Hello, trash panda baby angels, and welcome to another Trash Report. I am Elinor Jones, back from Spring Break vacation and ready to make “person who has been to Japan” into my entire personality. But as much as I enjoyed being away, I have also enjoyed diving back into everything that I missed and immediately erasing all of the rejuvenation; you can take the girl out of America, but you cannot take the trashiness out of the girl. Shall we? Let’s go.
The Girls Are Not Okay
Trump’s recently fired Department of Homeland Security demon Kristi Noem has not even had a chance to settle into her new made-up job at the Center for Fascists Who Can’t Terrorize Good when the Daily Mail broke news of her husband secretly cross-dressing with gigantic fake balloon tits. The think pieces have been all over the place, but the Washington Post really hit it furthest into the toilet by lamenting about how sad and lonely Bryon Noem seemed in his blurry pictures with the honkin’ cans. I’m sorry, are we supposed to feel sorry for him? The guy who stayed married to the lady who killed his kids’ puppy? Get a grip. I can understand not wanting to kink-shame, but I draw the line at not wanting to Republican-shame. I hope these assholes are sad and lonely every second of their miserable lives.
Elsewhere in Trump’s orbit, he also just canned his Attorney General Pam Bondi because somebody had to fall on the sword for how fucked his legal woes over the Epstein files are looking, and why would he fire a man when there was a perfectly disposable woman right there? Bondi’s portraits were removed from the walls of the Department of Justice within hours of her firing. Not only were they removed, but they were unceremoniously tossed into garbage cans. Is this a metaphor for her attempts to trash American rule of law? Or is this a metaphor for how her over-bleached highlights looked, i.e. like trash? Whatever it was, I hope whatever leaks from that mess is redacted as poorly as she did with the Epstein files so we can get a proper look at how much everybody hates her.
Some Girls Are Okay
Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo seemed to have buried the hatchet from their long-rumored feud, or at the very least, they were photographed near one another at a Paul McCartney concert. Great! But some headlines say that the two reconciled “thanks to Paul McCartney,” which is a highly different thing and highly improbable! They didn’t reconcile thanks to him. Paul McCartney didn’t do anything. He played a concert. He probably didn’t even know they were there. He was at work. They probably buried the hatchet themselves because they are highly evolved women and whose personal brands rely heavily on some form of feminism and female empowerment and they recognized one another as colleagues rather than competition. That, or they still aren’t friends, but just wound up near each other near a concert because they are both very rich and very famous and there are only so many spots for the uber elite to hang out in venues like that. Either way, it was NOT thanks to A MAN.
(Of course, should anyone have hooked up with anyone else after the Bruce Springsteen concerts in town last week, that was at least partly thanks to The Boss. He has a power in America that Paul McCartney does not.)
Elsewhere in UGH MEN, Kanye West and Louis CK are both staging comebacks, and doing so effectively. Don’t people know there are other people? We don’t need these guys anymore.
One Down to Rule Them All
Beloved nerd saga The Lord of the Rings is turning 25 this year (which is impossible because I saw those movies in the theaters and I am but a small child?). Star hobbit Elijah Wood was recently on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and revealed that not only do he and the other hobbits keep in touch, but they send each other their daily New York Times mini crossword times; Wood put co-star Sean Astin on blast for usually being the slowest. You know who else got picked on for being slow? Samwise Gamgee, and he basically saved Middle Earth, didn’t he? Put some respect on that name. Also, there are some more movies in the LOTR universe in development and they are struggling when it comes to recasting a younger Aragorn, because nobody comes close to the amount of heat that Viggo Mortensen put on that horse. Leo Woodall is in the running, and while he was charming enough in One Day, I really think they’d be better off just putting a coat on an empty chair and then explaining what Aragorn has been up to off-screen than trying to convince us another face is worth Liv Tyler’s immortality.
In more current movie news, a new Mario movie is coming out. The first Mario movie is literally the only time I have ever fallen asleep during a movie at a theater, which says something about how boring it was considering how loud it also was. I’m not interested in the sequel, so I’ve been tuning out most of the promotional tour for it. That is, until now: Charlie Day, who voices Luigi, went on a podcast and was asked who his favorite famous Luigis were. After naming his own character, he also named folk hero/CEO-killer Luigi Mangione. So it says something about how cynical this press tour is when name-dropping a murderer is the most charming thing about it.
Iced Reali-Tea
There is a huge reality television scandal involving people from Summer House. I read this piece about it and I cannot get on board. I’m sorry, I tried. Not since Scandoval have I wanted so badly to jump on a bandwagon that I am simply too far behind on. If you know who these people are and got in on the ground floor, I am happy for and deeply jealous of you.
You know why I can’t follow some current events? Because I am still following politics in 1990s R&B. TLC’s Chili is on some people’s shit lists for having donated to some conservative causes over the past couple of years, and also sharing a post on social media that was critical of Michelle Obama. Chili posted a clarification that she was not MAGA, just not computer-savvy, and she didn’t pay attention to who funded the orgs or which buttons did what. I’m going to need her or her people to start paying better attention, because TLC is about to launch a tour with En Vogue and Salt & Pepa and obviously I need to go and don’t need any guilt attached to who my money is going to!
Local Trash
In local trash, it is REALLY nice out, which means that Portland patio season has officially begun. Before enjoying it, please have your pleasure dampened by this warning from our local government about how eating at poorly maintained outdoor dining structures could actually be bad for you, actually. Yeah, right. And sunshine can give us cancer. Flowers could make you sneeze. A fresh breeze might muss our hair. A poorly maintained outdoor structure is still outside, which is glorious. Go sit outside with your friends. We are so lucky to be here.
Gloriously,
