DearEvette

I made a Cacio e pepe that tasted of peppery perfection! For such a simple dish with only three/four ingredients tops, it can be either hit or miss for me when I make it. So it becomes about technique and balance. And my dish last night was the perfect balance of the noodles being just right level of al dente and the sauce being just the right texture of creaminess and cheesiness and the pepper being bright pop in each bite but not too overwhelming.

I didn't catch it, but I would not be surprised if Henry Thomas flubbed the line and they kept it because it sounds like something Freddy would say.

Aw, Rip Marty Krofft. A few years ago I was telling my kids about their shows and showing them HR Puffenstuff and The Land of the Lost. And I can still sing the theme of Electra Woman and Dyna Girl! They were so unimpressed. LOL. But they just don't know the awesomeness of the Gen-X Saturday morning shows!

I got a chance to watch these two eps. They were enjoyable and I was entertained throughout. Enough to want to see the next one which is more than I can say for any season of Fargo since the first one. I know I am in the minority when I say that I am not as impressed with Juno here as most. She feels a little miscast, to me. I don't see the unassuming house wife when I see her. She has a look that is a little too polished and sharp to be the person she is pretending. I was truly not surprised to know that that woman at the school board meeting was capable of what she was capable of. She looked like it from the jump. It could be that that was intent, but I think the shifts we get from the 'Oh golly gee" wide eyed persona to the smart escape artist or the "don't fuck with me" steely eyed stare down with her mother in law would have worked better for me and hit harder if there had been a bigger contrast. Instead of seeing someone take off a mask to reveal someone wholly new, all I saw was someone drop an accent. And there were a few things that kept yanking me out of the story. For one, if Dot is supposed to be so savvy why wouldn't she be fully aware the gig is up? DIY home siege preparation is fun to see for what it is and how it will come into play, but it is impractical and if someone forgets how something is set up or touches something you can get a hammer to the heads or electrocuted? Also, If someone wants to get you, they don't have to do it while you're home. Joe Keery as Gator was great though. I barely recognized him and he hit just the right loutish note. LaMorne Harris also hit just right as the officer who probably never expected to do more than traffic stops or busting up bar fights. I am betting that Witt and Indira between them will fill the shoes that Frances McDormand has in the original movie. Jon Hamm was of course great as that particular type of 'I am the law" Sherriff. My husband and I were laughing that Jennifer Jason Leigh didn't even attempt the accent, instead dusting off her Hudsucker Proxy tribute to Katherine Hepburn accent. So far the only people I unreservedly like are Indira, Witt and Scottie. Very curious about Dot and Roy's relationship and her background. Also very curious to see what happens with Dot going forward. If the show remains true to its pattern no one is gonna come out unscathed.

LOL. I saw that and the first thing I thought is... WOW, Vanessa must be over the moon. And oh yeah, congrats Bliss and Zach. 😂

Abbott has a return date. Woot!

Wow... been reading the Cassie allegations against Diddy and they are awful. Just awful. If this is all true, why are people like this? Also Diddy (allegedly) blew up Kid Cudi's car?

I am so sad to know that this has been going on since before her pregnancy. There is actual footage from her own security cameras showing all of this. I wonder if he knew they were there? If not, well played, KeKe. if so, then he was arrogant enough or felt secure that she would never tell to do it anyway. She did get her restraining order and full custody granted. I hope he goes to jail he sounds dangerous.

Well, I lied. I ended up reading Payback in Death by JD Robb after deciding to press pause on her work after the last few installments felt rather meh. But I am in a massive reading slump and she is reliable. And she roared back with this one. It was good and had a lot of callbacks to one of my favorite books in the series, Treachery In Death. One running joke amongst my In Death book buddies is how slow time passes in this universe. Robb has been writing these books since 1995. This is book #57 in the series and yet only 3 years have passed in-universe. In this book one character is moving to live with his significant other. Eve, the main character of the series, wonders if they are moving too fast because they only met 'a few months ago.' Hilariously, they met in book #35, the aforementioned Treachery In Death, which was published 13 years ago. It feels like to me they've been together forever. I had to chuckle at that.

I don't necessarily read her as high and mighty per se, but one of the features of a lot of these types of stories is that supernatural or super human beings are often very disdainful of humans. I think a being like Verna having been around for years and observational about human nature probably isn't too impressed with us. At the very least you are given limitless wealth and opportunity and this is what you do with it? The show doesn't tell us exactly what Verna is, but if we go with supposition she works in bargains. With that in mind, I think she had to make them an offer. It is like the story of the scorpion and the frog. It is what she exists to solely to do. I mean yeah, Madeleine and Roderick were awful, but we can't know how less awful they might have been without the deal. As it is, Verna's bargain smoothed the path for them. They got everything they wanted with no effort and no consequences. They were literally above the law. If they had met any resistance at any point along the way it may have caused them to take a moment and pause or if they had ever had to pay any consequences for anything... it might have made them proceed with more caution. But moving through life unfettered and free of any threat of imprisonment or fines or anything had to have corrupted them even more.

