Lost

No, there are no spoilers here. As I'm generally one of the unfortunate few who have to record and watch later, I know better than to ruin the surprises for everyone else. Plus, there are about a billion other sites that'll be discussing the intracacies of the episode in a vastly more intelligent manner than I'd be able to muster up. (And, if you didn't tape it, you can watch it here tomorrow.)

No, I'm going to talk about the book, Bad Twin.

You know, the manuscript that Sawyer was reading in last week's episode. (Watch it here now.)

Apparently, this is a whole new era of cross-marketing. We have a strange mysterious show with weird characters, a mystery involving an odd fictional foundation that runs its own fake commercials and has its own website. (Not to mention that the fake airline in the show has its own website.

Now there's this book. And that fictional foundation is taking out print ads against the book.

This show is starting to make me think too much. Can't we just go back to the time that tv was mindless amusement? Kind of like what The Onion is referring to in its discussion of sitcom reparations.

Update: Today's Pink Is The New Blog on Lost:

The Hanso commercial told us to go to www.sublymonal.com to get a password to use at the Hanso Foundation website. I played around with it last night, got the password and entered it in the correct field on the website but there have been no majorly shocking revelations so far. There is way too much for me to explain ... head on over to TheLostExperience.com for a full run-down with plenty of explanation on how to figure out stuff on the various websites.

Update 2: The Washington Post is even discussing the Lost cross-marketing phenomenon. Of course, that's after it ran the print ad the Hanso Foundation took out against Bad Twin.