Tabbyclaw

I heard "Slide" by the Goo Goo Dolls for the first time in years today, and I've got a long-standing mondegreen for it. They can tell me all they want that the little flourish at the end of the song is "slide between the sheets of all those beds you never knew." I'm still going to hear "God, it seems it's been so long, I'm glad to hear from you."

I've been chewing over this possibility, too. Her enemies created a weapon to destroy all her beautiful work, and now she's using its latest incarnation to resurrect all her favorites. I liek the theory that Charlotte is causing the sickness, especially because the first symptoms -- blisters and fever -- are the same ones she was describing on the man with the ant bites. But I'm not sure if the timing lines up, as it seems like the bear couple had and recovered from the sickness before she arrived. Right now I think it's more likely that the plague came in on Dave's leg. Whatever is causing it, I hope we get to see more of the chaos next week, because "Trouble that activates other people's Troubles" has been on my 'plots I want to see' list for this show for a long time. I may not like Chris Brody, but I do love the way people react to him, so that Skype call had me grinning ear to ear, especially Dwight's annoyance after he hung up that he'd been gotten again. Also, nice that they brought back the lightning Trouble from his first episode. It being that woman's little sister this time was probably for practicality reasons of "we couldn't/didn't want to track down the other actress again," but it also plays to the theory that those whose Troubles are already active are immune to the sickness. Which means that Gloria's assistant is the best person to be looking out for the infected. It also occurred to me after watching the episode that they missed a golden opportunity to show Audrey fawning over Chris now that she's lost her immunity and Chris being completely bewildered.

The first time he showed up, I was staring at the screen because I knew I recognized him from somewhere. And then he started talking and I just lit up and went, "Oh! He's... from Earth!" It's a very good thing I was alone at the time.

I debated whether this belonged here or in the music subforum, but the crazy hype is really way more about the video and its story than the (very catchy) song. A whole fandom has cropped up practically overnight for this four-minute animated video, and I'm one of the ones who's fallen in love with it. Ghost, by Mystery Skulls: Come for the Scooby Doo pastiche, stay for the unexpected backstory.

We had a dinner a couple nights ago that really highlighted the varying tastes in my family. We had French onion soup (the frozen individual ones that Trader Joe's carries; we love those guys so much) and grilled cheese to order. Which means I grated sharp cheddar off the block and added horseradish and sriracha for myself, pulled some mild shredded cheese out of the bag for Mom, and put a couple Kraft singles on bread for Dad.

*buffs nails* I have to hand it to whoever titled this episode. Exposure of secrets, exposure of photographs, and depending on what's going on with Dave's wound and the CDC, possibly exposure to a pathogen. I sighed a little at seeing Seth again in the previews, but he made a great addition here. He had just the right amount of nerdy enthusiasm and tendency to ramble. One episode per season of him is probably the perfect amount. Man, they are just doing everything they can to break Duke down this season. He's sounding more bitter and cynical with each passing episode, and I don't blame him. I just really want him to come out of all of this psychologically intact and relatively content. I am aware of how tall an order this is. As for the stuff about his mother, eh. It's believable, but it's not terribly interesting. Not that my theories were the height of genius (although I was kind of attached to the one about her coming from a Troubled family and only finding out later that Simon took care of that for her), but I was hoping for something more immediately relevant to the plot. And now I have to do some major rewriting on a couple fanfics. My Australian is currently theorizing that Duke's 'mutant' Trouble is working out exactly the way Mara intended, and now he's a loaded gun. She was just expecting it to be easier to aim him where she wanted to. I'm not sure about that, but it sent me down a mental rabbit hole and got me wondering if William and Mara created the Crocker curse or if it was created in response to them, to clean up their messes. It would add another layer to Mara being so gleeful about mutating it when she reactivated Duke, turning her enemies' weapon against them. ETA: I have to admit that I'm sort of loving this. I always get a kick out of antagonist characters responding to being physically powerless against the heroes by getting obnoxious and needling them in the most petty ways they can find.

I have heard a lot of people say that whatever the lyrics are, the whole song sounds like that's what the singer is really thinking.

