Oh, wasn’t it clear that this is just a Janelle fan page? Honestly, all headlines are probably going to just be in relation to her status. When she gets evicted, consideration will be made if we even continue writing. Yes, I just wrote “we” rather than “I” as one person alone isn’t enough to write about Janelle and if I need to manifest other personalities, so be it.
Anyway, not that I get out of the house much, but it really is hard to motivate myself to write a Wednesday AND Thursday post. So here we are, on Sunday, and I should probably quickly catch up. Honestly, not too much really happened?
In the Wednesday Veto Episode, a lot of potential alliances were being made, but I have way too much BB experience to put too much faith in any of them, even the likely ones such as Cody and Nicole F and/or Dani. Things always change. Anyway, in the Veto Comp, Cody was hot:
Not a surprise. The competitors had to rock a banana to charge a timer (and something else, if you know what I mean….) and then go and try to stack vegetable-shaped puzzle pieces and have the largest stack. Also, pay attention to your timer as you have to re-rock the banana to get more time. See Enzo:
It’s a lot to take. So many people time out during this competition, including Cody and Ian. Enzo locks in a good score of 18 and Kevin HAS HIM BEAT at one point, but then he decides to continue playing as Keesha is still in the comp and then his stack falls and it’s like, dude WTF. You had the win, take it. Anyway, Enzo wins Veto.
Man, I love the hell out of these two. Their awesomeness is not unnoticed by everyone else in the house though as they easily become two juicy targets to take out, especially as the house starts shaking out along battle lines. There’s Cody and Nicole F (who strangely are allies now?), along with potentially Tyler and Memphis? Then there’s Kaysar and Janelle, and then everyone else – those others aren’t floaters but it’s just too damn early to say yet.
Anyway, Cody’s plan this week? Nominate Kaysar and Janelle. Shocker. It sucks for my enjoyment as I love these two, and it seems like there’s going to be another new-school vs old-school showdown brewing like what happened on Survivor this past season. It would be great if old-school gets the upper hand this time, but we’ll have to see if that plays out.
Well, just as Cody thinks his week won’t be too stressful, we learn about the “Safety Suite.” Everyone is given VIP Passes to BB’s hottest club: Safety Suite. Over the next 3 weeks, the Safety Suite will be open for one hour each week – you can decide to scan your pass at the door and you enter yourself in to compete for that week’s competition. The prize? Safety for the week. Also, you get to take a “+1” and that person also gets safety. It’s like this twist was specifically made to help keep Super Targets safe!? The downside? You can only use this pass once, and if you lose, you don’t get to try again later. Oh, and the “+1” gets a punishment.
This week’s easy targets, Janelle and Kaysar
So, the Safety Suite opens up for the week and absolutely everyone is terrified of making the move to swipe in. It does indicate you feel you’re not safe and you’re willing to do something about it….which YEAH. That’s exactly the point of this whole thing. Don’t put your fate in someone else’s hands. Both Kaysar and Janelle saw right through Cody’s noncommittal blahblahblah to them when they individually talked to him and could tell they were in trouble. But neither of them move to go swipe in. It’s not until literally 30 seconds are left when Kaysar gets up, goes upstairs, and swipes in at literally the last second. Janelle is right there with him and swipes in too.
Thoughts: where the hell was anybody else from Cody’s “side” of the house to mitigate this quite obvious possibility? Like, was no one thinking about the fact that if just Kaysar and Janelle compete, unless they both absolutely fuck up in the comp, which hello, both of them are comp beasts, that means they’ll both be safe? Where was Nicole F or Tyler or Memphis shadowing them and being the spoiler??? I’m glad they didn’t, but I’m still staggered at this non-play by that side. Also, some have speculated why did Janelle even bother playing at all if it was likely that she would be Kaysar’s “+1”? I think her concern is that if Kaysar lost, she’d be fucked. It seems there was a time limit to the comp and a time out was entirely possible. So it was best to just hedge bets and stay in the game rather than pray Kaysar didn’t lose.
Come Through, Safety Suite!
In an enormous lounge area somewhere on the studio stage, BB built up a big DJ booth for the competition. The goal was to be the fastest to recreate the “Twinkle, Twinkle” remix by pressing the right buttons that contained the various pieces of music found in the remix. Kaysar went first, followed by this Confident Queen:
Janelle’s swagger knows no bounds. The animated GIF of her entering and throwing her jacket on the chair is just…chef’s kiss.
Is it weird that the world is suffering through a pandemic and one of the brighest sources of comfort for me is a dumb, addictive reality TV show? If so, don’t care. I can’t tell you how happy it made me to watch this first episode of Season 22 – which also happens to be the first All-Stars Season that Big Brother has had since Season 7 way back in 2006. Two thousand SIX. I was in Colorado Springs still and in the Air Force! I hadn’t met Larry yet. I’ve lived an entire life since the last All Stars, and that life has admittedly completely crumbled and withered away in that time too, but hey, this brings me joy, so I’m going to embrace it.
