Bastet

But that's not analogous to a girl being dressed up like Lolita. He wears some items of clothing that are stereotypically feminine, yes, but that's irrelevant -- he's not a sex object in his outfits like Lolita is in hers; he's dressed like a kid, not like an adult.

Becky had already had sex with Mark when she went on the pill, but they were using condoms for disease prevention and she wanted the pill as extra protection against pregnancy. I loved that, and I loved that Harris wanted the morning after pill because she wasn't sure if they used the condom right, not because they hadn't used one at all. As you said, this show has always been refreshing in its handling of teen sex, especially teenage girls having sex.

Yes, Mary said something about how Aunt Darlene referenced reincarnation - that Granny Rose could come back as [something]. Geena smirked that Aunt Darlene needs to put down her yoga mat and pick up a Bible. Darlene said it's not some radical idea, just something that hundreds of millions of people believe, and Geena rejoined that they all better make a reservation in hell because it's going to be crowded. Darlene said they already have a cabana. What remains to be seen - and what will probably be answered in the "Separation of Church and Dan" episode - is whether this is good-natured teasing that goes on in the family, where Geena believes one thing (which David also believes?), Darlene believes another, and the rest also all have their own idea on such issues, and they just tease each other about the differences in those beliefs because they care about/are comfortable enough with each other to do so with no hard feelings, or whether Geena really thinks everyone needs to pick up a bible or they're going to hell, and Darlene's way of dealing with that refrain by this point is with dry humor at least part of the time, rather than calling her on her shit.

I think he's the guy who played Christy's boyfriend on Mom for a little bit, but I need to look him up. (Justin Long, I think recent articles about the love interest for Darlene said he is - I didn't recognize him by name, but tonight I did by face, and I think it's from Mom.) I enjoyed last week’s premiere so much I took a break from the World Series to watch this episode, and am glad I did. It wasn’t great, but it was solid. I realized right as it began that I never watched the episode of Roseanne last season where David returned; oops, I’ll have to see if I can find the disc I recorded that on. David and Darlene were great for each other as first, teenage loves, but awful for each other once she went to school in Chicago, and deciding to get married and have a baby never made sense to me. So I definitely don’t want them getting back together, but it is nice seeing him from time to time. The actors play well off each other; their real-life friendship and long working history is valuable. Sara Gilbert killed it when she said it was time for them to get a divorce. She was so great an actor as a kid, so awkwardly bad as a late teen, and has now cycled back to someone I’m not sure how good she’d be as another character, but is perfect as Darlene. And I certainly want David to get his shit together as a father, but seeing the kids is only a teeny tiny start and he’s not doing well with the rest. You bring your girlfriend, who has only met your kid twice, to the parent-teacher conference about that kid?! When you barely know the kid yourself, no less? And then he leaves the kids with said girlfriend. Ugh. “Harris, why don’t you go get your stuff, find your brother, knock the crack pipe out of his mouth, and we’ll go?” Hee. And Darlene handled things with Harris nicely in the car – a nice blend of openness and parental “OMG, no!” reaction. David as the daughter Roseanne always wanted was a nice moment, too. As was revisiting the Dan/David dynamic in the tag. I love, “If you disappeared, everyone would just think you ran off for good.” Spot on. I like that Mary regards everything someone says to her about any sort of higher power as an interesting story that makes her happy, and hope Geena doesn’t drill that out of her with her “my way is the only way” crap. I also like Jackie, Becky, and Darlene out together. Becky initially not being asked to help with drywall to get some extra money ties directly back to the original series episode where Dan asked Darlene but not her. Nice. All heavy drinkers on TV are alcoholics, so I saw this coming, I guess. I liked Becky better as someone who abuses alcohol than as someone who’s addicted to it, but I also really like Becky and Dan’s relationship, and the dynamic of having just lost their wife/mother to an overdose makes for a good storyline, so I'll go with it. I didn’t even realize last week what makes Darlene laugh in the new around-the-table credits – she puts a fruit plate down in front of Dan, and he distracts Harris in order to switch plates with her.

