Bastet

It seems that the longer she has endured against chefs with stronger credentials (whether on paper and/or in her mind), the more confident she has become, which has led to her not just holding her own but coming out on top, or a close second, in recent challenges. However it ultimately turns out (I don't expect her to win the whole thing, but for a while I'd have figured she'd go out one, two, or three rounds earlier than this, so I'm not counting anyone out at this point), I hope that confidence holds in the finals, and I'm really glad she's earned a place there; she's one of my favorite people in all of TC, and she's shown all-star chefs don't have to all come from the same career path.

The "Picture the Movie" category amused me. The McNamara TS surprised me. I did not have a good game. I got all but one in the first round, but missed quite a few in DJ, and random things, not things in traditionally weak subjects. I did get FJ. I knew FDR's was the first presidential library, so I started mentally rattling off subsequent presidents, and getting to Johnson = Texas made me think of the Bushes. I was out of time then, but figured there wouldn't be a state with more than three, so was confident I'd figured it out. It was nice to end strong after my DJ performance.

In the script and original cut of the film, she came back - but playing for Racine - but the scene revealing that got cut because the Jimmy/Dottie kiss got cut. Marla was pregnant, but couldn't let the coach know or she'd get kicked off the team and she and Nelson needed the money (which, yes, begs the question why she quit mid-season in the first place). She fakes a back injury so she doesn't get put in much to begin with, and then the players - who all know she's pregnant - finagle things when she is on the field so that she only has to make simple plays. When the Peaches are warming up to play the Belles, they're reunited with Marla and find out about the pregnancy and its cover-up. In the game, when Dottie gets onto first, Jimmy stands there trying to talk to her, but she's pissed off about the kiss, so it's a very tense conversation between plays that distracts her from seeing Racine has subbed Marla in at second base (or that the players in the dugout are trying to alert her to that fact). With the next hit, Dottie takes off extra hard because she's so emotional and wants the hell away from Jimmy, and by the time she registers that it's Marla on second, it's too late to avoid mowing her down. Marla is okay, but Dottie feels like shit and everyone is upset with her. That's why she's crying alone in her room when Bob makes his surprise return. But with the kiss cut (because Penny Marshall was pissed test audiences were rooting for a Dottie/Jimmy pairing, so she didn't want to give them that fuel), that game scene had to go, too -- if the kiss didn't happen, the conversation on first can't happen, and without that, there's no reason she'd fail to notice Marla or take off running with such unnecessary intensity. So the film winds up going right from Betty Spaghetti learning about George's death to Dottie crying in her room, and the context for the tears completely changes, to being about Bob instead, something that forever drove Penny Marshall crazy about her own movie.

The opening words of the Deadline obituary for Anthony James tickled me: Anthony James, an instantly recognizable character actor who often played the creepy guy ... Yep. (The Hollywood Reporter opened its obituary in a similar way; there's just something about the phrasing in that one that amused me.) Looking up his credits, I realized he hadn't worked on screen in quite a long time. So I was pleased to read in the obits that it was by choice; he retired from acting to focus on his painting.

No, you were right the first time, that the whole place still* feels a bit frozen in time, but the food keeps evolving. At one point in the episode - I think as the cheftestants were walking into the restaurant - there was a chyron quoting the headline of Jonathon Gold's 2017 review: Michael’s in Santa Monica still looks like 1979, but it tastes very 2017. *Apparently; I haven't been there since well before the minor redecoration in 2017, but based on Gold's review and the comments last night, "still" is accurate. Not in first class. And that was hopefully the context of Kevin saying that's how he's always flown - that because he has actually had a lot of good food on flights, he has plenty of examples to draw from and knows what to make. But then, in a challenge that didn't actually impose all the necessary parameters for airline food, he blatantly flouted one of the few they did and sent out a dish where the meatballs were higher than the bowl. Because they could be squished down. So squish them! Oh, they wouldn't look good? Then make them smaller to begin with so the dish complies with the rules of the challenge. He's been rather frustrating this season, and I don't remember that about him from his first run.

