Bastet

Yes, I assume it was because of arthritis; he did okay on the first leg, but then seemed to be struggling a little, so she just carried him since it was a straight shot. Different than navigating a spiral staircase with open space (rather than a solid riser) between the treads. I've seen many a dog refuse to traverse that type of staircase (cats like to show off, though), so I wasn't surprised he was hesitant.

He didn't bother me - there was one thing he did a lot that distracted me, but now I can't even remember what it was - so I was starting from a neutral opinion, but, yeah, I've enjoyed several of his articles. It's important for men to call out sexism, and he seems to have a good grasp of things. Yeah. Arthur, Julia, and the other guy. The other guy won. (Ben.)

I'd blame it on age, but every year most of the ToC players look, at most, vaguely familiar to me. I don't know how the producers look at that heavily white and male line-up and don't cringe with embarassment.

That's more common than not. If anyone ever brings the Thin Man remake to fruition (Johnny Depp was shopping the idea around several years back), I will grab my pitchfork and torch and head for the relevant studio. I'm not opposed to remakes in general. I am, however, opposed to certain films being remade. That's at the top of the list.

There is no postage, because Freecycle is local; you pick up/drop off in person. You can go to the Freecycle website to see if someone has established a group for your city/neighborhood.

The Budweiser Clydesdales commercial.

I like that one, too. I always hear, in my head, Gary from Remember the Titans saying, "Now that's a momma joke" when I see that commercial. And I hate "your momma" jokes. Well played, Amish Guy.

Tania had been making me laugh all week in promos by telling Pierre, "You're ruining my street cred," and she cracked me up even more getting a gander at the various cuts and costumes in that grooming salon. Did she say, "Oh, Mylanta" when Pierre came out with his 'do? I think so; that's an expression I haven't heard in ages but used to say all the time. I recognized him immediately as half of the Odd Couple bonded pair, and was sad he was on his own. But Tia made perfect sense in saying it's better for them to endure separation in order to get their own forever homes quickly than stay together for years on end in the kennels. Bonded pairs are hard to find homes for; not a lot of people want two new dogs or cats at once. A pit and a poodle? Like Tia said from the day she took them, the average pit person is not a poodle person and vice versa. Some pairs really should not be separated. But I think those two found each other when they needed each other most, supported each other through dark days, and were ready to survive on their own. Pierre certainly seemed happy running all over that huge yard, and his owner is obviously going to dote on him something fierce. Yankee Poodle Dandy, indeed. Tia cracked me up with her impression of the abandoned dog upon leading her to the back staircase: "Lady, you are making this way harder than it needs to be." What people do to animals never fails to disgust me, no matter how familiar I am with the litany of bad behavior. You take a dog who is probably in his last year of life and tie him up in a sweltering upstairs room of an abandoned house with no water (or leave him water, but, gee, it was consumed/dried up quickly)? Shame on them, as Tia said. For Legacy, it worked out okay (although the poor old guy will probably not be adopted and wind up dying in a kennel, although at least surrounded by affection and care). For most, it's a slow death, scared and alone. I hate people. I'm glad the surgery seems to have relieved some of Earl's pain. I love how happy he was to get back to the dogs. And Sui made me laugh, declaring he was going on vacation now that Earl was back. Those two guys are aces.

I'm with your husband. I hate 95% of Christmas music anyway, so I don't really care to hear it ever. But in early November? Hell no.

I watched Nightmare on Elm Street 4 last night for the first time in eons. That is a weird movie. Renny Harlin was pretty new on the directing scene, and it shows with a lot of fancy shots that are there just because they’re fancy, but it’s also obvious he had better than average skills. And the special effects are fantastic. I wish Patricia Arquette had come back as Kristen, because Tuesday Knight is as terrible in this as she is in everything else. (I have a friend who worked with her once and absolutely hates her to this day, so my opinion may be colored by that, but I find her very annoying.) I’m surprised this did such big business at the box office. It’s nice looking, but it’s not scary. It is pleasantly trippy, with Alice pulling people into her dreams (and promptly getting them killed). And the time loop is cool. It just feels like something that had potential to be really good – no surprise, really, given what both Harlan and screenwriter Brian Helgeland went on to do - but didn’t live up to it. I have only vague recollections of the next one with Alice; isn’t she pregnant? I have a DVD set with the first four films, and I hardly ever watch any of them other than the first, so I don’t intend to buy the fifth. But I may have to rent it. I can’t remember which is the last sequel I saw; at some point, I decided the franchise had gone to hell and quit watching. Same with Friday the 13th. I hung in for a long time with that one, as I can appreciate a silly slasher film, but each sequel was worse than the one before. The original film was the only truly good one, but if they’d stopped after the fourth as originally planned that would have been a nice run because all of those other than the 3-D one are decent slasher films. The retconning of movie five was bad enough, but then each director took his turn coming up with a new story for Jason and it was just a mess.

I would never move someplace I couldn't take my pets; they're family.

Ha - I knew y’all were going to lose your collective shit over Laura’s voice. It didn’t bother me for one episode, but it would bother me sitting on a jury listening to her for days on end, so I’m a bit intrigued that she’s an attorney. And wondering how many episodes before I get annoyed. It’s an odd vocal tic. It’s not vocal fry or Valley Girl, because it occurs so specifically rather than throughout her speech, and it’s not uptalk, because she doesn’t phrase statements as a question – she just extends the final syllable when a sentence or question ends with a word that ends in a vowel sound. “Wherefore art thou Romeo?” as a DJ clue? Really? I love that Pet Shop Boys song, so that TS bummed me out a bit. Le Creuset surprised me. It was a good game for me overall; I got most clues correct. Laura was really slow to get going, so that was a nice come-from-behind win. I thought I was going to blow FJ, because I’m generally bad in Children’s Lit – it has been a very long time since I read any, so I don’t remember much of it, and I avoid kids like the plague, so I have no current exposure to it. But it was another “This can’t really be what they’re asking, can it?” moment.

