Bastet

There's also the funny, such as Susan's death on Seinfeld. Dan Conner's death on Roseanne was like a punch to the gut. Roseanne takes a lot of flak for the "it was all a book" reveal, but I like it (other than the Mark/David switch) and love the content of that voiceover. When it originally aired, and the camera panned over to that empty chair as Roseanne revealed Dan had died of his heart attack a year earlier, I got chills and sat there with my mouth hanging open. Re-watching it, I still get chills, even knowing it's coming. Gary's death on thirtysomething was water cooler conversation for days. Ken Olin was amazing in the scene where Michael listens to the message. Charlie Cagney's death on Cagney & Lacey was incredibly moving, not to mention one of the best CPR scenes I've ever seen on television. Mrs. Landingham on The West Wing. I wish I hadn't been spoiled for that one. I wasn't watching by the time Leo died, but any time a character's death is necessitated by an actor's that is a separate category of heartbreaking.

I was already bummed by Kenny "The Snake" Stabler's death, and then woke up to news of Omar Sharif. Both entertained me for many years.

We can add blue laws to my list of peeves. (More than a peeve, really, given the muddled legal history of when they do and do not survive constitutional challenges.) We don't have any here, but I'm flabbergasted when I still run into them while traveling.

I'm quite content with middle age, but there are a few things I miss about being in my twenties. One of them is being able to eat guacamole & tortilla chips for dinner on a somewhat regular basis without gaining weight or becoming unhealthy.

It worked for Frank Costanza's lawyer. Super Lawyers. But I like the superhero scenario better.

I hate calling them "sin" taxes, but I have no problem with things like paying more for my booze to fund public health initiatives or even just add to the general fund.

Thanks, I must have heard it wrong -- I thought she went with the wrong O sound but included the G.

I know nothing about White Collar, but I figure it was unintentional; as I mentioned, to me, this felt reminiscent of a Remington Steele episode (minus the similarity in casting). I'm sure that was pure accident, too.

I’m so excited by the rare event that is an all-woman game, yet at the same time cringing in anticipation of what Alex might say. I play Scrabble on my computer daily, and I tend to remember a fair bit of chemistry given how long it’s been since I studied it, so I was excited about FJ. It was easy for me – my Scrabble knowledge confirmed my chemistry guess was correct. The first round was another good one for me. Anything about booze is right up my alley, I also ran the ‘90s TV category since that’s back when I watched a lot of TV and read enough entertainment media to be familiar with shows I didn’t watch, the Congress category was a breeze … I’m not sure how impressed my cat was by my performance, but I enjoyed it. I thought they accepted mispronunciations consistent with the spelling of the name, so was surprised by the second contestant’s answer of Rowling – wrong form of the vowel, but correctly omitting the S the first contestant had appended – being rejected, but I guess it’s just misspellings consistent with the pronunciation of the name. Or maybe I heard that wrong altogether. Help? The Sad category’s clues seemed too easy for DJ. Same with the Bible phrases clues, since I got all of them. And a picture of a stingray? Cubism was my most surprising TS. But Black Rock, given the “bad day at …” clue within the clue, was also unexpected as a TS.

It's going to be pizza tonight here, too -- alfredo pizza, with chicken, broccoli and mushroom. Also an arugula salad with ... because alfredo pizza doesn't completely clog my arteries on its own ... shaved parmesan.

Yeah, I'd regret killing off beloved characters in a mean-spirited huff because viewers dared not to enjoy my inferior spin-off.

There's a scene like that in a movie, with one woman cooking breakfast and another attempting to open a box of donuts with a cigarette in her hand; the first one is following her movements with a spatula to catch the ash that's going to fall off any second. Sixteen Candles, maybe.

LOL - fantastic!

Y'all make me want to send my parents a large bouquet of flowers.

I do, too.

That is so adorable. The "What, I was just bathing her?" trick is one my late kitty Baxter adopted early on to pester Maddie (in the avatar) without getting in trouble. Since I am among cat lovers here, I'm going to share my relief ... Maddie is at least 16 years old (she was an adult when I adopted her from the shelter 15 years ago) and is estimated to be around 18. She's had chronic kidney disease for six years, which I've managed via a high protein/low phosphorus diet. At her senior check-up a couple of months ago, the kidney values had risen for the first time in those six years, but were still stage two and she acted fine (and tested fine otherwise). A couple of weeks ago, her appetite was a bit diminished, but she was otherwise acting completely normal. Then for two days she ate great (for her; she's never been a big eater). By the weekend, though, terrible -- she wouldn't even eat tuna or baby food, despite a dose of appetite stimulant, and she clearly wasn't feeling normal overall (not terrible, and maybe even okay, but not normal). On Sunday the 28th, we went to emergency, and her kidney values were worse than they were two months ago but not high enough to explain her not feeling well; it seemed to the vets like a secondary effect of something else. They gave her fluids, and I brought her home overnight, scheduling her for a Monday morning ultrasound. I was terrified they would find cancer or something further wrong with the kidneys, but the only thing they found was evidence of pancreatitis -- mild hyperechoic mesentery surrounding the pancreas. I did subQ fluids, anti-nausea, and Pepcid AC and feeding her whatever she'd eat while waiting for the specFPL test results, which we finally got a week ago -- normal level of that pancreatic enzyme is up to 3.5 and hers was ten times that at 38.5. So, yay for pancreatitis seeming to be the only thing wrong with her. She turned a corner Friday and really started feeling better, so she takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'. I've been feeding her anything she'll eat, never mind something nutritious, let alone low in phosphorus, so we're now engaged in a battle of wills as we transition back to what she should be eating (but at least we've moved on to Wellness and Merrick's formulas from Fancy Feast!). But she's got a good 90% of her pep back, sleeps well again, and is getting enough calories. We're well on the way to being back where she started: an old lady with failing kidneys that don't bother her a bit.

