film noire

I loved every minute of the tournament - Ken's hosting, the camaraderie of the contestants, the hugs and handshakes, the upbeat mood of the audience - it all felt so lighthearted, but also important to the players. A pleasure to watch.

Yes. And in the end, she's the wife waiting in the car; a wife looking for a way to make herself fit. What a brutal ending for Shiv, who always thought she mattered.

I got a million questions! Here's two: How is Jason and Brynn's relationship these days? And when was their last father-daughter outing?

Couple of weeks ago, Skinny Girl graced us with yet another one of her mighty insights - this time re: eating disorders (while clutching a prop ice cream carton as an accessory). In Bethenny Frankel's world, only tweenagers are susceptible to pressure to have "perfect" bodies, not middle-aged women; "Bethenny Frankel doesn’t believe Gwyneth Paltrow can promote disordered eating with a “middle-aged mom” audience. “When people are talking about eating disorders … her base isn’t tweens,” Frankel, 52, said while holding a carton of ice cream she promised to eat “soon.” https://pagesix.com/2023/03/17/bethenny-frankel-denies-gwyneth-paltrow-promotes-disordered-eating/ She's obviously kissing Paltrow's ass (in hopes of getting her on the podcast, probably) but what a fucking stupid thing to say - esp. since she claimed, back in the day, to have had food issues herself (while insisting that's over, and she "never diets or exercises to lose weight" now. Sure, Jan).

Amen! I'm beyond bummed it's going on this long. (I made an extremely childish and very snotty noise when I saw the schedule - I'm showing way less maturity than these contestants did as teenagers, back in the day ; )

Me, too. She was a delight. But if Patty had to go, at least she was beaten by somebody with an accent suitable to Pemberley ; )

That was such a fun win. A personable contestant + she (almost) bet it all, baby! +unexpected win = me and mr film noire spontaneously applauding. Go, Patti, Go!

I take your point, but in the end, I think they're very different couples - Edward gave up being King, Harry gave up being the spare (and in the system he believes contributed to the emotional alienation and death of his mother). As well, Edward and Wallis frittered away their lives; unlike Harry and Meghan, they had no drive to do good in the world, no children to love, and unsavoury political leanings (Nazism). They were a couple without family, children, or valuable work to be done together. A lifetime of cocktails and gossip and golf. @Welshman in Ca I take Meghan & Harry at their word that remaining in that institution was not a safe option for them - and given that Diana was also driven to the brink of suicide while living within the same institution, I did not find Meghan's despair, or the danger it posed to her life, at all hard to accept. I wonder if either M & H will eventually turn up on The View, to promote any of their current projects? (It would have to be on a non-Ana day ; )

They were extraordinary - and they tipped their hat to (enter the ladies!) Eleanor Powell as one of the most gifted dancers ever: “Eleanor Powell was one of the very greatest, period, bar none,” said Fayard Nicholas of the Nicholas Brothers dance team, who understood greatness. “Not one of the greatest woman—one of the greatest, period.” Dynamic and versatile, Powell danced with a melodist’s sensitivity to the essential musicality of tap. “She was a musician,” Nicholas said, using the word tap dancers tend to reserve for their highest praise. https://newrepublic.com/article/110438/remembering-eleanor-powell-the-dancer-too-good-fred-astaire I'm enjoying Cris's run - his skill aside (a big aside!) I like the smile that fleetingly appears when Ken announces his running total at the end of the game (his serious face briefly dissolves into a delighted grin - as if Cris can't help himself upon hearing the amount - then returns to neutral).

Because remaining was not possible - which tells me exactly how unbearable that life must have been, since defending against death threats as private citizens felt safer than remaining in that world.

