Bastet

That is indeed a shitty little kitchen. I laughed out loud when she said she was setting the oven at 400, because on that thing, it could mean anywhere from 325 to 500.

Does anyone know how long ago they filmed the Watch What Happens Live episode with Tom, Padma, and Gail about the season premiere? (I know it wasn't live, but I don't know how far in advance they taped it.) Because Andy Cohen announced today he has tested positive for the coronavirus.

With time on my hands, I looked up how they all finished during their previous appearances (according to Wikipedia): Eric Adjepong - Third place, season 16 (three went to the finale, but only Kelsey [who won] and Sara got to compete all the way through it; Eric was eliminated) Karen Akunowicz - Seventh place, season 13 (for context, she was the 11th elimination, leaving six remaining) Jennifer Carroll - Fourth place (four went to the finale, but only Kevin, Brian, and Michael [who ultimately won] got to compete all the way through it), season 6, and 17th place (second person eliminated) in season 8 (all stars) Stephanie Cmar - Seventh place, season 11 (12th person eliminated, leaving six remaining, but only eliminated because the person who would have been knifed had immunity [team challenge]) Lisa Fernandes - Tied for second place, season 4 (she and Richard Blais lost to Stephanie Izard in the finale) Kevin Gillespie - Tied for second place, season 6 (he and Bryan Voltaggio lost to Michael Voltaggio in the finale) Gregory Gourdet - Second place, season 12 (lost to Mei Lin in the finale) Jamie Lynch - Ninth place, season 14 (eighth person eliminated, leaving eight remaining) Melissa King - Fourth place, season 12 Brian Malarkey - Fourth place, season 3 (eliminated in part one of the finale; Dale, Casey, and Hung continued on to part two, which Hung won) Nini Nguyen - Tied for 12th place, season 16 (one of two contestants eliminated in an early Restaurant Wars challenge, leaving 11 contestants remaining) Joe Sasto - Third place, season 15 (Adrienne Cheatham and Joe Flamm went to the finals, which Flamm won) Angelo Sosa - Tied for second place, season 7 (he and Ed Cotton lost to Kevin Sbraga in the finale), and 7th place (12th person eliminated, leaving six remaining) in season 8 (all stars) Bryan Voltaggio - Tied for second place, season 6 (he and Kevin Gillespie lost to Michael Voltaggio) Lee Anne Wong - Fourth place, season 1 (she also won her way onto season 15 via Last Chance Kitchen, but withdrew her second week due to altitude sickness)

Probably my favorite of her songs. I simultaneously agree with both CU commentaries. Number 657 of all time is about right, because: But, on this list, it's too low, because: Too low. Too.fucking.low.

The latter would have been cringe-inducing, and the former not a viable scenario for a long-running show (and, even if it was, would not have served the show as well as the music they used). The only thing it has prevented is DVD release. We still got not only the original in its best possible form, we got the reruns and syndicated airings in that same form. I'd never opt to go back in time and give all that up in favor of some pale imitation just so it could also exist on DVD.

She was a teenager. In the heat of the moment, thinking her boyfriend was moving to another state and she wasn't going to be able to go to college, she had a meltdown and got into an ugly fight with Dan. In the immediate emotional aftermath of that, when Mark suggested they get married and she come with him, she said yes. But when the dust settled, she came up with a plan to get her GED, attend community college, and then try again at university after they'd saved up some money (she wasn't going to be making good money, but Mark had a union job paying far more than he'd made working for Dan, and he wanted to help her go to college). Off-screen, Mark lost that job, Original Recipe Becky was replaced by New Coke Becky, and the two of them returned to Lanford too stupid to live, let alone succeed, and when her old personality peeked its head back up, Mark was threatened by her ambition. But, for a while there, she had a goal and a viable plan to achieve it.

Because he's taller and has longer arms - better able to reach over/through the crowd.

I skipped the episode in favor of the Top Chef premiere, so I just read the archive as a brain cleanser before coming back to my oddly-vexing question of what to order for dinner (I'm trying to support my favorite local restaurants in this remaining way, knowing most of them are still going to go out of business, so it's hard to decide who to order from when - I think I'm going with Vietnamese tonight). Reason was a surprising TS. Arsenic, the Great Salt Lake, The Power of Positive Thinking, and Oklahoma (really, no one even guessed the "Indian Territory" state for that clue?), too, to varying extents. Not a great game, but the winner was responsible for only one of the dozen-plus wrong answers, so - just by looking at the numbers on the archive - things worked out as they should.

I wish they'd chyron the cheftestants' names more in this first episode; yes, they're all stars, and I recognize all of them by face, but there are a few whose names I don't remember. I absolutely adore Stephanie. I've liked watching almost all of them, but I have always really liked her on a chef and personal level. I love the mise en place race (one of the few game-type things I like), so I was excited to start with that. I am s-l-o-w at trimming an artichoke, so I was particularly impressed by that round. With Tom snarking that you can tell who hasn't done prep in a long time, I wanted to see how he could do. I LOL when Gail said Tom only asked who'd been named Sexiest Chef so he could point out he had, too. The QF food all looked delicious, except I knew Joe's pasta and Lee Anne's tempura wouldn't eat right. I don't like awarding to the team with the best individual component rather than the team with the best meal overall (which I think would have been the blue team). The free-for-all grabbing of ingredients for the EC is not my cup of tea, but it's a small part of the show, so I go with it - it's just always something I have to get used to again at the beginning of each season. The EC challenge is a hard one for the first - starting and maintaining a fire is its own skill, and knowing what to cook where and for how long over that fire is another, and not skills all chefs have. I would have happily eaten all the EC food, but Karen's, Melissa's, Gregory's, Jen's, Erica's, and Stephanie's I really want. Right now. The yellow and blue teams seemed to have the most cohesive menus, especially the yellow, so I was not at all surprised to see them declared the winner. I was surprised how many mistakes the red team made, and thus equally unsurprised to see them in the bottom. Lee Anne's "I hope I don't have to swim home" was good natured in the midst of her frustration at making "dumb, technical" errors two days in a row. I was glad to see Joe go over her; the flare-up wasn't the only problem with her dish, it would still have had some issues, but his dish would have had more problems than hers if they'd made the exact same thing indoors. Right decision, and no shame in going out first among this group. I am so excited for this season!

I work from home, and my parents are retired, so in both households the cats are used to having someone home more often than not. Now having someone home almost 24/7 has all three of them in nirvana - they are definitely not dismayed by the change in their routine, because their routine is to demand someone provide a lap immediately should they wake up and realize they are sleeping somewhere other than on a human.

I enjoyed that one, too, and for the same reason. Other than "Eat, Germany" I got all of them, but I'd never really thought about any of those name origins before; if they'd given me the city and asked me to translate from there, I would never have done as well as I did in reverse.

This is on TV again, so of course I'm watching it again, and because I've spent nearly 30 years complaining about Kit - and stand by every one of those annoyances with her - but only the past year or so giving credit for something great she does, I have to reiterate my love for that scene, because it's wonderful and I'm ashamed it took me so long to notice: When Dottie and Kit realize Capadino isn't taking Marla because she's not pretty, they both immediately drop their suitcases and refuse to go with him. They aren't looking at each other, and Dottie isn't even a second ahead of Kit; Kit is not in any way following Dottie's lead. Dottie doesn't even want to do this league tryout to begin with, is just doing it for Kit, while to Kit this seems her only possible chance at the kind of life she wants. But, like Dottie, Kit doesn't hesitate to consider whether she's willing to put it on the line for a stranger. A woman is being treated unfairly, and she, just like her more-privileged sister, instinctually will not stand for it. It's a small but powerful moment in a film filled with them. And since it relates to Marla, I'll go ahead and say for the umpteenth time that the scene at the train station between Marla and her dad is perfect. Penny Marshall, who saw it untold number of times during filming and editing, teared up every time. So it's no wonder I do the same every time I watch it.

I can't believe no one took a guess with Gutenberg bible; maybe they were afraid to be embarrassed. The Arizona TS surprised me a bit, but that's about it. I was surprised the Ellen Barkin clue referred to her role on Animal Kingdom in present tense; I'd have thought this was taped after her final episode aired (I didn't watch the show, but I remember reading about her being pissed, so I looked it up and it aired in August; this season had started taping in July). If I knew the German word for "eat", I'd have run the first round. The Places in Fantasy and Battleships categories doomed me in DJ; I only knew one in each. So, not a great game for me, but at least FJ came to me fairly quickly.

Because when Bonnie turned back up in Christy's life, she made a point of being ultra-helpful with the kids. Christy wasn't a mess anymore, but Violet was still helping raise Roscoe (and, like Christy said, Violet was a better mother to him than she was). Then Bonnie comes along, starts taking care of Roscoe (taking that responsibility off Violet) and being cool, non-judgmental Grandma to Violet, and in short order Violet turns up pregnant. I think it's very natural at that age and circumstances that she clung to Bonnie (and notable she called her Bonnie, not Grandma - she wasn't inventing a pre-existing relationship, she was just enjoying this new one), with whom she didn't share the ugly history she did with Christy, rather than analyzing how what Christy put her through is what Bonnie put Christy through.

Same here, only the commercial is clearly an updated version because they're all wearing helmets and we didn't even own helmets when I was a kid. It's a quiet suburban street populated by a lot of families with kids; I have two friends who live in areas like that (neither of whom have kids, so I don't know how they can stand it, but that's another issue), and there are always kids playing in the streets when I visit on the weekends. Only they're not as quick at moving out of the way as the kids in the commercial; those little shits expect you to wait while they finish the round/drive/whatever of what they're playing.

For the first time in quite a while, I watched a few minutes here and there of this episode, and it seemed to - in contrasting Jazz and Noelle's physical and emotional situations at the time of surgery - encapsulate what this series has been talking about all along and why I've continued to read here for updates on Jazz despite my long ago disgust with turning this from a documentary series into a reality show. When the Jenningses, upon realizing all their "corrective" measures didn't work and what they had in their youngest toddler wasn't a confused boy but a transgender girl, went looking for a transgender community to connect with for support and guidance, they found almost exclusively adults, and who hadn't transitioned, in any way, until after puberty and suffered tremendous psychological damage having to undergo the wrong puberty and continued damage - both psychological and to their physical and financial safety by the resulting ongoing difficulty in "passing" - and thus lamented having to go through the wrong puberty and talked about how life could have been/be so different without that. So they ultimately sought to alleviate that by medically inducing the right puberty in Jazz. And that indeed solved some problems, but also created one, with the physical difficulty in not having as much tissue to work with as desired in conducting bottom surgery. That's what was on display here - Jazz, with her early hormonal correction, is better able to "pass" (which, of course, is not just cosmetic, but potentially a matter of survival in our society) in terms of her physical self the public sees (those who don't know anything about her via the show), but has a tougher time in terms of obtaining what she wants for the genitalia she sees and any sexual partner will see, while Noelle and most of the transgender girls Jazz is friends with have more to work with in creating a "typical" vulva and vagina, but have facial features that do not as well comport with the desired "feminine norm" and instead look more like what is traditionally described as "masculine" (and had to spend longer looking at - and disguising via clothing - a penis that caused such psychological discomfort and potentially physical danger from others. There is no clear path Jazz and her parents, Noelle and hers, or anyone should have taken, no definitive right with anything else being wrong. And Jazz doesn't doesn't seem to get what was right for her isn't automatically right for everyone else, but it's also not hard for me to imagine why - with her very existence/identity under societal (and some personal) attack as long as she can remember, and the predominant sentiment she heard from her adult counterparts, she feels that way.

Something I forgot to mention is something I've liked every other time it has happened in this series as a whole - the realistic touch that most of them don't have nice winter coats. The few times they get dressed up for something, they top it off with the same cold weather coat they wear on a daily basis, like Jackie did for her "tonight's the night" date.

