Bastet

Also The Maltese Falcon and Taxi Driver -- yeah, Friday's TS definitely had me feeling my age compared to the contestants.

I usually go to my parents' house on 4th of July, as my dad grills cheeseburgers and my mom makes onion rings. When I adopted my cat Riley eight years ago, she was very much a scaredy-cat (she trusted me immediately and came around beautifully, but it was a process), and her first 4th of July with me was just a few weeks later. So I stayed home with her, and grilled my own burger but did not mess with making onion rings. She was fine, so I could have gone; I seriously missed those onion rings, but not my parents. Which is not a slight against my parents, just that the 4th is not like Thanksgiving or Christmas to me in terms of wanting to be with my parents. (Nor do they think of it as a family holiday; they're usually home for it, but there have been a few times they've been out of town for a stretch that includes the 4th.)

Huge bummer! I mentioned earlier this year I tried Americone Dream for the first time and loved it. A non-dairy version, no thanks.

I only like a couple of her songs, but they were everywhere for a while so I knew the basics of her career, but I found her late husband absolutely gross for taking up with a teenager whose career he controlled, so I've never paid any attention to the details of Celine Dion's personal life. But, despite my lack of familiarity or really even interest in her, I watched this because I wanted to learn about Stiff Person Syndrome. Wow, what a strange and debilitating thing to live with! Good for her putting herself out there like this, as raising awareness may help others struggling with this rare disorder. "I think I was very good" really got to me. And, of course, the extended seizure. That a flare-up can be triggered by the exhilaration of succeeding at what she loves to do is heartbreaking! I like that it wasn't all struggle, that the film included fun moments like her saying she'll take any shoe size from six to ten if she loves the shoe, and busting out with the Kit Kat song when she says "Give me a break". This Guardian interview with the director, Irene Taylor, about how the film came to be is interesting.

Holidays to which I had no personal connection, many times, and my birthday twice when my parents were spending time with dying family members but I needed to stay home due to my own obligations. So I can't help, as there was never anything to be bummed about -- life happens and we do what we can do. From the outside: If you're alone on a holiday that you'd normally spend with others, I think there are two options -- just marinate in the benefits of a lack of socialization and numb yourself to the drawbacks however best gets you through it, or actively turn the day around, volunteering to help others in the same situation for even worse reasons. I find them equally valid.

Cat is my Person of the Day. This was not a good game (15 TS!), but it ended Drew's run, so that makes it great. (I cannot wait for the call from my mom when she watches her recording.) She made a valiant effort at laughing at Ken's terrible "Cat, are you grumpy you didn't get that one?" The San Francisco TS really surprised me, as did doberman. I also got the Cape of Good Hope, malinois, Bermuda shorts, fish food, Park Police, the Wicked Witch, Madison, Joan Crawford, and Travis Bickle, but those were the two I never expected to go unanswered even in a game this bad. The first round was a study in "oh, so close" -- I ran alliteration, but missed one each in everything else (almost always the $1000 clue, so I guess that's some consolation). Not so much in DJ; I missed four in internet celebrities (I'm impressed it wasn't five, but I correctly guessed Grumpy Cat) and three in myth (I'm impressed it wasn't five there, too). I only ran villains, but got all but the missed DD in states and all but the acquisitiveness TS in words. I missed two in ancient. FJ was an instaget.

I did not watch the debate - the combination of bourbon and Ativan I would need to avoid stroking out would be just as fatal - and just reading about it has been painful enough, so seeing clips of it is only happening in short bursts. Thus, I've only watched a little bit of Jon's live post-debate episode, but he has managed to make me laugh twice already, first at calling a real estate agent in New Zealand and second at "resting 25th Amendment face".

I almost didn't watch because I've never enjoyed Triumph, but decided to give it a try - as soon as "say your name and what the fuck is your problem" was the first instruction, I knew I was in for the whole thing. I loved all the mocking of the guy with the sideburns, concluding with asking him to just sit this election out. "You look like you already live underground; will the rest of the mole people be cool with us moving in?" That was gold, Jerry, gold.

Not Colonel Mustard! This is his daughter's announcement on Instagram: I love the part about the dogs. Here's an obituary, from Variety.

I've never been. I'm just here for the forums (same as at TWoP, although I read a few recaps there), so come directly to them.

Another archive game for me due to the debate. I missed two each in Shakespeare and Y, but had an overall decent first round; I ran science, industrial revolution, and Whose What, and got all but Father Damien in change the world. Decent DJ, too -- I ran cities and crossword clues and got all but the TS in halls of fame, missing two each in the rest. At first I just stared blankly at my monitor for FJ, but then Colonel Sanders popped into my mind.

I don't use Twitter, so I didn't get half the references, and they flashed tweets on the screen so damn quickly I couldn't finish reading all of them. So this was a bit of a frustrating watch, but still an interesting one. Particularly hearing from the people who used to run the departments that Elon Musk came in and eliminated.

