Summer was delayed here but has finally begun with a vengeance. I’m sitting in my little office sweating like a kosher pig, the roadrunners are walking, the coyotes aren’t even bothering to chase them, Wonder Dog is looking hurt and betrayed that we moved her furry ass here, and my car is actually sinking into the molten asphalt.
Old Guy Music, and it’s natural to question why an urban Jew is so fond of jazz and bluegrass. The answer is, fuck you. Oh, and if you don’t like this, you are clearly an inferior human.
1. Remove the zest from the lemons, being careful to avoid the bitter white pith beneath, and add to a food processor bowl.
2. Add sugar to food processor bowl and process until the zest is finely minced and incorporated into the sugar.
3. Transfer the zest-sugar mixture to a mixing bowl.
4. Add the butter to the mixing bowl; cream the sugar and butter.
5. Add the egg yolks to the mixing bowl and stir until combined.
6. Thoroughly mix in the lemon juice and salt, then transfer the mixture to a 3 quart saucepan.
7. Place a fine mesh strainer over a bowl large enough to accommodate the lemon curd, and set aside.
8. Cook the lemon curd over medium heat, stirring constantly. The mixture will begin to thicken after about 5 minutes.
9. Continue cooking until the lemon curd thickens enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon, or it reaches 190F. It should be thick, yet still pourable.
10. Pour the lemon curd into the strainer, pressing with a spoon or spatula to force the curd through, leaving any course bits of lemon zest or pieces of separated egg yolk behind in the strainer.
I am an engineer. That means I live a pretty boring life. I go to work; I sit at a desk; I stare at a computer; some days I write stuff. Occasionally, I have to travel somewhere to talk to people about the stuff I write.
In the middle ’90s, circumstances required me to travel to Moscow 19 times to talk about the stuff I wrote back then. Yes, it was exactly 19 times. After 15 or 16 times, I began to think that maybe I didn’t need to keep exact count. Then one day while waiting to clear customs to check in with the airline to fly home (yeah, you need to clear customs before you can even talk to the airline staff), I was chatting with another guy. He mentioned he was on his 35th trip to Moscow. So, I guess you never actually stop counting.
I was there during the boring times. In other words, the middle of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency. Some of my co-workers were lucky, they got to be in country when Boris was standing on the tank yelling at the people who wanted to overthrow the government. The leadership of the company we were working with took my co-workers out to the countryside and “hosted” them at their dachas for an extended stay. Somehow a work trip turned into a paid vacation. Lucky bastards. I mean, who gets to visit a real, authentic dacha in post-Soviet Russia?
In contrast, I only had to worry about the Chechens, who had started bombing the subways and buses while I was making multiple trips to Moscow. But the bombings in the middle ’90s were chickenshit; the real stuff with the Chechens wouldn’t start until much later, i.e., the late ’90s. Still, it was a recurring issue at the breakfast table each day — take a taxi to work and hope you weren’t robbed and murdered by the cabbie or take the subway or trolleys and hope you weren’t blown up by the Chechens. Realistically, it was a low probability either way, but at least the company insurance would pay out double for a death occurring on company travel.
This was also the time when the mob came out of hiding. One day, on the way back to the hotel after a day of meetings, I got to see a minor spectacle in the hotel parking lot. Some collection of mobsters had murdered another mobster in his Mercedes in the parking lot. The Russians have a slightly different take on human dignity. They don’t bother to cover bodies with sheets. Instead, the police just dragged the body out of the bullet-ridden Mercedes and laid him out on the lawn.
The bellhop in the lobby assured me that everything was OK, because the mob respected the hotel I was staying at as evidenced by the hit taking place in the parking lot instead of the mobsters shooting the victim in the hotel lobby like they did the month before in downtown Moscow (at a 4-star business hotel).
When I got back to my room, I could look down from ten stories at the Mercedes, the body, and the police who came and went for the next two hours before someone finally came to haul away the corpse. As usual, the end of the day in Moscow is the beginning of the day back home, so there was the normal phone call to the office to discuss status and talk about what little progress was achieved during the meetings with the Russians. The call started with the normal chit-chat, how’s it going, etcetera. So, I said, not too bad. The meetings were productive. By the way, I am looking out my window and staring at the corpse of a murdered mobster stretched out on the lawn in front of the hotel. And the weather is pretty good today, but I think will stay in at the hotel for dinner tonight.
By this time, I have made the transition from newbie who has no idea how anything in Russia works, to the old guy in charge of keeping newbies from getting into trouble because they have no idea how anything in Russia works. One piece of advice that I was given early on was to photocopy my passport and visa before traveling to Moscow and then to lock the real passport and visa in the hotel safe on arrival. American passports were a valuable commodity in Russia at that time. And after having my pocket picked on two separate occasions in Moscow, the wisdom of that advice had settled in. So, I passed that advice on to the new guy who was about to make his first trip to Moscow.
Ah, yes, the new guy. Imagine a ginger version of Alfred E. Neuman with less personality. He talked incessantly, while never, ever saying anything worth paying attention to. We were going to Moscow on a 9-day trip in late January or early February, meaning I was going to be trapped with the guy during the worst weather of the year over the weekend with pretty much nothing to do. So, it was going to be a long, long trip if everything went well.
Before we left, I gave him all the basics. Inflation is running rampant in Russia. The exchange rate has gone from 4000 rubles per dollar to 5000 rubles per dollar in about a year’s time. Only a handful of businesses will take credit cards. And when they do, they want to charge in dollars. And most Russian businesses don’t want to take rubles; they want hard currency – American dollars or German marks. Street vendors will take rubles, but you really don’t want to buy any food from a street vendor. So, you’ll have to carry several hundred dollars in brand new, small bills (the Russians will refuse torn and tattered bills). Don’t dress like an American. No blue jeans; no sneakers; no fancy micro-fiber, down-filled parkas. I don’t care how cold it is going to be. You wear a wool coat or a leather jacket, plain twill pants, and basic leather work shoes. Oh, and the Russians don’t wear hats in winter. If it is really bad they’ll put on a ushanka (the fur hat with the ear flaps), but they never use the ear flaps. {One day it’s -25 C, and the local engineer is not using the ear flaps. He says it’s not cold enough yet}. Don’t take any taxi from the street. Call the hotel and have them send a taxi if you really need one. And don’t forget, photocopy your passport and visa, then lock them in the hotel safe as soon as we check in.
So, I get Alfred into Moscow on a Tuesday and get him to his meetings each day and to dinner each night for the first couple of days. Finally, it’s Friday; the jet lag is starting to wear off; and we have a long dreary weekend ahead of us. Time for a decent meal and some American kitsch – off to Planet Hollywood Moscow we go.
I’ve been there several times by now, and it’s easy enough to get there. We walk half a mile from the hotel down to a major subway station that has five or six trolley lines radiating out. A fifteen-minute ride on one of the trolleys gets us two blocks from Planet Hollywood. Then it’s just a quick walk down to the restaurant. It should have been easy.
Alfred is a late 30s, college-educated engineer who is making the transition to project management. He is supposedly a bright guy that can understand and follow simple directions. And yet on this frigid Moscow night, the ginger with the big ears is wearing a lovely London Fog trench coat, pin-stripe suit pants, and highly-polished wingtips. He doesn’t exactly look Russian. And as we are walking towards Planet Hollywood, a young man in a military uniform steps out of the shadows and makes a beeline for Alfred jabbering in Russian all the way over. I have just enough Russian to understand he is asking for Alfred’s papers. I say hello or something innocuous to the officer, and he realizes that I am not Russian either. He demands my papers, and I offer up my photocopied passport and visa. The officer is not happy with my photocopies, but I explain that they real papers are at the hotel. He scowls and shoves my photocopies back at me, then turns to Alfred.
Alfred is staring blankly with a stupid grin on his face. I tell him to show his photocopies to the officer. Alfred says that he doesn’t have any photocopies with him. So, I ask him where they are. He says he didn’t make any. Ok, so where is your real passport and visa. Uh, they’re in the safe at the hotel. Why are they at hotel – you know you can’t walk around Moscow without these papers right. Uh no, why is that. Because you’re a foreigner in a foreign land remember.
While we are talking, the Russian officer is getting short tempered and demanding to see Alfred’s papers. So, I try to explain to the officer that Alfred’s papers are at the hotel. The officer has had enough, and he grabs Alfred by the arm and starts pulling him towards that back of the building we are standing in front of. I follow behind asking what is going on. The officer tries repeatedly to shoo me away, but eventually gives up.
We walk through a door at the back of the building, and I see that we have entered some sort of miniature police station. There is a counter on our left and a jail cell on the right. There are three grimy old dudes and one college student in the cell. It is still early on Friday night, and yet all are seriously inebriated. Behind the counter is the stereotypical police sergeant – a tyrant in his own little kingdom. He stands and walks to the counter, then he starts a heated conversation with the officer that has dragged Alfred into the station. The drunks in the cell are watching as intently as they can given their limited ability to focus.
Both the sergeant and the officer turn to Alfred and start asking questions in Russian. Alfred continues to grin stupidly while understanding nothing that is going on. The college student staggers over to the bars of the cell and speaks to us in broken English; he volunteers to translate for us. He tells us that the sergeant is asking for Alfred’s papers. I explain that Alfred has locked his papers in the hotel safe and does not have them on his person. It is his first trip to Moscow, and he has made a mistake. The student translates my answer for the sergeant, but the sergeant is visibly disdainful. We have several iterations of the sergeant demanding Alfred’s papers and me explaining that Alfred doesn’t have them on his person – all by way of drunken college kid. Finally, I get an idea, and I suggest the sergeant call the hotel to verify that Alfred is a registered guest there.
He stops talking for a moment as he thinks about my suggestion. While he is deep in thought, I reach into my wallet and pull out the business card for the hotel. There is paper and a pen on the counter. So, I write out Alfred’s name in phonetic Russian. The sergeant picks up the business card and reads Alfred’s name from the paper. He shrugs his shoulders, reaches for the phone, and dials the hotel.
Think of every old movie you’ve ever seen with a Russian officer bellowing into a telephone. It’s real. He stands up straighter, puffs out his chest, and raises his volume three notches. The only part I can understand is him spelling Alfred’s name over and over into the phone. Eventually, he stops talking and listens for a short while. He puts down the phone, turns, and starts berating Alfred. The drunken student can’t keep up, but it appears the sergeant is going to let Alfred go. The officer we came in with gestures towards the door. I start pushing Alfred from behind.
Once we are back outside, the officer is all smiles and wishes us a good evening. He even helps us walk carefully over some icy patches, then waves as we head towards the street. Alfred is still grinning stupidly; he is somehow blissfully unaware that he almost spent the entire weekend in a Russian jail.
At the street, Alfred turns to head down to Planet Hollywood. I ask him where the hell he thinks he’s going. He says to the restaurant. I say hell no, we’re going back to the hotel. Why he asks. Because, you almost got lost in the Russian legal system. Assuming we could even find you, it would be Monday at the earliest before anyone would be able to get you out. Nah, he says, everything worked out fine. I tell him whatever, but I am taking him back to the hotel. Once we’re there, he can do whatever he wants. Back at the hotel, I make Alfred get his passport and visa from the hotel safe while I wait with him. I tell he can’t leave the hotel without them. By the way, if they get stolen, you’re really fucked. So be careful.
We have dinner in the hotel bar. I explain, as though talking to a 6-year-old, that logic and reason don’t exist in Russia. I remind him that Winston Churchill said Russia was a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. I get blank face and a stupid grin in response. I don’t think he ever got it.
