Bastet

Hey, look at that -- the list is finally down to the point where I recognize all the names on it. (I never saw Santos or Vinick, but I know who they are.) And I still cannot believe Abbey was eliminated before so many of these characters. I like Amy a lot more than some of them, too, but the Abbey thing blows.my.mind. Will Bailey Annabeth Schott Joe Quincy

I've hit the "give zucchini away to strangers" part of the summer garden; I posted on NextDoor, and went around the neighborhood yesterday delivering to those who'd asked for some. I gave away a few crookneck squash, too, but those are still mostly under control (between my parents, a couple of friends, and me, we're generally eating them all). I don't like cherry tomatoes, but a friend is overrun by them and my mom likes them (my parents didn't plant a garden this year because they'll be gone a lot), so I keeping picking some for her. I am eating my weight in "regular" tomatoes, though. So.Freaking.Good. A BLT (with avocado mashed up with a tiny bit of mayo and spread on the bread) is pretty much my perfect sandwich, and one of my favorite things about tomato season. My parents' peach and nectarine trees are practically collapsing under their own weight and have hit the point where every day there are about ten new perfectly ripe for picking pieces of fruit, so we're all enjoying the hell out of those.

Wow, Peter married Cleo? I don't remember that at all about his departure (but, then, we've established that "I don't remember" kicks off my reaction to most of this show). I didn't remember Carla died, either. I am so offended by what they did to Carla's character to change when they get together/she gets pregnant/they figure out how to co-parent Carla to "by the way, I'm moving abroad with the kid; peace out and, by the way, he may not even be yours [even though when you acted an ass when I told you he was back when I was pregnant, I set you straight] Carla." Sexist, racist crap. Going back to how little of this show I remembered before re-watching the first six seasons in syndication, despite how many years I watched it pretty much every week, it also strikes me that when watching this recent syndication run, I concentrated on one episode per day and just had the others on as background noise and, now that it's cycling through the first six seasons again, I have not once bothered to turn it on to catch a different episode each day. It's a strange relationship I have with this show - I like it, but I'm also so much more detached from it than anything else I watched that long, and it obviously didn't change the second time around.

That commercial, well, cracks me up.

I love a lot of screwball romantic comedies from the '30s/early '40s, and between then and now there may only be a dozen romantic comedies I truly enjoy; it is a genre that generally doesn't interest me, and often annoys or even offends me. I offer this background to give context when I say the promos for The Big Sick look great to me. I'll probably even shell out to see it in the theater; it seems special, and I'm in. I can't even articulate specifically what I'm responding to. Being based on real people/a real relationship is probably helping create something a lot more palatable to me than the average rom-com, but it's not as if my beloved screwballs were particularly grounded in reality (situation wise, but on the flip side, the characters feel more authentic to me, especially the women). The cast isn't a factor: I don't know Kumail Nanjiani other than his role in one of my favorite episodes of The X-Files (and that he's a big fan of the show), I don't know Zoey Kazan at all (I had to look up her name after seeing the trailer), I like Holly Hunter but not remotely enough to watch something in which I'm otherwise uninterested just to see her, and I only know Ray Romano from Everybody Loves Raymond, which I could not stand. So there aren't specific things from the trailer that I can say THAT makes me want to go see this movie, but the combined effect is working on me.

Annabeth Schott Will Bailey Oliver Babish Dr. Stanley Keyworth

Those are some crazy low prices, even for lunch. Shouldn't the Stan the Putz sandwich be Stan the Yutz or am I the one remembering it wrong? (I know either would apply, but I have Sophia and Stan's mom in my head saying yutz.) I get a ridiculous laugh out of naming the Caesar salad after George Clooney (in honor - or "honor" - of the haircut he went on to have).

And as obvious and thus distracting as it is, they manage to do the product placement in a less-annoying way than I've seen elsewhere. Or maybe it's just that I like the show better. But I watched Rizzoli & Isles, even though it had some issues, because I loved the friendship between the main characters (I am so starved for realistic depictions of female friendships on television, I'll put up with a lot). That show also had a habit of blatant product placement, specifically in the form of two characters randomly discussing the virtues of a certain item or one pitching it to the other, but it bugged me more on that show than it does on this one.