I’m stoked that friends also are obsessed – so we’ve set up a draft for this year. I think I got some good picks, and while some live feeds info makes me wonder if I’ll end up doing good long term with my picks, it’s always way too early to make that kind of call. If you want to peek at what we’re doing, click here to our Google Slides about it.
Anyway, let’s meet our houseguests!
Our first 4 HGs: Nicole F, Daniele, Da’Vonne and Christmas
The first 4 houseguests to enter are Nicole F, Daniele, Da’Vonne and Christmas. It’s a surreal thing to see this brand new, gorgeous exterior studio and it’s utterly empty. No studio audiences in the Age of Covid, and as you can see, the HGs have their masks on still. These folks have been quarantined for 2 weeks to ensure that once they go in to the house, they’ll not be spreading anything inside. It’s crazy but necessary. It was a 2 hour episode, so after some chit-chat, Julie had these first 4 go in and compete in a semi-final for HoH. It was a ball maze puzzle and only the first 2 to complete it would go forward and compete for HoH.
You had to maneuver the ball into the right hole that answered the question your group got. Christmas here was the only one who made it.
Only Christmas made it to the finals in this group. What I seemed to notice was that in these groupings, the girl groups all had to go for the rear part of the puzzle while the guy groups had mid-way targets. Kind of bullshit.
The 2nd group of four
Our second group in was Kevin, Tyler, Ian and Enzo. Kevin and Ian were the ones who made it to the finals.
The third group of four
The next group of four was the last of the girls: Nicole A, Janelle, Bayleigh and Keesha.
muthafuckin’ Janelle!
This queen is welcome to be on every single season of Big Brother, at least if I have my say. Same for Britney. She, along with Kaysar, are from the earliest season represented in the cast (BB6), and you know she’s still a threat to go super far. I hope she can take it all, but she’s not exactly under the radar. None of these people are tbh, yet Janelle stands tall as a BB MegaStar. Get it Queen! LOL tho, only Nicole A was able to complete the ball puzzle. D’oh!
I just finished watching the latest (and last, for this “season”) Youtube video series put on by Josh Gad (Book of Mormon, “Olaf”) and I’m in such a great mood. Since the Pandemic started, he has put together the Zoom calls to end all Zoom calls by reuniting casts from epic 1980s movies – so basically, these are dream reunions for us in Gen X. Not only is it awesome on its own that he does that, but he’s also raising money for various charities to help support those hurt by the pandemic’s economic toll, so I am only too happy to chip in $50 here and there to help. Today’s episode that I watched? Fuckin’ Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, that’s what!!!!!
It’s so goddamn good, and the entire time I had a smile or was laughing. Honestly, nearly EVERYone from the cast was there (with the exception of Jeffrey Jones as he ended up getting convicted of pedophilia, so yeah, he’s persona non grata), even freakin’ Ben Stein AND in a surprise cameo at the very end, Kristy Swanson. The 45 minutes blow by so damn fast watching Matthew Broderick, Alan Ruck (who Larry & I saw at the In N Out in Burbank one time!), Mia Sara, Jennifer Grey, the parents, and more reminisce and re-enact scenes. That movie is just the greatest. I actually recently rewatched it some time during the pandemic and it just holds up so well. The parade scene, everything.
You gotta watch till the end for obvious reasons, but there’s also a fantastic John Hughes dedication that brings out a TON of brief re-enactment cameos from mega stars of John Hughes’ movies, and I can’t stop laughing at Jane Krakowski reciting her “french kiss” line from National Lampoon’s Vacation. It’s such a perfect line for her and she fucking delivers it just perfectly, still.
There have been other reunions that Josh Gad has hosted – I watched the first one for The Goonies and that was spectacular. Also watched the one for Splash, but I haven’t seen them all. I highly recommend you seek them out, as they’re magical, especially if you’re in the Gen X timeframe like me. Larry would have fucking loved watching these.
No doubt that this is a really hard time. For me, for sure, but for everyone. But yeah, I’ll say I’ve got a bit of an extra heaping of bullshit that can overwhelm me at times. I had a bad Wednesday. It was not good. My friends helped me out of it. I would like to say I’ll avoid getting into that mindset again, and I’ll certainly try – but that kind of feeling kind of is just hard to avoid 100% of the time. Anyway, I guess that’s enough to let you know that I’m trying my best to keep going and I can do so because of my friends and certain parts of family. Enough said I guess there. I’m just going to post some fun pictures and tell some stories briefly about good things that have been going on, fun stuff I’ve been watching or playing, howza bout that?
Crossrope: I added jumping rope to my exercise activities. So in addition to my daily yoga (I’m up to 126 days straight! go me! Thanks Yoga with Adriene!) I now will either do some jump rope routine or I’ll do the Bodyboss band system. Hopefully that’ll help in the long run. I need the cardio and the strength training.
The Get Lean set – these jumpropes are awesome
Sad yet resilient
The jump ropes are really good and assist in making it easier. I had bought some junky Amazon rope and it was totally the wrong length and material. Anyway, here comes my swimsuit body, lolololol.