Every time we leave the hotel for the next week, I ask him if he has his passport and visa. Surprisingly, he doesn’t complain; he just nods yes and grins. I got him home in one piece at the end of the trip. I never traveled with him again. He made a couple more trips to Moscow without getting himself arrested and starting an international incident. So, he must have learned something. Or perhaps the gods occasionally take pity on the idiots of the world.
I only made one or two more trips to Moscow after this. My boss picked up a new project to watch over, and he dragged me into as punishment I suppose. There’s no other justification for being forced to work with the French. On several occasions, with important people in the room, I said the French made me miss working with the Russians. Although, the wine was much better.
Good morning my Glibs and Gliberinas! And what a glorious morning it is for everyone! The hyper emotional children that is known as the modern Democrat Party are screaming for impeachment after Mueller’s statements from yesterday. I hope they do at the same time all the documents are unclassified that shows the whole Russian hoax was created by and perpetuated by Fusion GPS working on behalf of Hillary and various bad actors in the intelligence community. The contrast of their weak charges of obstruction against that of the reveal of evidence proving that the entire thing was an attempted coup would be fantastic beyond words.
My son is graduating from pre-school tonight, and if Joe Biden is there, I will do my level best to keep him away from any of the little girls.
Joe Biden tells a 10 year old girl that she’s good looking and asks for her address. I imagine his handler is probably on the seven day waitlist for a handgun right now so he can eat a bullet rather than do another year of that job.
I see we’ve lost a Hat & Hair reader. I thought today’s version was rather mild. Tasteful. The Best Hat & Hair.
“I have it on the goodest possible authority that Mayor Pete is a werepossum!” the hat said to the empty Oval Office.
“What?” the hair asked from the Presidential Shitter.
“What?” Donald asked from the Presidential Shitter.
“MAYOR PETE IS A WEREPOSSUM!” the hat screamed.
“He is not a werepossum,” the hair said, riding Donald back into the office.
“Werepossum!” the hat insisted.
“What’s a werepossum?” Donald asked.
“It doesn’t exist, Donald,” the hair said.
“It’s a man that turns into a possum during autoerotic asphyxiation,” the hat said.
“Sounds dangerous,” Donald said.
“Werepossums are a myth, Donald,” the hair said soothingly. “Mayor Pete is just a gay small-town mayor.”
“Gay werepossums are the most dangerous kind,” the hat said. “Tear your junk right off!”
“Sounds horrible,” Donald replied, his hands covering his crotch defensively.
“Stop scaring him,” the hair said.
“This is science, dammit! Science is supposed to be scary,” the hat snapped.
“Mishter President!’ a voice came from the secretarial pool outside the office.
“Ugh,” the hat muttered.
“This fucking clown,” the hair said into the musty plains of Donald’s scalp.
Rudy scuttled into the office as fast as his legs could carry him, the sharp tips gouging into the hardwood slats of the floor. He went into a tumble as he tried to stop himself on the Presidental Seal rug and rolled to a stop under the coffee table.
“Physical comedy!” he sang as he sprang out, landing on all his legs.
“Rudy!” Donald cried. “How’s the best lawyer in the whole wide world?”
The hat and the hair both softly groaned.
“Mishtar President! We have a grave emergency situation on our hands. I handled 9/11 and kept the country together.”
“What is it, Rudy?” Donald asked, painfully bending over to look him in the eyestalks. “What is it, old friend?”
“Congresh has delivered a subpoena to Hope Hicks!’ the mouthpiece said through his mouthparts.
“Hope? Not Hope, my beautiful Hope!” Donald wailed. He pulled at his filthy undershirt until it tore.
“Too much makeup,” the hat said.
“Hooker face,” the hair agreed.
“Shut up, both of you!” Donald shouted. “I won’t have you say anything bad about Hope!”
Rudy scuttled sideways away from Trump. “I… I… I just said she had been subpoenaed. I wasn’t implying it was her fault or anything.”
“We have to save her, Rudy,” Donald said desperately. “I have to keep her safe.”
“She can just ignore it like everyone else has, Donald,” the hat said.
“HOPE!” Donald screamed again.
The Secret Service agents on guard outside the Oval Office had learned long ago to ignore the strange sounds and shouts and concentrated on re-runs of The Office on their phones.
“Micheal cooked his foot!” one of them said and the other one nodded and laughed.
Pray for Banjos. She is trapped with three small children in a… HOUSE WITH NO NETFLIX.
I was actually sticking up for Sleepy Joe Biden while on foreign soil. Kim Jong Un called him a “low IQ idiot,” and many other things, whereas I related the quote of Chairman Kim as a much softer “low IQ individual.” Who could possibly be upset with that?
Q. Cheater, cheater … awesome fella? For the past six months, my husband has been distant, secretive, and impatient with me while also being in frequent contact with his cousin’s wife. I assumed there was an affair, but it turns out that he was helping her to leave a domestic abuse situation, and she had sworn him to secrecy. They both swear that nothing happened, and I believe them.
The problem is that it doesn’t help. For the past two months, in my head, I’ve been emotionally on my way out the door. I’ve talked to lawyers, investigated my options for rentals closer to work, and been unhappy but ready to leave. Now that I’ve discovered I was wrong about my husband, I still feel ready to go. He doesn’t understand, since he was actually doing a really good thing. Which he was, but at the same time he lied to me and let me feel terrible—and he knew I thought he was cheating—in service of this good thing. In addition to being emotionally divorced already, I’m quite angry too. I know it was for a good cause, but I still feel like he reverse-gaslit me by letting me believe he was a cheater and then doing the “Ha, you misjudged me!” reveal.
