Hey guys, I'm going to go make another thread since this one has gotten so long.

Severance sounds interesting and like the type of thing I'd enjoy.  I'll have to give it a go as I've got Apple TV free for another month.

I'm also surprised they decided to fix your car Mare, especially as you were hoping to just get the insurance money.

I'm excited for the Millennium residency, but I hope the rumored remastered Millennium album release is also happening so that the whole fanbase will have something to enjoy.  I've seen a lot of fans from other countries saying they don't want to travel to the US right now, even if they could afford it, which is completely understandable .  I wish our country wasn't such an embarrassing trainwreck right now.

Yes, Leighanne is absolutely entitled to share her opinions, but I'm glad she backed off from doing so, whether by choice or because Brian and/or BSB's publicity team told her to knock it off.  Either way, she showed her true colors, and I will never see her the same way again.

I agree with you about American Idol.  I'm sure Brian will promote it, as any parent would, and fans will vote for Baylee because of that.  I haven't decided yet if I'm going to watch it or not.  I used to be really into American Idol but haven't followed it in years.  I might tune in to the audition episodes out of curiosity, but I'm not sure if it will suck me back in or not.  And I have mixed feelings about Baylee, so I wouldn't necessarily vote for him just because of Brian.  It'll be interesting to see how far he gets.

Oh, I remember hearing about Severance now.  One of my coworkers was talking about it.  Sounds like an interesting premise.

I did not know the actor who plays Whitaker on The Pitt (assuming that's who you're talking about) was Australian either.  He does a good American accent!

Wow, I'm surprised they decided to fix your car for that much!  In your situation, I would have been hoping for them to total it, too.

I enjoyed my snow day, but I bet most districts are regretting calling it so early because we didn't even get half of what was forecasted LOL.  We got maybe 2 inches, just enough to cover the ground.  I went out and shoveled my driveway because I was home, but I didn't really need to.  We're supposed to get more snow over the weekend, though, so I knew it would just get deeper and freeze over if I didn't clear this round first.  I'm glad it wasn't more because I hate shoveling LOL.  I have a fairly long driveway that is part gravel, so it's a pain in the ass.

I don't know about you, but I've seen fewer MAGA comments on posts lately.  Prior to the inauguration, any post by our local news was full of ignorant comments by the MAGAt idiots of central Illinois.  Nowadays, the majority of comments are anti-Trump.  It could be that the liberals have just gotten more vocal, but it also seems like a lot of the people who were pro-Trump have gotten quiet... as if they might actually be embarrassed or starting to regret their vote.  I hope that's the case.

I haven't watched The Masked Singer since the season after Nick was on, but that would be cool if Kieran or one of the other Culkin brothers was on it!  I wish we'd get another BSB on there.  AJ's voice may be too recognizable, and Brian would never do it for various reasons, but it would be a great opportunity for Howie or Kevin to shine!

I don't see myself leaving Twitter anytime soon. Until everyone else does, then I'll just follow wherever you all go. I go on Bluesky every once in a while, and same with Threads. Neither of them are great because like you said, there's really no one on there.

I'm glad his wife has learned to keep her opinions to herself. I mean she does have every right to say whatever she wants, but I'm glad she realized that by doing that, people started to get angry at her husband just because, since basically all her followers were only following her because of him. Speaking of which!

I'm glad Baylee is trying to find his own identity but maybe going on a national reality show where people get to vote for the winner isn't the way to go. Seriously, how unfair is it that if he actually makes it in and all the way to the voting stage, that he will have an automatic fan base voting for him. As much as we know it shouldn't happen like that, it will. All Brian will have to do is post about it. Which he will, and everyone on God's green earth will vote for the boy even if they have never watched the show a day in their life. If he really wants to break free from under daddy's name, he should do it anonymously like Garth Brook's daughter did. It wasn't until she got a record deal before she told people who her father was.

I saw the BSB news announcement. I posted about them yesterday to see if it would bring them back to my timeline and it worked. I really was hoping it would be a Muppet movie, but glad for all of the people who will get to go see them for this Milennium reboot.

Severance is totally unrelated to Succession, but it seems to be the show everyone has migrated too, because like Succession it's incredibly well written and acted, although the plot is beyond complex and sometimes falls into the LOST range for me. The basic premise is really original. It's about a huge cooperation like FB or Google, that starts a trial procedure for its employees where they can sever their brains. So they make an experimental severed floor. So, if you get this surgery done, when you go into work, once you enter the elevator you no longer have any recollection of your real life and only your work persona exists. Which means those people have no concept of what outside is or anything. Just like children. For them, they only know their work mates and the small office they work in. So, to reward them for their work, the company will throw them a pineapple party and give them things like finger traps and toys because they don't know any better. When they leave, they have absolutely no recollection of even going to work. They don't know what they do for a living or who their co-workers are or anything.

Obviously, it's nice for the real-life person because work for them is entering an elevator and then the next thing you know when the elevator door opens again, they are heading home. Absolutely no stress. However, the work persona is constantly working. When they enter the elevator to leave, they are right back on their floor ready to start another workday when it opens again.

It is worth a watch if you have Apple TV. There was almost a 3 year break between seasons! For a show this layered, that wasn't a good thing, but it is perfect for people who have just started it. Because the first season ended with a huge reveal.

I haven't watched last week's episode of The Pitt yet. I had no idea that the kid who plays the very Carter like intern is Australian. I saw him on an interview, and it surprised me. I love when I find that stuff out.

They actually decided to fix my car, which is insane because it cost almost $10,000! I'm not sure what the rationale behind that was because my car is worth way less than that unless they assessed it at a higher value than what it's actually worth. I really was hoping they'd just declare it a loss so I wouldn't have to worry about the selling part, but at least I know to ask for a higher amount although now it's been in an accident, so I have no clue!

Happy snow day! Those are the best. When they panic and call off the night before. Even better if then nothing ends up happening. 7 inches wouldn't even get a two-hour delay here which is crazy! However, we have had a fair share of snow days already because of ice, which they do tend to panic about. We're expecting another snow to freezing rainstorm tonight into tomorrow morning.

I didn't know you didn't get much snow there, Steph. I don't know why I thought you did.

Thank God for my anti Trump friends. One of my friends who I went to high school with but is a few years older than me, ended up teaching at Berklee. He posted about the Kennedy Centers thing and the valedictorian from my graduating class who is as Trumpy as Trumpy can be, went on his post and said he thought it was a great idea. You don't want to go onto a music professors post and say something that stupid. All of us pounced on him. So, I went to bed all worked up. Which means it will be a no news day for me.

There is a random clip on the Masked Singer of Ken predicting that one of the singers might be Kieran and it felt like the whole Nick thing all over again. But there's no way he would've had the time to do that. If it didn't film in LA, maybe but no way. Maybe it's his brother. Anyway, if for some reason you watch that show, please let me know if he it might really seem like it's him. I'm pretty sure singing isn't his thing lol but what do I know? I wasn't aware he could play the piano either. 

Yay for a snow day for you! We don't even get 7mm of snow, never mind 7 inches lol

I'm excited to hear what this BSB thing is going to be.  I'd love to hear unreleased songs even though I do have a lot of old unreleased songs already.  If it's a Las Vegas residency then hope everyone able to go has a great time.  I don't know if I'd ever to be able to go, but I can dream lol

Yes, it can be a bit lonely working from home part of the week, but I'm used to it now as done it since Covid times.  At least I can have my music playing while I work.  I do have Teams so can chat to people in work from home.

Ew, I didn't realize Elon was following everyone on Twitter now.  Creepy.  It does sound like MySpace Tom, but more sinister.  BlueSky is similar enough to Twitter that I don't mind it, but I only have a few friends there, and none of the Boys have moved there yet, so it's not a replacement for Twitter yet.  Maybe someday.  Threads finally has a Following option to filter your feed so it doesn't just show you random content from users you don't follow, so maybe I'll start using it more.

