled up with the good, true, and beautiful.

And when you find a story like that you tell the world. You get on your Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Google Buzz, Bebo, Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress, Orkut, Jaiku, Friendster, Ning, or whatever and tell everyone. Whether it’s a movie, band, TV show, poem, or short story.

Or in this case, a novel. I’d never waited in angst for a book to be published before now.

Having been one of the first to discover the Harry Potter series after they were all already released, I’ve never felt that nervous energy of unquenchable anticipation. My fingernails remained neatly clipped, not chewed to stumps, as I flew through books 1-7 without pause or thought to what it was like to have a year roll by between volumes.

Until a few months ago.

I began reading Auralia’s Colors, a novel by Jeffrey Overstreet, with the end of the aughts (or the two-thousands, or the double-0s or whatever we ended up calling that decade) looming.

It’s the first book, or the Red Strand, in a series called The Auralia Thread that was initially published in 2007 by WaterBrook Press.

Auralia's Colors, by Jeffrey Overstreet

Set in another time, in another world, the people of the Expanse have a long history they trace back to a single ancestral group of children, who, led by a Mosaic patriarch, escaped a dangerous wilderness to settle a new land. Generations passed and the people scattered and separated into four houses, each with its own distinct and complicated lore. Auralia’s Colors throws us headlong into the contemporary trials of House Abascar when a young girl, orphaned at birth and of unknown ancestry, brings new, life-giving color to a drab and dying people.

Try to remember the last time you read a fantasy novel, and, if you can, all the ones before that. (Which might bring most of you to a grand total of three, and us geeks and nerds to a total of near 22 or more.) Of those, how many were about men with weapons and kingdoms to defend against irredeemable evil and save weak womenfolk from sure destruction? Black and white stories with no room for gray – or color?

Once it became clear that our protagonist, Auralia, was a little girl enamored with colors, mystery, and the seeing of things unseen, I was hooked. In all my previous fantastical readings I’d never encountered such a premise, though some might be out there. At first I was intrigued, stepping cautiously – if not a little skeptically – over the pages and wondering where this tale was taking me. But like that of all master craftsmen of language, Overstreet’s storytelling pulled me deeper and deeper into this vivid world both rich with – and yet deprived of – color, song, creation, and all that their presence brings.

I burned through the book like a dragon puffing ragweed rolled in magic paper.

Cyndere's Midnight, by Jeffrey Overstreet

Fortunately I didn’t have to wait at all to start the second installment, the Blue Strand, Cyndere’s Midnight. It was strategically positioned in my bag so when I inserted a finished Auralia’s Colors, I could remove an untouched Cyndere’s Midnight. Really, the only way I could’ve shortened that lag time would have been to glue one book to the other.

As much as I was enchanted by Auralia and the story Overstreet wove in her pages, I was changed by Cyndere’s Midnight, a story of loss and redemption. Of finding out what makes one human, and what shreds one’s humanity. A story that could not let me be, but pushed me to become something better. One that probed my heart as I found pieces of myself – the good and the wretched – in these characters. Their journey became my journey, their hopes and sorrows mine.

Raven's Ladder, by Jeffrey Overstreet

So, you can imagine the vacuous hole left in me when I closed its cover and had no other book in my bag to pull out. I sat on the train filled with questions, gawking bewildered at the route map like a first-time tourist because there was nowhere else to stare, searching for answers with such ferocity that if I’d been the conductor we’d have skipped every stop until the track ran out.

And so I waited, feeling for the first time that reader’s anxiety common to many but alien to me. I waited 46 days that seemed like one point two five score and four weeks.

The characters’ stories have yet to fully enfold, but this one has a happy ending.

Raven’s Ladder, the Gold Strand and third book in the series is finally available. And it is every bit as engaging, imaginative and transforming as its predecessors.  While I long to feel the resolution of this transformational, expertly-crafted story, part of me hopes the series will never end.

Because while there will always be, in our lives and in our culture, an important space and time for entertainment – for movies like Avatar – we need story. And when we’ve found it, we cling to it. We share it. We relive it over and over, and are changed by it. We let its colors saturate our lives.

So I got to thinking, with the smell of chestnuts roasting over a street vendor’s coal, that we need a new pop culture holiday tradition. Don’t we all have enough versions of We Wish You A Merry Christmas on our music playback machine of choice to last us the rest of our lives? Really, can anyone want figgy pudding so much that they would refuse to leave a person’s porch/living room until some is brought to them? I mean, how merry of a Christmas can you possibly be wishing me in this scenario?

Here’s what I propose: we replace the annual release of Music Celebrity du Jour’s Christmas record with something that has just as much cultural identity and brand development as those far-out music stars of wonder shining beyond us. Something that always turns a profit, regardless of the quality of the artifact. Something that would at least give us a break from hearing silver bells jingle.

“What is this something?” you ask, your cheeks quivering nervously like a bowl full of jelly thanks to all the pumpkin pie and egg nog you’ve been downing since Thanksgiving?

Movie franchises.

Instead of the Jon Secada & Lady Gaga Christmas Duets from La-La-Land, we get Pirates of the Caribbean: Mists of the Black Coal Stocking. A much needed change for the better.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Mists of the Black Coal Stocking

Captain Jack and crew sail to the North Pole to discover the source of coal filling the world’s Christmas stockings. Along the way, Will and Elizabeth Turner must rescue their young twins from the Isle of Banished Elves, while Jack schemes to find a way to turn coal mists into diamonds and partners with a most unusual sailor of the skies.

Terminator: Incarnation

War rages endless between man and machine. Weary of the constant loss of life, cyborgical and biological, SkyNet determines there is only one way to bring peace between man and machine. A young orphan, Maria, agrees to be the vessel that will bear the perfect half man/half machine. When word of this deliverer’s birth reaches ears and CPUs, many are threatened by the new world he will bring. But three cyborg generals, and three vagabond resistance guardians, join forces to protect the new hope that has entered their broken world.

AVP: Joyeux Noel

After eons of slaughter and violence cutting across the galaxies, two enemies – separated from their brethren – become unlikely friends as they learn to lean on each other for survival. Inspired by their experience together, Autjr’tyi and Xoktz return to their respective species and tirelessly pursue an unfathomable armistice on Pt’Katix, a holy day of celebration for both worlds.

