Bastet

I do, too, but the piece they showed didn't much look like Waterford, so I figured it had to be Swarovski. And then once Waterford was ruled out, I knew that was it. (Not that there are only two crystal manufacturers in the world, but there are only so many J! is going to ask about, and it didn't look at all like Baccarat.) Had I been a contestant, I wouldn't have rung in initially, but after Waterford was off the table, I would have figured it easy money to ring in with Swarovski. So I was surprised neither of them did.

I can hear the line "I always played Salieri to his Mozart" (from a guest character) in my head, but I can't place it within an episode for the life of me.

I just looked up the company's website, and I like those divided containers. I don't use plastic food storage containers anymore, but glass probably isn't a good idea for a kid taking lunch to school and these are BPA free, so I can see where they'd be a good option for kids' lunches.

I doubt GoDaddy wants it taken down from media websites; yesterday this was something being discussed on pet forums, now it's all over the place, and I find credible those who think that was the plan all along. Although I have read that the company initially issued some defensive statements, so maybe they really were that tone deaf (let's make an ad celebrating irresponsible dog breeding, yay) and then decided they could make hay while the sun shines by pulling the ad, and making a media production out of doing so. GoDaddy probably has one or more of their usual sexist commercials ready to go for the Super Bowl. Ads which won't generate nearly the same level of controversy.

I agree about the timeline for progress, but if it turns out a limited-run series is, in fact, going to be done, I wouldn't want them to rush to make air. I'd rather CC and crew (and, please universe, let him get plenty of other creative minds from the old days involved) take the proper time to conceptualize what they want to do with that self-contained arc. If this thing was greenlit today, I wouldn't want it shoved onto the fall '15 schedule even if the actors were magically available. The nine-episode Twin Peaks project got the go-ahead last fall, and that's not going to air until 2016, which I find an appropriate timeline. I'm a little nervous, but mostly excited, because so far they're doing everything right to ensure it comes off as something befitting the series and worth the wait. If XF is going to pop up again (on the small or big screen), it needs to do so in a way that redeems the franchise after the performance of IWTB (and pushes the inevitable remake many years into the future). That takes time on top of all the negotiating and scheduling.

Tonight was my introduction to Christine, and nothing about her comportment bothered me. To the contrary, I thought she carried herself well (and played a good game -- what a fantastic play on that final DD, especially after Brian made such a boneheaded wager on his). I loved the "within the sciences" category and ran it. But I was just as iffy as the contestants with the islands category. "Shire" was quite overvalued. I also thought much of the best sellers category was too easy for DJ. How did no one get Swarovski once Waterford was ruled out? I'm pretty good with Oscar history (although I'm worse with recent years), so I knew both possible answers for FJ. Brando came to me quickly, but Hoffman took a bit longer. Leonardo DiCaprio seemed an odd guess (I had no idea there was some internet meme, but he never would have entered my mind).

That's where the show not trying to be anything more than a standard-fare sitcom works in its favor for me; they threw in several "where's Henry?" jokes in a "Yeah, we know; just go with it, okay?" spirit and that completely worked for me, whereas normally I'd roll my eyes and say, "You made your bed, now write it properly." I never really took the characters seriously as people; they were very much always situational characters to me, so as long as they kept me laughing, I was quite lenient.

Here's an article about it.

It appears the backlash to this GoDaddy ad has resulted in the company pulling it from the Super Bowl (and hopefully altogether). If only the same thing happened every year for all their other awful ads. https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1422327029&v=X2AHrCtOHqc&x-yt-cl=84838260

"It's Guys and Dolls, not Guys and Guys." Seinfeld poked fun at the fallacy that men liking musicals is "gay". A woman thinks Jerry and George are a couple, causing them to suddenly view everything they say and do through the lens of whether it makes them seem gay and they start attaching unintended meaning to the innocuous. So when George gets Jerry tickets to Guys and Dolls as a birthday gift, with the intention they go together, what would have normally been greeted with an enthusiastic thanks instead elicits a hesitant, "Isn't that a lavish Broadway musical?" (which prompts George's response I quoted above). The narrative POV is they're being ridiculous, so it's an amusing deflation of the stereotype.

I had to look that up, because I don't know many of the episode titles, but that is a good one. I think the first four seasons of Reba are surprisingly funny. It's not particularly sophisticated, edgy or innovative humor, but it's funny, and as was discussed above that works for me if that's what a show is trying to do and does it well. Reba McEntire isn't anywhere near as good an actor as she is a singer, but the cast gels together wonderfully. My Reba UO is I don't care that we hardly ever saw Elizabeth or Henry. Van and Cheyenne's situation is so fundamentally unrealistic, I just let the whole thing go and enjoy it for what it is, so the perpetually-napping kids are just part and parcel of that. They are so young they wouldn't add anything, and featuring them more would just drag things down.

Oh, it may just be a different brand and the manufacturers of the one you're using weren't courteous enough to include instructions for sheet cake baking. But if your mix is made to yield two 8- or 9-inch rounds for a layer cake, it will also yield one 13 x 9 sheet cake (or 24 cupcakes). It's just the bake time that may be different. For example, the Duncan Hines classic yellow mix says to bake two 9-inch rounds for 23-28 minutes, and says the same for a 13 x 9 sheet. But for two 8-inch rounds, it says 26-31 minutes. And, now I want cake.

