The Serena Also Rises

The NY socialites save the day for Eleanor Waldorf's show. Photo from CW.com

Serena has climbed back on top of the social ladder and Blair has gone tumbling down -- despite all of her attempts that is. It's Fashion Week in NYC and Blair tries to woo her friends by putting them in the 2nd row at her mom's show. The girls are excited about the tickets, until they spot a picture of Serena in Women's Wear Daily out on the town with socialite Poppy (is socialite naming like celebrity naming? The weirder the better?).

Dan, after getting fired from his internship, is taking his writing to some one new who tells him his stories are dull and lifeless. Well, they're about Dan's real life, what do you expect buddy? To spice up his pages Dan decides to follow Chuck for a day. Chuck gets Dan liquored and hopped up on pills. "How do you know so many twins," Dan to Chuck. "The twins find me," Chuck. And just when you think these two actually get along, Chuck leaves Dan in the middle of no where without shoes and tells Dan he was just his entertainment for the night. Ouch.

Little J has been skipping class to help Eleanor and while she was at it changed the seating chart Blair put together for the show. Big no, no Little J. At the show, J put Serena and her new found socialite friends in the front row, breaking the tradition of Serena and Blair watching the show from back stage. Poor Blair is SO picked on. HA. And of course we see another shameless Vitamin Water plug in the fashion show gift bags.

Dan doesn't know when to leave things well enough and goes back for seconds with Chuck. When Chuck tires of Dan's 20 questions he moves on to a woman he thinks is a prostitute and when her boyfriend confronts Chuck, Dan knocks him out. They get arrested. Glad there's one realistic aspect in this episode: knock someone out at a bar, get arrested.

Back at the show, to get back at Jenny, Blair sent all of the models home. But J has a plan. Socialites save the day on the runway!! Yippeee! "It's a good thing socialites are wafer thin," Eleanor. Good thing indeed. In another attempt to sabotage, Blair sent Serena onto the runway wearing J's after party dress that she designed and made. Turns out both girls are a success. In your face Waldorf.

In the after show Eleanor praised Little J's help in the show and even though unhappy Rufus saw this he still pulled her aside and lectured her. That's when Little J decided to tell him that she wasn't going back to school. Quite a decision for a 15 year old to be making (again why I would never let my child, if I had one, watch this show).

Until next time. XoXo

Ready, Set, Go!

I am so excited that the Amazing Race is back again. If there were one reality show I would be on, this would be it for sure. I wouldn't even care so much about the $1 million prize (although that would be pretty sweet). The best part about this show is the travel experience. Granted the contestants are kind of rushed from place to place, but you still get to see so much!


With that said, here's how the premiere of Amazing Race 13 went.

Contestants started the season from the Coliseum in Los Angeles. Their first destination was Salvador, Brazil. Terence and Sarah tried to beat the usual L.A. traffic by taking side streets to the airport, while Aja & Ty were smart by taking the carpool lane, but ended up going to the wrong ticket counter when they got to the airport.

On the way to Brazil the first plane got delayed, but not by enough to have the second group catch up completely. Once in Salvador contestants had to go to a sandwich shop, get a cart full of goodies and wind their way through the streets to find their next clue. The comic bookie geeks from San Diego, Mark & Bill, were the first to the sandwich shop, but it was Terence and Sarah who were able to push their cart faster. Did you notice the Brazilian lady dressed in hot pink that was trying to help all the contestants? Was she trying to get her 5 minutes of fame?

The first Road Block challenge options were:

1. Climb up stairs to a church on their hands and knees and answer a question at the top. If they failed they had to navigate the streets back down to the bottom and start again.

2. Descend a cargo net from atop a building some 250 up.

All but the ASU frat boys chose option 2 and seemed to have no problem with the height. The frat boys made it to the top of the stairs pretty quickly, were unable to answer how many stairs they just climbed, but got the correct answer on their second trip up.




Siblings Starr & Nick took the top spot, while beekeepers Anita & Arthur were sent back home to Oregon. Photos from CBS.com

I have to say that it looked very warm in Salvador as everyone was sweating like crazy. In the end Starr and Nick took the top spot followed closely by the team they have dubbed mom & dad, Ken and Tina. The Oregonian beekeepers couldn't keep pace with everyone else and were the first to be eliminated from the race.

It's hard for me to pick a favorite team in the first week, but I must say I already have a team that I greatly dislike: Terence and Sarah. Terence is a bit of an asshole already and has proved to be very controlling over Sarah, at times even talking for her. Dallas is the hottie on the show and Starr is already cozying up to him with a little firting action. Should make for some interesting episodes.

Thursday night rundown

Since I didn't have it in me to take copious notes while watching my Thursday night lineup, I shall just put down some general thoughts on the night.

UGLY BETTY
My Thursday night heart warming and laughter show is Ugly Betty. This show can always provide me with a smile and the premiere tonight was no exception. After taking a trip to discover herself Betty returned with some life goals:

1. Take on more responsibility at work. Well, this would have been fine and dandy if it weren't for the fact that Daniel got the ax from Mode and is now the EIC of Player magazine. Between the grunts, cat calls and boo's of her coworkers, I sure wouldn't want to take on any more responsibility, I'd want to walk right back out the door. But Betty prevails and is put in charge of an event for the Players girls on Harley's. When one girl goes on, Betty steps up in her place and lands in a pool of what can only be described as jelly?
   