Indiana Jones and the Star of Wonder

After inscriptions on a rare 1st century vase from the fertile crescent are found – supposedly detailing the falling of an eastern star that had shown brighter in the sky than any in ancient history – Indy and Mutt are dragged into a race against the clock to decipher the remainder of the script and find the location of the fallen star before the evil energy conglomerate Consortio Globus can destroy the treasure: a meteorite, presumed to contain enough mineralogical space radiation to overcome the world’s fossil fuel dependence and bring peace on earth and good will to all.

Sinterklaas and the Planet of the Apes

For thousands of years Kris Kringle has warped time to circumnavigate this planet in one night to deliver good gifts and cheer to all the Earth, but this time, night is bent too far and Santa is hurled to an apparently lifeless, foreign planet. The sleigh’s power of flight lost, and his reindeer scattered, Claus begins the search for a way home and discovers the horrifying reality of this new place. His capture at the hands of an impossible enemy leaves him wondering if he’ll ever escape to be Father Christmas again.

National Treasure: The Tunnel to Korvatunturi

Santa Claus and his North Pole home are the most powerful myths of the modern world. But, what if it is more than a myth? What if the Santa Claus lore is actually a series of clues? Clues to an unfathomable hidden treasure buried beneath Mount Korvatunturi, one of the many rumored locations of Santa’s lair. Ben Gates is determined to find out. He and his band of treasure-hunters embark on twisting, turning adventure to discover the fabled entrance to the Tunnel to Korvatunturi and reclaim the lost treasure of Saint Nicholas.

Star Trek: Epiphany

The United Federation of Planets calls the Enterprise and its crew into action once more. This time the mission is one of peace: to bring a gift to a new race only just discovering warp drive. But when they arrive, they find a most unusual series of events unfolding in the history of this people – events much like those reported to have occurred on Earth millennia ago. A child that some fear and others hope will be their savior has been born. Kirk and crew must confront long abandoned ideas of God and faith to present the gift to its true recipient while the fate of this entire planet hangs in the balance.

The Matrix: Neotivity

Rain pounds the window of Michelle McGahey’s Lower Downtown Capital City apartment. This dark night brings a strange visitor to the door, calling herself “The Oracle.” She tells the young woman that she is pregnant, and that her son will be “The One” and restore order to what she calls “The Matrix.” “You shall name him Thomas Anderson, but his true name will be Neo.” The Oracle leaves behind her a guardian – John Anderson, a servant of The Oracle – to watch over the shocked mother and her unborn son as a husband and father. A word of warning she gives as she departs, “stay hidden, and stay quiet. For, others will come after me who do not seek to protect Neo, but to destroy. In good time all will be revealed. Until then, guard this child.”

Avatar: Blue Christmas (IMAX 3D)

100 years after the Pandora War, peace exists between the Na’vi and humanity. Mankind has long since colonized the Edenic planet and has intermingled life and love with the Na’vi. But some Na’vi fear the loss of their ways as they see the “small man” grab more and more authority over this shared world. A group of young freedom fighters begin to study the culture of their invaders to find the perfect time – a point of great vulnerability – to take back what is rightfully theirs.

How many of the above movies would you go to the theater to see? 1? 4? 8? Won’t you join me in righting the pop-cultural ship we see sailing in on Christmas Day? Together we can usher in a new era of the commercialization of Christmas – an era that will be as timeless as an era can be, in our age of ultimate consumerism.

I’ve spent most of my life learning to play instruments and studying music – history, theory, composition, performance. A lifetime’s pursuit, the study of music is never complete.

Having a deep-rooted musical knowledge opens the door to experience music in a way that is almost indescribable. The best I can do is to liken it to a botanist’s appreciation of a leaf; every part of it has meaning to one who has learned how and of what a leaf is made.

To the “Average Harry” (I have a good friend Joe that resents his name’s use in such a generic manner. I don’t have any friends named Harry. Well, except for maybe Harry Potter) a leaf is pretty – perhaps, at times beautiful. To the botanist, the leaf is sublime; it is mystery. It is a treasure trove of wonders that both asks and answers questions about life and existence. It is so much more than a pretty color; it is the blade, the petiole, the veins, the margin, and the midrib.

In truth, I find leaves most marvelous when the colors change en masse each autumn. And, the botanist can certainly appreciate leaves this way. But like a master craftsmen, the botanist cannot help but want to get a close-up, in-depth view of even just single leaf, to study it and to marvel at it.

This is the way that I listen to music. Like most, I first hear the forest, yet I yearn to pore over each leaf and find the treasures it hides.

But a problem arises. Unlike the natural world, with all its complex systems of adaptation and perpetuation, music-making does not have a controlling force that squeezes from the raw materials an artifact of worth by default. Certainly some leaves are more interesting to certain leaf-lovers than others, but it is seems unlikely that there are leaves, which upon closer inspection, elicit a melancholy, “This leaf should never have been made. It’s a crappy leaf.”

Listening with a critical ear then, leaves me with a relatively small cross-section of “leaf music.” Usually I hear a tune on the web, iTunes, or . . . (dang it, what’s that thing that you have to put on a certain number to hear some music, otherwise it’s just static? Um. Radiator? Radial? Radiation? No, no. RADIO! That’s it!) radio, and quickly find that the particular piece of music is a forest without leaves. In the past, I would have made it a point to announce that I disdained said music and wished there were a filter for music that would create a forest of leaves for me to discover and revel in. Now I simply make a small point about it and move on. (And perhaps one day I’ll mature enough to not say anything at all and spare my friends and co-workers the verbiage.)

For instance: John Mayer’s new album was released last week. In it, he conducted an experiment and condensed the usual three stages for recording an album – writing, demo, recording – into one. Whenever an artist decides to break from his or her traditional creative method, the work very well may not shine the way it had when it was created through a honed, developed system. It seems (for now) that is the case with Mayer’s record.