I order mine online, but I notice that in the stores near me (a low-crime suburb, mind you), the razor blades are locked up in cabinets and shoppers have to get a store employee to unlock them. So the part where the guy wants the razor cabinet unlocked and the guard starts interrogating him makes me laugh (but I don't like the tasing tag after the sales pitch). I have to have someone at the hardware store unlock the specialty battery cabinet in order to buy one, and I understand they do it for the same reason stores lock up razor blades - they're small and valuable, and thus easy and tempting to steal - but I also understand the, "Really, all this so I can shave my damn face/legs?" reaction the commercial plays on.

I don't mean for Leo and Jenny's age, I mean for the fact Sam and Leo have lived through a presidential campaign, inauguration, and a year in office together by the point Sam makes his mistake; it strains credulity that he'd have never met Mallory, let alone never heard about her, or that he could think there'd be a little kid in the picture whom he'd never heard of.

I was both a Sports Night fan and a political news junkie, so I was all over WW from the start. I'm quite lenient with pilots, and this one sailed over the low bar I set; definitely one of the best I've ever seen. The opening is ultimately one of those "Meet Character A, he is a [2-3 prominent characteristics] type," pieces of exposition, made all the more obvious by how many characters we were introduced to in that fashion, but it's a good deal more entertaining than most and even a bit more polished (Sorkin can thank Schlamme for the latter). And Bartlet's introduction is the greatest character introduction in the history of television, which makes up for a lot. (My second-favorite character introduction of the series comes not in the pilot, but when we meet Nancy McNally.) Sam thinking Leo had a daughter in elementary school is a lot to ask me to swallow, but the scene where Sam implodes in front of Mallory is so damn funny I happily agree to go with it. "Well, this is bad on so many levels."

I wonder if those on the receiving end of that argument need to have it pointed out to begin with, though; is the fact they are generally unwilling to suspend disbelief in this one regard an indicator they are unaware film as a medium requires us to suspend all manner of disbelief? I doubt it in many cases. This sentient being understands it without being told, and I imagine many others who aren't a fan of the convention of breaking into song do as well. "That's not what happens in real life" isn't the best way of phrasing the objection, certainly, but in my experience people mean it as a shorthand. The qualifier about the basic conventions of the medium goes unsaid (and rightly so, IMO), and what's really meant by that sort of statement is, "The random bursting into song is just one step too far removed from realism that it takes me out of the film." Which tends to be the tip of the iceberg of objections to the genre, although I know there are some people - especially among the younger set - who really do just have a knee-jerk "I hate musicals" reaction without ever examining why, or even giving a few such films a try. All I can say from personal experience is this: When I say westerns are generally not my cup of tea, people simply say "Me neither" or "Oh, I really like them" and move on. When I say musicals are also among my least-favorite genres, it's an even-money bet whether I'll get the same "different strokes for different folks" response or a condescending lecture on how I've just not evolved enough as a movie fan to appreciate them. It's nice to experience more nuanced - and humorous - discourse here.

I didn't see the episode; did she seem to be around the typical retirement age? If so, I'd assume it means she retired just like one would retire from any other job, just minus the formal benefit system. My aunt was a homemaker, and when my uncle retired, so did she; they hired a housekeeper, cook, gardener, etc. and are free to travel, volunteer, rest, whatever they want on a daily basis.

I was planning on roasting a whole chicken tonight, but got home late, so instead I cut it up, browned it in a pan for about 10 minutes and stuck in it in a baking dish. I made a roux out of the butter and drippings, then added milk and Swiss cheese to make a sauce. I poured that over the chicken, topped with some Parmigiano-Reggiano and bread crumbs, and put it in the oven to bake. I just put some Brussels sprouts in to roast (seasoned and tossed with some chili pepper-infused olive oil) and made a mixed-greens salad, so now I'm having a martini while I wait. The chicken looks and smells quite good, so I hope it comes out just as well -- I sort of threw stuff together based on what I had in the fridge.

My Michael Bolton guilty pleasure is How Can We Be Lovers? It's followed on my purchased list by Celine Dion's Where Does My Heart Beat Now, so clearly I was in some sort of mood that day.

C is for Cagney & Lacey, in which Herb Edelman ("Stan") had a recurring role as a bail bondsman. (Estelle Getty did an episode, too, and there are probably several other actors who appeared on both shows, but Edelman is who springs to mind.)

Yeah, I tuned in late, and had to look at the shading behind where Irvin and Carter's names were written on the on-screen "scoreboard" to know whose team was in which color uniform.

Other than a marinade, my most common ways of fixing quick and easy chicken breasts are to either bread them with a mixture of bread crumbs, parmesan, parsley, and garlic and bake them (I dip them in butter before the crumb mixture and pour a little extra of that melted butter over the top, then baste them with the drippings as they cook), or to sauté some mushrooms and onion, then simmer with a little chicken stock and balsamic vinegar, then pour that over breasts that have been seasoned with garlic and thyme and baked.

How did she not know what the @ symbol meant? It's not like it was something new at the time. She's a journalist, had she never looked at a keyboard?

The ad where one guy's life is sad because the song that follows him everywhere is Rainy Days and Mondays, and the other guy's life is cool because the fact he has a better car means the soundtrack to his life is Back in Black does not have the intended effect on me because I like both songs. Further, I've already become sick of hearing Back in Black, yet Rainy Days and Mondays getting in my head hasn't yet reached irritation level.

Use the magnifying glass icon (top right of the grey bar at the top of the page) to bring up the search box. Or, you know, what was said in the post directly above mine. How I missed that, I do not know. Carry on ...