I was advocating for the Survivor All-Stars to make its big twist be that Jeff had to play, instead of just do the Alex Trebek stuff on the sidelines.

You know that Jeff was the host of Rock & Roll Jeopardy, right?

...but did he eat rat he had killed and cooked himself on that show? I bet not. (Actually, I have never heard of Rock & Roll Jeopardy. Although I do see Marc Summers from Double Dare on Food Network not and then.)

...but did he eat rat he had killed and cooked himself on that show?

Not so much, but he was very funny. The other bit of R&R Jeopardy trivia I know is that Mark McGrath (once of Sugar Ray, now of Extra) was like the best player ever.

I loves me some Jeff Probst. The man strikes just the right balance between--"this stuff is kinda goofy" and "This game can be really interesting."

I like Jeff, too. I never understood why everyone hates him. Not his fault they make him parrot that goofy "The tribe has spoken" nonsense. And I think he's getting snarkier with every season, which is fun.

I'm also wondering if Locke's original injury was at least partly psychosomatic. Powerful stuff, the mind.

Uh Huh. I'm glad someone else has been thinking along these lines. It seems most people automatically assume Locke's paralysis was physical, yet after 4 years his legs are still fine. A psychosomatic cause seems more in tune with the state of his legs, since the muscles wouldn't necessarily atrophy they would with damage to the spine.

Wouldn't the muscles atrophy just from lack of use? My knee injuries resulted in a fair amount of atrophy, and that was just months of partial use, not years of not any.

Which is to say -- that's not somewhere I'm looking for symptoms to match sense. I doubt they'll resolve cleanly, unless he's been doing isometrics in his sleep this whole time.

The atrophy would occur no matter the cause of lack of use. I don't imagine they will address that issue. They have left open the possibilities for cause. I haven't heard anything that clearly indicated a physical event. If it was then it will have to link with another character.

Wouldn't the muscles atrophy just from lack of use? My knee injuries resulted in a fair amount of atrophy, and that was just months of partial use, not years of not any.

Bear in mind I'm only surmising and trying to find a sensible explanation in the context of a TV show, so don't get too crazy over my insensible reasoning. I presume your injury would've made it painful to work the leg until your knee had healed sufficiently, thus atrophy began to occur. However, once the knee had healed you were able to build the muscles back to what they are now. With Locke, it's reasonable to presume he would've begun receiving physical therapy after a certain period of time, which would've begun to reverse any atrophy occuring. Now, since there was no actual damage to the spinal column, the nerves running to the legs would still be getting the full measure of signals and blood and stuff and so the muscles would also be getting worked the same way as a non-paraplegic. Therefore, when the psychological block causing the paralysis was broken after the crash, his legs were as good as if it he'd never been in the wheel-chair.

edit b/c it's "your" injury, not "our" injury :)

BTW, over at Readerville, there was a suggestion that the kid in the toystore was our "connected backstory".