I was disappointed. Earlier in Mayer’s career, I had written him off as a no-talent pop hack. And then I heard his live trio album; I heard his raw performance style; I heard him shred on the guitar in a pop/rock age where few shred on guitar anymore. I was hopeful that there would be some “leaves” in this new record worth studying. But alas – there aren’t, at least for me. (True, I only heard the first 30 seconds of half the cuts. But honestly, if the first 30 seconds of pop/rock don’t grab you, it’s too late. It’s not like each song was nine minutes long.)

So, I got to thinking. What “experimental process” records out there are filled with “leaves”? Two came to mind straight away. (Undoubtedly there are many others, but I turned to these two when slightly depressed after the John Mayer preview.)

Chris Thile's "Deceiver"

1. Deceiver – Chris Thile
It’s not often that one artist’s ideas and voice can carry an album. This is one of those rare instances. Rather than bring in the caliber of musicians that he worked with on Not All Who Wander Are Lost (Béla Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Bryan Sutton, Jeff Coffin, Edgar Meyer), Thile played all the instruments on the recording – drums, keyboards, strings, bass, guitar, and mandolin. He wrote and arranged all the songs and sang all the parts. Normally, this is recipe for disaster, and yet, it’s fascinating to hear a musician push himself as far as possible in so many areas. Musically, the album takes a lot of risks, avoiding the typical trappings of bluegrass and folk music with complex rhythmic and harmonic modulations and angular melodies while still planting key musical moments in the listener’s mind.

Is it his best work? Probably not. Are there others who have executed the same concept better? Most likely. But in the realm of musical experiments, this one holds its own.

The Mutual Admiration Society

2. Mutual Admiration Society (Glen Phillips with Nickel Creek)
Here, the experiment is a little different. The former Toad the Wet Sprocket front-man and the now-dissolved bluegrass trio got together, as the name suggests, out of respect for each other’s musical voices. Over six days they wrote, rehearsed, and recorded the album, with great success. Flaws found their way into the final cut, the mix is not quite up to industry standards, and a few moments are more raw than one expects from these artists, but the songwriting and passionate performances turn this effort from flop to fab.

Each track on these records feels the first sign of fall foliage, and draws you in closer and closer to uncover every artery and vein bringing life to the music.

What do you hear in the leaves from your favorite recordings; what music do you etch in your mind?

Few joys found in music are greater than when you delve into the mystery of what makes it move you; when you seek those songs in which you find an endless forest of leaves.

Journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward

All the President’s Men is indisputably the all-time best film about journalism ever made in the history of the universe of films being made about journalism. (Take that, Citizen Kane.)

It’s not about journalism in the boring sense, but the golden snitch for every journalist: breaking the story. (And, some weird lobstery guy who, I understand, did a couple of dumb things as president.) If Hollywood is to be believed – and I’d like to think that it is – a truly great journalist will stop at nothing, will leave no scruples standing, in pursuit of that grail. If you’re trying to have integrity and hone writing skills over a long, industrious career to one day enjoy a body of good, true, and beautiful work that made the world a better place – I hope you’re not a journalist. You might as well be a one-legged man in a three-legged race and/or chin-kicking contest: it’s not looking good for you.

Journalism is for the two-legged only. I suppose if you have three or more legs you can get into the biz, but you may have some serious medical conditions you should have a professional look at.

Journalism is for those in whose veins runs fire unquenchable for unbroken story; those with nose for news that sniffs out story’s scent like foxhound smelling quarry’s stink, even when quarry has recently dated skunk in feeble, but foxy, attempt to throw trail. The journalist cannot be derailed from his or her density, excuse me, destiny.

With the publication of this piece, I, too, enter the ranks of the many great (imaginary) journalists who shook off naysayers’ shackles and found a way – found the story. It might be presumptuous to start talking Pulitzer, but I thought I’d at least mention it in case the committee has a Google alert set-up to let them know when awesomeness gets published on the Internet. It’s not every day one can say they discovered, what is sure to be, the next major global cultural phenomenon.

Warning: once the word is out, this thing is going to be harder to get your hands on than the new KFC Double Down Sandwich. (Which I am likely to cover in a future article.)

I’ve been compelled by voluminous stories before: The Lord of the Rings, the Space Trilogy, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Martian Chronicles, I & II Chronicles. Basically, if you put “chronicles” in the name, you stand a good chance of me liking it. And now, a new series has risen to their level, and I think many after me will agree, and some will argue it may be best of all.

A Wondrous Discovery

This seven-volume collection “chronicles” the coming-of-age of a young wizard in modern-day England: Harry Potter. Each installment, titled Harry Potter and The Whatever-The-Main-Plot-Thing-Is-From-This-Particular-Book, moves steadily through Harry’s seven years at what is called “Hogwarts,” a school for witchcraft and wizardry somewhere in northern England that can only be accessed by a magical train, or other magical means.

The Harry Potter series is chock full of the fantastical as Harry and his friends Hermione and Ron tackle one adventure after another. Together they find themselves immersed in a long, dark battle against an evil wizard whose name most fear to speak. Having been one of the very few to have read these brand-new books, I hesitate to type the letters: V – O – L – D – E – M – O – R – T.

This Voldemort – or He-Who-Should-Not-Be-Named, as all the characters save Harry and the enigmatic and lovable headmaster, Dumbledore, call him – has got a score to settle with Mr. Potter, or The-Boy-Who-Lived, as he’s called, because he is the only person ever to have survived Voldy’s killing curse.

Another word of warning here, be on the lookout for a slew of references in pop culture to this The-One-Who-Shan’t-Be-Named stuff. I have a sinking feeling it’s gonna be around for a while. As will the use of hyphens to turn a sentence into a noun. For that we have J.K. Rowling to thank.

A precocious little wife and mom with an acre lot, a white picket fence and the Union Jack flying proudly from the porch (I assume the British are as into that stuff as we are, right?), J.K., or J. – as those closest to her and I call her on account of we are the only folks out there trumpeting this would-be blockbuster – got the idea for these stirring and ever-so-readable books from what can only be described as a luminous vision of herself sitting in Buckingham Palace at high tea with Her Majesty after the masses finally get a hold of these artifacts and make her the richest woman in the U.K.. Second to the Queen, of course.

That day is a long way off, but perhaps this breaking story can be a catalyst for the recognition and honor that she (and by extension, I) deserves. But we can dream.

Having recently finished the seventh book, I am convinced that Harry Potter will hit it big with the kids first. J. has a great sense of what kids are thinking and how they perceive school and teachers. It seems as though she’s written this, not for the high-brow literature critic like me, but for those schoolboys and girls whose imaginations and dreams seem to be locked up in the proverbial closet under the stairs. (Ironically, that’s where Harry was locked up when you first meet him in book one . . . )

I do foresee a little troubled water ahead for the series if it manages to cross the pond. And I certainly hope it does. Peppered throughout the thousands of pages are words that strike fear into the hearts of many Americans. Words that some don’t think anyone should causally toss about. Words like “spell,” “witch,” “wizard,” “wand,” “witchcraft,” “wizardry,” “magic,” “England,” “flying,” and “Hermione.” A few will see these words as an outright endorsement of Satanism and/or the Occult. They’ll protest the idea that it’s okay, even good, for kids to read about fictional children in a made-up story doing fake spells and battling a non-existent evil-snakey-wizard-guy, all the while bolstering their imaginary friendships and learning valuable figmentary life lessons. They’ll say kids are too impressionable to understand the difference between real and make-believe. They’ll ask, “If they read these books, won’t they start trying to fly on broomsticks, levitate their peers, turn eggs into rocks, and other dangerous, magicky stuff?”

He-Man and Battle Cat

Reminds me of when I was a kid. I thought that if I just thrust my plastic sword higher and fiercer into the air and bellowed, with cracking voice, the “magic” words, I, too, would “have the power” and the accompanying steriody pecs and skimpy wool underwear. Well, look what happened to me. I write goofballish articles online, make up words, use too many hyphens and play the saxophone . . . which is the devil’s horn. Oh my! Maybe they’re right. Maybe we should stop this magicky Harry Potter thing before all our kids end up playing saxophone!

Well, anyway, the winds of change they are a blowin’ and they’re bringing with them witches and wizards (and not the innocent Gandalf-type we all know and love in spite of the fact that he, too, is a powerful, gray-haired, magical, Dumbledorean, spell-casting wizard).

I do forecast, however, that while this trend will come out of the gates strong, good ol’ American consumerism should win the day. Once Walmart starts selling the books and peripheral goods (and believe you me, they will), the protesters will put down their signs and fall in line with fellow consumers to snatch up hundreds of dollars in merchandise on behalf of one Santa Claus (a known imaginary figure who uses magical means to deliver gifts to kids who do good and who deserve them for the doing of the good things they did do).

Since none of you have yet read this about-to-be monumental series, I don’t want to give too much away. Suffice it to say that, more or less, above all else, when push comes to shove, in the end, these books are about love. Not a sappy, easy kind of love, but the difficult and sacrificial kind. The kind of love which reminds you that those things worth loving aren’t so easily had or kept. That kind of love which puts neighbor before self. That kind of love that lights the darkness.

The kind of love that inspires Hollywood to crank out flicks that make oodles of dough, cashing in our collective soft spot for pre-teen/teenage fantasy book-turned-movie sacrificial-loved-themed stories. If I were a betting man, I would rush over to Vegas and put money down on the odds that these books will become feature films. I’m sure the action will be good, although the line probably won’t. Any sportsbook that would put up a money line on the Harry Potter series – and had literate staff – is gonna open the line around -500 that the movies will get made. Not a favorable risk if you’re betting sports. But if there ever was a sure bet in literature turned motion-pic, this is it. My advice: plunk down your retirement savings (or what’s left of it) on Harry Potter goes Hollywood (that sounds oddly like a sequel to the sequels) at -500 and pray that I’m not wrong about how sure of thing a movie deal for Harry is. (Gambling, and any discussion of it, is for entertainment purposes only. Unless you’re a wise guy. Then I take 15% commission for the tip.)

Whether or not this quaint little series ever rakes in billions at the box office, finds itself on the New York Times bestseller for weeks and weeks on end, drags bleary-eyed mums and dads out to the only bookstore left in a 100-square-mile radius at midnight to get their soon-to-be-saxophone-playing, magic-deprived kid the next book, or, um, rakes in billions at the box office, remains to be seen. For now, if you can burrow to the dustiest back shelves of your local mall’s B. Dalton or Waldenbooks, you might find one or two of the Harry Potters.

Oh, and don’t count on getting any help from the pubescent cashier. I recently was trying to hunt down Book Two and asked the pimple-faced youngster stocking shelves if he’d ever heard of Harry Potter and be able to direct me to its location in that fine establishment. He just stood there and gawked at me like I’d just sprouted a second head. Kids these days. Maybe he would have picked a few manners (in addition to transformation spell or two) if he had read any one of the H.P. tomes.

So. Now you can tell all your friends, you heard it here first.

I guess, what makes me sad about writing this piece, is that it may mark the end of my tenure as contributing editor at The Curator. Once it’s out that I was the one who discovered what will be the greatest literary phenomenon of all time (save the Bible I suppose) I think I might find myself overwhelmed with interviews, talk-show appearances, and maybe even tell-all book deals about my miraculous journey from wayward web-writer to Woodward-and-Bernsteiner.

I’ll save my thank yous for my Pulitzer acceptance speech, with this one exception: The Curator. Read it. Bookmark it. Tweet it. It’s as verisimilar as a small online magazine imprint of the International Arts Movement can be in our age of anti-verisimilitude.

Two months ago, I could have told you who mine was. It might have taken a few moments to sort through my mental list of candidates for such a designation I inadvertently keep. (If there’s anything I learned from not having been in the Boy Scouts, it’s that one must be prepared with hyperbolic and uncorroboratable opinions at any moment. That is what they mean by “be prepared,” right?)

Anyway, it was a little difficult to shuffle through the crowd of names jostling to be my chief antagonist – especially with names like Kenny G and Shia LaBeouf on the list.

But one name stood head and shoulders above them all. In fact, I remember the moment when He-Who-Will-Be-Named-In-A-Few-Moments first summitted my mountain of Moriartys. I was forced, by a poster plastered onto Manhattan’s Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle in its most unavoidable sight line, into confrontation about which my sister (a fan of He-Who-Will-Be-Named-In-Even-Fewer-Moments) still has nightmares.

