Need a Little Patience, Yeeeaah... Just a Little Patience, Yeeeaah

Hello my dear friends -

Knowing that I'd previously stated my Mother of All Posts would be done by the end of June, I thought long and hard about how to inform you that it's still going to be a while before I publish it ("it" being my Lost series finale write-up, in case you're not following me). Seeing as how there are only five days left in the month and I haven't even started pulling anything together, it clearly ain't gonna happen. What's more, with my summer commitments heating up and a trip to the east coast planned in the near future, I don't think I'll get a chance to make any headway on it for a while.

You might be thinking that this delay stemmed from me needing to finish my manuscript, but that was actually only part of the hold-up. (And yes, thank you Sweet Lord Baby Jesus, as of June 15 it was ALL turned in, and now I'm nervously awaiting my first round of edits from my publisher.) The full story is that my tardiness has more to do with a long list of crappy things that I've been having to deal with over the past few weeks, and since they're pretty personal and private, you're just going to have to trust me when I say that I've been in no shape or mood to tackle what I really want to be my best Lost post of all time. If I don't have fun writing it, you're not going to have fun reading it -- that much I know.

So, there's some good news and some bad news. Bad news first, always!

Bad news:
1) I think it's gonna be another month before I can finish my exhaustive take on "The End," since I haven't even started it and I'm going to be tied up with other things until mid-July. And that means that those of you who were annoyed at me for taking this long are going to be even more annoyed at me now. Sorry! I'll buy you a Dharma Beer to make up for it if you're ever in Chicago.

Good news:
1) Lost isn't coming back. (Hmm, actually, that should've gone in the Bad News camp, huh?) My point is, the series isn't going anywhere, so it's not like there's a new episode looming in the distance that I need to get in front of. In a weird way, I'm glad I've had so much time to digest what I thought about the finale -- my piece is bound to be better now than it would've been had I attempted to sift through my emotions a month ago.

2) Mentally, I finally feel like I'm getting ready to jump in with both feet and write this bad boy. There is NO WAY I could've done it immediately after my book was completed -- I don't know what I was thinking before when I figured I could crank it out so shortly afterward, even if all of the other personal stuff hadn't gone awry. I was totally drained, and the last place I wanted to be was in front of my laptop. It's a weird thing, writing. For something like this final Lost post, I have to be in just the right mood. I think I'm getting there, because last week I rewatched the finale for the first time since it aired. And I've been leaving myself little audio recordings (thanks, iPhone) with ideas of concepts to cover and song lyrics to use for section headings. So the wheels, they are a-turnin'...

3) By the time I post the finale recap I will definitely be able to (finally) spill some details about my book. And then I think you'll realize the scope of what I was dealing with and why the writing process made me lose ten pounds and age ten years. (I'm rapidly gaining the weight back by eating every high-fat thing in sight, rest assured. For example, just two hours ago I had a World Class Chocolate waffle cone from Dunkin' Donuts -- and it was awesome.)


The bottom line is that there is TOTALLY more good news than bad news in what I wrote above, right? RIGHT?

Seriously, though, I really want to thank you guys for being so patient. June 2010 will go down as one of the worst -- if not THE worst -- months of my life, and I am ready for it to be over and for things to get back to semi-normal. Thanks for sticking with me. And please do not holler at me about the fact that I will be writing several times a week over at 'According to e' before I get my final Lost post up. As I alluded to above, writing about Lost is a different process for me than writing about other things: I'll crank out 'A to e' stuff in the morning (whereas I've never written about Lost in the AM) and those posts are going to be really short and will take me zero time to think through, whereas we all know that's not going to be the case with my Long Live Locke masterpiece.

So I hope you'll join me over at 'A to e' in the meantime -- I have a new post up talking about what I intend to cover there going forward.

Have a great July... and if all goes well, I'll be back with "The End" before it's over.

