samhexum

I binged the first 2 seasons of THE MESHUGANAH MRS. MAISEL in a day and a half over the weekend, so obviously I enjoyed it, but I have a few criticisms: 1. The entire cast kept mispronouncing her name. I knew a family growing up named Maisel, and it's pronounced myZELL. They could've just had her use MAYzle as a stage name, because the audiences & club owners kept calling her that. 2. The end of the 2nd season was supposed to mark a year since Joel left. I know that's a good milestone to use for dramatic effect, but it seemed far too quick for everything that happened in the 2 seasons to happen, given the era & the lack of successful women stand ups at the time, especially considering Midge's complete lack of experience & Susie's lack of experience as a manager. The first season ended with Midge's boffo set at The Gaslight, & using her name onstage for the first time. That should've been the one year mark. Then the telethon appearance & subsequent offer of a 6 month tour that ended season 2 should've been the 2nd anniversary of Joel leaving. 3. Joel's mother seems like one of those characters writers come up with to throw every stereotype and eccentricity at, figuring the audience will find her so ridiculous they'll laugh at her on sight. EPIC FAIL! I found her character extremely annoying any time she was onscreen. 4. Midge's mom seemed like a believable character for me, except for her reliance on psychics. Nothing about her character seemed 'old-world' to me, she didn't seem massively tied to 'the traditional ways' and she was fairly cosmopolitan, so the psychic visits did not ring true to me. 5. I think Tony Shalhoub did a good job bringing the character as written to life, but he seemed more like a caricature than a character to me. I originally thought his scenes in Paris when he stayed with Rose for a while were kind of a saving grace for the character, but when I thought about it, nothing else in the 2 seasons made it seem like he'd have the patience or social graces to have that in him. Did anybody recognize Midge's (& Abe's) lawyer? It was Doogie Howser's best friend, Vinny Delpino.

A true fan would have known it's sweathog, not warthog.

Didn't you watch the Super Bowl for the ads? He was attractive and fun as Santa in those CapitolOne ads with Samuel Jackson. Maybe instead of embracing his daddiness he can embrace his Father Christmasness.

As the clip above shows, it was Clorox Bleachman, not MTM, who slammed the oven door.

Homeless shelter resident stabs man over phone in Chelsea Jeez... I know I'm clueless about technology, but they have tech that allows you to stab somebody you're talking to on the phone now? What about texting? Can you do it that way, too? Is this feature something related to 5G technology? I'm so stuck in last century...

ESPN.COM had 5 of their basketball experts do a roundtable of the most memorable aspects of 2021 and what to expect in 2022. Do you notice a theme in their answers for the following question? What was the most memorable on-court moment of 2021? Collier: Giannis Antetokounmpo’s game-saving block on Deandre Ayton in Game 4 of the NBA Finals. This is the play that best encapsulates what a generational talent Antetokounmpo is and what a special performance he delivered throughout the 2021 NBA Finals. His performance overall to clinch Game 6 is legendary, but for a single moment, Antetokounmpo pulled off something few players in league history could, guarding Devin Booker on a pick-and-roll, then recovering for a game-saving block on an alley-oop attempt by Ayton. This play will live on highlight reels for a long time. Shelburne: Antetokounmpo’s 50-piece in Game 6 of the NBA Finals. I don’t often get emotional at games anymore, but when the weight of his journey from selling handbags on the streets of Athens, Greece, to NBA champion and Finals MVP culminated at that moment in Milwaukee, it was beautiful. Bontemps: Antetokounmpo going for 50 points — including a 17-for-19 performance from the foul line — to close out Game 6 of the NBA Finals and deliver a championship to Milwaukee. It was the kind of iconic, all-time performance that we’ve seen so many great players have in those moments over the years, and allowed Antetokounmpo to move another level higher on the list of the elite players in the history of the sport. Friedell: Antetokounmpo winning a title in Milwaukee. He has always said he wanted to win and stay in Milwaukee his entire career, and he made it happen. Through sheer will, he pulled the Bucks out of an 0-2 hole against the Suns and forever cemented his legacy. Regardless of what else he accomplishes in his career, Antetokounmpo’s accomplishment is a reminder that small-market teams can win if they have the right players around their star — and if they catch some breaks along the way. Pelton: Jrue Holiday stealing the ball from Devin Booker in the closing seconds of Game 5 in the NBA Finals and lobbing an alley-oop to Antetokounmpo for the game-sealing and-1. I still can’t believe Holiday didn’t simply run the clock out in such a crucial situation, but I’m glad he didn’t.

