DramatistDreamer

Just starting to read up on this recent event. Ocasio-Cortez would be well advised to focus on the NYC politics that she is better versed in and to not let her political associate lead her down the road to perdition. Because when sh*t hits the fan, the WOC will be the most likely to suffer any fallout, not Bernie.

Yes, of course that's obvious since Pam didn't arrive until later the next year in '87. I guess your post was unclear to me, which sometimes happens on social media. I know it wasn't your intention to sound dismissive of the character but sometimes people do dismiss characters, particularly the African American characters on the show as only being best friends of another character. As a writer and a Black woman, who has been inspired to write because I saw so much lacking in media, I do admit to getting defensive when it feels like a character is dismissed as only having importance as the best friend or sidekick of a White character (which unfortunately happened all too often). It was never my intention to sound didactic.

Nella's appearances on the canvas pre-date her friendship with Meg. She was initially introduced as Roy's bratty little sister when Heather was dating Roy, sometime in early-spring 1986. Nella was initially involved in storyline during the early stages of the "Falcon" mystery because she was dating a drug dealer who Roy and Hal eventually ended up shooting when they interrupted a plot in action where Nella inadvertently got caught up with when this boyfriend lured her to the location where the shootout soon took place afterward. Nella was pregnant with the said boyfriend's baby and had some sort of back alley abortion where she ended up getting an infection. There was fallout from that as Nella confided in Heather but didn't want Heather to tell Roy and when Roy discovered this, he lashed out at Heather. Roy tried to reconcile but Heather had left town, never to return. Meg didn't start working at the hospital until the late summer and didn't begin the nursing program until the fall. She met Nella during that time.

Sarah played by the great theater actress Novella Nelson who died just last year. There was Leonard, Sarah, Roy and his sister Nella. There was a middle sibling who was dead, shot by the police which was a big (mainly unexplored) source of contention in the family, especially seeing that Roy was a police detective. I know that the graduation party was to emphasize Pam (excuse me for saying Meg, who'd already graduated) and Nella's ties but Nella predated Pam's appearance on the show. The audience really should've been more familiar with Nella since she'd been on more than a year before Pam arrived on the canvas. In fact, the entire Franklin family had been on before there was even a Pam character yet people can remember Pam but not them. Therein lies the problem.

True. This is the reason why I think the problem is more systemic and industry-wide rather than the fault of one particular writer or production company.

I do think there was a desire (in Marland) to achieve what the show had previously left behind, part of the soap's origin story of an agrarian farming family. When ATWT began, the Hughes family had all but completely abandoned the farm, even Pa Hughes was struggling to adjust to live 'in town'. Marland likely was fascinated in showing what life might have been like for an agrarian Hughes family in the Snyder clan. I'm not mad at that but there were some problems for a rural family being dramatized on a daytime soap and that is the isolation involved and we know on soaps, characters generally are most effective when they mix it up with lots of other characters on the canvas. This is probably why the Snyders became somewhat incestuous, in a matter of speaking (fun parlor game is to count the number of Snyders who shared the same partners). Roy's family lived in Oakdale and they were definitely isolated, so much so that when they once tried to have Roy's parents mingle at the Mona Lisa, presumably to attend Nella and Meg's graduating party (from the nursing program), it felt contrived and I kept thinking that it was a nice attempt but Nella's parents looked out of place. I think the Franklin's could've been better, ahem, integrated onto the canvas but that would've involved more screen time. For example, Roy's father Leonard (yes, I remember his name, lol) was a bus driver for Oakdale's transit department and there were characters like Meg, who supposedly frequently took the bus to get into Oakdale. There could've been a scene (or more) where Meg is riding into town, presumably, at a time when she wasn't supposed to be, lied about here comings and goings when Leonard inadvertently mentions her being at the bus as a certain time of day to Iva or Holden or some family member who he's likely to run into in town. That could've been the beginning of making more connections among other characters, as a start anyway. There are ways of connecting characters but it would involve spreading screen time out among more characters and soap fans can sometimes me averse to this. Marland with his tendencies to concentrate storylines among certain characters, was still one of the more judicious storytellers in terms of how many characters he tended to incorporate into his stories. I've seen headwriters who were far more stingy with what/how many of their characters got meaty stories on soaps.

Congrats to Novak Djokovic and his fans! It must feel like a solid result for him and his team that he's progressed from where he felt stuck. As a tennis fan, I can't really remember one match that truly felt memorable from this past fortnight. The Anderson/Isner match will be remembered for its length, the way the Isner/Mahut match is remembered. And when recalling this Wimbledon years from now, the winners will be cited as well as some stats like Kerber being the first German since Becker, Graf and Stitch to win a singles title at Wimbledon and this being Djokovic's 13th GS title, or all the Top 10 women crashing out in the first week. Other than cold hard facts, I won't remember this Wimbledon for having any truly sublime matches. Plenty of matter of fact ones though.

Well, I don't know about that. Y&R continues to add token POC characters and give them marginal story before unceremoniously writing them out. The Michaelsons and Jordan Wilde immediately come to mind. The only difference is that with Y&R's recent characters, they were attached to core families but in all honesty the Winters have never fully occupied screen time the way that the Newmans and the Abbotts do. That's the one realistic thing about the Snyders. Marginalized people like low income and many minorities tend to be fairly well, marginalized in the U.S., except for working spaces. Even in working class sections of a town or cities there is an invisible "red line" that people are relegated to. In the beginning where Holden only interacted with the Walshes at work, through the stables...that was a dose of reality. Where the soap opera fantasy comes in is where Lily crosses that line by walking into the Snyder house (muddy shoes and all).

You mean the 1880s? As in Gangs of New York? Trump might consider the 1980s as still too progressive.

Someone on Twitter called this the "Pusher's Grand Slam" year.

Oh yeah, I heard her remarks in press. Serena also mentioned that Kerber gave her "many different balls" which she had trouble dealing with, which is what I meant when I said that Kerber varied her ball so much that it kept Serena off balance.

This is a pattern with the tennis press. They are trying to "sell" the men's final off Serena's back by hoping to stir up controversial remarks. Over the years, they've tried to promote the game off the backs of both Williams Sisters, either by raising them up, or tearing them down.

Serena has nothing to prove at this point and by getting to this final, she zooms up to Top 30 (I think) in the rankings. Angie Kerber was just relentlessly focused today on every single point. Many people noticed that Serena looked off balance at times but it also could have something to do with Kerber's play-- she varied her shots so often that, it seemed as if Serena didn't know what to expect. Full credit to Kerber and many compliments to Serena on that run to the final.

I love how I just watched a scene between Iva and Lucinda where Iva declares that she can cite the day, hour and minute of Lily's birth, yet decades later we were supposed to believe that Iva couldn't remember having a whole other child.

Didn't someone else post this site in the past, or am I confusing it with another? It seems as if all those episodes are either up on You Tube or sets that SoapClassics distributed and sold. I wouldn't give my personal information (not to mention financial) to a website that is not secure. Seems like a recipe for identity theft or worse.

In the wake of all the unfortunate gun violence that permeates life in the U.S., hospitals have become much more adept at treating gunshot wounds over the years. A busy day politically, to say the least.

LMAO.

Bonanno. My point is, they're not even bothering to stay underground, they're openly shooting people in the streets like they're the Corleones at the San Gennaro festival. This happened like two days ago. EDT: I actually pulled the video because it's probably too graphic but if you want to see the footage, do a search and you'll find it. In broad daylight, no less.

Not only is he trashing May but he's also spreading his white supremacist, nationalist rhetoric. Again.

P.S. the mob is back in NYC. Rudy didn't get rid of them all (as they probably guessed correctly that Rudy is corrupt now too and would be the least of their troubles). I guess the crime family that resides in the White House has only emboldened other crime families to re-emerge from their money-laundered hiding places.

