Bastet

They're giving me whiplash with how they're great, then they suck, then they're great, then they suck. At least the Giants have the consideration to suck consistently, so I know what to expect. The least the Rams could do was not pick their game against the fucking Cowboys as a suck week. I'd have been fine with them losing to the Seahawks. I am not okay with this.

I don't think it's any big deal not to invite your romantic partner of less than a year to your family holiday, either. No big deal if you want to, either. But no big deal if you don't, for whatever reason. Hell, I know three married couples (all child free) who spend Christmas separately - he goes to his family, she goes to hers - simply because it's easier and a little more enjoyable that way.

No (I'm not home for Christmas). Hey, maybe that's why she never brings me a Bloody Mary in bed on Mother's Day.

I dislike more of those than I like, but I do like some. My favorite is "Hokey Pokey" in the "Chinga" episode of The X-Files.

I'll read it once I recover from my disgust that a 2200-word piece, with an estimated read time of nine minutes, is housed on a site dedicated to "long reads". ... Okay, I read it (in about seven minutes), and I think it's a superficial but accurate summary of the series' trajectory. Nothing that hasn't been said before, but worthy of repeating:

Yeah, I think it's one of their best.

This is typical, at least in recent years; I just checked, and 2018 was released on the 14th and 2017 on the 17th.

The TCM Remembers for 2019 is up on TCM's YouTube channel. It's a good one, but might be a little more difficult than usual to edit to include any additional deaths between now and the end of the year - so that's another reason to hope we don't have any more. (TCM has now taken it down for some reason; stay tuned.) (And now it's back up, edited.)

There is also a "No Time" by Australian indie group Frente.

One of them did. But none of them knew the character's name (nor did I; I knew it was someone from a Matrix movie, but I've never seen them and Neo is the only name from them I've picked up through cultural osmosis, so I had no shot at guessing who was talking to him [him? her? it?]).

I laughed at that one, because until it came up in the House Hunters thread a while back, I had no idea how many people said "hot water heater" -- I guess it's common enough to be an acceptable J! answer. I didn't find anything wrong with the clue ("it's the last name of the man who said {quote}" is straightforward and the category is "business namesakes" so that last name has to be part of the business), just her answer; his last name is McDonald, not McDonald's.

Smokey Colbert. Because it's Stephen Colbert. Betty White and Al Roker each did one, too. Possibly other celebrities as well; it's a series commemorating the 75th anniversary of the campaign.

I won't be home tonight, so I checked the archive, and according to what's written there, Lisa was given credit for "McDonald's" in FJ. If accurate, that's bullshit; the clue asked for the guy's last name, not the name of his restaurant. I don't care that it still put her in third place; having to avoid making that dumb mistake was the only thing that made the clue slightly more challenging than Toddler Tournament level to begin with. Bar was a surprising TS. While I didn't know the Matrix character (but did know that was the film; I've somehow picked up Neo = The Matrix via cultural osmosis), I was a little surprised none of them did, either. Isn't that franchise incredibly popular? (So are Star Wars and The Princess Bride, and I didn't know those, either - bad category for me after the first two clues.) I didn't know a single one of the Literary TV Adaptations clues, either, yikes. But I did get everything else in DJ, including all the Pope clues, even though Vatican II was my joke guess.

I just do a tabletop tree, a (real) 3-4 foot noble fir, each year. I must always have a real tree, but it has been years since I felt like decorating a 7-footer. And I'm at my parents' house from Christmas Eve dinner through Christmas dinner, so the presents go under their tree. I have the perfect table for a short one, I can fit plenty of ornaments on it, I bought about half a dozen decorative boxes in various sizes that go under it, my cat leaves it alone (she checked it out her first year and has ignored it ever since) - sold. What I keep meaning to do every year and still haven't is get a new topper; mine (a snowman) is a bit oversized for a short tree.

I never knew anything about Aiello beyond his roles until reading that THR obituary just now; he had an interesting background and career trajectory. I like this about how he came to be in Do The Right Thing: