monagatuna

A plastic clowdah ring spray painted silver.

That reads like an actual parody. My eyes hurt just trying to make sense of it! If it's real...those poor women. :(

The US is a big, big country--here we use helmets, bike lanes and turn signals/hand signals. I don't cycle but my spouse does and with the traffic we have here, it scares the bejesus out of me. Given who's signing this couple's paychecks, wouldn't it make sense that they're doing everything by the book, down to gossiping about whether the HOA will approve their tomato-red house paint and whether that neighborhood is in this or that HOA? Just another tiny stroke of genius for these writers and directors. They leave no detail untouched.

Ehrm, so, the guy in the car with Mike after the boxing "match" was Daniel Wormald, yes? He's not credited in the episode on Rotten Tomatoes or IMdb, but Michael Mando IS, so, grain of salt. Could be some random guy, but it sure looked like Wormald. Edit: Rewatched this scene and the guy TOTALLY looks like Wormald, but doesn't talk like him. No blogs I've read have IDd him but they did several close ups of his face and it's clear we're supposed to recognize him. But how do you go from hiring Mike to guard you while you trade ill gotten pharmaceuticals to drug peddlers, to being hired by Hamlin to follow Jimmy around? If that IS Wormald, there's a very twisty link between the stories. Also, I'm digging the Spanish guitar in this scene. We (reasonably so) haven't heard a whole lot of Spanish guitar in this series. Also--mistaking kindness for weakness? When has Hamlin ever been kind? He's chaotic neutral at best. Any leeway he's given Jimmy has been out of self-preservation.

Gotta drag out the series to get those advertising dollars! That tense dude admonishing people to "BREATHE." before dancing around in his bathrobe doesn't make me wanna buy a fitbit, but you do you, I guess? I was so surprised to hear "Teenage Dirtbag" and in disbelief that they'd actually sing the second verse, but once I got what they were doing with it, I thought it was really well done. Now it's stuck in my head and I'm not mad about it.

You're not wrong, but the showmakers had a big task ahead of them; Krakauer's book is written in much the same way, and you can't just skip the Mormon history part of it, as it lends flavor and nuance to the case. (For anyone who hasn't read it, I recommend you do! It's fascinating.) I was raised around LDS, even went to church with them for awhile, and always thought they were just an offshoot of Christianity (which I was also raised in) and the origins and (some) current practices of Mormonism are absolutely bananacrackers (though to be fair you could say this of any religion) and the book is eye-opening. Welp, that's a lot of parentheses...

Wait, what?!?!?! Please don't tease me!

I was shocked--shocked!!--and scandalized to learn that someone as meticulous as Gus would wear a clip-on tie. Buuuut, doesn't it kinda make sense? The man wears a bulletproof vest to work at a chicken fast-food joint! (I remember in BB wondering how a man so slim would look so barrel-chested, and I wonder if he was wearing them the whole time in BB? If so, how would that not become a plot point later in the series? Or maybe it did and I'm forgetting.) Wouldn't it follow that he would wear a tie that keeps up his neat appearance but can't catch in machinery or be used as a weapon? Why put a noose around your own neck when you're dealing with Salamanca types?

Totally. My bride and I each had one. No way were we going to leave out our best friends because of their gender! I honestly can't tell--it seems every time we think she's gained, someone points out that she's always been this huge (or huger). I think at her size it's really impossible to tell. That secret is between her and the scale, and she's not talking, and the scale can't. I don't think she's ever looked as huge as she did on the beach after her aborted "8k" where she looked like an oversized baby.

The series does see a lot of character development in later seasons, particularly for Gus, Hector, Hank, Marie, and especially Jesse. He progresses from somewhat of a flat, one-dimensional caricature of a junkie to a deep, complex person who Has Seen Some Shit that you really root for. However, if the series is a slog for you from the beginning, it may not be worth it. (For me, by contrast, I was transfixed from the very opening scene and the series could've focused solely on Walt and I would've still loved it.) You can enjoy BCS as a closed universe, and the easter eggs from BB will escape you, but it won't take away from your experience. So I'm not going to advocate for you to invest in a series that you've given a good try to if it doesn't resonate with you. As hooked as I was and still am by BB (and now, even more so, by BCS), it's not for everyone.

How funny--that is my favorite moment in all of the BB series. Up until BCS, BB was my favorite show of all time. I thought this show would be a fun connection to that one, a cute, casual watch that I wouldn't connect to but it would give me something to remind me of my favorite show. I underestimated Gilligan & Co. I get it though--this show has a style and panache that differs from BB, although there are a number of crossovers and parallels.

And he'll actually show his face to the cameras. I suspect we're going to have a "will they/won't they" season a la Boo Bear, now that Boo Bear is unavailable. Lennie must be desperate for cash. This is exactly true; I was in France in March and it was an amazing trip, with very few issues having to do with Covid. If you're vaccinated and have a negative test, very little interruption to your daily life on another continent. But if Le Blur doesn't want to be on camera, and this wedding was filmed for the benefit of TLC, I presume he wouldn't be the most enticing wedding guest.

Absolutely not. I have zero interest in climbing that particular mountain.

Last night I was bumbling around facebook and stumbled upon some woman's MLM group for Paparazzi jewelry. I started watching a Facebook Live that included one of the women from this show (literally have forgotten her name already, it was the dark haired one with the lipedema on her legs). It was...a mess. I know MLM victims tend to be pretty...well...unprofessional in their presentation, but I spent ten minutes watching these two try to set up some sort of presentation in a filthy room, moving the camera around, chatting to each other, focusing the camera on one eyebrow for several minutes while the other one shuffled stuff around offscreen. I am so befuddled why people would watch this (yes, I know, I watched it for a few minutes, but in my defense it was at the end of the night and three glasses of wine in). In the ten minutes I watched I never saw a single piece of the butt-ugly jewelry, and you can't fast-forward through Lives. Why wouldn't they set everything up and THEN do the Live? It was totally amateur hour. Oddly, I ended up getting this "Paparazzi" group suggestion from searching for hiking groups for Mt. Whitney.