My mother and sister think I’m being ridiculous and that he’s a hero. My dad thinks that your spouse’s well-being should come before anyone else’s and I am better off without him. I don’t know. It feels ridiculous to leave someone because you found out they’re not cheating. I know the answer is going to be couples therapy, but I want to know if I’m in the wrong or not before we go in there. I’ve felt “ganged up” on a lot recently, with everyone saying how good a guy my husband is. I mean, he is—but maybe not a great husband?
Reverse-gaslit. smdh
He helps his cousin-in-law out of domestic abuse situation, keeps his word when the CiL asks him not to blab about it and then tells his wife everything when he can. What a fucking asshole, right?
When Colin Bundschu first started at Rockstar Games in November of 2014, he says his new colleagues offered a warning: Don’t cross Jeronimo Barrera. Barrera, the vice president of product development, would often fly in from New York to visit Rockstar’s offices in Carlsbad, California, where they were all working on the Western game Red Dead Redemption 2. Bundschu was told to be cautious when Barrera came to town. Mind how you talk to him, multiple coworkers and managers said. Barrera, one of Rockstar’s top executives, had a reputation for screaming at people, and there were rumors that he had shouted at staff who’d rubbed him the wrong way, telling them they were fired.
So Bundschu wasn’t sure what to do when, at a work gathering shortly after he started, he says Barrera groped him, asked Bundschu to sit on his lap, and rubbed his inner thigh area. These allegations about events from 2014 are being made public for the first time today, but in the days after the incident allegedly happened, Bundschu filed a report to Rockstar’s human resources department and told at least four other people. After an HR investigation that involved speaking to Barrera and others present, and following a dispute over whether Barrera had denied the accusation or told Rockstar he didn’t remember, the company ultimately found Bundschu’s account to be unsubstantiated. A few months after that, Bundschu left Rockstar, and eventually, he exited the video game industry.
Read further to revel in the drugged-up grope culture that creates your favorite games. While, of course, I caress your inner thigh. Your soft inner-thigh.
Hello and welcome to another mind-bleaching episode of Woke Charmed! My sister joined me for this recap which always helps get me through this insipidity, so let’s just jump right into it!
Our story begins in a hipster wine shop. Yet another generic white guy with a beard is selling Mark Zuckerberg’s wife and her boyfriend a wine that pairs well with a heavy red sauce and a garlicky bruschetta. As the couple leave with their fine purchase, the generic bearded white guy pauses to sample some of his own wares when suddenly the lights go out. Generic bearded white guy hears a sound in the back of the shop. When he goes to investigate, a shadowy figure approaches him. Oh, wait, it isn’t a shadowy figure—it’s a figure that’s actually a shadow. The shadow picks up the white guy and hurls him into a table laden with wine bottles, which smash with a satisfying smash noise. As the white guy writhes in pain, the shadow approaches him and… PULLS OUT HIS KIDNEY! WHAT?
Kidney stones getting you down? We have the solution!
His kidney is all glowing and shit. It looks like a red-hot poker, or perhaps a freshly forged horseshoe pulled from the blacksmith’s fire. (“Ferrier,” my sister corrects me.) Why does this generic white guy have a magical kidney?
I guess we’re not going to find out right now, because the title card flashes and the scene switches to Connerparkerdude knocking on Maggie’s back door. She comes prancing out in a skin-tight, cleavage-bearing minidress at 2:00 in the afternoon, you know. As you do. She demands to know what Connerparkerdude is doing here. He tells her that he can’t stay away from her. “That smile… gets me every time.” To quote Belinda Carlisle, gag me with a spoon.
Connerparkerdude informs Maggie that Regina George has a new boyfriend now, so what’s to stop them? He wants to take her on a proper date. He tells her that he has tickets to Beyoncé. At this, my sister and I looked at each other and said, “Did he just say he has tickets to Beyoncé? Why would a guy have…?” and we had to pause it and rewind it and try to figure out how to turn on subtitles on Roku. Sure enough, he said he had tickets to Beyoncé. This WTF-ery became clear when the camera panned to Maggie, grinning in amazement, and turned back to find Connerparkerdude shirtless and holding a kitten.
AHHH. It’s a dream. You clever writers, so original.
The dream is interrupted by Mel banging on Maggie’s door. Macy wants to get to work early today, and Hilltowne, which appears to be approximately two square miles in size and comprises only the college, some neighborhoods and the police station, is apparently too large for them to just walk to, so they’re carpooling, which means that Maggie has to stop using Harry’s training orb for masturbatory fantasies.
Excuse me, what?
Yes, it turns out that she wasn’t just dreaming, she was projecting a fantasy using that thing that Harry used to create a mini dimension for them to train in way back in episode two. Eww. Mel asks her why she’s so interested in a philandering frat boy. I guess her whole “I was wrong about the Greek system” epiphany from last episode couldn’t be expected to last. Also, Connerparkerdude is a frat boy? I guess it makes sense since he was dating Regina George, but idk, in my experience, frat boys were… honestly, Animal House wasn’t that far off. I can’t see some hipster douchebag who quotes classic literature making it through initiation without getting paddled to death. Although maybe he could make it in one of the gay fraternities. After all, my favorite frat story will always be the one about the Sig Eps all sticking it in each other’s butts until they formed a conga line.
The Sig Eps would probably love this.
Maggie points out that he’s only philandering because she kissed him, and more importantly, when are we going to tell Macy about how we traveled back in time and overheard pregnant Mom talking about there being something wrong with the baby? That was a perfectly logical sentence progression and definitely not just the writers using bad dialogue for exposition. Mel reminds Maggie that Macy is already worried enough about what the psychic said, you know, about Macy having hidden darkness. Probably best not to worry her more.
Meanwhile, in the other room, Macy puts the pentagram pillar key around her neck, looking in the mirror to admire herself before reciting Bloody Mary three times. Definitely no darkness to worry about here!