“I hate, hate, hate, hate him! He’s my ARCHNEMESIS!!” I screamed, much to the dismay of wealthy tourists stuffing their Gucci bags with Coach clutches and declaring that they came to this “mall” to avoid all the New York “weirdos.” (A statement that I took not as an insult, but rather as a sincere honor, considering the source.)

The-Movie-Star-Who-Will-Be-Named-Shortly was top bill and, literally, poster boy for a new film about to hit the overpriced movie houses of my fair city, besmirching them with that impish grin and perfectly coiffed hair. Seeing this movie quickly became last on my “mop list” – a list of things that I will never, ever do before I die.

So, imagine my utter despair one fateful day when I found He-Will-Be-Named-Soon-Enough-Just-Keep-Your-Trousers-On’s face occupying one of the crucial “films you will be forced to watch on this uncomfortable 13-hour flight to Tokyo” slots. I almost got off the plane. Really. But I quickly realized that this “quote-unquote” film would be on every flight, since it was about to be released to DVD and wasn’t boring holes into people’s souls at the theater any longer.

After watching every flick on the flight roster, I was faced with the inevitable. The high noon, or maybe midnight (I’d completely lost track of time and space at that point during the endless flight), collision between me and him: The-Guy-Who-Doesn’t-Have-A-Name-Yet-But-Will-Right-Now.

Zachary David Alexander “Zac” Efron.

I stared at the in-flight movie guide, clenching my fist around the poorly designed remote control that never fits back into the holder, often causing an accidental change of channel or crank of volume. I returned my seat and tray table to their upright and locked positions and spoke:

Oh, Zac Efron. Zac, Zac, Zac, Zac, Zac. Here we are. Just me and you… and the other 200 other people on this plane. I daresay you never thought we’d meet. Nor did I. You with your millions of dollars and screaming tweenybopper fans, your filmography and successful career. Me with my crappy airplane remote, my puffy, dehydrated eyes and my inflated and unsupported opinion of my views on art and culture. It’s time to end this once and for all, ojos a película.

I pressed Play. 17 Again began.

For nearly two hours I sat, upright and locked, eyes fixed on the manchild I had despised for at least several months based solely on the “facts” that he was young and popular, and that the tweenyboppers liked him, assuming that anyone they would like could surely be nothing more than eye candy who can barely use the English language, let alone act. Just another talentless, studio-backed tool. The type worthy of derision from those with such high-minded taste as mine. (That should be funny for those familiar with my work.)

As the high school yearbook-styled credit pages turned, one word emerged from my mind, a phoenix from the ashes of that small part of me that hasn’t yet been consumed by post-post-postmodern cynicism: delightful.

The film was delightful. Zac Efron was delightful. Truly, truly I tell you, I would have shed tears if there had been any water left in my body as we soared high, and dry, above the Pacific Ocean, or the Yukon, or wherever we were.

Of course, 17 Again is, on the surface, a tired retread of the same old “I don’t like my current life. Can I go back to H.S. and relive my ‘glory days,’ then learn my life lessons and come back and fix my current life?” story. But that didn’t matter. It was a charming movie, entertaining and heartwarming. I watched it twice on the flight, and have since seen it here on the ground, while hydrated, and still loved it.

Without the mesmerizing Zac Efron, it would’ve stunk. Not that Matthew Perry is the next thin Marlon Brando, but Efron upstages him with a surprisingly complex portrayal of the 17-year-old version of a 40ish man pretending he’s the 17-year-old version of himself. No small task, especially when that 40ish version played by Matthew Perry, an actor with a hyper-stylized delivery and a known quantity to Gen-Xers like me.

Zac nails it. He saves the day. He won me over.

Zac Efron’s onscreen for 90% of 17 Again, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. His performance is funny. It’s serious. It’s genuine. It’s as timeless as a performance can be in our age of immemorability.

Congratulations Kenny G: you’re back on top.

No person can be highbrow in every arena of life and culture, even with the oldest old money in the world and the Gold Coastiest Gold Coast mansion in New York. There will be at least one aspect of life into which your tastes fall into the shunned and repulsed lowbrow designation – in food, TV, movies, theater, music, vacation spots, boats, art, cars, fashion, drink, books, comedy, sports, jewelry, or something else. But there will be something.

Many pretend to maintain the highest level of taste in every one of these, but they, too, fail. Because it’s impossible to dedicate the time and energy required to be an aficionado in all of these areas. Those who deny this reality are what we “bottom-feeders” call snobs.

I have occasionally been labeled a snob. I take exception to the term; I make no pretense toward the highest of highbrow tastes in everything. There are only a handful of cultural arenas in which I even begin to climb appreciation’s ladder: music, beer, art, and food in general – and specifically, popcorn.

How I adore popcorn. Tiny clouds of delight dancing on the tongue. Not a mere “snack” or other such trifle – popcorn is delicious. I don’t mean that popcorn can be described as delicious. I mean that it is delicious. It is the very essence of the word. To eat popcorn is to swim in deliciousness, to bed with delectability, to soar with scrumptiousness. Popcorn truly is delicious.

Sadly though, people everywhere have never dissolved themselves into a savory palm of perfectly popped, plump popcorn and had their cares and concerns whisked away in the whirlwind of fantastical flavors found in their fist.

It is for them that I here write.

Popcorn is deceptively simple. Husk-dried corn kernels containing a small amount of water that, when heated to boiling point, bursts as steam from the kernel’s hull, leaving behind the fluffy and delicate piece of popped corn.

Making popcorn requires nothing more than heat and kernels. Yet, unless the conditions for popping are just right, and the kernels both fresh and of good quality, you’ll end up with a handful of staleness. Not only can the popcorn be ruined simply in the making of it, but popcorn is also and most often ruined by the seasonings that suffocate the corn and terrify our taste buds.

One culprit is, of course, movie theater popcorn: over-salted, fake-buttered movie theater popcorn. I admit that from time to time I enjoy a bucket of popcorn with a motion picture, especially the good/bad action/adventure type. But (no thanks to the movies) all popcorn has been defined by this style, in some kind of synechdochic nightmare which we wake from to face that greatest affront to popcorn lovers everywhere: microwave popcorn.