They've been doing that for quite a while; inclusion of a cheftestant's call home in an episode stopped being a definitive indicator of impending elimination many seasons ago - because the audience caught onto this particular editing trick of the magical elves in pretty short order - and such clips were instead scattered throughout the season among cheftestants who go home, win, or wind up somewhere in between during the round in which the footage is shown. That description was astoundingly tone deaf. Bad enough that Kevin waxed rhapsodic about "plantation food" in promoting his RW concept, period - I mean, the hell? - but he in the same breath played on the nostalgia of his grandmother's recipes. Fool, please - nobody cooking on a plantation looked like your grandma. If he doesn't grasp even that much? I don't remember its details, but I do remember there existing a scene early during the season Kelsey won where she spoke plainly and honestly about how the cuisine of the American South took from slaves. I'm not sure Kevin ever even acknowledged as much, and, while it may just be my memory, his language this season makes me suspect I'm not just forgetting some awareness - since any such sentiment has not been included this time around. Southern is fairly far down my ranking of cuisines (and I wanted to eat very little of the Country Captain menu), but Kevin has made some dishes in that vein that I'd absolutely love to try, and nicely executed dishes in other cuisines. He's a great chef, just like everyone this season. On food alone, I can't protest his inclusion in the finale. His intelligence is hinted at enough that I can understand the roots of Padma's intellectual crush on him, as brains is what most attracts me, too, even in the absence of multiple things. I get the "Yay, Kevin" thing on the whole, but damn. I'm rooting for someone - preferably Melissa or Gregory or dark horse and my imaginary friend Stephanie - to rise above him in the finals.

Ha: “Champagne Padma is my favorite of all Padmas.” I love Stephanie, and I am SO HAPPY for her going to the finals (not to mention to Italy). That was a lot Kevin had to go through in LCK to get back in (which is as it should be this late in the game). I don’t remember if they’ve done it that way before, where it’s not just two LCK participants against each other, but someone from LCK vs cheftestants still in the game. Like Kevin, I grew up flying first class (thanks to my dad’s frequent flyer miles upgrading us on family vacations) and after flying coach once as an adult, I went immediately and permanently back to my “airplane diva” roots. And I’ve had some good food on airplanes (and never had bad food, that I recall). But I don’t think the QF parameters really covered what would be necessary to create a dish that would reheat, plate, and eat well in that specific environment. Oh, well – it’s just a QF. For the EC, I think I recognize that pasta dish Stephanie chose as her inspiration! From its year of creation, it doesn’t seem like it still would have been around the first time I ate at Michael’s – which had to be in the late ‘80s some time - but if nothing else I had something with scallops and that sauce. Anyway, Stephanie did a great job with it, and I greatly wanted to reach through the screen and eat her version. Same with Melissa’s dish. I’m not at all surprised they were very close in the judge’s rankings. Everything looked great, though; I would have been deliriously happy to have been there that night. (It’s funny how much smaller than the originals everyone’s dishes were.) Piss on Malarkey for his faux quitting dramatics; let Gregory earn his slot by having made lesser mistakes than you today, not by default, and THEN say it was your time to go and you've had a great run. (Also, don't make something that's only good if people eat it a certain way, especially when there's no instruction to that effect.) Asshat. In the QF, I got a good laugh at Jonathan Waxman telling him, “You tell a good story, but your food didn’t.” HA! Malarkey has the kind of personality that puts me at risk for permanent eyeball sprain from all the rolling of them I do when exposed to him. I am very pleased with the final five. Tom’s “Here’s to 40, and may you see 50” toast takes on a whole new meaning given the decimation of the restaurant industry since this was filmed. Last time I was at Michael's was probably ten years ago, and we just did the "happy hour" (which lasts the entire evening) menu - which is delicious. So I'm certainly not a frequent customer. But it would be weird for it not to be there; hopefully it rebounds (they haven't been doing take-out during the closure).

I'll be watching something else later, so I just checked the archive for tonight's game. It read like an interesting one - it seemed to include more wrong answers than average, but fewer TS. I'd have run the first round if it wasn't for the mythology category, but I missed all of those. In DJ, I would love to blame not being able to see the pictures for me getting two of those clues wrong, but I couldn't have answered amphora or Escher even with the visual aid. I also missed three in the chick category. But I got everything else that round, including all the poetry clues when that is a fairly iffy category for me. And I reasoned my way to the correct answer for FJ pretty quickly, so it wasn't a bad game, just not one of my best.

The only cookie I would ever crave. There are plenty of cookies I'll eat if you hand one to me*, but soft chocolate chip cookies I will devour. Especially, yes, if it's right from the oven. *Homemade or from a bakery; other than the occasional Thin Mint, there isn't anything pre-packaged I'd want. The ginger snaps from Trader Joe's are okay; great ginger flavor, but too crunchy a texture.

