ON THE NIGHT BEFORE LOSTMAS

"Regard the fleeting world like this: like stars fading and vanishing at dawn, like bubbles on a fast moving stream, like morning dewdrops evaporating on blades of grass, like a candle flickering in a strong wind; echoes, mirages, and phantoms, hallucinations, and like a dream. "- The Eight Similes of Illusion

We all have no idea what's about to happen in the next four months, where this story that has taken us so far is going to take us next. But as all prepare to board the flightdeck, I'd just like to say to everyone : Whatever LOST means to you, or whatever it has come to mean to you, or whatever you hope it ends up meaning in the end ...

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Enjoy.

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One Day To Go!

DOWN TO THE WIRE

This picture gives me the chills. I'm all out of words at this point. Just bring it on already!

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Day 2! Waiting for the Beach Premiere!

THINGS TO DO WHILE YOU'RE WAITING FOR LOST

The clock is ticking down to the big Finale Premiere on The Beach tonight. Here's a shot of the big screen being set up on Waikiki Beach, as seen from the hotel room window of the insanely lucky Jopinionated, who is blogging the event from Hawaii.

It's going to be a long wait, well into the night for most of us. So here's some Things To Do while you're waiting for the tweets and twitpix to start zinging through the cybersphere:

1. Watch the old bloopers on Youtube.

-Season One
-Season Two
-Season Three
-Season Four
-Season Five

2. Enjoy the wit and wisdom of James "Sawyer" Ford.

3. Check out Vozzek's old IMDB Comic Strip Series. These are some real antiques, from back when Vozzek and DarkUFO were holding court in the teenage frathouse at the LOST IMDB boards. I can give credit where it's due, even when it's to a fanboy. These are funny.

4. Re-watch The Onion ode to LOST fans and resolve to be a less weird LOST fan this year.

Which reminds me that now might be a good time to review Why LOST Owes Us Nothing.

5. See if you agree that these are the 100 Questions LOST Must Answer.

6. Read some more excellent recent articles about LOST:

"Fantasy Island" from The Independent.

I love Lost the way I love fast food. I look forward to it with a sugary pang of guilt, devour it lustily and then, an hour later, find myself hollow, disappointed and regretting my former enthusiasm. Yet I keep going back for more.

Liz and Jen's chat with Jeff Jensen in The Washington Post.

Jeff Jensen: I've long cheered Sawyer and Kate. I kinda never understood what Jack sees in her. Actually, I've never understood what Kate saw in HIM--he only ever makes her feel crappy about herself. She deserves better. Someone asked earlier in the chat if I ever predicted something that came true, and yes, there is one: That Juliet would die.

Salon explains "Why LOST is the most important show of the decade. Why? Because it's DOOMED."

It's been done with love and attention and the evident and ceaseless passion of true, red-blooded nerds, and in the end, it's going to leave holes, because it has to, because what they bit off is just that big. ... Going forward with a show, raising question after question after question, asking people to be patient about a monster for five-plus seasons, knowing that it's all going to get you a kick in the teeth from your own adoring fans someday because you have taken on more than you will ever be able to really explain? That's audacious.

7. And if all else fails ... Everybody Watch Skex!

There's still some waiting left, but not much. We're getting down to the hours and the minutes. Stay chill, fishies. Catch a livestream of The Big Event by Aloha Bruce. And come on over to The Fishelage to gab about it!

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DAY 3

SKATE STRAIGHT UP

I know everyone is getting crazy excited for tomorrow night's Finale-Premiere of LOST on Waikiki Beach and, after that, for Tuesday night's three solid hours of LOST-utopia. But we've still got some time to kill. So if you're one of the readers of this blog who enjoy Sawyer and Kate's story the way I do, then pull up a chair and kill some of it here. And if you're one of those readers who don't enjoy Sawyer and Kate, well, then ... get the hail outta here!

As a perpetually amused observer of LOST's incessant online conversation, nothing makes me chuckle more than the conceit in various corners that those who enjoy the romantic stories of LOST are somehow mentally ineligible to appreciate the story in full. Shippers, as we're known in the vernacular, have been tagged as drooling, babbling squee monkeys who have invented a parallel universe in our minds, some girly fantasy that bears no relationship to the larger plot.

