DRW50

A special show for Neighbours as it moved to Channel 5, including many interviews and backstage moments. They really ramp up all the dramatic material in this (for promotional reasons) which has the side effect of making the show sail right into Acorn Antiques territory - the scene of Susan passing out after Toadie has a panic attack and is ushered from court made me laugh, I'm ashamed to say.

I'm seeing a lot of despair over how close the race was and how can this be in America or in Georgia, which reminds me of how many online expect too much. It was extremely difficult for Democrats to recapture the breaks of the 2020/2021 period, and to defeat a football hero, even one who was a shockingly inept candidate. They beat back the most basic of cynicism and identity politics. Georgia is still not a blue state, and has to fight to keep the elements of a purple state. Warnock should be credited for his difficult feat, as should Stacey Abrams and everyone else trying to stop the state from going backward the way others like North Carolina did. May they manage to still hang on even as the media coronates DeSantis 2024. The knives are out among a certain set for Mitt Romney's niece. (Ned Ryun is a lunatic). We'll see if it goes anywhere. If you need a laugh: Speaking of jokes:

This is a great example of Kirstie's more underrated talents (there's a real stillness and subtlety in this until the big final outburst - the camera was just left on her face to tell us all we need to know).

I think I did too. That and the scene where she and John return home at the end and terrify everyone out because they've both completely lost their minds by that point are probably what I remember most. I think I also saw It Takes Two in a theater, now that I remember.

When I was a kid, my parents watched Cheers. I thought Kirstie Alley was an interesting presence, as everyone on the show was, but I was more drawn to her movies, which were often not good (I'm not talking about Wrath as I didn't see that one for a while), but which utilized her energy more, whether it be boisterous, fragile, sleepy, or ethereal, sometimes in the same scene. The weird movie with Tom Selleck and killer robot spiders, the weird movie where she was married to Scott Bakula and slept with his brother Sam Elliott (and it gets even weirder...), the manic Madhouse with John Larroquette, cult classic Summer School, with peak Mark Harmon, and Look Who's Talking 1, 2 and 3, which gets progressively more and more bizarre, from Elias Koteas as her gun-toting, nutso wingnut brother to Lysette Anthony as a temptress trying to steal her man, leading her to have fantasies of weeping in a morgue while dressed in French gear. I'm sorry about what she became, but I can't help thinking of what she used to be and how unique her aura was. I will miss that, and what never was.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/bob-mcgrath-dead-sesame-street-original-star-dies-1235274833/ I grew up with Bob, and Luis and Maria and Gordon and Susan. They always made me feel safe and happy. It really hurts letting them go.

With the claims out now of TJ having an affair with a GMA producer that Robach knew about (and was friends with until very recently), this moves to levels of increasingly toxic sleaze. Speaking of sleaze, and delusion, this is laughable. Ross Barkan, known for many bad takes, is begging people to pay $40 to read Matt Taibbi's swill because otherwise they have no right to say it's swill.

Sometimes I forget how many of the leaders and activists who cling to the far left are desperate to push as hard as they can towards Trump and other extremists - even as doing so would just give the death blow to unions. They do not care. This guy is just posting outright fanfic bullshit when he's not cheering union leaders going on Steve Bannon's hate show.

From one repulsive, morally bankrupt con to another - Bimbert is already trying to get hearings for Tara Reade against Joe Biden, with Tara jumping into the replies. I'm sure Biden would love to get her under oath... @JaneAustenThat's a wonderful story. I sometimes feel like I don't take enough time to appreciate the Democrats in Congress who just want to do their jobs and help people.

Kanye put some DMs on Truth Social which suggest this was all coordinated with Elon...until it wasn't. He was also originally meant to just get a 12 hour ban, until he spun out of control. The sad thing is many are still going on about his brave, truth-telling words, but his days of being a useful foil for the GOP are over (for about a month, anyway - if he survives that long). His last tweet, or one of his last, was a photo of Elon looking like the stuffed pig that he is. You could tell Elon was upset by it too. Speaking of pigs, and worthless media:

@Vee Oh the memories of his consistently annoying Fix days, with the T-Paw love and Sam's Club boostering. I think at CNN he melted more into a general blandness and phoniness that makes the channel so uniquely repulsive, but even then he felt like a relic, something Holly Hunter and Albert Brooks would have hooted at in Broadcast News. I'm sure he'll find some other outlet to grin at while the world burns - Semafor must be hiring.