I think the biggest financial driver is the exorbitant cost of protection, 24 hours a day. There are still ongoing violent threats against Meghan, Harry and the children - and Harry (as recently as 2018, when they were newlyweds) faced such dire threats from the Taliban, the country residence he and Meghan shared was turned into a fortress to defend against Islamic terrorism: "While the couple are already well protected at their normal home at Kensington Palace, their countryside home has been transformed into a fortress, with the same level of anti-terrorist security provided at Buckingham Palace and that protects UK Prime Minister Theresa May and spy bases. Motion sensors and cameras are said to have been strategically placed on the property in a bid to catch any intruders. It has also been included on a list of properties where members of the public risk being jailed for six months if they are found trespassing. Villagers near the country pad in Cotswolds, in south central England, have reportedly been stopped and questioned by heavily-armed, specially trained officers. They are believed to patrol the estate on foot and in unmarked 4WDs." https://punchng.com/meghan-markle-prince-harry-heavily-guarded-amidst-taliban-threat/ The estimates I've seen are 2 - 3 million a year, minimum, so the amount you need to earn, pre-tax, to cover that post-tax cost is pretty high. Harry inherited 10 million from Diana on his 25th birthday (presumably that's grown well over time) but even that sum - princely in an ordinary life - is nowhere near enough to fund 24 hour a day protection for a family of four, over the next forty years of their lives. They need to make a lot of money just to stay safe.

It wasn't hearsay or gossip. It was openly posted on Twitter. A famous BBC Broadcaster (Danny Baker) posted a picture of a chimp with the caption "Royal Baby Leaves Hospital." It's beyond frustrating nobody on The View seemed to have any real clue as to why Meghan and Harry refuse to shut up about the impact of racism on their lives - I'm a white woman from Canada, and it's no mystery to me - the former British counterterrorism police chief stated just this week that the threats against Meghan were horrifying (kidnapping, dismemberment, gang rape) and that some threats were so severe, people were prosecuted. (Hey, Ana? Think those violent racist threats are part of why Meghan and Harry keep talking about, you know, violent racist threats?) Sunny mentioned William's godmother (who was forced to resign her position at Court this week due to her foul & bigoted treatment of a Black woman) but not that this awful woman was also put in charge of ushering Meghan into royal life (yet another strong motivation to keep M & H on the topic of handling racism in the palace! And since the royals are exempt from British law re: equal employment, and are allowed to discriminate based on race and sex when hiring, I'm guessing that's one more part of 'royal life' M & H find horrifying, and will hopefully dicuss in the Netflix doc). And even though I usually find Joy entertaining, she annoyed me in her wrap-up of the segment (jesus, woman - yes, many people actually do care about the royals, esp. any person of colour living in Britain or the Commonwealth - so stop acting as if they're some obscure group living on the fringes of civilization that only a handful of people care about).

I'm surprised Jenna Lyons is joining RHONY - she's in her mid-fifties, crazy accomplished, rolling in dough, and has no need for this shit show - plus, she has a genuinely (as in not-Carole) offbeat sensibility that isn't the standard go-to when casting RHoNY. She had an interesting path to her career, imo - she was bullied as a kid (she has incontinentia pigmenti, a genetic disorder which scarred her skin, made her hair fall out in patches and caused her teeth to be malformed) and ended up as the woman who was labeled (when leading J Crew) as "the woman who dresses America". I'll watch the first episode if only in hopes of seeing more of her apartment (dear god, the munny, hunny: love or hate her design style, her home screams casually-worn-wealth curated with an eye for what she loves, not what will impress others). Pandemic tour (2020) here:

Exactly - and overall, I'm sure phones have had an impact as 'delivery systems' for what used to be pushed by fashion magazines/television/movies/music videos (I think the updated version of Saving Ophelia addresses phones) but it's not The One Big Truth I Discovered! dude thought it was. There's years of research showing that same dynamic, pre-phones.

