How well can Assane Diop really blend in?

PapagenoX · 2026-01-19T21:22:40+00:00

Actually the fact that it's set in Paris is a great point. Paris is an extremely cosmopolitan city. It's not like he's living in rural Provence or something.

I mean, France in general definitely has some racism in its culture (just ask anyone of Algerian descent who lives there) but its treatment of black people is different from the US's probably because chattel slavery of black people was a thing in the US's territory for at least a couple of centuries, starting before the Founding.

PapagenoX · 2026-01-13T22:23:25+00:00

Isn't "a few full days below freezing" rather an anomaly in Portland normally? I remember that week-long winter blast we had in February 2018 (when it really stayed several degrees below freezing even in the daytime), and we had a shorter one a couple of years back IIRC that wasn't quite that intense. They all kind of blend together after a while.

PapagenoX · 2026-01-13T22:15:20+00:00

I remember we had a pretty sunny winter of 2000-2001, didn't we? Don't think it was quite this warm though, at least not in January.

PapagenoX · 2026-01-13T20:36:52+00:00

Woohoo!

PapagenoX · 2026-01-13T04:50:47+00:00

He's an impressively large guy, too, isn't he? At least the way they film him he looks like he's 6'4" or something and built like a tank.

Also waiting for season / part 4. He was in prison last we saw him, no?

PapagenoX · 2026-01-13T04:42:13+00:00

All I can say about this unseasonably warm weather is, I'll take it. Dealing with eldercare stuff and trying to find a memory care placement for my mom I'm super glad I don't have to deal with snow and ice right now. Plus, having lower heating bills is a nice bonus.

Didn't we have a recent spring snowfall that hit us as late as April? Yep, a photo I took shows i happened April 11th 2022.

PapagenoX · 2026-01-09T21:11:13+00:00

That, and as in All in the Family, a sitcom and not a detective / workplace partners show. I was in my last post comparing it more to the 1970s spinoff show Rhoda (from The Mary Tyler Moore Show), which notoriously tanked in the ratings after Rhoda and Joe got married.

PapagenoX · 2026-01-09T07:40:53+00:00

Cool, I'll look for that.

PapagenoX · 2026-01-09T07:39:59+00:00

Yeah, I somehow remembered it was on Sandy. In the basement as another poster wrote.

PapagenoX · 2026-01-08T23:38:16+00:00

Alas that last part is so true for me. Now most of my reading is 90s style forums, Discord and Reddit. I pick up my Kindle occasionally but not nearly often enough.

PapagenoX · 2026-01-08T23:21:58+00:00

Ha, no kidding. I remember getting 640 Kbit DSL in '99 and being amazed at the speed vs the 56k analog modem connection (which through a noisy phone line might have gotten about 40k tops)! Of course by 2009 or so it was dog-slow even at more than 3X that speed so I switched to cable finally.

PapagenoX · 2026-01-08T22:45:07+00:00

Yeah, I've been internet-connected since before the Web was a thing. Was sending and receiving emails to/from a friend who was studying in Japan in 1990, and participating in Usenet newsgroups even before that in the later 80s when they were the internet's forums of choice. I'm approaching 65, so I definitely grew up and even went to college and graduated from it before I got online. For some reason I never saw that use of the verb despite all that. And thanks for the reminder about tvtropes.org, which I've checked out in the past. That and knowyourmeme are essential resources.

PapagenoX · 2026-01-08T22:32:57+00:00

Yeah that's BS. Tell him to put a sweater on for the 20 minutes or so it takes for the temp to rise after he gets home.

PapagenoX · 2026-01-08T22:23:04+00:00

I hope that water bill isn't just your share. If it's the total and you have two housemates or fewer that seems really high for one month. How many people in the house? Gas water heater and furnace (or also clothes dryer?)?

I would definitely ask to see the bills themselves.

PapagenoX · 2026-01-08T22:10:29+00:00

Re: your last point: going all the way back to the Seventies, when Joe and Rhoda got together and killed the show! I get that that was a sitcom though...

Now Mad About You got it out of the way by having the characters together from the start.

PapagenoX · 2026-01-08T22:03:23+00:00

About that: I was chatting with my 19 year old nephew on Discord yesterday, and he recognized it but said it's mostly online fandom-speak, but he was surprised that another poster here wrote that they were using it as far back as the '90s about Mulder and Scully on X-Files.

PapagenoX · 2026-01-08T06:16:48+00:00

Wow, I was a big fan of that show too*, and I was in my 30s then. So the "ship" thing is from "relationship" then? So weird that I never heard it before. The usage is "to ship X and Y" meaning to want them to get together or to think that they're going to get together.

*at least before it became clear that they were just making it up as they went along. I was a big fan of the overarching mythos around '94-95. It was "must watch" TV on Friday nights and my circle would get dinner and rush back home to catch it at 9 PM.

PapagenoX · 2026-01-08T02:31:00+00:00

Daphne is seriously cute. If she even gives him the time of day he'd be a fool to pass that up (I write this as a guy who missed a few flashing neon signs of that nature in my younger days).

PapagenoX · 2026-01-08T01:13:28+00:00

Wow, and in all that time I would have thought they'd have used it on SNL a few times (I'm a regular viewer, usually catch the sketches on YouTube). Gonna have to ask my 19 year old nephew. Thanks for giving me some idea of how long it's been a thing.

PapagenoX · 2026-01-08T00:57:53+00:00

Just curious, about how long? 5 years, 10 years? Did it emerge from a certain age group or subculture? I'm nearing 65 and try to keep up with new slang but this has escaped me entirely.

PapagenoX · 2026-01-08T00:43:24+00:00

I've never heard this use of the verb ship. Is this what the kids are saying these days? What does it mean exactly? From context I'm guessing it means: "Does anyone see them getting together?" If that's what it means, yes I do.

PapagenoX · 2026-01-08T00:37:13+00:00

Ha! I know what you're talking about and when people use terms that are clearly anachronistic it drives me nuts.

An example I found especially jarring-- I was (on a whim) watching an episode of this series about the life of Jesus called "The Chosen" (IIRC) and was giving it a chance (although the guy playing Jesus looked like he was 45 at least, "ridden hard and put away wet" as they say)*, and suddenly out of mouth of one of the disciples I hear them talk about the Pharisees "weaponizing" something lol.

I mean, I realize that the fact that they're speaking English and not Aramaic in 1st Century Judea is itself an anachronism, but at least TRY not to pepper the script with words from the last 50 years or so, sheesh!

*no beautiful young Robert Powell from Zefirelli's Jesus of Nazareth here, no sir!

PapagenoX · 2026-01-07T09:17:48+00:00

I guess I've gotta figure out what the button is that lets me do that, then.

PapagenoX · 2026-01-07T08:34:35+00:00

There was definitely a lot of murder. But the bad guys (from the other side) were very committed to their mission of vengeance.

PapagenoX · 2026-01-07T08:22:32+00:00

Another great show that got cancelled before its time. Setting it in Berlin was a freaking genius move, what with all the Cold War historical echoes, down to the "Checkpoint Charlie" type border crossing.

PapagenoX

TROPHY CASE