Microwave popcorn – while edible – is to popcorn as Kraft Singles are to cheese: a mere shadow of what was intended to be.

Hope persists, though. You can make popcorn quickly and easily in your home that will leave your friends and family floating on a kernel cloud of euphoria they’ve never before experienced. And while I enjoy hyperbole, I hyperbolize not in this instance. Not once has a guest, even when pressed, admitted to preferring microwave popcorn, or even movie theater popcorn, to my corn concoction.

Let me teach you how to wow your friends and dazzle your enemies with popcorn fit for the Last Supper.

About Implements. Here is the most important thing I recommend to perfect your popcorn: the Whirley Pop. While I am not usually a fan of kitchen items that only do one thing, this item is special. The crank keeps the kernels from sticking and burning; the lid vents release steam as the water escapes its granular prison and keeps the corn light and fluffy. This piece of equipment is worth every penny.

(You can use a regular saucepan with a lid, but make sure to jostle the pan while cooking and keep the lid cracked to release the steam.)

That said, we need a recipe.

The two main ingredients when making popcorn are the kernels and the oil. Skimp on freshness and quality and you’ll be left with nothing more than an unsatisfying “snack.”

About Kernels. They come in dozens of varieties: yellow, red, blue, black, baby rice, hulless, white, and many variations of those. Part of the journey of a popcorn aficionado is to discover which varieties are palpably pleasing. The most important factor, as I have stated, is freshness. You can get good popcorn online. But it’s most fun to find a small, out-of-the way market where you can see the kernels and verify the freshness.

About Oil. Whatever your preference for general cooking, a mistake most people make when popping corn is to use vegetable oil. Flavorless, flaccid vegetable oil. The best oil for popping corn releases the corn’s flavors and doesn’t overpower them. I recommend sunflower, peanut, canola, or, as a last resort, olive oil – preferably a light olive oil.

About Making Popcorn. Since you likely don’t have a Whirley Pop yet, I’ll use general reference guides as to amounts. If you have a gas range you can begin by preparing the popper; if you have an electric range, preheat the burner to medium-high. Into the popper, pour the kernels one layer deep until the bottom of the pan is about 70-75% covered. Then add about 1-1.5 tablespoon of oil for every 1/4 cup kernels. (It is possible to use as little oil as 1 teaspoon per 1/4 cup of kernels, but that can sometimes yield popcorn that’s a little too dry for my taste.)

Place the pan on top of the preheated burner (or on the gas range and light the burner to about medium-high) with contents already loaded. If you are using the Whirley Pop, turn the crank until the stirrer cannot be easily turned and wait until there is at least 2-3 seconds between pops, then remove from heat. If you are cooking in a regular pan, continue to shake the pan until the until there is at least 2-3 seconds between pops, then remove from heat. Once off the heat, put the popcorn in a bowl big enough to allow you to shake the popcorn around a bit.

(Note: Do not wash the Whirley Pop; simply wipe it off with paper towel. If you are using a regular pan, you’ll have to wash it.)

About Seasoning. The other major faux pas in popcorn making is over seasoning. Before you add any seasoning, you must taste the popcorn. Let the taste of the popcorn help you determine the type and amount of seasoning that will enhance and enrich the flavor of the popcorn. If you want to taste nothing but salt and butter, why did you make popcorn? You could’ve stuck your face into a bowl of melted, salted butter.

For now, I’ll keep it basic. With a good popcorn recipe book, or a knack for creative flavor combining, you can concoct some extraordinary treats for special occasions – or no occasion.

I generally use one of two different kinds of salt for my popcorn: kosher, or garlic. Kosher salt is great for popcorn because the flat crystals stick to the popcorn and dissolve quickly. Their size makes it a little harder to over-salt.

For garlic lovers, garlic salt adds an extra dimension to the flavor profile of the popcorn, but is dangerous because the garlic and the salt together can quickly drown the popcorn’s natural flavor. But not just any garlic salt will do. The only garlic salt I use is Lawry’s Garlic Salt.It’s not too salty, not too garlicky, and the grains also dissolve on the popcorn well.

After you’ve tasted the corn, sprinkle a little seasoning on the popcorn and shake it up.Then taste again.If it needs more seasoning, sprinkle and shake.Repeat that process until the popcorn’s flavor bursts in your mouth. Then grab your favorite beverage and enjoy! (I recommend a good I.P.A.; the hoppy, fruity taste complements the slight saltiness of the popcorn.)

Oh, and I don’t add butter to my popcorn. Butter makes it soggy and fatty. Popcorn is actually a very healthy food, when you spare the dairy. Do your hips or gut a favor – or just do 300 ab crunches as penance.

About Storing. One of the auxilliary benefits of this approach to popcorn is its longevity. You can store the popcorn covered with foil for several days and it still packs a tasty punch. Some have even told me that it tastes better the second day.

So there you have it. Popcorn at its most simple, savory, and satisfying. It’s as timeless as corn can be in our age of victualage processing. I reckon after you get the hang of it you might start trying to sneak your own bag of delicious into the movies with you – you snob.

I don’t often wake up in a sweat from reliving the eighth grade.

There’s me, four-eyed, cowlicked and draped in an over-sized I.O.U. sweatshirt, facing the peercing gaze of a few hundred middle-schoolers and teachers, and waiting for the squad of judges to fire their next multisyllabic missile.

“Multisyllabic. May I have the definition please? May I have the part of speech please? Can you use it in a sentence? What is the language of origin? Are there any other alternate pronunciations? Multisyllabic. M-U-L-T-I-S-I-L-L-A-B-I-C. Multisyllabic.”

Then it comes; a hope-squashing, dream-crushing sound. DING. “Multisyllabic is spelled M-U-L-T-I-S-Y-L-L-A-B-I-C.” Jeers rain as I step from the stage and, defeated, shuffle my way to the bleachers to join my nerd friends. “Y. Y! I knew that!” There’s nothing left for me now but to seek solace in the warm-blanket acceptance of the band room. Leaving the gymnasium, I hear the Kettle Moraine Middle School Eighth Grade Spelling Bee Champion’s winning word echo in the chasm of my pubescent failure: onomatopoeia. (onomatopoeia… onomatopoeia… onoma…)

Thankfully, the only time of year I head to the bathroom at 3:00am to towel off is right around the airing of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. And though it brings me nightmares every year, I must watch.*

It’s no mystery what’s so engaging about the spelling bee. Most of us have been in a spelling bee at some point, and like all things we’ve done or can easily imagine doing, we love seeing it done at the absolute highest level. And let there be no dispute: though the competitors’ ages top out at around 13, they form a Dream Team of spellers.

