Bastet

Grrr; the one night of the all-stars championship that traffic got me home halfway through the episode is the one night that meant actually missing half the game; if that had happened night one, I'd have only missed about five clues. Thankfully, the archive is already updated, so I was able to read the clues from the first round. I was very surprised to get all but one of the TV by the Numbers clues that stumped them, because I don't watch any of them. I think the only one that surprises me as a TS is One Life to Live. The Wedgwood TS definitely surprised me. Allergy and gallery, a bit, too (and, oh how I loved that anagrams category!). Having just read it, that bugged me, too -- the clue asked for the facility ("in a nod to this facility named for a president"), so that's the Kennedy Space Center.

She used fresh jumbo lump crab (in plastic tubs). She bought a little can of something, but I don't have the eyesight to have seen what it was.

The House Hunters International and House Hunters Renovations threads were moved out of the House Hunters forum <sigh> and are now single-thread topics on their own. I followed HHR and it didn't show up on my Custom Home Page, so I thought maybe that was because it was new, but then I followed HHI and that immediately appeared on my home page. So: House Hunters Renovations.

Him packing a bunch of underwear, bras & nylons, and the stapler (and nothing she actually needed), led to the fabulously-delivered line, "I was just thinking how I wanted to put on all my underwear and staple something!”

So were the cheftestants and the guest judge -- there were several "I can't believe you have red tomatoes!" comments. So someone planted their tomato plant in exactly the right spot (soil and sunshine) and got very lucky.

Because she's from Alabama? Or is there some non-stereotypical reason I've forgotten from previous episodes that would make her the least likely to know where Macau is located?

That's why I was so curious to see how her dish turned out and was received; as she acknowledged, this isn't something you would normally do with Iberico ham, so the judges were either going to clutch their aprons or agree with her that when you have the rare opportunity to get one for cents on the dollar you can "waste" a lot of it that way to help make an incredible dish. I was kind of fascinated by the whole thing.

I loved the audience enjoying the Ann Richards quote. Larissa was on fire; if she’d landed on that politicians DD, she’d probably have given her team a huge lead heading into FJ. I’m glad they wound up with one after FJ, and am surprised only one got it. I know, I know, even J! contestants suck at geography, but this is the all-stars championship. One couldn’t even come up with a single country and one didn’t pay attention to all the words in the clue. Coming up with the lyric “land that I love” has no place in DJ, ever, and certainly not in this championship. Identifying Beethoven’s Fifth was also ridiculously over-valued. I spent that entire category grumbling at the pianist; like many here, I was irked by the slow reading of the clue. It was like a parody of slow clue reading! Only two TS, I think; propofol surprised me, but I think they just couldn’t pull it from their brains, probably picturing a jumble of letters starting with p and scrambling to bring it into focus but running out of time. I liked seeing bits of the wagering strategy sessions before we got to FJ.

Yay, Gail! And, yay, I’m glad to have Michelle back. Adrienne’s QF dish looked very appetizing; so fresh, and all that color. The top three dishes all looked wonderful, and I’d have been happy to eat the bottom three, too. I love veggies straight from the garden. I was waiting for the cheftestants who paid out the ass for vegetables at the auction to find them at market price in Whole Foods (I don't shop there, so I don't know how special they get in their specialty item selections). I think Kelsey went on for a while describing her dish at the dinner table, prompting Padma’s “Okay, that’ll be all for now” dismissal. I like that she showed so much technique in that gumbo. It was painful to watch Adrienne’s mentor talk about how she does some of the best plating of any chef he knows, while she frantically threw food on the plate. I was worried for her the entire episode, because they spent a lot of time on her backstory, photos, etc. Then I saw Justin’s dish and thought, nope, that was a red herring and it's him. Everyone is competing on a very similar level at this point in the game, and any one of them can be the one to go home in a given challenge. I hate to lose him, but I'd have hated to lose her even more. It's tough to see someone go home for a good dish again, but that happens at this point in the game. I couldn't believe Sara got that crazy-expensive ham and then used most of it for broth; I was most curious to see how hers turned out, because that was either brilliant or unbelievably stupid. I’m glad it turned out so well. She’s come on strong at just the right time. I love to see the final five 80% women. And I've liked Eric from the beginning (I've liked pretty much everyone this season). It's always nice when I'm not rooting against anyone in the finals/finale, because I like everyone's food and the way they generally conduct themselves, so I may have an extra fondness for some (e.g. Adrienne, ever since she kicked absolute ass as Exec Chef in Restaurant Wars, and Michelle, because I like seeing her quiet style of strength respected) but there's no one I'd be disappointed to see win the title.

I was one of the few people he didn't bug when he was on (I vaguely remember there being one thing I found annoying), and I also enjoyed some articles he wrote, particularly about the racism and sexism in "nerd culture."

I know his program wound up being syndicated nationally, but he's forever in my mind as a local (Los Angeles) reporter, because he was a fixture here in the '70s and '80s. I don't remember the specifics of how they were ripped off, but my friend's parents were the consumers he helped in one of his early segments.

Same here; I would squeeze until they squealed like Maxwell. I hate that commercial, other than the perfect way the mom snaps, "Maxwell!" to get his attention. Maybe if his damn weeeeeeing didn't go on so long it wouldn't be as bad, because I think it's a funny concept, but I am going to hurt myself lunging for the remote one of these days.

