DramatistDreamer

Yeah, I remember there was a picture on Social Media of DelPo after his QF match and he specifically said he was fatigued but happy. I do think the fact that he hadn't played in so long, he still has to build his stamina for playing deep into a tournament. He's already jumped over 200 spots in the rankings, so at least there's that. Does Dimitrov have currently have a coach? Kyrgios doesn't and it seems to be working for him so far but if someone is slumping the way Grigor is slumping and he doesn't have a coach, then he's way past due for one. Sometimes I feel like Grigor is having an identity crisis on the court. He got saddled with that stupid nickname (Baby Fed) and he seems married to the idea of mimicking Federer's style as much as possible. I mean, there are some natural similarities in style but Grigor should aspire to duplicate everything because it won't work. I'm not sure he knows what his strengths are anymore. I'm not going to hold my breath but I hope he gets it together- tennis tends to be more interesting when there are more than 3 or 4 guys who can win at any given time.

The men were no better this weekend with both Del Po and Dimitrov losing to two awful low ranked americans…LOL I'm going to give DelPo a pass since that was his 1st tournament in over a year, I think and he was playing with a strong forehand but 1/2 a backhand. I just hope he stays healthy and if he does, I doubt he'll be losing to the likes of Sam Querrey. As for Dimitrov...no comment. I don't know WTF is going on with his game but I no longer pay him much attention.

1990 must be one of, if not the darkest years for storylines on ATWT. Coming off the revelation that a father murdered his son. Breakups galore, half the town in extensive therapy, Margo has to 'pull the plug' on her stepfather. The storylines are very well written and highly compelling (it beats the hell out of today's soaps!), don't get me wrong but the pathos is seemingly unrelenting.

So Angie Kerber's first tennis tournament since winning the Australian Open and she loses in the 1st round, getting a 2nd set breadstick?! Oh tennis. E.T.A. Looks like Kerber is in good company. I just saw that Halep, Bencic (who recently made her Top 10 debut), Errani (who just won Dubai), Jankovic and some other players all lost. Looks as if Doha defending champ Safarova may be about to go out but this is not surprising since she hasn't played in months due to that viral infection she was battling.

I never knew that Bill Shanks (Casey Peretti) was once married to Ashley Crowe (Beatrice McKechnie McColl). Wow add them to the list of formerand current couples on this show! I've lost count.

I don't think that it's a coincidence that Trump's latest poll numbers in SC have shown a noticeable drop. In SC the evangelicals may far outnumber the Catholics but they don't call Charleston the "Holy City" for nothing! The idea of a politician tangling and trying to put down the Pope (especially one as popular as Pope Francis) is an aspect that many South Carolinians probably find distasteful. Trump's numbers dropping are no surprise but the numbers in SC speak very loudly and there seems to be a correlation between his remarks in response to the Pope's statement. Trump is still leading but his lead in SC is not nearly as wide as it once was.

This is the episode where Bob tells Kim that he slept with Susan Stewart. I don't think this episode is anywhere else on the 'Net. In a weird twist of irony, Julianne Moore appears in a commercial for Oil of Olay during the break.

I'm sad to say that I don't think I have ever heard of this. Is there a documentary somewhere about this? I feel like the subject matter sure merits a documentary.

It really was! I'm gonna need him to stay healthy and I see him getting better. Delpo was really the only guy in Djokovic's age group that knows what it's like to challenge him and the other top guys. Maybe if Delpo can find a way to step it up despite all of the challenges he's had to deal with, perhaps the other guys in Delpo's age group can find the wherewithal to step it up too.

I saw that Morning in Vancouver thing earlier this morning on a news segment. Pretty lazy and sloppy by the Rubio campaign.

I hope people realize that the GOP Senators' strategy of delaying Obama's nomination picks is neither new nor is it just about the Supreme Court. They've been blocking Obama's picks to lower courts, mainly the appellate court since 2013. Obama probably has the lowest number of lower court judges appointed of any President in modern U.S. history. It's well known that the appellate courts are often a stepping stone to consideration to the Supreme Court, which is why Republicans have conspired to block even pre-approval of judges for consideration. Just how long are these stall tactics supposed to be tolerated? E.T.A- Obama has had more success appointing judges at the District Court level. And in the Appeals court, I misspoke, he actually has made up some ground and has had made slightly more appointments than Clinton but still less than Bush but this is still due to Republicans systematically blocking any hint of a nominee- case in point, Obama still lags way behind both Clinton and Bush in regional judges appointed.

