Bastet

I had pizza again last night - olive oil base, with mozzarella, rapini (broccoli rabe), Italian sausage, and black olives. Tonight, I have no idea. I'm defrosting some shrimp in case I'm in the mood to make something quick after football and the premiere episode of the X-Files revival (which I've seen at a screening, but want to watch again), but I may just order in Thai or Chinese food.

I think it's impressive the mom knows the daughter is in there dying her hair and isn't freaking out about that; the daughter probably bought the dye herself, and is old enough to decide what she wants her hair to look like. Mom is only tripping on the mess being in HER bathroom, and that little shit still won't open the door. That the commercial ends with the mom cleaning up after little miss goth-goth just boggles my mind.

Oh yeah, I would never routinely share a bed with someone in anything smaller than a king. But if I was house hunting as part of a couple with a king-sized bed, I'd know I was either going to wind up with a bedroom consisting mostly of that bed or have to look at styles of homes that have larger bedrooms. So I don't care about someone wanting room for a king-sized bed, I care about someone complaining that a home of an era/style in which bedrooms are fairly small has a bedroom too small for a king-sized bed. That's really my fundamental peeve with HHs: Those who complain about features endemic to the housing style/neighborhood in which they're looking. Don't look downtown and complain about street noise. Don't look at old homes and complain about the lack of "open concept." Don't look in a new development and complain about ongoing construction. Etc.

IFC has been airing the two XF movies several times over the past month or so, too. Hopefully all these things are sparking interest, and will thus bring in the numbers tonight.

It's hard, because the show doesn't (can't) cover every step, but by the conversations we did see, it seems like a phone number either wasn't provided on the adoption paperwork (unlikely) or had been a dead end (makes more sense, but odd there wasn't a simple line thrown in to that effect) and thus the address was their big lead; when that proved to be an abandoned house, and the neighborhood a whole was pretty wiped out so, as Mariah said, she couldn't even go door to door to try and find out where the owners had gone, they were pretty well assured this dog's owners were long gone. They've proven themselves over and over to be a rescue that tries to find owners, help them if they're not a perfect home to be a better one, etc. rather than one that puts forth a cursory effort and has ridiculous standards that lead them to believe their kennels are a better option than a loving but flawed home. So I trust they did their best. It was, on the one hand, odd how she - apparently - wasn't scanned until the vet visit, since they have a scanner, but since she was dumped - rather than a found stray, AND they knew who'd dumped her, I can see it not coming until they'd got her the necessary medical attention to think, "Wait, maybe this asshole got her through nefarious means and we can go back a person to look for a legit owner." Yay for Doris and Smack! I love seeing dogs roll around on the ground and present their bellies, like, "Oh, I am so happy to be here." And I love how this and other episodes have shown VRC doesn't refuse to turn over a dog when there's something about the yard that needs to be fixed but can be fixed; if the owner is aware of it, and committed to fixing it (and the dog can be safely kept away from the problem area in the interim), they'll proceed with the adoption. And here Doris is the one who said, "This was designed for a dog who couldn't jump, so I'm concerned it's not enough for Smack, so you tell me if it will work and, if not, what I need to do to make it work." Absolutely get that dog into her home rather than making her wait. And, hee - "I'm not a hugger, but I have to hug you [because of this dog]" -- Doris is a perfect match for Tia in that regard.

Yes, I do not see this fit among real-life male colleagues, but I see it enough among men on TV that I think it's a deliberate style rather than a poor fit. But, to me, it looks like the latter. To the point it's distracting, and I'm not one who focuses on fashion.

There are numerous factors affecting what an actor can command, as you noted, but they're rooted in evaluating what the actor brings to the table in terms of their ability to bring in viewers to that project. (Which is how you can get an actor getting less than their typical price when they do something outside their usual range, because the studio doesn't have the same assurance audiences will flock to see her/him in that type of role.) This show is a fairly perfect example of where two parties are equal in that ability.