Grrr … another goddamned “Oh, hel-lo” from Alex in response to a DD wager. I loved the triple homophones, internal organ, and “it shoulda been a contender” categories. In fact, add in the material, islands, and witness categories and that board was a really good one for me; I don’t think I missed a single clue in the first round. I did pretty well in the DJ round, too, so this may have been an inappropriately easy game. I’m surprised The Searchers was a TS. I am not remotely a John Wayne fan, and, while I do enjoy movies from many eras and genres, I don’t consider myself a film buff. But I thought that was so well-known a film (and so oft-cited as an Oscar snub) that at least one contestant would join me in knowing it. I’m equally surprised Death on the Nile was a TS. Less surprised no one knew The Shadow could cloud men’s minds, but still surprised. And Corrigan?! Do people really not know things “before their time” anymore? If anyone in my family makes a wrong turn, at least one of us will say, “Wrong way, Corrigan.” The valley of the shadow of death was hideously overvalued; if I can quote something from the Bible, so can your average 10-year-old, never mind your average J! contestant. Otherwise, the overvalued prize would have gone to Murder on the Orient Express as a DD. I’ve never heard glass noodles called cellophane noodles, but a quick Google search tells me it’s a common alternate name. And, yeah, WTF with “curtains” being okay? FJ was an instaget for me, so I’m not surprised all three got it. Has Alex ever addressed a male contestant as “young man”?

I just saw it again and I was wrong -- he's 14-3/4, not 14-1/2. So it makes me sad thinking the guy is doing this bucket list and having a birthday cake now because the dog probably isn't going to make it to his 15th, but it's just so adorable it makes me happy, too.

I was just thinking the kid is lucky he doesn't live next door to me. I'd suggest the parents have a little chat with him about littering. And physics.

Spiders and most other bugs don't bother me, but I understand some people don't want to deal with them. But I will also never forget laughing my ass off 20-something years ago when my then-roommate called me at my parents' house to report there was a spider in her bathroom, so she'd shut the door and a) could she use my shower and b) could I please get rid of it when I got home. I didn't have the heart to tell her the gap under the door was more than adequate for the spider to escape. Of course it was gone by the time I got home, but I told her I'd taken care of it. Then there was the time another friend insisted that I get rid of a spider before we could go to sleep. It was late and we were pleasantly drunk, so I was spending the night and just wanted to get in bed. But there was a spider on the ceiling of the upstairs hallway, and she wouldn't be able to sleep for fear it would come into the bedroom and then crawl on her in the middle of the night. She had no ladder, so I had one foot on the built-in cabinets and one foot on the railing in order to reach the ceiling. This was also 20-something years ago, and she still thanks me for it.

That's my instinct as well -- something that leaves the door open for future storytelling, but not something so specific that if there are no more stories it feels horribly unfinished. I'm not interested in social media in real life, let alone on TV, so I'm not particularly pleased to hear he's making an effort to incorporate that, but I also have much bigger fish to fry, so, whatever. Yay for Mark Snow.

I remember a campground on the Oregon coast in which I received 43 mosquito bites on my arms and legs (damn right I counted). This was during the first week of our three-week vacation, so I was not amused. Other than that, I've never been much of a magnet for bug bites. My latest driving peeve: someone who decided the placement of a stop sign in front of a high school turned that intersection into a drop-off zone. Um, no. Under any circumstances, but especially when you're dropping off an able-bodied teenage boy for some summer activity. He's perfectly capable of walking from a distance, the distance would amount to almost nothing since it's not a regular school day ... move your gas-guzzling SUV, you entitled ass!

Isn't that what the contestant guessed? I remember it was something that made me laugh (with her, not at her, because it was a word that worked despite being wrong).

No, but thank you for a name to look up. It turns out I knew him from ER and an episode of Cold Case.

I had to look at Jess’ hair/ears today thanks to all the commentary after yesterday's episode … I can honestly say that is something I’d have never noticed on my own. What is it she should have done -- have that surgery to tack her ears to her head, or have them glued back like they did on Clark Gable and other stars whose ears had the gall to protrude from their heads? I went to Wonder Con one year because of an X-Files panel, and the people there freaked me the hell out. I wasn’t expecting to know anything in the Comic Con category … and I pretty much didn’t. All I knew was cosplay (and wish I didn’t). A cleaver is not a butcher knife, so I would have said “wrong” rather than “be more specific.” Lancet as a TS in the same category was surprising. It was disappointing to leave so much on the board in the first round. I’m surprised Dick Van Patten was a TS. And really surprised by Rachmaninoff; I’m bad with composers, so if I can figure it out, I expect at least one contestant to do the same. I loved the add a consonant category, but then I pretty much always enjoy word play categories. FJ was so easy to me, I, too, was surprised to see two of them miss it.