It's one of those "all in the delivery/context" funny moments, but the scene in Warm Bodies where the rest of the corpses from the airport catch up with R under the bridge always gets me. M's sympathetic sigh of "Bitches, man" when he hears that Julie left R behind, coming out with the labored difficulty that characterizes all the corpses' dialogue, is so incongruous yet perfect that I can't help busting up every time.

We ditched our membership a couple years back, unfortunately. However, a couple of my local grocery stores do "buy one, get two free" sales on the ribs a couple-three times a year, and we have a nice big freezer.

Yes, they're two different rings. I meant that they're identical in style. That could have been clearer, sorry.

He probably thinks that's what he's doing, but it's the same ring Vince had from Sarah.

Freddie Lounds, causing trouble with a camera again. Odd to see her dressed normal-normal rather than Hannibal-normal. I have to admit I'm starting to get a little tired of everything having to be a two-parter that ends on a cliffhanger, but at the same time nothing really feels padded. Even for as arc-y a show as this has been since about the middle of the first season, this season has been even more so. The Mara plot has been more like one continuous episode with a Trouble of the week occasionally poking its head in. As a Lost fan and a fan of sci-fi mystery TV in general, I got a major kick out of the immediate assumption by the 'ghosts' that this is Purgatory. Has there been a show in the past decade where that hasn't been one of the running fan theories? And being me, of course I snickered at Mara calling Nathan Duke's boyfriend. I am unsurprised by Audrey's lack of immunity, as well as her apparent disorientation. The immunity is somehow 'programmed' into Mara herself, and it didn't transfer over into this new body. I wonder if she still has the old memories, though; specifically I was looking at the piano and wondering if she still remembers how to play. Current assumption about how the Trouble of the week is going to play out: The bright light is a camera flash and everything is being caused by the photographer at the farmers' market. She's the fiancee of the 'leader' of the ghosts, and he's the one killing the others to threaten Nathan away from trying to fix this. He figured it out long ago, but he doesn't want to go back because the cancer will kill him for real if he does.

I suspect that the rings, the necklace, and the small box are connected. It looks like nothing so much as a jewelry box. The puzzle was explained in-episode as something that was created by a particular person who wanted revenge on the town. I don't think it was ever meant as a clue to something larger. I would say it's more likely that the Carrs are another of the founding families. If they bring Julia back and do something interesting with that then rock on, but for my part I'm happy for her to stay gone forever. My big question that's related to Julia is wanting to know why her tattoo is a variant design. We've seen two versions of the Guard symbol -- the softer one on Julia's shoulder also appears outside the Coogan house in Colorado -- and nobody has acknowledged this yet in-universe. It's not uncommon for smaller restaurants to close up after the lunch rush and not reopen until dinner hours. I'd also consider it plausible that the Gull is only open all day on weekends, and the rest of the week it's an evenings-only business. As much as "No, seriously, tell me about Duke's mother" is one of my favorite topics of speculation, I think she and Nathan's mother are casualties of TV drama writers' tendency to dismiss male characters' mothers as nonsignificant if the father exists. I don't assume Mara knows his 'real' name. But anything she might say about him is information the others don't have and might be able to use to find out more, which is not something she's inclined to give them. She entrusted her child to him, and now we find out that Dave thinks he killed him. That may or may not be all of it, but I have no doubt it's at least part of the reason.

I will have you know I am now picturing Nathan trying to be helpful and supportive during a flareup and not quite getting there. "You're all right, we've got you. Just focus on your breathing." "I'm not in labor, Nathan!"

Remember my saying that pasta carbonara is the easiest and most indlugent thing I know how to make? I forgot barbecue pork ribs. Pricey unless you find them on sale (I spend the summer stocking up!) and they require more advance planning, but it only takes about ten minutes to mix up and apply a brown sugar rub, followed by two hours of just leaving them alone in the oven. And I spent almost all of those two hours doing a combination of treadmill walking, upper-body work, and an ab workout, so I earned the indulgence this time.

Fully-loaded pho. The kind with the super-thin raw beef and the beef balls and the tripe and the tendons, where when you decant the leftovers the next day it's just a solid block of gelatin until you reheat it. Yeah, I could live happily on that for decades.

Bear in mind that so far 'this season' has been just a couple days. I imagine Duke can afford to close up shop for that short a time while he deals with the current crisis.

First rule of keeping something secret in Haven: Always assume that Duke knows a guy who knows a place.

You wouldn't happen to have a link to that video, would you?

Granted it's only been a couple seconds and everyone's still in shock, but I'd assume that if Audrey doesn't have her Troubles immunity Nathan would have noticed immediately, given the way he was holding her. This may be contradicted by the fact that Vince didn't know anything about what Dave was looking into in Cincinnatti, but my theory once we found out that the Teagues and Gloria knew more about Dwight's sister than he did was that she was running a Guard safehouse.

Echoing all the "did not see it coming" remarks. Which is why I love this show.

From Two Weeks Notice: Whenever I'm going through a long list of things that are stressing me out, I can feel "I'm running out of shampoo" trying to sneak into it.

I don't have a lot of mondegreens because apparently deciphering song lyrics is my mutant superpower, but a post in one of the other threads reminded me of one of my favorites. In Don Henley's "Heart of the Matter," the actual lyrics are: But I always hear it as: I imagine it as a phone call from someone who knows this will be a sore subject and wants to stir up drama under the guise of keeping him informed and offering support in this difficult time.

Got Love - Tove Lo I...have no idea how to describe this song. It's not a song I like even though people are telling me I shouldn't. It's not even one of my "love it in spite of itself" songs. I hate this song. I hate everything about it, from its bland beat to the barely-there instrumentation to the bored-sounding singer to the stupid, stupid lyrics. And yet I can't stop listening to it. It's like the musical equivalent of tapping a pen on the table or jiggling your leg while sitting still: obnoxious, but still somehow nice to have going on in the background. And more along the lines of my usual "love it in spite of myself," the new song from Fall Out Boy. It's not grabbing me by the throat the way The Phoenix does (which, I admit, owes some of its hold over me to the awesome Fullmetal Alchemist fanvid where I first heard it), but holy crap have I been putting the video on repeat and grooving tonight: I'm starting to think Fall Out Boy is my official "GAH, WHY IS THIS AWESOME WHEN IT TOTALLY SHOULDN'T BE" band.

I'm going to say it's kind of like a cross between the Dragonlace Chronicles and Avatar, which is both apt and completely misleading. Tonally it's far lighter and less complex than either, being very much a kids' show. (But like Avatar, there are some adult situations/jokes, a few questions about the consequences of one's actions quietly raised, and a couple episodes that will punch your feelings in the face.) The Dragonlance comparison is mostly in the aforementioned RPG basis, where everyone's got a clearly defined character class and the cast has been built as a balanced party of archetypes. You've got Tristepin/Percedal (depending on the language) the book-dumb-but-heroism-savvy Iop (warrior) swordsman, Ruel the wise and greedy Enutrof (treasure hunter) mentor, Amalia the naive and high-strung Sadida (plant wizard) princess, Evangeline the tomboyish and level-headed Cra (archer) bodyguard, and Yugo the cheerful and bighearted Eliotrope (portal wizard, among other things) child with an ancient destiny. (Yes, all the character classes in the game are either brand names or French words spelled backwards. The big bad for the first season is a Xelor. Three guesses what his specialty is.) And the "cheerful and bighearted child with an ancient destiny" bit is where the Avatar comparison starts to come in, because this is the story of a little boy on a quest to learn to use his abilities and restore harmony to the world with the help of his not-much-older friends. Yugo and Aang would be BFFs in a heartbeat if they met, and they both come from stories where your BFFs are the thing that's going to save the world. Visually, I don't have a lot to compare it to. The best I can offer to show off some of the animation style and the wide range of character designs is Youtube videos, and this is the best one a quick search turned up for showing off the characters and the world without spoiling the hell out of certain later developments.