Bastet

I've apparently mellowed in my middle age, because I am less annoyed by some characters this time around then I was originally. Cynthia was still unbearable, and I still dislike Malucci, but - and I never would have anticipated saying this - Lucy didn't bug me as thoroughly this time. (Maybe I've softened on Kellie Martin - who used to annoy me in anything I saw her in - because I'm so much further removed from Life Goes On, which is what started me disliking her in the first place [to be fair to her, everyone on that show annoyed me].) And I'm not finding Michael Michele quite as wooden.

Yeah, I just tuned in and saw that Domino Heart (Friday's last episode) is airing again, as today's first episode, thus pushing All in the Family to tomorrow. I'm annoyed (and wonder why they're doing that), but at least I have an answer to my question; it was driving me crazy, thinking I'd lost the ability to count to three.

It really is, but it doesn't come off as petty given the way Gleason always praised Read as an actor and said he completely understood his feelings -- he'd have written more for him if he could, but that's just not how the show was going, so if he wanted to leave, he couldn't blame him. It kind of sucks for Janet DeMay, who got thrown out in the retooling, but I think Doris Roberts was a great addition to the cast, and I'm glad Michael got over his initial ideas of who the new character should be and hired her.

Same here; I started watching a documentary series, and now I'm stuck with a reality show, which is why I'm only semi-watching.

I love the two-hour Acapulco premiere for many reasons, one of which is the brief "why Murphy and Bernice are gone" exposition, when Steele - after Laura says Murphy moved to Denver and opened his own agency - remarks that he works closely with the coroner's office. Knowing that James Read wanted to either leave or be given more to do than read autopsy reports, I howl at that.

Yeah, I don't remember it being heavily publicized, either. Well known within the industry, certainly. But I don't think it got a whole lot of tabloid or entertainment media attention - if for no other reason than there were juicier stories about Moonlighting to take up those column inches.

Oh, it was well known at the time that they didn't particularly care for each other, and they did a lot of communicating through assistants because they didn't want to talk to each other when they didn't have to, but that they were professional and did respect the other's work despite personal distaste -- and also had moments where they teased each other and had fun. I know Doris Roberts has made some comments about the tense working environment, but she's also said positive things, and, on the whole, comments from those on set add up to them getting the job done rather than acting like brats and making things awkward for everyone. There were definitely tensions, as was routinely noted then and as is noted "now" in some of the comments by others on the DVD commentary/interviews, but it wasn't like over on the set of Moonlighting where production was actually being affected (having Michael Gleason rather than Glenn Gordon Caron at the helm helped, I'm sure, as Caron was a big part of the problem and Gleason seems to have just hid in his office when things got bad). I'm not even sure Stephanie and Pierce were engaging in revisionist history via their DVD interviews or being disingenuous; a little bit, yeah, but I don't perceive that as the motivation -- I just think enough time has passed that they remember more of the good and would rather focus on that when sharing specific memories, while leaving the bad to just a "Yeah, it was tough sometimes" type of thing and moving on. (They've also never really been the type to bad-mouth each other in public; they kept things in house.) We get the gist of the other side of the coin via others, especially when there's a group of them doing episode commentary (in what they say and, in one case, what they don't; that strange period of silence in between comments on the finale seems, under the circumstances, like someone shared a little more than they meant to and they edited it out). As for the chemistry in this dreadful "season"? Yeah, it was off. But the fundamental characterization and storytelling was off, so how could it not be, even before adding in the backstage issues? Given how utterly miserable they were, resentful of having to be there in the first place, I think it could have been worse. At least in the few quiet moments between the two characters, it feels like old times.

I have several things with old-school orange price stickers on them, and the prices always crack me up. Speaking of discontinued packaging, I miss the glass jars Best Foods mayonnaise used to come in; I have one remaining, but those were so useful -- nice wide mouth and good lid. And, you know, glass instead of plastic. Oh, and metal coffee cans to pour grease into.

That sounds good. My house is a deep yellow, with very dark brown trim and a roof in medium shades of brown. Almost every house on my block has white trim, so I started with the trim color and went from there. The color is in my stucco, rather than painted on top of it, so before the stucco dried it looked more orange than yellow; my neighbors might have been alarmed. There's a house down the street from my parents that is done in a great brown (can't remember the trim color). And there's one up the street from me in a shade of green I love (cream trim). I like pretty much any house color other than pink (because, in general, I like at least several shades of every color other than pink) -- having my stucco sandblasted off, I discovered my house had been pink at some point. (It was a really pale yellow with white trim [and an awful grey roof] when I moved in.)

