Salacious Propriety

Okay. I’m hooked. My Lost history dates back to Fall 2001, but I’ll get to that.

I had thought my history with the show, Lost, began whenever the pilot episodes aired. I don’t remember why I watched. I think that I just happened across it. At the time, I liked what I saw. Was it always on Wednesday night? Perhaps the reason for watching was that Smallville was still airing at the same time slot on Wednesday nights and that particular night Smallville was a rerun or something so I flipped channels. After this night, Lost became out of sight out of mind.

Fast-forward to two months ago. I’m walking through Borders with a friend. He NEEDS a DVD to watch so we’re going through the sections. My eye catches the Lost Season 1 DVD set. I pick it up and think to myself, “I hear good things about this, but naaaah…I’ve invested enough television-watching hours to The Sopranos, Big Love, The Apprentice, and Smallville.” These are pretty much my current line-up and the extent of my TV programming I follow right now. The Apprentice continues to suck, as does Smallville for the most part, yet I still keep them around. The Sopranos reclaimed it’s spot from the show Rome which did quite the nice job helping forget that I’m in Sopranos withdrawl. I placed the box back onto the shelf.

Two Wednesdays ago, I was at my aunt’s house and at some point plopped on the couch to turn on the television. I happened across Lost about 5-10 minutes into the show. I thought, sure why not. This was the Lost:Reckoning. Would you look at that, it’s this season of Lost’s clip show episode. Okay, now I was intrigued.

The following Thursday, I acquired Season 1. Since then, I have also completed viewing all of Season 2, finding that ‘Dammit! I spoiled the season with that damn clip show!’ I can’t be too mad though, because if it wasn’t for that, step 2 in catching up would never have occurred.

The other day, Wednesday, I watched Lost at its normal airing for the first time since the pilot. I noticed a commercial, but I don’t usually pay attention to commercials anyways and immediately switched to TNT’s NBA playoffs. Little did I know that I had noticed enough of the commercial for my memory to relegate some space for it. Later that night, a friend and I were discussing Lost, and he sent a link. thehansofoundation.orgI was like “Why does that sound familiar to me?” He LOLed at me.

I mentioned how I had caught up with Lost, and how on my personal comparisson list, it takes it place on currently-airing TV programs between 24 and Alias level. Above 24 would be your Sopranos/Rome level and Six Feet Under/Big Love level. After a big gap would be 24, Lost and Alias would be in the next level. This isn’t any indication of appeal to me but just where I’d place the show in terms of quality-of-production. 24, though, would still claim it’s spot on my favorites list above Lost.

I played around with the site and recalled the relevance of that commercial I opted out on viewing. Upon, realizing the point of the site…I noticed that it wasn’t like your Google Web Quest for The Da Vinci Code, but I noticed something eerily familiar…

Mid-August 2001: A stressful time for me as I was navigating my way towards convincing school to allow me to graduate on the grounds that I had made a teacher cry. Another story for another time. I didn’t mean to. Anywho, measures were taken to resolve the issue involving certain punishments and extra work. Final decision on whether I would graduate would occur between then and the second week of September. So I was pretty much at home all the time, doing the extra projects, experiments and work that I promised to do…work that I claimed to be able to accomplish in the remaining time that the school’s administration did not believe I would be able to. The fools. So anyways, I needed a down-time thing. I don’t remember the exact details, but I think it had to do with me either playing games at EA’s Pogo.com or looking at EA’s site on news regarding NCAA Football 2002 or Madden 2002. I can’t remember, but I was brought to EA’s site and noticed this game I could download on the site. It was a free download, and you could play the game for a one round for free. Afterwards, you had to subscribe to the game on a monthly basis. I figured why not and soon found myself subscribing to the damn game. It’s called Majestic.

I have NEVER played or heard of any game like this ever. As far as video gaming, I consider it revolutionary. I had a blast with this game. It’s difficult to describe, but essentially if you have seen the movie, The Game, it’s very similar in concept. The game occurs in your regular daily life, peeking it’s head in at your leisure or during your daily routines. There is no on-screen character. You, the person you were born as, are the character. The game is conspiracy-theorish, and it combines many forms of mixed media and communication, email, home phone, cell, fax, snail mail, newspapers, Instant Messaging and the Internet in order to play the game. I remember forgetting to inform old roommates about the game and receiving death threats and confronted by WTF expressions on their faces.

The Hanso Foundation reminded me of Majestic…it’s the EXACT same kind of game. I had wished that games of this sort would continue to be made after Majestic’s commercial failure. And here it is…as a tie-in to Lost. Earlier today I would be informed that Majestic and Lost Online (which I now know to extend beyond just the Hanso site) are not unique…that numerous games of the sort have been around since Majestic’s time, including a tie-in to the movie A.I. My source also informed me that this game type has a name, Alternate Reality Game (ARG).

Lost isn’t just a show on television for me anymore. As a show, I maintain it’s place just behind 24. A person can watch just the show Lost and that would be fine. But now I have found that, IMO, despite the commercial entity that is just the show, Lost is a mixed-media event. The creative minds behind this (who also happen to be involved in the comic book industry and that line of thinking storywise), have created this user-experience wherein Lost is just one part. The many websites that tie into the game, the phone numbers, the letters, the book(s) being written, advertisements…all in this alternate reality. Dude.

Lost is so freakin awesome now to me. My love for puzzles is definitely satisfied! Dude.

P.S. Sawyer is the best character!!!!! I hope the Others kill the doctor, Locke, and Freckles next.