Belle Chere

Not only does she do a masterfully job filling out her costumes, the costumes themselves are exceptionally well-made! Click HERE and see for yourself!!!

I know, I’m one to talk, right? But I figure, we’re talking about a fictional character, so making light of said character’s “battle of the bulge” should be fine, right?! I have to say, seeing Betty again was great for all the wrong reasons! Let me count the ways:

1) Betty at her Weight Watchers meetings, it’s like a gathering of sad pandas, and she’s the saddest one!

2) Betty maliciously telling Sally about Anna Draper to force a wedge between her and step-mom Megan. And it almost worked, with Sally mouthing off at Megan something ridiculous. I think she’d have been perfectly within her rights to slap the shit outta that kid! Especially after that “Are you gonna pretend to cry now?” crack (Megan had been showing Sally how to pretend to cry for acting earlier in the episode). Thankfully, Don regulated that mess and put Sally in her place.

3) Betty finding a romantic note Don left for Megan about going out to buy light bulbs so he could see her better, when she came to Don’s apartment to pick up the kids. Obviously, Don never left Betty any romantic notes when they were married.

4) Oh, and this:

5) Which ultimately led to this:

Welcome back, Fat Betty. We missed you!!!

If I’ve missed anything in my quest to lose weight, it’s a some good mac & cheese. Especially since one of my regular dine n’ drink spots in DC closed (although they’re planning to reopen in the summer), and the mac & cheese their was pretty damn awesome.

But watching this video kinda scared the everlovin’ shit outta me. From the moment these fools made a deep-fried “mac & cheese cake” (with a bacon cheeseburger center, no less!!!), I felt like I was having a damn heart attack! Then it just gets crazier from there! Granted, some of these variations on mac n’ cheese certainly around terrible, even if they all go pretty damn overboard, others just seem really nasty (Cream cheese mac with lox, tequila guacamole mac & cheese, yeah, I’m lookin’ at you!). But I guess being Canadian and all, I can’t fault ‘em for doing a poutine mac & cheese, even if I don’t see it working out that well. And for Avengers fans, they even got shawarma mac & cheese in the mix!

And let’s not even get into listing all the macs & cheese, including individual caloric counts, before a squad of 20-something college girls are charged with chowing down.

Yeah, you been on your weight loss kick for a minute now, but you still that good-good thick’ums to me, lady!!! Break out da milk n’ cookies!!!!

Since one commenter hipped me to this monstrosity, I’ve been oddly intrigued. I’m disgusted and fascinated at the same time! Created by the Flying Monkey Patisserie, in Philadelphia, The Pumpple consists of apple and pumpkin pies baked inside vanilla and chocolate cakes covered with vanilla buttercream. It was 15 pounds, measures a foot tall, and has about 1,800 calories per slice!!!!!

Now, the part of me that’s still fighting the fat myself (finally down a pants size, bitches!!!), I just want to shame everyone involved in its creation!!!! I fear just looking at it is enough to put me in a diabetic coma! But on the other hand, I feel like this is more of a case of a sound concept that just went overboard. One pie baked into one cake actually sounds awesome!! When you think about how rarely you might find yourself in a situation to eat cake anyway (birthday, wedding, retirement party, etc.), it’s honestly not that bad. Hell, I haven’t had cake on my birthday in like three or four years!!! And with the exception of last week, for some reason, I only got pie on Thanksgiving!

This is a perfect dessert for someone who isn’t into desserts all that much throughout the year. Whether you wanna go full retard with the double-decker original, or if you prefer to just go halfsies with it, the Pumpple can be your one time in the year to slamdance tarantula-style on the dessert tip! Even Rihanna approves!

No, Roger Sterling doesn’t get blown by anyone else’s mother-in-law this week, but we did see focus turn back to our guy Pete Campbell, who appears to be in a serious rush to have a mid-life crisis! It’s equal parts hilarious and sad, and as much as I used to think of him as a smarmy little prick, back in seasons one and two, I’m genuinely starting to feel for the poor guy, now. He’s a smart, capable young man, with a beautiful wife, a prestigious job, a wonderful home, but none of it really seems to matter to him. The poor man’s been Chasing Draper, and the realization that he may never catch up seems to be weighing on him. When his buddy on the commuter train isn’t trying to sell him insurance, he’s regaling Pete with tales of his “apartment in the city”, which he uses for boning 24 year-olds with perfect tits, even though he’s married to Alexis Bledel, who still doesn’t look at day over 18!

