Cas Stark

The Wild Bunch is so sad, I never watch it all the way through.

Dune was on regular TV last night.  I think I like it more every time I see it.  There are still a few things I dislike, such as Jessica crying all the f. time and how dirty they did Mapes with so little screen time.  I would also guess it was pretty slow for anyone wo didn't read the books.  Chalemet seems like one of the very, very few young actors with old school charisma.  That is all.  Will make sure to see the next one at the theater.

47 minutes ago, Madame deVenoge said:

Yeah, he hasn’t even called me. Or texted. And it’s 6:30 pm.

Either he took off and went to Charleston on his own or decided to stay here, but either way, I have no idea what’s going on, or if he’s even talking to me.

And either way, if you were supposed to leave for the trip today, he should have communicated with you that it's off.  I'm sorry, which doesn't help you.

59 minutes ago, Madame deVenoge said:

Oh my…I am not in a good place right now.

Last night, I was out with friends, and the Doctor called. I answered, and he said “what are you doing?” And I said “out and about, can I call you back?” And he said something kind of short and dismissive, and hung up the phone,

I went outside 5 minutes later and tried to call him back; no answer. I called at 11:30 this morning, when he was supposed to be done with work. No answer. I texted “is everything ok?” No answer.

We were supposed to go to Charleston, today. I don’t know if that’s happening. I might be really paranoid, but did I get broken up with??

I haven't read the whole thread, did you have a 'talk' with him about joking you were broke?  I had a different take on that than  most everyone else.

You might be paranoid, but that's a lot of non responsiveness in a short time.  Good luck and keep us posted.

On 6/26/2023 at 10:57 AM, Tywin et al. said:

So in the last week she's bitten my step-brother and my step-dad's sister, the latter on the ass. 

It sounds like you need a trainer and probably more exercise for the dog.  

I haven't killed a bee or spider in decades.  The one year we tried growing small hot peppers they did amazingly.  Tomatoes just don't do well, the back yard is too shady and they don't thrive in pots in the front.  Flowers are doing well so far, although squirrels continue to dig them up now and then.

I wish cities did more tree planting, it seems a no brainer.  When you go to a wealthy area, its always leafy and green.  Why we don't try to replicate that in non wealthy urban areas is beyond me.

10 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

I assume the questions are rhetorical?  

You don't think she wears those Jenny Packham floral dresses--a little nip here and tuck there--that could have been worn by the queen mother back in the 40s by accident do you?  

17 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Being a Stepford wife is a good thing? Okay...

Anyways, they say nothing in public then in private use their deep connections with the media to savage the people they dislike. Not sure there's much nobility in that. 

I think it's more of a generational divide than cultural. And being incredibly repressed is not healthy which the royals display all the time. Do you think a lot of the core ones are truly happy?

I said 'personna'.

I'm not so sure about that anymore.  Our confessional culture of the last few decades doesn't seemed to have helped anyone's mental health, statistically speaking.  Instead, it has created a society full of naval gazing, fragile, infantilized people who are incapable of functioning without all kinds of 'supports'. Maybe our grandparents had something there with the idea of getting on with things.

LOL.  "Sources close to Harry and Meg say........"

https://www.instyle.com/meghan-markle-prince-harry-sick-tired-cheap-shots-spotify-netflix-7554630

TBH, it doesn't seem like Harry ever understood how things with the media worked.  The idea that 'royals sources say/palaces sources say' or Charles best friend going on the record are acts sanctioned by the family as some kind of insider revelation is weirdly naive.  Didn't everyone already know this and that it was done to give the royals and especially the monarch some plausible deniability and wiggle room.  Exactly the same as 'white house sources say' 'friends of Brad and Angie say.  

I also don't believe that his brother or probably anyone was dropping stories about H and M to deflect criticism.  Whether they say that because they're paranoid or they really believe it, I have no idea.  

Disrupted an existing industry??   WTF??  Harry and Meghan have if anything revived and expanded the existing industry of royal experts.  They provide a nearly unending stream of new content for books, blogs, and the Daily Mail. 

Similarly, the couple's seeming belief that somehow leaving the UK would reduce tabloid coverage of them was also mind bogglingly naive, if true. 

50 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

It wasn't. Nor has it been for MM. The key difference between us is I'm pointing out why the hate is misplaced while you're shitting on her.

You shouldn't hate either. I hate the institution of the royal family, but I don't care much about the individuals. I just like to point out how most of them are not special in any way, hence why I said there's easily over a million people in the UK who could fill the same role and would do it while taking a lot less.

Not necessarily a virtue. You're essentially praising them for being fake yet seem to hate H&M for being liars. Being fake publicly is a lie too and a more glaring one. H&M tell you how they feel. I'm sure they're typically overstating things and trying to make themselves look good, but at least they say somethings are honest and revealing. I'd rather have that than the Queen who gave you nothing when we all know shit behind the scenes was messed up and she certainly played a role in that. 

