FoundTime

I admit I did! Found this interesting article: This Is The Real Case That Inspired Girl In The Basement You couldn't make this stuff up. No one would believe it. At one point it reminded me of the book (and movie) Room...and then it just kept going 😲

I got a distinct vibe that this was somewhat routine for her: "Wilford's going to do something horrible and sadistic again, time to go shut the door and put on the soothing music and the headphones." I appreciate everyone's explanations here of what happened with Alex and the razor blade. For a while I was wondering if she was purposefully going to be leaving a trail of blood from the first class dining car back to Big Alice. Guess I gave her a little too much credit.

Water is back for me, though we're still under a boil order until the results of our city tests come back from the state (expected late Sunday). Had my first hot food and drink since last Sunday and am looking forward to washing my hair within the hour. MSNBC appears to still be pursuing how everything went wrong and how to fix it and I remain appreciative of them continuing to do their job ☺

Wanted to weigh in from balmy Houston, Texas (hey, it's 47 degrees today) to express my appreciation for Rachel's (and all of MSNBC's, really) coverage of our frozen state. I was especially gratified to see our county executive, Lina Hidalgo, on last night's show. She is a force to be reckoned with and has a great personal story, having come here as a child from Colombia, with her parents. She's 29 years old and has exhibited more leadership and compassion in the two years since she was elected, through any number of local crises, not to mention the pandemic and now this, than all our state-level officials put together. (Shoutout too to our excellent mayor, Sylvester Turner, who appeared on Chris Hayes' show last night, another leader who knows how to lead.) Personally, I lost power sometime before 6:30 a.m. February 15 and got it back at 10:26 a.m. February 17. My indoor temperature got to 42 degrees. I was able to boil a few batches of water on the 17th but am using the last of that today and haven't had running water since the 18th. I've been filling a pail with water from the apartment complex swimming pool for flushing purposes. We are under a boil-water advisory until at least Monday the 22nd to protect against possible bacterial growth due to low water pressure, but like many, I have no water to boil! We've had two deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning, ten from hypothermia, and who knows how many people with broken water pipes in their homes to add to the misery. It's hard to believe this is life in the fourth largest city in the country, in the third millennium. Rachel and the MSNBC team are doing excellent reporting on this situation and calling to account all of the many negligent persons and systems. This Houstonian is grateful.

Enjoyed this episode but I found myself obsessing over where the grandparents' bedroom and bathroom were. I couldn't tell if there were more rooms on the second floor that we just didn't see, or if those spaces were downstairs in the main family living area. Just thought that was an odd thing to omit, since those are rooms one uses every day. I know not all shows feature a bed/bath makeover, but at least it usually seems clear that those spaces exist in the structure. Might be just me ☺ Feel free to tell me to get over it 🙃 I will say that as a person who would love to have a proper library, I also couldn’t tell if there was really enough light in there to read by. I noticed one of those big Japanese-style lights near the couch, but it didn't look as though it would be very bright. The art studio was to die for, though, and they practically worked miracles with the kitchen. And extra credit for pronouncing "Carnegie" correctly, with the accent on the second syllable.

Fun fact: Rafe Spall, who plays Nick Bailey, is the son of Timothy Spall, who played Peter Pettigrew/Wormtail in the Harry Potter movies. I'm enjoying this. I had DVRd the first two episodes, which I watched back-to-back Sunday night, and I was all in for last night's ep. I just happened to catch an ad somewhere on the teevee for the series, which is the only way I knew about it. That's how I "found" Line of Duty too.

I half expected to see the red BREAKING NEWS chyron when they put up that she was snowed in 😅

I swear that man looks ten years younger 🙃

This might be the point at which I stop watching this show. Y'know, self-care and all that 😉 I'll be sure to get the scoop here afterwards!

Masterful too to tie it to recent events and draw a bright line between disregard for representative small-d democracy (especially when it involves the voices of Black people) writ on a local and now national level.

I call total shenanigans on PB Forever Home (which has been a little feel-good oasis for me in pandemic times). When HGTV started running ads for the new season they promised new episodes through February. Now they are moving it exclusively to Discovery "+". I am so mad I could spit. I can do without watching Joanna Gaines cook (from the commercials I've seen, even she doesn't seem too into it), but to move new episodes of shows that have historically aired on HGTV is not cool.

I always save the "Festive" episode of GBBS for New Year's Day, and this sure got 2021 off to a hilarious start. I basically giggled my way through the whole thing. Have watched a couple of episodes of Derry Girls and that probably helped but it was in no way a requirement. (I'm going to recommend it to a friend who isn't all that into DG, just 'cause it's such a darn silly ep of GBBS.) It did strike me too as a cross between GBBS and Nailed It (which I watched one episode of and didn't really enjoy -- but I'll give it another chance) though I think this was helped immensely by the bakers all being comic performers who know how to bring the funny. And the natural tension between Irish and English culture went a long way too (even though Derry/N. Ireland is part of the UK) .