I really appreciate the archive folks this week, because between football and the World Series, I’m not going to be watching much, but still want to keep up. Alex must have been in heaven with the En Francais category. I was surprised to get all of those; I guess I’ve picked up more than I thought on my travels (I studied Spanish, and know a little bit of German from family). I also got all the country songs, but the Hank Williams classic is Your Cheatin’ Heart, not Your Cheating Heart. Genes was a little bit surprising as a TS, but only a little; definitely not on the level of someone getting a Stupid Answers clue wrong. Guessing the United States instead of Mexico for Durango & Zacatecas surprised me, too. I pre-called Beowulf based on the FJ category, but once the clue wanted a character rather than a book I had no guess -- I’ve never read it, or heard much of anything about it, I just know it exists as pretty much The example of Old English Lit. I don’t always do all that well in literature categories, because I read non-fiction almost exclusively, so it’s down to what I read in school, the little bit I read now, and what I pick up by cultural osmosis. But, while I didn’t know FJ, I knew all but one in Literary Openings (I missed the DD just as the contestant did), so I came away happy.

I've read complaints about that one before, and finally looked it up (I'd never seen it on TV), and, yeah, instead of Quick - Bounty, how about she quick - moves the laptop? And then Dad makes the stupid kid who poked him with the sword clean it up. But, the "no" scream is in slow motion and they cut away with very little time having passed in real time, so hopefully in the next millisecond, she did indeed move the computer. Because she's certainly too old to be that dumb.

Oh my. I found it, and I thought she was going to do the "here comes a plane" thing to him, which would piss me off, as I don't like the elderly treated like babies, but instead it was like she was just remembering what he used to do, and did it in front of him as a shared memory, but not to him. And then that smile on his face when he remembered, and I was done for.

I'm rooting for the Dodgers. I live in Los Angeles, and go see two or three games each season, but I only watch them on television if it's post-season. (I don't know. It's a life-long thing -- I love watching baseball in person, but on TV it has to be high stakes or I get bored.) There are so many Red Sox fans I hate, that I hate the team, so I'm doubly rooting for the Dodgers. But I'm not invested like I am in football, so it's not going to ruin my week if they don't win. It's rather nice, actually - to have something that makes me happy if it goes my way, but doesn't upset me if it doesn't.

Yeah, it happens, and that's what I loved about it. It was perfect for Jackie, that she'd want to step in and take care of things, and she'd reach the point where she was just inventing things to do in order to be there doing something, with the result being, as Darlene said, "we can't sit on the couch or use the kitchen."

You're the second person to post that, so maybe not being able to see the photo (I was reading the archive, not watching the show) wound up helping me. Because, without any "wait, is that copper-colored?" to distract me, the clue boiled down to "the water ____ snake is venomous" and that was easy for me since water moccasin is the only water snake I know the name of, and it has a rather infamous reputation (scary-looking [plus something about being in the water is creepy] and potent venom). I did not, however, know the duck-billed platypus is venomous. The name is memorable, and I've seen pictures, but never learned anything about it. Leave it to Australia to have one of the few venomous mammals on the planet.

Yeah, I was a little distracted during the replay joining the announcers in their WTFery on going for two, but I thought it looked like a throw he should've caught.

Going for it and missing it means if they manage to score another TD without Atlanta scoring, they need the two-point conversion even to tie; they have no option to go for the win. If they kick the extra point (and get it), and they score another TD without Atlanta scoring, they then can decide whether to kick for OT or go for the win. It was a TD too early to go for two, plus momentum is really important under their circumstances.

Maybe, but Brown v. Board had already been accepted (WTF?), so I don't think they needed to worry; while the case is properly titled Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, it is almost always referred to in media discussion as just Citizens United. (And Brown is technically Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, but no one ever requires that.)

Well, those people are awful, and in theory I like her sister being a parody of them (love the line delivery on "cycling's my passion"), but the sister is in her own house doing something and Flo is sitting there like a toddler repeating, "Janice, look" and trying to get her to look at the Progressive website. So, in practice, they cancel each other out with the annoying.

Why in all hell did the Giants go for two in this situation?!

As per usual on Mondays, I watched football tonight instead, but I took a break to read the archive (shorter break than watching the game, and the Giants were well and truly pissing me off - as they do - anyway). Two TS surprised me tonight – water moccasin, because I figured they were pretty notorious and water was given in the clue (that was an instaget for me even without having access to the picture), and Citizens United. Now, it’s obviously hard for me to be objective on that one, as a lawyer (after all, Marbury v Madison, the missed DD, was an instaget for me too). But while I don’t expect M v M to be well known generally, or even all that well known among J! contestants (although I do think that must at least come up in their study, as it's one of the most-influential cases in Supreme Court history and the show does do SC categories semi-regularly), Citizens United is far more recent, and something that got a lot of attention and fired up a lot of people in opposition to it. So that one I did think at least one contestant would know. Maybe John Travolta a little bit, too, but that would depend on the contestants’ ages, I guess, as to whether Urban Cowboy is “before their time.” Same thing with Gene Autry being the singing cowboy. Oh, and if checker cab had a picture (I can’t see them on the archive), then add that to my list. I got most of the TS, but two of them are clues I literally could have sat here until I perished from dehydration and malnutrition and not come up with, as I’d never heard of them – the Feast of Lupercalia and Modest Mussorgsky. (I am bad with composers. And ancient Roman festivals, apparently.)

Maybe you should join a group that's a little less fanatical in its devotion. Like the PLO.

I saw that one yesterday, and cracked up at all the bad photos:

Your husband is a grown man; they'll be fine. I hope you feel better soon. I am lying down too, with cramps, and I am quite peeved about that as well - it just won't let up despite the heating pad and pills. Grrr. At least Riley is happy, getting middle-of-the-day snuggles like this.

If he didn't show up for the funeral, that would be glaring, yes, but this was three weeks later. He works on a boat, and isn't going to have three weeks' bereavement leave (or any bereavement leave), so he had to get back to work, I'm sure. He probably got home within a couple of days of Roseanne dying, stayed through the funeral, and then left.

Yeah, I do that, too, with any of my three closest friends (and they are always expecting me; I would never show up unannounced, as I loathe drop-ins myself), walk in if there hasn't been an answer in about a minute, and call out, "Knock knock." This happens a lot at one friend's house, because I have a knack for getting there when she's out back switching laundry. At my parents' house, which is the house in which I grew up, I don't even knock/ring, I just let myself in (again, they know I'm coming, and when). But, yes, on TV, people a) do the walk-in with people where the relationship between them is such that I think, "I would never enter my [whatever's] house without them opening the door or saying 'come in'" and b) do not wait to see if their knock/ring will be answered before doing so. And I know it's for the same reason that when a door is opened on TV, it's answered very quickly - dead air while someone makes their way to the door/waits for the door to be opened is not interesting - but the idea that people are always lurking right inside their front door, ready to answer within three seconds is one of those TV Things I've always noticed.

Sarah Polley's article, The Men You Meet Making Movies, is good; it came fairly early in this wave of stories, and a turn of phrase she used has stuck with me ever since for how perfectly it described why women often don't talk about it publicly: "I’ve grown up in this industry, surrounded by predatory behavior, and the idea of making people care about it seemed as distant an ambition as pulling the sun out of the sky." Getting back to film adaptations, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret was one of my favorite books as a child, even with the God aspect (I think I was a born atheist who didn't know that's what she was until the teen years), and one of the few childhood books I held onto as an adult. But I haven't re-read it in a long time; I'll have to do that now to see if my perspective has changed on anything. But I'm not sure I'll want to see a movie version. Harriet The Spy was my favorite book as a child, and I never saw the film because I didn't want the inevitable frustration/disappointment in comparing it to the book and my memories. But I feel like perhaps this book, adapted to film at this time, could be something that would supplement my childhood experience, not detract from/compete with it. I find myself rather excited by this news, and will definitely read reviews when the time comes, and probably - hopefully - decide it's something I do want to see for myself.

Good gods. Last Sunday's and tonight's games are the only two Chiefs games I've seen this season, so I'd heard about the slobbering over Mahomes, but hadn't experienced it. It's ridiculous! I think he's a good player off to a promising start and I'm interested to see how his career plays out. But holy cow! Dial it back a notch or eight, please.

Potential adopters usually see more than three dogs, but when the show is edited together, producers pick three of those meetings to showcase and have the participants talk about in their interview segments. They used to mix it up more as to where they slotted the "winning" dog, but they do seem to be putting them in the number three slot more often lately (not always, just more often).

Even with you pointing it out, I never register it. Next episode, I'm going to have to make a point to listen and count along. Which I'll probably regret. I got a little kick out of Bridget continuing to munch on the good cheese even after the gruyere taste testing was done; she'd tasted all of them and ranked them, and Jack had revealed them and was giving more information, and she was still snacking away. As would I, with cheese in front of me. But who knows how many takes they'd done, so it made me laugh.