Lost in Humboldt

President Barack Obama had the good sense to schedule his State of the Union address to avoid competition with the season premier of ABC’s hit series, Lost.  The final season begins tonight.

Sadly, the Eureka City Council is less in-tune with its constituents, so unless they can wrap it up before 8pm many voters will be choosing a well-scripted drama or the other kind (you decide which is which).

Early adjournment is not impossible — if certain elected officials who are running for county supervisor can avoid campaign platitudes during the meeting — there’s a chance of avoiding overlap.

Lost takes place on a tropical island somewhere in the South Pacific, but Humboldt County once played a cameo.  In the third episode of Season 3, the mysterious character John Locke flashed back to a time he spent on a (you guessed it) marijuana farm somewhere out highway 36.  But idyllic commune life fell apart when Locke unwittingly led an undercover Humboldt County deputy inside the well-guarded operation.

The episode, “Further Instruction,” aired on Oct. 18, 2006, hitting prime time before the more recent national attention by Pot City USA, Marijuana, Inc., NPR, the LA Times and the pot-sniffing New York Times door-to-door camera crew in Arcata.