Thanks to a handful of big name musicians, vinyl sales skyrocketed this year, with the BBC reporting that the UK topped 5 million record sales for the first time since 1991. Indeed, the past 12 months saw vinyl sales up 8% over 2020, an increase partially due to the release of a few blockbuster albums by the likes of Adele, Ed Sheeran and most markedly, Abba. The Swedish super group’s release of “Voyage,” their first new album in over 40 years, sold 29,891 copies in its first week alone and soon became this century’s fastest vinyl seller, according to the Official Charts Company. CDs, meanwhile, saw sales drop 12% since last year, with only 14 million discs selling in the UK — the least amount since 1988, six years after the format was born in the nation. Abba’s international releases are displayed at the Abba museum in Stockholm Cassettes saw more success than CDs in 2021, with sales increasing for the ninth year in a row. Still, the sale amount is relatively tiny, with just 190,000 tapes sold this year. That trend may also be more attributable not to format popularity but bundle deals, in which artists sell signed cassettes with every CD or vinyl album purchase, the BBC noted. This year’s top-selling cassettes included Queen’s “Greatest Hits,” Lana Del Rey’s “Chemtrails Over the Country Club” and in the No. 1 slot, Olivia Rodrigo’s “Sour.” https://nypost.com/2021/12/29/vinyl-sales-are-skyrocketing-thanks-to-abba/ This just makes me happy. I wonder what will happen to sales when they release their next album in another 40 years.

Sports Writer/Renaissance Man Keith Law's review: http://meadowparty.com/blog/2021/12/30/the-power-of-the-dog/

Tomassetti attacked the couple during a custody dispute over his 1-year-old child. He has been charged with two counts of attempted murder. He had started arguing with his parents at about 10 a.m. on Christmas morning. As the argument escalated, he allegedly tried to leave the home with the child. “When the parents objected, the defendant produced a .22-caliber pistol,” Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder said. Tomassetti then allegedly shot his mom in the head and then fired at his dad, hitting him in the back and wrist. “He struck his father then in the head with the gun numerous times after he ran out of bullets,” Ryder said. The baby and the child’s mother were in the room at the time. Tomassetti wasn’t licensed in Nassau County to own the pistol — and he had no prior arrests. His parents underwent surgery for their injuries, but were both released earlier this week. The 1-year-old is in the care of its mother. I guess he won't be winning any father-of-the-year awards. Now watch the parents hire a hotshot lawyer to get him off. Actually, I'd get him off for just a nominal fee.

Man left naked on public beach after sister gifts dissolvable shorts A Tennessee woman has been slammed for gifting her brother a pair of “dissolvable” swim shorts before filming him frolicking in the waters of a public beach as they disappear. Dara Roberts conducted the “cruel” prank last month, posting the footage to TikTok where it has been viewed a whopping 28 million times. The clip starts with Dara’s brother, Seth, sporting the bright blue bathing shorts, which she tells him she found “new at a Goodwill.” Seth has no idea that the pants will start to dissolve as soon as they get wet, and he is later seen wading into the waters at a busy beach blissfully unaware as to what will soon be revealed. Footage shows Seth throwing around a football in the waist-deep water before he realizes that his swimsuit is melting away. “My swimming trunks ripped… bad,” Seth says in a panic, as he clutches his private parts beneath the waves. Dara continues to record him, and is heard bursting into laughter at her brother’s sudden despair. “Quit videoing me. I’m serious,” Seth says. “I’m naked!” He refuses to get out of the water until family members fetch him a new pair of shorts, insisting that he cannot be seen nude in public. The clip then cuts out, so it’s unclear whether Seth was forced onto the shore while naked as a seahorse. “We still haven’t told him the truth. Seth, if you see this. I’m sorry,” Dara captioned the clip. However, TikTok viewers certainly weren’t laughing, and took to the comments section to slam the sister’s sinister prank. “Funny in a backyard pool, but not in a PUBLIC place with your sibling,” one chided. “This is more embarrassing than funny. He sounded genuinely upset,” another raged. Others described the clip as “humiliating,” “traumatizing,” “sick” and “illegal.” Several TikTok users said that if the gender roles were reversed, and it was a woman being pranked into wearing a dissolvable swimsuit, the authorities could be called. However, Dara brushed off the criticism, subsequently sharing a second video in which she lashed out at her haters. “@ the overly sensitive TikTok users,” she wrote across footage of herself, which was accompanied by the song “I Hate U” by SZA. However, the outraged comments continued. “Your brother could have got a massive fine and been put on a registry because of that. But hahaha… so funny right?” one wrote beneath the second clip. Dara has not responded to the ongoing backlash. Seth has not made public comment. https://nypost.com/2021/12/28/man-left-naked-on-public-beach-in-dissolvable-shorts-prank/ I think the brother should sue the sister for the emotional distress, then get her an outfit for court that dissolves when exposed to air. Thanksgiving and Christmas must've been fun at their home this year.

