Bastet

9 to 5 is not stupid. You take that back right now! Ahem. I'm okay. (Although, really, I would never classify it as a stupid film.) I expected The Money Pit to be a low-rent knockoff of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (a film I grew up on and adore), but I wound up enjoying it. I don't see it on TV often, but it popped up recently and I watched it, as I do any time I come across it.

I have a friend who's like that, and she's the only person I know who is, and she'll owe all you directionally-challenged folk a debt of gratitude -- after reading how much more common this is than I thought, I'll be more understanding when giving her directions. (Not that I was ever saying, "What are you, an idiot?" or something like that, just frustrated sometimes.)

Oh, mind you, there was plenty of arguing and yelling during those dinners and camping trips. Some stomping off, some slamming doors. There is no one on this earth who can drive me crazier, quicker, than my mother. There is also no one I love more. (Which is not to say I love my father less than her.) Since this is a TV site: We talk to each other - and yell at each other - the way the Conners do, not the way the Huxtables do. So, yeah, a normal, happy family ... one variety among many. From how you've described your relationship with them, and their families, as adults, I'd say you did.

They're not astoundingly clever or anything, but I like the Match.com (I think) ads positioning themselves as the happy middle between dating sites where people sign up hoping to get laid that night and those where people sign up hoping to get engaged that month... especially because they are clearly making fun of eHarmony with the latter scenarios, and making fun of eHarmony is something I can always get behind.

My mom never understood her friends who were counting down the days until school started again, since she didn't feel that way, and then she realized she had one child and they had two (or, in one case, three) and figured she'd be good and ready to have the kids gone for 7-8 hours a day if she had to deal with the sounds and activity of multiple kids, too. My parents always took their own trips - the two of them together, plus each of them separately on occasion - in addition to our family vacations. We ate dinner together most every night (pretty much everyone in middle class families did back then; kids weren't scheduled within an inch of their lives and parents weren't expected to work all hours, so most evenings everyone was home), took the motorhome out one or two weekends per month, etc. -- we spent plenty of time together, but we also all enjoyed a break. They got to spend some time away, I got to stay at my grandparents' house (or, when I got older, at a friend's house and then, the best, home alone) ... win, win. And little things, too - we went out to dinner as a family every Friday night, but they went out to breakfast just the two of them every Sunday. It was the perfect mix for us, but different strokes and all that jazz. I don't use social media, and most of my close friends opted not to have kids, so there may very well be a lot more parental complaining going on than I hear. But I also think we're finally, slowly, slightly lifting the stigma against mothers who don't find every second of motherhood to be sunshine and rainbows so that women with kids feel more comfortable now than before admitting they want a break.

Mother Jones picked up on the patronizing "Women's Movement" initiative from the Bucs, and showed it's not just them - or the NFL - treating female fans this way.

I'd never heard of Pentatonix or seen the Macy's ad, so I just looked it up. It's fine, but I imagine the song snippet would get annoying pretty quickly with a little repetition.

Jane in the jacket amused me because she was doing it to torment fashionista Maura. If she'd really been that excited by it, I'd have been annoyed.

I think she's simply more talkative than her husband. And she, rather than her husband, being the one accompanying Jazz to various events seems to me a function simply of her being a stay-at-home mom. I question anyone who opts to live their life on TV or online, but I can understand some of this particular family's reasoning for doing so. And I do think it's a family decision, not just Jeanette.

I hate hearing women referred to as girls, but I didn't notice it last night; goes to show you how much trouble I was having paying proper attention to this episode (and I paid even less to the one after it). Other than a few episodes of Little People, Big World way back when it first began, I’ve never watched candid reality programming on TLC, so I’m not familiar with their MO (although, any network that would give the Duggars a platform is automatically suspect). That’s interesting if this show was a concerted effort to counteract backlash. At any rate, clunky is the perfect word, and this episode was the worst so far. I don’t believe a moment of the Mother’s Day episode was organic, either, but even something more obviously a pre-planned storyline came off feeling less scripted than this episode.

It's Christina Chang (who is 44). I don't recognize any of her credits, but she's been in a number of things.