I don't drink coffee, either, but I think that means asking that the cup not be filled so high that there isn't room to add stuff to the coffee. I never pour liquid into a trash can. I sure as hell don't want to deal with that at home (that will inevitably be the bag that has a little hole in it), so I'm not going to do it to somebody else.

The way Lanford's economic collapse played out over the course of season four was masterful. Wellman being all but shuttered (meaning few residents had union jobs anymore), Rodbell's replacing the diner with a bargain bin (reflecting the community's altered spending habits), etc. - economic conditions changed so much from when Dan opened the bike shop, making its closing inevitable. And it all played out so naturally, and sometimes in the background. Here we'll be catching up with changes that happened while we weren't watching, rather than seeing it play out over the course of a season, but the show was so great at this sort of thing, I'm optimistic it will once again be a refreshing look at such issues. This is what I said upon re-watching the entire series a couple of years ago; it's why I'm not cringing in fear of this the way I do most revivals (and did with the reunion TV movies of the past): I’m just so thankful to Roseanne Barr for this show. To the other actors who helped bring it to life and to the writers who wove her stories into such wonderful episodes, too, but primarily to her. She had a vision, she stuck with it, and she made sure that for nine years we had a show on American television told from a feminist, blue collar viewpoint. A nine-year exploration of class in America; with the popular narrative being that the so-called American Dream (work hard and you can pull yourself up the socio-economic ladder) is the norm, here was someone pointing out that the reality is if you are born poor, you are most likely going to die poor. Nine years of speaking truth to power, exploring issues often misrepresented, shallowly addressed or ignored altogether, and showing us the lives of people often disregarded. Done through comedy that is - far more often than not - intelligent, honest, and downright hilarious.

I think you are ignoring HUGE red flags out of some admirable desire not to be judgmental of a serious mental health issue because of your own psychological concerns. And I truly hope it doesn't end badly for you, that the worst thing that happens is you realize he's unhinged and while you should wish him the best in getting help for that you should not be any part of his life, but I'm concerned for you. This guy has shown a dozen things that scream "Run Away!" yet you're going out with him, and brushing off the numerous warnings objective parties have given you with basically the standard, "But you don't understand how it is when it's just the two of us" that precede all manner of fuckery. I'm also disturbed that it may be part of a pattern. Mr. Makeout not only wanted but pushed physical interaction to a point that one of your close friends was deeply concerned about it, but you - despite apparently having a "no sex on the horizon" policy - went along, despite the physical being the only connection and you having no intention of following that to its logical conclusion. (Not that you owe anyone that, of course, but when a guy pushes that hard towards something in which you're not interested, why carry on rather than calling it off?) Again, I merely skim through this topic, but I've picked up enough to think there's very little that's healthy about your intense quest for dating partners, and think you'd be better off working on some other, more important aspects of your young life at this point. Dismiss this as you will, and for your sake I hope I'm wrong, but, straight talk is: I think you're making foolish choices and, with this guy, making some potentially dangerous ones.

Behind the scenes.

I think Jennifer Grey is pretty bad in parts of that film ("... and never feeling again my whole life the way I feel when I'm with you" is one of the worst line readings I've ever endured), and the film itself is fairly bad in general yet somehow manages to have a certain charm to it. But I do like when she calls him on his shit in that moment, yeah. If I had to pick a Hell, Yeah moment, I guess it would be Baby pouring water on Robbie and telling him to stay away from her and her sister, or Jerry Orbach snatching the money back, or maybe the mom's guileless "I think she gets this from me" when Baby starts dancing. (I also love "I carried a watermelon?" but that's not a "Hell, yeah" moment, that's a "Ha - yep" moment I think of whenever I say something lame and can't believe I just said it.)

