Homework Distraction #1

I've been thinking a lot about stories and how they are told lately. My research project that I'm developing for the honors project I'm in at university revolves around storytelling. I've been reading some great books lately (His Majesty's Dragon, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making) that are wonderful exercises in storytelling. And of course, I am using what free time I have to write stories of my own. I used to tell people I love reading--and, well, I still do! If there is any one thing in my life that I love, it's the art of reading and writing stories. But I will also now tell you that I love storytelling. And good storytelling is not confined by the medium the story is told in; I've come to appreciate television, film, radio, art, as well as written text because a good story is a good story no matter how it is told.

I've especially been thinking about television lately, though, partially because my research project heavily involves both Doctor Who and Sherlock, and partially because I've been doing a lot of homework lately and something I really enjoy doing is multitasking! Which is just a fancy way of saying that while I'm typing out that essay I tend to have my favorite episode of Doctor Who or Avatar or Lost playing in a window on my computer alongside it to keep my creative side happy. This thinking about television and watching television while I study has in turn reminded me of a lot of my favorite moments from my various favorite shows. So because I like making lists I've been making up some lists just for fun, like 5 of my favorite TV character introductions or 5 of my favorite funny TV moments. It's fun to revisit those moments that are the visual equivalent of my favorite lines in my favorite books, the moments when storytelling really shines.

And since I've made the lists already I figured I might as well post some here on the blog, to share them with y'all. First up: 5 of my Favorite 'AUGHWHATNO' Moments, which basically just means those moments that made my jaw drop in agonized, delighted disbelief. Aren't those just the best? I'll embed video when I can, and when I can't I'll just have a link to take you to video of whatever scene I'm talking about. Sharing is caring! And we can all use a little break from school sometimes :D

Note: Of course these lists will have spoilers. Shows featured here: Doctor Who, Lost, Sherlock, and Supernatural.

#5: "It's good to see you out of those chains."

Admittedly, this is only one of many, many shocking Lost moments, but I just love FakeLocke and Richard's faces in this scene and Richard was one of my top 5 characters in the whole show so to see him suddenly getting knocked out like that after so many seasons of seeming invulnerability was just awesome. In a terrible sort of way.

#4: "Do we have a deal?"

I was going to put the ending of Waters of Mars here but couldn't find a clip so this'll do fine too. This episode is just a series of WHUT moments, and it's also one of my favorite DW episodes ever. And this moment is just the part where everything gets much, much darker and uh-oh and awesome.

#3: Richard Brook, he's on dvd!

I could probably have all 5 of these be scenes from The Reichenbach Fall, honestly, because I love that episode just that much. But here's one of the two moments that seriously gave me chills and made me scream at the screen, which is not something that I do often, to be honest. Really it's the whole scene that gets me, the escalating panic and fury, but here's one part of it anyway since I can't find the whole thing in one vid on youtube.

#2: Demon semi!!!

My favorite season finale cliffhanger ever, only tied perhaps with Juliet hitting the bomb in Lost Season 5 and Sherlock aiming his gun at the bomb in Sherlock. Heh, guess I have a thing about cliffhangers involving bombs. No bomb here, just AN ENORMOUS SEMI TRUCK THAT COMES OUT OF NOWHERE. When I first watched it I literally jumped and then just stared in incredulous shock for a few minutes. The episode was so full of terror and drama and awesome and then after an extremely nailbiting climatic scene it finally slows down for a second and then BLAM CAR CRASH and now you have to wait 'til next season. So. Good.

#1: "Well, good luck with that."

The other RF moment that absolutely chilled me. This entire episode is a work of art, honestly, storytelling at its superb best. And this was so unexpected and so horrible and so absolutely, completely RIGHT. Even in just this 30-second clip you can get a feel for the stakes here, the tension and emotional devastation this moment meant after the previous 1-hour-plus of exquisitely multi-layered plotting and unravelling the characters and it was just wow. Also the music is exquisite.

Anyone out there who's seen these scenes before? Do you agree with me in my assessment of them? What other scenes do you think are superbly AUGHWHATNO? Share them in the comments!

jkabsfv;aeol;kfjwoklfrwo;pq!!!!!!!!!!!!Kj1!!!! (Or, My Reaction to "The Candidate"

This entire post, of course,--or at least most of it--is SPOILERS.

1) I'm ashamed to admit that I seriously screamed at the television a few times, haha, that rarely happens. Especially when Sawyer was about to do . . . that one thing. Toward the end. Yes.

2) So--Many--Parallels--To--Earlier--Episodes--Mind--Explodey--

3) SAYID. 'Nuff said ;(

4) I didn't lose it until that shot of the two hands letting go. If you saw it, you know what I'm talking about.

5) LAPIDUS??? Is he still in the game? He's been useless, but he's so charismatic anyway, I hope he's okay.

6) I want to go back to Team Richard/Ben/Miles, which will be happy perhaps to know that the whole blowing-things-up idea has been taken care of without them.

7) I'm liking Jack more and more and more with every episode! This is a good thing.

8) I'm letting my island-feelings interfere with how I see characters in Sideways World. Not only was I happy when Sideways-Desmond ran Sideways-Locke over in the school parking lot a few episodes ago, during this episode when Sideways-Locke was telling Jack his sad story about crashing the plane and injuring his father, I could only think that I wanted Jack to call up Sideways-Desmond and tell him to finish the job. Grrrr.

9) I was RIGHT all along, Team Jacob for the win!


. . . And good night. I have art homework to finish. My only consolation right now is that after what Sayid said we have more Desmond on the way. Whether alive or dead remains to be seen, but at least he'll be back.

MIND. BLOWN.

OH. MY. SILMARIL.

I don't even want to admit how many times I screamed aloud while watching this week's episode of Lost, ha ha. So. Much. Craziness. And while I was always against FakeLocke to begin with, now I'm dead set against him! FakeLocke = Evil, and I don't care what anybody else says!!!

SPOILERS BELOW:

1) I can't wait to get back to the Richard/Ben/Miles group, because they're gonna be like a walking comedy troupe. Their personalities are gold together.
2) I laughed when Ilana blew up.
3) I was yelling "Run him over!" at Des when he's in the car at the end, and then was totally surprised but pleased when HE DID.
4) I was terrified from the moment I saw that well that I knew where Desmond was gonna end up--and sure enough, I was right again. That was one of the scream moments, btw.
5) I'm secretly happy that mad freak-out Richard is back again. He's gone through more emotions in the past two days of his life than he has for two centuries, methinketh.
6) FakeLocke's weird head-tilty thing when he looks at people scares me. I get scared by the weirdest things.
7) I was sad to see Black Rock go.
8) Imagining Desmond eating fried chicken is one of the funniest things ever. So is his new "I'm wearing sunglasses" attitude. Melikey. But get him out of the well.
9) OHMIGOSH CHOCOLATE FACTORY:



And that is all. I am gonna watch that again. And again. And then watch "The Constant" to cheer myself up. Bwaaah . . . .

Things are finally moving, and that's proving to be nothing short of pure awesome. I'm going to go do homework now because I'm too excited to sleep. I'll take this opportunity to thank Professor Littman and Anna for persuading me to watch this show over a year ago. Consider yourselves each gifted with a virtual cookie and sonic screwdriver.

Whew . . .

Gotta do Russian studying. Now. And I have a headache.

Anyway, I was all set to enjoy the long-awaited Desmond-centric episode tonight when it got cut off at a crucial moment by a flash flood advisory. So. Annoying. It marred the whole episode, which is a huge shame. Anyway, I ended up liking the episode, but also being very, very confused. I need to watch it again. On Hulu, where no flood advisories will get in the way.

And there's no worries about flooding where I am, so that's why I sound so nonchalant about the whole advisory thing. It just broke the mood of the episode for me at a crucial point, which made the episode less engrossing than it should have been!!!

Although . . . Daniel and Desmond and Charlie all in one episode together? That already gets a happy dance by default. Emotional-scene-that-was-ruined-by-flood-advisory would have been epic, I know. SO, I will empty my mind, rewatch the episode, and not only like it, but love it like I should have the first time. Hopefully. I was loving it until the beeping and recorded voice cut across everything! >:(

I bought tickets to watch the Hawaii premiere of "The Secret of Kells" on Friday night, which I'm super excited about. I've been wanting to watch this film for a long time, thank goodness it's finally here on the island!

And I'm going to fail my Russian midterm tomorrow. But I can retake it. So I will retake it and do better.

I also have not managed to find my mysterious vanishing library card, so I guess I'll just shell out the fifteen dollars or whatever needed to buy a new one. What a pain.

Any last notes? Um . . . I watched Laurel and Hardy's "The Music Box" at an Honors English Program meeting today. That was fun. And I'm almost done with S is for Space. It's an interesting group of stories.

Also, after a vote in class today my Western lit classmates voted to read excerpts from Plato's Republic for next classtime instead of my choice, excerpts from Herodotus' The Histories. I've read both books before multiple times, so I don't really care I suppose, considering that after the real thing I'm always disappointed in excerpts anyway, but I'm not going to bother reading Plato. I know that blasted Analogy of the Cave by heart and back-to-front by now, thank you very much--I've only had to study it every single year of my life since I was thirteen!!! And role-play about it in class last semester, no less!! Sigh.

I like Plato's writings, they are interesting, and the Analogy is very compelling. It would just . . . have been nice to have been able to reread about Xerxes attempting to punish a river by throwing hot branding irons and chains into it for a change. I don't want to have to sit through yet another explanation of the Cave while most of my fellow students are introduced to it for the first time. Thursday will be a slooooooow day.

DESMOND!!!!!!!

That is all.

I also liked seeing Mikhail and Keamy (brr, he creeps me out more than anybody else on this show) again, but. Other than that and Sawyer's few brilliantly delivered lines, I wasn't really impressed by this episode, although I hadn't expected to be, so that's totally fine. I'm still basking in last week's epicness, so no complaints here. Or, wait, one complaint. Anybody else HATE that red 'V' in the corner of the screen? I already disliked the show just because it's had so many commercials . . . Now I hate it because it was getting in the way of "Lost", grr. Thank goodness this wasn't going on in last week's episode. Gah.

ANYWAY-- What I've been hoping to happen all season, and most particularly since 'Recon', happened: The return of the Scotsman. Leaving me in a positively euphoric mood as I go skipping off to study some more for tomorrow's midterm. Good night, peeps!

PS: Wow, almost April Fool's Day! Got any tricks planned? And that also means I need to start writing up all my March book reviews. Whee!

PPS: Lol, I just realized that in the photo I found it looks like he's glaring at that V . . . Yes, it annoys me too, Des.

Spring Break Day 4: A(lpert), B(ooks), and C(leaning)!

Let's reverse that order. I spent most of today doing a thorough clean-up of my room. This might not sound too bad, but I had papers almost literally everywhere, so it took a long time to sort them all. And I had books all over the place too. But now the books are tidily stacked, the dvds are alphabetized, the floor is clear, and the top of my little table where I study (and type this) is shiny-clean. This makes such a nice change. I always let my room fall to pieces during school because I'm too busy studying to clean up, and so I seize free time like this spring break to get everything back in shipshape condition.

After the room was mostly clean, my grandmother asked me if I wanted to take a break and go to Barnes and Noble. Of course I couldn't resist something like that, so away we went! I used my gift cards to buy not only a copy of "Lawrence of Arabia" on dvd (on sale for 9.99, score!), but I also managed to track down "The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents". I looked for Asimov's Robot trilogy as well, but they didn't have it, unfortunately, and the Fifth Doctor dvds I want were either not in stock or far too expensive for my budget. Still, it was a nice jaunt, and I did pick up two items I wanted very much indeed.

Upon returning to the apartment, I finished cleaning my room just in time for tonight's "Lost" episode--Yeah, only the episode that I've been blathering about and looking forward to since before I even knew it existed. And I realize I've probably bored you silly with all my obsessive anticipation, so I won't babble about it further here beyond saying that was, quite possibly, my favorite episode ever (aside from "The Constant", but this is a serious second placer in my book). It delivered on just about every count I wanted, and . . . almost a solid hour of Richard Alpert. I don't think I need to explain myself further. I don't care what happens for the rest of the season; this episode delivered, which is what I wanted, and I'm entirely a happy camper now, just along for the ride. Or, well, almost. I do care about what further happens to Desmond. But that's another rant entirely, let's not mix up my two favorite living characters any further, mmkay? Just a few final notes:

1) After watching "Ab Aeterno", the suicidal-Richard scene in "Dr. Linus" is immeasurably more sad. Because now we know that what's killing him is that he feels that all those years ago he made the wrong choice. I won't get any more spoiler-y than that.
2) Did Fake Locke hear the whole conversation at the end? Because if he did . . . Big uh-oh.
3) Nestor Carbonell is brilliant. And I got to shake this man's hand??? Gah . . .
4) I wore eyeliner today ;)

I'm still freaking out. First thing on my schedule tomorrow: Jump on hulu.com and rewatch that entire episode!! And then I'm going to I'olani Palace, and after that I plan to walk to St. Andrew's Cathedral. Hopefully I'll be able to find where Daniel Faraday's office was filmed and take my picture there, haha . . .

Can't think of a title right now, honestly . . .

Tonight's "Lost" episode wasn't bad at all, but I'll only really like it if it turns out Desmond is on the sub (behind the mysterious locked door? Yes? Please?). And I like Charlotte and her cute-awkward romance with Faraday too much for her to get dumped off on Sawyer, grr. Other than that, it was entertaining, but ultimately not my fave. Why? Because it's just an obstacle between me and next week's episode! Yeah, the episode I've been waiting for since forever! Whee! And it'll be Spring Break! Double-amazingness!

I completed the first of my two midterms this week, and I think it went very well. I also am almost finished with "The Caves of Steel" already, which shows you how good it is. Or how bored I am. I don't know. No, wait, I do know--it's very good. I spent two hours or so this evening squinting in the fading sunlight and frantically trying to draw a perspective drawing of the hallway outside the apartment for tomorrow's art class before the sun gave up on me and left me in the dark. I managed it, barely. My eyes still hurt.

I'm seriously worried about my 'Book of the Month' deal this month. I've read so many good books, I don't know which one should merit the top spot. And that's unusual for me, usually the really good ones are few and far between. I guess March is my lucky month, which is only fair, since it's my birth month.

I'm finally starting to break through my writer's block, too. And it feels absolutely wonderful. Like relearning how to breathe. Slowly but surely, I'm getting there.

"Dr. Linus"

BEST EPISODE SO FAR THIS SEASON.

Because I was freaking out the whole time that my two fave characters aside from Desmond were going to die. Even though I knew that they wouldn't, not yet, I couldn't help but be all wound up about it anyway.

And then they were fine. And we got a beautiful throw-back to the first season ending. And . . . dawwww, the fuzzy cuteness!!! Even if neither of my favorite characters got a hug at the end!

Celebratory vid:



YAY for the Not-Dead-Yet Richard and his trip to da ship!

Benry Knows Best

(Click for larger view)

You really have to go here. Not only are they adorable, tiny, and amazingly expressive cartoons, but they are all about Ben Linus. And they are chuckle-out-loud funny, in either sweet or ironic ways. How brilliant is that, right?

MUCH Bettah!

Oh yeah, that's more like it. This week's episode ("The Substitute") is waaay better than last week's! It fulfilled almost all of my previously stated requirements as far as what characters to include, after all :) I'm going to add Smoke Monster to my list though, because he's turning out to be brilliant.

My only gripe is that Desmond is still mysteriously absent from, uh, just about everywhere, and there's only about thirteen hours left now, right? His absence is distracting me! And for some reason these flash-sideways things aren't that interesting to me. I'm not sure why. I really want to like them, and I liked the first one because of the mystery and weirdness and nostalgia, but these past two episodes they've been only mildly entertaining, not particularly compelling. Though that might be just me, because I know most folks I've talked to seem to like them a lot *shrugs*

Anyhow . . . I got my Art portfolio back today, and apparently got the best marks in my class, which makes me happy, as I'm not even an Art major. I'm tempted to double-major, but honestly? A double-major in Art and English? That's just like a double-whammy of the most useless majors you can get, alas. Why are all my interests so artsy?

In other news, my birthday's less than two weeks away now, as I suddenly realized yesterday. It's a bit rattling. I'm not used to the idea of being 18 yet, let alone 19! And then I'll be leaving my teens behind forever. It's a bit amusing and a bit sad, this whole growing up and getting older business. I'll probably go out to tea for my birthday, but other than that I have not the foggiest notion. Library trip, perhaps?

I hope you are all having a good week so far. Week six of the semester already, wow. Soon I'll be halfway done!

"What Kate Does"

No Desmond? No Richard? No Ben? No resurrected Faraday?

I'm so disappointed.

