dmmetler

I kind of think they should leave the teams split (and maybe send them to different competitions). It let different and more kids be featured, and honestly, each is still a really BIG team. It really wouldn't be unusual for a large program to have more than one competition squad.

Now we need Grant....

If anyone is interested in the original book, it's on sale currently on Kindle for $1.99.

I think my favorite part was that Rip was listening to Beethoven 7th while moping about having Jax fix the timeship and the resulting exposure.

My DD11 is leaving a cheer team that she's been on since she was 4. The state finals will be her final competition with them. (My husband is being transferred to a different office). She's not expecting a big party, or even for the coach to mention it, but she is making bracelets for her team mates, with charms that call back some of her favorite memories with them. Kids move. Kids change studios and programs. It happens. Life goes on.

It's even more humorous when you realize that every single competitive cheerleader out there wears giant bows as part of the uniform, as do many girls' softball teams. It's kind of a "I'm an athlete and I'm a girl" thing. You see t-shirts with things like "Bad to the Bow" or "Fear the Bow".

I wish they'd do a smaller set of figures, like about Playmobil scale :). I kind of want to put Wonder Woman up against my Playmobil History sets :). And, in all seriousness, my own superhero girl, at the older end of the age range, is more into making model worlds than Barbie type play, so some super hero girl figures that are bigger than the Lego ones, but smaller than the current line would come in handy and fit more into the 'tween market which is more into crafting and cosplay themselves. That's one thing My Little Pony has done right-you can get ponies in a range of sizes.

Comcast has the musical by itself as an extra on demand. It works better that way-although the Shakespeare dialogue does not fit the music style at all. I did find seeing Mat's actor in the Romeo role humorous, because here he is singing a role that he fought to get to dance on Dance Academy. The guy can't get away from doing the same role his senior year-even by changing countries and continents!

Of course, Maddie will be leaving the team the minute she's no longer on contract to be on it for the show. Why would that be surprising? FWIW, I have an 11 yr old who, last year, got stuck doing a power puff girls themed routine, in a Jazz class ranging from ages 7-10. She wasn't happy about it, either. She was just fortunate that her sighs and eye rolls were mostly limited to in the car, not documented on reality TV. I do think that sometimes instructors go by what they think is cute, and forget that there's a big,difference emotionally in a few years time.

FWIW, I'm watching on Netflix, and I wondered if maybe they wrote the finale assuming it would be the end of the show. They've set up Ray for his transformation to shrinking Atom, Felicity and Oliver are riding off in the sunset, Sterling city is in the hands of Thea, Laurel and Dig, and we've got a big bad in Malcolm set up for Atom, Flash, and the duo of Nyssa and Tatsu/Katana to take on (I SO want Nyssa and Tatsu to ally with each other. Although that might be more awesome than one TV can stand...).

You know, except for Nyssa, Oliver could just unleash the A/O on Nanda Parbat and make his escape. Oliver and Maseo are immunized against it, after all, and it's not like he has any reason to not want to wipe the LOA off the globe. But he needs to get Nyssa out first.

I'm pretty convinced that there are no rules for these competitions at this point.

I think the problem with Ray is that the actor just physically doesn't carry himself like a adorkable nerd. Felicity does-she's a beautiful woman, but the geeky girl shines through. Barry and Cisco are the same. They're good looking guys, but they're still obviously adorkable. Ray is just too perfect to pull off geeky. He's good looking, has a lot of money, and just carries himself like he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, got straight A's, sailed through college, was president of his fraternity. He's not able to pull off "geek" because he never experienced the social awkwardness that geeky kids/teens face, even those that end up being physically attractive, pulled together adults. All of his "see, I'm geeky like Felicity" lines fall flat because he just isn't and his backstory is such that he was unlikely to be treated as such. Felicity as the daughter of a Casino Waitress who moved to being a dealer when she had enough seniority is perfectly believable. So is Barry, the foster son of a police officer with a dead mom and a dad in prison. But I can't imagine anyone giving young Ray Palmer a wedgie or running his underwear up a flagpole. Add that he also doesn't do traumatized, and he just isn't relatable. When you feel like messing up in a fight is the first time this guy has ever had anything go wrong in his life (yes, I know he lost Anna the love of his life, but since he was making Cow eyes at Felicity from the first time he walked into the Best Buy clone, I don't buy that, either), that doesn't make me root for him. He doesn't have the backstory of a Tony Stark or a Bruce Wayne to make it seem reasonable, even by comic book standards. Instead it comes off as a spoiled kid playing with toys, and that's not heroic.

She may have miscarried or delivered prematurely and lost the baby. Meth is linked to miscarriage and premature birth as well as psychotic hallucinations, and I know that after losing a baby I had periods where I'd find myself rocking the cat, only to come to and realize my baby was purring. It was weird-and according to my perinatologist, is actually quite common for a few months following loss of a baby until the hormones return to normal. Add the Meth, and she well may have basically gone into that state and just not snapped out of it, even now that she's off the drug. I'm sure she's met mothers who have lost custody of their children-and "getting sober for my baby" could be mixed in with guilt of feeling that she killed her baby (again, mothers who lose babies often do feel guilty even with no culpability on their part-add drug use, and she'd have a reason to feel guilty.) All that is to say, it felt really plausible and "real" to me.

If you're not primarily a (fill in blank) group, why would you be surprised to lose to a grou that does focus on (fill in blank) in a competition where that is a focus?

I like that they seem to be going in the direction that Trish has untreated issues. It's so common for kids to self-Medicate, and it can be a real complication in treating addiction.

I don't know-my DH has been acquired twice in leveraged buyouts (software engineer), and in both cases, the original company name was eventually removed-although the product name is the same as it was two companies ago. And QC is linked to some pretty bad stuff. If Palmer Technologies acquired QC, I could see the QC label being retired. The size makes that less likely, but not anything less likely than some of the other stuff in Starling City.

Battlebot Hexbugs announced at Toyfair2016

Nia's "I don't care" look when Jill was talking about Abby not wanting them speaks volumes. The only kid who really looked like she was at all concerned was Mackenzie.

If you have Comcast On Demand, Talking Saul is available there.

I took the "you're a monster" to be that with the knowledge of his mother's affair and Thea's parentage, he now assumes she was an active participant in the undertaking, including destroying the Queen's gambit, and was simply lying about being maneuvered by Malcolm and being scared of him.

I just assumed Felicity was #1 on his speed dial, so she was the one he could call with it being least obvious. And the "no one else answering the phone scene" would have worked better if it weren't Felicity's cell phone.

I really liked this challenge. Jermaine Dupri has these parents (and kids') number.

African Dance was the hardest dance class I ever took in college. Lots of fun, but hard. Comparing Kendall and Brynn's dance to Chloe and Maddie's Black Swan...there's just no comparison. Both Kendall and brynn were basically just dancing and letting the costume carry the theme. There was none of the frail innocence that Maddie portrayed well and the fierceness that Chloe portrayed well. And they were, what, 9 and 10 at the time? If Abby actually picked the dances/groupings this week, I think they were designed to show that the team would fail without her. Having said that, I was glad to see the girls actually learning something new. Because, ultimately, that's what they should be doing, not doing the same lyrical/jazz with side aerials and circle cartwheels week after week.

Wow, there are a lot of drugs in a place designed to help addicts stay sober! Also, if Rebecca's dad is a doctor, couldn't he legally prescribe her Ritalin? Why would that need to be hidden? It stinks that he'd do that, but I know a lot of kids who have had Ritalin prescribed by family doctors based on reports from the school, without ever having a Neuropsych, neurologist, or child psychiatrist involved.