Exactly. Their post-XF resumes are pretty equal (I'm far more familiar with hers, but a look at IMDb tells me he has done a lot of work, too), so they're coming into this revival with equal experience/cachet (although she has a lot more acting awards), but, more importantly, they are playing equal partners in a two-person show. There is just straight-up sexism going on in approaching her with HALF his offer.

Yes, Mondays at 8:00 will be its normal time slot for this revival, except for the Sunday night premiere. Also, for anyone who may not be aware, Sunday night's episode will air at 7:00 on the West Coast, simultaneously with the 10:00 East Coast airing, rather than us having to wait until 10:00 our time (of course, I've already seen it, but I'll be watching it again, and it will be nice to discuss it immediately afterward). If the game goes long, it will start after the game, but same deal -- we get it at the same time as East Coast viewers. Presumably it's "live" for Central and Mountain viewers as well, although I have not looked that up.

I have that, but I've only used it as an immersion blender; I haven't used the chopper.

I'm really looking forward to everyone's reactions to the first episode when they don't have the spectacular third episode as a palate cleanser. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's a total dud. I just think it's not all that great, and certainly more lackluster than the show's reintroduction to the world should be. But I think - although obviously don't know because there were literally seconds between the end credits of episode one and the opening of episode three last night - that even without the euphoria induced by the Were-Monster episode I would come away excited that the X-Files are back open, and really excited that it's because both of them want it. Mulder isn't convincing Scully to come back. She wants to. She basically tells Tad it was the time of her life (as a scientist and, yeah, because of Mulder). I just finished emailing a friend a scene by scene recap as best as I could remember (in some places I couldn't quite keep track of the sequence of events, and I forgot a lot of what Tad and Mulder were including in their conspiracy theory ... this is where the politics comes in, where some real-life government action CC is calling out you think, "Yep" and some you think, "Wait, you're lumping that in?") and it reads just like I said -- vintage CC. I think however you usually felt about his mytharc episodes is how you'll feel about this one.

That's what really gets me about this, that they tried to do it again. I believe they got the same for the first movie, because the publicity about their pay discrepancy for the series was fresh. I'm not sure about the second film; they both pretty much took peanuts up front in exchange for a percentage of the gross in order to stretch the measly budget, so that was probably at least an equal pile of peanuts. But then here we go again with the six-episode revival. I love that when they made her an offer for this, she basically said, "No, you go negotiate David's deal, and then when that's done you pay me whatever that is. Because when we do it this way, you try to pay me half." And, sure enough, that's what they were offering.

Yeah, I suspect the six episodes to be like any random six-episode stretch of the series -- a mixed bag. Which is kind of ridiculous, because when you know you only have six, they should all be your best effort. But it's okay, because now that I've seen the third one I know there's at least one that will make me say this whole thing was worth it. I'll still be really pissed if the sixth episode sucks, though.

Well, we were about 360 of the 400 they let in for the screening, so our seats sucked but we got in. (The studio also authorized a second screening, after ours let out, for the overflow, which we were told this morning would likely occur in the event there were significantly more people than the theatre could hold, so I think everyone who showed up got to see the first and third episode eventually.) Standing in line for an hour and a half is not my idea of a good time - especially since we'd already gone down in the morning to get wristbands, only to find out those didn't guarantee entry; you still had to be among the first 400 people (with wristbands) in line - but it was a nicely non-psychotic group and time went fairly quickly. Anyway, yes, Gossamer was the main repository for XF fan-fic back in the day. People still post to Ephemeral, but since Gossamer hasn't been updated in eons it just lingers there rather than being integrated into the archive. Archive of Our Own (which houses all sorts of fic, not just XF) is a decent clearinghouse these days. I think everything else is pretty fragmented (it was LiveJournal, then Tumblr, and I don't do any of these things so I just rely on emailed links from a friend who does).