That can be a tough one. The "easiest" thing to do (meaning it makes separate feedings easy if it works) is train them to eat their meals in relatively short order, rather than grazing all day and all night, so that you can just separate them at meal time and there's no need to leave food out. But that's not always possible. I don't know that I could have ever got Maddie to eat a full meal in one or two servings; she took all day to eat her breakfast, and all night to eat her dinner. She wasn't food motivated, so I don't know that I could have trained her out of that. Where you have one who won't eat enough at a designated meal time and thus has to have food left out, and can put that one's food where s/he can access it but the other cat(s) can't, that works, too. Thankfully, I was able to keep Baxter from getting into Maddie's food by putting her food on top of the dryer -- he couldn't jump that high, while she loved to be up off the ground, so it worked perfectly. A friend put her thin (grazing) cat's food in the shower/tub with the door closed to a width that he could squeeze through but her other, wider (food-stealing) cat couldn't. While they aren't cheap, and are certainly more cumbersome than a little bowl or plate, there does exist at least one feeder that can be programmed to only be accessible by a specific cat (it's tied to either their microchip if they have one, or a chip on a tag you attach to their collar if they don't) -- the food is covered, and the lid will only open for the designated cat -- so that's the only thing I can think of if neither of the above scenarios will work; perhaps others will have additional ideas that don't require fancy equipment. A friend used the individualized feeders for her two cats, because one was a food hog, and it worked great -- when the food hog shoved his head in to the other cat's feeder, the other cat moved away, and the lid closed. So the food hog learned to give up. Now, if the cat who's supposed to be eating doesn't move away, keeping the lid open while both cats eat, that would defeat the purpose. But it may be something to try. (When my friend was trying to figure out how to keep one out of the other's food, I said, "They should make a feeder that only a specified cat can access, like doggy doors that only open upon sensing the little thingie on a dog's collar." I went Googling, and it turned out my idea already existed.)

She was great as a rape victim in an episode of L&O: SVU, and she's also been in an episode of Major Crimes. Those are my primary associations, but she's been in quite a few other things: Myndy Crist

"Did you see his butt? Darryl doesn't have a cute butt like that; you could park a car in the shadow of his ass." A friend and I do the "I looove to watch him go" thing a lot. (And I would totally eat mayo by itself if it was socially acceptable. It's, by far, my favorite condiment, and what I put on everything involving ingredients contained within bread - sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs, etc. - because I loathe mustard and don't much care for ketchup.)

I've seen the actor who plays Malucci in three things - this, U-571, and L&O: SVU - and he has basically played the same character in each of them. They've all annoyed me.

Aw, your fatty is a cutie. (And I love calling it his Before photo.) My friend adopted a 22-pound cat several years ago; he's 12 pounds now. I can't remember how long it took to get the weight off him, but it happened pretty steadily. Something I forgot to mention in my post answering your diet questions: The "right" weight varies greatly from cat to cat. When you get him closer to where he needs to be, don't get too hung up on hitting a target number -- more telling than the weight is the overall shape of his body. You want the ribs to be easily felt, but not visible. There should be a defined waist when viewed from above, and maybe a little abdominal tuck when viewed from the side. There shouldn't be a whole lot of belly to rub. Things like that. Here is a typical representation of the body condition score used by many vets, if yours didn't already show you something like this. (Although, honestly, a lot of cats are technically overweight - a six on the linked scorecard - but healthy. Just getting them down below fat reduces a lot of risks, and anything else is a bonus.)

Why are they split up? Today's block of episodes concludes with The Domino Heart. According to the IMDb episode guide for the show, the next three episodes (which would air Tuesday rather than Monday because of the Doug & Carol marathon for Memorial Day) are Abby Road and then the two in question, Be Still My Heart and All in the Family. So is IMDb missing an episode or something? I hope they're both airing on Tuesday so I can watch them in a row (I'll just plan on taking a long lunch that day).

@Jaded, I'm sorry to hear Captain is still having troubles. You have really been through the wringer with him. My friend's cat eats the Royal Canin urinary formula. My friend hates to give it to him, because of the crappy ingredients, but he's afraid to switch and have him block again. It has been so long, I can't remember if that was the first one he tried or if he had to go through a few before finding one the cat would eat. I've heard (via a pet forum) of a couple people having success with a urinary formula by Wysong. @Mindthinkr, I'm happy to help. (I know a lot about feline diabetes, too, but hope to never need to share that info with you.) Good luck! Slow and steady wins the race, so just find something healthy he'll eat, follow the gradual approach, make exercise part of the daily routine, and you'll get there. And a lot of people find themselves shocked at how many calories they'd been feeding; as you said, it's all over the map as far as to how many a can (or cup of dry food) contains. And often feeding advice is just "a can a day" or "half a cup per day," so you can easily be feeding what looks like a typical amount of food per day without knowing your cat is actually taking in a huge number of calories. Don't beat yourself up over it or anything; you didn't know, now you do, and you're on top of it. He's in good hands.