@Soapsuds, I understand the desire to run a tight ship (time is $ and all that) but that does sound cold that he would just go on and recast what was at the time such a pivotal character involved in a lot of storyline. And if it's true that Bill Shanks stayed on longer than he wanted to simply so that the nuMargo could bond with Casey, so that when Margo pulled the plug it would still have impact, this seems more inconsiderate to other actors than if Caso would have just accomodated HBS. Seems like a penny-wise and pound foolish personnel decision. Margo could've been written in a way that HBS could've gotten the time off she needed. Over the weekend, I was watching an episode where Margo (played by Dolan) is thinking over Mac's offer for a considerable promotion. They could've shifted that promotion up to HBS maternity leave and have Margo go for additional enrichment training to take over her new position, the way Tom went to DC for the crime commission. I wouldn't rehash the storyline that Tom & Margo had with Tom's absence but perhaps Tom reluctantly agrees, not wanting to stand in the way of Margo's career progressing, afraid it will eventually cause a rift. Maybe Tom and Hal are now left to co-parent Adam and deal with the lingering awkward feelings that comes with that. Or heck, they could've just found a temporary replacement until HBS returned.

I believe HBS was a fun spirited prankster while CZP was more subdued laid back…thus the friction in the actors. Their rivalry was one of the best in the show. HBS left because she had a child and I think wanted some time off and Laurence Caso, EP at the time, wouldn't let her and instead he recast the role of Margo with Ellen Dolan. I don't think Caso was a friendly(close to the cast EP) as was Robert Calhoun, who had moved on to GL at the time. That could be part of the explanation for the somewhat high turnover rate among the cast in the late 80s/early 90s.

I loved Barbara but CZP better not be the reason why HBS left the show. (my side-eye) The interaction between Barbara and Margo in their scenes was fantastic!

John Oliver succinctly explained the ridiculousness of the party that claims to be all about adhering to the Constitution vowing to upend it especially as it concerns replacing the originalist Scalia.

Billy Magnussen (Casey Hughes, ATWT) was sort of handed a diss by a NYTimes critic regarding his acting on the People v OJ Simpson series on FX:

President Obama once nicknamed the GOP debates as The Hunger Games Debates. Is it any wonder? I think the Democrats are going to push the needle on the nomination progress. Already Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton have each spoken out on the need for the current President (not the next) to choose a nominee and for the Senate to do due diligence and see the nomination process through without delay. Both have said that if the Senate fail to do so, they fail to observe their Constitutional mandate. Warren said that this would fly in the face of all that the GOP have been claiming they were about- adherence to the Constitution. And the argument that a nomination shouldn't occur in an election year is pure bunk. Reagan nominated one of his 3 Supreme Court justices during an election year (1988).

We've got 341 days left for the current commander in chief to nominate a new Supreme Court justice. People like to think Obama is a lame duck, but he is actually far from it. Many nomination processes have taken half that time, so anyone who thinks that the nomination process should be left until 2017 clearly thinks the obstructionist ways of the GOP are acceptable. Those same GOP activists screaming for observing the Constitution and who would otherwise want want a Republican president to immediately put forth a nominee, will now want to bend policy even if that means obscuring that same Constitution just to ensure that the current Democratic president doesn't exercise his executive duty? Puh-lease. I hope Obama tells them to stand down and have a seat.

Downton Abbey claims that ISIS the terror group had nothing to do with there decision but they failed to offer any explanation as to why they killed off the dog. And ISIS was the name of an Egyptian goddess long before it became the name of a terrorist group, so I prefer Daesh, mainly because it almost sounds like the pejorative Arabic name. People and businesses had the ISIS name and are being harrassed daily now because of this group. I actually have friends and some family who are Muslim, so I knew from jump not to prounounce Muslim as if it were muslin, the name of the cloth. I am fortunate to have a pretty global upbringing so pronouncing certain words like Pakistan and Iraq never fazed me. It kind of makes my teeth itch when someone prounces Iran as if they are saying "I ran...to the store". Yeah, I'm one of those fuss-budgety people who insist on prouncing names as closely as possible to the way a native speaker would. I remember a co-worker from Japan telling me, I was the only non Japanese person she'd ever met who pronounced her name correctly. I'm a word-nerd, so of course that made me happy.