RE: phones/2012: Girls have long suffered horrific turnarounds at near-puberty. Back in 1994, "Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Lives of Teenage Girls" noted the sudden onset of eating disoders, body dysmorphia, depression, etc in girls turning that age (but that book was written by some chick doctor of philosophy - who literally got there twenty-five years before the dude mansplaining a topic wth decades of research already in place, pre-2012 - so of course, Maher don't give a shit.) RE: Maher's use of a cheap pull-quote to turn Barbara Fried's philosophically-minded essay into a witless anti-responsiblity tract: No surprise there (given how lazy-minded Maher has become, his once-sharp insights dulled by anti-woke-rage and inordinate self-satisfaction) but the essay actually deals with failed mass incarceration policies in the U.S., and how differently people are treated in the justice system based on their circumstances (so of course, Maher don't give a shit about that, either - let the little people rot in jail under "three strikes out"). Here's a quote that makes her core position clear VS the crap Maher peddled last night: "There are tools of social control that are directed specifically at harm reduction. The point of such tools is not to coddle criminals, or to deny their accountability or volitional capacities. It is to reduce future harm at a tolerable cost to all of us, wrongdoers included, by influencing wrongdoers’ future choices through rehabilitation, more carefully calibrated deterrence, and, when necessary, isolation from society." And in this Fried quote, I'm hard-pressed to differentiate between Fried's words, and dozens of Maher's drug rants over the years: "Our schools are broken, a new generation of kids has been lost, our prisons are crammed with petty offenders whose lives we have ruined in the name of a war on drugs that has been a total failure." It's a festival of petard-hoisting! Maher mocked a legal scholar calling for harm reduction in drug laws back in 2013 - one of his longest standing pet causes - proving himself to be completely out of touch with even his own agenda (but of course, Maher don't give a shit about that, either: he'll just get legally stoned, courtesy of legal minds like Fried arguing in defense of harm reduction laws). Fried's full article here: https://www.bostonreview.net/forum/barbara-fried-beyond-blame-moral-responsibility-philosophy-law/

@hoodooznoodooz - Briny Girl? WTF? (Martini olives for Sonja's cheater brand booze?) Justia shows the trademark lapsed in July of 2021 - wonder what happened last summer to make Frankel drop the trademark?

...only because she's had Brynnygirl trademarked for years ; )

Mileage varies & all that good stuff, but I see nothing paternal in that photo, and I don't think most emotionally healthy fathers would hold their daughters like that - head bent close like a lover, arm and hand wrapped around her waist in a possessive gesture, his body leaning into her - none of that says "Dad" to me.

Frankelstein trying to stay relevant by picking on Meghan Markle (yet again - her bizarre obsession with Markle feels so toxic): "Bethenny Frankel has lashed out at Meghan Markle and Prince Harry for holding hands at the queen's funeral..."Grow up. Keep your hands to your f***** selves at a royal funeral. Grow up." This is not the first time Frankel has lashed out at Meghan.. "I think she's sanctimonious and I think there's this subtext of elevation. She's up there, we're down here." https://www.newsweek.com/bethenny-frankel-lashes-out-meghan-markle-funeral-hand-holding-1747964 "She's up there, we're down here"? She's not Kelly, Bethenny. Get a fucking grip. September's attack: “She is a terrible, terrible businessperson, strategist — she’s playing checkers, not chess — because she is overplaying her hand, and she is painting herself into a corner, becoming a woman without a country....I remember talking about this before the Oprah interview and getting death threats and losing major deals and having many A-list people text me saying that they agree with me secretly,” Frankel said, “but then friends of hers text me, ‘Please take down what you said.'” https://pagesix.com/2022/09/07/bethenny-frankel-calls-meghan-markle-terrible-businessperson/ Hmm. By " A-list people" does Frankelstein mean: 1) A-listers like Tom Hanks, Ryan Gosling, Tom Cruise, and the wonderful Emmas (Stone & Thompson) frantically texting Bethenny thumbs-up emojis? Or 2) "A-list" = two texts from former assistants to the A-(tlanta Housewives) list? .

I rolled my eyes when Kyle said they were like sisters to her (really? Cuz you were calling them "trained assassins" only moments before, so unless you've been blooded into a rarefied circle of female ninja killers, the phrase "trained assassins" is not synonymous with "just like sisters to me"). I agree. I wonder if Kyle watching Kim/Kathy being attacked and shamed alleviates Kyle's constant anxiety; some illogical, fucked-up echo of the dysfunctional mothering and emotional ghost of Big Kathy (as long as one or both of her sisters are being shamed and criticized, then Big Kathy has her target and Kyle can be the Good One, or at least the slinking away one). Big Kathy (btw, could she have a more motherfucking mob name?) may be dead, but that doesn't mean the family dynamic she created has been laid to rest. (Please feel free to read/hear my non-expert psych assessment delivered in a menacing Rinna-whisper ; )