I finally saw the Peter Pan Geico commercial last night, and hated it. With the other “It’s what you do” ads, what the person is doing is funny and/or it’s funny that they’re doing it. This one, neither. He’s just obnoxious.

I really like him, too. Since you haven’t seen all the episodes, you may not know Jake goes way back with the family, well before he started working at Villalobos. His mom and Tia were friendly through dog training, so the kids all knew each other – he was close friends with Tania, teased Mariah like she was his little sister, etc. When he worked at VRC in Agua Dulce, he lived in Tia’s house. That’s why him getting locked back up was as hard as it was on Tia. She’d really come to rely on him (and Mondo) at the ranch after AJ was arrested, but there was also tremendous personal disappointment and heartache in seeing him make such a stupid mistake, because he was like family. And, of course, when he left. I like that while he sort of talked around it, Jake did acknowledge he handled his resignation really badly, but it was because he just had no idea how to do it so he sort of shut down, spit it out, and left.

That’s how I would stand as a contestant; for me, it’s the most comfortable way of holding the buzzer. I was watching football, so only saw the show in little snippets during breaks in the game. The Queens TS surprised me, too, but I can’t figure out why I thought that would be more common knowledge. Seeing some of you saw the wording threw you, maybe that’s what happened. I tuned back in for FJ, and just sort of stared at the TV, thinking, “That can’t really be a FJ clue, can it?

Jake is now married to the vet (at least I’m pretty sure she's a vet; definitely involved in veterinary medicine, as that’s how they met) he moved to North Carolina to be with, and runs a rescue.

Yeah, I always filled the cats’ prescriptions at Costco because it was always significantly cheaper than any other pharmacy. A lot of their prescriptions were for human drugs, but Costco carries a lot of veterinary-specific drugs as well. There was never anything I needed for the cats that Costco didn’t have (I think a couple of times they had to order something, but it was ready within 24 hours).

I posted about that in the Family thread a while back.

Sizable chunks of the average Lauren Bacall obituary were taken up by talk of Humphrey Bogart. What chance did Harrison have? Very frustrating.

When Sam forgot the title of the rivers category and thus guessed Snake River, it seemed like there was a comment from Alex that was edited for time. It cuts from the military contestant’s correct answer to a brief glimpse of Sam laughing to Alex telling the military dude something along the lines of “back to you.” Kirsten Gillibrand as a TS made me sad. Gloria Steinem was a stupid answer on just about every level. FJ was one of those clues I got by knowing precious little. It was obviously pointing to auto racing, something I know almost nothing about, so I started shuffling through all two or three names I associate with it. Formula One sounded like it best fit the clue, so that’s what I went with. The epitome of a lucky guess.

I saw a commercial for some financial services company last night, in which we see one of this company's employees on the phone conducting business all day long, wherever she is. It starts out at the office, but then we see her in the middle of a class at the gym (the instructor has to tell her to put her phone down), while making dinner, while hanging out with her kid, in bed, etc. I forget what the tag line is, but I'm supposed to find it wonderful that X Company's employees are so dedicated. Instead, I just find it awful that they feel like they have to be available to work 24/7. That it's presented as a good thing is a sad commentary.

I haven’t seen the show for several episodes now, but I checked the archive for last night’s game. FJ was an instaget for me thanks to Seattle being in the clue, but I wouldn’t have known otherwise. I loved the country borders category, because geography is a strong point for me. But war history is not. Nor are short stories, apparently. I knew Walter Mitty, but that was it. I knew Twain’s story was about a frog, but could have sat here all morning and not come up with the name. I’ve heard the memorable name Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, but never read the story, so the plot did nothing for me. I didn’t know Brokeback Mountain started out as a short story. The description and year should have led me to that one, but I spaced. I should have known The Monkey’s Paw, too, but I just sat staring blankly at the screen. Dissident and non-conformist both surprised me a bit as TS. With the latter, I initially got hung up on the Church of England part of the clue and figured I was a goner, but when I shifted my focus to the general definition it popped into my mind right away. I was also a little surprised none of them have heard of Walla Walla onions. None of them knowing murmur really surprised me, so I’m wondering if they know what a heart murmur is but just didn’t think of the word murmur as being onomatopoeia. Same with hiccup. Knowing what instrument Thelonious Monk played doesn't seem worthy of a $2000 clue to me. Bullish was bullshit.

I hope they keep bringing that one back every Halloween, as it's my favorite from the "It's what you do" series. Everything about it is great, from the line delivery on "Why can't we just get in the running car?" to the look on the killer's face when they're making all that noise in their hiding place behind the chainsaws ("you're breathing on me!") to their decision to head for the cemetery.

At this point in the series, yes - primarily Vancouver, because of school. Prior to that, she’d been based in LA. (They seem to have done a nice job of shifting primary physical custody over the years according to what was best at the time, considering they were in different countries most of the time.) That is annoying about the credits. A contractual thing, but annoying. And it's no surprise the network promoted the hell out of DD being back for those episodes. What is surprising is how stupid 1013 was to write those episodes so that Mulder and Scully spent so much time apart rather than taking advantage of it. (I didn't watch, so I don't know details, but I remember a lot of online screaming about it.)

I always ask the local restaurants not to include plastic utensils and condiment packets with my delivery orders, but nine times out of ten, they do. So I wind up with a collection of them that I don’t need but don’t want to throw away (wasting usable things makes me twitchy). If I don’t have anything else for the local food pantry at the time, I post them on Freecycle, and they’re always snapped up.