. . . Well, it wasn't bad really, just I'm not a Kate fan. Miles is starting to grow on me this season, though. And I'm really liking Japanese man. Not just because he was in "Sunshine", either. Nice to see some old long-gone characters again. I just was not as interested in them as I could have been, because I was busy hoping one of my favorite characters would show up. Sigh.

And I've finished my art homework/portfolio! Yay! And I finished "Strongbow" while on the exercise bike at the school gym earlier; it was ultimately nothing special, because although it had a good opening and some nice stylistic bits, it didn't really bring life to the story it was telling. I felt like I was just getting the bare bones of what could have been a very engrossing story. It's a very short book, and I think it would have been much better if the author had been patient and allowed it to be longer. Oh, well. I'm moving on to a new Bradbury book now.

FUN!

I just had to post this, because it made me laugh so hard. And I don't even like Spongebob.

My Week Thus Far

Nothing particularly out-of-the-ordinary happened to me today, beyond an unusually chilly wind (for Hawaii, that is) whipping me in the face all the way to Russian class. And me nearly falling asleep during art class. I've been exhausted all week, I think because of the very busy weekend I had (Honolulu zoo, Lost premiere, heatstroke, homework, and more homework). I make a point of going to the school gym every Tuesday and Thursday for an hour, and this Tuesday I actually fell asleep while pedaling the exercise bike. Yeah, I've never done that before. I only woke up because I started to fall over to the side, and the thing was beeping at me to "Pedal faster".

Watched "LA X" again, only this time I got to see Part 2 as well as Part 1. Won't say much about it, in case you haven't watched it, because I don't like to be spoiler-y, but I will say right now that Richard and Desmond are absolutely my favorite (living) characters, and so nothing bad had better happen to them. Everyone else is fair game in my opinion, but leave those two alone!

I have my first Midterm of the semester this Friday. Yes, you read that correctly: MIDTERM. Who's bright idea was it to start giving multiple Midterm Exams? Isn't that sort of defeating the purpose of the meaning of 'mid'???

Sigh. Anyway, I'm currently cramming my brain with the workings of the digestive system, what percentage of my DV is composed of lipids, where bile comes from and what it's function is, and how many kcals are in a gram of protein. This nutrition stuff isn't really that hard to understand, it's just hard to remember everything.

This Friday I am going on retreat with about 20 other Catholic students to the North Shore, which should be awesome. I'm really looking forward to it. Also on Friday, I've arranged to meet with a Medieval Combat club on campus, which I'm also looking forward to (to my mother's dismay). Anything else of import looming on the horizon? Erm . . . not particularly. Only my birthday, but that's still about a month away, so let's not dwell on it yet.

I'm currently reading a science fiction novel called "The Copper Crown". It's actually quite entertaining: Basically, the story is that the ancient Celtic people of Ireland, on their famous sea-voyages, discovered the last remnants of Atlantis, who gave them the secrets of space travel. And so they built space ships and left Earth, setting up their own world many billion miles away. Flash forward to a few thousand years from our present day, and an Earth space ship stumbles across this Celtic planet and its people. Except they now call themselves Kelts, and their planet is Keltia. A meeting of two cultures ensues, swiftly followed by intergalactic wars, plots, magic, and mayhem, with a bit of traditional Irish culture thrown in for kicks.

Surprisingly, the book is pretty good. Perhaps I'm biased, being an Irish dancer and Irish mythology lover and all, but it's curiously entertaining to read about Keltic warriors driving their war chariots, living in castles, singing bardic lays and holding ceili dances, as well as wielding laser glaives in battle and using telepathy and enormous space-ships carved into bestial shapes like old Viking seaships. Somehow it works. So far (I have about 100 pages to go) I'd recommend it.

Anyway, back to the homework before I go to sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a busy, busy day.

"Lost" Premiere! (Full Album)

Here's the public web-link to my facebook album of photographs I got at the premiere. Unfortunately facebook is acting bizarrely recently and uploaded all my photographs pretty small, which is annoying, but I'll try to fix that ASAP.

In other news, I have my first real exam of the semester coming up on Friday. Nutrition class. I keep thanking my lucky stars that I watched "The Magic School Bus" as a kid, because that one strange episode where the class has a fieldtrip inside Arnold(?)'s digestive system is really helping me remember all my terminologies and things for this class!

"Lost" Premiere!