More tomorrow, as I am exhausted, but I went to a screening of the first and third episodes tonight. (So, obviously, spoilers ahead, but, then, this is the spoiler thread. I'm not going to go scene by scene or anything, though.) Oh my god, the third episode (Darin Morgan's Were-Monster episode) is just short of perfection. A fantastically funny script, wonderful social commentary, callbacks to many previous episodes, Mulder unclear how to use his phone's camera - and then sticking it in Scully's face while she's trying to do an autopsy, a lovely shout-out to Kim Manners, pitch perfect Mulder & Scully (you think "This is how I like my Mulder" is going to be the best line between them, and then she says her next one), a fantastic scene reminiscent of the "You're doing me" role reversal from Moonlighting's Yours, Very Deadly episode, Scully giving great face as she tries to get a word in edgewise while Mulder presents his theory, Mulder gets his groove back, Scully saves herself (and solves the case), Scully gets a new dog, a faux porn scene that had us all howling ... the studio knows what they're doing in including this with the first episode in two L.A. screenings so far, because you really do tend to forget the first episode's flaws when you go right into this one. (The "just sort of perfection" comes from the treatment of a character who is transgender; DM thinks he's being understanding and inclusive, but he can't resist making a joke.) The first episode was pretty much just what I expected -- vintage CC. Which means it's over-written, Mulder-centric, and doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but does have some exciting/intriguing moments that draw you in and get you excited to see where other people take it from here. You can tell what they filmed early on, as Gillian has more awkward moments in this episode than she does in all previous episodes/movies combined, but she also doesn't have a lot to work with. The break-up isn't outright explained very well; what's on paper can make Scully look like an ass, like she just dumped Mulder when he got depressed, but if you've followed them all these years it's not hard to imagine how living with him got to be too much. I hope this gets fleshed out, though. But they still feel right to me, very much like a couple who still loves each other (and in Darin's episode, very much like a couple who still adores each other), so unless they fuck things up in episode six (CC's stupid cliffhanger shit), I'll have no problem imagining they come back together as romantic partners once Mulder gets himself back together (and the stage is set for that in episode three, so ... get on the ball, CC). I still wish he'd just left their relationship intact, but that ship sailed and at least episode one is not as bad as I'd feared on that front. I am really thrilled that they dispense with what a guest character calls the "nonsense" (a word I often use) of the whole aliens vs. aliens/aliens on earth thing and get back to government misuse and cover-up of alien technology. Much more believable, and thus much more interesting (to me, obviously). The politics on display are, well, interesting, but I think it comes from a place most of us can relate to and try to ignore the rest. But it's really hard to get invested in Mulder declaring, yet again, that this time what he's being told by X person is The Truth, and everything prior to this was a lie. And they really shouldn't have revealed William B. Davis' return so early on and so freely, and then tried to play off CSM's appearance as a huge reveal (complete with keeping his name out of the opening credits and instead putting it up as a special "And" credit after the final scene). Okay, well, I got a second wind and wrote far more than I expected to. Any specifics you want to know, just ask and I'll check back in tomorrow.

"Real mother" set my teeth to grinding, too. Wow, is Kwame lucky. That was one of the worst-looking plates of food I've ever seen on this show. Without being able to taste any of the three bad dishes, I was hoping Philip would go home because he was the only one who didn't acknowledge he'd put out a bad dish. But I figured the under-seasoning kiss of death would strike. Carl's impersonation of Tom cracked me up. Marjorie's dish sounded good - on its own and as a way of meeting the "tell us something about you ten years ago" challenge - from the moment she described it, and then I got nervous with the lack of lemongrass until she adjusted, so I was happy to see her win.

