selkie

It seems like the right time and place for an annual discussion of whether 'Die Hard' is actually the greatest Christmas movie of all time.

Russia has a hella homophobic culture in a lot of ways so my first inclination is to hear it as that kind of slur against Jason.

And then there was 'Babylon 5', where Delenn's 'I seem to be having these cramps' line to Susan Ivanovs seemed to be a bit of a throwaway line at first, but then in true JMS/B5 style it ends up being a clue about a huge plot point involving her becoming human enough that she could actually have a child with Sheridan several years down the road. As long as I'm thinking of JMS shows, cramps made a reappearance in 'Sense 8', where you have a group of people who who can feel everything the rest of their cluster is feeling, and there's a bit where Sun gets horrible cramps and Lito ends up feeling like he's about to keel over and die from her pain.

Nike is a misogynistic and often rather nasty company with a really, really good advertising agency.

And followed by a women's marathon world record that will officially 'count' pending ratification. https://www.letsrun.com/news/2019/10/brigid-kosgei-runs-21404-shatters-womens-marathon-world-record-at-2019-chicago-marathon/

Because I'm a very cynical American track fan, I hold that the biggest upset of the meet was that the American men's 4x100 managed three clean and fast exchanges in the event final. It was a highly entertaining WCs and I'm excited to see so many great performers here and hope they do even better in Tokyo.

When an athlete or athletes seemingly past their prime seem determined to keep going anyways, I figure if they can say that a) their sport is still paying them well enough to cover their bills and b) they still really enjoy getting up and going to work in the morning most days, then I'll just leave them alone until they decide it doesn't make sense any more for them.

I've seen some speculation that Elisabeth has a decent run on the show since she seems to have lost noticeable weight while she was away.

I don't remember if Kim did much with doubles. Martina Hingis had a pretty god run as a doubles player long after she gave up the singles game, so that could be a pro option.

The USA legally defines Middle Eastern persons as white. It goes back to the lobbying of early Syrian and Lebanese immigrants in the 19th century who wanted to being family members over and who were legitimately concerned that if they got labeled as Asian, they would get caught up in laws designed to ban any additional Chinese immigration to the US West. It's only really been in recent years that there's been a push for a new designation for Middle Eastern/North African in US law and census documentation that would cover Arabs and Persians/Iranians.

Marc Soler? It would make as much sense as anything at this point.

I was in a Tijuana Flats (inauthentic but tasty fast casual 'Mexican' food) over the weekend, and Sweet Caroline came on the radio. While there was no outright dancing involved, more than half the restaurant did indeed end up singing along to the chorus for no real reason other than it was fun

So if I'm reading this right, you can stream the Giro d'Italia for free in the USA next year? https://awfulannouncing.com/streaming/fubotv-launches-ad-supported-fubo-sports-network-will-feature-original-programming-and-julie-stewart-binks.html

Because I am oddly sentimental about sports, I got a little sniffly at a domestique from an Euskadi squad on iffy financial ground winning a proper stage in the Basque Pyrenees. (Rumor mill sys they may now be close to sponsorship that would get them through 2020.) And then had to laugh at: https://www.bbc.com/sport/cycling/49581440

I am reminded of the scene in Homicide:LOTS when the detectives who own the bar are told they need to get approval from some sort of Baltimore historic preservation committee before doing very necessary work on the building because Washington might have peed in the latrine there.

I ended up ponying up for the NBC Sports Gold cycling package and the European long feed didn't have the Education First crash video either. Horrible day for that team.

It's like how I wouldn't be surprised if Nassar never touched Nastia Liukin because of who her father is.

The Vuelta cinematography still pales in comparison to Le Tour, but it's actually significantly better than it was five years ago, when it seemed like they were running the whole operation using five old Betamax cameras they'd found in a random Basque separatist's back tool shed. Two stages in and it's a lot of fun since no one really knows what they heck is going on yet. Earlier this summer, the UCI did a global fan survey, and apparently I'm not alone in preferring my races to be less predictable https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1083905/uci-road-survey-results

Amazon is not the first media group to make an attempt at a WoT adaptation. A previous holder of the tv/movie rights actually made a (by all accounts really horrible) pilot for the show in order to trigger a clause that would extend the time frame of the original rights and it apparently aired briefly on overnight cable tv https://www.wired.com/2015/02/wheel-of-time-tv-pilot/ https://io9.gizmodo.com/the-real-story-about-that-wheel-of-time-pilot-that-aire-1684773094

See also: 'A Cry for Help: the Tracy Thurman Story'. Along with 'The Burning Bed' we watched that in a class called Family Living in high school, which really was the case where it was a class run by the assistant football coach and you were pretty much guaranteed to get an A for showing up, watching a bunch of proto-Lifetime movies and writing a few paragraphs on how domestic violence was, like, a really really bad thing.

Honestly, I know I'm not the only person who felt like Robert Jordan lost anything resembling control over his cast of literal thousands somewhere around book 7 or 8 and will regard it as a Good Thing if they cut and consolidate a lot from those middle books before Sanderson sadly ( for those unfamiliar with the books, he was the one who was contracted to finish the series after original author Robert Jorden passed away) had to wrestle a whole bunch of overly rambling plotlines back into place to get the end of the series to work.

The rare exceptions to this include Merrit Wever as Zoe on Nurse Jackie, and Lena Dunham as Hannah on Girls, and in Dunham's case she was also producing the show and casting herself as a lead.

We've been doing an ER rewatch ourselves, and I'm finding myself really strongly on Team Kerry Weaver during the clashes between those two doctors. Yeah Kerry was an ambitious weasel many a time but she also was generally pretty solid on patient and hospital ethics concerns.

Every so often when a modern television show decides to to the entire episode in three second cuts or less, I find myself wanting to dig out some of the 'Max Hedroom' episodes where they were talking about blipverts making people's heads literally explode because they couldn't process video that jumped that quickly.

And if anyone wants another datapoint on why it's a bad idea to pick your 2019 team in 2018, Ryan Held just went 47.43 in the 100 free prelims. This is a new US Open record (fastest swim by an athlete of any nationality on US soil) and is faster than the bronze medal time at Worlds. Regan Smith is the top qualifier in the 200 butterfly, and it's going to be interesting to see her progress. We're in between generational talents right now in that event (2019 World champion Boglarka Karpas was nearly a second slower than Mary Meagher's 2:05.9 at Brown Deer in 1981) and while the Olympic final will be faster, anyone who can go a 2:06 remains a medal contender in the race This is a selection meet for the broader (not for a specific international event) US National and US Junior National teams and a top 8 or top 16 world ranking coming out of this meet can mean a bigger paycheck from USA Swimming for 2020.