Mondrianyone

I thought it was very clever of Rob to remove the bottom of the pan completely and just put his pie directly on the heated cookie sheet (over parchment) to get a better browning on the pastry bottom. I'm going to try that sometime. I have tried that trick where you brush egg white over the inside bottom to minimize sogginess, and it seems to work fairly well. I was a little surprised that no one deployed that one. I laughed at that shot of Howard pushing up his glasses with his middle finger after the critique of his work. I thought, Whoa, he's sneak-flipping the judges the bird! Probably just me projecting my shady Noo Yawk self onto that sweet Englishman. Because it's what I would've done. If I could climb through my TV screen and live in this show, I would.

I've always thought it was a southern thing, so I was surprised to hear it from a Pennsylvanian. Maybe he hasn't always lived in PA.

Totally agree with you, Ouisch. It's like the rule of Chekhov's gun: If you show it in the first act, it should go off in the third act--or else it should never have been there at all. If you show me a video monitor or a tape player, I want to see or hear what you got. I'm such a dope, though. I thought, Gee, isn't that a coincidence--they both have the exact same boom box. Duh. It's obviously the house machine. I really wanted to hear what Nadia had for evidence. You know, because it's a matter of principle!

I haven't seen the show yet today, but don't give up on Groucho so easily, AngelaHunter. (And thanks for the earworm.) How about: Nadia, oh, Nadia, There's nobody squatty-a . . . Now to go watch JJ.

Barbara wasn't overly modest about her success in winning scholarships in those beauty pageants, "just about every time." So it was satisfying to me that she did really badly at first. Glad she didn't win this time. Congratulations on the new address, Carpe! There's more than one way to get into Harvard!

The thing that shocked me the most was that Go Get a Shawl Lady was only thirty years old! The breed of the rescue dog who attacked the neighbors' dog was a presa canario. That's the same breed as that pair of dogs who attacked and killed a woman in their apartment hallway in San Francisco about a decade ago. Those animals can get enormous, they're bred to be guard dogs, and in the wrong hands, they're bred to fight. If you're going to rescue a breed that's problematic in that way, you have a much greater responsibility to keep it under your control. This didn't go well for either dog. But I give the plaintiff a lot of credit for resourcefulness in "waterboarding" the attacking dog with her garden hose. I don't know if I'd have had the presence of mind to think of that.

In hindsight, though, that could only have been an improvement.

I can't imagine what advantage she'd gain by stealing his custard on purpose. (And I can't believe I just typed that sentence. There'll always be an England.) It was inevitable that the truth would come out, and when it did, her trifle would be judged on the basis that it wasn't all her work. I think some people just get really nervous, in ways it's hard for us to identify with if we're not under that kind of pressure, and do mindless things. But I agree that Howard was a million times nicer about it than I would've been if I were in his shoes.

I know about toast soldiers from reading way too many British mysteries, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to refer to toast cut into strips as a "dish." That would make my mother eligible for a James Beard Award for slicing my grilled cheese on the diagonal. As someone said above, as soon as I saw the little shoulder lift and cute pout in the contestant intro, I had that automatic uh-oh feeling. And we weren't wrong. It might've been an interesting experiment to see how long that story about the flower delivery would've gone on if left uninterrupted.

Why would a landlord negotiate a substantially cheaper rent--what was it, $500 a month less than asking?--for a gorgeous, oversize apartment with an unobstructed view of the Seine simply because some Americans said pretty please? Paris apartments a lot less fabulous than that one can command rents that high and much higher. Was the landlord just charmed by their adorableness? The whole story reeks.

Asking Manhattanites to wear black is like asking humans to breathe air. If my good friend asked me to wear a color I probably would've worn anyway and I showed up in red instead, I'm not as good a friend as she thinks I am.

Olivia needed to keep her hair out of her food and her food out of her hair. That was pretty disgusting, and I have a high tolerance for sloppiness in the kitchen. At least tie it back. No one wants to find a three-foot strand of hair in their sauce.

Yup, that's the one. I'm afraid to stare at it any longer--I have my annual eye exam tomorrow (I really do!), and my doctor might find that image burned into my retinas. She's so street, isn't she? ;o)

It's your fault if I have nightmares tonight, talula. That gif you posted is terrifying. And strangely hypnotic.

Yeah, but daytime/nighttime, you still have to shut up and let the guest talk. And let the guest occasionally be smarter and funnier than you are as the host, without always trying to one-up the other person. Not her strong suit.

