candall

I knew they'd all be striving to be at the top of their game, so I recorded all the monologues from the four late night men for a few days. I think it's obvious that Stephen Colbert has the best writers (plus he is, of course, very talented and skillful with his delivery.) I am surprised to notice how much time Seth Meyers spends on self-deprecating snorts, or long pause + winking at the audience, or some other version of big raspberry admission that a joke fell flat. His long-form Closer Look is brilliant, but the stand-alone jokes don't have a very high success rate. (Weird, because I can identify five or six of his writers by name. "Scollins!") The Jimmies... They seem nice.

gasp The closest Trader Joe's is about three hours. Leaving now.

Well, by all means, let's take a gander at that, because the alternative name for my FF button is "F. Armisen."

Oh, I kind of like seeing Cirie shuffling around in a bathrobe, all morose and bitter about the eviction of her son. She was smug and giggly about their big secret conspiracy and now it's like she thinks it's unfair that she has to maneuver through this game "all by myself!" Sorry, I know those are harsh words, but Cirie is a strong, seasoned competitor; Jared was an immature man and an inexperienced reality challenge player. I was somewhat shocked to hear Cirie reprimand MeMe in her goodbye clip. "I told you not to evict Jared." Who else harks back to the 'mistake' made wrt another player? What is she, his mother or something? .

"ONE MINUTE, JULIE!"

". . . my brother's and I's"? Is that something someone wrote on a cue card?

Hmm, I'd go the other way. It looks to me like Emily is dunzo as far as Sabiyah is concerned and there's nothing Emily can do about it, no matter how much she might like to repair things. Tough spot to be in for Day 3 in a five-person tribe.

I'd say 9 out of 10 times, it's easy to figure out who made what. 10 out of 10 by the last round. I think any judge with half a brain should be able to skew either the guest or "The Titans!" into the win, if so desired. All this blind judging they're so proud of is ridiculous, with the two competitors standing just over the shoulder of the judge, muttering "oh, come on" under their breath.

I like Cam, in general, because he's in the hamster upper 1% who can keep his mouth shut. I think it's clever how he elicits information without giving away anything himself. (If he were on Survivor and found an Idol, he would be able to keep it to himself--a rare talent.) But I was very sour about his superior attitude when he was lecturing __________ about Emily Dickinson, (a reclusive 19th C. poet,) since he clearly didn't know the first thing about her except that she was somehow affiliated with writing. If you're going to condescend to someone, you should at least know your shit.

That looks FANTASTIC. Thanks for the welly talk. More going on under that flaky crust than I realized. : )

I'm disappointed that I'm not able to view the Wellington shot you posted, and jealous of both of you ordering from the HK menu. But I have a Wellington question. I'm almost sure that Beef Wellington used to have pate de fois gras instead of mushroom duxelles. I understand that we don't torture geese in that particular way anymore, but is there never, say, a chicken liver element? I thought the flaky pastry/rich liver/tenderloin combination was the traditional point.

Okay, great, thanks. I was already iffy about giving five minutes of my life to DeSantis, but I'm definitely not up for Maher scoring shots off Biden's age. Bill's had five months to sharpen up. Is "Gee, that Biden guy sure is OLD!" really the best he can do?

There have been enough episodes now for the guest chef to know how to pick which Titan for each round. In Round One, Bobby chooses ingredients more or less related to the guest's cooking style, so there's an advantage and you want to use it when you're going against Voltaggio. (The best of the three, edging out Brooke for risky creativity, IMHO.) In Round Three, you get to whip out your own ingredients, you've practiced what you're going to prepare--which is the only dish you have to cook--and the double point system can make up for whatever shortfall you have from the previous rounds. Save Tiffany for that round. (Tiffany's good, but she's not as experienced as Brooke or Voltaggio.) That leaves Brooke for Round Two. .

