AuntiePam

Here goes. The most recent wedding in my family was for a couple who had been living together for five years, second marriage for both. Two of the bridesmaids were the husband's daughters from a prior relationship, and one groomsman was the son of the bride. The ring bearer was their four-year-old son. Bride had two father-daughter dances, one with her bio dad and the other with her stepfather. It just seemed ironic to me that this wedding, as well as most others, is proof of the fragility of the marriage commitment. (I write more and deleted it. I'm a curmudgeon on this subject and I'm pretty sure it's boring to others.)

Was LeeAnne correct when she said that it's common to have ten or fifteen parties attached to a wedding? Would those be for both bride and groom? And would guests be expected to bring a gift to all the parties? [deleted diatribe about weddings in general] LeeAnne's ludicrous lingerie party was an excuse for the women to show off their bodies, except for Kam, who compensated for her lack of pulchritude by bragging about her relative youth.

I heard misused pronouns from Kam, Brandi, and Stephanie (and maybe Travis too), and then thought "Wouldn't it be awesome if libertarianslut would tweet Andy Cohen and ask him to do a grammar lesson at the reunion, or on one of the clubhouse shows". Your mission, should you choose to accept it . . .

I thought it was about Brandi and couldn't figure it out, because Brandi's outfit was almost sedate, for lingerie. So yeah, maybe it was Cary. I laughed at Kary's conversation with her daughter. So stilted, and expositional, like a bad novel, when we're being introduced to a new character. Kary tells Sofia what she already knows: I'm divorced, I've married rich men and haven't had to work, you're 21, I remember taking you to college, you're almost finished with college, you've had the same boyfriend for three years, Maybe if they had been filmed while they were doing something, it wouldn't have been so bad. There was just a minute with Kam when she was talking with her daughter when she sounded like a normal person, none of that affected voice. For a few seconds I thought "Damn, Kam, you're really attractive, and you might be worth listening to if you stopped with that Tallest Little Girl in the World act." I'm also not in favor of parents constantly telling their small kids how wonderful they are. That's not how to prepare them for the real world. That said, the little girl doesn't seem TOO spoiled, yet. Loved Stephanie and Travis, and Travis treating her like she has a brain, finally. Didn't like that apparently D'Andra is going to blame her mom for all her failings, and that she's going to try to keep that business afloat. Just give it up and do something else!

I chuckled at the drive-thru, when they figured out that they could write a check and it wouldn't bounce because it wouldn't hit the bank until Saturday. Been there, done that. Love seeing how people with cash flow issues work the system, without resorting to crime. /smile/ A friend used to "forget" to sign checks, back in the day when a bank would return an unsigned check. It would give her a few more days to pay the light bill. She'd also smudge the routing number on the check -- that would take the check out of the automated system, another delay. And she'd pay her Visa with her MasterCard. Sometimes Violet speaks too quickly for me to pick up what she's saying -- that's my only gripe.

Possibly. But in this case, there was a separate bill for water, so presumably there was also a bill for sewer -- they're usually connected. Basic utilities shouldn't be more than $150-$200 a month, so these trailer park owners are raking it in.

What upset me the most about the trailer case was that people have to pay $468 a month to rent space to park it. Which is probably an eighth of an acre, if that. I can't even imagine what a $700 trailer looks like.

It does seem like everyone is in a good place, but I'd miss this show. There's still the question of Dud and Liz's father -- is he really dead? There was no body. I'd like to know what's in the scrolls, but I'd also be okay if they couldn't be translated. Gotta laugh at Lamar hauling that typewriter around. Those bitches are heavy.

I don't think he expected Kim to kill Miller. Ray always looks disgusted or disappointed. Ray has to understand that not everyone is able to kill another person. I kinda wanted Ray to let Miller go. Let him live, and let him wonder if and when Ray or Kim will be back. Also, Ray left fingerprints all over Miller's kitchen. It'd be all kinds of wrong if he was caught and prosecuted for this murder.

Family crisis averted. Son says he has Minnesota plates and insurance. Yay! Googling brought up a Release of Liability form, which we will use the next time we sell a vehicle.

Son isn't on our insurance. He's 35, been on his own for years, has at least one other vehicle. My husband is positive that signing the title over is all he needed to do. He's sold cars before and dropped coverage immediately. Our carrier has never asked if the new owner had registered any of those vehicles. I hope I've sown enough doubt that he'll keep the coverage going until son gets his shit together. It's just liability, so it's about $30 a month. What's funny is that son's wife is an insurance broker. Surely she knows how important this is!

Because Stephanie's more sympathetic. She doesn't pout when she's not the center of attention. She doesn't spread ugly rumors (Cary's husband sucks c***). Stephanie doesn't whine. When she talks about her depression and suicide attempts, she's looking for understanding, not sympathy. And she's sharing information that might actually be helpful to others. She's a good example of someone pushing through, getting help when she needs it, being aware of how her actions affect others. LeeAnne is a terrible example for abuse survivors. Who could look at her and think "If she can recover, so can I?" The answer is no one, because she hasn't recovered, She's just fine, being ugly and negative and self-involved. I realize that every victim isn't going to have Elizabeth Smart's attitude, but LeeAnne doesn't even try. She's getting too much out of it to want to change. If she's not Angry Bitch Carny Girl, who is she?

