Honey! My beloved grandfather just died!

Dudes, Martha Stewart showed that trick on her very first post-prison daytime show last September! I'm sure she didn't make it up, but she and one of the Desperate Housewives (Bree) demonstrated the trick and got a lot of press about it.

Please notice how I start my post off with "dudes," which is meant to balance out the rather nelly (and proudly so) knowledge of Martha and Bree.

I live in Boston, and this gubernatorial race is getting uglier by the day, thanks to repugnant Republican nominee Kerry Healey's attack ads. But this Mihos ad is, to me, utterly tastless. In another context I might appreciate it, but I don't want a governor who takes this approach... I want a governor with some decorum.

Also, I don't think anyone is going to vote for Mihos at all, never mind based on this ad. He's an Independent, and the race is really between Healy and the amazing Deval Patrick (D). In Mihos's other ads, he comes across as an overcaffeinated rodent - kind of hard to explain, and not totally awful, but not governor material, in my book.

I have no real interest in CR. But I am a vegetarian, and I must say that Quorn is one of my favorite meals. It's tasty, easy to cook, and flexible. In my house, it's become almost "trashy" food, filling in when we don't have time or energy to prepare something more elaborate.

As a vegetarian, I'm not spending money on meat, so the money I spend on Quorn doesn't bother me. And I don't think it's all that expensive.

Actually, it's available in our local Stop & Shop supermarket, and seems to fly off the shelves (the stock on the shelves is always low). My neighborhood, btw, consists of low- to middle-income families, and students. So I don't concede the "classism" of Quorn eating.

And yes, we're bringing Quorn to Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow (the rest of the family will eat turkey), and we're looking forward to it!

I understand it's not aimed at me, so I don't care much about Jitterbug. But those lo-o-o-ng ads are so bad... the volume is turned way up (a hint at who these phones are targetiung, though why the ads are on during "Angel" repeats in the morning is a puzzler.) And cheery chorus - "Jitterbug! Jitterbug!!!" - makes me pull my headphones out of the jack (I'm at the gym, you see).

I really just skim Camille these days; her Myra Breckinridge certainty about her absolute 100% correctness in all matters is tiring. But the "soap" mention in the subheadline caught my eye...

"TV soaps -- now a dying form, narcotized by corporate blandness." I assume Camille realizes what a silly thing this is to say about a genre that was started by corporations, to, uh, sell soap.

I also assume she knows that McKinsey and others didn't CREATE those lines, they just delivered them - not without talent, perhaps, but it feels naive to compliment an actor on the cleverness of a line.

This brief mention made me wish for a serious study of soaps - I am a long time fan, despite my knowing better. Very, very few people critique soaps these days in an interesting, unbiased way. And all those soap magazines at the checkout counters are just holdovers from the Hollywood studio system - they won't print anything critical for fear of losing access. I think the industry - which Camille rightly suggests has fallen on hard times - is fascinating, and redeemable. Obviously I shouldn't be looking for unbiased anything from Camille, for whom everything from her childhood/young adult days was amazing, and everything now is dreck.

if the godawful BSG finale had anything to do with Virtuality not being picked up. I do know that many - not all - BSG fans were put off by that finale (I was), so perhaps the rabid fandom Fox or others were counting on dissipated and couldn't be counted on to bolster this series? I, for one, lost all faith in Moore and company as long-term storytellers. Just a thought.