PamelaMaeSnap

If this is off-topic or in the wrong place PLEASE let me know or whatever but given the comments in the thread about how they are cracking down on immigration and visa interviews, etc., separating couples to grill them or springing unexpected questions on them to trip them up ... a little personal tidbit (which I found interesting and weird at the time and wonder if it's happened to anyone else) ... Three months ago I was coming home from two-week vacation in Italy with Mr. Snappy, my husband of 33 years and counting. We both have valid passports, etc. I even went so far as to start using my married name on all my official documents a few years ago because I knew that international travel was getting tougher (I worked and lived under my maiden name for many years because it was much easier to spell and pronounce). We're both US born, US bred, etc. We had already done online check-in but were doing the counter check-in followup at the airport in Rome (American Airlines, if anyone cares). Usually it's bing, bang, boom (no bad pun intended). So, this is not even security or customs or anything, right? It's just checking in for our flight. The airline attendant at the counter starts springing all these questions on us ... what date did we get engaged, how did he propose, what was our first dance at our wedding, where was the reception ... and she wasn't just a Nosy Nellie. She was grilling us to see if our answers matched or we were faking being married or whatever. I have NEVER had this happen ... and let me add that I have had a silent stroke and two episodes of transient global amnesia so half the time I don't know what day it is, no less be able to pull specific details out of my memory without thinking about it, so this made me even more nervous. The ONLY thing that I could think of that would have made us subject to such a random grilling might be the fact that I don't wear a wedding band, but hey, I'm not the only person who has packed on a few pounds since my skinny minny wedding day and frankly it doesn't fit anymore ;) (I can't get it resized because it has a special "our saying" engraving inside, which also has a typo because my dad was the jeweler on it and he didn't spel gud). Has this happened to anyone else? Has it simply become de rigeur, the random "are you really who you say you are" for no reason other than luck of the draw? I mean, I guess we passed the test since we got back here (the proposal question was a little dicey because technically he never did propose but that's another story). Maybe I look like a gold digger. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. So not.

There is no question he's using Nicole to get his green card and get to America. And if that was even remotely disguised or hidden or not obvious to everyone in the world other than Nicole, despite her being told this by everyone, then I might hedge. But she seems perfectly happy in her role of being the sugar mommy. He's not cruel, he's not evil, he's not abusive (as far as we've seen) and he seems to genuinely like May. She could do a lot worse and I'm not sure she could do any better.

After rewatching this episode, I think Evil Annie may be one of the worst of the worst yet ... not like we haven't seen some awful ones but she doesn't even try to hide her revulsion about David either in her THs or right to his face, plus she's 20 maybe in dog years at best ... I realize that David set himself up for this, but I hope that he gets out of her clutches ASAP ... I mean, there is no way they'll end up married because she's never gonna do it without the baht on, and he's not going to be able to fork that over to her satisfaction. Plus, she is really rode hard and put away wet. Maybe David IS the best she can do ... Listening to Evelyn again just made me laugh.. I'm torn between which is worse ... her voice or, more notably, her song(s). Auto-tune can fix intonation (though if you know what to listen for you can hear the fixes), but there's only so much it can do ... it can't fix her awful sound and more significantly it can't turn a piece of crap snippet of a song into something anyone will want to listen to, no matter how good the singer's voice is. Sadly (for her, happily for the snarkers of the world), her family is equally untalented AND equally delusional. That whole dinner table convo about the bridge and the transition was so scripted I actually physically cringed. Sorry, brother with the Bruce Bochy eyebrow thing (any baseball fans here?), you're going to have to find other "musicians" to play with ... just grab the next three people you see on the street or in the halls of your school (oh wait, that would be mom and dad and Evelyn I guess) and odds are they'll be just as talented as the ones you're "gigging" with (in your basement) right now. PS ... Mikayla is really cute. Maybe Evelyn took her on as homely wing-friend a few years ago, but right now looking at the two of them (especially with Evelyn's hair), Mikayla is the catch. I'll say this, though ... Mr. Snappy would probably put on a wig and makeup and raise his voice an octave on Skype if it meant getting a Sharp-paid trip to Granada to meet a suitor.. I think it's his favorite city in the world. Nicole just keeps getting worse and worse. And I will express what is probably an unpopular opinion but I kind of like Azan. At least I don't put him in a class of scum like Muhammit-dammit or Loser Larry or Freakazoid Paul (though the latter two are not comparable since he's "the catch" not "the catcher") ... My opinion may change as the season progresses but for now, I find him the least offensive of most of the characters (I also think Luis is really cute and am withholding judgment on him completely since pretty much all we've seen is him being pretty sweet during phone calls ... they could end up being the Melanie and Devar of the season, who knows? I <3 Devar indeed.)