It's best to stay away from "diet" foods and simply feed fewer calories of a good food. Canned or raw food is generally healthier; cats' natural diet is high in protein, moderate in fat, and very low in carbs, and almost all dry food is much more carb-heavy. If your kitty is a kibble addict, try Nature's Variety Instinct, EVO, or Wellness Core; those use pretty good ingredients and are much lower in carbs than most. For canned food, Nature's Variety, Wellness, Halo, and Tiki are brands that use good-quality and species-appropriate ingredients (the protein should be animal, not plant) and have good caloric composition (percentage of calories from protein, fat, and carbs). There are others, too -- just look for animal protein to make up the first few ingredients on the can, no wheat, corn, or soy, and either no grains or starchy vegetables (peas and potatoes are common ingredients) or, if they do appear, they're about halfway down the ingredient list. For (pre-made, frozen) raw, Nature's Variety and Primal are two I know to be good. You can take a look at Dr. Lisa Pierson's chart showing the protein, fat, carb, and calorie content of a wide variety of canned foods to get yourself started; she did a lot of number crunching so we don't have to. (The numbers on the can are just "guaranteed analysis" -- a maximum or minimum it falls below or above, rather than accurate "as-fed" percentages.) Then, once you find something nutritious that your cat will actually eat (because the "best" food in the world is of absolutely no value if your cat won't eat it), figure out how many calories of it to feed. A very rough average is 20 calories per pound - e.g. 200 calories per day for a 10-pound cat - to maintain weight, and about 15-20 percent less than that to lose weight. But it's important to reduce calories gradually, rather than suddenly reducing them by a significant margin, so first calculate how many calories per day you have been feeding. Fairly recently, I talked with someone who discovered she'd been feeding her cat nearly 400 calories per day. Suddenly cutting that in half or more could have been dangerous to the cat; hepatic lipidosis generally occurs when a cat, particularly an overweight cat, suddenly stops eating and goes a few days without, but it is possible for it to happen (again, particularly in an overweight cat) with a dramatic drop in calories, even though the cat is still eating. That's a very serious illness, so it's best to avoid the risk. So, it's best to reduce calories gradually, about 15-20 percent at a time, until you're where you want to be. Oh, and protein keeps them feeling fuller longer than carbs, so that's another benefit to feeding a dieting kitty a high-protein/low-carb food -- they're a little less cranky. Exercise is healthy too, of course, so hopefully when you're settled into your new place and Kitty is out of confinement, you can get some good play time in. Best of luck to you, and let me know if you have any further questions.

Yeah, as I've mentioned, I'm only paying partial attention, but the Doug/Carol relationship confuses me. They were engaged and trying to get pregnant. Then he pulls his stunt at work and moves to Seattle (or wherever), asking her to come with him; she opts not to uproot her entire life because he did something idiotic. I'm with things so far. But then she gets pregnant, and has twins, and he doesn't so much as take a weekend off to come see her? I guess, realistically, she's going to have to go to him if they're going to be together, as he won't be able to find work in Chicago (I don't know why anyone else hired him, but I'll go with it). It just sucks that she's going to have to do that. Two babies, and she's going to have to move away from her mom, her job, all her friends, and the city in which she's lived her entire life. All because Doug decided climbing up on his high horse was more important than his best friend, his fiancée, and all the patients served by a county hospital and its two clinics.

They don't only laugh in the moment, they laugh when talking about it in sit-down interviews. If, during those times, they acknowledged it as a problem they're working on, unfortunately without much success, I'd feel quite different about their culpability. Instead, we've had one "I need to teach Sean about boundaries" comment (from the father) and the rest has been a bunch of "Oh, Sean that little scamp"-type laughing. They think it's cute, if the show's presentation is accurate, and based on the comments of camom (who knows some of these people), I'm guessing it is. It is unequivocally not cute, and they have harmed and are continuing to harm their son and the women he comes into contact with by behaving as if it is.

I do that, too.