man we gotta go back

Wednesday is February 2nd. Do you know what that is? The one year anniversary of the beginning of the end.

Yes, I remember the exact date of the LOST final season premiere.

This video makes me laugh and cry. Seriously.

not quite all

This is really, really tempting me right now.

oh my gosh

I just realized I really wrote a lot about the ending of LOST without a spoiler alert or anything. And I know of several people who allegedly read my blog and are not caught up on LOST...

I sincerely hope I didn't spoil it for anyone. And I'm very sorry if I did :(

My LOST post will still be up, but I'm turning all the text white so if you want to read it, just highlight.

namaste

This post has SPOILERS in it, so I am turning the text white in an effort to protect those who have not lost their LOST virginity or are otherwise unaware of the finale. Just highlight if you want to read.

Well, it's over. After six wonderful years, LOST has let go and walked into that white light.

What did you think?

I thought it was amazing.

To me, LOST has always been about the people. The mythology of the island was fun and compelling, but the relationships formed, the personal struggles, and the basic battle between good and evil was the true basis of the show. Ending the show with the emphasis on these relationships seemed perfectly fitting.

I've heard LOST referred to as an iceberg--what we see is just a tiny bit of the true bulk. Do we really need all the answers to all the questions about Dharma, electromagnetism, the hostiles, Walt and so on? I don't think so. I think it's a stronger show for leaving a lot of that up to interpretation. It's like the end of The Giver; if you knew what was at the bottom of the hill, would it be as good of a book?

I am a little surprised by how many people out there in internet world are confused as to what was going on in what we've been calling the flash-sideways, but was really a flash-forward: it was limbo. purgatory. an in-between place. the wood between the worlds. It was just a place that Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Hurley, and all our other old friends constructed after they died (at different times: some before Jack, some long after him) in order to come to terms with their lives and their deaths and be able to move on into the light together.

Oh, and how great was it that the last scene was Jack closing his eye. I love when things come full circle.

don't mock me

i think i will seriously cry tomorrow night when i see this for the last time.

i first heard about LOST in 2005 when two women i worked with used to talk about it at work. at that point, i was still under the delusion that LOST was some sort of survivor spinoff--a reality show. then in 2006, my parents sat us down to watch the pilot while we were visiting them for Christmas.

when they listened to the french transmission and realized it had been playing for 16 years... yeah. that's where it got me.

for anyone who still thinks LOST is about getting off an island, please, for your own sake, rent season 1 and watch it. i promise you will like it.

see you in another life

This week's episode of LOST gave Desmond's adage a whole new meaning.

We've always known Desmond was special. We know the rules don't apply to him. And now it looks like he is the looked-for link between what happened and... what also happened.

Desmond has always been one of my favorite characters (he and the infinitely manipulative Ben Linus). I think that's because of his similarities to Billy Pilgrim.

Desmond episodes are the best.

issues

Think about how many characters on LOST are named by someone that doesn't ultimately raise them.

Walt was named by Michael, but not raised by him until he was 10.

Aaron was named by Claire, but was only with her until he was a few months old.

Ben was named by his mother, who died shortly after.

Alex was named by Danielle, but snatched and raised by Ben after only a week.

Ji Yeon was named (kind of) by Jin, but still hasn't actually met her father.

ETA John Locke was named by his mother who left him to be raised in foster care.

Once again, my two passions (names and LOST) converge...

fade to white

I started planning my LOST season six premiere party in November.

Excited? Yeah.

For the invitations, I bought extremely realistic (Helena took a bite of one and said "Ew, yuck!")fake mangos at Robert's. I printed off the party info on a piece of orangish-red cardstock, and wound twine around the mango to hold the cardstock in place. I liked to imagine the Losties writing messages on paper, tying them to mangos, and then throwing them to each other in place of cell phones.

Old suitcases piled in the corner. Doh, I just realized that I forgot to have raggedy clothing hanging out of them!!
Jason and I have quite a few of the books on the LOST book club list and I checked out about 12 more from the library--here they are stacked on our mantel. I don't think anyone realized what they were, but I kind of like how they look stacked there...

I stacked the paper goods for the food in another empty suitcase.

The "treat" table display.

I got this great backgammon set at DI--it only took me three different visits to find it!! And this is a good view of Jack's pills under the glass cake cover. I bought empty prescription bottles from Wal-Mart and filled them with jelly beans for party favors.

I printed off the Dharma water and soda labels from this website and wrapped them around bottled water and Jones' sodas.

I even had a spot for Charlie's imaginary peanut butter.

It looks like I neglected to take pictures of everything else or any of the party attendees. I asked everyone to come dressed as their favorite character: we had a smoke monster, a breakdown Jack, a Claire-and-Aaron, and six Charlies. I guess the other people who came were all red-shirts because they didn't dress up :P

Our menu was John Locke's BBQ pulled boar sandwiches, Island sweet onion potato chips, Roger Workman potato skins, Sun's fresh garden vegetables with Hurley's favorite ranch dressing, Kate's fruit, Dharma water and sodas, Charlie's imaginary peanut butter, Claire's peanut butter cookies, Sawyer's fish biscuits, and Jack's (jelly bean) pills.

I followed the instructions on this blog and made lottery tickets. Of course, the winning number was 4 8 15 16 23 42 and the winner got a stuffed polar bear (from DI) with a Dharma Hydra station collar. For our game, I printed off famous quotes from LOST characters, rolled them up, and stuck them in an empty glass bottle. Then we took turns reading quotes aloud and everyone else had to guess who said it and in what context.

I had a blast planning the party. Can you tell?

And the show... wow. It blew my mind. The genius of it is that it's something everyone has wondered at one time or another: What would it have been like if things had happened differently?

man of science, man of faith

{With "the beginning of the end" rapidly approaching, you can look forward to a lot of LOST posts from me. I have been talking and thinking about it nonstop since Christmas, when my brother gave me a Dharma Swan t-shirt.}

I have often wondered if J.J. Abrams purposefully chose a diminutive form of "John" for the name of Locke's nemesis. John Locke and Jack Shephard are polar opposites in everything--their priorities, their leadership styles, their belief systems. John believes in fatalism; Jack, free will. Jack is a self-proclaimed man of science; John is a man of faith.

I like to think that Abrams was aware of the implications of his choice.

After all, names have been an important aspect of LOST. Many of the characters' names are allusions to literature or philosophy: John Locke/Jeremy Bentham, Danielle Rousseau, Charlotte S. Lewis, Desmond David Hume, Anthony Cooper, Boone Carlyle, James "Sawyer" Ford . Ben's ill-fated mother's final request before she died was that her son be named Benjamin. Flashback Danielle and her french lover had already chosen the name Alex for their baby, whether it was a boy or a girl. And the mysterious Jacob alludes to the Old Testament Jacob: "God loves you as He loved Jacob".

I recently wondered about the effect a name has on a child, and the same theme can be explored in LOST. Sawyer's most recognizable trait is his habit of calling people by nicknames, including himself. James Ford adopted the name of the man that conned his parents, and along with the name, he adopted the man's persona. I can't be the only person who noticed that his personality changed as he started going by James again.

If Jack was really John, would he still be a man of science? Or would he become a man of faith?