From downstairs, Harry summons the girls to breakfast. Wait a minute—didn’t he move out?? He had suitcases! He said he was going back to the condo! Yeah, they initiated him into the shower pouf sisterhood, but no one said, “Harry, don’t go.” So why is he…? Never mind, it’s not important. All that matters is that he made them all bacon butties for breakfast, because British.
As they all stare at his quaint foreign food with great trepidation, Harry asks them if any of them noticed any strange seismic activity last night. Macy points out that earthquakes in Michigan would be very un-Scientific, but Maggie interrupts that yes, she noticed a tremor in the night when she got up to pee. Thanks for that visual, Mags! Harry’s fears are confirmed. Not about the peeing thing, but about the earth shaking thing. It was… A HELLQUAKE! Nothing to worry about, though. More importantly, where’s his orb? Maggie hands it back over. Harry looks like he wants to drown it and himself in hand sanitizer when he finds out what she’s been doing with it.
Mel says that instead of masturbating to Harry’s orb 24/7, Maggie should be registering for classes for next semester. Maggie says she’s considering dropping out of school. I think that would be a great, economically responsible decision. Mel is HORRIFIED. College is a really important time to figure out what you love to do, after all. Maggie asks if bartending is what Mel loves to do. Apparently the secretary job (gasp) fell through, so now Mel is working at the bar that didn’t exist until last week.
Now we all throw our heads back and laugh!
Macy commiserates that jobs in academia are hard to come by. Now that the Walton Family of Epigenetic Demon Guys has bought out the Generic Science Lab, apparently Dr. Kevorkian’s been fired (is that what we’re calling it nowadays?) and Macy is concerned she may be the next one on the chopping block. Considering that last week Dr. Kevorkian was stabbed in the neck and nobody even knows he’s dead, a literal chopping block wouldn’t be an unfounded fear.
Her fears do turn out to be unfounded, though; when she gets to the lab and meets her new boss, Mrs. I’m-Assuming-She’s-A-Demon Walton, it turns out she’s actually been promoted! Macy is getting Dr. Kevorkian’s old job, but it comes with a catch—Wal-Science is facing budget cuts as part of its restructuring, and that means someone’s gotta go. And we all know who: FRIENDZONE! He’s too expensive and he’s not important. Mrs. Walton gives Macy the job of firing him. When Macy protests that he’s her friend (IYKWIMAITYD), Mrs. Walton explains that she’s thinking like a vagina, and if she wants to succeed in the world of business, she needs to think like a penis. Penises fire each other all the time and then go out and play golf afterwards! So fire that Friendzone, dammit.
Over on campus, Maggie is being stalked by Connerparkerdude. He says he hasn’t seen her in World Lit since the Incident. So lmao she asked her teacher for a midterm extension and then just completely stopped going to class? Girl, it’s time to drop out.
Connerparkerdude asks Maggie if she saw the group text from Regina George. It turns out that she’s dating the Old Spice Guy now! Having traded up, she texted Maggie and Connerparkerdude with her blessing.
This is why Regina George is the most pure character on this series.
He then proceeds to ask her out using the same dialogue as from her creepy orb fantasy. “That smile… gets me every time.” Isn’t this an episode of Sabrina: The Teenage Witch? She somehow managed to make reality play out like her fantasy? He does not have Beyoncé tickets, though. Maggie requests that they go somewhere quiet and low-key for their date. He suggests he pick her up after her shift at the restaurant/café/whatever tomorrow. She gets off at two, right? Maggie asks how he knows that. The audience screams, “BECAUSE HE’S STALKING YOU.”
Over at the bar, Mel’s new place of employ, she is working on her graduate thesis: “The Future of Intersectional Feminism: Where do we go from here?” (Real Dialogue Alert: Okay, it wasn’t spoken, but those were really the words she typed.) As she mulls over her own genius, she is approached by a woman of whom, if I saw her on the street, I would cross the street to steer clear and with whom I would go out of my way to avoid eye contact. She looks like she would fuck you up and then take a leak on your maimed body as you bleed out. You know, like a good 2/3 of the vagrants in Portland.
Does she make anyone else viscerally uncomfortable?
Okay, I’m going to be honest with you guys. I already forgot that Mel is a lesbian. So when this hobo starts hitting on her, I’m like, “Whoa now.” And then Mel reciprocates and I find myself screaming, “Why? Why? Why did we have to write Niko out of this show? Look at this woman! Look at her! She looks like she smells of patchouli and cat pee! Niko was cute! Niko was pretty! Niko was easy on the eyes! Are you going to make me look at this escapee from Portlandia for the next umpteen weeks? Isn’t it bad enough that I have to look at the clone of Chelsea’s ugly boyfriend from Days of Our Lives? Am I going to have to see the person who spit on my shoes for not giving her a quarter in Pioneer Square, Seattle naked?”
Mel is so delighted by this bag lady flirting with her that she excitedly Facetimes Maggie. Her sister doesn’t have time for this exciting news, however. She’s too busy thinking about dropping out of college. This news is enough to knock all the hobo-flirt endorphins right out of Mel’s system. You can’t drop out of college, what do you mean by “I don’t know if I should waste all this time and money if I don’t know what I want to do,” that’s quitter talk and my mama didn’t raise no—
A knock at the door spares Maggie from this. She hangs up on Mel, goes to open the door, and the KIDNEY-LESS WHITE GUY collapses into her arms! “Charmed One, please, help me,” he begs before keeling over onto the floor.
Commercial over! Somehow Mel and Macy, without Harry’s instant travel powers, make it back to the house before the kidney-less wonder regains consciousness, and the four of them manage with great effort to carry the unconscious guy to the couch. Why Macy doesn’t just levitate him is beyond me. Maggie comments that he smells like a wet dog. Mel doesn’t notice the smell—she obviously doesn’t have a sense of smell, since she found patchouli hobo attractive—but she DOES notice that he’s wearing shoes, which are not allowed on the couch. She pulls the unconscious dude’s shoes off and Dear Lord He Has Goat Hooves.