As Pete returns from the city, he meets this wife, having locked her keys in her car while waiting for her insurance salesman husband, who’s not comin’ home anytime soon. Pete’s already thinkin’ them thoughts as he drives her home, and clearly, she can’t stand knowing what her husband’s up to, so how’s about some payback sex!!! And dammit of pussy don’t make that dude bold as a motherfucker!!! I was honestly flabbergasted at how bold Pete was being. He’s gettin’ himself invited for dinner, he’s kissing this woman all open-mouth and shit while the husband’s in the other room! Inviting her to hotel rooms and shit!! I was like, “is that how we rollin’ Petey C.?!?! That’s what’s hot in the streets?!” But even I felt bad for dude when the wife didn’t even show up. He had the champagne chillin’ and everything!!! So ungrateful!!!! Honestly, with everything happening with Pete this season, I really am starting to buy into the speculation that Pete might just end up eating a bullet. He’s been on a downward spiral ever since Lane beat the shit outta him, and let’s face it, we’re about at the point in the series when something like Pete killing himself would be a major enough event to really shake up the status quo.

As to the rest of the episode, it was mostly just the hilarity revolving Megan’s decision to ultimately quite Sterling Cooper Draper Price, to pursue her dream of becoming an actress. Much of this due to two things:

* Don calling the office repeatedly to find out where Megan is one night, and Peggy getting so frustrated with the calls, that she pretends to be a carry out restaurant:

* Don having to act out a pitch for Cool Whip with Peggy, that he originally did perfectly with Megan, that when disastrously, leading to another great “Peggy curses out Don like a BOSS!” moment!

Needless to say, Mr. Belding was not pleased!

If it wasn’t clear already, it’s been made pretty clear now that Sally Draper must have had the worst childhood ever in the 60s, if Mad Men is any indication. She’s already had to suffer through the divorce of her parents, the ongoing psychological abuse from her ice queen of a mother (and to an extent, her step-grandmother), and little by little, her innocence has been chipped away at.

Things start off innocently enough when Sally calls her ol’ buddy, Glenn, who appears to be living in a boarding school now, as I’m sure even his parents realized what a creepy fuck that kid had become! And while part of me still thinks he’s plotting to wear Sally’s skin and frolic in a forest one day, he seems like a well enough kid with just a few issues he’ll probably get over once he loses his virginity. But anyway, disaster strikes, as big ol’ step-grandma trips over the phone cable, as Sally had taken the phone from another room across the hall into hers. Although it’s ultimatly blamed on one of her baby brother, Gene’s, toys. With ol’ step grandma on the mend, Sally and Bobby have to stay with Don and Megan, who are also entertaining Megan’s French-Canadian parents (her mother played by the still incredibly beautiful Julia Ormand), who are in town to visit their daughter, and attend Don’s awards dinner for his letter against Big Tobacco from last season. Theirs is a sham of a marriage, apparently, and it’s not helped by the fact that one of them is a rapid communist. He also spends a fair amount of time trying to convince his daughter that marrying Don was a mistake, an idea that’s permeated the season for the last three or four episodes.

Papa tries to push the point even further at the dinner, so to the point that he’s completely oblivious to the attention his wife has been giving Roger “LSD convinced me I should end my marriage” Sterling. But as Sally goes off looking for a bathroom, the poor girl’s innocent eyes are flooded with the image of:

For one, I have to wonder how actress Kiernan Shipka’s parents felt about their daughter’s character having to witness someone gettin’ blown in a piano bar! Will her parents sit with her, and watch the episode, then “have a talk” about what those adults were supposed to be doing?

But dammit if Sally Draper hasn’t learned herself a valuable lesson . . . Roger Sterling gets all the bitches!!! And also:

London Andrews

Photo by ©Andrew J Baran

That is one thick milkshake, I tell ya!!!

Yeah, I know I’m mad late talking about the most recent Mad Men, but I figured if I waited I could go total renegade on spoilers and not hear a whole lotta bloodclot cryin’ about spoiling the episode for some folks. In any event, I loved the episode if for no other reason than its use of one of my favorite storytelling tropes, P.O.V. (Point of View) Three vignettes chronicling a day in the life of three of Sterling Cooper Draper Price’s most dedicated, and most emotionally troubled employees.

Roger and his wife take LSD, and Roger comes to the conclusion that his wife wants him to end their marriage. Peggy goes HAM on a client ’cause she’s tired of him telling her to come up with a way to make beans “sexy” (which is impossible, unless flatulence really tickles your wang!), and tries to calm herself by going to see a movie. . . . then gives a perfect stranger a popcorn tub handjob?!?!?!? Then there’s Don, who takes his wife to a Howard Johnson, forces her to eat sherbert, leaves her at the HOJO, goes back to try and find her, comes home to find her already there, and goes full-on Hulk and almost Ike Turner’s the shit outta her!

It’s become quite clear that this season is all about these people completely unraveling. The pressures of their personal and professional lives is starting to take its toll, and it’ll be interesting to see who gets hit the hardest. The only prediction I’ll confidently make is that Don and Megan’s marriage doesn’t survive the season finale. If we wanna be real bold about it, I don’t see Megan surviving period!!! Yo man be havin’ dreams about killin’ broads and shovin’ ‘em under his bed like a collapsible Stairmaster!!! Run, bitch!!!! Run Fo’ Yo’ LIFE!!!!

If you like your rock music loud and dirty, this is the album for you! And despite the anatomical impossibility, I wanna have have frontwoman Lzzy Hale’s baby!