I just watched last night's episode, and the Sarah Palin coverage was just fantastic. I love them sitting around discussing her as a spooky campfire tale, and then Trevor's absolute giddiness at watching her word salad speech. "It's like a bag of Scrabble tiles that grew a body and came to life." "It's almost like she's a malfunctioning robot." "It's like the only thing Sarah Palin hates more than Obama is punctuation." That last one reminded me of Jacob Weisberg (in Newsweek) saying back in 2010 that Sarah Palin is like Fox News without the punctuation: “[sarah Palin’s] exuberant incoherence testifies to an unusually wide gulf between confidence and ability. She is proud of what she doesn’t know and contemptuous of those ‘experts’ and ‘elitists’ who are too knowledgeable to be trusted. The issue is not that Palin … still doesn’t know all the details. That’s understandable. The issue is that she rarely appears to have the slightest grasp of what she’s talking about. … Bush-isms … often hinged on a single grammatical or factual error. Palin-isms, by contrast, consist of a unitary stream of patriotic, populist blather. It’s like Fox News without the punctuation.”

I recently borrowed my mom's car in the rain, and the wipers were on auto; until I figured out how to control them manually (we basically have the same car, but hers is much newer than mine and thus has features mine doesn't), I spent the drive arguing with the damn car -- "I don't want them on at regular speed; intermittent is enough."

Yeah, a friend was telling me she had to buy pine nuts in a jar at her supermarket and that was the one place she could find them. I'm spoiled by my local market; they have bulk bins of the most common nuts and grains so you can scoop however much you want, and then they have an aisle where one whole side is packages (usually around a pound or half a pound, depending on the item) they've pre-measured of just about every nut and seed there is. They offer everything raw, plus roasted versions, then roasted and salted versions, etc. I can really go crazy in that aisle. I've seen recipes that call for pecorino instead, so yours should be good. But, no, I wouldn't leave it out.

I'm supposed to be going to a screening of it Friday night, but it has now turned into a screening of the first two -- yay, because I'm sure I'm going to like the second one better than the first -- and CC will be showing up in the afternoon for some publicity photo -- boo, because now crazy fans are going to line up all day and we're going to have to either join them in order to get in - our reservations don't guarantee entry - or skip it and thus we're probably going to skip it. I hate crap like this.

I always have to remember to do that during rain. I have mine set on Auto, so they come on automatically when it reaches a certain level of darkness, so when it's raining (which isn't all that often here) in daylight, I have to do it manually. I'm good about remembering, though, because staring at everyone else's lights is a good reminder. I've never made a pesto cream sauce. I've had it, just never made it -- I always just make basic pesto (basil, garlic, pine nuts, parmigiano-reggiano, extra virgin olive oil) and use that as my sauce. STORM WATCH coverage on local news is utterly ridiculous.

Same here. I am not a morning person.

My dad is from Oklahoma, descended from sharecroppers, and his family will refer to themselves as Okies, or me as half-Okie, but as a joking way of reclaiming a word designed to disparage them. I don't care that it came from the book, you don't put "Okies" in a J! clue. I took a guess for FJ as it was one of the few branches of Islam I could think of and wound up being right, so I'm certainly no religious scholar, but come on. It says branch right in the clue and two people guess "Islam" and "Judaism"? Alex was really showing off with that first Wales clue, wasn't he? Kudos to him; I could have sat here all night and not come close to pronouncing that correctly. I know he had time to practice, but as much as I mock his imitations of accents, his pronunciation of foreign words is admirable to me -- other than Spanish words, which I can generally get right, and select words from other languages I've heard/spoken all my life, I always sound like an American saying a foreign word. He doesn't.

Oh, dear. With the flashbacks to the awful Hyundai commercials the mere mention of Pomplamoose induced, there is no way I'm clicking on that link.

I made another batch of pesto recently and have some I need to use up, but am not in the mood for pasta tonight. I saw ALenore's post about pizza, and decided that sounded good (that's why I love this thread.) So I'm making flatbread pizza out of wheat lavash (something I pretty much always have on hand, and thus use it for many breads/crusts) and topping with pesto, goat cheese, chicken, and sun-dried tomatoes.