I don't eat potato salad (I hate potatoes), but substitute macaroni salad, and that's me -- I will not eat anything other than my mom's anymore, because I got tired of any other version I tried inevitably not being "right."

What a great interview with Anne Ramsay in that Baseball HoF magazine. Some examples:

I love Talenti's caramel cookie crunch, and its vanilla caramel swirl, despite not being a huge caramel fan. Oh, man, all this talk -- the sale is on until tomorrow, and it's a really good deal, so I may have to go pick up a pint of one of those flavors (I got chocolate chip this time).

She's cute, confident, and fairly outgoing, and she's also new -- the rest seem to have known each other or at least crossed paths as part of the Los Angeles DS community for a while, while she only came out here (from Colorado) for the show.

I'd hardly call Turner's evolving accent an affectation (via comparison to the Bieber example), rather than simply a natural result of her lifestyle -- she divided her time between the U.S. and Europe back then, living in several different cities (more often in Europe than here; she was HUGE there, and the man who would become her husband was German, often working in London), eventually moving full-time to Switzerland (she's not even a U.S. citizen anymore).

Here's another good oral history, from ESPN. I always enjoy hearing how much all the actors enjoyed making this movie -- getting to spend so much time with a bunch of other women, working for Penny, having to get the physical stuff right, etc. And about how many people had no idea the league had ever existed until the documentary that inspired the film, or until getting/hearing about this script, and thus how it makes them feel that this film wound up being many people's introduction to the AAGPBL. There was a 25th anniversary edition released on Blu-Ray back in April, apparently.

Netflix has (or at least used to, but I think it's still there) Desk Set, but that's the only old romantic comedy I can think of on there. Basically, it's only TCM that airs films from the '30s through '60s (even '70s films aren't very well represented on the other movie channels or Netflix).

Nope. If you want to move on, I'll spoiler-tag the answer; I won't be back to check for a couple of days:

Boo to Amy Gardner being gone. Will Bailey Ainsley Hayes Danny Concannon Elsie Snuffin

Horror movie spoof from the early '80s. The Book of Evil. Starring a real-life married couple. Featuring Jeffrey Tambor.

Hmm. I don't dislike Nancy, but it wouldn't do for someone who's never done more than say, "Good morning, Mr. President" stick around too long, so I'll sub her in to my usual list. At least we've reached a point where I recognize most of the characters remaining. Will Bailey Danny Concannon Nancy Ainsley Hayes Annabeth Schott

Talenti gelato is very good for something you can find in most grocery stores (I prefer gelato to ice cream, but most general markets stock much more of the latter). A local chain has it on sale this week, and it took great restraint to only buy one pint/flavor.

I also like that they have her as someone with lumpy breasts. Younger, with denser breast tissue, that's just how they were and it was fine. That doesn't mean she can, at this age, dismiss lumpiness as "yeah, I'm like that." It's a good reminder that you need a baseline (a mammogram at some point, but also just a "this is how my breasts feel" before and in between) to look for changes.

In Europe they would; it's as common there (at least much of western and central Europe; I'm not familiar beyond that from my travels - yet) as "downtown" is here in the U.S. And, especially since so many of these HHs have actually lived in their new location for a while, it would be natural for them to pick that up. Even traveling, I'd say city center rather than downtown, just as an adjustment to local vernacular that I was readily aware of.

I'll have to go back and read it in full later, but from your excerpt, I think I love Kelly Candaele. He had me at "bratty sister," but I love his entire "hell, no, you don't fuck over your team or give up your own integrity" response. Oops; should have read more closely to correctly identify Candaele; thanks scarrynikki12.

"They just wanna hook up some poor, uneducated slobs, so the country has somebody to blame America's Funniest Home Videos on ... That Nielsen box is a conspiracy ... they wanna make sure that people like us watch crap like tractor pulls and Jerry Springer so the advertisers can sell us all this stuff that we don't really need. And then they take our money, and they give it to these right-wing Washington politicians that cut school lunches and all these other budget cuts, you know, to make sure that people like us have no choice but to stay people like us."

Another group where I only recognize one of those eliminated (Laurie this time, whom I don't dislike; I can't stand Sam when it comes to her storyline, and was thus glad for it to end, but she's inoffensive to me). I'm voting for my usual suspects: Danny Concannon Ainsley Hayes Will Bailey Annabeth Schott Simon Donovan