Unloading the dishwasher was one of my chores as a teen, so I hated it. But now that I don't have a dishwasher, I greatly look forward to enduring that task again (which won't be until I remodel my kitchen). Because it has nothing on how much I hate doing dishes. And, even though it's just me, I cook a lot (and I work out of my home office most of the time, so it's two or occasionally three meals worth of dishes a day), so it adds up. I can leave the breakfast and/or lunch dishes in the sink for the day, because those meals don't generate a whole lot to wash, but once all the pots, pans, mixing bowls, etc. from dinner are involved, it's a pile that must be washed before I can go to sleep. So every damn night with the dishes. I can't wait to be able to just shove them in the dishwasher and go to bed (something I take great joy in doing when I cat-sit at my parents' house). And I don't like drying them with a towel, so I leave them to air dry in the rack, which means the first thing I have to do in the morning is put them away, because I can't stand clutter on my counters. Folding/hanging and putting away is where laundry bugs me, too. I never leave clean laundry sitting out while I procrastinate doing it, but I am notorious for leaving the last load in the dryer to "deal with later" and then forgetting all about it until the next time I do laundry; I wash the first load, open up the dryer to toss it in, and realize, "Dammit!"

I’d like to amend that to say Team Anyone But Austin or Buzzy (although I do find Alex Jacobs quite an impressive player). I didn’t see either of them during their runs (I went through a couple of long periods where I was working consistently late and didn’t watch the show), but they looked unbearable in their introduction montages – and I say this as someone who normally isn’t fired up for or against contestants. The team splits it. (That's only fair, but confirmed by Alex telling Brad he doesn't need $333,000 to visit Australia.) The delay in actually getting to the game - and then through the round, with a break before and after the interviews - was annoying since I watch the show for the clues, not the contestants, but this is so different, and presumably a one-off event (or at least the first of something that can’t be repeated until many more big winners have been accumulated), I'll let it go. Colby had enough money left from taking care of his mom (that was touching how she’d be the first person in his family to actually be able to truly retire) to finally buy a suit that fits, I see. Brad got an “Oh, hel-lo” AND a “Good for you.” (And it’s funny that Australia was his bucket list answer, when that was just an answer in yesterday’s Alex’s Bucket List category.) Triple Rhyme Time was fantastically challenging. I’m great in regular rhyme time categories, and I got the first one unveiled - which stumped the three all-stars (Greek Peak Week) - so I was all puffed up, but I only got two more. That was a rather frenetic game despite the slow pace of the overall episode, with all the board hopping and being fast on the buzzer. But I dig the level of competition, and am looking forward to more now that I understand - which I didn't from the little reading I did about the format prior to tonight - how the whole thing works.

I don't remember a lot of these people by name, and I'm almost certain Austin's run was during the period when I wasn't watching the show. So, if pressed, I'm Team Julia, just because I remember quite liking her. But I'm really just here for some good competition in a new format.

There will have to be a group rendition of "Miami, Miami, you've got style" to close out an evening. Or am I the only one who belts that out with the Girls whenever it's on?

I really enjoyed them as friends, and would have been quite annoyed to see them start dating. TV shows pair up way too many people, so it's nice when they acknowledge that two people can work together and become close without exchanging bodily fluids.

I complained about Glinda being a DD, but I forgot about "Thank You" also being a DD; yes, that was just as ridiculous. What the hell else was a two-word Oscar acceptance speech going to be, "I won"? "Holy shit"? "Up yours"? McCoy was fairly easy, too, but those two are on another level.

Thanks to an ill-timed phone call, I missed the entire game, but thankfully the archive was updated so I was able to read all the clues. I wonder if the clues in Alex’s Bucket List were true, because it’s hard to believe someone with his resources and love of travel hasn’t been to Australia by now. (Please tell me the visual part of the clue, which I can't see on the archive, was a picture of someplace in Australia, not a world map with Australia highlighted!) The Llasa TS in that category did not surprise me, even though it amounted to “Name the capital of Tibet," because geography clues are particularly prone to stumping contestants. The Salinas TS somewhat surprised me; I thought that whole American Lit category was better suited to the first round. Gypsum surprised me at first, but then I decided it didn’t. The Negro Leagues TS just flat-out surprised me, though; Hank Aaron is obviously baseball, and with the team name it’s obviously not MLB, so look at the year and Aaron’s race, and what can it be? I’d have thought at least one would get that. *Speaking of over-valued clues, I can’t even with the Glinda = the good witch being a DD in DJ. I don't even like The Wizard of Oz, but talk about cultural osmosis; references are everywhere! I figured all three contestants would have time to sing in their head and come up with the last line in order to nail FJ, but apparently not.

L is for the 24-hour kind of Lou Gehrig’s Disease Arnie came down with when he was supposed to meet Nancy’s family

Re. the bolded: Pun intended? 🙂 I had to look it up, and was amused to find this article complaining about the ad turning using a noun as a verb (and which links to an earlier article complaining about the pronunciation).

To Kome? Something like this was my first thought, too:

Ditto to this entire post. (I only occasionally click on those links to see what post is being referred to in the notification, so I haven't bothered noting it, but it is definitely something that only started happening with the update.)

Gaza Strip? Neonatal? Humane, as the next clue in the animals category (not even a guess, with the not "Society" clue within the clue)? Speedy (trial)? Norton (Anthology)? Rotor(craft)? The Maine? Desert Inn? Flemish? I know that's not even all of them; the contestants were frequently stumped tonight, and many of them were surprising.

The Bill of Rights category was left over from a teen tournament, right? I thought it was an on-the-easier-side-of-the-show's-average game overall, so quite a few of the TS were surprising. I hated the wording of the Puerto Rico clue; way to perpetuate the disturbingly prevalent erroneous belief that it's a foreign country.