Episode 610: The Package

I went to go check the cast list when I had a free minute today and I discovered that it will not posted before Friday. AHHHH this is killing me. Like, literally.

Okay, on to the Lost blog:

SPOILER ALERT http://abc.go.com/watch/lost/93372 SPOLIER ALERT

I decided to analyze this episode by characters because a lot happened character wise and plot wise, so it's good to take a look at both at once.

Sun and Jin (flash-sideways): They're not married! Oh no! They are, however, really cute lovers who have been discovered by Mr. Paik, Sun's father. Jin was bringing the payment to Keamy to kill him! Wow, that' pretty heavy. Anyway, it just shows that Jin and Sun have still always meant to be together, even if Jacob had never touched them. The bad news is, Sun has been shot during Jin's tangle with Mikhail (he got shot in the eye!) and she was pregnant! Ji-Yeon! No! I'm guessing there's another Jack flash-sideways coming at us soon, and maybe someone named Sun is his patient?

Sun and Jin (on island): They are married! And still looking for each other. It has officially been roughly two seasons (if you combine the end of season 4 with this season and all of season 5) and three years (their time) that Sun and Jin have been apart. I will not stand for it any longer. They must be back together! And now it seems like it's never going to happen because Jin is now on Hydra Island with Widmore, Zoe (who looks a lot like Sarah Palin), Desmond (he's back!), and Co. They're looking for Jin's help with a map he signed off on (when he lived with the DHARMA INITIATIVE in the 70s) of electromagnetic energy. I think that is why Desmond is here. But why are they studying this? Could it have to do with vanquishing a certain smoke monster? I think one of the best moments of this episode was when Jin saw the pictures of his daughter for the first time. That was an absolutely beautiful moment for Jin, one I don't think we have necessarily seen before.

Meanwhile, Sun is confronted by Not-Locke who says that he has Jin (little does he know Jin was taken by Widmore's people while Locke was out on his little hike) and he will reunite them. Sun, who doesn't care about the candidates or destiny but still does not trust Not-Locke (yay!) runs away, hitting her head on a low hanging branch. She goes unconscious and wakes up not knowing how to speak english! I think this is a fantastic foil to the first-third seasons where only Sun could speak english, but now Jin can too. Wicked cute.

Jack: Jack has become the new Locke basically and has accepted the terms of destiny. He is now the leader of the "good camp" I think is fair to say and I like to see it. Also, that scene with he and Sun was adorable. Plus, we got to see Jack in doctor mode again.

Not-Locke/Widmore: It's war. But I don't think this war in good vs. evil. It's something different. I still can't believe Widmore is on Jacob's side. He's trying to exploit the island and yet he wants to keep Not-Locke (Smokey, Man In Black, whatever) on the island. Hmmm...

Kate: Apparently indespensible for the time being according to Not-Locke as he tells Claire. He only needs her to get Sun, Jack, and Hurley (the remaining candidates) to their camp and then after that "whatever happens, happens". Wow, Not-Locke. Really?

Sayid: Still INFECTED. Only now we have heard what the symptoms are. He can't feel anything. It seems as though Sayid is only a shell of what he once was. I don't like it. Especially now that he's Not-Locke's little spy bitch.

Richard: I like this new redeemed Richard. Thank you Hurley. Richard is large and in charge now and is completely gung-ho for keeping Not-Locke on the island. I absolutely loved Sun's blow up at him though. That is going down in Lost history.

Desmond: He's back! But where's Penny? Where's Charlie? What is his purpose? What is your plan Widmore!?

We'll find out next week!

Namaste!

Waterbottle

Yesterday I lost my waterbottle. I'm very sad about it. I loved that waterbottle and I don't know where I misplaced it. If I knew that, then it wouldn't really be missing, would it? I know that it is somewhere on campus. Somewhere... Oh well, I guess I have to use the UVM waterbottle I got at orientation. Crap. This waterbottle was cool and silver and stuff! All I have left to remember my waterbottle by is the caribeener clip that came with it. It's on my keychain now.

But onto some good and exciting news! On Monday I auditioned for UVM's first play for next semester: Cloud 9. It is an incredibly abstract yet hilarious play that plays with sexuality and cross dressing. I want in. Anyway, I got a callback for last night which meant unfortunetely I could not go to Music Makers but I think it went very well. I only read for one character and I read twice. I don't know if that is a good thing or not, but we will have to see...