Am I a terrible person to sort of kind of hope that Evelyn actually reads this thread? She probably vanity surfs the sh%t out of herself looking for more people who lurve her. Which also means she probably thinks we're just a mean old bunch of haters who are just JEALOUS of her. But having worked in the music industry for awhile, having a husband who has been an actual, you know, self-and-family supporting musician for his entire adult life, and having a kid who got her degree in music and works in the business (having chosen to give up being, in fact, a good singer-songwriter to work on the other side of the business which she finds more gratifying), I feel very comfortable in saying, "Evelyn, go to college and get a degree or just sell godly things along the roadside or become a missionary or do SOMETHING where no one has to listen to you yowl." Team Michaela. May is the toddler, Nicole is the waddler.

The "problem" (hahaha make that one of the problems) -- as I'm SURE you are well aware by now -- is that unlike, say, a stroke there is zero indication of anything in a brain scan, etc., so it's one of those things they can only diagnose by ruling everything else out and then going by the unique symptoms (the perseveration, the same questions and same inflections, etc.) ... I am SO sorry you guys have gone through it ... I got to be one of the lucky lottery winners that have had two (so far) and permanent short/medium-term memory loss. The Trump episode was my second one. Obama was still president during my first but I didn't remember him either though once I heard the name I knew I liked him. And to stay on topic here LOL ... in fact, TWICE ... a) I've found a Pollyanna bright side to some of it in that I can re-read favorite books with pleasure and re-watch favorite shows where I remember the main characters but have ZERO recollection of the episode-specific storylines, and plan on re-starting Grey's this weekend from Season 1! Yay! (And will keep an eye out for the Izzie episode which, of course, I don't remember!) Also ... b) am amazed that Grey's has not addressed this in an episode in all these years! It could make for a great episode. A little comic relief ;/ Maybe take them a little time to figure out what's going on (my emergency room doctor had NO CLUE what it was and was convinced I was having a heart attack and wanted to keep me in there for a few days for all sorts of heart tests ... having just paid the bill for my husband's aFib ER adventure, I said no way and left the hospital against their advice). ETA: WalrusGirl: "It was fascinating to literally watch her memory catch back up a year or so at a time, in terms of my grandparents’ living/deceased status ..." My great aunt has had THREE TGAs (though she has NO post-episode side effects or memory loss other than the hours of the episodes, lucky her) had said that she kept asking if her parents were alive and every time she was told they were dead she cried all over again like she was hearing it for the first time (she was in her 70s I think when she had the first one).

BUT THAT DOG WAS SO CUUUUUUTE!!!!!

I thought ... and as usual I qualify this by saying my memory is not as reliable as it once was ... that the reason given for the twins' showdown ... because they couldn't say "Ratings! Gold!" was not that they couldn't decide which one that particular challenge was the weaker one and who'd been responsible for it, but that they knew they worked together a lot (which also leads me to believe that they were VERY well aware of all the "working together" they'd been doing unofficially in prior weeks) and as such they wanted a challenge where there was very definitively NO sharing, NO helping, NO working together so they could be sure to send home the weaker link.