Hi, PR people. I just dropped in here to make sure there wasn't LSD in my Diet Pepsi while I was watching the show tonight. Apparently not, and Blake really did win for that slapped-together foolishness. I was surprised none of the judges thought it looked like what I thought it did--a huge deflated blue scrotal sac tacked on the back of a badly made dress. I'm relieved to see the reactions here, and that I wasn't hallucinating. It hardly pays to have skills anymore on this show.

It seemed odd to me, too. Initially I thought the first dress must be something really expensive and one-of-a-kind, but then it turned out to be Halston Heritage, which as far as I know is just the ready-to-wear label of the company that still owns the Halston name. (Somebody will correct me if I'm wrong about this?) And according to Bethenny herself, IIRC, the first dress was worth $500 and the replacement dress was worth $485. So all this mishegoss over a 15-buck difference? I get that it's also about the principle and about not stealing--and clearly that aspect made a big impression on the completely amoral Ramona--but the dress-swap part seems kind of screwy.

Just watched the single guy and his female best friend looking for a vacation house in Lake Tahoe. What a pleasure! No whining, no vocal fry, no holy trinity, no "Jackson won't like this"--just two grown-ups with a good sense of humor and a realistic idea of what would work. I'll give him the undivided-sink fetish--some silly obsession always seems to get pushed on these people. And a guy could be a mass murderer, but if he loves his old dogs, he gets a pass from me. And if he has a girl for a best friend, especially one he's known since they were both ten years old. I can't remember the last time I thoroughly liked a pair of HHs. That Suzy was a tall woman, wasn't she?! Jeff said he was 6'4", and she looked pretty much the same height whenever they stood next to each other. Apropos of nothing.

I think you might've answered your own question in this earlier post: Or asking her about it, apparently, and calling bullshit on the "I'm so alone" fiction. Or talking about the situation with Jason, which I sort of doubt she's legally barred from discussing (or we could have Carole sit on her lap like a ventriloquist's dummy and let Bethenny throw her voice so Carole can say all the things she herself "can't"). Because I haven't seen any evidence of him courting fame or the press, so I'd be interested in some questions about what she meant by all that. I could probably think of some more examples if I weren't feeling so thoroughly over the whole deal by now. Another season of watching everyone walk on eggshells around the queen B and more of the same everything just doesn't feel all that appealing at the moment.

I found it interesting that when Carole invited herself to stay at Bethenny's house in the Hamptons, what we didn't hear was Bethenny saying, "Oh, of course, I'd love to have you. You can stay at my place anytime!" I think Bethenny liked being a guest in the Hamptons when she didn't have a place of her own, but she's not all that excited at the prospect of hosting others. I don't think he's there for the paycheck. He's the producer of these shows, after all, so it'd essentially be like him paying himself. I think he's there to preen and to goad the stupider women into saying embarrassing things and to prod them into fights and to ask idiotic, gay-hating questions about the lady pond. Edited to add: Oh, yeah, and to protect Bethenny from any truly awkward questions or conversations. And for the most part, I didn't appreciate Bethenny stepping in. If I'd been one of the other women, I probably would've said something like, "And now, translating my remarks from the apparent Swahili I was speaking, it's our English-to-English interpreter Bethenny. Again." Mostly I just kept falling asleep, so I don't have a lot more than that.

Well, a girl has to get out occasionally. You know it must be pretty boring sitting around the apartment all day watching the ghostwriter type. ;o)

Ain't that the truth. It kind of amazed me that he was so seemingly unwilling to let her have anything she wanted. Because she could've done way better than him. And she still can. I bet the shallow end is crowded with people thinking the same thing.

I didn't think the stoves were much of an issue, since the agent was showing them houses with gas feeds already in place, so it was a simple matter to switch over from electric. The husband was the one I found most irritating, even though a lot of his whining was undoubtedly producer-driven. Like not being able to have an office anyplace near where laundry might sometimes be done. Because when you pay the princely sum of $100K for a house, you don't expect to make any compromises.

Everybody grieves differently, but I think it's pretty well established among mental-health professionals that anyone who's still in active mourning more than, say, five years (and that's a generous amount of time) after the death of a spouse has some serious problems. She wasn't too sad to have love affairs, so the idea that she couldn't possibly consider having a child if she really, passionately wanted one--especially with all the financial resources at her disposal, much more than most women who decide to have a child on their own--seems silly to me. If she considered it and rejected it, that's a choice. If she didn't consider it, then she wasn't interested enough, and that's a choice, too. Signing off on this one now.

Who doesn't? I know I do. That's the burden that comes with all the choices we make.