amarante

I guess I wasn't clear in my original post. I didn't understand why Nema's mother was so secretive about the reasons for separating the siblings. Acknowledge it and move on because the secrecy is far worse for the dynamics of the family than whatever the reason was - especially since separating siblings by gender while psychologically harmful was not completely out of the question when it was done. And in terms of forgiving one's parents, at some point one has to let go of whatever grudges one has unless one's parents were completely outside the norm of just garden variety neurotic parenting. Obviously this can be easier said than done but for one's sanity, one has to make peace with it or wind up like my aunt who was still nurturing grudges against my grandmother when my aunt was in her sixties. My grandmother was an immigrant and so enabling her children to survive and move into middle class was a supreme achievement - i.e. go to college and become relatively affluent.

I am not sure what the mystery was regarding Nema's childhood. It is not (or was not) uncommon for parents - especially in traditional cultures - to divide children between mother and father based on gender. While it is not the best psychologically in terms of the best interests of the children - it certainly shouldn't be treated as something mysterious. What is mysterious is why the parents lived on opposite coasts preventing the children from having normal split custody but living with the sibling. It doesn't seem as though there were objective reasons for this - job or other family etc. to keep the parents on different coasts. For me, it seemed the obvious issue and - at least in terms of the portions of the letter read - Nema's mother didn't address that at all. Almost everyone carries some baggage from childhood. Only a child still thinks of their parents as some type of infallible gods. Most people within the range of normal try to parent as best they can. This is especially true if one's parents were relatively young - I remember my friend discussing how she *forgave* her parents when realized that they were just 22 and trying to figure out the world as much as they could - and how she at 22 was trying to figure out the world the best that she could.

How else would Mike pay for it? Like all of these trips, the romantic getaway was just an excuse for them to go somewhere all expenses paid by BRAVO. Bravo wants the cast members all together - heavily liquored up - because there are almost guaranteed brawls and *drama* Given that the only possible reason she is seeing Mike is to be on a reality television show, I think she would have been pissed if she had been left behind like Adam and Tommy generally are.

Very unlikely for a number of reasons. MJ is a public figure so there is a higher threshold than for private people. Truth is an absolute defense for any libel/slander action. I am assuming that the only potentially defamatory statement was that she had TEN abortions. Did she have ten? Did she have more than one or two? Clearly she had more than one abortion. What are the damages to her reputation? It's not as if she is going to lose income from this or that she is a leading proponent in the Pro-Life movement who has been unmasked. Cast mates can't sue each other so the issue is moot in terms of a suit against Reza. FWIW - slander is spoken defamation and libel is when the defamation is published - e.g. written or broadcast or otherwise disseminated in a "firm" type of way. Historically it was assumed that slander would have a limited audience since it was oral versus defamatory statements that are "published" and therefore more widely disseminated as well as lasting more than a spoken word. In this case, if Reza had merely screamed at MJ at a private party it would be slander (if anything) but since it was recorded and broadcast, it is libel (if anything).

As others have posted, there is no expectation of privacy between two friends. If you don't want something winding up in the hands of others, DO NOT PUT IT ON PAPER or email or any form of social media. I treat everything in terms of whether I would want it be "discovered" and used in some form of legal proceedings or read by an employer or otherwise used against me. I can't even conceive of actually emailing or creating a paper trail of some kind to cast members of a reality show in which they have all turned against each other at some point and producing "receipts" is now considered to be an essential part of the drama. My point exactly. I have no moral issues regarding abortion but I do have issues with the stupidity of adult women using it as a form of birth control especially when these are relatively affluent women with access to medical care who would have no problems finding and affording reliable forms of birth control.

I am completely pro choice and accidents happen, but how in the world do adult women living in Los Angeles with money for appropriate medical care have multiple abortions. One unplanned pregnancy is understandable but after that, most women I know make sure they are using a reliable form of birth control.

My father died of old age at 99. He was essentially fine except for the last two years when he required a full time helper and was in and out of hospitals because he had congestive heart failure and it was a balance in terms of the heart and the kidneys. I expect somewhat like Nonna he didn't have a fatal disease like cancer but his body was breaking down. He recovered from breast cancer when he was 93 - had a mastectomy. He wasn't afraid of dying - or more accurately he wasn't afraid of being dead but he was afraid of suffering pain. I understand what you are saying because I didn't wish that he would die but I also dreaded phone calls signaling he was back in the hospital or needed yet another "procedure" like draining the lungs because of fluid accumulation. When he finally died - relatively quickly after yet another hospitalization I was relieved because I had spent the last two years mourning the "death" of my father. My mother died suddenly after a vacation and a long plane trip when she was 80 and that death was much more difficult for me to process since it was completely unexpected since she was a relatively healthy 80 year old -not at all like Nonna who was an *old* 76 I would have to suspect he died of Covid19 complications given the timing and that he is in New Jersey. Tre's household included a lot of people with active social lives (Tre and the girls) who were much more likely to be infectious than people who had more limited social activity. Ironically seniors living by themselves or with their spouses are probably safer so long as they started self isolating a few weeks ago when it was clear what was happening. Tre genuinely loved her parents and so I respect the genuine grief she is feeling.

The commute for the Chicago duo was a complete non-issue. Surprise surprise that he *learned* he could do his job completely remotely from home. I know nothing about Chicago neighborhoods but I fast forwarded and knew they would going to buy house number two. Tampa Mama's boy - are there really no better alternatives in a HH's wish list? The space for the pool table was way too small as you could actually use a cue stick from two sides of the table. But painted tile and laminate in the kitchen and bathroom - and cheaply painted kitchen cabinets - that would be a completely non-starter.

I must admit the timelines now have me confused. I thought that Randall actually went to Howard - did he actually wind up going local to stay close to his mother. For some reason I remember the initial meeting with Beth seemed to be at a gathering with black freshmen versus one in which Randall and Beth were one of few POC. Also, since you seem to know the anthropological nuances of black frats. Is Randall actually a member of a lightly disguised black frat such that it would be recognizable even with a slight name tweak? And what if any significance does that Greek affiliation have for his character?

I don't find her problematic as she is generally dealing with idiots with no conception of the kind of compromises necessary in a European metropolitan area. The Dutch real estate seems to be particularly problematic - at least to me. Either you live in the suburbs or you are going to be living in a very narrow home with steep stairs. Homes will often have odd angles and cut off ceilings because it's the nature of the housing stock. At least in other European cities the homes seem more like standard urban apartments versus the kind of suburban homes many of the HHI are used to. It could be that I am more familiar with these kinds of compromises in living but I find Amsterdam units to be particularly unappealing to me - while I can live with one bathroom, I don't think I could deal with a three story apartment with one bathroom reached by narrow steep stairs.

Raymond Chandler's famous quote regarding the Santa Ana winds. “There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.”

I would imagine it was a marked spot indicating where people were supposed to stand. There was a similar marked floor spot where Randy was supposed to stand. All television productions have markings so the cameras know where to shoot.

He was the only designer that was at all exhibiting enough creativity so that it could theoretically be channeled into a commercially successful line. Presumably puffer coats aren't all he would produce as he did some standout designs. He had the tie dye dress with simple lines that was infinitely more interesting than Nancy's runway dresses that were theoretically the same basic sheath silhouette. Hopefully he isn't a one trick pony but time will only tell. At any rate, based on his competition, he was the only designer who would seem to have a shot at actually achieving any kind of success. There was a designer from an early season - was her name Chloe? - who has a fairly successful clothing store based on her designs and I would think Victoria could do that or she could probably get a job as an in-house anonymous designer for any one of the brands that do commercial clothing for the masses or for the bridge line price points. Sergio did beautiful clothing but should have been born into a time when Hattie Carnegie reigned supreme for that crowd.

Geoffrey had a design aesthetic that could be translated into more commercial stuff. He was the only one that was showing clothing that wasn’t wildly derivative. I think one of the judges actually stated that he had ideas which could be used for the actual line. That is very much how a lot of runway fashion works as the runway stuff isn’t necessarily wearable as shown but the DNA will run through the more commercial mass produced clothing. Nine of the other designers showed any kind of originality that could be translated in that manner and Geoffrey would Probably benefit most from the mentor ship. Nancy’s clothing was pretty uninteresting stripped of the fabric choices and without being ageist, why waste helping to help a designer launch when the designer is realistically at retirement age. Sergio does beautiful clothing without fringes but he seems to be more suited to an atelier where he designs for his ladies who lunch. Victoria’s designs were not attractive and he ones that were like the simple pink dress or coat were not particularly innovative.

Painting cabinets is a cheap flipper fix. If the wood cabinets are in good shape they are 100% more durable than a paint job. A factory paint job is much more durable than paint done on older cabinets and will start chipping in a shorter time versus the original wood stain will still be in good shape even if not trendy. Last night’s episode made no sense either economically or functionally. There was only $20,000 additional even with cost of renovations being artificially low. And how are they getting four decent appliances for $2000. The actual renovation was pretty bad as well. There was no longer any place at all for a television so new homeowner will have to redo the wall unit. And there didn’t seem to be any dining area at all except for the bar they built.