That is what really bothered me the most. And I actually like Brandon (not as a designer but he seems like a good guy). But that design, while being pretty much a mishmash of everything he does every week, had ZERO ZERO LESS THAN ZERO to do with ANYTHING his young partner asked for or suggested. He admitted as much on the runway, to his credit. But the judges just acted like he hadn't said a word and gushed about the folds or whatever those upside down nun wimples were. I mean, he didn't even go with something brown! That he wasn't B3 to me is VERY telling ... it would have been easy enough to say, "Well, you know what, Brandon, you absolutely did not address this challenge at all so you're B3 but you're safe" instead of putting him in the T4 where he had no business at all being. But no, heaven forfend they say anything remotely critical of their darling. I think I love Kentaro even more than ever after this episode. He just cracks me up and is so adorable. Plus I actually loved his design even though it was very simple ... I suspect we're looking at a Brothers F2 and that's fine with me because none of the others have been SO amazing or consistent that I could enthusiastically argue in favor of them over the long haul, but I really hope Kentaro is the winner because I like that this late in the season he's making a concerted effort two weeks in a row to go out of his box. Brandon meanwhile is crawling further and further into his, or else simply is such a one-trick pony (no matter how much they may like that one trick) that he has nowhere to GO out of his box. I knew Amy was toast from the first minute or so in ... until this episode, I kept forgetting she even existed and we knew NOTHING about her. She was a non-entity. A total cipher. Once they showed her emotion about her daughter and we actually got a talking head with her, it was "so long, Amy." And wow, Batani's outfit looked like something I'd whip up when I was four and raided my mom's scarf drawers and tied crap together to be a pirate. Way to make the most of that last-minute absolution. (I had not noticed before how really drop-dead gorgeous Monique is, BTW). I wonder if the double-elimination was based on the fact that they score the outfits and they literally came out tied on every vote? They were equally dreadful. I was actually in the dark as to whether Michael's outfit would be top or bottom ... I am actually glad he won but ... well, it was tacky but fun and exactly what his poppet wanted. And while I am not a fan of Margarita, I thought her dress was gorgeous (would make a great wedding dress and actually reminds me a lot of a gown I saw on Say Yes to the Dress which I only remember because my niece wore it at her wedding ... in the way it flowed ... but I LOVE LOVE LOVED her sparkuly material! Very modern day Cinderella.) And while I can't imagine anyone on this earth ever wearing Ayana's get-up (I got Alice in Wonderland on acid if that's not redundant), I give her HUGE props for going that far out of her zone, really tackling the challenge with gusto, and having the awesome Liris to bring that baby home!

Gotta ask ... does your mom have TGA?

And my personal favorite moment of the night ... I have been suffering from a condition where I have profound memory loss for several hours at a time and the "test questions" my husband has to ask me to know when I'm "coming to" include "who is the president?" ... In my case, my answer was that I didn't remember but when he told me I immediately responded "you've gotta be f*%king kidding me." And this happened several times with exactly the same response. So I re-ran the scene for him and he thought it was pretty hilarious as well. Overall, I absolutely adored this episode. My mother had a similarly-placed brain tumor when I was a teen (unfortunately in her case diagnosed too late to ever completely remove it) and so much of the pre-op, surgery, early recovery was very close to home and I thought very well done. I am even on board with almost all the potential shipping (I admit I did NOT see the April-Arizona potential implication, but rather thought they would be uniting as much needed Girl Friends) but DID wonder about Amelia and DeLuca. I also adore Maggie so am in the minority that would actually really like her and Avery as a pair.

I am not a dance mom (though I watch them on TV) so my reaction to watching the older kids' dance is obviously YMMV and by "Y" I mean you guys with a lot more insight and understanding but ... that said ... I actually thought Camryn was by far the best dancer out there, re: combination of her look, her attitude, etc. I know we've seen basically none of her but for me, she's the one who jumped out at me in a positive way. I can't keep the "ana's" straight but while the older/bigger one may be an excellent dancer her manic pixie personality exhausts and annoys me. Not to dump on a kid but I just find her irritating. I don't know if she's really all that sugarplums and moonbeams on sugar overload or her mom pesters her to "sparkle, baby" to get airtime. Is Maesy still a thing? I'm guessing yes since I still see her mom (award winner for worst hair on TV) but we never see her at all. She's like Brynn without the looks or talent.

I just assumed she was doing karaoke, not that she was a nightclub singer. If it was the latter she'd already be all over him to get her to the U.S. to pursue her amazing careeeeer (rhymes with diarhear tm Larry)

I've spent the first season of watching them thinking "shouldn't it be a-ZAHN?" and now just accepting it must be AZZan if that's how everyone is pronouncing it."

This whole subthread is cracking my s%$# up ... I've always wondered what is it about Maine with all these town names? I actually went to sleepaway camp (do they even still call it that, asked the old lady?) in Naples, Maine. Rumor had it there was actually a pizzeria (not to be confused with Larry's "dia-rear") IN Naples where the counselors hung out on their nights off (at 13, we never got to go into town so I can't confirm or deny) ... I think it was called Mario's. And I think that was the only thing remotely Italian about the town. (That said, I adore Maine and its beautiful coastal towns/cities AND inland lakeside havens).

I think you should trademark the expression "classless asshat" because it is AWESOME. (As is your screen name ... we call it the Bichon 500 but I like yours better!)