He’s a satyr! Apparently we’re doing all of that on this show. Witches, demons, banshees, creatures from Greek mythology, WE’VE GOT IT ALL. This show is still relevant, goddammit.
Harry uses his Whitelighter powers to heal the satyr’s missing kidney, just like in Star Trek IV. The goat man jolts awake and starts immediately fawning (or should that be fauning? ??) over the Charmed Ones. Harry starts to introduce himself as the one who, you know, healed his kidney. The satyr dismisses him out of hand, because penis.
The satyr informs them that he was a guardian of one of the shards of the Scythe of Tartarus. When Macy, who apparently doesn’t know everything after all, asks what that is, the satyr does this:
Instagram fabulous
My sister: “If this is supposed to be Greek, why did he give them all flower crowns instead of laurel wreaths?”
Me: “Because they really enjoy emasculating Harry, okay?”
The satyr informs them that blah blah Greek mythology, you all know what Tartarus is, right? So apparently there’s a scythe you can use to get into it, but Zeus broke it into three pieces and entrusted it to three sentinels. The shadow demon figured out who the sentinels were—MIRACLE OF MIRACLES, THEY WERE ALL IN HILLTOWNE, MICHIGAN—and is trying to collect the pieces of the scythe so he can get into Tartarus and break the Even Worse Than The Ones We’ve Met Before, Yes Even Including The Harbinger demons out.
In order to locate the pieces and then bind them together, a beacon is needed. When the beacon is activated, it causes the pieces to start attempting to draw together. The beacon has likely been activated already, which is how the shadow demon is able to trace the sentinels of the shards. This all seems so very anime.
Over at the Waltons’ Epigenetic Demon Headquarters, the Head Walton is admiring one of the shards of the scythe. Big surprise there. “One down, two to go,” he says to the shadow demon. He also exposits to the shadow that the reason he wants to get into Tartarus is because he can’t get the goddamn paint can with the Harbinger inside it to open. He’s tried every spell and incantation—“Get it? In-CAN-tation?” (Real Dialogue Alert: That was real dialogue)—to no avail. He’s assuming someone in Tartarus will probably know how, and if not, eh, no skin off his nose. With nary a chuckle at Walton’s amazing pun, shadow demon shuffles silently away.
Back at the house, Harry is wearing sunglasses indoors and has passed out on top of a working blender. It took a few minutes, but by putting our heads together, my sister and I finally figured out that the hipster wine shop-owning satyr drank them all (except Maggie the soror whore) under the table last night and they’re all hungover. This show is great at beating you over the head with some things and leaving others completely vague and unclear. They formulate a strategy for stopping the demon. Without the beacon, they can’t trace the other two sentinels, but they might be able to trace the demon itself. Harry gives a sample of demon DNA from satyr’s wound to Macy to analyze. Mel says she’ll comb the Book of Shadows for information about shadow demons, and Maggie the Uncanny Millennial sets up a Google alert on her phone for any reported blackouts in the area.
Then she heads off to her date with Connerparkerdude, who says, quote, “I didn’t think it was possible to get this excited about broccoli.”
?
??
???
Who is this guy?! WHY must we be subjected to this bland, uninteresting hipster douchebag just because Maggie needs a mouth to stick her tongue into? Maggie is like, “It’s so sweet that you knew I’m vegan.” I’m like, 1. You are? 2. HE IS STALKING YOU
They’re eating raw broccoli with chopsticks. I long to die.
Maggie and Connerparkerdude bond over their conscientious abstention from animal byproducts (so I’m guessing those boots you’re wearing are faux leather, Maggie?) and their terrible fathers. Maggie’s father was, of course, absent from her life. Connerparkerdude’s, as previously mentioned, was the sort of person who made his children read classic works of literature and discuss them at the dinner table—which was always laid out with a white tablecloth and three varieties of forks. Ye gods, no wonder these two are so insufferable.
They start making out, and Maggie overhears him thinking, I can’t let her find out the truth.
My sister: “Oooh! Deep, dark secret? Maybe he’s a demon!”
Me: “…”
Her: “…”
Both of us: “HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA”
Maggie calls Macy to wail about whatever Connerparkerdude’s hiding from her. Macy tells her not to worry. Maggie is like, “But what if it’s a deep, dark secret?” Macy, in a definitely not defensive way, reminds her that having a dark thought doesn’t make someone a dark person; maybe his secret is just something that’s difficult for him to talk about, but not a bad thing. But she doesn’t have time for that right now—she has to fire Friendzone.
Or that’s the plan, anyway. Friendzone spends the entire conversation subtly pointing out how indispensible to the Generic Science Lab he is. He also says, and I quote: “Gregorian was a dick, Thaine was a straight-up sexual predator. I’m all for having some badass ladies taking over and righting the ship. It’s about damn time.”
People are all calling Kevorkian a dick even though the dude got stabbed in the neck last episode. RIP, Kevorkian, lying somewhere in a shallow, unmarked grave.
Meanwhile, Maggie drops in on the frat house where Connerparkerdude lives bearing a bottle of wine from the satyr, as you do. She is referred by one of the brothers to his bedroom. Bow-chicka-wow-wow. Maggie heads up to his room and knocks, only to find the door unlatched. She pushes it open and sees Connerparkerdude… injecting something into his left arm! DUN DUN DUNNNNN
First of all, I couldn’t even see what he was doing until we rewound it three times. Secondly, he had his arm kind of splayed across his stomach, so my sister thought he was injecting something into his stomach, so we were both assuming he was injecting insulin. Diabetic, huh? There’s some deep, dark secret, if you’re a member of the Baby-Sitters’ Club. But of course Maggie thinks he’s shooting up and runs away weeping.