I am not understanding why anyone would want to live in a tiny home. A tiny home is not the same as a small modest home. There are a lot of smaller homes built for workers in the early part of the 20th century that are much more livable than the tiny homes. Row homes; the ubiquitous two bedroom bungalows built for the railroad workers in Los Angeles; the shotgun homes in the South - they are all modest but are more gracious than having a fold down bed in a tiny kitchen. I don't even understand it as an investment so one can *own* one's home. It's a depreciating asset just as a car is.

I think it was done deliberately because she and her entourage were so unpleasant. I knew it was the right color. She certainly wasn't gracious when she had to acknowledge her stupidity. I was surprised that Gok didn't handle the little woman because it seemed (at least to me) that she was the perfect candidate for Gok doing one of his custom jobs. I also was wondering about how the proportions of the actual dress would look like when finished since there would be so little skirt between the waist and the decorative motif at the end of the dress/train.

It’s vocal fry and it’s a deliberate affectation among a certain type of woman so feel free to hate it without guilt.

I just saw the Gandia(? spelling) episode from Spain. I am genuinely confused by people who move to a foreign country with limited resources and buy a home instead of renting. In this episode, their budget was $100,000 but there have been other episodes in which it is clear that the have limited resources. I can't imagine moving ANYWHERE and buying a home immediately if I had limited assets. I would feel much safer renting for a bit and having a nest egg in the bank for economic contingencies.

I am not sure if these are all Dateline episodes but I seem to have watched a lot of episodes in which the wife *lures* husband to a deserted road where her lover shoots the husband and the wife then attempts to claim that a mysterious stranger - who just happened to be on this dark deserted road - randomly decided to kill the husband. Extra bonus points for claiming that the attacker was black because the wives are all white Southern women - or at least that seems to be the ones I remember. Almost immediately the police find out the wife had a lover - in several the affair is so blatant that the car/truck has been spotted numerous times at the wife's home while husband is away. Not sure whether cheating wives are really that stupid or it's just that the smarter ones get away with murder. After all, there have been a few Dateline cases in which the wife is only discovered with the death of the second or even third husband (or family member). Not that husbands don't also kill their wives - and often in blatantly obviously ways. There was one in which the wife was somehow lured to a dead end road and shot by a woman and it only started to be untangled by police because some boys shooting snakes happened to see the murderess.

All I can say is Jennifer went from a natural beauty to the grotesque poster child for too much plastic surgery. I don't understand how this *look* became the aspirational aesthetic for a certain category of women. I guess Kim Kardashian is the poster child for this kind of look. Not that I aspire to look like KK but it certainly does illustrate the difference between the really excellent plastic surgery KK has had done and the kind of stuff done by less talented practitioners. While her husband might not have actually done Jennifer's face, he certainly would have been the one who offered his *vision* for what the final result should be. KK certainly looks plastic but her obviously artificially enlarged lips don't look like a baboon's anus.

The English Say Yes is equivalent to the Great British Bake Off. The Great British Bake Off has no villains - no outlandish characters vying for screen time. The competitors are there to bake their little hearts off for the honor of winning.

Most definitely purchased from a neighborhood bag lady and not from Canal Street. It's way easier to order up exactly what you want rather than have to find a good supplier on Canal Street. The Chinese replicas from good sources are virtually indistinguishable from the authentic stuff - don't ask me how I know :-). And I know many truly wealthy women who buy and carry them with no one the wiser.

No doubt he was a sociopath. But there have been quite a number of sociopathic murderers who give interviews claiming their innocence. If I don't know the disposition of the case, I try to determine status based on the background and how the *perp* is shot. I think I have seen this saga done on several shows. I don't understand how an insurance company pays out a large policy when the policy was taken out only weeks before the "accident". And it seems as though the insurance amount were disproportionate to the actual economic "value" of the wife and son. Not that I am placing a dollar amount on a wife, husband and father but it seemed as though the wife and the son were not earning a lot and most people in those economic brackets don't spring for life insurance.

I always roll my eyes when people buying relatively expensive homes bitch about cleaning or lawn maintenance or maintenance in general. In my experience people generally have at least a cleaning person to come in and they hire lawn care people for the lawn. I might of course know exceptionally lazy people but at a certain income level - especially if both people work - time is money and people are paid to do things because it makes more sense to pay someone else to clean your toilets or mop your floors rather than spend your limited time on the weekend or after dragging home from a long day in the office doing it. It is also not my experience that working people who aren't employed in the trades do it yourself on full scale bath or kitchen renovations. They hire people. On the other hand, whenever a HH mentions that they are involved in construction or any other kind of trade, they are going to pick a home that needs renovation just as surely as any home that has been "abandoned" in mid-renovation is actually the home on which the HH have already started to renovate.