CeeBeeGee

I hope not. They're such a beautiful pair together. I'm so proud of how they kept their composure at Worlds last year after the accident.

Okay, I have to share with you my experience re: Star Trek Continues. In the winter of 2019-2020 I was rediscovering Star Trek TOS. Podcasts, rereading the very first fan novels, rewatching the remastered versions--the whole works. I came across a couple of fan-produced episodes on YouTube (including one that had been written by David Gerrold (writer of The Trouble with Tribbles)) and through that, discovered Star Trek Continues. I start watching it. I'm thinking hey, this is pretty good. Production values are excellent, it's competently filmed, scored well. And I notice the same name over and over--Vic Mignona. He plays Kirk, he's a director, a writer, a producer. Even composes some of the score. And I'm thinking, he's pretty talented, I wonder if he has a website? I look him up and find a resume/bio. And I see he graduated from Liberty University in Virginia, which is just down the road from the women's college I attended. And I see the roles on his resume and the truth dawns on me--I know this guy. I remember this guy! He was a very controversial cast member in a couple of productions we needed (we had to be creative--if the role was at all ambiguous, you could cast a woman as a man, or just be ambiguous about what gender it was (I played the Emcee in Cabaret for example). But sometimes we cast male actors in the community). He was controversial because he was a huge in-your-face Christian bigot, not at all shy about his evangelism. Most of us disliked him, although he is certainly talented. He and I got into a huge argument at a cast party about the English language (my major)--he was taking the unoriginal, unsupported position that the English language has "degraded" over the years "since it was first established." I won the argument simply by asking him over and over to define his terms. "When was that? When Johnson wrote the first dictionary? When Anglo-Saxon turned into Middle English, a process that took hundreds of years? When the work f*** first appeared in print?" He didn't understand that languages are constantly changing--there's no such thing as a single origin point. And he was very firm that everyone not an evangelical Christian was hellbound. After this realization I also found an old AV article--apparently there have been a ton of complaints about his behavior at fan conventions and the like. Lawsuits were traded, he lost and his career kind of evaporated, as far as I know. I will say, I quite enjoy Star Trek Continues, and they've gotten some major talent to sign on.

I absolutely love that montage. The sheer craftsmanship of patiently (so many movies hurry through things) showing all the major players, how they're dealing with the death of the old year, the birth of the new, how they're dealing with loneliness, how maybe they're not dealing at all, they're just asleep (Steve and Brady), friends showing up for other friends, even struggling through the snow and the subway just to be there for their friend, to laugh over Chinese food. And I love that shot of Big--I love the movie giving us that glimpse, letting us know his story isn't over, nope, we've got unfinished business with this guy. We'll be seeing him again. Just wait. Be patient and wait. And all scored with that brilliant, wistful cover of Auld Lang Sang. It's just brilliant. I love it so much.

I AM SO EXCITED!!!!!!!!

I did love that dress. That whole scene is--wow. I've never understood why so many seem to hate the first movie. I think its long slow journey to forgiveness, starting with that scene in the street, Carrie wailing "I am humiliated!" and Charlotte leveling that look at Big, standing him down like a lioness, the montage on New Year's Eve ("You're not alone") and ending with Steve and Miranda's lovely reunion on Brooklyn Bridge and Carrie coming across the emails Big sent to her--is positively Charlotte Bronte-an.

Only a pathological narcissist would say something that profoundly self-serving.

I'm trying to not blame Che on Sara Ramirez but that article makes it difficult. This comment: nailed it. Calm. Down. Sara.

Bunny was like the WASP version of Ethel Kennedy who was once (brilliantly) described as "more Kennedy than thou." She'd married into a big, well-known family and tried way too hard to fit in and be the quintessential Kennedy. Whereas Jackie remained her authentic self and gained everyone's respect. Similarly Bunny is over-invested in her identity as a MacDougal--because she wasn't born one and feels she needs to prove herself.