Okay, back to the grind. I'll post the Lost blog later today and hopefully the results of callbacks!

Peace out!

State Theater Festival

Welcome to my first ever video blog entry! After our awesome night at 308 watching The Orphanage with Megan, Velvet, and Ashley and screaming my head off (it was very fun, you can't go wrong with horror movies) and giving Jake a tour of 308, Jake and I returned to Jeanne Mance with the conviction that we were going to film our journeys to Randolph (to the State Theater Festival to support LI theater and so I could earn some money teaching a workshop again) and our "epic road trip" that encompassed the whole day. This is what happened:

My workshop was a pretty good success. I was able to teach coreography to "Don't Stop Believing" on the spot because I didn't really have time to prepare. Ashley, Heather, and Jill all won individual acting awards and all the directors were honored by a girl from Randolph sang "For Good" from Wicked. We all made our hands into hearts and held them up for Erin. She cried. Unfortunetely, LI did not make it on to the New England level, but that's okay. They were amazing with tons of outstanding performances and they still have yet to perform at QNEK, the theater I am partaking with this summer. I'm so proud of them. It was a great day.

Peace out!

Heading Out

Good morning everyone! I thought I'd just do a quick post before peacing out here for an amazing weekend. Jake came over last night and after a costume fitting and rehearsal for the play (which is going very well. So excited!) we went over to 308 so Jake could meet everyone. He and Megan already know each other but he got to meet Velvet and Ashley. This of course was all under a cloud because we went out Thursday night to Rasputin's so....

Basically the general consensus is that this semester needs to be over. We're exhausted and I feel so bad for Megan. Can anything possibly go right? She's had a rough semester but I just wanted to let her know that we're herefor her. Also for Velvet who has had a rough semester. This post is dedicated to the semester getting better and ending.

But as for this weekend. Jake and I are heading out to go eat at Al's French Fries and then go to the State Drama Festival to root LI on! I'm also teaching a workship again like I did for the regional festival. Should be fun! I'll let you know all about it!

Peace out!

Episode 609: Ab Aeterno

This is it! This is the Richard centric episode we have been waiting for!

SPOILER ALERT! http://abc.go.com/watch/lost/93372 SPOILER ALERT!

There were not many questions answered this episode about the Man in Black or Jacob, but we did recieve a lot of answers. I'm just going to go through the episode piece by piece. I do want to comment right off on Nestor's Carbonell's acting performance in this episode. He was amazing and the way he played the period scenes were fantastic. I even loved him during the present scenes, especially when he did his giddy (though it wasn't giddy) little laugh right at the beginning of the episode. This was an amazing episode, and I just had to watch it again today in order to completely understand everything that happened.

Okay, let's get started. Right at the beginning of the episode we get to see the entire scene of Ilana at the Russian hospital. Why she's there? We don't know. What happened to her? We don't know. How she knows Jacob? We don't know. But we do know what Ilana's mission is: to protect the candidates. Awesome! OK, Ilana team go!

Next: THE ISLAND IS NOT HELL. We were told about four years ago during season 2 by Damon and Carlton that the island is not hell, it's not purgatory. Richard only says this because yes he believes it because he's hurting and this is what the Man in Black told him in order to manipulate him into killing Jacob. The island is a cork apparently that is containing evil. This evil I think is this physical electromagnetic force that brews under the island that causes the time travel, sets off the Swan station, and causes women to not be able to become pregnant. This evil is manifested in the smoke monster and as told through the metaphor at the end with the smashed wine bottle, smokey wants to escape to spread his evil through the world. Jacob is trying to contain him and prove him wrong by giving people a chance to redeem themselves on the island. What a beautiful story. Gotta love Lost.

With that, we come to Richard's backstory in the Canary Islands in 1867. Isabella and Richard are wicked adorable together. I felt so bad for Richard and I will continue to feel bad for Richard for the rest of the series. His backstory was awfully sad, possibly even more sad than Locke, only not really. The doctor and the priest have to be the worst doctor and priest have ever seen in my life. They were horrible! I'm glad Richard killed the stupid doctor. Next, we learned the origins of the Black Rock and I totally knew Richard came in on it! I had a feeling especially with everything that had happened recently with Richard looking at the chains last week and Not-Locke saying "Glad to see you out of those chains!" Totally knew it.

Now I want to talk about that last Ghost Whisperer-esque scene at the end where Hurley really has taken control of his gift. It was adorable and seeing Richard's development and coming to terms with the perspective. Also, Hurley's very creepy warning at the end was scary, and I think Hurley was scared too. Yikes!

And even though we learned that Richard recieved his "gift", (he asked for it) we don't know what this power is that Jacob has. Is Jacob God? Who is the Man in Black? Is he the devil? He said he had a mother but I'm still unsure about who these characters actually are. I guess we shall know soon!

Namaste!

Last Weekend

Good evening blogosphere. Tonight I am to recount the tales of my weekend. If you want the account from my dear Megan's perspective, please go to http://308maple2.blogspot.com/.

This weekend was lovely. Megan and I decided to take the trek to Lyndonville for the weekend, and it was a good thing we did. This was the last weekend I had before a torrent of business hit me. You see, there is a lot coming up for me in the next month ahead, as I am sure there is for every college student. My brain is becoming overloaded. But I'm handling it well. This weekend provided a very good break for rest before having to plow my way through the end of the school year.

We did a lot this weekend including get served by a crappy waitress at Friendly's, using Megan's shower at home (I LOVE her shower), watching Alice In Wonderland (amazing movie!), playing on the East Burke playground like we're nine years old with a frisbee, go on a ten minute hike, watch LI perform Eleemosynary again for their community performance (it was Megan's first time watching it), renting movies and cooking an epic dinner, watched Precious and Couples Retreat (I cried my eyes out and then peed my pants laughing and Precious goes into my top ten movies list), and then stayed up talking until 4 in the morning about life. An amazing weekend with one of the most amazing people in my life. Sounds like an awesome last weekend to me.

And now it's time to bear down for the last part of the semester. Almost over while my parents are partying it up in Florida with my grandparents.

Oh and BEN & JERRY'S FREE CONE DAY IS TOMORROW!!!!

Peace out!

Vermont Spring

Today again continues the string of beautiful spring Vermont days we've had the past couple of weeks. Because it was so beautiful outside (and as Megan prescribed) I spent my afternoon outside once I got out of class. Actually I'm writing this while chilling outside on the University Green, so...Anyway, it's gorgeous out here. I'm just hanging out listening to Avenue Q and talking to Megan on facebook. It's a great time. I'm also people watching which is also fun.

I decided to make the Billings Center Tower my own personal candy bar.

Spring in Vermont is hilarious because as we start to thaw out from the winter deep freeze, 64 degrees starts to sound like a heat wave. So, we strip. Megan and I decided to wear short today, but I saw several shirtless people today on my walk to class. You can always tell the Vermonters from out of staters during this time. The Vermonters aren't wearing hardly anything while the out of staters (while we still love them), who still haven't figured out this whole cold thing are still wearing their winter jackets and chattering their teeth. Yep, it's a good time.

What was also a very good time was last night when Bess O'Brien picked me up from history class and brought me to a showing of Shout It Out at the S. Burlington high school. The group there was so excited to have us there, and I was happy to be there to answer and have a good time. It was also really awesome to see Bess and Annalise again. Also, and this is the big one folks, Bess asked if I would come with her and Annalise to New Orleans this summer to accept the Civil Rights Award that was awarded to the film from the National Education Association! I almost jumped out of my pants I was so excited. Now, I know what you're thinking and I was thinking this too: wow Ryan, you're already pretty packed this summer what with work and the QNEK play you have committed to. I think this is early enough in advance so I can let everyone involved know and it should be fine. I'M GOING TO NEW ORLEANS!

Now get outside and have fun in the sun!

Peace out!

Episode 608: Recon

Happy St. Patrick's Day! And what a happy one it is! The sun is out, poodles are barking, people are cooking on their outdoor BBQs, and you don't need to wear a huge winter coat to go outside. It's beautiful. I love this time of year.

And now onto the Lost blog! SPOILER ALERT! abc.go.com SPOILER ALERT!