Really? You ask. Here’s just a few of the words spelled during the 2009 competition: antonomasia, bouquiniste, oriflamme, menhir, phoresy, Maecenas, guayabera, isagoge, sophrosyne, schizaffin, wisent, diacoele, reredos, amarevole, becquerel, Caerphilly, palatschinken, ecossaise, fackeltanz, jacqueminot. Ironically, the spellchecker has flagged all but three of those words as misspelled.

My utmost respect goes out to this year’s champion, Kavya Shivashankar, an eighth-grader from Olathe, Kansas. She, along with Sidharth Chand of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., were favorites coming into this year’s bee. Fortunately for Ms. Shivashankar, she played the role of Tiger Woods, while Mr. Chand’s performance was more akin to Phil Mickelson; Woods possesses nerves of steal and an unparalleled drive to win, while Mickelson usually falls short of expectations. Chand slipped up on apodyterium. A fluke error on such an elementary word with clear Latin and Greek origins, something any speller at that level would have studied. Even the greats lip out a “gimme” put from time to time.

Sporting analogies come easy when writing about the spelling bee. Perhaps that’s why this year’s semi-final rounds were covered by ESPN, with the final round shown on parent network ABC. In fact, you can still watch the 2009 bee on ESPN360.com. Given the prime-time media coverage of the National Spelling Bee this year, it’s clear the spelling bee is enjoying a pop culture renaissance. No longer is it the solely the domain of cowlicky geeks and near-sighted nerds, in large part due to the success of such films as Akeelah and the Bee and Spellbound, as well as the musical comedy The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. All are heart-warming tales of quirky youngsters trying their hardest and learning valuable life lessons along the way.

But I would like to take this opportunity to thank MTV for pushing the spelling bee to new highs – and lows – and cementing it as a full-on cultural force. In its unremarkably not-groundbreaking “reality” TV show, Real World / Road Rules Challenge: The Duel 2, MTV uses the spelling bee as one of the many “challenges” in which contestants compete to receive “immunity” from contest elimination. In a recent episode, players stood elevated 100 ft. above water in bikinis and board shorts and had to spell to stay alive – and dry. If a word was misspelled, the player was dropped (though by cord and harness and almost in slow motion) into frigid New Zealand lake water.

Before addressing the spelling aspect of this episode, it is worth noting that this might be one of the worst (and best, in a sense) shows ever produced for television. The concept: place “characters” from MTV’s other dumbfoundingly dumb reality shows in another entirely trite “reality” show where their idiocy, shallowness, narcissism, joblessness, enhancedness, and utter unproductivity to the human race can be displayed hebdomadally. (A word used in this year’s National Spelling Bee, by the way.)

(And now back to our show. Which was brought to my attention via Bill Simmons‘s Twitter feed.)

Being precariously poised on a high-rise platform with wind whipping, where failure yields falling, may not be the most conducive condition for spelling. But, we are talking about highly competitive TV personalities that have faced worse, presumably, during the course of the show. After the “ladies” finish dry-heaving (from “fright,” I suppose), they begin to spell, and are followed by the men. Here’s the first round of words: arithmetic, exercise, freight, poison, cucumber, abnormal, yesterday, throne, simile, extremely. Here’s the second: millennium, pinnacle, immaculate, curriculum, svelte.

The lists are mostly comprised of fourth-grade level words and, even in these circumstances, one would think college-age and older adults could spell them rather easily. So, how many correct spellings do you think there were out of fifteen words? 12? 10? Nay, only seven. Only seven of those words were spelled correctly. It was astonishing and unbelievably – or perhaps believably – hilarious.

In fact, the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Grade Level of this very article is 8.00, which means that it could likely be understood by someone in the eighth grade, which, hysterically, might exclude most of the contestants from The Duel 2 if they were asked to read it standing on that platform.

At this point I’m really tempted to tell you how the misspelled words were so. But, the commitment and, let’s say, seriousity of each speller cannot be captured in words. Don’t be upset, you can watch the entire episode online. I recommend starting at around the 17 minute mark (though only after watching the opening credits and “Haka” chant, which truly set the mood for what you are about to view) to spare yourself – if you so wish – from a level of baseness achieved only by MTV.

If, however, you’re hankering to spell, but even ten minutes of lowbrow is enough to start you packing for Paris, here are some other ways to indulge your newfound or rejuvenated lexiophilic leanings.

Scrabble. If you don’t know what this is, where have you been since the mid-twentieth century? My advice: Buy the Diamond Anniversary Edition. The swivel board and tile-holding gameboard make it worth every penny.

Upwords. A Scrabble-y word game that’s a tad simpler at first glance, with generally shorter game-play. Its distinctive characteristic: You are allowed to build words on top of existing words. My advice: Don’t think of it as vertical Scrabble and play words to score big on layer one. You will make it too difficult to build upward later in the game.

Boggle. With letters randomized in a square grid, you are to find as many words as possible by connecting touching letters. My advice: Don’t forget to look for forms of a found word. It can help you turn one word into two or three longer ones.

Wordsquares and Wurdle. Two fun iPhone apps. Wurdle is similar to Boggle. Wordsquares is like Jumble meets Sudoku.

Snatch. A portable and well-designed game in which players form words from a central pool of letters turned right-side-up, one at a time. Its distinctive characteristic: Players may “snatch” another player’s words by stealing the word’s letters and forming a new word (you can’t, however, just add ‘s’ or ‘d’ to steal).My advice: Form words as you can that contain 5 or more letters or odd combinations of letters. The more letters your words contain, the more you score, and the harder it becomes for other players to snatch your words.