IMDb lists both titles, and the Food Network website page for the show reads "The Return". It seems like Reloaded started in 2018, consisting of old episodes edited with updates. In 2019, which is what was in the clue, came The Return, with all new episodes. I don't know if that's entirely accurate - since even though I like the concept of his show I cannot watch it knowing what an asshole he is - but that's what I got from my perusal of IMDb and the FN site after your post made me curious.

I like the PSA for the Census, giving examples of who does and does not count as a member of the household for Census purposes -- it concludes with a kid saying his dog should count, but doesn't:

Alex was probably bummed none of the Say It in French clues were TS. In fact, I'm surprised that by the end of the category, he didn't just go ahead and repeat someone's correct answer back so he could use the accent (like he later did with Avignon). The Ellipse TS really surprised me. Erin Andrews surprised me a little bit; I don't watch Dancing With the Stars, but guessed her figuring she's one of the very few female sports reporters J! would ever ask about. I would've thought DWTS was popular enough one of them would know her from there. I am clearly never going to achieve a perfect game when there is any sort of modern pop culture category present; I only knew Mariah Carey among the recent hits clues. I managed to know (or at least correctly guess) all the TV personalities, though. But I missed several other clues in DJ. And I had no idea on FJ; I didn't go for many fairy tales as a kid, and I've forgotten most of them. Alex's line reading didn't help me.

There's a thread for the Independent Lens series as a whole (not any individual threads for the films within it). I recorded Rewind, but haven't yet watched it.

Bleh; another ten I mostly don't know and a couple I don't care about. I don't personally care for this song (or Joe Diffie in general other than "Bigger Than the Beatles" which I flat-out love), but I think it's the one of two songs of these ten appropriately ranked. This is the other. My instinctive reaction is "too low" and, for this shit burger of a list it is, but on an actual Top 1000 of All Time list - which is what CU sets out to analyze - it's about right. Welcome to the new CU commentator with his reaction to the latest of the nearly 20 Jason Aldean entries on the list (seriously, let that sink in again in case I haven't emphasized it enough since finding out-- that dipshit has SEVENTEEN songs on the list): But, come on now, CU - how about a female voice in this discussion?

Triscuit (the reduced fat version, since I can barely taste a difference from the original) is my favorite cracker, because it's just wheat, oil, and salt. I love the simplicity and complete lack of sweetness; I can't stand Wheat Thins because of all the extra stuff, especially sugar. Yet my second-favorite is Milton's "Everything" cracker, which has about 20 ingredients, including sugar. Go figure.

Ha - reminds me of laments after a meal at some nouvelle cuisine restaurants in 1980s Los Angeles. Indeed, I voiced some of those complaints; I frequently bemoan the typical portion size at most restaurants in the U.S., but I can seriously put away some food, so while I prioritize the happy medium, I can abide occasionally being part of the problem and leaving a restaurant table stuffed or, especially, with a doggy bag, but I can't with spending good money and making a bowl of popcorn when I come home hungry and empty-handed. Looking at an example of the Kaiseki offering from n/naka, though, I cannot imagine between the amount of protein and number of courses I would walk away hungry - they're numerous, and each small but substantive. This challenge, with far fewer courses, created a different impression of the typical meal. (But, really, I think I've have been just fine even with only the six courses as presented.) The n/naka food sounds quite good, too; it's clearly about flavor, not just a study of presentation -- I really don't think it's all hat and no horse. But I am never going to spend $400 a head to find out ($275 without the wine/sake pairing, but I'm not interested in a nice night out in which water is the drink to complement my food), just in case. A table - back when one could eat in restaurants here in Los Angeles - was not an easy reservation, so there are clearly plenty of people who were. I rarely miss, working in the non-profit world, my time working in the entertainment industry, but if n/naka had existed back when I had that kind of expense account (or even my old salary, if I was really inspired to take a chance), I'd have indeed given it a whirl.

Meggie reminds me of someone, but I can't figure out who. The chase TS surprised me; I think they just hadn't grasped the category yet since it was the first one. The Madonna TS, though; before their time, but come on - not one of the three? I was not expecting that (but I was sure David Bowie was going to be a TS). Eidetic was a bit surprising, too; I thought that term was better known, especially with the letters spotted by the category. Another good game, which is a relief since the Teacher's Tournament games have been spotty over the past several years. We may well see all three of them in the next round. (I wouldn't have predicted that in the beginning, as Sam had a couple of wrong answers that raised my eyebrow, but it wound up being a well-matched group. I was afraid of the Royalty and Page to Screen categories, but wound up getting all in the former and only missing one in the latter, so it was a great first round for me; the only other clue I missed was fern (even with all the extra time, I couldn't come up with it). But in DJ, I missed several Shakespeare clues and a couple in Canadian Places. The former was not surprising, but I'm usually very good with geography. FJ was an instaget again (two in a row - good for me). So, not anywhere near my perfect game goal, but a good showing.

I finally got around to watching Nanette this weekend, and then watched Douglas this morning. Nanette is astounding and so very specific, so there's no truly comparing this - or anything - to that, but it's every bit a worthy successor. I love the prologue clearly laying out what to expect in Douglas; this one will be just as unapologetically on her terms, and there will be direct address of the expectations and hatred she was catapulted into. It's very well paced, fantastically intelligent, equal parts heartfelt and hilarious, and targets all the right people and systems (and indeed I did forget about the promised Louis C.K. reference, so the mic drop totally worked on me). I laughed throughout and disturbed my cat with a couple of fist-raised cheers. The art history lecture was brilliant, I could listen to her take the piss out of the patriarchy all day long, and every word about the anti-vaccination cult was gold. How valuable her different way of thinking is, and how much she loves it despite the difficulties that come with living with autism, was beautifully illustrated. Great stuff about the results of naming things having always been done by men, and about men calling women hormonal whenever they do something the man failed to predict. I also loved the lighter stuff she turns into a pufferfish about; that will be my term for when I get het up with disproportionate rage.

I know we've done this one before, but I'm too lazy to look up which songs have already been listed. So, also: Anne Murray Madonna Simple Minds Vixen And, The Cure, almost ("Lovesong"). Probably more; I suspect this is among the most popular titles. We've done this one, too, and that's probably another popular title - we could maybe do it half a dozen times and still not get all of them. The ones I can think of to add are: Heart Martina McBride Faith Evans Donna Summer

I was more than ten years past pre-teen when it came out, but I really liked that movie. I can rattle off a list of flaws, sure (especially with the present-day characters), but I re-watched last year on Netflix and still liked it; I can forgive a lot in a film centered around female friendship. I've never had any interest in Hocus Pocus, though, despite the presence of Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy, and Thora Birch. It just looks dumb, and whenever I come across it on TV I can't convince myself to find out if that's true.

Today has been a bit of a weird day, and I'm not sure why; yeah, I'd normally have enjoyed burgers and onion rings at my parents' house, and I missed doing that (and, holy crap, I miss their cats so much), but I couldn't see them for frakkin' Mother's Day, so Memorial Day isn't a big deal. There's just something "blah" about me today. So I definitely do not want to cook. I had several options in mind, but just wasn't in the mood to lift a finger. So I just ordered Thai - chicken satay, a cucumber and cilantro salad with chili lime dressing, and shrimp panang. For lunch I reheated some leftover roasted Brussels sprouts (I don't know how I couldn't finish them last night, since I make the same amount all the time, but I'm glad I couldn't because - again with the blah mood all day - it was really the only thing I had that didn't require any effort). At least I'm finally getting hungry, and I'm sure the flavors will perk me up.

I agree; with Archie as the category, I don't think Peter should have had to repeat it, and really don't think he should have been teased for just saying Manning. It felt to me like Alex forgot the category. The She Said TS surprised me a bit, as did the missed DD of cobalt, but good performance by Amanda. Thanks to the categories about the Bible, TV shows, and recent bestsellers, I did not have a great game; I missed several in each of those. But I got everything else and FJ was an instaget, so it wasn't a bad game.

Me too!

Exactly; it's self taping by the members of the household (plus some mounted cameras). There is no professional production crew on site.

I finally saw the CC episode with the whole brisket, and I'd never put in that much work for something I loved, let alone something I just eat if it's served to me. But even though brisket doesn't excite me*, I was so impressed with how juicy that brisket was I really did wish I could reach through the screen and taste it, especially with that nice smoke ring. *It's like pork shoulder for me; I don't dislike it, but cuts of meat that have to be cooked to insanely high internal temperatures in order to be edible slide fairly far down my list of things I want to eat, as I prefer cuts that can be grilled/roasted to rare/medium rare. I'm like that with everything - whether it be meat, vegetables, or pasta, I prefer it cooked just enough rather than cooked low and slow.