Although I have watched “Lost” since its beginning, I have not always watched with true fan vigilance. Watching TV usually means multi-tasking with reading magazines, firing up my laptop because it suddenly occurs to me that I immediately need to know where Kevin James was born. And then while looking him up on IMDB.com I discover his real life parents share the same name as his TV parents, Joe and Janet, and while pondering this interesting trivia tidbit I fail to hear the whispering going on during a “Lost” scene or miss memorizing Kate and Jack’s license plates so as to decipher their hidden meanings.

I wish this picture was larger.

Also, if I am not watching at my sister and b-in-law’s home with their beautiful, huge, flat-screen, HD TV I am usually forced to watch on a black and white, five inch screen, so I have excuses as to why I couldn’t make out the obituary. I typically cannot distinguish between dark blondes, red-haired anomalies (2-6% of the U.S. population), or light brown coifs on my $20 TV/radio with both AC/DC adaptibility, so how was I supposed to catch the fact that Kate didn’t have freckles when she met Jack at the airport. That being said, I would have simply attributed it to the fact that she was all made up versus her au natural island look we have grown accustomed to viewing. I really doubt Kate would slather on foundation everyday while stranded on the hot and humid island, people, so theories regarding her freckle-less face are without merit, in my opinion.

Prior to Wednesday’s show I had never visited a “Lost” messageboard. I wanted to bask in my own ideas of “Lost“, possibly give rumination to family and friend’s ideas, and appreciate these without “other’s” theories and conjectures. But one of the headlines for my news portal page indicated a review for the show’s season finale, so I read it, because reading is fundamental.

The review claims that the show was a flash forward to the future versus the typical flashbacks. I am dumbfounded. I feel disgust and disappointment with myself that I missed this huge element in the show. Where was I? I remember thinking during the show, wait, Jack and Kate knew each other prior to the crash? I recall that I thought I needed to go back and view past episodes because I was sure I would find words, actions, scenes contrary to this new fact. I am so thrown by this simple line in the review I head off to the messageboards.

Once again I experience that “other world” phenomenon. That all these other worlds exist of which I am not privy. It’s not that I want to be totally in this world, mind you, but brief exposures to “new” environments always makes me happy in that I feel I broaden my mind at least a little bit.

I begin reading the board and see that the flash forward was not necessarily clearly defined as a futuristic scene since some of the hard core “Lost” fans are debating its meaning. And then I come across a post where some dude points out that the name of the funeral parlor Jack visits, “Hoffs/Drawlar,” is an anagram for “flash forward”. Brilliant.* Love this.

Here is the supposed text of the newspaper clipping. One poster claimed he used a computer program to generate the text (believable) and others make the claim “they know someone who works on the set” (less believable because even if they do know someone on set, that person would probably not posses this sort of information):

“The body of John Lantham of New York was found shortly after 4 am in the 4300 block of Grand Avenue. Ted Worden, a doorman at the Tower Lofts complex, heard loud noises coming from the victim’s loft. Concerned for tenants’ safety, he entered the loft and found the body hanging from a beam in the living room. According to Jaime Ortiz, a police spokesman, the incident was deemed a suicide after medi_cal tests. Latham (sic) is survived by one teenaged son. Memorial services will be held at the Hoffs-Drawlar Funeral Home tomorrow evening.”

“Lost“, you have found that spark and reignited my interest in you. Why do I have to wait until 2008 to see you again?

*Brilliance is really an attractive trait, especially if it comes in an attractive package (kidding). Writers who first think, consider, ponder, deliberate and then write have a special place in my mind and heart. I would, if I could, spend hours inside their head, as if a museum, and read and study and wonder at all its elements. I’d seek out the dark corners of the mind and gape with awe at what I’d find.