Bastet

I'm looking forward to watching that again, as it is so raw it's almost too difficult to watch. That is one of the best marital fights I've ever seen on television, and it pretty much has to come so far into a program so you understand both where they're coming from and that it's not going to be the end of them. And it works on its own, as well as in hindsight knowing Dan had actually died of that heart attack -- as a manifestation of Roseanne's anger (at Dan, for the choices he made with respect to his health that contributed to his death, and his lesser share of the parenting), guilt (for her own diet/lifestyle choices that affected the family), and fear (that she didn't do a good enough job with the kids, and now she's left to continue parenting alone), it's packs a few extra punches.

It's usually either mashed potatoes or shortening.

My favorite part of the draft, and why I watch on NFL Network. The year he lost his voice before day one even got started was a real bummer.

Don't worry - I wouldn't bat an eye, since I let my cat drink out of my glass, lick ice cream off my spoon, etc. And I have a close friend with whom I regularly get together for nights spent on the couch eating, drinking, chatting, and watching movies; when we have ice cream, we each grab a spoon and dive in. I’m just not one to get excited about germs, especially when it comes to family and friends. With that said, I do agree the shared carton of ice cream is more common on TV than in real life. As is eating Chinese food out of the carton, with chopsticks.

I don't use Facebook, either - at all. It is just not for me on any level, so I don't have a profile or look at anyone else's. (And I won't do business with places that have Facebook as their only means of communication.) I don't use Twitter, either (that one I really don't understand the point of), or Tumblr, and I'm not even entirely clear on what Pinterest and Instagram are (I learned at one point, thanks to a Jeopardy! category, but it didn't stick with me and I've never cared to look it up again). And whatever else is out there in terms of social media, I can't even name. And I don't do anything online under my own name (deliberately, anyway; with the way records are being stored these days ...). If someone were to Google me, they'd get only my State Bar profile and a few articles. Anything else that pops up is about some other person with my name. I'm a very private person.

When I finish my rewatch, I'll have to watch that one again and take notes. Yours is a common reaction to it, at least going by TWoP, but I sat there thinking, "Wow, that's not how I take it." So many episodes have come and gone since then - plus a big gap in between when I was watching other things - that I can't remember specifics, though, so I'll have to revisit it in order to comment. I started in on season eight last night/this morning, which opens with probably my least-favorite Darlene episode ever -- the baby shower Roseanne makes the girls throw for her (in which Darlene does jack all, yet takes credit). She's so awful, and for absolutely no reason. Roseanne is incredibly tacky in this one, deciding to have a shower so she can get gifts to return for enough store credit to buy the crib she wants, yet Darlene leaps right past her for the title of shittiest person of the episode. Going back to my unpopular opinions, I really enjoy the episode when Roseanne and Jackie go on a mini-road trip, give Riot Grrrl Jenna Elfman a lift, and wind up musing on how androcentric, and often downright sexist, the music they grew up on was. It's a fluffy, filler episode, but I don't mind that meandering feel under the circumstances, because it's natural as road trip conversation. And I love the way they are cracking themselves up as they trade insults with the sexist truck driver, especially because they have Thelma & Louise on the brain as they're doing it. Roseanne and Jackie are having fun, and Roseanne and Laurie seem to be having fun as well, and the mood seeps into me. I also watched what is probably my favorite season eight episode, the "That's Our Rosey" parody. That is a brilliant take on all the clichés of '50s sitcoms -- the advertisements, the anti-Communist hysteria, the parade of gender stereotypes, "that darn Anderson account," the cute little kid with a tag line, etc. I also like the Thanksgiving episode, thanks to DJ's Pulp Fiction-style Thanksgiving play (it cracks me up, especially Anne Marie's reaction to that "people came to this country for the freedom" woman) and Roseanne's imagination sequence as DJ's teacher starts to explain away some myths. The ending is heavy-handed, and perpetuates several stereotypical tropes about Native Americans even as it subverts others, but those two segments make up for it. Unfortunately, getting to those two meant sitting through the Halloween episode in which Roseanne gives birth to Jerry. I know Roseanne was very affected by Jerry Garcia's death and wanted to honor the basic message he'd communicated through his music, but that episode is a mess. I do love the tag, though - her taking questions from the studio audience and pretending to fire a writer. As much as I dislike her portrayal of Becky - and the whiplash I get from the characterization shift depending on who's playing her - I can understand why they started bringing Sarah Chalke back when Lecy wasn't available. I've only watched a handful of episodes from season eight so far, and there have already been several scenes, and even a couple of entire episodes, where neither Lecy nor Sara were available, and having both Becky and Darlene missing is really noticeable given what's happening in the scene/episode, especially when Mark and David are there. And they don't even bother to throw in a line explaining their absence.

