DramatistDreamer

Laura Harrier (Destiny Evans, TOLN/One Life To Live) is co-starring in Hollywood, a Netflix series.

Reading this story in the paper this morning was heart-rending. Those fools who are protesting for the "right" to infect and spread to other people surely don't care about beautiful little children like Skylar Herbert.

Not on the planet where the rest of us live, clearly.

Wow, Naomi Campbell is doing a livestream with Venus and Serena!

Ew, they did that? I remember the backlash at the redesign but I didn't know that the designer behind the Apple store was behind it? Why would anyone think that was a good idea?? Lord & Taylor has already been facing hard times. They have had to downsize their flagship store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and in contrast to the big splashy window displays that they used to do for Christmas, this past year, they had to settle for something far less ornate. Saks Fifth Avenue has bought the license to recently liquidated Barney's New York, just so they can sell off-loaded merchandise and stick the Barney's label on there. So far, Bloomingdales and Nordstrom are probably the only brands that haven't had to downsize or downscale in some way (at least, that I know of). It's hard times all around, that's for sure, which always makes me irritated that Y&R botched what could've been a really compelling story with Fenmore's decline.

Anti-Netanyahu protests in Israel.

For some reason, I immediately thought of Sophia mentioning Neiman Marcus when I saw this too. It made me giggle. I think people have been waiting for JCPenney to be forced to liquidate for about a decade. JCPenney was never fancy fare but it used to be a place where you could at least, get the basics. Years ago, I remember venturing in there on the hunt for a crisp white shirt/blouse and couldn't find one. I knew this store was headed for trouble. JCPenney and Macy's started bleeding out at about the same time but everyone was focused on Macy's struggles due to their prominence. Then everyone started to focus on Sears because of the pathetic state of their stores. All during those times, few had noticed that JCPenney had become a zombie retailer with little to offer inside its walls.

This time it's Neiman Marcus. I'm also told that JCPenney is also set to file for bankruptcy next week.

This sound like a really good lineup. I'd love if Locher could get Rachel Miner and Ellen Parker sometime down the road but for now, it will be good to hear from these folks. Anticipating hearing Clarke play the raconteur about Billy and Vanessa's storylines. Should be good.

Such a sad story but it is important to remember that there are human faces behind these grim statistics. In case you don't want or can't get onto the NYT site, an alternative link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/she-visited-her-husband-every-day-then-the-visits-stopped/ar-BB12LTU0

Saw a link to the blog with this article in my inbox and thought you all might be interested. https://www.wgfoundation.org/blog/2020/4/15/the-lone-arranger-meet-jean-rouverol-butler

Maybe he can rely on Martha and Don Hastings to connect to some of the other actors. If someone could get John Wesley Shipp on, that might lead to Julianne Moore since they're still in touch (at least on social media they are) and Moore has talked at length about her working in soaps on podcasts and TV, so I don't think she's completely unreachable. I wonder if Gregg Marx keeps in touch with anyone? I think he'd be fascinating to have on the show. Last year, I remember watching an uploaded episode on YT and in the comments someone claiming to be Bill Shanks' nephew posted a comment, lol. I'd love to hear from some actors we haven't heard from in a long time. I bet they'd have some interesting perspectives.

Even if/when they do have chemistry, if you look closely, you can often see brief moments where there is some occasional awkwardness. I was only occasionally watching at that point but I remember when I found that out, I thought it seemed fairly pointless. It seemed as if they were trying to get some sort of tension out of that situation (because his relationship with Barbara, I guess) but it just pretty much generated a shrug. James had already gotten a surprise son years ago, so giving him another one and one who lacked any gravitas seemed especially weird. Also with James only being on the canvas occasionally, it would have had more dramatic impact if Maddie and Henry discovered they were somehow related to Grant Coleman, one of Lisa's ex-husbands, it would've given Lisa something to do in those last years of the show.

Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist but part of me wonders whether those protesters may have been paid by right-wing groups. There is a very unseemly connection between some of these right-wing groups and the coronavirus. We've also seen articles discussing how white supremacists groups have been using the pandemic to try to recruit people. It just seems a bit suspicious. Also, At the risk of sounding like a scold, I think it's very dangerous to speculate about knowing or thinking we know what COVID-19 is all about, especially while scientists and researchers who are doing the very hard work of trying to decipher the characteristics of this virus are, have yet to fully get a grip on what this all is. None of us here are scientists or researchers. I have scientists and researchers (and the odd one or two doctors) in my family and I don't want to diminish the real intense work surrounding this, so I'd like to hold off on playing amateur researcher/scientist. I hope that doesn't come off as b*tchy but this is a novel virus, so what we know is very little right now. Something to keep in mind though is that this novel coronavirus seems to have more in common with MERS and SARS, two viruses that the Western world had very little knowledge about since the Western world was largely unaffected by it. Another thing to keep in mind is that we have people who live with mysterious viruses/diseases all the time. MS, Sjogren's, RA, Hashimoto's are autoimmune diseases that people live for years, sometimes decades with. One person can go into remission, while another can become frail and still another can go into a degenerative state. Just like this virus and any other virus does not affect two people the same way, none of us here can say what will happen from one person to the next. There is no blanket set of behaviors for everyone infected with this virus. Just read the recent news about patients who have been 'cured' of sickle cell after decades of researchers grappling with the disease. Many people resigned themselves to people with the disease going from one crisis to the next but thankfully researchers have not given up. They are a very small group but they exist. Something similar has happened with a few HIV patients.

Lord, this is painful. I gotta go, lol.

Is he naturally flirtatious? Doesn't he have a wife and kid? lol.

I feel kinda bad tuning out, especially after stating how important it could be if these livestreams got a lot of clicks but this conversation has got to perk up soon or I'm exiting this livestream. They should've tried to get Zach Roerig and Jessica Dunphy.

Van is right side up but they've lost Alex's feed. Whew, what a mess!

Casey, Will and Adam were all morphed into characters that seemed better suited for the Shameless TV show on Showtime. There's dysfunction and then there's the Shameless brand of dysfunction and it seemed really discomfiting, considering the roots of those characters. We're seeing this on the remaining soaps but for some reason, P&G shows like ATWT and GL seemed to be the forerunners for this type of plotting structure. I'm currently watching GL episodes from the mid 90s and you can really see the point where storyline arcs start to shorten and the storylines start to become inconsequential.

Just clicked onto the livestream and Van Hasis is sideways and nobody seems to care, lol.

There is still speculation on whether tests had been reading 'false positives' in the first place but the cases are not being labeled possible reinfections as much it is being thought of as a possibility that the virus has been "reactivated", meaning not a new infection but the same one that had gone dormant possibly being triggered. I don't know which possibility is more menacing, tbh. Dispiriting article on the role that nationalism and xenophobia is playing in China's handling of the pandemic as it pertains to foreigners. https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/as-coronavirus-pandemic-fades-in-china-country-sees-rise-of-equally-infectious-nationalism-and-xenophobia/ar-BB12KESk There has been articles that I've posted on African residents (some who have lived in China for years) being suddenly evicted from apartments and other dehumanizing actions but there is also anti-American and anti-Japanese sentiment being expressed as well. In one area of Guangzhou there is a banner that is celebrating the raging of coronavirus in the U.S. while "wishing coronavirus a nice stay in Japan" 😯 This is especially ironic behavior, given how vociferous the Chinese government has been about vigilance against anti-Chinese sentiment globally. They seem to be making excuses for this behavior.