Bastet

I guessed pizza crust out of the things cauliflower is used as a replacement ingredient in these days because the clue noted the founder was the mother of two kids (and pizza is the most kid-friendly food of the things I was thinking of). I thought it was properly valued at only $400, but I didn't react like she did when no one figured it out/guessed it correctly.

The China TS surprised me; Asian country for which a new Secretary of State would have tough words in early 2021? I was terrible in the first round, only running fashion. To the surprise of no one, I did not do well in the sabbath category, missing three, but one of the two I got was missionary; I thought that was too easy for a DD clue. I was also totally inept in wrestling, missing four (including tag team, which I cannot believe I couldn't figure out in time). I missed the two clues about Lincoln and another two in Hodgepodge (but got the Norman TS since I have a lot of family in Oklahoma), plus the flying "nod" creature I'd never heard of. I was much better in DJ, even though I only ran geography and triple rhyme time (I loved that one, and was glad sheared beard revered was a TS as that gave me time to come up with it). I missed two constellations, including Taurus, which really should not have stumped all four of us given the "bovine" hint, another two each in Shakespeare and food, and the 3-2-1 Contact TS. FJ was an instaget, so I ended a lot better than I began!

As soon as the college and NFL schedules are announced each season, the important games go onto my calendar so I know not to commit to anything else on those dates/times. They said yes to the wedding before the schedule was known, but he still had plenty of time to realize the conflict, tell his wife he now really didn't want to go the wedding he never wanted to tag along to in the first place, and ask what she thought. Then she could either decide she'd go by herself, invite someone else, or tell him she wants him to come with her like they'd planned. If she picks the last one, suck it up and go, dude; welcome to marriage. Instead waiting until just a few weeks before and then arranging for her friend to go with her, without ever talking to her about it until he presented it like a done deal was stupid. Of course she's going to get upset under those circumstances. And, yes, it does sound like a plot from one those Everybody Loves Raymond type of sitcoms.

And you can still remember some things you learned in school.

That trailer doesn't have much of the franchise's trademark humor in it. Maybe "I've been through this. A lot." But, on the other hand, that humor doesn't readily lend itself to soundbites. Hell, whatever they come up with, I'm in. I just wish it wasn't only in theatres, because unless things are different by then, no way I'm marinating indoors with a bunch of other people for two hours.

I don't remember the last time I was at a wedding with traditional vows instead of a personalized statement and promise, but I try to attend as few weddings as is socially acceptable, so I'm hardly out there collecting a representative sample. I'm sure the "for better, for worse, yadda yadda yadda" vows are indeed still in greater real-life use than they are on TV, but they're boring, so I don't mind that about TV weddings. What I do find tiresome is how among every TV couple coming up with their own vows, there is pretty much always one who can't come up with a single word to say until it's time to speak, and then he - because, let's be real, it's always a he - flawlessly bursts forth with something far more articulate, poetic, and schmoopy than he's ever been shown to be.

Oh, yes, as in Harper's Bazaar (and others). Duh; that indeed makes all the sense in the world. But if that's why my brain went there, the connection was a very subconscious thought. Because I didn't even think of that in wondering after the fact why that was my first thought, let alone in contemplating whether Harper was the right pick among all the big last names in publishing. I think it was actually a good clue that went over my head and I got lucky, but, sure, let's pretend I sussed it out.

I'm relieved the "Who Directed It?" category wasn't called Women Directors, or even Female Directors - it was just a category in which all the clues were about women, just like all the categories where all the clues are about men don't specify "Men [Whatevers]" in the category. More of that, please (and then maybe don't point it out). I think the straight line TS was because they all over-thought the clue. So close - I got everything except bandersnatch and Fibonacci in the first round (and could have sat here all night and not come up with either one). In DJ, though, I only ran "In". I missed three Jesus clues, another three in short stories, two each in history and directors, and one in education (I knew Framingham was in an M state, but didn't guess the right one). For FJ, "Harper" popped out of my mouth almost instantly, and I spent the rest of the Think music wondering if that was right (maybe they were the Collins brothers? The Simons? The Schusters? The Macmillans?), but decided to go with it; since I had no idea, I might as well go with the first thing that sprang to mind when thinking of publishing companies with last names in the title. I don't know why Harper is the one my brain pushed out first, but thanks, brain.

I am thoroughly enjoying revisiting how absolutely fantastic Vanessa Williams plays Wilhelmina's evil scheming, and then how deftly she handles those rare moments of humanity, like when she feels sorry for Christina finding out Stuart is dying, so fills her hospital room with flowers, closes the curtain on the paparazzi she'd summoned, and sits there with her. I like that they moved production to NY, because this is a show in which the city needs to be a character, but the new costume designer is awful; now everyone is starting to look as ridiculous as Betty. Wilhelmina's wardrobe was to die for in the first two seasons, and all the fashionable people at Mode indeed looked like what fashionable people would wear to the office. Now everyone looks like they're in costumes parodying fashion (that ridiculous rubber dress that woman sent Amanda, pranking her that she'd served as a muse to some designer, is now the type of thing everyone is wandering around the office in). It is also driving me nuts that in all the various shenanigans over who - between Alexis, Daniel, and the fetus - owns what share of Meade and thus who can exert what control over Mode, the writers completely ignore that Claire owns Mode. Just toss in a line about her giving it to the kids when she was heading into prison or something!

Well, he did say "flock" for the gaggle TS when flock was right there in the clue, but, yeah, hard to imagine he even started to write Germany. I agree. People disrespected Emma the same way when she beat James. Add me to the list wishing it was Jessica who'd come out about $400 ahead of Jonathan instead of the other way around; I love that it was so close between first and second place, given the way they both played in DJ and wagered in FJ, but I'd have really loved if it had once again have been a woman who topped a J! giant.

Oh, what a bummer. I saw them perform probably half a dozen times at various festivals, and once with Sarah McLachlan.

Exactly, because the league is made up of Grudens; this disgusting talk - written and verbal - is a regular thing amongst themselves, but they want to make a production out of acting on this one perpetrator of the entrenched sexism, racism, and homophobia now that a written record is out there, playing it off as some horrible anomaly they quickly booted and moved past.

It's a hideously predatory industry - and long has been; this was written back in 1963.

This shows (starting at 2:21) what was said between Mayim and the contestants after the sign-off:

I looked this up earlier; there were only six games prior to this one where it was possible heading into FJ that someone could beat Matt (in one of those the best someone could do was tie him, so they could have beat him if they did that and then won the tie-breaker). Five of those six were last season; until today, there was only one this season that wasn't a runaway for Matt.

I'll be watching football tonight, so I checked the archive; I'll have to have to switch over around 7:25 to see everyone's reaction to Matt losing! In fact, since none of "my" teams are playing, I may watch the whole episode to see how things played out - from the archive what I can tell is that Matt didn't land on a single DD, so wasn't able to pull way ahead with big wagers on those, and Jessica and Jonathan had strong trajectories in DJ (while Matt's was rather flat with some dips) and wagered smartly in FJ. I kind of wish they could have both won. Thankfully, there weren't many clues with visual hints, so not being able to see them was irrelevant - I either knew it anyway (Mubarak) or wouldn't have known it even with the picture (Venom and Boise). There only being one guess in the nose TS surprised me since there are only a handful of sense organs to choose from (I picked the right one as a lucky guess). I ran 2011, biographies, and anagrams, and missed one each in the other first round categories, so I was off to a good start. In DJ, I only ran meaning and abbreviations, but missed eight across the other categories, so not bad for that round. And FJ was nearly an instaget, so I had a great game.

I know this can be insulting if you know it, so I apologize, but a lot of people don't know it because "fryer" deliberately insinuates something else, so, just in case: If your oven - wall, toaster, or range - has a convection setting, you already have an "air fryer" and don't need a separate appliance taking up more space.

That's just Strategy 101. Contestant after contestant has said most contestants know most of the answers, either immediately or with enough seconds to think about it, so the strategy to playing the game is in how one traverses the board and, ultimately, buzzer timing (which is both strategy and luck) can become the determining factor. If odds are - based on the category and the fact you made it onto J! in the first place - you're going to know the answer to a given clue, of course you buzz, hope you got in first, and then hope the odds being in your favor mean you indeed can spit out the correct response in time. It's nothing specific to any one champion.