2. Get her own apartment in the city. As someone who has scoured Craigslist for apartments in NYC, I will vouch that this is no simple tasking, but a good goal to set. I wish I could do some follow through on my searches. This goal lands Betty a rundown (to put it mildly) apartment with a view of two geriatric nudists and a loud neighbor. But when her family joins in they spruce the place up like new. Ah, the wonders of TV.
   
3. Avoid romantic yadda, yadda, yadda, entanglements, yadda, yadda. This episode was light on the romance until the last five minutes when Betty introduces herself to her cute? neighbor, whose name escapes me (darn the no note taking).

Oh, and did I mention Lindsey Lohan is Ignacio's boss at the burger joint? There's a laugh right there for ya. I also had a laugh at the clothes Betty wore in this episode. I don't consider myself a huge fashionista, but I do recognize a few designer outfits here and there. In this episode, when Betty was flung into the pool of jelly, she was wearing the pink version of the same dress Blaire Waldorf wore in the season premiere of Gossip Girl when she was riding bikes with Lord Marcus and walking in town with Serena. I noticed because I LOVED the dress on Gossip Girl. Here are the pictures below.

CW.com and Popcrunch.com

GREY'S ANATOMY
Thank GOD for DVRs and being able to fast forward through commercials. As my roommate pointed out, there was a commercial like every 20 seconds in this premiere. Might as well have made it only an hour premiere because the other hour was all commercials!

After building Derek a house of candles, Meredith keeps having dreams that Derek gets in a car accident and dies. Hmmm, take a clue much sweetie? Flirting between Alex and Izzie, flirting between George and Little Meredith. Awkwardness after the season finale lesbian kiss between Erica and Callie, gee, what a surprise.

I got very excited when Dan from Journeyman showed up as military trauma surgeon Major Hunt whose bad ass moves equally impresses and turns on Cristina, who, after telling Meredith that things probably won't work out with she and Derek if they move in together, slips and falls on black ice then gets impaled by a falling icicle. Oh the laughter had there. Only on Grey's.

Somewhere in there was also a car accident (two actually), an affair, a lying husband, a slip in rank from No. 1 teaching hospital to No. 12, getting staples in the leg without any numbing.... I think that about covers the two hours pretty well.

ER
I was about to be pissed at NBC for teasing something that didn't happen. But lo and behold, it did happen, eventually. A fan favorite died. No matter what I was going to be sad at whoever they killed off the show, but I think I would have rather it been Sam. I loved Pratt. He was the doctor with just enough a$$hole in his system to keep people respecting him, but was really deep down a giant teddy bear. Anyway, I'm usually pretty good at shedding tear when watching this show and tonight I followed suit... so much so that I needed a Kleenex at one point. I held it all in until Pratt himself started crying on the show. Even though there seems to be a big character turnover from season to season, this has always been a really well acted show and I guess that's why it's lasted so many seasons.

I don't really have much else to comment on for ER other than it was a good start to their final season. I look forward to bidding ER a proper goodbye.

Monday night meals

Yes, I know that it’s Thursday and I’m just now posting under the heading of Monday night meals, but I really did make all this grub on Monday. I’ve just been slacking a little on the posts.

I hadn’t cooked in a while due to being out of town and just plain not having much time, but I went grocery shopping for the first time in nearly a month on Monday and filled my fridge and cabinets with all sorts of goodies. I also decided that it was about time I made a recipe from the Food Blogga blog that I’ve become a religious reader of as of late. The food posted on this Web site always looks SOOO good and there’s always some kind of twist to make it different than your run-of-the-mill recipes.

My first task was to make Lemony Blueberry Corn Bread with Basil. I was both a bit scared and intrigued when it came to the basil aspect in this recipe, but the blogger, Susan Russo (who is also published on NPR quite often), said that the basil loses some of its zip when you bake it. I was sold.

This recipe was very simple, but mine didn’t turn out quite as pretty as the pictures on FoodBlogga. I used a silicone bread pan and the loaf got stuck to the bottom of the pan (I thought that wasn’t supposed to happen in those pans, that’s why I bought it). Also, even though I sprinkled my blueberries with flour, like the recipe said, my blueberries ran a little. Maybe my next attempt will be better.

For dinner Monday night I made a Rachael Ray 30-minute meal (which is usually about 45-60 minutes for me). I wanted to go with something other than chicken, but lo and behold, a chicken recipe caught my eye. This time it was in sandwich form, a bit of a change, I suppose.

I marinated the chicken in thyme, lemon juice, salt and pepper for about 10-15 minutes. For the sandwich I whipped up a mixture of Dijon mustard, EVOO (as Rachael would exclaim), white wine vinegar, salt and pepper to taste and whisked in some grated Parmesan reggiano cheese. I sliced half a pear, added a little more lemon juice then tossed it with the Dijon dressing, mixed greens (the recipe asked for arugula) and sliced proscuitto. After tenting the cooked chicken for about 15 minutes I cut thin slices and placed it on my toasted sandwich roll, topping it off with the pear salad. The sandwich was really good! The sweetness of the pear mixed with a little saltiness of the proscuitto was a treat. I would make this recipe again for sure (in fact, I did again the next night since Rachel’s recipes are always 4 servings – and I only halved the recipe).

I ate Monday night’s meal in front of the TV watching the Chargers massacre the Jets and of course some Gossip Girl, which I also reviewed on the blog.

Cheers to good eats and entertaining TV!