Vee

What a day.

A bit! Just a tad! Going back many, many years, this behavior is not new from him.

Agreed. That delivered in a major way, more than I had expected bc I am not super susceptible to fan service without real weight and purpose. This had that and is probably the most emotional Marvel film for me besides the Infinity War/Endgame duology. Forgot to add:

I really liked the ending with the lone saxophone. That was great. It's just so strange because I felt last year would be the time for something like that, and here we are again.

That Weekend Update is legitimately funny, I'll give them that. I also loved Tom Hanks' opening line: "Thank you, surviving crewmembers."

That reminds me: Liz Vassey (Emily Ann) has a show in dev at NBC.

This is ridiculous. The man should know when he's beat and also not parade on like it's still the glory days for him or the show. It reminds me of when they were supposedly paying to fill seats in the throes of 2020, which was unconscionable.

Not sure how much Derwin and JVD discuss GL here but Zaslow does come up - with Erika Slezak from OLTL:

The Variety story sounds grim. I can't imagine what the more detailed facts are like. Why risk making the old joke "Saturday Night Dead" literal? I know Lorne prides himself on never stopping but it's not like they're in the Phil Hartman/Jan Hooks/Mike Myers/Dana Carvey, etc. second golden era here. Granted, I haven't given a [!@#$%^&*] about SNL in decades but...

Joe Bob Briggs and The Last Drive-In come through again for the soaps on Shudder: As part of tonight's Christmas charity telethon/horror movie marathon, they are showing the absolutely godawful "Ice Cream Man" from 1995, which features Clint Howard as a homicidal ice cream man, Olivia Hussey in a role she'd like to forget, the late Jan-Michael Vincent drunker than ever - and yes, OLTL/B&B/Y&R's immortal Andrea Evans as the vixen horny for the ice cream man's "hard pack". The last person I expected to see tonight by far.

Here's a little bit of her in the awkwardly-scripted Screech tribute, though this isn't what I was referring to. I haven't seen much of the season overall, but it's a cute show in portions. I mostly watch for the originals.

Saw some of the new season - Lark is out in a fair bit of material with Tiffani and Elizabeth Berkeley (with a hilarious Showgirls riff) and doesn't miss a beat back with the gang doing gags. I'm really, really happy for her getting well.

There are a lot of Senate Dems who are still very committed to norms and not violating them which replacing or ignoring the parliamentarian would require, believing that eventually things will go back to normal if they just appeal to their colleagues' better nature. The Senate is too cozy an environment for a lot of these people who make friends with the opposition inside that cloistered circle and fail to fully accept or acknowledge what the modern GOP really stands for today - and the same goes for a ton of Beltway media. But I don't believe there are enough Democratic Senators left to blockade real change if Manchin or Sinema bent on key issues; assuming that would be futile because there is always another recalcitrant Senator is IMO wrong. The handful of Dem Senators who are dragging ass on these issues prefer to have Sinemanchin do the work because they don't want to be exposed and forced to vote their conscience; if left vulnerable, they will buckle to the majority will and do what the people want. Which is another reason Manchin hollered like a hit dog when it was reported he wanted to cut the Child Tax Credit - I suspect he'll do anything to avoid being stuck with that blame, which may be leverage going forward.

Eric Martsolf has always been stunning. Sure, he may not resemble a sketchy twink photoshoot in a crinkled issue of XY Magazine from 1998, but who among us does these days?

Not ever to my knowledge. Malone was brought in from his novels outside of soaps in 1991. I can understand why a DAYS fan would love some of that, but for people who watched the more socially conscious Malone of the 90s (who definitely had flights of fancy, but they were balanced with gritty social stories as well) it was like living in Bizarro World. It went south almost immediately. I have a pretty high tolerance for camp and fantasy on soaps myself, but so much of Malone's 2003-2004 was very, very poorly executed. When you're spending a week in the never-before-mentioned 'secret tunnels' of Llanfair and watching as Blair and Dorian get trapped in a secret room full of Indiana Jones spike traps while searching for an all-powerful Indian diamond, all of this supposedly happening in Viki's basement, and the other A-plots are Jennifer Rappaport and Antonio Vega, my patience wanes fast. That being said, I've never forgotten any of it and it was a truly imaginative, demented time with some highlights and pluses amidst the chaos, far preferable to the nihilistic morass of Dena Higley.

I remember Michael Malone's second OLTL stint very, very well and I can assure you it was fit for DAYS, but in all the weirdest ways lol. (I often wondered at the time what would happen if they gave him DAYS) It was very gothic in that 90s way both Malone and Reilly enjoyed and drenched in his personal artistic sensibility and poetry but was also often very bad. Malone has always been very florid at core - it was Josh Griffith and others who tamed Malone's operatic, gothic excesses in the 90s, and Griffith is a burnout case today. Carlivati was the sane alternative when he took over OLTL; unlike Malone II, in his early years Carlivati was able to execute long story. But today, neither of them would modulate the other at this point. I have no idea what happened to Sheri Anderson, who would be my choice but clearly they already tried that.

A fatal flaw he perfected at ABC, sadly.

Meanwhile, from the "Couldn't Happen to Worse People" Department: