Bastet

The (hot) pursuit TS surprised me a bit, as did grace period. Those were back to back early in the game, so I thought it might be another game like last night, with a number of puzzling TS. Thankfully, no. I was off to a good start, too - I ran nautical, jumble, credit, and altitude, and only missed three among the other two first round categories. In DJ, though, the wheels came off the wagon. I didn't run a single category. And in some of them, I was just plain awful -- I missed all but one in pop culture and three each in Freddy's and animal homes. I missed one each in the rest. Ouch. At least FJ was an instaget, but that was a disappointing performance after being on fire last night.

I think that one is barely okay, but refreshing in that the two biggest stars don't wind up together. I mean, no one should marry the dude, but at least he and the maid of honor don't delude themselves into thinking their stupid pact is real when it really at long, pathetic last comes down to the wire - that's progress for the genre. A truly good movie would have ended with him single and contemplating how to be better, but I at least spent less time yelling at the screen than is typical.

I tuned in just a little late, so I didn't hear Savannah's opening remarks. I think her first game as host went very smoothly, and I like the charity she chose. (They've all, other than Dr. Oz, chosen well.) The Plymouth Rock TS was a doozy. Maybe there was some confusion about the category, since that was the first of its clues unveiled. But maybe not; there were several TS this game that were not clues I'd have never predicted would have gone unanswered. The Walrus, ICC, vodka (not that no one knew the drink, but that no one took the Gorky Park = Russia = vodka guess). Gin, too a bit, in that I was again surprised no one guessed, just because most of the other common liquors had already been used. And I was a little surprised by the aircraft carrier TS; if I know something military, I figure at least one J! contestant will (I guess I'm more surprised no one even had a guess - I kind of thought someone would say battleship). Anyway, I had a great game to start my week. I came so close in the first round - I ran the whole thing until the very last clue, when I joined the contestants in being stumped by Beau Brummell (I should have paid more attention to "It's Still Rock & Roll To Me" [but I do know all the lyrics to "We Didn't Start the Fire", which can also help with clues]). In DJ, I only ran the city and gh categories, but I only missed five across the others. FJ was an instaget, but then I briefly doubted myself when I re-read the quote; the more specific I got with the language, the more it started to sound like something else instead. But I stuck with it. One of my best games!

Yes, it's supposed to be, but it veers off track a fair bit and the moderators quit redirecting a long time ago. Well, that's what a pet peeve is - something that isn't necessarily wrong, but really annoys someone anyway.

Ned Beatty died today at 83 (at home, of natural causes). Despite the memorable movie roles I've seen him play (including his film debut in Deliverance), I most associate him with being Dan's dad, Ed Conner, on Roseanne. This is interesting, from the linked (Hollywood Reporter) obituary:

The traditional martini is probably out as too strong for you, so the simplest would be a Gin and Tonic or Gin Rickey (club soda instead of tonic) with a squeeze of lime or lemon juice, or a Tom Collins (gin and club soda, with lemon juice and powdered sugar). Simple but with more juice, there's the Blue Canary, which is gin with blue curacao and grapefruit juice, or the Bulldog, which is gin with ginger ale and orange juice. No, that sounds odd to me - gin already has a distinct flavor. Flavored vodkas I like quite a few of, but I've never tried a flavored gin.

One of the few I like, and I love it. I've probably posted this here before, but when Tovah, the stereotypical NY Jewish mother who has spent the whole movie "he's a very nice boy"ing Jessica in a quest to find her a good husband listens to her say without saying it the truth about her relationship with Helen, the "friend" she'd been bringing around, and responds, "I think she's a very nice girl," I cry.

What? I mean, this novelty song is amusing enough, but it shouldn't even be on the list, let alone in the top 200. I am seriously scratching my head at this one, too, and by the fact revealed in the CU commentary that there are FOUR Roger Miller songs in the top 200. I'd put four in the top 1000, and only "King of the Road" in the top 200. Oh, come on. I don't love this song (I like it, but don't love it), but it's a honky-tonk classic; move it up at least 50 slots. I'm not much of a Keith Urban fan, and this is probably my favorite of the few songs of his I like, but it ain't top 200!

There isn't. The poster said that because using "less" in place of "fewer" is so infuriatingly common, there has also emerged an over-correction problem where some change all instances of less to fewer, even when less is correct (I, quite the Grammar Pedant, did that once here - I was tipsy, and thankfully a poster corrected me so I could fix it for future readers the next morning, but I had it right, then second guessed myself in my muddled head and changed it before posting). Like what happened with so many people using "me" when it should have been "I" - people "fixed" even correct uses of me to I.

That was me. I switched elementary schools when I was eleven (starting the new school in sixth grade), and at recess at my old school we had all been kids, hanging out talking and engaging in various activities (I was a tetherball champ). At my new school, the boys did stuff, but the girls just walked around the field in groups talking to each other - often about boys. And boys and girls were "going together". No one actually went anywhere, of course, being 11-12 years old, but pairing up was a thing. This was so utterly strange to me (I hated that school for several reasons), but when I turned on the TV, girls my age were all boy crazy. So it felt like my old peeps and I were the anomaly - worse, it felt like we were weirdos.

I don't want to see it all the time, and I don't want to see abusive yelling (or any other abusive behavior) excused, but I appreciate the occasional yelling in series like Cagney & Lacey, Roseanne, some of the Norman Lear sitcoms, etc. because it shows how yelling is not in and of itself bad; it depends on context, and some people who love and respect each other do yell at each other sometimes, but they work it out just fine. In my (closer-than-average, very loving, and mostly functional and healthy) family, we all yell sometimes, so it was a breath of fresh air when people on TV started doing it, too, because I'd always found it odd to see all TV families even-keeled 24/7.

I know I've mentioned this somewhere on the site before, and most likely this thread, but here I go again anyway: At the Smart & Final (grocery chain in the southwestern states) near me, the express lane has one sign reading "or less" and one reading "or fewer". The placement and attachment of each leads me to believe the "or less" came first, so I like to imagine they got so many complaints they put up the "or fewer" version and just didn't feel like dismantling the first sign.

Yeah, I'd call the grand opening of his foundation a pretty happy ending. Especially since none of these people were actually "ending", we just weren't going to be seeing them anymore - who knows what he, like any of them, went on to experience in life, but he was where he belonged. The Kem thing is open-ended, right? Personally, I figure she doesn't call him, he finally accepts it was never meant to be from the beginning and is well and truly a thing of the past, and life goes on. I don't see him continuing to pine over her once she's gone again; I think it was because he saw her while celebrating the foundation he'd named after their dead baby that his emotions got screwy.

Indeed. Even though she was just assisting in a QF, I was really excited to see her cook again. She's been on Top Chef twice and Tournament of Champions twice (I don't know what else, but those are the heavy hitters in terms of competition) and of those four competitions she has won twice and come in second twice. She has mad skills, not just in terms of cooking, but of being innovative in meeting challenge parameters while under a time constraint - she's a great chef and a great competitor, so she's fun to watch. With how awful a chef has to be to get fired for misconduct (what's accepted is appalling in most industries, but this one is pretty damn bad), I'm very comfortable rooting for him to go home next, whatever he specifically did, since none of the others have done the same (being on TC, and social media being what it is, I'm sure it would have come out if anyone else had been fired for misconduct).

I thought she'd had a research paper published after her PhD dissertation (not that a dissertation on "hypothalamic regulation in relation to maladaptive, obsessive-compulsive, affiliative, and satiety behaviors in Prader-Willi syndrome" isn't enough!), but in looking it up I see that parenthood - she had her first kid while in the process of collecting and analyzing data and got pregnant with the second right after filing her thesis - caused her to switch from pursuing the research and teaching track to returning to acting (better schedule, since she was the primary caregiver, plus better pay and SAG health insurance). But she has written several books that incorporate science.