To be fair, Brian never really posted anything full-on MAGA.  His wife did, but she deleted most of her social media accounts or made them private after the backlash in 2020.  I still follow her on Instagram for the occasional Brian photo she posts, but she's never posted much political stuff there.  The worst of it was on FB.  I'm sure she's still as MAGA as ever, but she's learned to keep her ignorant thoughts to herself.  And apparently Baylee deleted his political posts after auditioning for American Idol.  I thought American Idol used to not allow professional recording artists to audition, but they must have changed the rules.  I haven't watched it in years, but apparently, a lot of the people who audition now have released music before; they're just not well-known or successful.  I liked it better when it was all amateurs.  I'll be curious to see how Baylee does.  I have mixed feelings on him auditioning, but at least he'll be able to get some real, hopefully unbiased feedback that will help him grow as an artist.  I think he needed to do something to step out of Brian's shadow and cut the cord from his Mom-ager if he's going to have a real career in music that doesn't just depend on BSB fans.  As much as I love Brian, I haven't bought any of Baylee's music because I'm not into country.  He doesn't have a bad voice, but he's nothing like Brian in his prime.

An NYC residency would be cool!  They probably stick with Vegas because it's convenient for at least 3/5 of them, especially Nick since he lives there.  But it's a short flight from LA for AJ and Kevin, too.  I saw some speculation that, with Nick's ongoing legal drama, a Vegas residency is a better choice than a new album and tour right now.  It keeps him close to home, and there's less risk of cancellations.  As much as I'm ready for new music, I'm still salty about so much of their Christmas album promo getting canceled.  They're probably better off waiting for the next album cycle until the cases are resolved.  I can't wait for that to be over and for Nick to be able to talk openly about what he's been through.  But, anyway, based on the clues they've been posting, it looks very likely that some kind of Millennium 2.0 thing is happening.  Someone posted a leaked link to a Millennium 2.0 double vinyl album that was supposedly listed on Amazon.  The speculation is that one of the discs will be the original album, possibly remastered, and the other will include some new remixes or recordings and unreleased tracks.  If that's true, at least that is something the whole fandom can enjoy, even if they can't make it to Vegas for a show.  And this is all still just rumor at this point.  They're apparently announcing or releasing something tomorrow morning at 8 EST, according to the little teaser video they posted tonight, so we should know more then!

I haven't watched Severance.  Is it related to Succession somehow?  From what I saw of The Pitt fics, the biggest ship so far is Dr. Robby and Dr. Collins, the pregnant doctor.  And there are already a few ER crossovers, of course.  I like the characters but not enough to want to write fanfic about them, unless it was in the context of a BSB crossover.  But some people can write fanfic about literally anything!

I hope you get more than $5000 back for your car!  Sounds like it was in good condition and will hopefully be worth a lot in parts.

I agree with everything you both said about friends and coworkers.  I'm sure working from home makes it even harder to make and stay friends with coworkers, Steph.  I'm lucky in that respect because working in a school feels a lot like going to school.  I eat lunch with the same group of people in the teacher's lounge every day, and I consider them all friends to some extent.  But even within that group, there are smaller groups of us that actually get together outside of school and in the summer to hang out.  Those are my true friends, not just my work friends.  It definitely helps to go out to dinner and have drinks and get to know people outside of work.

I'm glad you have a lot of teacher friends who are anti-Trump, Mare!  We are in the minority in my school because I live in a pretty red part of a blue state.  (Illinois is a blue island in a sea of red because of Chicago.)  I know who I can share my opinions openly with at work and who I should avoid political discussions with.  Thankfully, my two best friends from work are liberal - which is definitely part of the reason we've become good friends.  I'm sure it would suck to be a liberal living in the south.  I hate living among the ignorance that surrounds me, but at least I'm in a blue state that finally (FINALLY!) has a great governor.  Illinois has a bad track record with past governors being corrupt or completely incompetent.  I saw that Trump just pardoned our former governor, Blagojevich, which is interesting because he's a Democrat... but he was also on Celebrity Apprentice, so I guess they're buddies now.  Birds of a feather flock together!

In a bit of good news, I have a snow day tomorrow!  It's supposed to snow all day tomorrow and accumulate up to 7 inches, so they went ahead and called off school tonight, which I so appreciate.  I know 7 inches is nothing by Buffalo standards, but it's more than we've had all winter.

Still haven't heard about the car. It was towed to a new place since my insurance company doesn't work with the place it ended up initially. I should hear today if they think it's a complete loss or not.