I remembered I also recently watched Crazy Rich Asians and the Awkwafina movie about the family that travels to China to visit the grandmother who doesn't know she's dying. So that's at least 5 I watched in 2021. And one of them was actually from 2021.

Combine in a bowl: 1 pint sour cream 1 20 oz. can of crushed pineapple in its own juice 2 small boxes of instant vanilla pudding Plop the concoction into a graham cracker pie crust and refrigerate. ENJOY!

Deadpool (the first one). I'm not a movie-watcher and don't know if I've even watched 5 all year. (The 2 Deadpools, Shang-Chi recently, and I don't remember if I watched anything else)

When is Ryan Murphy doing the story of your childhood, and who is going to star in it?

My mom used Alevei occasionally, and I call it Davening when I'm rocking back and forth on the toilet trying to coax out a... well, you know...

I had a rather refined English teacher in Junior High who responded to a student's burp one day thusly: A belch is just a breath that's uttered from the heart and if it went the other way it would have been a fart.

She probably got it from Bugs Bunny, but my mom used to say she was going to unlax.

I'm very familiar with the 2 RetroFitness locations where he worked as a trainer. (I've passed them by many times, in other words)... between Burger King & PC Richard on Queens Blvd (near the LIE) and in the shopping plaza with Stop & Shop on Union Turnpike, off Woodhaven Blvd (behind Trader Joes). His family’s construction empire shaped the Big Apple’s skyline, according to the Daily Voice. Rocco Tomassetti’s Empire Transit Mix company reportedly provided the concrete for the Freedom Tower. The pumped-up suspect’s late grandfather — Italian immigrant Dino Tomassetti Sr. — owned construction chain Laquila Group, whose projects included Goldman Sachs’ headquarters near Ground Zero and the Bank of America headquarters, the outlet said. He also had been linked by the feds to organized crime, according to a 2006 report in the New York Times. The then-79-year-old Tomassetti Sr. was under indictment for allegedly making thousands of dollars in illegal payoffs to union officials over a decade, according to the newspaper. He had denied the charges. And in 1997, Rocco Tomassetti and his father were arrested for allegedly operating an illegal waste transfer station near the company’s headquarters in the Flatlands section of Brooklyn, the Times reported. Laquila also failed to disclose a 1987 racketeering indictment for bribing local officials to allow it to dump construction waste illegally in New Jersey, according to the outlet. The scheme was allegedly organized by a member of the Gambino crime organization. The charges against Laquila were ultimately dropped as part of a $25,000 civil settlement, the Times reported. https://nypost.com/2021/12/27/mug-shot-released-of-nyc-bodybuilder-accused-of-shooting-parents/

My sister's family got a dog named Shaggy earlier this year. The day after Thanksgiving Shaggy called me and told me that she'd found the perfect gift for my sister, but her credit card was maxed out, so she asked me to buy it for her. Of course I did.

Gone Baby Gone

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