My Thoughts on LOST's Series Finale

I loved every second of it.

I teared up with every 'realization' the characters had and tears ran down my cheeks after my eyes welled up with them during the final 15 minutes.

And I am not an outwardly emotional person. The most you'll see out of me is silent tears and LOST managed to do that in the 1st 20 minutes with the Jin and Sun 'realization'.

The reveal that the Flash-sideways is a purgatory of sorts, that the characters created so they could move onto the next phase of life together, not alone, is an interesting plot choice by the writers.

It definitely works for me.

It places the emphasis on the characters of LOST, not it's mythos. The point that Christian makes to Jack about how the most important time in each of their lives was the time they spent together on the island. The past six seasons had led up to the defeat of the Man in Black and, as a result, the saving of the rest of the world. I think that point, that they saved the world, is likely to be forgotten.

I also think it is easy to spend time dewelling on the lives the characters, who left on the Ajira plane, lived after the time the show's final image in the present. The same applies to Hurley, Ben, and Desmond on the island. Although the time Hurley as the island's protector and Ben as his #2 is eluded to by their brief exchange, very little is mentioned in regards to the ones who left on the plane. I only remember, right now, Kate saying to Jack, "I missed you." The lack of any knowledge, of what these characters did once they left, is likely to incense some fans, but they should recognize that this is the writers' way of telling them that what happened after the island was not important. Like Christian said, and I'm paraphrasing, "the most important time in their lives was what took place since flight 815 crashed."

I'm sure that countless people are frustrated that LOST, which built its notoriety on its myriad of mysteries, ended up leaving some things unexplained and instead filled its finale with beautifully crafted scenes of emotion. I suggest that people who are unsatisfied with the show's conclusion, or somehow feel betrayed, go back and watch the series again and do two things while watching:

1. Do some critical thinking. Most of the 'answers' are there. The writers simply chose to not spell every thing out. Think of it like this; the writers filled in half the crossword puzzle and then handed you their pencil saying, 'you do the rest'.

and

2. Screw the 'answers'. LOST is about the characters.

In the end LOST touched me (not like Jacob touched people) and I cannot say that about any other show except, maybe, The Wire.

So maybe I'm a Romantic

How do you tell someone you barely know that, to you, they are 'perfect'? I like to think that a person should always have someone who reminds them that life does not completely suck. Someone who keeps you 'connected' to life.

A "constant", to borrow an idea from LOST.

I cannot believe I just typed such a thing.

I have an incredibly hard time of verbally expressing affection toward anything (I think this is why I love to write). Of course, this only applies when I like something; showing dislike is an old hat to me. I've somehow rationalized in my mind that to do so would be a form of weakness. As if doing so would give anyone witnessing said affection an upper hand on me or allow them to understand me better.

It is completely ridiculous and stupid.

What makes it even more ridiculous and stupid is that I would like nothing more than to have someone understand me. I am not trying to paint myself as some complex individual. I'm no more complex than the next guy.

OK. Maybe I'm slightly more complex.

But only slightly.

It is because of this mental block that rarely have any 'truly' meaningful conversations with anyone outside of my mother and father. And my mother has said on numerous occasions that she wished we talked more. With me it is 100% superficial whatever% of the time I can keep it that way.

I know. I'm an idiot.

But back to the problem at hand. How do you tell someone that? How do you let someone see you without any of your barriers up? Which in my case is too many to count. I suppose the easy answer is, just do it. That's what most people would say, but the problem with that answer is those people do not have to live with the repercussions that you have to. That is why it's an easy answer.

I think a thoughtful answer would say, "You might get burned, but if you like this girl enough, then the worries you have shouldn't get in your way".

That is the answer I would give.

I think it is the answer I am looking for, but it still does not alleviate my worries. The sad thing is that I can think of a hundred of ways I would look like a moron and lose a friend, but only one way where I do not.

The glass is always half-empty with me.

I want my NBA back

Yesterday I was sitting with my mother watching one of the ESPN 30 for 30 films. It was called Winning Time: Reggie Miller vs. the New York Knicks and it chronciled the two intense playoff series between Miller's Pacers and the Knicks in the early 1990's. Watching it reminded me of how much fun the NBA was to watch in the early to mid 90's.

The NBA was the first professional sport where I actually sat down and watched a complete game. When I was young (around 6 or 7) I would stay up past midnight watching the playoffs; even on school nights. My mother told me how she remembers calling my father, who had transferred to a job in Philly, and telling him how I would just sit there and watch; she thought there was something wrong with me.

I loved the NBA back then.

There was Barkley, Penny Hardaway, Ewing, Olajuwon, Gary Payton, David Robinson, Malone and Stockton, and, of course, Pippen and Jordan. The league wasn't simply players though. The teams were great too; so were the series they played in. These games were physical battles and you could see the players who were men and those who couldn't handle it. The refs called these games like men were playing too. Go back and watch some games from back then. These guys were beating on each other and a foul was actually a foul, not a miniscule bump. Guys would be getting technicals and flagrants called on them constantly if the refs called those games the way they do now. And I think that many of the 'great' players of today would struggle if they were playing in the early 90's NBA.

The NBA is embarassing to watch now.

Refs repeatedly give preferential treatment and I'm not even sure they call traveling anymore. That is where the NBA is at now. They market their stars to the point that teams do not even matter. The game is called with such bias that you could put LeBron James on nearly any team and he could make the conference finals. There are no great teams and that means there are definitely no great series. Of course there are exceptions; the Bulls/Celtics series last year was special to watch and the same applies when the #8 seed Golden State Warriors beat the #1 seed Dallas Mavericks a few years ago.

The NBA exisiting as it does now is its own doing and you can easily find the genesis of it with Jordan in the 90's, but Jordan was actually great. The greatest actually, not a fraud like many of the 'stars' today.

What I am really getting at is "I want my NBA back", not this crap being peddled to fans now.

Whoops!

Man, those 15 months flew by like that (you can't see it, but I'm snapping my fingers).

I am truly a failure as a blogger. Seriously, my blogging frequency is worse than a college frat boy attending class. The absence of writing on this blog is not indicative of my writing in general though. I'm will attempt to update this blog with my thoughts and ideas because I have way too many thoughts (sometimes bad) and ideas (also sometimes bad) to not be keeping a record of, oh I don't know, a 1/7th of them.

I think if I keep my thoughts brief I should be more consistant with blogs, so this blog will end with this thought/opinion:

HBO's The Wire is fucking incredible.

SSX. What does it stand for?

I do not know. Nor do I care. I love it. For about a two month period in '04 I was addicted to SSX3; the open world mountain that you could traverse from peak to base was unbelieveably cool. Now it is 2008 and Ubisoft has released Shawn White Snowboarding (using a modified version of the Assassin Creed engine) and it had been posed by a few people that this could be a successor to SSX3, a game widely considered to be the best snowboarding game ever.

Shawn White is out now and hasn't been recieved as well as speculated. Stupid prognosticators are always wrong. I'm not one to buy bad or poorly made games, not now at least. I did buy Chromehounds during the Xbox 360 first Summer drought though. Poor purchase aside I saw Shawn White and it gave me the desire to play SSX3 again. So this past weekend I scoured the local Gamestops in both Bloomington and New Albany, IN with the goal of finding the five year old game. Just finding it would have been fantastic, but to find a working copy, that actually had its instuction manual (I never understand why people trade-in a game without the instruction manual. There is a place for you to put it for crying out loud. Granted I don't need it, but I hate opening a game box and seeing a huge empty space) would have been astounding. Amazingly I found a copy for the low price of $6.99.

When I arrived back at my apartment I began playing and even after five years of innovation in the Videogame Industry SSX3 holds up well. There was almost no re-learning of the controls; it felt like I had played the game just the day before. This is remarkable since most game's controls do not stick with me after I've moved onto a new genre with a different control scheme. The visuals do not hold-up as well as the controls, but that is to be expected. When you play SSX though you aren't paying that much attention to the scenery as you are pulling off your next ridiculous trick. This should go without saying, but if you haven't tried SSX3, or it's predecessor SSX Tricky, you need to give it a shot. I've never snowboarded a day in my life so knowledge of snowboarding isn't necessary.

In other news it looks as if I'll be advancing to my Fantasy Football championship game. I currently lead the #1 seed 83-63 with each of us having a player left in tomorrow night's MNF game, so barring a miracle I will win. Should I win, my next opponent, who looks to have rapped up his game too, will be a guy with a monster team; in particular his running backs who are beastly to say the least.

So tonight I will preemptively bask in the glory of my upset and play some SSX3 until the wee hours in the morning since my only classes this week are my two finals on Tuesday; starting at 8 am though. Have a happy Sunday.