Gods, Ben looks better. Who knew - he's actually cute under all that scruff! Why is Darlene putting her inability to pay her bills on Ben as the episode opens? Of course there's no money coming in yet from this magazine idea of theirs and she needs to get, you know, a job. Based on the desperation she admits to later, I think she's been in denial. Still, Darlene annoyed me in this episode. Harris was on fire tormenting her at work - so many great lines - but she also took it seriously, that Darlene's performance would reflect on her and if Darlene was too damn good to work there, she didn't need to work there anymore. (And Darlene was bad before she told a customer to go home and then hid in a dressing room to do her magazine mock-up; even if that customer is a clueless jerk creating a messy pile you're going to have to re-fold, you don't attempt to stop them by essentially saying, "You're fat; look on the bottom," you ask, "Can I help you find the size you're looking for?") I felt terrible for Harris when she got fired - it didn't just eliminate a paycheck, it eliminated the path she thought she had to college. It was a crappy job, but she was willing to not just suck it up but do it well, because she had a long-term goal. How very Corporate America that instead of that being valued, she got replaced by a robot. And how very sitcom that she'll probably wind up living in the same house as everyone else. But I wanted to see her break the cycle. But Darlene not being allowed to work at seven-year-old Harris's pretend bakery because she depressed the customers was funny. As was Becky becoming a customer for life upon learning they made Harris Darlene's boss. Dan's confusion as things unfold at the Lunchbox was pure gold. "Have a nice time doing whatever each of you thinks this is" was good, and then as Becky explains ("You getting this old timer?") it got even better. Jackie trying to figure out how the physical intimacy will work was funny enough, but then came "I don't know who's going where, so I cleared the decks" and I nearly choked on my drink. (I also liked the follow-up, that she shaved places not meant to have stubble.) Finding out they're not actually into the throuple thing, just trying it as a last-ditch effort at spicing up a stagnant marriage gave the show a predictable out to this storyline, but I'm still kind of glad they even went there in the first place. And LOL at the Osbournes appearance at the end; I had totally forgotten that was coming.

Good game. The David Lee Roth TS surprised me. I was not expecting Marlee Matlin or University of Virginia to be TS, either. The Singapore Sling TS didn't surprise me, but thinking a Mai Tai was made with gin (or was alliterative) did. I couldn't believe they initially accepted Portugal in place of Portuguese; glad to see that corrected. China was what popped into my head right away for FJ, and then immediately after that I started doubting myself because it was an instaguess not an instaget of a fact I know for sure. But, after running through a few other reunified countries against those dates, I was almost positive I indeed had it right.

No autographs. No problem. Although I loved Wonder Woman as a kid, that GG episode is the first thing I thought of, too. (Just like any mention of Sonny Bono makes me think, "Sonny Bono, get off my lanai!")

I saw a shorter version on TV last night and had a similar reaction. I take it that, with the noise cancellation, she's so in her own happy little world with her music that while, physically, she's walking down crowded city streets, mentally, she's dancing around some strange cool world with funky lighting. But, yeah, to me, some of her movements more closely resemble having some sort of fit than dancing.

Yes! The way she snaps "Maxwell!" when a simple "Max" doesn't get his attention is perfect. If the "wee"ing didn't last as long - enough to set the stage for how irritated she is (which doesn't take much, since we know the set-up is he does this "all the way home"), but not so long that I'm also so annoyed I have to change the channel to make it stop - I'd like the commercial, because she's funny, as is the way the pig says, "Oh, cool. Thanks, Mrs. A." when she tells him he's home. And he's cute hanging out the window.

Even as someone who was only a casual fan for a few years, I saw enough of Friends to pay attention to discussion among those who stuck it out to catalog the myriad reasons Rachel and Ross utterly suck as a couple - including multiple ways they bring out the worst in each other. I just stumbled across a new one in going around the dial and briefly stopping on a syndicated episode. Rachel told Monica and Phoebe she and Ross were going out on their first date X night, and Monica reminded her she'd agreed to be the server at the dinner party Monica was catering (as she struggled to get this very new business off the ground and only got the party via a referral from her mom) that night. Instead of simply saying, "Oops, sorry (Monica, my best friend) - I got so excited I blanked on the date. Since Ross and I see each other every.damn.day, I'll tell him we need to reschedule," Rachel whines, "But it's our first date!" Fool, please. Most of what sucked about that relationship was Ross, and how stupendously awful he is as a boyfriend to her as it goes on, but, wow, this was an early bad look from Rachel.

Unless a character wants to tell that person next to her or him something embarrassingly personal; then, the music is loud, necessitating a raised voice, but the music will momentarily die down between songs - just in time for the whole bar to hear this shouted revelation.

The subcontracted TS surprised me; I think they got tripped up by the promised in marriage part of the clue. Nexus, 15th century, and dateless (which also stumped me) were clues I'd have figured at least one contestant would get, but no head scratchers among tonight's TS. I didn't know the story behind that line from "Vasoline" - my fun tidbit for the day. I wasn't sure what to expect with FJ, as I tend to enjoy stage musicals, but don't even need both hands to count the movie musicals I like. Singin' in the Rain isn't one of them, but I guessed it immediately based on the year and water.