Sounds like something Jackie Chiles would say.

I actually don't mind too much not knowing everything right now. I am kinda liking the anticipation of getting bits of info in each episode. The only thing that hinders that, is that we won't have the luxury of time to let them expose it in this way. What with show cancellations etc. One thing in this show's favor is that it is doing well in the ratings because it doesn't really have any other scripted competition. So maybe we'll get a good run. I am hoping, charitably, that the writers/showrunner has planned out what their vision for Sir is so as it plays out and is revealed it works logically. I am also hoping, charitably, that they don't actually plan to have him in the basement too long. It is an unsustainable element of the show and over time would bog it down because it will begin to loom larger than it should.

I wonder if Roderick having all the kids was his way of trying to loophole the contract? Madeleine we know was trying to loophole it by trying to first find a way to beat death itself via AI aided immortality and then by trying to renegotiate. Maybe Roderick thought that the only kids affected by the bargain were the ones born at the time of the bargain, i.e. Freddy and Tammy. And him having more children and then making them basically hunger games themselves into getting money and position was his way to figuring out who would be the one to carry on the Usher legacy. Doesn't make him any less shitty for basically bargaining away the life of the two kids he had in favor of making a better life for the ones he didn't.

Co-sign. And just because I think it bears repeating every year. Amy Schumer. She's been upgraded from garden variety unlikable to straight up garbage person flames-on-the-side-of-my-face unlikable.

I am wondering if at that point he got a little careless? Most kidnappers won't allow their victim anywhere near anything that could be weaponized. The case of the week with the undocumented girl was kinda meh for me. It is tv series cliche 101 that an unrelated murder investigation would just so happen to dovetail with Gabi's lates missing person. Feels like lazy writing. That said, I found everything else interesting. I saw Sir's exercise in 'Let's choose a new name and reinvent ourselves' as just that, an exercise. A test to see if he was breaking her down. If she was ready to deny her own name and pick something else, that would have been a major win for him. Still not sure what role Gabi played for him? He calls her his 'family.' I wonder if he had some sort of psychotic break and had a daughter at some point? So Dhan had been kidnapped for three years. I am so curious to hear everyone's back stories. I wonder where they plan to go with Margaret's son? Do they already know their end game there or if they are just playing with it for now? Based on that last conversation by the lake, it almost seems like hot cop knew Gabi's dad? Maybe? Another little puzzle I'd like to get the background on. What is Gabi and Hot Cop's history? Sir is playing Gabi. Him showing her that wood shard feels like a manipulation as was his challenge for her to let him go. He is where he wants to be, imo. I had to LOL at one point. During the fight in the kitchen, there were three dark haired men of a similar build, with similar hair and similar facial structure all fighting. I couldn't tell them apart.

Huh. So Zoe Kravitz and Channing Tatum are engaged per: People Magazine. I feel like I had no idea they were dating. LOL.

Yeah, that is purely for tv. Most places have an upper age limit to attend high school in person. No way they are gonna let Rodney Dangerfield come back to sit in a high school classroom. LOL. That employer should invest with contracting with a credentialing service if proof of degree is a requirement of employment. We always tell students the Diploma is a nice wall ornament. The real credential is the transcript with the degree posted on it. Anybody with a printer can fake a Diploma. My most recent only on tv peeve is I was watching a show where a character got a job as a college instructor part time to teach an introductory required class. And there was a scene where she was flirting with the department chair (just no!) and he said "now all you have to do is come up with a title for the course." Uh... no. A part time new hire isn't going to create the title for a required introductory course. Who even does that? A lot of Adjuncts don't even get to create their own syllabus much less the title of the course. LOL.

Chili and jalapeno corn bread.

Yeah it depends on the theater. In my town the movie theater got converted to stadium seating with the big chairs and they deliver food to you. But the next town over they still have the traditional flip up/down seats. It isn't necessarily the individual experience though, it is the entitlement inherent in that quote. I always hate false analogies "well if you can do X then you can do Y' when X and Y are two completely different things. It can also be ableist. Also I read that the majority of the theatres who put in the intermissions were overseas. Yet there is a long history of movie edits to accommodate differences between the American movie going experience and international. There are cases when actual content has been edited. The Wolf of Wall Street had a lot of nudity and profanity edited out in Muslim countries.

Dude! The arrogance and obliviousness in that quote just took me out. There are many great LONG films that had intermissions. Live theatre has intermissions. Yours isn't that special. Also, even if I am binge watching something on tv for multiple hours, I am not sitting there in a chair hemmed in by other people, not moving. I pause, get up, get snacks, yell at my kids, feed my cat, talk to my husband... I move around because you know sitting for long periods of time in a single stretch can lead to health issues. It is also short-sighted if your aim is promote seeing film in a theatre, which is a drum he continually bangs. If that is the end goal, then making the movie going experience as attractive as possible should be part of it. It could also lead to people buying more snacks which is really where the theatre itself makes their money.

So I binged all 4 episodes of this and .... I am surprisingly digging it quite a bit. Each episode gets better. I think the show is managing to work its tricky premise pretty well to date. But it is one of those shows where the audience waits queasily for the shoe to drop -- kinda like Mike's non law degree on Suits being found out. Another thing I like is that the show isn't info dumping us on the main character's background. I think on any other show we would have gotten a lot more exposition on them. But right now all we are getting is little glimpses of each. All we know is that all of them have had some sort of kidnapping trauma. We don;t know anything about Gabi's or Lacey's families. I think I heard that Zeke's family is very wealthy and all we know of Dhan is that he is the muscle and is happily married to his husband. But it seems to really concentrating on the cases of the week and letting the interpersonal stuff insert here and there. Lord knows if this was a Shonda show Gabi and Hot Cop would have been boning secretly or something, LOL. Thank goodness it isn't quite there. I like when a show takes advantage of good sexual chemistry, but I also want the relationships to slow burn. We also don't know Sir's motivations for kidnapping young girls. It doesn't seem as if he sexually molested them (unless I missed something...?). I am not so sure Sir can't get away if he really wanted to. I think he likes being in Gabi's sphere and so he is willing to be her prisoner... for now.

I made Spicy Sesame Soup with pork Xiao Long Bao dumplings. The video recipe came across one of my SM feeds. It came out pretty well. Here is a tik tok of the recipe.

My husband and I had a conversation about that and we threw around a lot of ideas. We don't think she is the devil because deals with the devil usually mean relinquishing the soul and Verna said she doesn't believe in souls. We don't think she is necessarily death, because she seems to be too angry and offended by all the people that their drugs have killed. Death as an entity would not care about how people died, I don't think. My husband mentioned that one of the roles of a raven in some mythologies is that of a trickster. Kinda like the coyote. They are also considered creatures of prophecy. With that in mind, one idea we kinda hit on was that she is a being who exists to tempt people into agreeing to tricky bargains she sets to them. Not every bargain has the same terms, so not every person's fate is necessarily death. I think Madeleine and Roderick's was specifically tied to their bloodline and the death because a) they themselves were so stubbornly attached to Fortunato and felt they deserved to be a part of it because of their blood, even though their father never publicly acknowledged them and b) death was the ultimate payment because they themselves were willing to kill to get it. When Verna talked to Pym her first act was to try to bargain with him. And her terms were based upon information about him that she could use as leverage. Personal information as leverage is the sort of currency that Pym in his profession as lawyer and fixer would normally use. I don't think Verna is evil because even though she presented the bargain, the twins didn't need to take it. And in her interactions with the Usher children, for some of them she would have made their deaths painless and uneventful. And we saw how compassionate she was with Lenore. Which brings me to another thought/question. Did the Usher kids all die in order of age from youngest to oldest? If so I wonder why Lenore was last? If she was doing it simply by bloodline and in age order Lenore would have been first. If she was doing it in generational order, then Lenore should still have been the first. I get the feeling she left Lenore to last (before Rod and Madeleine) because she really would rather have not killed her at all. But the rules of her existence means that even she must abide by her own bargains.

Smashburgers and onion rings. Also for desert I made apple fritter rings. We live in an area where we are surrounded by apple orchards (and vineyards)and my husbands LOVES apple season and all the varietals. This yesr Crimson Crisps and Macouns are the faves, sweet and tart and with a satisfying snap when you bite into them. But we got a bunch of Jonah Golds that were a little punky so those I am using to cook with.

My son had some friends over last year, they were all college students and were in the family room playing video games or something, joshing at each other. I was vaguely hearing snippets of their conversation and at one point one of the guys asked another, "But what are you gonna do when...muffle muffle'(I didn't hear that part) but the other kid said as loud and clear as day 'That's a future me problem.' I think that is the main characteristic of these types of 'bargain with the devil' stories. The person making the bargain is so venal and eager to get something big now they aren't too concerned about some future nebulous payback, they grab at the now and shrug away the consequences as a 'future me problem' thinking that they'll either be able to deal with it then or wiggle out. Over time they can periodically forget that there is a payback waiting in the wings while in the back of their head worry/wonder when the bill is gonna come due. I believe both Roderick and Madeleine both remembered the parts of the deal that worked for them, but were so blinded by the shiny thing on offer they didn't pay attention to the details as @shrewd.buddha pointed out, people don't often read the 'terms and conditions' they just want to click through and get the access. But Verna's terms were very clear. 'You all exit the world together' and 'Your bloodline dies with you' and 'you two die together. You two came in this world together, you die together.' and 'when that curtain falls, everyone takes a bow together' And she almost literally told him when he would die when she said they'd have '40 to 50 years of a gilded life' which is about how many years Freddy and Tamerlane had. But I think the only thing they heard was 'let the future generation foot the bill' and over time just conveniently forgot the details.