So I discovered last week that the premiere of the first episode of the last season of "Lost" was to be held at Queen's beach here on Oahu, during a "Sunset on the Beach" screening. I was instantly interested, but unsure if I would be able to go, or if I wanted to put aside my homework for one day so that I could go.

Well, I ultimately went, and thank goodness I did! It was amazing.

If you're looking for spoilers about the episode, I have to tell you now that you aren't going to find any here. I don't want to ruin anything for you. I CAN say, however, that I enjoyed it. And that the "Lost" recap shown right beforehand was hilarious. It didn't do much to help my grandmother (who came along but has never watched the show) understand what was going on, but it got a lot of appreciative laughs and cheers from the crowd.

That's an important aspect of the day, too: Pretty much everyone I met was really friendly and nice. A large amount of people were dressed up in "Lost in Hawaii" shirts, or shirts sporting the Dharma logo or the Numbers, but I didn't see any outrageous costumes. Which doesn't mean there wasn't any, of course. The crowd was enormous--supposedly 20,000 people were expected to show up.

I managed to position myself and my camera right up against one of the railings by the walkway where the cast members who were attending the screening would walk by on their way to the stage. This meant I had to arrive about five hours before the actual screening time, but it was worth it. The weather was mildly warm, the ocean waves were rhythmic and hypnotic, and there was just enough cloud-cover to provide shelter from the sun without being gloomy. I mostly just read a library book while I waited, although I also walked along the shoreline and ventured knee-deep into the water a few times.

When the cast members started arriving, I and people around me would be alerted by screaming away by where the limos drew up, and eventually I got to see every member of the cast who arrived, and get photos too--some good, some not so good. Unfortunately my camera was feeling tempermental and sometimes refused to focus at the worst possible times. So it is that I missed out on getting a photograph of John Locke--I mean Terry O'Quinn, of course!--pulling a goofy face and giving me "thumbs up". Oh, well. That's what old-fashioned memories are for.

After the cast had all stopped doing rounds and the sky was much darker, I left my spot by the railing and managed to thread my way between towels and beach chairs to reach where my Grandmother was sitting, which was only about seven feet away from the VIP section, a bit to the right of the 30-ft projector screen. It was from here that I watched the episode itself (or, rather, the first hour of the episode, as that was all that was premiered).

The experience was unforgettable. Looking up, I could see almost impossibly clear stars; close upon my right, the waves rushed and ebbed, rushed and ebbed, the sand was cool, and the air smelled like salt brine. The best atmosphere, I suppose, for watching "Lost", as it's about an island and all :)

So, here's some of my 300 photographs!

1. Michael Emerson.

One of the two people I was really hoping would be there, and he was first of all the cast members to arrive! He has a really nice smile, which I found slightly funny, because he gets so little chance to show it on the show. He was pretty friendly, and posed for the cameras in my section of the crowd, but again--camera refused to take the picture. I don't know why. He also thanked us for coming--in that awesome voice of his--and told us very sincerely that he hoped we would enjoy the episode, which I thought was nice of him.

2. Ken Leung.
Second to arrive. This was the only smile I caught him at the entire evening. I'm not that big a fan of his character on the show, but it was neat seeing him anyway. He still had the persona of Miles going, perhaps he's just like that naturally? Haha.


3. Daniel Dae Kim
I love Jin's character, so it was awesome to see Kim. He was one of the most chatty of the stars, as he'd call back replies when people in the crowd yelled 'JIIIIIIIIN', and seemed to be having a great time. I got a good picture of him shrugging and grinning when he apologized to us for having to leave to go to the stage ("Sorry, I gotta go!"), and yeah, it was weird hearing him speak without the accent ^_^


4. Jeff Fahey
I wasn't expecting Lapidus to show up! Love him on the show, but he seemed to have little time for the crowd by the time he reached my section. I don't know how many autographs he signed further back. He walked by pretty quickly, and though he did flash a smile once, my photo was blurry. Sigh.


5. Harold Perrineau
The guy standing next to me bellowed 'MICHAEL!' loud enough to startle Perrineau into looking in our direction. This happened multiple times, but he took it in good grace, and even seemed amused. Again, I wasn't expecting him to be there, and he isn't my favorite character on the show, but he seemed nice enough.


6. Jorge Garcia
It'd be pretty hard to miss Jorge. He also really interacted with fans, and even stopped to pet one fan's dog, haha, and to write a reply to a note that got flung at him before tossing it back into the crowd. I got more photos of him than practically any other cast member.


7. Naveen Andrews
Naveen was a bit confusing--one minute he'd be walking towards my section, the next he'd turn back, or turn aside, and vanish, and then he'd appear again, and then he'd vanish again. Eventually some people even started chanting 'Say-id' until he reappeared. He was really great, though, when he was around. Eventually he stopped doing the rounds and pulled out a cigarette right in front of my section, so I got to breathe Sayid's second-hand smoke, y'all! Woo-hoo!

8. Terry O'Quinn
The crowd went crazy for O'Quinn. It was pretty awesome to see him in person, and he went back and forth along the railings a few times, so I got a few good shots. Although not the one aforementioned. He had a nifty dress-shirt on--black and neon green.

9. Yunjin Kim
I hardly saw her, she went by so fast, and unlike many of the other cast members, she didn't reappear. Still, she somehow managed to appear so gracious in the three seconds that she whizzed past, that I couldn't feel that slighted. She's even prettier in person than she is on the show.

10. Henry Ian Cusick
Henry Ian Cusick is the main reason why I attended the premiere. I love this guy. Or, to be precise, I love Desmond Hume! Desmond's been my favorite character ever since his first appearance on the show, and he's just been getting better and better. I mean, he's practically Doctor Who now, all he needs is a police box to do his time traveling in. He's already got the super long scarf and the beautiful accent . . . But I'm sure Cusick's a marvelous fellow too. I was desperately hoping he'd be one of the stars to show up, but the ironic thing is, I was so busy trying to get a good picture of Naveen, I nearly missed noticing him when he did walk by, leading to shoddy photography >.< But it was still an epic moment!!! He's got a positively radiant smile, and is just as charismatic in person as he is as Desmond. And isn't that shade of blue familiar?

11. Evangeline Lilly
I can't honestly say that I like the character of Kate very much. So I wasn't as excited as I could have been about seeing Lilly. The crowd as a whole, however, was almost as excited as it had been when O'Quinn went by. Lilly's outfit was gorgeous, but she, like Yunjin Kim, went past pretty quickly.


12. Matthew Fox
He went past even faster than Kim and Lilly did. He seemed to reconsider and did pause to smile for photographs, but that was unfortunately after he had passed my section of the crowd. So I got very few pictures of him, and most of those are distant profiles.


13. Josh Holloway
Of course all my photographs of Holloway turned out blurry. Aaaaagh! Still, I can report that he was extremely friendly, seemed to be having a blast, and has a great laugh. His outfit was pretty awesome too. While most of the stars seemed to be really enjoying themselves, he seemed the most excited, like a kid in a candy store, but not arrogant at all. Just a really pleasant guy.


14. Nestor Carbonell
Out of all the stars, Nestor wins the pure awesomeness award. He actually arrived before half the cast did, and spent a long time signing autographs and posing for pictures further up the line, and then was called away for press duties right before he reached my section, which made everyone moan with disappointment. When he returned, people were screaming for him to come over, but he replied by waving and saying apologetically 'I've got to go over there [pointing to other side of the grass], but I'll come back later.' And though it took a while, he kept his word, and not only kept it, but went one better. You see, where I was standing there were two railings set up between crowd and stars, so we were too far away to get autographs. He, seeing this, simply vaulted over the taller-than-waist-high railings and signed autographs, posed for pictures, and chatted for over five minutes. He, like Emerson, thanked us all for coming, and was just really nice. Not to mention he's RICHARD ALPERT . . . I didn't manage to get an autograph, but I got a lot of fantastic photos, and really just him caring enough to make sure we poor double-barred fans were able to spend some time in closer quarters with a star was better than any autograph. Thanks, Nestor, you're fantastic!

That's it for the cast! Damon Lindelof, Carlton Cuse, and Jack Bender were also there, as was the woman who's playing that new character, what's her name? The mysterious woman from the Russian hospital. Anyway. There was so much more, but I don't want to post photos here. I'm going to post all my photos in a Facebook album, so if you're interested, come by and visit!

I'm exhausted, sunburned, and had to take medicine for a massive headache I had afterwards, caused either by tiredness or sunstroke or a bit of both. But it was all very worth it. Thanks to everyone who helped me talk myself into going, and here's to the final season!