2 weekends ago (June 14), I met up with my PwC friends and coworkers out at Valley Village park in North Hollywood. We were nicely outdoors and socially distanced, and it was great to see people again. It was a really wonderful day, perfect weather, and we got to celebrate Mel’s engagement from the day before! It was the first time I’d been out to a social gathering of any kind since the lockdown. Crazy.
Socially distancing
Mel and Viv
Showing her ring
It’s Fitz
While at the park above, Mel & Josh (her great fiance) brought a cool Bose portable speaker. I was jealous and bought one online right then and there as my roofdeck needs something and the Beats Pill that Larry had got so long ago back in Silver Lake as a way to get that AT&T phone extender is getting gross and totally dead. So, problem solved. I highly highly recommend it if you’re in the market. The sound is fantastic, bluetooth, etc.
Very exciting recently was Michancy came down last weekend (June 18-21)! I’ve missed her so much and it worked out for her to drive down and we indulged in drinking everything, watching all of Picard, playing Ticket to Ride, drinking more, inviting Nicki over for rooftop fun and games, cooking wonderful meals (filet mignon on Friday night, and spaghetti carbonara the next even though I had basically passed out after daydrinking, managed to wake up and motivate myself as I knew the ingredients were there and goddamn it came out good), playing Just Dance and burning off alcohol, and overall, just having a fantastic time with BFFs while the world continues it’s march to destruction. YAYYYYYYY.
Let the drinking begin
Out on the deck jamming to tunes and talking
Prep time for the filet mignon meal
YUM
Late night rooftop fun with drinks and convos
Game day with Ticket to Ride
After Michancy left on Sunday, I admit I think it was hard to come back down to reality and be alone again. Maybe that was why my Wednesday was so hard? Combination of reality check, my mom isn’t doing that great and keeps falling (I ended up buying a whole new bed after I had already bought her a whole new bed when moving her in March), and I really really miss Larry still. I’d give anything to have him be here to get through all this with – whether it’s the pandemic, the issues with mom, my resentment of a lot of my family, the political nightmare that is our presidency…any one of those things would be enough to justify my alcohol consumption, but all of them at once? And the fact i’m still grieving Larry and stuck alone for most of it? It’s hard. The good times pre- his final descent are what keep me smiling, but I can remember those last 3 months vividly and it wrecks me. What he went through and to witness it. It’s just fucking not fair and I fucking hate everything at times. Most times, really.
My friends talked me from the ledge Wednesday and on Thursday, as we had a nice zoom call and I can’t tell you how much I love them. We’ll get through this all together. I think Nicki probably recognized that maybe I might need some friendship and I recognize I do, so I invited her over this weekend to hang out, so we did. It was a fun day and a half – we hung out and enjoyed the roof deck yesterday and I introduced her to the game of Mastermind, which is an old favorite my mom and I used to play way back in the day. It’s a classic, and perfect for 2 players. Then we watched two seasons of Search Party and damn, that show is something else. It’s funny as hell and I love the characters, but it is a show that goes to some surprisingly dark places and there’s really no way it doesn’t continue to get darker. The 3rd season is out now, so I guess we’ll be able to catch up. We also watched a super fun movie on Netflix:
Eurovision, ABBA, Will Farrell, Rachel McAdams… hot Russian backup dancers and promises of even more great European songs? I was in long before this came out, but holy shit, the final product is fantastic. I really liked that it didn’t make fun of Eurovision – the original songs are like, really good. Anyway, Jaja Ding Dong!
For dinner last night, we made Larry’s arroz con pollo recipe and it really is just a stupendous dish and it was nice to make that, hopefully with Larry smiling in satisfaction somewhere out there.
I introduced Nicki to Mastermind
Nicki’s pic of me conquering Mastermind
We made Larry’s arroz con pollo recipe
What else have I been watching or doing?
Detroit: Become Human – I heard about this game by seeing a picture of this cute guy from it and because i apparently can’t help but be distracted by hot guys, I read into it. Saw a sale for it on Steam, bought it, and wow, I’ve been so entranced by the game. So much fun, and I find myself playing it far longer than I probably should some nights. It’s a cool story game about androids gaining sentience, and the androids are of course all attractive. Anyway, I Heart Connor forever and always.
Twin Peaks: The Return: I’ve raved about this plenty before, and it’s just so good getting to the end section The Return. Still hard to believe Larry & I went to Seattle and did a Twin Peaks day just after the conclusion of the show.
Control: A really cool videogame about the ultimate terrible office building filled with possessed-by-demons humans and you have the only way of defeating it. Trippy environments and a relatable protagonist help make this a really fun play. Occasional challenging to the point I have to walk away and think about it.
Anno 1800: This game is just gonna be an always-playing situation for a while. It’s so good and mesmerizing. I’m nowhere near done or at the endgame, which is what it’s all about.
Anyway, I guess that’s it. Maybe I’ll update more often – maybe that will help my emotional state.