That's great news. Jane is always a bonus for any show smart enough to hire her.

We've probably already had this topic before, but it's not as if we have much new to talk about anyway. If this is a duplicate feel free to lock it. My pick would be a scene I've talked about repeatedly, in a story I despised, with two characters I despised - scene-killing teenage bimbo Kimberly, and Michael Pavel, whose days as a mafia enforcer and miscarriage-causer were ignored by the show because of how he looked in tight tops. They were in a quadrangle from hell with her mother, Rae, and her husband, Seneca (a very gross pairing, "psychological" reasons or not). For New Year's 1980, the foursome go the the Crystal Palace, where Michael discos to the wonderful Fame staple "Red Light" with Delia. The writing for Delia at this time could lead me to give you even more complaints, which I will spare you for the moment. Anyway, even if it's broken up in this episode, it's a delightful sequence, even moreso because of Rae and Kimberly seething with jealousy the entire time. And it's a side of Delia, and Randall Edwards, the show ignored far too often in favor of having various sanctimonious Coleridges scowling at her. Starts about 15 minutes in.

TSJ is starting to resemble Josh Taylor. I hope he won't ruin his face the way Taylor did.

There's a danger to too much focus going on a candidate saying stupid things, if it drowns out the whole rest of the race and numbs voters to the danger they are facing. This happened with Trump in 2016. I'm hoping it won't happen here. Speaking of morons, this is the man the Beltway has spent the last few years fawning over and painting as the brave, noble mastermind of Congress. And they will just keep right on.

Thanks @Faulkner that's lovely.

I think it was @Vee who showed me an article earlier this year where she said she wasn't touring anymore. I'm still shocked, but not as shocked as I would have been. Still, I'm heartbroken. Christine was the main one who got me into Fleetwood Mac. I was watching their reunion special, The Dance, which led me to pick up some cassettes and CDs. While the appeal of Stevie and Lindsay was undeniable, Christine's songs, and the clarity of her voice, are what I found myself appreciating most. There is something of a Lennon vs McCartney feel with takes on Stevie and Christine, which is unavoidable, but also dismisses McVie's role in the band. She wasn't just the pop-oriented alternative to a dreamy Stevie or a driven Lindsey. She was one of the main forces who kept the band together, not just in the Rumours years or in the agonizingly slowly cocaine comedown of the '80s and early '90s, but in the much leaner years, when Stevie and Lindsey were hustling in LA and Fleetwood Mac had never heard of them, when Fleetwood Mac was a nonentity in the US and in the UK that group Peter Green used to be in, when they were a group who spent more time suing impersonators than hitting the charts. Christine's incisive, brilliant pop-rock songs were, along with Bob Welch and Danny Kirwan, what reshaped the band, and when they left, she kept on going, reshaping, evolving, while never needing to truly evolve because she had been there, right and good and fantastic, for so much of that time. If you listen to her songs on Mystery to Me and Bare Trees, they are phenomenal, timeless, raw, and always touch my heart. As she always did and always will. Homeward bound, Christine.

I also thought Joe Barbara was very hot, and I felt like there were moments of humor and tenderness he brought to the part, which probably helped me get past the more barbaric bits. Still, I can see why Paulina fans may have hated the relationship.

At this point I could probably buy it more than Amelia and Josh as Victor and Nikki's kids.

Agreed. If people being sick and dying wasn't so profitable you wonder what might be. You hear about Cuba supposedly having several vaccines for different types of cancer, but I'm never sure how accurate that is as I know some are vested in pumping that country up.

Always gotten kind of a bad vibe from him, so no loss.