Until then,
- e

PS - I hope this post didn't come off like I think that anyone's sitting on pins and needles and holding themselves and rocking back and forth and drooling, anxiously awaiting my final post. I know you all have other things going on, too, and are out enjoying your summers. But I have received quite a number of emails asking me "WHERE IS IT????", so I felt like I should at least address the delay.

It's the End of the World As We Know It

Hello my dear friends -

Well, it's over. It doesn't seem possible -- but it's true. Lost is over.

As I mentioned last week, I'll be back with my full -- and I do mean full -- analysis before the end of June (at the very latest), but until then I'll just say that I am extremely happy with how everything wrapped up. There wasn't a dull moment in those two and a half hours, that's for sure. And all of the incredible parallels to Season One? Amazing.

But let's get to what everyone's sure to be debating until the end of time: the last fifteen minutes. I'll admit that on my first viewing, I did not like the "twist" near the end (I'm purposely not mentioning any of the details so that those overseas who might stumble upon this post aren't inadvertently spoiled). But that's also probably because I totally misinterpreted what was going on. Then my husband, Miss M and I talked through it, watched those last fifteen minutes over again, and now I get it. And I love it.

What did you think?

Catch ya in a few weeks... and if you don't trust yourself to remember to check back, you can sign up for my emailed posts (to the right), or follow me on Twitter. Or mark your calendar for June 30 -- I should definitely be done by then.

In the meantime, I'm going to post a very short comment right now (below this post) with my understanding of what went down in the closing moments of the series. And you can of course feel free to write whatever you'd like in the comments. Which means those of you who have not seen the finale yet -- steer clear.

Until June,
- e

Look Out, Here Comes Tomorrow

Hello my dear friends -

I just wanted to take a few minutes to wish you all a Happy Finale Day tomorrow. As I'm sure you've heard, the West Coast feed of the show will be broadcast simultaneously in several other countries in order to help fans overseas avoid spoilers. Now, those fan are going to have to get up a 5 a.m. -- but hey, what a way to start your day, right?

Several of you have asked what I'm doing for the finale, and my answer is that I'm just keeping it low-key. My plan had always been to watch it completely alone... I guess I just wanted to feel like I had the last hours of the show all to myself or something. But then my good friend Miss M -- whom some of you might remember from my Season One and Two write-ups (I often stayed at her place in NYC when I worked for The Man) -- learned that she was going to be in Chicago this weekend, and I asked if she could extend her visit a little longer. So I'll now be watching the five-and-a-half-hour Lost extravaganza tomorrow night with her, my husband, and two of our good friends from grad school, EG and KG, who were part of my original Season One viewing crew. These four are among a handful of people in the world who've already seen me at my worst in years past, so if I completely lose it in front of them during the show and start sobbing like a fool, it's all good. They've proven they can handle it.

I decided to haul out all of my Lost memorabilia for the occasion -- I'm actually still in the process of decorating, but here are a few shots of my TV room so far:





All of my Lost action figures are off to the side, out of view. I'll make sure they have a good seat for the main event, though, so don't you worry about them. And, um, no... my manuscript isn't done yet. But sometimes I just can't sit at my laptop another second longer -- so the decorating was a nice excuse to give the ol' legs a stretch. I also took a five-minute break Friday morning to talk with the team at KPAM radio about why Lost is such a huge phenomenon -- you can take a listen here if you'd like.

OK, folks -- here's hoping for laughter and tears and gasps and lumps in the throat tomorrow evening -- as well as a feeling of happiness and satisfaction as a wonderful, life-changing ride comes to an end.

See you on the other side...
- e

PS - HAPPY UPDATE: Just found out that my friend KG went into labor at midnight last night (I was convinced she was going to have her baby girl at our place during the finale... and I guess I wasn't too far off)! So she and EG will only be at my place in spirit tomorrow evening. You can rest assured that I already bought this child Lost-inspired outfits -- one features the Driveshaft logo, and the other is a onesie that says, "Don't tell me what I can't do!" Hee hee.