I don't know, I thought the meltdown of the Pageant Queen team was interesting. We knew from the start that "Pageant Queens" were likely to be cast as the villains. But I thought it would be more cartoonish and this felt more or less unscripted. That one woman, Devi--who later said she'd been the one to bring the team together and had been the bestie to each of the others--unilaterally decided to go out and implement a strategy, i.e. forming alliances with other teams. And then, blammo, the other three were not at all okay with that. It wasn't the worst strategy in the world, and you could see how shocked she was when the other three united in their disapproval. "Wait a minute, what? But I'm the Queen Bee of the Queens! They just NOW voted me Prom Queen!" I thought it was somewhat poignant when she reflected that she'd never been in the outsider position before--that was some decent self-awareness you don't often catch in reality television. The other thing you don't often see is the loser stomping away muttering "Fuck you all, I am NEVER speaking to any of you again, no way, no how, I hope you all drown in that three-foot deep pond." Mmm, yeah! Speak out your feelings, sister. 😛

WOW, did you see how close that competition was as they came down to the last dishes?! And then the two teams TIED and they had to arrange a tie-breaker!!!! [End severe sarcasm] I've seen this show 900 times and the numbers have been sooooo close about 900 times. But while my eyebrows were sky-high and my eyes were rolling, it did occur to me that Gordon does a fairly decent job of not making the judging too, too obvious in order to achieve that. P.S. Did they just sweep that beautiful too-sweet lobster into the garbage? You are on my list for the waste, sir.

I was thinking, aww, it must be nice to have your mother available to rub your back and murmur soothingly when you need to just let it out and have a good cry in the Big Brother house. Too bad everyone can't be equally lucky. Which is why I'm so happy all the advantages of secretly having his MOTHER there, doing her best to help him win, didn't net Jared $750k. And all that nonsense about "Who will take care of Mama now?" was so misguided and embarrassing, it was hard to watch. What's next, show? Someone gets his mom and a secret cellphone so he can check the feeds? Pfft. . '

One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble Not much between despair and ecstasy

I bet Hannah is thinking about lighting a cig off her torch before Jeff snuffs it.

Wow, Brandon is not Peachy's cup of man-tea. "Come on, Brandon! YOU WANTED SURVIVOR? YOU GOT IT!" Eek, are they in the Marines now?

I believe that Kody looked blank when Janelle reminded of Savannah because he literally hadn't given her a passing thought in six weeks. I started thinking about what a tremendous responsibility it would be to keep birthdays and recitals and important dates straight for, what?, 16 kids, and I realized, OF COURSE Kody has never, ever, had to trouble himself with any of that. One wife or another has always handed him a wrapped gift or a card or a cellphone and pointed him toward whichever son or daughter was due to be congratulated. Dollars to doughnuts this is the first time in Savannah's life that Janelle didn't nudge Kody several times in advance, saying "Make sure you remember to give Savannah a call/hug/shoutout." Every year all the wives undoubtedly shop for all the children and write "To _______ From Dad" on the tags. Kody couldn't even clutter up his self-absorbed brain with buying a Christmas present for each of his wives (a much smaller number.) According to the show, he had to rummage in the bedroom for some old sweatshirt and hand it over, unwrapped, to Meri. "Here. Merry Christmas." Now, wouldn't that make you feel like a cherished beloved? Anyway, now there's only Robyn to keep all those kids from falling through the Kody cracks. She isn't going to do it--and I don't blame her--but will Kody step up and commit to remembering and recognizing the important dates for all his children? HAHAHAHA. I'm kidding.

Uh oh. Less competition this week, more interpersonal strategizing. We already have the professional famewhore Challenge USA contestants losing their minds over alliances and strategy. Not to mention the Big Brother hamsters and the starving unfortunates who are getting their bones broken as they Fight [each other] to Survive, making Thursday night extra grim in post-SAG/AFTRA apocalypse reality tv. Can't you Buddy Gamers just stick with s'mores and bug juice and big puffy clobber sticks? .

I'll take all those nasty white chocolate ones in the gold wrappers than no one else wants!

Assiduous, maybe.

I don't think Kennedy's error of dense cake was any more egregious than Grant's undercooked egg yolk raviolo. They all noted that both the pasta AND the egg yolk needed more cooking and then shrugged it away, while they were aghast at the texture of the cake. "Like a bagel!" They noted that the pork tenderloin was a bit simple for the circumstances and commented that rabbit as a competition protein is a risky proposition that they hadn't seen attempted before. To me, Kennedy's was the more creative menu, took more chances and used the more advanced techniques. I disagree that trout followed by rabbit is not a natural progression. But Grant surprised me with the sophistication of his sauces and it's nice that Mr. Bobblehead won the big reward in front of his adoring wife and little boy. Jennifer seemed to score a lot of points for being able to boil a lobster. And speaking of which, do you not have two seconds to give that creature a knife-chop to the brain before you drop him in to boil?

We'll never forget you, Buttons.