I think Kathy's reaction to Rinna was a housewives master class in how to shut down a shit-stirring sociopath: Disarm (apologize fully) stay calm (don't take the bait) offer an insight about Rinna's slimy character (just to let Rinna know you could get your dukes up, if you had a mind to) and then repeat the cycle with every sick, sour-faced escalation and provocation Rinna provided. Kathy not only "owned it", she owned Rinna. Brava. And screw Rinna being "shook" at whatever the-loving-fuck Kathy Hilton said - Rinna broke a glass and threw it at Kim Richards like a prison bitch waving a shank, so spare us the pretense of ladylike vapours. We all know Rinna has no ability to feel anything but an endless narcissistic craving for attention - jonesing like a junkie for camera time, willing to hurt and harm and even destroy a sisterly relationship, if necessary - so her having the scaredy sads is not on the fucking table. And Rinna's self-serving story doesn't paint her in the light she thinks it does (as this dear little thing quivering with fear, wandering her room, calling out for rescue - "Mama? Mama? Is that sparrow in the winter sky I see you?") If she genuinely believed Kathy was having a psychotic break, why did Rinna not immediately demand mental health professionals be called to the scene to stop Kathy from possibly harming herself? Because if Kathy Hilton was anywhere near as far gone as Rinna claims - as mad as Rochester's wife in the attic in "Jane Eyre", as crazy as Cujo the rabid dog, as loony as Lisa Rinna trying to sell us this shit - Rinna callously refusing to ensure Kathy got the emergency help she needed was the epitome of being...black-hearted. So enraging. Kyle truly is an awful human being. Whatever the dysfunctional crap between them, Kyle staying silent and allowing Rinna to savage Kathy like a human chew toy (including all but mocking Kathy for crying about a friend dying of cancer) was beyond disgusting. Kathy saved the day by staying calm and completely thwarting Rinna, but Kyle should be ashamed of herself for allowing that attack on her sister to go unchallenged.

Right - and Kathy was supportive of Kyle's movie - she went to the costume party premiere, set up that "prank" (Kyle facing a knife-wielding Myers clone, a filmed bit that gave Kyle one more reason to talk about her movie at the reunion) and she supported Kyle on social media - yet Kyle can't discreetly take Rinna's aside and hiss "Stop taunting my sister and buy a shot of her god damn motherfucking tequila, you bone bag of hate!" (Or something like that ; ) Taking a minute to promote her sister's booze, at a party hosted by Kyle herself - this is a road too far for Kyle? A woman who has, like clockwork, done more manipulative and course-correcting things in nearly episode of this show? I think Kyle was fine with Rinna pissing on Kathy, and (as sisters tend to do) Kathy knew that. I don't think people blindly criticize Kyle: she's fallen long and hard by her own hand, and along with that comes little trust as to her motives. I've been posting & reading (and laughing!) here since the dinosaurs roamed, and I remember Kyle getting a lot of positive reaction back in the day (especially in relation to her friendship with LVP, which was fun and quirky and entertaining, and seemed genuine). But Kyle's game playing and backstabbing chipped away at viewer good will, imo, and when Kyle blew off LVP mourning her brother's death, I think a lot viewers took it as a wake-up call. And of course, the embracing of Brandi as a "truth-teller" just to sabotage and destroy Denise. And now her embrace of Erika, a cruel grifter obsessed with nothing but keeping every last thing illegally bought for her, using money stolen from victims Erika either ignores or attacks. Birds of a feather and all that (no disrespect meant to Lois!) I wonder if part of why Erika didn't want the other women in the store had to do with her working Diana like a pimp, and not just the usual trash-bitch behaviour we've seen from Erika. The other women entering the group would've changed the energy and focus, and ruined Erika's whole "I'm a refugee! Buy me a gift to cheer me up!" game with Diana.

I think the interaction was more than that, something that spoke to Kyle's real character. She takes, never gives back, and forever plays the martyr, hypocrisy the one constant. I think if the roles had been reversed and Kathy had done the same thing to Kyle, the world would've been treated to a Defcon 10 meltdown from Mrs. Umansky. She'd be all sweaty-faced and pissed off, eyes wild and indignant - like one of LVP's miniature ponies spotting Brandi approaching the front door of the pink palace - her whole demeanour as broken as if she survived an event as horrific as those endured by Erika's victims. And then that scratchy Kyle voice would roll out ("I was so - scratchy- hurt that Kathy-scratchy- did that. She knows how much this tequila means to me and Mau-scratchy-ricio and my family!") It's ego-driven and self-serving and after so many years of her bullshit, I have no patience left. You get what you give. YES. This is the Crystal I've been waiting for! (But poor Dorit: you could see her brain puzzling through the strange things coming out of Crystal's mouth: "Moral Compass? Is that a store in Gstadt I don't know about? Do they make more than thirty versions of every item? Why have I never heard of this brand?") Brief moment that I loved: Sutton touching the brim of her hat - like a cowboy to a determined schoolmarm - and off Crystal went, armed for bear.

I agree no good came of colonization, but Sunny should be able to understand why people can have a profound attachment to a problematic institution, since she belongs to one with a long history of thieving, raping, land-grabbing and colonizing: The Catholic Church. (I say that as someone raised Catholic.) And the crimes continue today; nuns raped by priests forced to undergo abortions, the recently discovered mass graves of First Nations residential schoolchildren, and of course, the endless sex crimes; the endless brutal pedophilia, the perps protected by the Church herself. And yet, even with that evil history, I doubt Sunny would defend someone tweeting: "I heard the chief prelate of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May his pain be excruciating.” I found it such a frustrating segment - there's an interesting discussion to be had about what the monarchy needs to do moving forward, but this was not it. eta to make it shorter!

In what demented universe did the sick fucks editing this episode think we'd find this brutal, bullying footage anything but revolting? It was like watching rat fuck prison guards attack an innocent prisoner & leave her for dead. Speaking of rat fucks: Remember when Rinna posted her rabid attack on female posters criticizing her back in 2016 (“The haters/trolls are all fat hoarders with 50 cats with no teeth, and they couldn’t find their vagina if they tried.") and then claimed it was her father's death that made her rage-post? "...Lisa Rinna launched into excuse mode likely hoping to thwart the expected fallout...Rinna posted a photo of her father and captioned it, “Missing my Dad. It’s been 13 weeks since his passing. I’m still in the anger stage of grief I think." https://allaboutthetea.com/2016/04/17/lisa-rinna-her-fat-shaming/ Expect a similar defense in the wake of this episode ("Why are you attacking me for not protesting Diana calling Sutton a c***? My mother - who had a c***! - just died and I am rage-grieving!") It's beyond toxic watching the mother of two young women agree (via silent assent) with hate speech against women, but what else can you expect from someone who brags about her greatest literary achievement: teaching her young teenagers how to give blow jobs. (Nothing says "Proud Mama Bear" like learnin' your daughters how to shove both balls into their mouths like seasoned hookers!) Speaking of hookers: after watching Diana use her brother's horrific murder due to ethnic cleansing to gain some kind of upper moral hand over Sutton, I'm not surprised this is where she ended up: a repugnant, inhumane lizard-beast constantly licking her lips, gleefully degrading another woman ("Does she have any feelings?") while accusing Sutton of lying about her miscarriages (and after pretending to accept a heartfelt apology from the woman). Who's the real See Ya Next Tuesday, Diana? It ain't Sutton, you fucking tool. Speaking of tools: Do you keep that ever-ready pot-stirrer up your ass, Kyle? Because everything you did tonight smelled like shit. Speaking of shit: fuck you, Erika. I can't wait until your loathesome, sneering face is slapped into compliance by Fate, or Karma, or a great lawyer (and make no mistake: one of them's coming for you, Cunty). eta: As always, lovely Garcelle is the friggin' Dalai Lama of this crap-fest and if she'd not been there, that whole disgusting & disturbing attack on Sutton would've gone down without a single protest. What is wrong with these people?