I know several New Mexicans and they all say the same thing: it's beautiful, except for the people. Being from WV, I can relate. (Edit: this was intended as a joke, but it came out much more cruel than I intended. WVans (and probably NMans) are by and large lovely people.) Gus is indeed Chilean, and talked to Hank (or Gomie, I can't remember) about his family records being destroyed under the Pinochet regime. I read somewhere that Giancarlo Esposito had to learn Spanish for the role, and you can hear it in his accent, which is very clear and deliberate. Chilean Spanish is beautiful and somewhat clear, but it is much faster and much less enunciated than Esposito's Spanish, which is honestly really admirable. Spanish is my second language and I try not to look at the subtitles when this show is on to see if I can understand it, and Esposito's is quite clear. Clear, unaccented, over-enunciated language is a dead giveaway of someone who learned it later in life. (You should hear my French, it's...elementary at best!) This episode/s was everything I'd hoped for, and worth the wait and the late bedtime. I always thought nothing could compare to BB, but Gilligan and company really outdid themselves with this series.

Fixed that for ya.

I think it's just because Christine's life is in flux and she probably hasn't gotten around to decorating. If you remember all the wives' houses were absolutely stuffed to the gills with detritus, and her home was no different (although I guess it's easier to eschew clutter when you have fewer families' portraits and #livelaughlove junk from HomeGoods to hang up). It was always disorganized and overstuffed. I've had rentals for 20+ years and having junk lying around and not unpacked/hung right away has always bugged me. You just patch the stuff up when you move (or, if you're the Brown family, just leave a trail of junk and holey walls in your wake). Plenty of these people have rented over the years and it never stopped them from hanging up their cheesy word art and fire-farting horses.

At the start of this season, I would never have guessed that my two favorites would be Jasmine and Ximena. In fairness, I never expected any favorites because they were all reprehensible from the start (I am excluding Johnny simply because he doesn't seem to have any sort of personality to love or hate from the brief glimpses we got of him, and leaving Alina and Caleb out of this discussion because I don't care about them). Jasmine, for all her histrionics, at least genuinely seems to care about this cretin, inexplicably but genuinely. Maybe she was playing it up for the cameras, maybe not, but you could tell that she was genuinely upset that he displayed her photos to strangers (to her). Revenge porn is a sex crime, y'all, regardless of how much underbutt or sideboob your bathing suit shows. Edit: on Pillow Talk, the two nasally Georgia women were trying to figure out what name these two would have if you smashed their names together a la Bennifer, but they skipped over the obvious: Jasmeeno! Duh! Ximena? We all knew her deal in episode one. Yawn, another green card seeker who's bilking this idiot virgin. Right? Wrong! "You're breaking up with me? I want all my stuff back." "Fine, take it." "I could've been the best thing that ever happened to you." "My kids are the best thing that ever happened to me." "I will stop paying your rent." "OK." "I could've brought you to America, helped you learn English, gotten you a job..." "I never wanted to live in America, I don't need to learn English, and I have a job." "Oh? What job? YOU MEAN THAT ADULT WEBSITE?!" "Yes...the adult website that I'm not ashamed of, where you were my best customer." All said with the coolness and calm of someone who knows her worth. She may have used him, but he used her back, and they both knew their relationship was transactional--he just didn't like having that shown on TV. Ximena may have her problems, who among us doesn't, but she is the hero out of this bad bunch. By episode 2 I was already over Mike's pathetic possessiveness, and by the end of the season, especially after reading the individual couple's thread, he's lower than the dogshit on his own shoe in my mind.

I have to admit I mentally call him Soju Boy and it makes me crave delicious soju.

I would normally say I know tons of people in long term serious relationships that have bought houses together....but this is Leah. This relationship will last about as long as it takes for her extensions to fall out. I too scan the WV real estate listings, because I live in the bay area and apparently am a narcissist. Edit: masochist. Why in the world did I write narcissist??

I usually skim super-long posts, but I read every word of this with actual glee.

US insurance policies on dental and vision are absolutely atrocious. Dental care has a long, LONG history of affecting overall health, particularly cardiac health, and still most policies won't pay for much more than twice-yearly cleanings. I have the cadillac plans for both, and I still have to pay $500 out of pocket yearly just to be able to see. Not everyone could absorb that cost (and indeed I spent my early twenties squinting through life). I'm just lucky that I can now, and at least I have healthy teeth. I do hope Vannessa can get her teeth fixed if she wants, at some point--having healthy teeth isn't only healthy for your body but also for your self-esteem.

I would die rescuing my cats before I'd trust him to do it. "Hija de puta" may literally translate to "daughter of a bitch" but dude literally said "ha ha ha" into a translator app so I really don't trust his Spanish skills to know what he was saying. Edit: it's actually (literally translated) "daughter of a wh**e," but it just goes to show that literal translations mean nothing. hijo/a, perra/puta, it means "son of a bitch." But again, no way could he know that.

I was so curious how that car could've ended up on the roof of the restaurant...but after seeing the video...wow. I can't believe no one died. I hope the survivor in critical condition makes a full and fast recovery.

Is it weird that I love Ben's Peruvian sweater? He can keep the hat but that sweater looks so cozy, and if he bought it from a local artisan, even better. I'm a sucker for a unique knit sweater. Not that I'm saying Ben looks good, mind--just the sweater.