That takes me to another peeve of mine: holiday newsletters that paint some ridiculously rosy picture of life (I'm not fond of them, period, but those are the ones that really bug me). My best friend’s dad writes one of these every year, but they omit it from my card. They send one to my parents, though, and I read it at their house. It’s a Christmas Eve tradition for me to go through paragraph by paragraph and tell the real story behind the tales he wove. Also photo cards, with not one word of personal note written on them. I hate those things, period, because I have no use for the picture and the paper isn’t even recyclable. But especially when they can’t be bothered to so much as scrawl a single personalized sentence on there.

One was about Marilyn Monroe, and one was about Greta Garbo and John Gilbert.

I finished season seven this morning, and the last couple of times Darlene came home, they had her acting a lot more like her old self (rather than the sociopathic ass she’d been pretty much since she left home). But then she goes and ruins my joy at having the real Darlene back by telling David not to go to Europe because they just got back together. The hell?! It’s for a month, Darlene. Get over it. I’m glad Roseanne told her off the same way she did David when he tried to tell Darlene not to go away to school, but Darlene just didn’t get it. Which is ridiculous. I wish they’d never got back together; they haven’t been good for each other since she left for Chicago. (And the writers didn’t have to go that route in order to keep David around after graduation; going to community college and working, it would have made sense for him to keep living with the Conners for a while.) It would have been so much better to watch them figure out a friendship. I’ll never stop loving that Fred and Jackie breakup scene, sitting there at dinner with nothing left to say to each other and then, “I think it’s over, Fred.” “Yeah, I do, too.” It’s so nice seeing that on television, rather than yet another dramatic break-up with screaming, crying, and storming off. I also love prior to that, when going to counseling makes them finally acknowledge they got married not knowing each other. “Yeah, we’d just had a couple of dates. … And, you know, the baby.” I love the tag of the finale, with the Gilligan’s Island cast playing the Conners. I’m not really looking forward to watching season eight; there is some good stuff in there – and we get Original Recipe Becky back from time to time – but I hate the Darlene and David storyline, and it’s just the time in the series when I really start to miss the way things used to be. It’s not bad, but it’s not great anymore, and it makes me kind of sad. So we’ll see how long it takes me to get through it.

I'm a rabid football fan, but I have no trouble imagining how it could annoy people. Thankfully, most of my closest friends are the same way, and I take care not to bore the others with my obsessing. Which brings me to … people who are really into genealogy and insist on regaling me with tales of their latest find. I barely care about my own ancestors, so I surely do not give a shit that you found info on your great aunt Mildred’s first husband. I have a close friend who is obsessed with this stuff, and when she finds something new I’m happy for her because I know it makes her happy, but I have to cut her off when she goes on at length.

I have that milk commercial about cats with thumbs saved to my computer, and play it once a week or so because it just never stops amusing me. My favorite cat herders are the guy with the big ball of yarn, and, especially, the one with the lint roller. I'd never seen that "Don't judge too quickly" commercial before, or that last one with the giant cat.

Yep, she's 81 today (per IMDb). I like her, and I'm home today to get a bunch of stuff done around the house -- I didn't need to know about this marathon! I'll at least have to watch The Apartment (again).

