stuff is cool

THIS FUCKING SHOW

Ok, I was the first in my viewing party to utter “this is not a flashback.” Shannon backed me up on that.

EDIT: We all discussed the fact that Jack somehow had a RAZR phone during the supposed “flashback” (which would have put it sometime before Sept 2004) but we dismissed it as a goof. We were so DUMB!

It is either Ben or Locke in the coffin. There are many arguments for it to be either one.

Also, all four of us were a little curious about Jack’s “Go upstairs and get my father and if I am drunker than he is . . .” line. But we think it was just a) Jack being fucked up on pain pills and making a strong point and 2) the producers’ intent to make sure we didn’t suspect it wasn’t a flashback.

I also called that Hurley would somehow save the day.

Love that Hurley.

RIP, Charlie. I cried for you.

And yes, my mind is sufficiently blown. The next seven months are going to be realllllly tough. But I have wedding planning to distract me.

SPOILER ALERT: If you are for some reason not watching LOST this season but saving it up to watch on DVD in the future, do not read this. Mild spoilers ahead.

Ok, so Heroes: Chapter One didn;t end with a bang, nuclear or not. It kinda fizzled. So now it’s up to LOST to CHANGE MY LIFE.

In anticipation of having my mind blown tonight by the two hour LOST Season Three Finale, I wanted to share with you moments from my favorite episode of the season. Some would say it was a throwaway episode, but it had me smiling from ear to ear near the end as it was one of the most uplifting moments of the entire series. Oh, there were good episodes, especially those focusing on Desmond, or whenever Ben started wigging out, but this, this episode made me feel really good. Skip ahead to about 2:30 if you want to just see my fave part. The rest is plot build up.

I also just noticed Vincent was with them. BADASS!

Well, really this post doesn’t deal entirely with Lost but it’s what inspired me to get on this train of thought.

About 2 years ago I basically never watched any TV. All the TV was really used for, other than collecting dust, was to watch the occasional DVD (which was also fairly rare since I had canceled my Netflix subscription at the time) and play the occasional Gamecube game. In fact, I couldn’t even watch local channels on my TV without going through an interesting ritual involving hooking up a coaxial cable to the cable input, and holding the pin on the connector against a metal portion on my coffee table because that was the only way I’d get any reception since I didn’t have a real TV antenna.

One of the few exceptions to my “no TV” habit was 24, as I’ve stated here. And really at that point (which would have been either the 3rd or 4th season of 24) I only really watched it because it provided an opportunity to hang out with my family for an evening each week. Oh and a free meal didn’t hurt However, one thing that started making even the somewhat predictable and often outlandish plot twists on 24 more fun again was participating in what are called “live watching threads”. Basically, over on the Something Awful forums, there are 24 fans that will all watch the show and comment on it in a thread on the discussion forum as things happen. A lot of the time it’s pretty simple reaction stuff like “HOLY CRAP!!” or “awesome!”, but the people who post there are also pretty clever and funny, so there are often lots of funny little comments. Since I follow along in each thread (and sometimes post my own comments), I’m often cracking up during even the most tense of episodes. Of course, when somebody’s cracking up at something you have to know what it is, so now I have to share what I find to be the funniest remarks with my mom and Meg since I watch along with them. The best part is that instead of sitting there with someone who is actually saying these things, it’s all on my laptop screen, so it doesn’t make me miss any of the dialog/action (though with DVRs these days that’s almost a moot point). I dare say that if I had to watch a show with 20 people actually shouting out things trying to be clever (or other things like “what did he say? my cable went out for a second!”), I wouldn’t watch it for very long.