It took a long time to feel like some of my coworkers were friends. I feel like that happens when you can actually go out to dinner with them and talk about other things with only work coming up occasionally. That was my gauge anyway. lol I've been hearing from a lot of my teacher friends lately with all the Trump crap happening. Many of them are very proactive and have been actually taking that step and calling their representative s but since PA is now mostly red, their calls are being ignored. Another one of my teacher friends who has since moved to Savannah Georgia is having the same problem. It sucks to live in the South right now. I don't know if I could've handled living in Nashville if Trump was in office.

Sorry to hear about your car Mare, I hope the insurance claim isn't too much of a hassle for you and your sister.

I also know what you mean about making new friends when you get older and you're an introvert.  I've got the same few friends I've had for many years and I don't even get to see them that much these days even though we don't live far from each other.  I talk to people in work but I wouldn't call them friends lol, plus we're only in the office a couple of days a week and work from home the rest of the time.

I also don't really have an interest in reading other fandoms, it's just BSB for me and even then I don't read anywhere near as much as I used to.  I think I used to read a lot during work but these days work is busier so I don't have the chance so much.

I feel the same way about Twitter and FB and I use them the same way you do. I can talk incessantly about my fandoms on Twitter, but I use FB as a way to keep in touch with everyone else. only a few of you have made the move up to my FB friend's level. lol I haven't seen the political posts on FB as much as I have on Twitter including people I don't follow suddenly popping up for me. I went on my follower's page and noticed Elon and some of those people are following my account. I wonder if it's the same way it was on Myspace where the guy who invented it just friended everyone. I don't see myself leaving either platform and get almost a little anxious when people say they are. I've tried Threads and Bluesky, but I don't understand them.

Glad to hear Brian stopped with the MAGA posts. Did his wife as well? Is Baylee going on American Idol? I think that's something else I saw Rose mention. Can he even do that? Wasn't he signed with a record deal and has already toured the country etc... how is that going to be fair?

Oh, it would be nice if BSB decided on another residency. Sad it always has to be Vegas though. Some venues in NYC also do residencies. They should look into that as well. I agree with you about the whole destination thing. Cruises and vacations are extreme and do exclude a lot of people. It's usually the same people who are always excluded as well. That would be interesting if they did the entire Milennium album from start to finish. If they toured here, I'd pay to go see that.

AO3 was down last night and earlier this morning. Both times I went to answer reviews. I do hope they aren't taking on more than they should be. It would suck for me when I go to update after getting all the stupid HTML codes in there, once I click post it didn't work.

I get jealous that people can seem to jump from fandom to fandom so easily. Like my entire Succession twitter timeline is talking about nothing but Severance and while I do like the show, to me it's just alright, but nothing to get obsessed over. So, while they are all Severance this and Severance that, I'm still over there gushing about Kieran. I mean they will come back probably by Monday but since the last episode aired it's all about that. I'm impressed there's The Pitt fanfic. Did they manage to just focus on ships? Like how on earth? lol

Not working is what really slowed my friendship making down. My entire social life in PA depended on my teacher and music teacher friends.

We'll see what happens with my car. It's a 2016 Verano which isn't a popular car, so that might help me out and it didn't even have 50,000 miles on it because I hated to drive so it was only to and from work. It's been paid up for a while now. My sister takes it out and drives it to work for about a month before switching back to her car just so it doesn't die. It's not in bad condition and has a brand-new battery and a new tire. According to the blue book, it's worth about $5,000 so in my mind I was expecting to get that much or a little more. The good thing for me is I am not dealing with all the insurance crap because I wasn't the one in the accident so it's my sister who has to do the back and forth because I wasn't there. Still annoying.

The Supporting actors were able to give a speech but the first two had no idea what on earth to do. It was one of the guys from Shrinking and the girl was from Hacks and they literally just looked at each other for a second and started talking at the same exact time, which was hilarious, but then she stopped and let him go first and then she went but since all that confusion happened, she like said two words and the music started playing. Then they did the same thing for the supporting roles for drama as well. Since they saw what the two before them did, they were quicker to take turns but still, no other acting category did that. No one at all did. I mean I know they were probably wanting to save time, but it was classless. Do it for the limited series people if you want to do it to anyone. Hopefully they'll work that out. Last year I remembered them announcing them all in one bunch like that, but I think they at least got up one at a time and had their own moment. Awards season is winding down now. Just a few more to go. SAG will be next.