I agree @DRW50 about the letter written to Hal, which seemed particularly nasty. Lucinda wouldn't have even done that! I could imagine Lily blurting it out to Emily or someone somewhere random and Hal somehow overhearing it but writing a letter, letting Emily take the blame seemed like something quite OOC for Lily, maybe teenaged Meg might've done it. Frannie was basically Frannie except for the stuff with Barbara, that seemed like a departure from the old Frannie and brand new trait to add interest to the relationship. Between Iva and Ellie and Babs and Frannie, the early 90s signaled a deep rift between Sisters in the stories. Last night, I was watching some episodes from March 1990 and was struck by how progressive the love scenes were- they make today's shows seem somewhat tame in comparison. Caleb and Julie were quasi-graphic for a daytime show. There was a scene with Lyla straddling an immobile Casey as she gathers her robe around her before she climbs off of him, which I thought seemed realistic. Had a soap tried before to show a love scene between a couple when one was severely paralyzed? Some soap must have, right?

I went to bed before the end of the debate but one thing stuck in my mind from last night: Surely Sanders must know that mentioning Clinton's 2002 Iraq war vote is not the same as offering specifics on his own foreign policy agenda, right? Everytime he's asked a foreign policy question, he seems to dance around it by referencing Clinton's Iraq vote and he seems to try to tie himself to Obama, who also mentioned Clinton's Iraq war vote, but the difference is that at least, Obama countered with specifics of how his proposed foreign policy agenda would be different from 2007-2008 foreign policy. We expect Clinton to be fluent on foreign policy, given her previous position, but Sanders really needs to start offering specifics on what he would do/change/fix in terms of foreign policy.

Bernie Sanders is in Harlem today, which should be interesting since downown Harlem was once the location of Bill Clinton's office. I have thoughts but I'm going to hold my tongue and juust wait to see how this goes...

I'm watching episodes from 1990 with Heather Rattray and perhaps this has been discussed before (please tell me if it was) but I'm wondering whether there would have been less or little to no backlash if TPTB had waited a little while longer before recasting Rattray in the role? I'm comparing it to Frannie and I think Mary Ellen Stuart worked pretty well because there was a period of time where we didn't see JM's Frannie, plus I think because Frannie had been recasted a few times in the past viewers may have been more open to a new actress in the role. Martha Byrne was only the 2nd Lily and she was the one to play most of the events in the Lily's life. And the shift in Lily's personality, from naive young woman to sophisticated and worldly femme fatale aspiring business mogul must have been jarring for some fans of the Lily character. Taken in isolation, those scenes between Heather and Burke Moses are fantastic (as well as her scenes with Michael David Morrison and Elizabeth Hubbard), and Lily's champagne scene with Sean Baxter, with her blunt manner of seduction but it is a vast departure from the Lily last seen a very short while ago. Contrast that with the Frannie character, who also underwent a shift (somehow I couldn't imagine JM's Frannie having such a big fallout with her sister Barbara) but her shift was gradual with a lot of time for viewers to get used to it that by the time Frannie and Barbara had become mutual antagonists. Although, I have to be honest, I was never too keen on what was once a very tight sisterly bond being dissolved like that. Remember when some of us were wishing that Iva had not been written to put everyone else's happiness above her own? I was just thinking, what if Iva had interrupted Kirk and Ellie's wedding? I think that could have been cool as hell and Lisa Brown, Tom Wiggin and Renée Props probably would have played it wonderfully. And someone should've stopped that tacky azz wedding anyway. I feel badly for Casey who doesn't feel comfortable in some social situations. Too bad those robotic arms were not in use back when this storyline was being written. Casey would not have been so self-conscious about eating in public. Did Bill Shanks decide to leave the show or did they just decide to end Casey? I thought there was plenty of story left for the character. Oh well.

This is a clip from the play Margaret Colin and Tom Wiggins (Margo Hughes #1 & Kirk Anderson, ATWT) are in, City of Conversation.

That clip of Jeb Bush speaking in New Hampshire and pretty much pleading with the audience to applaud something he just said was funny and pathetic all at the same time.