Here's an interview that Mariann Aalda (DiDi) did with the blog The Soap Spiel. I now realize that I've seen her in lots of sitcoms growing up in the 80s yet didn't remember her name. ~SPECIAL FEATURE-MARIANN AALDA~ SPECIAL FEATURE-MARIANN AALDA What are you up to now? Well, after being based in Chicago (my hometown) for the last three years, and in New York City for several years prior to that, I’m getting ready to make a big move back to Los Angeles, where I lived and worked for more than 20 years. Why did you leave LA…and why are you moving back? I moved away when the television industry moved away from me! I was in my mid-50’s when the phone stopped ringing. And it wasn’t just that casting directors stopped calling me…most women over 50 pretty much disappeared from both the large and small screens. But the reason I’m moving back, is because there’s been a change in the culture…and I can once again see a place for me on TV. Last year, AARP Studios did a profile on me for their #DisruptAging campaign, as a representative of the Positive Aging movement. ( https://www.aarp.org/disrupt-aging/stories/disruptors/info-2017/mariann-aalda-career-reinvention-video.html ) The last of the Baby Boomers – over 76 million of us in the U.S. – are now over the age of 50. And according to the 2017 U.S. Census, 90.7 million Americans aged 50 and older account for 41.6% of all consumer spending…and they watch television 63% more than do Millenniums. What brought about doing comedy? I actually began my career in New York as a sketch comedy writer and performer with Off-Center Theatre and later toured with the Boston-based improv troupe, The Proposition. But after I started getting recognition as one of the few African-American soap opera heroines – playing DiDi Bannister on Procter & Gamble’s EDGE OF NIGHT on ABC – people tended to forget that I had ever done comedy. That changed, though, in 1984, when Edge (which was produced in New York) was cancelled and I moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in prime-time television. I guest-starred on a ton of sitcoms, playing a wide variety of characters, most notably – and probably the most diametrically opposite – recurring as Meshach Taylor’s yuppie-from-hell girlfriend, Lita Ford, on DESIGNING WOMEN (http://youtu.be/HnSZeyzEwbU ) and as Sherman Hemsley’s ditzy stripper girlfriend, Lois Keller, on FAMILY MATTERS. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7_Hv3u8OZw&sns=em ) I was also the wife or girlfriend to leading men Ernie Hudson, Dennis Haysbert, Clifton Davis and O.J. Simpson and played opposite comedy luminaries Mo’Nique, Kirstie Alley, John Ritter and Robert Guillaume. I was also a series regular on the CBS sitcom, THE ROYAL FAMILY as the boomerang daughter of Redd Foxx and Della Reese. realize that casting older actors and telling our stories – instead of just keeping us on the sidelines and incidental to the plot – is good business. It’s an exciting time…and I’m ready to get back into the game! You’ve had quite an illustrious career, so far! Who would you like to work with that you have not? Donald Sutherland and Viola Davis…which probably seems like an odd pairing, but I think they’re both really interesting actors and I feel I could learn a lot from them. What was your toughest role? Being unemployed! And that is not a glib answer. Actors are creative people. When an actor isn’t working, it’s all too easy to turn all that pent up creativity into negative energy, causing depression. That’s why I went back to my comedy writing and started creating and producing projects for myself, including standup ( www.FunnyColoredWomen.com ); a 25 episode improv comedy web series ( www.TalkToMeGinger.com ), and a 70-minute solo show ( www.OccupyYourVagina.com )...which, by the way, is available on DVD at the show’s website! What would be your dream role? I’d like to be a series regular, again, in an ensemble comedy. I’m actually developing something with Ted Lange (Isaac from LOVE BOAT) that is absolutely hilarious. It would be great if that got picked up! Other than that, I’m an actor-for-hire. I love acting – comedy OR drama – and I’ll go wherever the work takes me, including another soap. What advice would you give to up and coming actors or comedians? A lot of young people came of age during the era of Reality TV and they just want to be stars. But for those who are serious about acting – either drama or comedy – I’d say: “Learn your craft; be persistent; be patient; learn your lines; be on time; be polite; be a team player; develop your own projects instead of waiting for somebody to hire you…and most importantly, NEVER give up!”

For the most part, I'd have to agree with you. There haven't been any truly stand out matches this year, IMO. Part of me wants to blame the surface and the fact that the grass has been playing more like a clay court this year. I understand that The All England Club wanted to thwart "serve-bots" but I think they went too far in the other direction, creating stroke-production most similar to the infamous Isner-Mahut 1st round years ago, where points wouldn't end, they just died (no wonder Isner made it as far as he did!) Imo, though there is potential for a compelling women's final since both players have faced each other before and played some highly competitive matches in the past. @Faulkner Cibulkova's reasoning in the press conference reminds me of that of Capriati, after that horrendous call in her match against Serena where Capriati basically tried to pass if off as "oh, I've gotten bad calls in the past too" therefore it shouldn't be a big deal when my opponent gets a bad call. The logic is poor and unconvincing to me.

There already have been Trumpists and magabots screaming for Rosenstein's head since yesterday over this. Obviously Rosenstein wants to ensure that there is a chain of accountability, so it's not just his word against Trump's lies, which plenty of people are more than willing to believe.