Bastet

I've met Gloria Reuben (backstage before a concert, when she was on tour with Tina Turner) and she has a very calm energy. She's been in Law & Order: SVU, in two different roles. (Plenty of other things, too, but I think that's the only thing I've seen her in other than ER.)

Anspaugh can go screw himself, but I'm not real impressed with Jeannie, either. If she thinks Anspaugh decided a PA position was the one that needed to be eliminated, knowing it would be Jeannie because she has the least seniority, and thus it was all a pretext, fine. But she knows damn well Kerry made the only decision she could fairly make once she was ordered to lay off a PA, not a discriminatory decision based on Jeannie's HIV status, has in fact previously fought against those who tried to discriminate against her, and then networked to help her land a job in Atlanta. Yet when it was all over and she got her job back, she couldn't even manage to acknowledge that between the two of them? I do find it hard to swallow someone as savvy as Kerry didn't raise the issue with Anspaugh and Legal once she was told to eliminate a PA position, though -- hey, the PA with lowest seniority is Jeannie Boulet, so we'll be laying off the only ER employee we know to be HIV positive; help me make sure all ducks are in a row. And Kerry can miss me for deciding that because she can manage her chronic pain without drugs, everyone else should, too. But Jeannie owed her some personal courtesy in the midst of standing up for herself professionally. Shifting gears, between Captain Hadley from The Shawshank Redemption and the wife killer in that TV movie with Moira Kelly and Sheryl Lee, I cannot see Clancy Brown in anything without expecting him to be evil.

I recognized her only from an episode of Major Crimes and Deidra and Laney Rob a Train, but I just looked her up on IMDb, and, wow, you're right - she has over 150 credits to her name.

This simple recipe for pan-seared scallops with asparagus and pancetta, served over a mixed-greens salad.

As if the movies Hallmark Channel airs (sometimes on a constant loop, such as when they preempt my beloved Golden Girls syndication to air Christmas crap for what seems like five months) aren't awful enough on their own, now the network is airing a commercial in which the annoying Candace Cameron-Whatever is promoting them.

At least he looks repentant; here was Baxter (when the poor guy had temporarily gone from hyper to hypothyroid and put on A LOT of weight) looking at me, like, "What? Your lazy ass left two pairs of shoes inside the back door rather than taking them to the closet, and they are now mine; go away and leave me to my fetish."

She is a needy, weepy, clingy, incompetent mess of an idiot who Mark hires over everyone's objections and then starts sleeping with.

I almost didn't watch Law & Order: SVU when it premiered because I associated her with Cynthia. I may very well be remembering this wrong, but I think Hargitay said in an interview once that Cynthia was annoying or something like that. At least now I have Romano - a character I love to hate - to balance things out. I have zero interest in Mark's life crisis; I haven't since it started, and really don't as it progresses. I'm not intrigued, I don't feel sorry for him, I just think he's being an asshole. I think the road trip episode annoyed me, but we'll see. Daddy Peter is amusing me, though, from holding the crying baby in the bedroom doorway and talking loudly in the hopes Carla will get up and handle things to reading Reese to sleep by explaining how to form a J-pouch.

My favorite stuffed artichoke preparation is the Stuffed Artichokes Fontecchio recipe from The Silver Palate Cookbook. As for lighter dipping sauces, you can sub yogurt for mayo (well, you can if you like yogurt; I don't, so that's out for me). Or a lemon juice/olive oil/white wine base with whatever flavors you want to add (e.g. garlic and chiles) - that I have done, although I usually just make a mayo-based sauce because that's what I like best. A salsa verde can work, too. I remember mentioning this recipe (I've never made it) when someone else asked about lighter dipping sauces; it uses butter, but only a tablespoon for 4 artichokes worth of dip.

Oh good, it's on a channel I'm pretty sure I don't get, so I don't have to worry about stumbling across it while going around the dial. I've endured a couple of kid versions of Chopped during a marathon when I didn't feel like changing the channel, and the kids were always unbearable.

Hello Again "Please, I have a wife and kids." "Yeah? Well, you be sweet to them, especially your wife. My husband wasn't sweet to me and look how I turned out."

Cary Grant is my all-time celebrity crush, too.

Oh god, it's Cynthia. Well, the good thing about Pop airing three episodes a day is that she'll be gone soon. But this is going to be a long week.

Him crossing out "for" and writing in "is the" is one of my favorite Toby moments. My instinct is to say my top ten would skew heavily towards CJ, and CJ and Toby together, but on the other hand, so much of that is brilliantly subtle nuance that doesn't exactly stand out, it just makes the scene ten times better than it was already wonderfully written, and it just seeps into my brain, and it's later that I think about the little looks and inflections and mannerisms that made it so great.

There was a day last week where I was almost convinced my car had acquired some sort of invisibility shield for the number of drivers who pulled out in front of me from side streets, alleys, etc. and forced me to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting them.

Oh, I think there was definitely a racial element to his comment. And, in typical fashion, instead of stepping back and examining whether racial bias played a role in his attitude, he just pulled the "I can't be racist, because I'm friends with Raul" card. The live episode. I remember what a big deal that was at the time. A friend in Boston and I (I'm in Los Angeles) exchanged tapes, so we could each see both versions.

Oh, the goggles make it perfect. She should be a spokesdog for the laser manufacturer. Hope she feels better!

That idiot who can't get the guacamole off her plate with her fries should be in black and white. Infomercial parody fail.

Both of those specific examples made sense to me, although I often share your general complaint. With the brother donating a kidney to his sister, he said she practically raised him, so I assume they are estranged from their parents or maybe their parents died. With the prom couple, her attack started on the way to prom, so her parents wouldn't have been with her, just the boyfriend. She refused to stay for treatment or let her boyfriend interfere, so he was probably too scared to call her parents. And I can easily fanwank that they let her parents know once they were through with prom, and the parents were waiting for her upstairs (since we just saw them arrive back at the ER, without following up with her in surgery, I believe). I loved Maggie setting her straight, not to ever contradict her orders like that again -- "I may be younger than you, but I am the doctor, and you are the nurse." I also like that Carol admitted to Doug she is jealous that Maggie is younger than her and gets to give her orders. Carol has definitely been snippy lately, and I think it's because she's at a crossroads, wondering if she should have done something different with her life and if it's too late to change course now if she did. And Maggie is such a representation of that road not taken, since they grew up in the same neighborhood and Carol was in the same grade as her sister. Does Doyle have a crush on Maria Bello's new character (that episode was one I just had on as background noise)? I wouldn't blame her -- I think Bello is attractive on multiple levels (she's pretty, and there's also just something about her that strikes me as interesting). I laughed at Carter extolling Maggie's many virtues and then fishing for whether she'd ever date men, or at least him, and she just says, "Not a chance" and carries on. I like their friendship.

Definitely. But Nancy Curlee had such a sense of - and love for - the characters and their history, that when she was there she could somewhat temper Phelps' bad impulses; she slowed the decline. Once she was gone, it was just an unfettered path to the bottom. It felt so hopeful to get rid of Phelps, and should have been a time of transformation when Laibson/McTavish came in, but they just made things worse, or bad in different ways. It was sad to walk away from something I'd watched since childhood, with characters I loved still there, but they were all written so poorly they didn't feel like "my" characters anymore, so it was more like walking away from a show I'd tried for a few years and didn't like.

That's around when I quit watching -- in '95. The writing took a dive when Nancy Curlee, who was able to turn some of Jill Farren Phelps' bad ideas into good stories, was no longer Head Writer, so for a while I was pretty much only watching for Holly (my all-time favorite GL character) and Roger, and then those tools of Satan, Michael Laibson and Megan McTavish, came along and completely ruined everything, and I was out.

I miss both of them. (And it's almost hard to believe we're coming up on 20 years since Michael Zaslow died.) I know they absolutely could not stand each other in real life, but they were fantastic to watch together. I think Marj Dusay did a fine job as Alex, but it was when she'd spar with Roger that I really missed Beverlee McKinsey.

Book Jackie was straight and Book Bev was gay, but we learn in the finale that in reality it's the opposite -- Jackie had always told Roseanne she was gay, but Roseanne kept imagining her with men, so wrote her that way, and Bev was so sheltered and closed off from herself, Roseanne thought writing her as a lesbian might give her more sense of herself as a woman. ("Oh yeah, and she's nuts.")

Yes. In reality, he died (of the heart attack), and she felt abandoned. So, when she wrote the book, she wrote Dan as having had the emotional affair with the nurse while in California, to explore those feelings of abandonment, and then coming back to her, to give herself the happy ending denied to her in real life. The other big revelation from the finale that I wonder if they'll retcon for the revival is the husband switch -- that it was actually Becky/David and Darlene/Mark who got together, but she thought David was better for Darlene and Mark better for Becky, so she wrote them that way.

I've heard of that happening, with milk or other things -- plenty of owners have found themselves muttering, "But he used to eat that all the time and was fine." I don't have any personal experience testing that particular lactose intolerance theory, as I've never given a cat milk regularly; they just drink out of my glass sometimes when I'm having milk, which is only occasionally to begin with. (Yes, we share germs. No, I don't care.)