Hyacinth B

Yes !!!! It drives me BONKERS when I'm watching an otherwise good British murder mystery show like Morse or Inspector Lewis, and where do the two coppers sit down to discuss the murders, alibis and clues that almost always involve at least one or two suspects well-known around Oxford, like the Master of a college or a local doctor or a famous or infamous student? Right in the middle of one of the busiest pubs in Oxford! Everyone from the barmaid to the druggie on his way to the loo can overhear what they're saying, and considering the "Six Degrees of Separation" rule, possibly knows or knows someone who knows one of the people being discussed. They really need to take those conversations outside a lot more often. And the view from the terrace of their regular pub of the river is so much nicer than the view of the inside!

Heroes & Icons has just landed on my Must Watch list with the addition of ALL FIVE Star Trek series, every day except Saturday. Finally a chance to catch the last season of DS9! And there's still Herc and Xena in between the 2 ST blocks. "Now here’s a way to boost your channel’s ratings where no ratings have gone before: Schedule all five of TV’s “Star Trek” series to air together nightly. (Except Saturday.) It’s happening this week on Heroes & Icons, the digital subchannel offshoot of MeTV that launched nationally in fall 2014..." http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/tv/heroes-icons-metv-offshoot-to-air-all-5-star-trek-series-1.12088186

It's still the same lineup as before for us, we're with Comcast in the south Chicago 'burbs. Miami Vice is on now and Babewatch is listed for 11PM. It must be an affiliate decision.

That's SO cute! And I love Hiddleston's shoutout to The Lion King right at the end. His portrayal of Prince Hal / Henry V in The Hollow Crown series on PBS was excellent, and he's very easy on the eyes. Thanks for the link!

Right now it's showing last season's reruns on our local PBS Create channel in Chicago. Check all your local PBS stations but if you don't get Create you might be out of luck until the new season starts. VERY good program, BTW, and lovely if stark locations with a minimum of blood-and-guts, kind of like Midsomer Murders but with more angst, rocks and water, and much less in the way of trees, flowers and gardens. (And it doesn't hurt that the male lead Douglas Henshall looks almost EXACTLY like a guy I was head-over-heels in Wuv with about 30 years ago ; - D )

Reservations at all of them are hard to get. But if you don't mind waiting in line you can start off your morning with churros and your choice of Mexican-style hot chocolate at XOCO. https://www.zagat.com/b/chicago/5-decadent-glasses-of-hot-chocolate-in-chicago#5 https://www.zagat.com/r/xoco-chicago Fabio Viviani also has a place in River North called Siena Tavern. http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g35805-d3879063-Reviews-Siena_Tavern-Chicago_Illinois.html Here's Zagat's list of some of Chicago's celebrity chefs and where to find them. https://www.zagat.com/c/chicago-il/celebrity-chef-restaurants

Aside from Men Behaving Badly, which was a hundred times funnier than the US version, I've watched several of his animal and nature documentaries (his love for dogs and horses gives me warm fuzzies) and one about the Islands of Britain. Some of them are available on Acorn.tv - if you're in the US you can try out the first month free. And $4.99 a month is still a good price if you enjoy any kind of British TV.

Yep, another politician / political appointee who was probably offered an OBSCENE amount of money when their term was up to come over to the Dark Side. You have to wonder how some of these sleazos sleep at night, but I guess all those C-notes make a very comfy pillow.

There's a novel called The Honey Badger written by Robert Ruark back in the 60's that starts with a great quote: "There is a bloody brave little animal called the honey badger in Africa. It may be the meanest animal in the world. It kills for malice and for sport, and it does not go for the jugular-it goes straight for the groin. It has a hell of a lot in common with the Modern American woman" I kept thinking of that quote while watching that program.

Lady Margery also had more empathy, more decency, and more CLASS in her little finger than that b1tch Lady Mary has in her entire body.

Some might disagree, but I enjoy Sue and Mel, even if their humor can be a bit much at times. And they have caused a problem or two for some contestants. If anyone wants to see a bit more of Sue and why she's so popular, check out the Supersizers Go! videos on YouTube. Seeing what and how people actually ate at different times in history is fascinating and sometimes verging on nauseating, but usually fun. And you have to wonder how Sue and Giles made it through the entire series and some of those incredibly heavy and fatty dishes without a coronary, and how women of high social standing ever survived those Victorian and Edwardian seven-course dinners while being corseted tightly enough to take 4 or 5 inches off their natural waistlines. I'm amazed they could even breathe, much less eat! https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=supersizers

Yes! The main station WTTW has been doing that often lately. It happened again last night when we were watching Check Please. Hard to know if it's the station itself or Comcast. And it continued last Sunday evening during one of the Masterpiece programs, or maybe both. At least we have the other PBS channels to fall back on - I'm not sure if Comcast is the only provider that carries them all. Is anyone else in the Chicago area who doesn't have Comcast having the same problems?

Downton Abbey The first season or two were interesting, and the scenery and especially the clothes were the best eye candy on tv. Then self-anointed writing genius Julian Whats-his-face started running out of ideas, changing characters' personalities as needed to fill plot holes, and recycling old plots ad nauseam. Money seemingly falling from the sky when it was most needed, Matthew's miraculous recovery, Mary's endless parade of incredibly boring suitors, and OMG the bloody Bateses and their centuries-long crime and punishment story line. Geez, Fellowes, you call this WRITING??? I think I bailed at the end of Season Three, before my brain completely turned to mush. My DVDs of the original Upstairs Downstairs are much more interesting. The writing is coherent, the characters are well-drawn and consistent, and when Lady Margery went down with the Titanic, she STAYED down.

Well, at least that explains where most of those votes against Scottish independence came from.