Bananagrams. Players begin with a random group of letters and must form words in a Scrabble-like manner until all their tiles are used, and all tiles from the “bunch” are gone. This one is my favorite and fun in groups, alone, or one-on-one. Its distinctive characteristic: At any point in the game, you can scrap any and all words made. My advice: Be fast, very fast. Every time you place all your unused letters you and all other players take one from the bunch. If you can be fastest, unused letters pile up on your opponents and slow them down.

So here we are, spelling sweet teeth satiated, all thanks to a few pre-pubescent, highly intelligent kids who can spell words that Google Docs doesn’t even recognize as words. I’d like to congratulate them for their effort and commitment to excellence, and remind us all that the spelling bee is as honest as a competition can be in our age of PEDs.

I’d like for this column to be an illuminating, analytical illumination of the role of the presence of mid-twentieth century, commonplace American victuals as representative of leftover bourgeois sentimentalism for pseudo-capitalist, corporate socialism when manifesting in the Huxleyan dystopia that is “The World State.”

But, I haven’t read any Huxley. Everything I know about Brave New World – like all the topics slavishly researched to support my hastily-formed opinions on them – comes from the Internet. In fact, I don’t know what most of the words in that preceding paragraph mean.

I do know this: totalitarian control of a governing body over every aspect of life including technology, food, sex, clothes, travel, drugs, and blinking can’t be all bad.

One artifact of culture, in particular, could use some of that fascist muscle: the drive-in, drive-thru, backyard classic hamburger (hereafter referred to as a burger).

My whole issue with the burger, and my need for it to have some heavy-duty regulatory supervision, began just one week ago (which is more than ample time for me to form a theory on which I ramble for hours and then claim to be sacrosanct). My wife and I were wandering around Union Square and thought it was a B-E-A-utiful day for a burger. So I whipped out the trusty old iPhone – no holster yet – and found what seemed to be a reputable establishment only two blocks away: Goodburger. Perfect. We went. We ate. We left.

But we didn’t leave impressed. While they may just claim to have the “best burger in New York City,” little room is left (thanks to the hyperbolic steroid-enhanced reviews painted on the wall) to think anything other than Goodburger should be knighted and dubbed Sir-Best-Burger-in-the-Frakkin’-Universeburger.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that it wasn’t a “good” burger. It was.The problem lied in determining how good of a burger it really was, and why the NY Times, Zagat, New York Magazine, and Time Out New York were compelled to heap praises, like too many sauteed onions, onto said Goodburger. I’ve had a burger at almost every “best burger in NYC” establishment, and Goodburger is not on that list. It’s not even close. I feel like those burger reviewers haven’t even been to the other contenders and had a burger.

Anyway, after leaving Goodburger, I was confused. I mulled. I wrestled. I tried to determine why, beyond the obvious marketing ploy and newspaper payoffs, we keep calling things “good” burgers that are either just plain burgers, or not even burgers at all. I realized that we now must exalt on high a burger like those served at Goodburger because anything that resembles ground beef found between anything that hints at a bun is called “burger” nowadays. All objective burger standards are gone. If I want to call it a burger, I can call it a burger, and no one can stop me, and that needs to stop.

Much can be learned about what went wrong in the burger industry by looking closely at our current economic debacle – specifically, subprime mortgage lending. I’m no economist, nor do I play one on TV, nor have I ever studied economics, but I read a few articles on the aforementioned Internet that I think informed me of all I need to know about what was wrong with collateralized debt obligations – C.D.O.s – and how this applies to the world of beef patties on bread.

Let’s say, instead of the scores of media outlets waxing less-than-poetic about this burger or that burger being the best, there were agencies – experts in burgerdom – charged with the rating of what a restaurant would like to call a burger from AAA to AA and on down to BBB, the lowest and riskiest burger tranche. Everything that received at least an A rating would be allowed to be called a burger to the public for its purchase and enjoyment.The public would believe it had assurance that what they were buying was indeed a “burger” because of the trusty and rigorous testing processes the agencies used to determine that the product had earned the right to use the term. All those other meat sandwiches, and even some proprietors, would have to use new terminology like: McMeatWich, MeatWich King, Old Fashioned MeatWich, WhataMeatWich, Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, Big Mac, and so on. (Thankfully, one MeatWich giant is gracious – and, dare I say, bold enough – not to wait for the Brave New World, and censors itself more than one would expect.)

Much like our current mortgage bond market, this meat market would rely upon the trustworthiness of the rating system. But, what would happen if securities backed by subprime loans – excuse me – if MeatWiches that normally would garner BBB ratings somehow disguised their riskiness and were presented to the rating agencies hoping to get a high bond – sorry again – burger rating, so they may use the name?

And imagine, if you can (given the seeming impossibility of this kind of thing ever, ever happening), the agencies (for reasons that are just beyond the mind of any person with a shred of common sense remaining) rating the MeatWich AAA and allowing it to be openly called “burger.” Those high up the food chain in the – um, well – food chain industry, would have complete faith in the burgerness of the items because of their faith in the rating agencies, and would proceed to sell and trade and serve them to the public – a public that doesn’t really spend time thinking about these things (unless of course you are me; then, you probably spend way too much time thinking about these things). And the public would proceed to invest their hard-earned dollars into the non-burger burger for sustenance and nutrition.

What the public should immediately notice after one bite of the “burger” is that it’s awful and should be spat out never to be purchased again. But years of trusting the system has dulled common sense and people just go with the flow. Until the unfortunate day when the truth is finally told that all along, what they thought they were eating was not in fact a burger, but a MeatWich – a term I am in the process of trademarking, so don’t even think about using it. The burger market crash and riots that would then ensue are the stuff of legend, or more accurately, the stuff of the Wall Street Journal circa September 2008. This would cause a backlash against the governing party resulting in the opposite party taking office and trying to institute more regulatory oversight of the meat market without completely taking over because of a naive belief that the burger crisis can be solved by a moderate takeover.

We have the power to avert this disaster. We have not gone too far. We don’t have to wait for the burger industry to topple like the bond market. There is still hope that with a dash of dictatorship and a smidge of fascism, the burger ship can righted.We might lose most of individual autonomy and freedom of dissent and other useless rights, but we would gain so much more. We could be living in a world where a burger by any other name is actually called something else. It’s time for the revolution to begin. Let us together make and eat this Brave New Burger.