Dear God, that's what they've reduced Miranda to.

UGH. Worse and worse.

Watching the last episode now. Did not realize that Josh's charges were federal. Man, he is fuuuuuucked. That sleazy mug shot of his... Boob's audacity at running for state office while his shitty child molester son is on trial for downloading child pornography! Dude, read the room! His lashing out at Democrats, "cancel culture" whatever--dude, you and Josh are the problem. Not the boogieman of cancel culture. You and he are the problem. And your shitty wife. Tia's story--Jesus. Jesus. I have had that "I heard a voice in my head" experience. (In my case a random dude flashed a knife at me and told me to go to the staircase and I remember hearing/thinking "And now is the time to scream out loud and fight back" just as though it were a flowchart.) I am so effing glad she listened to that voice. I feel so tremendously sorry for Anna. She's in a very difficult position--she is expected to fight back against the husband she has been ordered, by every authority she recognizes and has been trained by birth to obey, to submit to, and fight back with tools she doesn't have. I really, really hope at some point she'll recognize the threat to her children--and to her self-dignity, and her sense of self--and leave.

This is fandom, sadly. This fandom and that of SVU, the scrutiny on the women characters is insane. See also: Harry Potter, Star Wars, Game of Thrones...hell, even fans of the British royal family. The scrutiny on female royals is so much worse, like, to a granular level.

Thank you for your kind words. I find myself so enraged about this. Who the hell gives a board game about going to Hell to children? They must've been terrified playing that. Just imagine being 5 or 6 and playing that. I absolutely believed in Hell at that age and was always very scared about doing the wrong thing (saying a swear word, for instance) and going there as a result, and I was always very scared at night. And I grew up in a normal family, I just got that idea "in the air," no one force fed it to me. Why would you plant that idea in the mind of an impressionable child? Why would you deliberately terrify these children? (Children are acutely aware of how powerless they are and it takes little at some ages to scare them.) And for God's sake why would you hit--all day--a baby??! The blanket training is especially cruel. First of all, a child that young can't form a thought or recognize a pattern of "if I do this [crawl off], then this [being hit with the spoon] is going to happen," not in any conscious kind of way. They are completely in thrall to their impulses. As soon as they get the urge to crawl, they've forgotten about the punishment, so you'd really have to keep it up for a long time. (Stopping a baby from crawling--really think about how stupid that is. That is an inherent part of their development! You're retarding their growth! Just put them in a playpen, let them crawl and keep an eye on them! Oh wait, that would mean Michelle and Boob actually have to parent.) And then, tempting them to crawl off by putting a toy off the blanket--tempting them to crawl off, so you can hit them again. I just--this is staggering cruel. What kind of sick f*** gets pleasure out of hitting babies? People who hurt the most vulnerable members of our society--old people, children, developmentally challenged people and animals--deserve Hell, or prison.

I don't know anything about Texas but the Triangle Trade refers to trade between the Americas, Europe and Africa (of which the Middle Passage refers to the leg of the triangle from Africa to the Americas). The phrase has been around for a long time and there's a song about it in the musical 1776. How is Texas using the phrase? And FLDS.

Working my way through the series. Jesus. This is beyond depressing. I'm in the middle if the second episode and the woman who tells--with a GIANT smile--about spanking--spanking--her 14-month-old "all day long"--JESUS. I work with kids. This is just completely depressing. And the lives (other than beatings) these little ones lead! (To say nothing of the fact that your own parents couldn't pick you out of a lineup.) They can't read any books that aren't GOD GOD GOD, they can't watch any TV, their interactions with even their siblings is severely curtailed and made weird--how are their brains supposed to be engaged if all they're doing is reading those "Wisdom Booklets"? Where are the colors, where are the dolls, where are the games? I am weeping at how poor their inner lives must've been, how unengaged these kids must've been. They should've been playing hide and seek (with both brothers and sisters), climbing trees, reading any book they wanted, smarting off to their parents, giggling with their parents--anything but this meek, toes-on-the-line brand-savvy anodyne blandness. I just want to sweep in and wrap them in huge hugs. I hate these parents. How dare you make 11 year olds become parents because you're too fucking lazy? Every time that woman looks adoringly up at her worthless husband, an angel loses its wings.