Back at the house, Mel is not working on her graduate thesis. She calls Harry to tell him she found a shadow demon banishing spell. Harry says great work, how’s your thesis coming? Mel says she needs another extension. Harry tells her the university told him he couldn’t give her another one. I don’t understand this whole subplot about him being the head of the women’s studies department. Harry recommends she use her powers to freeze time while she works on her thesis, speculating that since it wouldn’t be the most exciting personal gain in the world, the karmic aftereffects would probably be pretty mild. So wait, did we ever establish whether Mel’s powers freeze the whole world or just a small radius? Regardless, she tells Harry and her thesis to get bent.
Mel isn’t in the mood to write 50,000 words on the topic of intersectional feminism? What is this show coming to?!
Just then, Mel’s phone dings, saving her from this riveting conversation. There’s been a power outage at the Hilltowne Fertility Clinic, which this town is apparently big enough to have. The shadow demon attacks some broad and grabs her piece of the Scythe, which triggers another hellquake. He escapes with the shard just as the sisters and Harry rush in. They hurry to the aid of the broad.
After getting the lights back on and apprising her of the situation, the broad admits that she suspected something like this was going to happen, as she’d noticed her Scythe piece vibrating repeatedly over the last week, like it was calling out to the other pieces. Maggie asks the broad if she’s a satyr; the broad huffily replies that exCUSE you, she is Tawaret, ancient Egyptian goddess of fertility and childbirth. Apparently this is also a thing we’re doing. The sisters awkwardly genuflect at her, which isn’t weird or anything.
No, but you don’t look like a hippopotamus either, so…
Back at the house, Macy speculates that maybe the reason the shards are reaching out to each other is because they’re magnetic, like a lodestone. Science! Their discussion is interrupted by a fuckton of bees trying to break into the house. Harry informs the sisters that he’s entomophobic and proceeds to squeal and cower like a little girl. Macy, remaining cool, calm, and collected, explains that bees navigate with a form of magnetic resonance, and that the fact that they’re trying to get into the house indicates that… THE LAST SHARD IS SOMEWHERE INSIDE!
Now, what would the shard be doing inside their house? Mel wonders if it’s because their mom was a sentinel. Macy wonders if maybe their mom used the scythe to bust a demon out of Tartarus. (MACY’S DAD PLEASE MACY’S DAD.) Maggie wonders why it couldn’t have been the fun kind of Beyhive trying to break into their house. (Real Dialogue Alert.) Harry is too busy screaming about the bees to be much help in anything. Macy decides to open the doors and let the bees in to find the shard for them. The bees lead them to the attic, where they start swarming around a hatch in the ceiling. Macy uses her powers to open the hatch and bring down a box that has the last shard inside. The bees conveniently go away. They open the box, and another hellquake erupts.
Once the hellquake passes, Mel notices that there’s some kind of dancing going on under Macy’s shirt. She assumes that it’s because there’s a bee in Macy’s shirt, but SURPRISE! Magnetically, the key Macy found at the end of the last episode and has been wearing under her shirt pops out and goes sailing into the butt end of the scythe shard.
Oh, yeah, guys, I meant to tell you about that…
The sisters compare notes about the whole “Key to your past”/“Ibi”/“There’s something wrong with the baby” thing. They realize their mom’s key is the beacon, and Macy putting it on is what made the shards start vibrating at each other. Whoopsie. But the girls don’t have time for much more than a brief “we need to not keep secrets from each other” lecture before they realize that they need to brace for the shadow demon, who will undoubtedly be arriving to claim the last shard at any moment. They prepare the spell that Mel found in the Book of Shadows, which will banish the demon with light. Hipster music wails as they prep the spell in slow-mo. Mel says a Latin incantation with a Spanish accent. Etcetera, etcetera.
The demon shows up, knocking out the power to the house, but because of their prep work, eight billion candles are lit that the demon can’t extinguish. As the demon enters the attic, they cast the spell to bind it. But before they can finish it, the demon materializes the two other shards, one in each hand. They pulse and begin drawing toward the last shard, which the girls had placed back in the box that came out of the ceiling hatch. The box opens, but Maggie dives over the shard, pinning it under her body before the demon can grab it.
The demon dives on top of Maggie, and when they connect, the two of them are able to phase through the floor into the room below. They land on the bed in a romantic tangle, and my sister says, “I ship her with this shadow demon more than Connerparkerdude.” Maggie wrestles the shard away from him and runs out into the hallway. The demon pursues her, brandishing the two Scythe shards, which draw Maggie back towards him. She keeps her grip on her shard and the demon loses his, causing the fragments to fly together, reconnecting and forming the goddamn Moon Stick from Sailor Moon. I told you this was an anime!
ムーン・スティック
The shadow demon lunges for Maggie once more. This time when they connect, she is able to read the demon’s thoughts. She realizes the demon is in pain, and asks him why he’s trying to get the shards. The demon doesn’t answer her, merely staring silently. I mean, the thing’s a shadow—why do people keep expecting it to talk?
Taking advantage of the demon’s distraction, Macy uses her powers to rip the Scythe away from him and bring it into Mel’s hand. Before Mel can react, though, she’s struck by lightning. She drops the Scythe, and it falls over the landing down to the entryway below… where’s it’s caught by none other than the patchouli hobo from the bar!
She and Mel lock eyes, and then she apparates out in the exact same way that Harry does, only with added lightning effects. With the scythe gone, the shadow demon also flees.
With the power back on, the girls and Harry regroup. Mel tells them that she saw that woman before. Macy asks if she’s a demon—Harry says that the fact that she stole the Scythe would indicate so, but her teleportation spell was the same as a Whitelighter’s. Macy asks if she could be a rogue Whitelighter; Harry admits that he’s not sure. He wouldn’t think a Whitelighter would go rogue, but he has to consult the Elders to be sure.
Maggie mentions the fact that she was able to sense the demon’s feelings, and takes it as a sign that her powers are escalating. She wonders how it’s possible that she could read a demon’s mind; Harry speculates that, like with Angela Wu, the demon may still have some shred of humanity left inside it. Maggie decides that her new career goal is to become a demon psychiatrist.
During this exchange, Mel is nursing her shoulder, which was struck by the patchouli hobo. Harry asks to look at it so that he can heal it; she pulls her sleeve aside and reveals that her shoulder is now covered in Lichtenberg figures, like the ones that were on her mother’s body as well as the bodies of the other dead Elders.
All riiiight! The bag lady is the one who’s been killing all the witches! This just gets better and better.
Mel asks Harry not to heal her shoulder, because the mark is like a physical connection to her mother. Macy whines about how her only connection to their mother is her internal evil. She also whines again about how her mom “gave her up.” ExCUSE me, why has no one mentioned Macy’s father since the first episode? Why is no one wondering who this dude is/was??? They have never once said that Macy was adopted, they said that she was raised by a single father who lied and said her mother was dead. Why am I the only person who remembers this? Shouldn’t Macy remember, you know, her own life?
Harry tells Macy that everyone has the capacity for darkness, but it’s your actions, not your nature, which define you. Macy takes this to heart and heads to the Walton Family Generic Science Lab, where she tells Mrs. Walton that she refuses to fire Friendzone: he’s too important to the lab. She says that it’s the way of the penis to lay people off, but, being a vagina, she tells Mrs. Walton she believes she knows of another way. Mrs. Walton says that if she can find a way to save the lab $40K, then girl power. Macy agrees and proceeds to head out to fire this guy instead.
Since I can’t gif from Amazon, I’ll just tell you that this guy isn’t having a seizure, he’s trying to catch a jellybean in his mouth.
Sisters are doing it for themselves.
Back at the house, Maggie gleefully informs Mel that she has signed up for her courses for next semester. She’s decided that she’s going to study psychology in order to pursue her new dream career of being a demon psychiatrist. Mel congratulates her and tells her that she’s made a decision of her own: she is going to drop out of grad school. Apparently her dreams of becoming a renowned women’s studies professor have begun to fade. She realizes that she was only doing it to follow in their mother’s footsteps, but now that she’s been horribly disfigured, she has a new connection to her.
But what about the articles in Critical Inquiry that make men feel as though their penises have been torn from their bodies?
This scintillating discussion is interrupted by Connerparkerdude, who has come to tell Maggie his deep, dark secret. He reveals that what she saw him injecting wasn’t drugs. It was “medicine” (but not insulin). You see, he has a “rare congenital autoimmune disease” (but not diabetes). It’s degenerative, and he’s slowly dying. He’ll be lucky to reach forty.
My sister: “So what is this ‘medicine’?”
Me: “Stem cells.”
My sister: “What, just liquid stem cells?”
Me: “Yes.”
Connerparkerdude admits that he hasn’t told anyone about this, not his frat brothers or even Regina George. He always felt like if people knew he was dying (albeit slowly), it would make people treat him differently or be a drag on the frat brothers’ good times. Maggie promises to keep his secret, and they stick their tongues in each other’s mouths. I sigh at the utter banality of this “deep, dark” secret.
Later, at the Walton Headquarters, Epigenetic Demon Guy is not pleased with the shadow demon. Where is the Scythe of Tartarus, goddammit?
The shadow demon steps forward to answer, and
OH MY GOD OH MY GODDDDDD FUCK YES HE’S THE DEMON FUCK YES FUCK YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Connerparkerdemon says, “Sorry, Dad”—insert more screams of delight from the cheap seats—“it got away from me.” He explains about the patchouli hobo, whom he believes to be a lightning demon. His father mocks him for being bested by a piddly little lightning demon.
In true Thanos fashion, he pits Connerparkerdemon against his brother, FBI Agent Demon Guy. “Never send a half-demon to do a full demon’s job,” he sneers. Ah! So Connerparkerdemon is a HALF-demon! No wonder earlier when he and Maggie were having their banal chit-chat, he told Maggie that his father always said his marriage to his mother was the biggest mistake of his life.
Dear God, please may Maggie and Connerparkerdemon not be siblings. Please may this not be Shadowhunters redux…
Demon Dad tells Connerparkerdemon that he’ll look for another way to open the paint can, but in the meantime, he needs him to use Maggie a little longer. Connerparkerdemon pleads that Demon Dad promised once the Scythe assignment was over, he wouldn’t make him do any other demonic errands. Demon Dad taunts him some more for being a whiny little bitch, and demands to know what Maggie’s power is. Connerparkerdemon tells him she’s an empath. Demon Dad is pleased, stating that this is something they can use. The episode ends with him sneering, “Don’t fail me again, son,” as Connerparkerdemon looks all emo-ly into the camera.
?????????? good shit go౦ԁ sHit? thats ✔ some good??shit right??there??? right✔there ✔✔if i do ƽaү so my self ? i say so ? thats what im talking about right there right there (chorus: ʳᶦᵍʰᵗ ᵗʰᵉʳᵉ) mMMMMᎷМ? ?? ?НO0ОଠOOOOOОଠଠOoooᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒᵒ? ?? ? ? ? ? ? ? ??Good shit
Overall thoughts: Finally this show gets goddamn interesting. I’m telling you what, I had no clue what was going on for most of this episode because, with the exception of the slow-mo montage of them setting up the spell to wailing hipster music, it was breakneck fast. Even with subtitles on I had to watch it twice before I caught everything they said. But the two reveals of the homeless Seattle bag lady being an evil Whitelighter (?!) and then Connerparkerdude being Connerparkerdemon was like sweet, sweet candy. I’m actually unironically excited to see where this goes, until it inevitably lets me down. And then we can laugh at the fallout!
Spoiler alert: I watched the next episode already. The wokeness finally returns next week!