That made me laugh out loud. I'm not interested in his show (sorry, I can't remember the title), and still haven't got around to watching the Hannibal season one Blu-Ray I bought, what, two seasons ago, and don't know when I will, so it's not effective in the way the network intended, but the font and DD's dialogue ... well played, NBC.

Yeah, my mind fills in what he's saying, but it has always sounded to me like he managed to combine "go get help" into one word that's somehow a syllable and a half.

Decades worth of films from just about every genre? I'd never be able to compose anything resembling a comprehensive list of favorite black & white films, so I won't even try. Those of you who read the TCM thread know I love, love, love Myrna Loy and Katharine Hepburn. So it's no surprise that when asked to name my all-time favorite film, it results in an unbreakable tie between The Thin Man and Bringing Up Baby.

There are lot of hugely popular films I haven't seen, and likely will never see, as I have zero interest in doing so. Some examples: -Any of the Star Wars films (I tried several times to get through the original, and never made it more than half an hour) -Anything Indiana Jones -Just about any fantasy (Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, etc.) -Any comic book made into a film -Twilight There are also quite a few I can't quite believe I haven't yet got around to watching, some of which are rather embarrassing to admit: -The Godfather -The Maltese Falcon -Aliens -From Here to Eternity -Apocalypse Now -Good Will Hunting -American Graffiti -The Color Purple

To be clear, my "Wow" reaction at the "Ain't I a woman?" TS springs not from thinking every person of reasonable education and intelligence in the country should be able to identify it, but from thinking at least one in three people selected to appear on J! should know it. I'm surprised you've only encountered it once in your life, but I'm sure many people can say the same - or that they've never heard of it. But given the range of knowledge a J! contestant starts with, and the studying they generally do before the show, for none of the three to come up with it was surprising.

"Ain't I a woman?" as a TS ... wow. The contestants were really bad at the Irish songs category. Requiring a first name on Carson was chicken shit, in light of the last name only answers they've accepted lately. It was like this mean-spirited, "We know you only know it's Carson because of Carson City, not because you actually know the person, so we're going to stick it to you" thing.

A Doggett or Reyes cameo would have been okay with me, but with only six episodes, having them as recurring characters would have been nothing but wasted airtime, IMO. I want to kick it old school at the Hoover building and out in the field.

Mo Rocca is someone I want to like because of so much of what he says, but can't because he annoys the hell out of me when he says it. Penn Jillette I agree with on some things, but he uses misogynistic language I will not abide, so I hope he goes down in flames. Aaron Rodgers plays for the Packers, so - same. So far, I'll be rooting for Mark Kelly.

I really enjoyed that tournament, especially the finals with Marin, Jane Curtin, and winner Michael McKean.

I watched that one chanting, “Please don’t have kids” over and over. Both couples were too immature to get married, and hadn't even spent enough time together to know each other well enough to get married. I hope they had the chance to realize that, get divorced without having to deal with co-parenting, and start over. (Not much chance of that happening with the fundamentalist couple, I realize.)

I say this with no judgment against GA, just acknowledgment of reality: She’s a pretty odd choice to put up on a sexually chaste pedestal. I think CC’s issues run deep, and don’t have anything to do with GA specifically. He has a twisted notion that sex sullies a romantic relationship. It’s terrific that M&S (especially Scully, given how women on television are usually portrayed) always had interests and ambitions beyond getting laid/finding a mate, and that sex is but one of many facets of their relationship. But CC being so incredibly freaked out by Scully as a sexual being meant going through a lot of nonsense to get there. It’s one of the reasons why I don’t want him trying to write to the relationship this time around. It exists, it’s not going anywhere – I want him to just let it be, and let the other writers (and GA and DD) take care of actually presenting it. That way, no crap like “Dearest Dana.”

This quote was famous among my circle of friends at the time, and fantastic for so clearly showing what a sexist double standard that asshat CC inflicted on the characters and the audience (given his quote about Mulder's actions in 3).

My eyes glaze over when Melissa drones on exclusively about her kids, but I sure enjoy reading her when she writes about a variety of things. She's a good writer; sharp and funny.