I really liked this episode. I'm usually not totally on top of Sawyer's episodes. The parts that really got to me emotionally during his previous centric episodes were when he was shown as a child. But now, I really feel like Sawyer is much easier of a character to connect to emotionally because of the character development he has gone through.

Also, this episode was Sawyer centric, but it was also somewhat Kate centric which was very nice to see. It once again connected the two of them, possibly solving the trouble with the love triangle? I'm not sure. We'll have to figure that out as things unfold. But there were really three parts working here in this episode: Sawyer's flash-sideways, Sawyer on Hydra Island, and Kate with Not-Locke's team of evil doers.

Sawyer's flash-sideways. Okay, first of all...when Charlotte was first introduced to Lost, there was NO WAY I expected to see this from her character. There was no way I saw her banging Sawyer in the future. Okay, now that I'm over that...Sawyer as a cop is badass. And Miles as a cop is also badass. I think Miles would make a wicked cool psychic cop. They had that whole partner thing down. It was great seeing them together again and the way they worked together was amazing. The one thing that stayed true in Sawyer's alternate reality was his hunt and hatred for Sawyer, and it was amazing to see this angst played out in a different situation. Good game. Also, Kate being arrested by Sawyer was amazing. Can't wait to see where that leads.

Sawyer on Hydra Island. Here is my description of what happened to Sawyer on Hydra Island: Awww...the Love Cage...AHHH! PLANE! AHHHH! DEAD BODIES! AHHH! ZOE! I don't trust you! AHHH! GUNS!!!! AHHHH!! WIDMORE!!! I'm gonna con all of you for a submarine to escape with Kate. The end. I was a little upset that all of the Ajira crew is dead because I was really hoping to write a fan fiction about them after Lost is done. (I'm serious, don't make fun of me, I like to write random stuff, okay!?)

I'm still not very sure about this part. My theory is that Locke is trying to lure Kate in through this charade with Claire. I don't know, it's a thought. I don't think that Claire is this genuine, however. She's supposed to be INFECTED with evil, right? Just like Sayid?

Kate with Not-Locke's team of evil doers. I felt so bad for Kate during this episode because she has no idea what's going on. When she was in the camp with everybody, she was so confused. I mean, who wouldn't be confused? There are Others everywhere, a very evil Sayid, and a crazy Claire who's about ready to shove a knife into your throat Sweeney Todd style. No wonder she went off into the jungle to cry. You'd cry too! Anyway, that bitchslap that Claire recieved from Locke was pretty crazy, and then Locke's little convo with Kate took it right off the edge. I don't think Not-Locke was talking about Locke's mother during his talk with Kate. I think the smoke monster was once a person, as has been hinted at before. How this plays into the grand scheme everything has yet to be shown, but I'm hoping that a lot will be revealed next week when it's time for Richard's story to be revealed! Time for campfire stories, kids!

Until then,

Namaste!

A Streaker Just Ran Through My Library While I Was Working On Spanish Homework

Just sayin'.

Eleemosynary

Saturday was amazing. After a long week at home working in the LI theater, preparing everything for the regional festival, it all came to a grand finale on Saturday. The night before, while on the phone with Megan, I prepared a lesson plan for the improv workshop I was leading and highlighting my schedule, making note of the in case of emergency phone numbers, just in case. I felt like a complete theater teacher. I loved it! It was much more stressful than I thought it was going to be, especially in the morning trying to get all the school groups registered and where they were supposed to be. It was like I had asked them to perform rocket science. But it was an amazing time nonetheless.

I have to give it up to Ashley Audette, Jill Bearce, and Heather Libbey (the leading ladies of LI's one act Eleemosynary) and the cast and crew of the show because they were one of the two schools chosen to move onto the state festival! I am so proud of them, they deserved everything that came to them, and the show was absolutely amazing. Erin was so impressed and basically excited about the whole deal, and while Jake blasted We Are the Champions over the loud speakers, I could tell just how amazing they were! I love you guys!!

Also at the festival, I got to see one of my old friends from Shout It Out who I haven't seen in two years. Anna Martel! She was there with her school performing. She was excellent!