Looking for legal advice! Yeah, I know, it's worth what I'm paying for it. /smile/ My husband gave his son a truck a little over a month ago. Old truck, we didn't need it, we'll be saving $$ on insurance. Husband signed and dated the title. Son hasn't registered the truck yet, or added it to his insurance. Husband wants to drop the insurance. Is that a good idea? Aren't we still liable until the kid registers the truck? Because if just signing over a title removes liability, wouldn't people do that whenever they had an accident and didn't have insurance? I suggested that he ask our carrier before he drops the coverage, but he thinks he knows what he's doing. Does he? (Son lives in another state, and he and his wife both work, so I'm thinking the delay in registering is because one of them will have to take off work to do it.)

But D'Andra was drunk when she did that. They could have just told her to shut up and had their one-on-one discussion. LeeAnne was sober when she got all butthurt about Kam and Brandi making up. That said, Brandi should have just walked away when it was obvious that LeeAnne wasn't listening. And it was obvious about five seconds after they started talking. LeeAnne has to "win", all the time. She is such a downer. She just needs to accept that the negativity and offensiveness is how she copes, and that being in the spotlight is what gives her some self-worth. She can't even fake having empathy for others, or seeing their point of view.

Well, at least in the truck case, the plaintiff was probably telling the truth about giving defendant's dad $1500 for a truck. But why didn't she ask for the title? Always ask for the title. In the boat case, yeah, that looked like bullshit. Nobody gives a stranger $5,000 cash. JJ must have been suspicious from the start. She didn't ask about the nature of the work, when the boat was purchased, none of the usual stuff. The litigants tried to make a plausible story in the hall-ter-view, but it was pretty lame.

I fast-forwarded so don't know JJ's reasoning, but she gave plaintiff $100 for the two bikes. Plaintiff tried to show receipts for replacement bikes but JJ wasn't having any. Whiny babies -- perfect description.

Curse my failing memory! Have Dud or Ernie mentioned Lamar before? I don't recall them talking about the authors they enjoy, but they must have. Love that they're all hitting the road, and Ernie's rationale makes sense to me: When you've been losing all your life, what you do doesn't matter, so do what makes you feel good. (Or something like that.) Love that Ernie's boss supports them too.

Too soon to tell, but I think all the characters are strong enough to carry episodes on their own. I don't need a new evil every week. Give these people interesting backgrounds and I'll keep watching, just to learn more about them. I've been a Lahti fan since Running On Empty, which is on Turner Classic Movies today at 5:45, and then Chicago Hope, which I thought was better than ER but what do I know. Surely the writers will make good use of her. Love Aasif Mandvi too. Kurt Fuller I remember from Supernatural, and Michael Emerson from Lost -- kinda sad to see him as a villain but he'll be great at it. Colter has amazing eyes. I hope he and Kristen don't fall into bed, but if they do, it's understandable.

I learned on The Sopranos that psychiatrists are required to see psychiatrists. If that's true, then maybe they get a special rate. I liked this. George was a surprise, but maybe his frat boy behavior was a reflection of Kristen's non-believer attitude. She sees him as imaginary, silly even, so she isn't going to give him a Biblical name, like Gabriel or Lucifer, or have him speak in Biblical pronouncements. This is off the DVR so I can't check, but that first night George showed up, I remember Kristen looking at the window from her bed, and I could swear the window was closed. I remember this because it bugged me that she hadn't drawn the curtains. If her bedroom is on the first floor, anyone could peep in. But when she saw the puddle, the window was open.

Nope, not crazy. I do the same thing. Maybe the reason we're more sad about the animals is because they're forgotten -- the actors are remembered. And we know the actors are remembered, because most of them had families who are keeping their memories alive. Some of them might not be remembered so much by the public, but their descendants remember them. But the cats and dogs -- there's no one to mourn them.

Can he? I thought he just walked through this, like his heart wasn't in it. He spoke his lines too quickly and that made his lines sound rehearsed, which they were, of course, but that's not the intended effect. Maybe I've just seen him too often as a bad guy. I'll keep watching for his friends, especially Michaela Watkins. Is she a friend or a relative?

DoctorK, yep. I think if defendant had had insurance, JJ might have gone the other way. It was foolhardy of plaintiff to cross there, and she had to see that there was traffic. Just go half a mile to the crosswalk. It's not PC of me, but damn, she had a motorized chair? How hard can it be?

In Thursday's mother-daughter loan case, JJ was unsympathetic at the beginning. Mamma buys tablets and cell phones for the grandkids, and lends money to daughter for rent. There's no repayment. Lending with no expectation of repayment -- it's not a loan, it's a gift, we've heard JJ say. Then JJ asked plaintiff about her disability, and it seemed to me that JJ decided to cut her some slack. She had done the right things. Plaintiff was just a mom, trying to help her daughter, and she might actually be disabled. Daughter needed a smack though.

It's A Dog's Life, 1955, with the wonderful Edmund Gwenn. It's set in the early 1900's and is narrated by Wildfire, a bull terrier. I missed the first few minutes so don't know how Wildfire, who turns out to be the son of a champion show dog, ends up pit-fighting in the Bowery. We don't see any actual fighting but that part is still hard to watch, because we know how those fights turned out in real life. Wildfire gets in a pitch for the ASPCA and the Humane Society as sort of an apology, I guess. I love movies with dogs and cats, and this one was excellent, funny and heart-warming but not too smarmy. Sometimes the trainer is evident, because you'll see the dog looking off-camera for direction. Not here -- it was easy to believe that Wildfire was just responding to the story, like any other actor.

I'm envious. I went to see Johnny at the Surf in Clear Lake in the early 60's, but I was so excited about being in that environment -- my first live music show, cute boys, liquor, smoking! -- my 16-year-old self paid very little attention to the music. I just wasn't ready. While everyone's here, is there anyone new we should be paying attention to?