This was me with the Cagney & Lacey reboot that didn't go. There are a zillion cop shows out there, and I have no interest in 99% of them (because they normalize, justify, and even glorify police misconduct, and often have a gratuitous, exploitative approach to violence, particularly against women). C&L is among the handful I've loved (although, of course, it was not without its problems), and it was a milestone that went through a lot to get and stay on the air, settling into an award-winning chemistry and honesty the network had to get out of the way of. Inject into the tired cop show landscape a show centered around a partnership between two women with different motivations and MOs in addition to their shared experiences and with an explicitly feminist viewpoint about crime, police response, and the squad dynamics affecting women in a paramilitary organization? Yes, please. Delve deeper into intersectionality than was done in the '80s? Yes, PLEASE. But call them Christine Cagney and Mary Beth Lacey? No thanks. Just create a new show rather than trading in, since these issues are hardly unique to the fictional version of NYPD's 14th precinct; they're everywhere. Let C&L stand. When you get "Isn't this just a retread of Cagney & Lacey?" bullshit from entertainment media, fire back against the notion women are so interchangeable that any two of them paired up as police partners inevitably leads to the same stories.

I am not at all surprised she is still letting her dogs breed; it's not as if the issues with that can possibly be unknown to her, so she obviously doesn't give a shit. It's why I quit watching (but I watch so few shows, I keep the forums for even the ones I used to watch on my customized home page here to see what folks are posting). That's disgusting behavior from a vet, because even setting aside contributing to the homeless pet overpopulation crisis (it doesn't matter if she secures homes for her particular puppies; millions of animals are euthanized each year in this country because there are more of them than there are available homes, so shitting more puppies out into that reality is appalling, because if she hadn't, those homes - especially with the availability of rescue transports - could have gone to existing dogs, not those she chose to add to the problem), she is putting her dogs at risk of pyometra and mammary cancer down the line, two potentially fatal diseases early spaying practically guarantees will never occur. For a veterinarian of all pet owners to willingly subject her pets to such significant and unnecessary risk is a disgrace.

I like the Tibetan Buddhist sky burial tradition, where the body is cut up and placed atop a mountain for scavenger animals to eat (afterwards, the bones are pulverized and mixed with something, and even that gets eaten by the vultures). I am not going to have my body flown to Tibet (I doubt they'd even do it for a non-Buddhist, but I have not looked that up), so that's not an option, but I've thought it was a great use of a dead body ever since I read about it long ago. I always figured I'd have my body cremated, because I find burial a total waste of usable space, but then composting options emerged and composting is more environmentally friendly than cremation. So if I croaked today that's probably what I'd want done; I should talk to my parents about looking into that if I drop dead, as right now they'd have me cremated [which is fine, but if they want my remains back, turning my body into soil rather than ash is better]. Who knows what options will be available down the road. What's most important to me is how my body can best be utilized before what's left is best disposed of. So I like the teaching cadaver idea, but I also like the body farm, where the body's decomposition process is studied. Maybe my body can first be used as a teaching cadaver, then what's left of it sent to a body farm so they can learn if there are ways to forensically determine, at various stages of decomposition, that the various things done to my body during that first process were done post-mortem (and then when it's all done, my skeletal remains are used for further research). Now that would be optimization.

The FOX announcers blamed it on the officials, saying they lost track of the break and resumed play too early. If the same thing happened on radio, that makes sense.

I agree; he's like 17 frat jerks living in one body.

I know five things about Bobby Flay: 1) He's greatly skilled at combining ingredients into fabulous flavor, 2) He loves his cats, 3) He's a somewhat odd mix of arrogant and self-deprecating, 4) He adores his daughter, and 5) He's a serial cheater. I'm not interested in dating him even as a fantasy (nor would he be interested in dating me, since I look nothing like his parade of blondes), but couldn't swoon over him even if he was my type, knowing what a shit husband he's been. That doesn't keep me from enjoying his shows. I'll just also laugh my ass off at the "Cheater" banner flown overhead during his Walk of Fame ceremony.

Way to still be on commercial break when the Giants score a TD, FOX. It may be my last chance to see them in the end zone, and you blew it. So now we're out Jones as well as Barkley (not to mention the players out coming into the game). Good grief.