I can respect that.  Gritty is chaos!

Leave Philly outta this!

It seems pretty clear to me based on, I don’t know, 30 seasons of each show that the Bachelor/Bachelorette franchise has a significant diversity problem central to the show’s ideas about attraction and desirability, whereas the competition shows you mentioned generally have had more diverse casts and the emphasis is…

Since the 17th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1913, US Senators are elected directly by the entire state’s voters. So gerrymandering doesn’t make a difference in Senate elections.

Cosigned. You can make any flavor you want.  The best ice cream pie I ever made was a chocolate Oreo or Girl Scout thin mint cookie base, followed by mint chocolate chip ice cream, topped with a chocolate ganache.

The Wikipedia article on the “cookie table” specifically calls out Pittsburgh and Youngstown, Ohio as the hubs of this custom, and also associates it with Italian, Polish and other European-descended wedding traditions. It also says it’s virtually unknown in the western US, which is true in my experience (I’ve…

I agree, there is still work to do, especially as you highlighted there are previous reports about this teacher. The district has policies regarding anti-racism, anti-bullying, LGBTQ+ support, immigration support, and so on, and now they have to enforce them. Otherwise, parents will pull their kids out of the school.

With respect, I don’t think this is a fair assessment (Full disclosure, I am a product of Sacramento public schools). For what it’s worth, the board is as diverse as the people who live in the district. There are seven elected board members, of whom three are White women, one is a Black woman, one is a Black man, one…

I heard the same thing from a Persian friend who lived in southern California, and I believe she even knew some people associated with the show. I watched only the first two or three seasons, but you make a good point about fighting on reality television. If you’ve ever seen a Real Housewives episode, they often have…

I agree with most of your post here, but with respect, I wouldn’t call it a small community. There are almost 100,000 Persian-Americans in greater Los Angeles, of all creeds, and many quite prominent and successful. I know you weren’t saying otherwise, but I wanted to point out it’s actually a sizable diaspora.

I would also differentiate a snow cone (or sno cone) where the flavor or syrup is poured over the ice, from a granita where the fruit juice or flavoring is frozen simultaneously with the water, and the ice crystals are scraped to separate them. There is a spectrum of texture from smooth, small ice crystals to large,…

I got water ice in West Philly while working one summer. It might have been Siddiq’s, but I’m not sure. It was essentially just a guy and a push cart with water ice inside, but on a blazing hot summer day, it was one of the most refreshing things I’d ever had.

Damn right it’s wooder ice, slurred together as one word. Next question: Rita’s or John’s?

Aaah, the Philly breakfast of champions: Wawa coffee and soft pretzels. Unless you work in a trade, then it’s probably a gallon of Gatorade or sweet tea and a pack of smokes to get you through the day.

I hadn’t heard that, but now you’ve written it out, it makes sense. Bullies harass the person whom they perceive has no voice or power to fight back. Thanks for your reply.

I’m an enthusiastic viewer of Finding Your Roots but it breaks my heart every time. When Gates interviews a Black subject, there is often a revelation toward the end when the guest grapples with the legacy of slavery and how it affected his or her family in particular. The idea that your ancestors were brutalized,…

I wonder if Billie Piper or Freema Agyeman will have anything to say about this, having worked with him on Doctor Who. It seems certain they’ll be asked.

The joke’s on you, there are Tim Hortons in the US. Although I think Victoria, BC will be bothered that Bugs cut off the tip of Vancouver Island and sent it sailing away with Washington state.

This is the correct response to a petty narcissist who rhetorically asks “Who cares!” at the start of the letter, and then adds four paragraphs of insults showing that he actually cares A LOT.

Comments like yours and Charles R’s are why I would never trade my Gen X 80s adolescence for anything, even if it were possible. Those were magical times to be a young moviegoer.