Joe, Megan, and I returned to Burly World Sunday afternoon. The first thing Joe and I did when we got back was go to the dining hall to try and get something to eat. UVM DINING HALL FAIL. It was closed, but we ended up ordering Wings at 308, which basically made everything better. I was NOT looking forward to going to class the next day, at all. Ever.

But I did go to class today. Unfortunetely, I did go to English and Spanish today while trying to catch up on my reading. I did get my Spanish exam back though to find that I got a 95 on the exam! I might just have a hope for this class after all even though the professor is basically a tyrant, but we'll go with that. After my class, Megan (mmmmm...Megan) and Velvet met me to hang out for an hour before my theater lab today. Yeah, that was an epic fail. My theater lab was cancelled so instead of going to the gym, Megan and Velvet decided to grab me and go on an epic spring tour of the city of Burlington, taking pictures all the way. Here is the result of our labors:

It was a beautiful day. Spring is on it's way!

Peace out!

P.S. Megan finally got her pictures from her birthday uploaded. This is one of our favorites....

Episode 607: Dr. Linus

I'm kind of having to play catch up because of the lack of internet (I know, you're probably sick of me whining about it already), so here's the Lost blog, a couple of days late.


SPOILER ALERT! http://abc.go.com/watch/lost/93372 SPOILER ALERT!


This episode was absolutely PERFECT! It reminded me a lot of the old season 1 episodes that were purely based on character development and the intertwining of flashback with island activities. It was almost harmonious. Dr. Linus is one of my new favorite episodes.



I'm going to begin with Ben's fate on the island and how Ben has become an amazing protagonist in this story. Also, Ilana became a great foil to Ben, and the moment where she says that she will have him was astounding. I was very happy to see that Ben chose not to follow Not-Locke, even though I think that's what everyone was assuming. Ben really is full of love even if he has done some horrible things. He loves Alex and everything he has done in his life has been for the island, but the only thing that truly ever mattered to him was her. This is shown to us through the flash-sideways with Ben as a teacher. These flash-sideways are just getting better and better, even if they did start out kind of rough. But now, they seem more clearly defined. Ben abandoned everything he had for Alex. Also, Roger is alive? and they left the island? Well, of course that kind of makes sense. I don't think these flash-sideways are necessarily what would have happened if the nuke went off, I think they are more of what would happen if Jacob hadn't touched anybody. We shall see....

More goings on on the island: Richard has lost his marbles. But Jack (now this is weird, because usually it's Jack losing his marbles) reigns him back in and shows him the power of faith and destiny. WOW. Plus, we got some more Hurley moments like "cheese curds" and "dude, we're gonna blow!"

The best thing that I loved about this episode was when Jack, Hurley, and Richard were reunited with Sun, Ilana, Miles, Lapidus, and Ben. It was an extremely powerful moment reminiscent of other moments in Lost like when everyone returns from the Other's camp in season 3, or when the members of the raft are reunited with their camp in season 2. Totally awesome. Also, this makes the two camps (Locke and Jacob) more well-defined. Plus, the Sun moment was epic when her and Hurley embraced.

Lastly, we found out that it is in fact Widmore making the trip back to the island. How he found it again, we may never know but I think Widmore plays a more major role in this power struggle of good vs. evil then we first thought...

So those are my thoughts. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did!

Namaste!

Megan's 20th Birthday

Okay, epic blog post. Finally, I am home for spring break! It feels so good to sleep in my own bed again and to eat actual food. Plus, I’m realizing how much I truly missed everyone here. Once again, the downside is the lack of internet so I am going to attempt to squeeze in an enormous amount of info into one post. Yep, spring break is good. Let me tell you how it started:

Ashley and Ryan’s epic adventure. So, with the approach of Megan’s birthday on Sunday, 308 (basically me, Velvet, and Ashley) wanted to put something together for the occasion. This was sort of thwarted mostly because none of us had any money, or at least not enough to substantiate any activity we could plan. Instead, we decided to scrap whatever little money we had into making a cake. Thursday night, Ashley and I went to the store to buy cake mix, frosting, and chocolate chips (oh yeah…). Needless to say, it slipped our minds that we might actually need to get eggs and oil to actually produce this cake. Yeah, totally didn’t think of that. So Friday night, after getting lollipops and money at the bank, we went to Price Choppper to get those ingredients, plus some extra things I needed for the weekend’s birthday festivities. After running down the sidewalk with three bags of semi-fragile groceries screaming profanities to catch up with the bus and walking eight blocks at night and receiving assistance from a very helpful Wings driver (Wings always saves the day!), we made it back to 308. You can read the details of this adventure on Ashley’s blog: http://308feeleylove.blogspot.com/
Megan’s birthday weekend of spontaneous plan-changing. On Saturday morning, Megan and I woke up at 8:00 a.m. to get ready for Megan’s mom and gram to meet us at the dorm at 9:00 a.m. Or so we thought… Apparently, they had been waiting in the parking lot since 7 o’clock so that we could catch a noontime show of Avatar at an IMAX theater somewhere near Manchester, NH. Oh… After packing the car in a hurried rush, we sped down the road (with a pitstop at Dunkin Donuts!) and proceeded with the roadtrip!
We did make it to the showing, even if we were a couple of minutes late which was very surprising to me. Megan’s gram really stepped on it! Basically, Avatar was amazing. I hadn’t cried so hard in a movie like that since Wall-E, and that wasn’t even in 3-D! Anyway, this was Megan’s 2nd time watching it, and her mom and gram’s 4th time, and they still got emotional. You know it’s a good movie when that happens.
Anyway, on top of all this, Megan got sick around Thursday so the birthday awesomeness was also competing with a sore throat and later mucus, so that didn’t help things. We got to the hotel in Burlington, MA around five that evening, after spending about an hour trying to find the stupid place. It was like it was located in an entirely different dimension! We found it somehow after having to call the front desk. Apparently they get that a lot. The room was very nice (except for the coffee maker), and after eating at the Rainforest Café (in the GIGANTIC Burlington Mall after a 2 ½ hour wait for a table, but it was worth it), Megan went to the pool while I decorated the room. I put up streamers and balloons, giant WTF dinosaurs (it’s a Meg Ryan thing), pictures from Megan’s life starting from childhood, and I also got a cake with candles. We had a good time, despite everything that happened. We ended up watching P.S. I Love You and taking insane pictures in the hotel hallway and elevator.

The next day, we ate breakfast in the hotel restaurant where the waiter flirted with Megan’s mom and only charged us for two meals. We also went to a waterpark about fifteen minutes from the hotel. I have never been so wet in all my life. At one point, I couldn’t tell if it was water or my pee from screaming to death on the water slides. It was a good time, and the pre-teen girls that were there were fun to make fun of. OMG! THE JONAS BROTHERS!

After getting lost, going around in a circle, eating, and sleeping for an hour and a half in the car, we made it to Lyndonville Sunday evening. I wouldn’t take back a minute of that trip. I hope you had a really good (and spontaneous) 20th birthday Megan! Thank you so much for having me along for the ride!

So that’s basically how spring break started. And now I’m home and helping Erin and the Lyndon Institute Theater Company get ready to host and perform for the Vermont regional theater festival on Saturday. Can’t wait! How’s your spring going?

Peace out!

Correction!

In my last post, I said that the last time I had been to showing of Shout It Out was this past summer. I lied and forgot that we had a showing at the State House during Christmas break. Oh well. I need spring break. Now.

Theater Things in the Works

I just want to start by giving my deepest condolances to Velvet and her family. She's going through a very rough time right now, and I just want to say how I sorry I am. Love you girl!

There are a lot of things in theater coming up for me. For starters, last night was the first rehearsal for The Magic Table, the Gold Donkey, and the Cudgel in the Sack, a one act play to be performed during the senior's final project one act theater festival in April. I am so excited to be a part of it and to work hard again on a show. It's based on a Grimm brother's fairytale and it is incorporating Commedia del'arte, and Italian style of theater with masks. That's an awesome thing to have on a resume!

Also, this whole week during spring break I will be spending my time helping out at good ole LI. They are hosting the regional one act play festival next Saturday. They will also be performing a play that I wrote as an opener to the festival. I'm going to help direct, and to host a workshop during the day of the festival. Mainly I'm there to watch them perform. I can't wait to see them shine! (again!)

Finally, after having just checked my email, I noticed that Bess O'Brien has invited Annalise and I to a showing of Shout It Out at the South Burlington High School. It's on March 18th. It's been such a long time since I've been to a showing, the last one being this past summer when my parents and I went to Woods Hole, MA to a film festival where it was being shown. Now I get to go right here in town! Should be fun!

Peace out!

Episode 606: Sundown

And now, onto the Lost blog...SPOILER ALERT! http://abc.go.com/watch/lost/93372

First of all, I just want to say that evil Sayid scares the crap out of me. We kind of saw a glimpse of this Sayid when he shot little Ben Linus, but never to this magnitude. I believe the INFECTION is the "evil incarnate" that Dogen spoke of, and this evil corrupts the minds of people affected by it. This is what happened to Rousseau's crew, Claire, and now Sayid as with a smile on his face he tells Ben, "It's too late for me..." That was incredible acting! Go Naveen Andrews!

The flash-sideways in this episode was not all that important to the storyline except Sayid is no longer after Nadia because he feels as though he doesn't deserve her. The main awesome points of the flash-sideways were a) Martin Keemey is STILL dead, and apparently he makes good eggs and b) Jin? Hopefully there's a Jin/Sun flash-sideways soon. I need this cleared up.

As for that long ass-kicking scene in the beginning: WOW. Before that, I thought the fight between Sayid and Keemey in season 4 was the greatest fight I'd ever seen on TV, but now it has to be this Sayid/Dogen epic battle. Also, in terms of that last and amazing smoke monster RAWR scene and finale at the end of the episode: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! That is the perfect description of everthing that happened. WOW again. I think I seriously peed myself during that entire sequence.

So, I just wanted to summarize where everyone is at right now, just to get it straight in my mind. (this is on-island, not in the flash-sideways)

1. The evil losties (Locke's Team of Evil) which include Not-Locke (aka Smokey), Claire (who said that "He is coming to the island..." Seeing how Kate and her were talking about Aaron at the time, I can only guess...?), Sayid, Sawyer, Jin (I'm presuming he's going to be traveling with them now), random Others who have lost their faith and/or are scared Locke will kill them (including Cindy and the kids), and an unsuspecting Kate who is completely lost

2. Jack and Hurley who are still at the lighthouse and were rescued from the horrible scene at the temple by Jacob.

3. The good losties (Jacob's Team of Good) which include Illana (who seems to know everything), Lapidus, Sun (who was so close to finding Jin, but sadly he's in the jungle somewhere, see above), Ben (that moment between Ben and Sayid was amazing, but now I think Ben's going to have some issues), and now Miles who met them as he was trying to escape the temple

4. Richard Who I'm guessing is still running around the jungle, freaking his freak.

5. Jacob Still dead, still like Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Candidate Tracker:

X4-LockeX

8-Reyes

X15-FordX (I'm guessing because he's going with Locke, you never know though)

X16-JarrahX (I think it's safe to say...)

23-Shephard

42-Kwon (Could be either Sun or Jin, and it's still unclear where Jin's allegances lie)

Okay, that's my summary and thoughts on "Sundown." Stay tuned next week for more Lost!

Namaste!

More Than We Can Handle

Remember last week when I said I didn't want this blog to be a weekly thing? Yeah, guess that isn't happening.

I am a firm believer that God does not give us more than we can handle. But this past week has been awful. I have been getting so much homework because these professors just won't let up. Meanwhile, midterm exams are turning my brain into mush. Last week, I studied eight hours for my history exam on Thursday, a feat which caused me to get sick, not something I was looking forward to seeing how Megan's birthday is coming up and I really don't want to ruin the awesomeness.

This weekend was very good, even though I was coming down with this cold. We decided to have a slumber party at 308 by dragging the matresses from the beds out into the living room and laying them side by side. It was a good time and resulted in all of us watching old 90's shows and Donnie Darko. The night before that, Megan, Ashley, and I stayed up until 4 in the morning just talking. It probably wasn't the best idea with a cold, but it was totally worth it. Those kind of meaningful conversations keep you on track, and we had a great time.

Everything is paying off though. Even if I'm working myself into the ground with four exams at the end of this week, spring break is much deserved. Oh, I guess I also should mention...I GOT A PART IN THE ONE-ACTS!!! I checked the cast list Monday night and freaked out. This is going to be so exciting, and I'll keep you updated!

Peace out!