"While there are some questions about his past I'd love to know more about (like the wife he never mentions), I appreciate just how vague they've kept his past..." Sorry, I don't follow the storylines as closely as most of you, my aged brain can't handle all the twists and turns. But Crikey, how many wives has he had that we know of? Didn't he marry River Song? And didn't Ten run like hell from Elizabeth the First right after the marriage ceremony? I wonder how many other times has he's tied the knot. And all that time he might even have a wife he left behind on Gallifrey (who, thanks to all 13 Doctors, is now simply frozen in time instead of having been blown into her component atoms like he thought she was?) No wonder he's in no rush to find Gallifrey again, that naughty boy might have some serious explaining to do.

That TOTALLY kicked ass! Thanks !!!

Except for Tom Cruise, who's obviously a cyborg.

Nope, they lost me when they shut down almost 800 Dodge and Chrysler dealerships in 2009. A LOT of people I knew in The Bidness had their livelihoods torn to shreds when that happened. And then to make it even worse, they handed the company to Fiat and that colossal handjob Sergio. That's one of the many things Peter DeLorenzo and I agree on. But hey, at least I can still appreciate the sound of a Hemi.

Can anyone verify if BK still does that? If so, it would explain the lactose-intolerant kind of reaction any time I've had a Whopper and fries.

Maybe not - but that's a very clever part of the advertising. Make the viewer curious and convince them to sit through it to the end. It hooks you and it doesn't let you in on the secret until the last few seconds. But it DOES say Dodge, eventually. And for us Old Farts and Fartesses, the silhouette shown in the link to YouTube can't be anything but a Dodge Challenger, even if the new one does have the gas cap on the wrong side. Scroll down to the second photo: http://www.hotrod.com/cars/featured/mopp-1001-1972-dodge-challenger/

Watch closely and the Viper at the end gives a clue as to what brand it is. I don't remember what music was used in Risky Business other than Bob Seger, but this one is a shoutout to Miami Vice, and really works well. What's also VERY cool is that all the footage is actual video, no CGI at all. Peter DeLorenzo at AutoExtremist.com in his On The Table column from July 8 said "The spots were filmed in Miami over three nights and every image in the commercial was actually shot - which believe me, is a revelation in this digital age - including the alligator that morphs into the front of the Challenger SRT Hellcat. There's a boat scene - another image that conjures up "Miami Vice" - that was captured from a helicopter, and drones were used in the production. The car-to-car shots were taken from cameras mounted on a following Hellcat..." http://www.autoextremist.com/on-the-table1/?currentPage=4 It's fast becoming my favorite commercial, even though I gave up on Mopar a few years ago.

Are you thinking of that clueless, self-absorbed couple in Chattanooga who kept adding and adding more garbage to that house that the guy (who fancied himself an architect) had designed? Her Daddy was a builder (I think the land and the money was his, and no baby in the offing, just two self-absorbed nitwits with no common sense) and the daughter was his Princess and got whatever she wanted and Daddy was stuck paying for it. Not only was the 5-story house just a disaster stylistically (From the front it looked like a 4-unit condo building, and I think it was finished without a planned elevator because it was either too expensive or it didn't meet local building codes) and financially because it was built and financed at pre-Crash prices) but it has to be the UGLIEST most unlivable damn million-dollar house I've ever seen. And for the final irony, the massively entitled Princess and her equally self-absorbed Dream Hubby broke up shortly after the house was finished. If that set of episodes ever shows up on any channel, it's a Must-Watch, believe me. That colossal F-up couldn't have happened to two more deserving people. There don't seem to be any videos anywhere of those episodes but there were some good posts at the old TWoP about it and the other disaster stories from the series. The only thing I could find was a 3-minute video with Kelli and Jack "showing off" i.e. "desperately trying to find a gullible buyer for" their money pit. https://www.tvrage.com/Dream_House/episode_guide/16 http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/businesstopstory/story/2010/aug/11/tv-star-house-sale/26105/ http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/350-Walsh-Rd-Chattanooga-TN-37405/80500681_zpid/ http://tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/archive/index.php/t-349335.html

I'm sorry that I didn't make a note of which episode it was, but on one of the recent shows that aired in Chicago within the last month it sounded like Bridget (I think) used the title to this thread when she was introducing one of her cooking segments. Did anyone else catch that or am I finally and officially going senile? Do the ATK'ers poke their heads in at PTV once in a while? (Waves) Yes, I WILL make a note if it happens again, promise.

And if my memory isn't playing tricks on me after 50 years, the letter "V" in Latin was pronounced like a "W", so "Ave Caesar" (Hail Caesar!) would have been pronounced "AH-way KIY-sar" (long i) with "Caesar" sounding almost exactly like its German equivalent. And the famous "Veni, vidi, vici" would have sounded more like "Weeny, weedy and weaky" according to that superb historical treatise "1066 And All That". "Julius Cæsar was therefore compelled to invade Britain again the following year (54 B.C., not 56, owing to the peculiar Roman method of counting), and having defeated the Ancient Britons by unfair means, such as battering-rams, tortoises, hippocausts, centipedes, axes and bundles, set the memorable Latin sentence, “Veni, Vidi, Vici,” which the Romans, who were all very well educated, construed correctly. The Britons, however, who of course still used the old pronunciation, understanding him to have called them “Weeny, Weedy and Weaky,” lost heart and gave up the struggle, thinking that he had already divided them All into Three Parts." ; - D

Juust a Heads Up for anyone who gets the Hallmark Movies and Mysteries Channel on their cable system - starting early Saturday March 28 with "Prescription Murder" at 5AM Central, the channel is running a Columbo marathon thru 5AM Central Monday morning. The schedule for Central thru Saturday night, : http://www.hallmarkmoviesandmysteries.com/schedule?mode=daily&day=0&week=0&tz=CST Enjoy!