Talk about someone who torched her own legacy. Miranda was nearly as beloved as Samantha and now she's my least favorite character. All because the married Cynthia Nixon has the hots for a co-worker.

He was such a nuanced character--he loved her so much but was just not right for Charlotte. And they tried so hard. The tableau when they pose for the T&C magazine just as their marriage is ending, that brave sort-of smile on Charlotte's face--it kills me. And I love how kind and gracious and brave Trey is during the divorce negotiations when Bunny is trying to bully Charlotte out of the apartment, and Trey sends that awesome "Mother, stop. Just stop. Charlotte was a wonderful wife..." telegram. So proud of him for standing up to Bunny. This franchise used to have such amazing writers, such excellent character development. I would love to see Trey again.

From your mouth to God's ears.

Oh my Lord. Talk about a flashback. Poor Suzanne Somers. Those embarrassing 30-second calls to Janet and Jack. She was a huge part of the success of Three's Company and they treated her terribly. I'm so glad she was able to salvage a career after they'd torched her for daring to ask that she be paid as much as John Ritter. (And yes, I know the industry--I'm an actor.) Same with Lena Headey and Jerome Flynn in Game of Thrones.

Congratulations to the groom and best wishes to our darling Simone!!!

I hope they get booed. Or at the very least the audience sits stonily on their hands--y'know, like the Russian audiences did in Sochi.

I really enjoyed this but as someone upthread said, it isn't exactly a warts and all look at the SAB--and yes, it does feel like a piece of image management after the scandals. (Which, BTW, has made me rethink exactly where I'm going to spend my ballet dollars. I like the traditional ballets but the abstract Balanchine stuff--Jewels, etc.--bores me to pieces and I am pissed at how they handled the Waterbury case.) I loved seeing the kids in the green room also doing the choreography in front of the monitor. I kept thinking that during the last episode--that in just a few months their world is about to come to a shuddering halt. I was railing about that on the phone, how they kept praising Balanchine who doomed generations of women dancers to eating disorders and worse. Pavlova and Kschessinska had perfectly normal figures.

Thanks to your post, I was able to catch most of it. Stephen's twin sister looks exactly like him. They could've played Viola and Sebastian in Twelfth Night, that's how much they look alike. I loved the sister saying she wanted an open casket "so they could see what they did to him" and I immediately thought "like Mamie Till" and then she said "the way Emmet Till's mother did." One of the reasons I've fallen down the rabbit hole about this sordid saga is because the whole darn family has red hair. (My mother is a ginger and it runs in the family, although I don't have it.) It's like the Weasleys have gone rogue!

Right?! Alex stole a boatload of money--for what purpose? Where did it all go? Very difficult indeed, especially since the group was so intertwined and incestuous so that meant she was frequently in his company. Anthony and all the young people (except for abusive POS Paul) greatly impressed me. They all just seemed so...nice. Kids trying to do the right thing. I can't decide for whom I feel the worst--Anthony lost his girlfriend, Connor was maimed and nearly framed, Morgan lost her close friend and her former boyfriend of four years, Paul who was definitely scum but he learned that abusive behavior from someone (Alex, obviously) and he certainly didn't deserve to get murdered by his own father*. I guess I feel the worst for Mallory and her family. She seemed like a lovely soul. And the way her family was ignored so completely by the police and the Murdaughs nauseates me. *God, I can't get over that. He murdered his own son. In cold blood. He must truly be a sociopath.

Yeah, my cable guide says it's the 4cc but then it says from "Talinn, Estonia." :/