Knowing FDR's middle name belongs in the Toddler Tournament, not a regular game. The way Mayim said, "Come on, guys, who is Ferdinand?" was funny. I came so close to running the first round, but missed the maids a-milking TS in Groups of 12 and boxer in Also a Dog Breed. I almost ran DJ, too; I only missed two in Ghost, one in Buster, and adroit in Skillful Words & Phrases, which annoyed me because I usually run vocabulary categories. For the first time this week, FJ was not an instaget, but I did come up with it just in time, so I still finished out the week with a great game.

I have no idea how far in advance they planned the abuse storyline, but her relationship with Gary shows how she is a prime target for an abuser. There are a lot of similarities to the relationship with Fisher in her deference to Gary's interests and desires, and if he'd chosen to isolate her the way Fisher did he could have. Because Gary is a good man (other than that whole throwing down an ultimatum thing, which doesn't even make him bad, just not right for her, and good on Jackie for breaking up with a man she loves and who everyone tells her is the greatest guy she'll ever find because she knows he's not right for her), when he finds out she's hiding her true self in order to please him, he wants her to knock it off. Fisher, on the other hand, took her feeling like she wasn't good enough for him and ran with it.

If you just described Jamie's "language" to me, I would think, "Wow, she must be really annoying," "How old is she?" or something else uncharitable. But actually watching her talk, I am nothing but entertained - by her, and by everyone's reactions to her. They laugh, but not at her. They imitate her, but don't mock her. They like it, and so do I.

Gabe didn't go. In fact, he won.

Different set of physical requirements, a city agency having more liability rules than a private company, the fact this is a sitcom and no one paid attention to medical realities from the beginning - take your pick.

I agree, and also that prior to coming on the show, many had been isolating with their families. So they went from way more time together than normal to nothing.

This was an archive game for me, so I couldn't see the pictures, but sometimes they wouldn't have helped me. I had a bad first round; I did not run a single category, missing two each in half of them and one each in the other half. I am so ever-loving sick of Bible categories, but at least this one was combined with theatre, so I got all but one. I did better in DJ overall; I ran Americans, palindromes, and green (I'm giving myself credit for two I'm sure I would have known if I saw the pictures). I missed five total; the Judges TS from Biblical Broadway, the Heinlein TS in book-borne, and three in stations (I might have recognized Charing Cross, but I'm not confident, so no credit for that one). FJ was an instaget, so I managed not to curse myself yesterday - that's four in a row.

Holy shit, that was great stuff between Maria, Jamie, and the judges at the end. And “This asshole tried to quit on me” was hilarious when Maria told the others she’d been eliminated. Kristen tearing up as she empathized with Maria struggling with her worth versus her competitors got to me, as did Maria telling the others she thought she had fixed this about herself. I’m going to miss her. Great QF challenge. Dawn and Brooke together pretty much puts me in TC heaven. And it’s always interesting to me to see how cheftestants do when blindfolded and asked to identify ingredients, but this black box thing was quite a step beyond that. Good for Dawn being the only one to detect the mustard and pistachio. I wonder if she might have also won the EC if she hadn’t left the gravy off two plates, but all three dishes garnered absolutely rave reviews, so it might have still been Gabe. I wanted the EC food! Even the two on the bottom; I'd have happily gobbled down all those dishes.

By her phrasing, permanent (or at least indefinite; not anything like "for six months until you completely heal and then we'll reevaluate"), which didn't make a whole lot of sense based on how they described her injury, but that's what they gave us - that she'd be stuck sitting there typing.

(From an episode thread) I don't think that was stupid at all. She had no dependents and adequate savings for a single person living cheaply, so she was in a position to be able to walk away from an unfulfilling job and try new ones, even if it took her a while to hit on the next thing she wanted to really pursue. And she'd have been miserable in that job; it's not only that she's not suited for a desk job, it's that desk job in particular -- she'd spend all her time hearing and reading about her buddy officers doing the things she used to do, and desperately still wanted to be doing, herself.