selkie

USA Swimming did that stupid thing again when it selected its international teams for 2019 based on 2018 results, and Smith was third best in the event based on last year's times so didn't get an individual swim. We also didn't have the pre-WC world leader in the women's 200 breast in 2019- Annie Lazor- because of that selection process. And Ella Eastin, who would have been a finalist in the 400 IM based on early 2018 performances but missed selection in the event because she got mono right before 2018 summer nationals.

There's been a good amount of buzz about Regan Smith over on Swim Swam and such- she's been a very impressive age grouper since her 12& under days, a 2017 World Championship finalist at age 15, and the official world junior record holder in the 200 back. (Though granted the official junior records don't include a lot of really good swims from before there was such a designated youth category) But even her biggest fans didn't see that 2:03 coming. Like Katie Ledecky in 2012, it's a case of an athlete who is seen as having a huge upside down the road but is probably arriving somewhat ahead of expected schedule. Pretty much the typical World Championships meet- some really awesome performances as well as the usual controversy and trainwreck moments.

Nairo's been announced as going to the French continental Arkea-Samsic team next year. There's a points system for riders at the big events, and Arkea-Samsic is pretty much buying Nairo's points for 2019 in order to help the team get invited to some of the bigger races where only the world teams get automatic assignments. Seems like the problem wasn't just the snow, but that the course was having active mudslides https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/cycling/9592677/snow-havoc-tour-de-france-yellow-jersey-geraint-thomas/ If the local geologists had been able to tell race control that the hillside was stable and they'd had a chance to clear some of the mud so it was kind of like a Paris-Roubaix cobblestone segment, they probably would have continued. If it had only been snow, then they probably would have kept on. Here's Steven Kruijswijk losing the Giro a few years back.

Paul apparently grew up a swimmer, got into triathlons as an adult and finished Ironman Hawaii before knee problems meant she had to largely give up running. So yeah, she had the right physique to be an ocean lifeguard.

However, if it was easy to do so, it likely would have been picked up by one of the streaming services like so many other older shows have been.

IIRC, it's one of those shows with messy music rights issues- the old DVD sets had a fair number of song substitutions- and it could be that it's hard to clear enough of those original songs to keep fans happy on some sort of reasonable budget to have the show reappear on DVD or streaming.

And the last 10K of today's stage was really really entertaining in all the right ways and many dug into their suitcases of courage. Was De Gendt going to pull off the extended breakaway? Could Aliphillipe sneak back into the yellow? Was that Didi the Devil I saw towards the end?

Cavendish hasn't really seemed to have his old spark in 2019 and results so far didn't really make a case for his inclusion this year.

I was very impressed at Lauren Davis' upset of Angelique Kerber, especially since about 40% of Davis' body is currently covered by support braces and kinesio tape

Allyce Beasley- she had a few episodes on 'Bored to Death' around 2010, and the second I heard her voice, it was like 'hey, it's Miss DiPesto' from 'Moonlighting' back in the 1980s.

And Chris Froome is out for the rest of 2019 after a pretty horrific crash while warming up for the tine trial at the Dauphine. Le Tour is now wide open http://www.cyclingnews.com/news/chris-froome-diagnosed-with-additional-sternum-and-vertebrae-fractures/

There's the UK comedy series "The Detectorists" though they keep it real by having most of what the club finds be modern trash with no value;

The woman who tried to get 'Married with Children' taken off the air was part of the Romney political family https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Rakolta The 80s were also the time when Tipper Gore was trying to tell everyone what kinds of popular music they could and couldn't listen to. The rush to find something to be offended by in the 1980s crossed political and social boundaries. Speaking of the 80s, we tried to watch a few episodes of 'L.A. Law' the other week when our internet was down and we couldn't stream, and while there are some good intentions on this show, it just seems really clunky by modern standards in other ways.

A CAS ruling has effectively established that there is a biological definition of female for the purposes of elite athletic competition https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2019/05/01/olympics-7-questions-caster-semenyas-appeal-loss-iaafs-rules/3637922002/ There was no easy way of deciding this, and there's a fair amount fo sympathy for Caster, who has put up with a lot of crud and innuendo with class and good sportsmanship over the past decade, even from people who feel like she shouldn't be allowed to compete as an elite woman at her natural testosterone level.

I've only seen about four episodes of Burn Notice and now find myself wondering if he ever brought up how hard it can be to break a window in the Miami to West Palm Beach area due to local building codes strongly encouraging laminated impact-resistant glass as a way of protecting a structure against hurricanes. Just once I'd like to see a tv criminal try to take a baseball bat to a hurricane window and spend several minutes without managing to really get through the glass just like you see in the window company promotional videos.

Werner Klemperer said that he played the character of Klink because he got to make him an universal idiot and if the writers ever tried to let Klink win for a change against Hogan, that was the day he walked off set and never came back.

Also from SNl- 'And now is the time on Sprockets when we dance!'

We're doing an ER rewatch and I hate how much of an overly needy energy creature her character is and how poor Mark Greene was lucky she dumped him when she did.

I loved Sense8 but it was costing Netflix $9 million per episode and I can understand it when the network says that they love the show too but the viewership didn't justify the expense of a third season. And I'm good with the wrap-up movie because it had a high happily ever after quotient while JMS has said some things about possibly killing off part of the cluster if the series had gone its original planned run so hey, at least Will lived because things got condensed.

This was a league-wide memorial for Lindsay due to his instrumental role in the formation of the NHL players union and advocacy for better compensation for the boys on the ice.

Hockey gear also gets passed down as kids outgrow it. I think Play-It-Again Sports exists in snowbelt regions primarily to resell old hockey equipment. The down side to hockey is concussions, but these days you've got to get pretty deep into the game before they tend to be a more serious concern

There was Delenn asking Ivanova about cramps in 'Babylon 5', which as was typical for the series seemed to be a throwaway line at first but ended up signaling things about key story arcs and events in the show further down the line. (Her biology had become human enough that she could have a kid with a human man) Same showrunner also had Sense8 many years later, and there's an episode where Lito is feeling both Sun's mood swings and abdominal pain as the cluster comes together.

On a related note- jokes about people over 40 not really understanding The Internets (I'm looking at you, Lena Dunham) even though we were the ones out there using a VAX terminal or some clunky unix thing to check out e-mail before the WWW part of the internet existed, and then when Tim Berners-Lee cam along were handcrafting the first web pages by memorizing a bunch fo HTML tags.

While I usually roll my eyes at NBC Sports' attempts to turn women's alpine skiing into the Lindsey and Mikaela show, I've got to admit I teared up a couple times over Lindsey's farewell in the downhill at the World Championships. They did a good job of showing not just how good she was for so long but how much she genuinely loved her sport and getting up and going to work every days despite the injuries, and it was cute how she was all fangirl over Ingemar Stenmark, who usually avoids the spotlights these days, coming out to see her.

Since there are a lot of Tour de France-only viewers, I expect they'll do something nice then