Now I can't speak for all shippers of course, but I bow to no one when it comes to my appreciation of LOST. I know exactly how important romance, and in particular the Jack-Kate-Sawyer love triangle, is in the context of the big picture. Which is to say ... it's CENTRAL! Duh. Just ask Carlton Cuse. Wait, you don't have to. Entertainment Weekly already did!

I know there have been mysterious spoiler "sources" out there, Benedict Arnold types who have sold their souls for a chance to give DarkUFO a couple more hits. The online echo chamber has managed to convince itself that Sawyer and Kate as a couple are done, that in fact they've been done for years ... Hell, maybe they never even existed as a viable storyline in the first place! Whatever else happens in the final season, I think it's completely safe to say that these poor deluded souls are in for a rude awakening. Of the red toolbox variety.

Ouch! That's gonna hurt.

Maybe it's true that I'm not your typical shipper. I'm not necessarily the biggest consumer of ship oriented fancraft like fanfic and homemade videos. A lot of the videos that make their way online are impressive, that's true, but I often find the choice of music and the splicing of scenes to be a bit propagandist - as if the vid maker is forcing an emotional conclusion on the audience.

That's fine, of course, because it's a lot of fun sometimes to just bask in the glow of a story you enjoy, especially when you don't feel like you get enough of it onscreen. But what I want to do today, as we approach the runway for the BIG BIG BIG Season Six Premiere, is show that for one couple at least - for Sawyer and Kate - no ornamentation is necessary.

Our own Demy from Fishbiscuitland has graciously allowed me to feature this wonderful series she made of Sawyer and Kate's story through the seasons. I love the delicate musical score. It's unobtrusive; there's just enough to bridge the gaps and knit all the scenes together. And what scenes there are! Sawyer and Kate don't need any fluffing or exaggeration, don't need to be photoshopped or distorted or shown out of context in any way. Demy has done something very simple. All of Sawyer and Kate's great scenes are here, warts and all, the bad with the good, the happy with the heartbreaking, the ugly with the incredibly beautiful. There is nothing that needs to be hidden or explained or fanwanked away. I'm choosing to feature this set of five videos here because I don't think there's any better case to be made for this central romance of LOST.

It starts in Season One.
.

The waterfall. The wrestling. The birthday wish four years ago.

Season Two

The bottle on the beach. The pill whispering. Kate's magical black horse.

Season Three starts at crescendo and ends in diminuendo.

Love, passion and ... close your eyes, fanboys ... S.E.X.!

Season Four

A spectacular kiss. A noble sacrifice. A calamity of cause and effect.

Season Five wasn't one for romance. It was a gift to the sci fi geeks, but it's amazing how much Sawyer and Kate's story was woven into even this most fanboyesque of seasons.

And we all learned something last year: Whatever happened, happened is what's meant to be. I'm assuming that will make sense ... soon.

LOST online message boards aren't much the place for intelligent appreciation of the show. They've become the kind of place where people who can't spell common pronouns pound their chests over having "won" silly victories they've only invented in their minds. The online conceit that the triangle has ended, for instance, or that it's only the concern of estrogen intoxicated idiots, or that Sawyer and Kate aren't one of the most central plots in the show ... all of that isn't worth the hot air it takes to shoot it down. The evidence is right here in this clean and simple sequence of beautiful scenes. Thanks, Demy for making the case that no amount of words could have made, one that's immune to dispute. Thanks for letting the story speak for itself.

For any Skaters out there who want to bask a little longer in the glow of this story, central to the show for all six seasons, here's a little chaser. Another truly excellent fan effort, this one by galthial23, that shows how much story we've been told about this beautiful couple. Anyone who thinks there isn't more to come is, if you'll pardon the expression, outta their minds.

Here's to Season Six. Can't wait to see what that final collection of scenes will look like!

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Day 5 - LOLZ

LAUGH OUT LOUD

Being a LOST fan is kind of like being a prisoner. Those of us who are hardcore, who have battled it out across the seasons, who have dissected Easter Eggs and learned to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics, who can still remember the lyrics to You All Everybody, who can summarize all the arguments in favor of LOST following the time travel model based on Novikov's self-consistency principle vs. the Many Worlds model, who've gotten trapped in message board flamewars with arrested-adolescent fanboys and who've watched all our precious theories and predictions and guesses and wishes go up in smoke one by one by one, year after year after godforsaken year ....