Plus decades of life's shit had happened to her between when we - and most of her castmates - last saw her and when she decided to put an end to the pain. Even if the RW edit was a faithful representation of who she was then, that says nothing about who she was in her final years. (I didn't develop chronic anxiety and depression until my mid-thirties, so if I made the same choice in my early-fifties, there would be a plethora of people who knew me pretty well in my twenties but we later lost touch, so they'd say they had no inkling of my turmoil -- I didn't have that kind of turmoil then.) Joe apparently knew her best after the show, and he's the one who said she went into her line of work to "help others, and perhaps deeper understand her own mental health challenges". So who knows how far back it goes, in terms of her own mind, and when she started letting others in on her struggles.

The show is preempted again, so another archive game for me (but, hey, Drew can't annoy me if I don't see him). Thankfully, not being able to see the photos wasn't an issue. I was terrible in grapple, only coming up with Greco-Roman. But if not for that category, I'd have had a great first round, as the only others I missed were Jezebel and E.L. James. DJ was similar -- one bad category, but an otherwise great round. I missed three in names and two in jazz, but got all but the eye TS in Ellis Island and ran the rest. It all came to a screeching halt in FJ, though; I had no idea.

No, it's a lovely one.

Yes.

I love the original, but never even knew this film existed until it popped up as a recommendation recently (I know there's another, earlier sequel, but I've never seen that, either; it looks stupid). I watched it Sunday night and found it ridiculous because of that very thing, and not just the ending -- throughout, the same things they know happened to the original three keep happening to them, and they make all the same stupid decisions. So of course it ends the same way. That's dull. And, seriously, in 2016 people were still making horror movies in which the Black guy is the first to die?

She thinks he's one of the most arrogant people to ever disgrace the stage. I don't feel that strongly about it, but dude clearly thinks very highly of himself and I do not. He lost me in his very first game by pouting whenever he was beaten to the buzzer. I often don't even register contestants' tics, and am rarely bothered by them when I do; I am neutral to positive on the overwhelming majority of players, and sometimes find utterly charming the ones who bother other viewers the most. But this one just bugs me; it is what it is.

Same here. The main reason I have two sets of sheets is I don't want to look at the same color 365 days of the year, so I alternate between sage green and dark brown. But I also like that it means I don't have to wash the sheets the day I strip the bed if I don't want to. For most of my life I did it weekly, but I often don't have the energy for that anymore. Leaving the same sheets on for a couple of weeks is not going to harm me (or my cat) in any way, so if I don't feel like it, I don't do it.

Men who want you solely for your appearance should never be responded to, but it's not always possible to weed them out in the early stages. But they show themselves pretty quickly as things progress, at which point they should not be rewarded by seeing you naked, let alone having sex with you; dump their asses.

I'm behind again, and just watched Jon's episode from last Monday. The segment on how right wing media frames crime in blue cities had some fantastically scathing verbiage, turning their language about immigrants around to use about guns. Just pointing out over 90% of guns used in NYC crimes were originally purchased in southern states with lax gun laws, so Republicans have enabled the flood of weaponry to our cities they claim to be under siege in the first place, would have been enough, and then talking about the flood of "undocumented weapons" and obstructing attempts to "stem the tide" is a brilliant bonus. Adding in skewering the "Great Replacement Theory" and "Build That Wall" made it art, especially playing on Trump's infamous statement by saying:

Gods, yes. There's no need to come up with something Biden said or did every time they talk about what Trump said/did that day, especially if, as a hypothetical example, Biden tripped over his own two feet while Trump broke into the National Archives and took a dump on the original printing of the Constitution. One is news, the other is not, and they are certainly not equal transgressions. Advanced age is the only thing they have in common, so why the hell is that the go-to for this show (and others)? It's lazy, stupid, and an unconscionable distraction from the endless differences that actually matter; at the end of this election we will have an old man in the Oval Office, the oldest old man there's ever been, but how the next four years (and beyond) will play out will be wildly different depending on which old man it is. That is the story.

I also have a dumb TV, but access streaming apps via a Fire device, and I checked out of curiosity -- that final segment played normally for me (Hulu didn't put those damn three boxes suggesting other shows across the bottom of the screen until the credits started). It's only .99/month, but my list of things I want to watch on Hulu isn't terribly long, so I went into the deal figuring I'd keep it for a few months, six at most, and then cancel. But I'll probably wind up keeping it the entire year (and then canceling, because there's no way on this or any other planet I'd pay more than 99 cents for that damn thing) to get through my list, because I get so frustrated every time I watch something on there, I don't watch for all that long before I switch to TV or another streaming service.

That's my mom's superpower, too. She has walked me through it several times, but I just cannot do it. It comes together better than the crumpled ball, as you so aptly described, that results from my dad's folding, but not like hers. I can paint trim without needing to tape the wall and vice versa, though; that's my superpower.

Apparently, my dislike of Drew is genetic, and lessens with each generation -- I'm annoyed by him, and found out today my mom absolutely despises him. Heh. The telegraph TS surprised me a bit. It was a rough first round for me; I ran awards and got all but Thomas in statues and all but Lorraine in neighbor, but missed three each in stars and tattoos and two in sounds like Roman numerals. It only got worse in DJ. I nearly blew kingdoms entirely, only getting England and Scotland. I missed three each in literary and lamb and two in space. I ran come and got all but the bodyguard in TV. I did manage to get FJ, at least.