Or is it like Eddie Izzard's bit about how the movie Speed should have been La Vitesse in France but instead was just {French accent} Speed? ☺

I would watch The Stephen and Evvie Show all day, every day ❤

Hanging my head right there with you, TexasGal. I think we get inured to Paxton -- he's just part of the background noise here -- so it was helpful (in a weird way) to get Rachel's 30,000-foot perspective. Happy Safe Harbor Day, everybody! (like anyone even knew that was a thing before this year 🙄)

I know Wikipedia isn't everything, but they confirmed my memory was right of that Breaking Bad episode. Check out the page on "Blood Money," "References to other media," where they note the Godfather's use of oranges. Rewatched the finale tonight and appreciated it more, I think at least in part because of the fine commentary here ☺

Yes, oranges have been a motif for Death by Violent Crime ever since The Godfather. Wasn't there also a scene in one of the final episodes of Breaking Bad when Walt went to the house (after he'd been disappeared) and a neighbor saw him and dropped a bag of groceries...and oranges rolled out? My overall take on this installment is too many characters with too many weird names to keep track of/care about, and a main plot of gang warfare is not intrinsically interesting to me (as a side plot, fine). So I actually preferred some of the subplots and their characters -- Ethelrida and her family, Oraetta and her closet of death, Deafy and Odis* -- and I think that's where the performances were stronger too. *Predictive text hates these character names too, it tries to change each and every one 😆

Berlin! I visited in 2005, so that's a while ago now and much has changed, but I remember our tour leader going on about the Trabant (you occasionally saw one in the street) and I was kind of like, "Whatever." Didn't fully appreciate them at the time. Beer Yoga > Goat Yoga any day of the week! Even though goats = cute, Goat Yoga is stupid. IMO 😊 I am not sure if I would ever have gotten that word. I would think your brain would be scrambled anyway from all the adrenaline flooding through it after oh, walking down the side of a building, and I would have been lost without a pen and paper to work it out, despite eating sauerkraut every New Year's Day of my growing-up years (German good luck tradition). Just the way my brain works. It wasn't clear whether the Racers just didn't have pen and paper, or whether they couldn't. Was also looking forward to a penalty for the boyfriends. Anything to get them out, please.

I thought about that too. Tornadoes are so weird, it's possible Rabbi could be laid gently down in some location TBD, no worse off physically. I did think it was odd that there was a tornado when there was snow on the ground; they seem to me much more of a "springtime" phenomenon.

Oh, you must watch season 1. It's one of the best seasons of any of the shows in TV's New Golden Age. I did teach a class on it, though, so I might be biased 😉 Legion is an entirely different matter. I never had any idea what the hell was going on in that show, but it was so visually creative, I couldn't take my eyes off it. Plus, Aubrey Plaza and Jean Smart FTW.

Yes, John Oliver never lets us forget who the corporate daddy is (to hilarious effect, natch). There's also been some turnover on the documentary side, with the great Sheila Nevins leaving, and that side has also suffered. See: The Vow (or, actually, don't). I'm enjoying The Undoing well enough (the cast alone, swoon, and I love a good murder mystery), and I May Destroy You was amazing work, but with HBO having to compete with all the streaming services (which have the same freedom with adult language and content), its golden age is probably behind it.

I will be very disappointed if Grace committed the murder in a fugue state but even more so if it was after she had spent four days in the New Mexico desert cooking meth in an RV. Hugh Grant and Edgar Ramirez were both on late-night shows Tuesday. Ramirez said that while he was reading each script his own mind would change about whodunit. And Grant and Seth Meyers were waxing nostalgic about NYC and all the crowd scenes (apparently this was filmed right before the pandemic). I didn't notice too many crowd scenes in this ep, but there was one shot I loved where everyone on the street was wearing dark gray coats, and then along comes Nicole in her beautiful deep red coat -- and Dad Alvez and the pink baby carriage following behind. Just a touch of Schindler's List there.

I read an interview with Kidman where she said that it was really difficult to get used to "Okay, now we're going to shoot an extreme close-up of your eye!" And AryasMum, I love me a good unreliable narrator! I read a lot of fiction and most narrators are inherently unreliable (as in, why should we believe anything is true just because a character tells us so?) I think it makes a work more interesting and helps us realize how complicit we are in how we think a story is framed.

I was on a Zoom call a couple of weeks ago and someone had just seen The Social Dilemma and was going on and on about algorithms -- and I realized this was the first time she was understanding that that's how social media works. I was kind of gobsmacked that somebody could be a functioning adult in 2020 (and she is not a stupid person) and not know that. Rosa made what turned out to be a kind of throwaway comment (b/c of time, I think) that nobody is ever going to change because you call them a moron or an idiot or a racist, that you have to go slower and it takes time, and I really wish they had more time for that because she is absolutely right. I took a series of webinars on antiracism this summer and the presenter made exactly that point and taught a technique that went in the same direction Rosa was going when she got cut off. You have to elicit the person's story or experience and then share your own story or experience (that is different from theirs), over the course of a series of conversations. His name is Warren Chalklen and he has some videos on YouTube that illustrate the technique if anyone is interested in learning more.

I actually also blame Kirsten Gillibrand for what happened to Al Franken. The New Yorker did a pretty thorough expose'/takedown of the "case" against Franken. That said, the best spin I can put on his appearance here is that he is seriously out of practice. I don't think there is any real excuse for thinking you can make poorly constructed jokes (again, at best) and come out of it looking good. The Case of Al Franken