It's too much! We need a break! We have to laugh about this stuff, or we'd never stop crying. Luckily help is just a mouseclick away. This fountain of frustration we LOST fans experience has exploded into a Perfect Storm of interactive media blended with the creativity of some of the internet's most subversively hilarious fans. We may have an unhealthy obsession with all things LOST, but at least we can laugh about it.

I think it all starts right here. With the Classic. CapnBob's Lost Bohemian Rhapsody still makes me rhapsodic, even three years on:

I see a little silhouette-0 of a man!

This vid by Pawel18021990 takes a poke at Locke's pathological need to be special:

Are you pretty?

TheFineBros are a LOST fun factory unto themselves. Who said those geeky action figures wouldn't be collector's items someday? Trekkies, Bill & Ted and the DeLorean all together on Craphole Island! Doctor and doctor, James and James, Asian and Asian ... they're the same show!

Now that there is time travel, there's no need for logic anymore!

Maybe if Adolph had been able to obsess over LOST, he wouldn't have had time to go out and destroy the world. Although, on the other hand, maybe it would have just made him madder!

I am stuck reading fan theories on everything! Their theories are always garbage!

And this next video? Is too good. It's a friggin masterpiece, I tell you. TheFineBros have outdone themselves. Petula Clark's 'Downtown' - what an inspired choice. And I'm with you, bruthas, we need some 'Answers?!' I think, whenever I feel that frustrated feeling this season, I'm just going to watch this video again. And again. Brilliant!

I'm sure there's more of this stuff out there. Anyone know of any good ones?

Follow this link for a bonus fishbiscuit!

See you tomorrow! In the meantime, keep counting.

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DAY 6 - Geeking Out On LOST

ATTENTION TO DETAIL

LOST is not a show that you can watch with half your brain. You need to stay awake, if only to keep track of the mythological labyrinth it sucks you into. Just trying to remember the various chronologies and functions within the Hatch system is enough to drive you round the bend. Then there's the peculiar bureaucratic social structure of the Dharma Initiative ... who became the Others ... after they were colonized by the Hostiles. There's the Widmore Corporation. And Paik Heavy Industries. The Smoke Monster. Polar bears. The Black Rock. Jughead. The Temple. He Who Lies in the Shadow of the Statue ... Who (also) Protects Us All. Not to mention the freakin Numbers! Trying to keep it all straight is enough to drive you batty.

But we're committed here to trying. After all, this is the last big roundup. Once the new season starts (in just SIX short days!) we're going to be swamped with a whole new set of details and interwebbing connections and minutia and insanity. So I thought it might be helpful to put together a little reference material. To ponder over now and maybe come back to for refreshers as needed.

This amazing video is a real time rendition from several perspectives of the crash of the ill-fated Oceanic Flight 815. Televisionary has described it as "the single greatest ancillary video for Lost yet." I concur. Simply awesome.

Think of the attention to detail that video required from its maker. He could only have been a LOST fan. Because attention to detail, minute, excrutiating, ever evolving and differentiating detail ... that's what keeps us LOST fans going.

Like those apparently random and yet possibly significant connections the Losties have with each other. Like how Kate's not-dad Sam Austen served with Desmond's not-friend Kelvin during Desert Storm. Or how Locke's box factory manager Randy also managed the Cluck's restaurant that sponsored the balloon flight of the Real Henry Gale. Is this stuff intended to amuse us or mock us? Don't they realize apophenia is a disease?

If you've got an hour or two to kill, check out the following diagram. It's a touch out of date, but still fascinating reading:

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Or if you've only got a few moments to kill, try this handy dandy very basic interactive map that I found at Doc Arzt's. Simple and fun.

The mother of all LOST mysteries is the meaning of Time. Trying to accurately parse out the timeline of LOST is like trying to take apart a Swiss watch ... while you're really drunk. But there's one fan out there who gave it a shot.

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If you want a more comprehensive rundown of the Lost timeline in text form, look no further than this Lostpedia "Timeline" entry which helpfully breaks it down to pre-crash, post crash, and diverging timelines.

Remember the Hatch blast door from Lockdown? And how when that thing was backlit for a couple of seconds the entire fandom went to a happy place? Who knew it would be filled with cryptic bromides like "The wrath of the gods may be great but it is slow" or inspirational poetry like "Lift up your hearts lift up your hearts lift up your hearts." Here it is for you to enjoy again with Latin to English translations, so you can really knock yourself out. Just remember: "A mouse does not rely on just one hole." OK?

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The topology of the Island is something a lot of fans like to get into. Here's Rousseau's map (translated). Just in case you ever want to research the geographic relationship between "the place with a large quantity of coconuts" and "the most dangerous place (damned phenomena/freaks of nature) ". I know I never realized there was a Robert Island or an Alex Island off the coast. Will we ever need to know that? I've never been good at the geography of the Island. I always find myself wandering off and wondering why, if Rousseau was able to measure that "the beach is a metre deep for 1.5 km", she somehow managed to miss the fact that the Dharma Bums had built their very own Jonestown dystopia right next door to her local cave. I guess sometimes you really do miss the forest for the trees.

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And then there's Daniel's map, which has helpful hints like 8° N, 33° E and 0° N, 21° E. I mean I don't find that stuff too useful, but you really never know. It might turn out to be the key to the whole magilla. Daniel's map showed up in two different episodes. Between the first time we saw it ("The Other Woman") and the second ("The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham"), it had acquired hieroglyphics, which have been helpfully translated as "Northward Travel" and "Time of kings/ancients" respectively. Do those mean anything? Maybe. At least as much as anything "means" anything on LOST. So here it is, for future reference.

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One thing we can say about these writers is that they're good at baiting a hook for those of us looking for intellectual stimulation along with our slice of action, adventure and romance. It's a good bet that they're just stringing us along with most of it, but it's still a helluva lot of fun for those of us so inclined. So brush off your thinking cap, get out your magnifying glass and get ready to go back to work. It's almost TIME!

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HEAR YE! HEAR YE!

Yo! Calling all Fish! Calling all Geese! All hands on deck! It's time to wake it up and shake off those Long Hiatus Blues. We've been waiting so long, it's hard to believe our waiting is actually going to finally END! It's almost time to get LOST again! We're going BAAAAAACK!!!!

So much has happened since we last left our Losties, but all in all it's been a pretty good hiatus for Fishbiscuitland. The Season One review has been fun. It revived my awe and my admiration for this epic work of imagination we've all been privileged to be a part of. Plus we gained a lot of new fans this year. Look! Even Matt Fox is a Fish Fan now!

If by any chance you had forgotten how much Time has passed since LOST first cast its spell of enchantment over us all, then just take a look at this cute In Touch Weekly magazine spread (thanks to Susan at Outlaws for the scan.) It's a blast from the past for various LOST cast members. You know things are coming to an end when the media starts getting nostalgic:

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Look at them! It really goes to show what a difference a good hair stylist can make, doesn't it? It wouldn't have been the same if Jack had kept that Farrah Fawcett 'do. Although mocking Jack probably would have been twice as funny!

And Joshie with short hair? Would never have worked out. He's cute in an adorable sweet Dr. Awesome kind of way, but there's no badassery without that hair.

Locke never would have made it to icon status if Terry hadn't razored that dome either. No way. There's just no mystery.

As we've all learned along the way on this long strange trip, it's the little things that make all the difference. The devil is always in the details. ... Ah, the details! I get tired just thinking of how many new ones we'll have to analyze! Apophenics of the world, Unite! This is our last hurrah!

I hope everyone is as excited as I am. I'm on tenterhooks! I'm anticipating this show going out with a bang. No matter how we will feel about where all of our beloved characters end up, I think we can all agree that it's been one mind-frakking helluva ride. For better or for worse, there will never be another LOST.

In the spirit of celebrating the culmination of an iconic show which pushed the boundaries of network television, sometimes failed to hit the mark but always was ambitious in what it set out to achieve ... Let the COUNTDOWN begin!

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