I have definitely noticed more right-wing posts by accounts I don't follow popping up on both Twitter and Facebook, which is super annoying.  I've been tempted to stop using those platforms, but Twitter is still where most of my online/BSB friends are, and FB is where most of my "real life" friends are, and I don't want to feel completely out of the loop.

Brian seems to have learned his lesson from 2020 and hasn't posted anything remotely political in a long time.  I know he probably did vote for Trump again, but as long as he's not posting MAGA crap like his wife used to, I can keep clinging to my belief that he's just conservative and not a full-on, card-carrying cult member.  I just keep wondering where the seemingly sane, decent Republicans are going to draw the line and turn against their fascist leader.  When is enough going to be enough?  If even just a few of them in Congress swallowed their pride or fear or whatever's holding them back and sided with Democrats, so much more could be done.  But I guess they're too afraid of ruining their political careers like the Liz Cheneys and Adam Kinzingers of the party who tried last time around.

There's been a rumor going around for over a year now that BSB's going to do a Millennium 2.0 tour, and now the rumor is that they're doing another Vegas residency at the new Sphere.  The Sphere thing sounds more likely than the Millennium part, but it would be cool if it was both.  Def Leppard did a residency in 2013 where they basically played two concerts in one:  the first setlist was a bunch of deep cuts, followed by an intermission, and then they played their whole Hysteria album in order for the second set.  I would LOVE to see BSB do something like that!  The deep cut thing is what we were all hoping their 30 for 30 concert in Cancun would be.  I hope the announcement is not another fan event like Cancun.  Whatever they're doing, it should be something the whole fandom can enjoy.  I know not everyone can make it to concerts, especially when they're in a different country, but at least a tour or residency offers multiple dates to accommodate more people than one big, expensive event.

I heard AO3 membership has been going up exponentially because fanfic.net is getting old and having a lot of issues too, so it definitely could be that the site is getting overloaded.  If that's the case, I'm concerned about what importing all these other dying archives is going to do to it.  Hopefully they have a plan in place to increase their servers or bandwidth or whatever they need to accommodate more users and data.

Yeah, I wish I was able to jump from fandom to fandom like that, too.  The only way I've been able to write for other fandoms are if I'm doing a crossover with BSB.  Apparently, I still need those boys in the story to be fully invested in it LOL.  Out of curiosity, I looked to see if there were any fanfics for The Pitt yet on AO3.  There are 15 so far! LOL  If I hadn't already done an ER crossover, I could see myself doing one with The Pitt.  But since it's only been 5 years since I finished the ER story, I'm not really itching to write another story like that yet.

You're so right about adult friendships.  It's much harder to make new friends as an adult, especially when you're not working or part of a club or church or something.  Pretty much all of the friends I actually hang out with in real life, aside from BSB trips, are people I work with.  I barely keep in touch with friends from high school and college anymore outside of Facebook.  Everyone just gets busy with their own lives, and it takes effort on both sides to stay in touch.  Being introverted makes it even harder.  I always wish I lived closer to people I know online.  But then, I have a few friends who started out as online friends who only live 2-3 hours away from me, and we still usually only see each other for BSB-related events LOL.

Oh no!  I'm so sorry about your sister's accident and your car.  I'm glad she wasn't hurt!  And that's good that she has her own car, but it sucks that yours was totaled.  I hope you get a nice insurance check.  When my car was totaled a couple years ago, I actually got way more than I was expecting from my insurance company, about 9 grand for a ten-year-old car that, according to Kelly Blue Book, was only worth $3-4k in trade-in value.  Apparently, it was worth more for its scrap metal and parts than it was as a fully functional car LOL.  So, in that respect, I guess it worked out all right for me in the long run, but I still wish it hadn't happened.  It's so stressful dealing with all that.  I was planning to keep driving my car for a few more years without a car payment and then give it to my nephew when he starts driving, but he's out of luck now.

That's really weird how the Critics Choice Awards were given out.  So, were the supporting actors not able to give a speech, or did they just take turns?  Hopefully they do it differently next year.