Yes, it's a virtue.  I praise Kate Middleton for her placid stepford wife public personna that she never lets slip.  I praised the queen for the same thing.  They're playing a role and they know it. Presumably most people don't go to work every day and spend all day emoting about their personal lives.  It's the same for the royals, when they're out, they're on the job.  Fine.  I also imagine it's useful as a shield in providing a public v. a private life.  I don't believe you are incapable of knowing that this is different that outright lying, exaggerating and dishing private family dirt for money.

I vaguely remember when Edward was trying to be a producer? I give him credit for attempting to do something on his own, it's too bad it was a failure.  I also watched a documentary that he hosted about one of the royal palaces/castles and I thought he was fine, good even.  He looks ill to me these days, almost emaciated.

Yes, the media took it very easy on Sophie for the motorcade incident.

Another Hollywood insider, Jeremy Zimmer,  slammed the Sussexes yesterday, saying basically that just because you're famous doesn't mean you have talent.  No lie detected.  

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

I'm aware of how they treated her. It still wasn't as rough as what Meghan has been served up.

Eh, pretty much all the PR I've seen about her is positive even before Meghan. The stuff that wasn't outside of the refusing tp peg him was typically pretty minimal.

They started to get bad press for nothing they did and then Harry more so than Meghan decided to burn it all down. And yet she still gets attacked for things he's said. Her comments about the royal family and race have been more muted than his (and I'm not sure either has said anything that's not inaccurate even though some of it has been self serving).

I've said this before, they're all just that, an empty family of grifters. Some random person from Essex would probably be better than most of them. The need to hate these two is weird and there's an obvious outlier there.  

No, there isn't.  They are two of the most famous people on the planet.  Harry has been famous his entire life.  The fact that millions and millions of people are interested in the British royal family should not be news to anyone.  The fact that many people have observed the behavior of these incredibly famous people for the last 5+ years and come to conclusions different than yours is no kind of outlier of anything.  I don't know why so many people buy into this narrative since it is almost wholly lacking in any substance or evidence.  Indeed, the last person who flounced out of the British royal family and his divorced American wife also came in for a lot of negative press for a long time.  Same/same. The idea that there have been dozens of racist stories about Meghan every week for months or years is nuts.  

Anyway, we're not getting anywhere here, which should be okay.  People should be able to hold different, even negative, views of famous celebrities without all sorts of weird innuendos and accusations being attached.  

30 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Child please. It was never this bad. You can say Meghan's an asshole and I wouldn't push back much, but to deny the racial factor and how that's magnified things is just silly. Just like it's silly to pretend the UK hasn't had deep racial issues, both yesterday and right now. 

Lol, Kate barely gets a fraction of the hate Meghan does. To compare the two is odd.

And yeah, from the reporting I've seen suggests a lot of the main players are assholes and empty suits behind closed doors. The difference is how the media covers them (and how those with the most power influence them). 

Certainly, from a PR perspective, Meghan is the best thing that ever happened to Kate.  She went from being Waity Katie, Two Kitchens Kate, 'wisteria sister', lazy and always sneered at for not being an aristo....to now she's tagged as a perfect royal and always gets great press.  Now.  That wasn't the case in the past.

To compare the two is odd why?  They are married to brothers, the two sons of the current King and Diana.  Many, many parallels there.

You also should not compare the terrible press M and H get now...after all their trashing of the royal family, the British media and even the British public...with how they were treated before they bounced.  Apples to apples.

ETA...'empty suit' is the literal job description, which in hindsight, is the perfect 'job' for Harry and Meghan.  Dress up, show up, speak  platitudes. 

If you wanted to make a case that WOMEN who marry into the royal family are treated immeasurably worse than men, then the evidence there is overwhelming.  That's sexism, not racism and thus, Meghan's treatment during her time as a working royal was nothing out of the ordinary, despite that I'm sure as a human being, it's difficult to endure such a harsh spotlight. 

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

Lol, who has had the worst go of it? And what makes her different from the rest? Refusing to really think about that is the actual lack of critical thinking, especially when you and Cas try to say it's because she's mean to the support staff when a ton of the royals are reported to be assholes behind the scenes too. 

Now you're just making stuff up to bolster your argument that you think think must be true.  The only royal I'm aware of who supposedly is difficult behind the scenes is Andrew. Not Kate.  Not William. Not the queen.  Not Camilla. Not Edward and Sophie. Maybe Charles I'm not sure on him. Not Anne. What tons of people are you referring to here?

I will say again that both Camilla and Kate were treated worse by the media and for far longer than Meghan was during her short time as a working royal. 

17 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Only if you chose not to look. I will use this uncomfortable example again:

A lot of the coverage around Meghan reflects the above. And the above quote comes from Lee Atwater who was likeminded with Murdoch and a lot of conservatives in general, both in office and in the media. They all know the dance they're doing.

Nah, the negative press really started when H&M started to question the royal family and their history. Then the floodgates were out. Who exactly do you think did that? 

I'm just stopping here because this is comedy. Meghan has gotten way more negative press. Idk how you even compare the two. Kate has been pretty invisible for years now outside of the she won't peg William stuff which I doubt is true.

When exactly did they do that while they were still 'working royals'?  

Now she has gotten more negative press, of course, that isn't what I said.  I said that Kate endured years of negative press, while Meghan didn't get any negative press until stories about her behavior began leaking.  

The Lee Atwater quote is completely irrelevant to this issue AND is from the 1980s, you know 40 years ago.   Meghan was dragged for allegations of bullying, for allegations she wanted to keep freebies, that she demanded a specific tiara, for allegations she was mean to Kate, that she failed to follow royal protocol, that she had a Kardashianesque baby shower.  None of that has any kind of racial undertone.  

15 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

If you're going to argue there's no evidence that race is a factor then you also need to argue with absolute evidence that we all look alike. 

 

Eh, the actual evidence that race was a factor in negative media coverage is very, very slim.  There was a handful, and by 'handful' I mean probably less than six, stories that could reasonably be considered to have any kind of racial angle.  The 'straight outa compton' story and the 'exotic dna' stories.  As far as I know, and I follow the royal stuff pretty closely, that's it.  Of course there were racist comments on social media, but that isn't the same thing.

Meghan got rapturous coverage until details about her actual behavior began to leak out.  Did the palace let this stuff leak because she was biracial?  Or because she was behaving terribly?  That is unknowable.

What is knowable is that there were years more negative stories about Kate and Camilla and Fergie than about Meghan.  Years and years more and certainly the Camilla coverage in the 90s was much more vicious than anything written about Meghan, with the possible exception of the Clarkson piece where he admits desiring a Cersei Lannister walk of shame for her.

24 minutes ago, Relic said:

Yeah he's absolutely awful. Never could understand how people could wish him success. 

4 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Probably because the way the show sets his narrative up from the start is as the underdog, the Everyman who let his life slip away and is gonna live up to his potential, no matter how terrible that was. 
 

Im sure on rewatch it becomes more obvious he’s awful but watching it from the beginning I was totally backing him until maybe the 4th season

Hmmm.  I was wishing Mike and Gus would kill him by that time.  He is sympathetic in the first handful of episodes, I'm sure everyone fist pumped when he blew up the dudebro's car at the gas station and when he blew up Tuco's building.  There was a vein of sympathy that remained for a long time, but he was pretty obviously an asshole from early on,

I don't know that I ever recall seeing 'restrained' and 'Guy Ritchie' in the same sentence.  That idea is appealing though.

 Sometimes a spoon is just a spoon.  Maybe they lose staff a high rate and were accused of bullying, wait for it, because they are difficult to work for.  Maybe entertainment insiders are criticizing them, Spotify ended the deal, etc. because they are difficult to work with and don't have the requisite 'talent' to make the difficulty palatable. Maybe people who find the couple unlikeable base that on their words and actions and not her ethnicity.  Just a thought.  

Can't find anything to watch.  Found deep in the dregs of Tubi a 1988 documetary on Richard Burton.  Very enjoyable, but sad, as we was another one of those people who achieved all of his dreams, but wasn't happy.  Also interesting, no narration, just people talking about Burton, clips of him, of his films and some footage of Wales.  Also, easy to forget how much real poverty still existed in the early 20th century in Western Europe. 

6 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Exactly what I'd expect from someone who doesn't actually want to think critically about the subject. There's a mountain of evidence the UK has deep racial tensions that span centuries. Pretending they're not real and don't impact society today is literally putting your head in the sand. 

You often speak  as if once something was true, it must always be true.   If George V was racist, then it follows that his descendents, 100 years later must also be racist.  If any given institution or country was racist in the past, then they must still be racist today.  That seems to me objectively wrong.  In the US, African Americans are doing better than they have ever done in the past, better economically, educationally, culturally.  Yet many people here speak like it is still 1960 or maybe even 1940 with no acknowledgement of the massive strides that have been made over the past half century.

Just now, Spockydog said:

So why start this ridiculous fucking discussion? Is referring to herself as a woman of colour whilst in Africa not definitive enough for you? FFS. 

 

In the US 'woman of color' encompasses a lot of ethnicities that aren't considered black.  Is it controversial now to not consider Asians and people from Latin America as black?  And for the record, while I am old, one of my parents is non white and I am not male.

6 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

No. All of a sudden, Cas Stark decided that Meghan Markle wasn't allowed to Identify as black. 

Whether she does or not, has nothing to do with me or Cas or you or anyone fucking else. And it was I that bullshit was reacting to. 

Anyone who actually read my posts properly would know this. 

She can obviously identify as whatever she wants, I mean, that goes without saying.  But to my knowledge she has always identified herself as 'biracial', indeed sometimes she has identified herself as caucasian and spoken at length of growing up as biracial in the US.  

Sometimes, when people don't like you or what you say they find reason to be 'offended' and always choose the most negative possible interpretation of other people's words.