Re: the bowing, I am so glad you went further than I did and googled it because I definitely got the feeling that at least he had tried to do some homework and that was his bumbling way of TRYING ... And re: Sacre Coeur, totally with you there ... with all of the iconic sights and sites of Paris, for some reason sitting at the top of the Sacre Coeur steps and looking down at everything from there is the single most recognizable one for me! We're going back to Paris for a few days (actually bracketing a river cruise in Burgundy with a few days in Paris on either side) and while there are several places I want to go that we didn't get to the first time, that is one place I REALLY want to revisit (Sacre Coeur, Montmartre, etc.)

He absolutely crossed himself before eating the pork. His last name is Passariello so at the very least he's Italian. Not that there are not Italian Jews but I don't think he's one of them unless, POSSIBLY, an earlier wife was Jewish (or were his sons both OOW?) and he had to convert. ETA: I wrote longer than AZChristian so sorry for the overlap! :) I never thought I'd defend Larry in any way on here, and this is not really a defense per se, BUT ... I am not a vegetarian and there are few things I love more than barbecued pork (and FWIW I'm Jewish LOL) ... however, I don't really like being reminded of what my meal looked like before it was put on my plate (sorry, sorry, sorry) and the whole ceremony of unveiling the very dead piggy would have been a little rough for me but then taking the axes and chopping it to bits made me queasy just watching. I don't know if I could have eaten it after watching that. Not to say there weren't a ton of better ways to deal with it if in fact that's what made him unable to eat ... but most of us are probably a little better at coming up with good, reasonably respectful excuses than Larry. I think he was such a nervous wreck already about meeting FatherJenny (what WAS with that bowing and genuflecting?) that with his limited social skills they all flew right out the window. At least he tried to be nice. VERY similar situation, IMHO, to the chicken feet. Wish they'd come up with a new storyline to highlight "cultural food differences that ugly American can't deal with." Also, re: Patrick's escapades at the bottom of the Sacre Coeur stairs, I actually got a huge kick out of that because that expanse is probably the biggest free stage for every street performer in Paris ... was just looking at old photos of my trip there in 2009 and my favorite memory was a young African street performer who walked on his hands while doing amazing tricks with a soccer ball with his feet. Patrick would fit in well there but he'd be overshadowed by better performers. That said, he's by far my favorite of the 90DF suitors for this particular batch.

Thank you! I've gone and speculated. But my memory is so bad that it explains why I am not allowed to have nice things.

Thanks to OnceSane for leading me to this ... I hate necrobumping BUT ... my memory is a poor excuse for a thing that closely resembles a hunk of Swiss cheese BUT ... I could have sworn on the coming attractions from the most recent episode (and I automatically deleted it from the TiFaux before I could stop myself) that I saw Clinton and Uche together in a coming attraction. Maybe I mis-saw it. But if Malcolm and Nurys ARE a match, then we know that Clinton and Uche are NOT, right? So even if they were sneaking around on the sly, they wouldn't be together in a group shot unless they were potentially still a match? Or am I overthinking and/or misremembering this?

I really wish this show had a spoiler/speculation thread because I could have sworn I saw a spoiler in one of the coming attractions but I don't tend to believe my own eyes half the time (for all I know it could have been an inadvertently -- or advertently -- placed clip to dupe us).

If you see that I looked at your profile, it's not because I am a creepy stalker. Was just hoping you lived near me so I could be your wing-woman.

I think we need a new thread just for Sasha because I, for one, am rooting harder for her than I am for any of the 90DF folks ...

I realize that I have not seen this discussed but I may be reading so many of the different 90DF threads that I missed it ... but of ALL of the reprehensible annoying awful folks featured on ALL of the shows, I think my VERY LEAST FAVORITES (VLFs) are SisterPedro and MotherPedro. Especially SisterPedro. She is just a shrieking virago with no redeemable characteristics ... when Chantel cursed her out I gave a slow golf clap and I don't even like Chantel. I can't help but feel a large part of Chantel's resentment about Pedro supporting them is not just the concept of "nice Dominican young man supporting his parents" but how HORRIBLE the supportees are to her. His MotherPedro is awful too, but it's his mother. SisterPedro Is The Worst. Just me?

To go along with a great voice for mime.

Excellent book about this ... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002CZPRHW/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 ETA: The book is about the Our Lady of Angels fire, not about pyrophilia!