But what does this have to do with Lost? Well, Lost has live watching threads as well and although these threads aren’t often as funny as the 24 ones (probably because Lost has a more tenuous relationship with reality than 24 does, so something glaringly other-worldly or flat-out unbelievable isn’t as ridiculous on Lost) the Lost threads are often full of interesting speculation and/or ideas. In fact, I became one of the folks who was chomping at the bit trying to figure out what everything said on the Swan Bunker blast door and what it all meant in relation to the larger mysteries involved with the show. I started listening to the Lost podcasts to hear the teaser information from the producers. Though my interest waned somewhat with the end of last season, it’s picked up again a little bit with the little 6-pack of episodes (the “mini-season” if you will) that they’re airing now before going on a long break until February. I dare say the show is addicting, but it’s really something different than that to me, which I’ll explain here once I tie things back to my introduction.

So is Lost just a show that I finally deemed worthy enough to break my general “no TV” habit? No, I figured out that it’s not the programming itself that makes the TV I watch appealing to me, it’s the shared experience. It’s the fact that the shows sort of live outside of the TV itself. Try and get me to watch a new TV show and I’m still most likely to balk at it, honestly. Very few shows have I found to be good enough to watch just because I enjoyed the shows themselves (I’m looking at you, Arrested Development).

The only reason I started watching Lost at all wasn’t at someone’s recommendation, it was because I saw so many people chattering about Lost on the forums that I thought I’d watch through the first few episodes and see what I thought. Well, the show itself was good enough for me to watch the entire first season (25 hour-long episodes) in about a day and a half, but I still watch it every week now because there’s a community of folks that I can chat with about the show.

So to any of you who have tried to recommend a TV show to me and I’ve turned my nose up at it, now you know why

Two great tastes that taste great together: one of the few TV shows I watch, Lost, and my web framework of choice, Django.

Jeff Croft has put together a site, Lost Theories to allow folks to add/rate/comment on theories regarding Lost. And, to make things even better he’s distributing the source code to it. He says he borrowed a lot from the Zyons folks, and that’s actually the app I was looking at as well when trying to figure out some auth issues (see a few posts ago). However this site seems to use user authentication and authorization more like my site needs to, so hopefully his stuff will have stripped out some of the stuff that was confusing me. I haven’t taken a look yet because I was just so happy to have read this that I immediately came to post about it

Also, if anyone wants an example of just how kickass a Django-powered website can be, check out Jeff Croft’s blog (link above). I’m actually not a huge fan of the front page layout (too much stuff at the bottom), but everything else is very nice. The “live search” at the top is incredible - try it out by starting to type stuff in the search box and watch as results appear before your eyes.

I don’t watch much TV. In fact, I watch essentially no TV at all, save two shows, 24 and Lost. In fact, I have to go elsewhere to watch them because I don’t have a cable connection and my reception to the local channels really blows. So, Meg and I have standing weekly appointments for watching these — Monday nights for 24 at my parents’ house, and Wednesday nights at her place for Lost. However, this past Wednesday I had to work late and couldn’t make it in time to watch Lost, so I had to do something to be able to watch it later. As it turns out, I don’t have to resort to the *cough* questionable *cough* methods of getting that episode that I did, because ABC has decided to try out this new concept: distributing their shows online.

Thursday morning, the show went online at ABC’s free full-episode streaming portal. Currently they have four shows on there: Lost, Alias, Commander in Chief, and Desperate Housewives. Basically you just watch them in your browser and have to sit through a handful of commercial sections. It’s not all that different from watching TV normally, except that you don’t need a DVR to pause or rewind it. You can even skip to a specific point in the show if you want if for some reason you missed just a small bit and wanted to catch up. It’s pretty cool. And one added bonus for them is now that I’ve watched Lost on there, I may check out one of their other shows as well, since I can view it whenever I want to. Everybody wins!

As for actually what happened this week on Lost, well, that’s another blog post entirely. Crazy crazy stuff, and I’m glad there are no more breaks between new episodes. Hooray for May sweeps!

Edit: I just noticed the date range up at the top, apparently this is only through May and June. Good thing Lost is over by then! Though seriously I hope this catches on and is kept up on a more permanent basis.