So does anyone think that in a year of friendship Zach never previously told Ari his dad is transgender and used Jazz's video to make the announcement, and chose to reveal this for the first time on camera? Yeah, me neither. I don't know that this sort of staging that permeates reality TV is a big deal, but it's one of the many things that has always turned me off the genre -- just tell (and, where possible, show) me the real story. I understand why they opted to compare and contrast Jazz with a transgender woman who started her transition much later in life, but just do that -- don't set up some phony pretense for it. I don't know ... I'm trying to hang in because I think it's helpful for Jazz's story to be told, even in this way, but reality TV is just not my bag, and as this goes on I get more and more distracted by the machinations.

The shorts are listed on TCM's schedule. They don't show up on my satellite provider's on-screen program guide, but they're on the TCM website. Come to think of it, I'm not sure all are listed, but many are (including the Public Jitterbug one being discussed).

Bite your tongue! I had stopped watching by the time Monica showed up, so all I know about her is what I’ve read – whale songs, basically. I’ve said all along a cameo by Reyes and/or Doggett would be fine, but anything more than that would be an unnecessary distraction, so I have no objection to her appearing in one episode. … Unless it’s about William. And then I object on general principle.

I'd be in favor of anything that put Sharon Gless on my screen!

Yeah, I thought this was a fairly aimless episode, but still an enjoyable way to spend half an hour. The Marlon Brando guy's "Maggie!" take on "Stella!" was lame, but somehow really funny. And I adore Mark. Emma and Bread Man/Rabbi Dan are pretty cute together; I'm not sure hitting the sheets after a couple of hours knowing each other was a good idea, but I'd like to see him hang around a while.

Exactly. I can't believe how stupid this is! They're freakin' teenagers; this relationship will last five minutes, and she'll have sacrificed a family for that? And for however long it takes Brandon and Callie to get over their break-up, it's awkward for everyone whenever Callie is around? What a waste. I stopped watching after the first season for a variety of reasons, but tonight I was going around the dial and happened upon the show just as Brandon and Callie were getting it on. I sat there with my mouth hanging open. I'm glad I quit watching before I got attached to the characters, because it bothers me enough as it is.

"There comes a time when a dying man needs death the way a tired man needs sleep." -- Stewart Alsop (Or, as it alternately gets quoted, "A dying man needs to die, as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time when it is wrong, as well as useless, to resist.")

I think a lot of people do that when cooking at home.

There is also a cell phone commercial that tells me my cell phone is the first thing I look at in the morning, the last thing I look at before bed, the one thing I’d never want to lose, etc. First of all, it’s not any of those things; my cell phone is generally in my briefcase or car, with a battery that needs to be charged, and I bother to turn it on maybe twice a month. But even if I did use it regularly, come on. It's a phone. But I guess it's honest advertising for many people. They should just come out and say “It’s the most important thing in the world to you.”

That's a tough one, because I find them both just awful to listen to, but I guess vocal fry. As for communication peeves, I have had it with people whose attention span taps out at 160 characters.

Frank Gifford, NFL player turned sportscaster (and husband of Kathie Lee) passed away this morning at home. He was 84.

Continuing to prove the inverse relationship between quality of food and cuteness of commercials. Do condensed versions of these ever air on television? I've never seen one, but it could work.

If I so much as breathe improperly on Maddie's food, she won't eat it. Hiding meds in it - forget it. Even things like fish oil and Cosequin, which add flavors palatable to her, are impossible to get past her when she's feeling slightly less than 100% (which, between two chronic illnesses, is almost a weekly recurrence).

Watching it again via the MSNBC special, I realize I forgot to comment on how moving I found it to hear Jon say this was the greatest work environment he'd ever experienced and something he knows he'll never have again, and that was something he had to come to terms with in deciding to leave. I once stayed in a job two years longer than I wanted to/should have because of the people I worked with. It's hard to walk away from an environment like that, and this was me doing a job much less meaningful than Jon's -- and almost infinitely less profitable and visible. I can't imagine how long and involved his mental deliberation must have been. Every time I think the coverage of his departure is getting ridiculous, I think about how much I'm going to miss his version of the show and get sucked right back in.