Happy Christmas hangover day, my grimy Trash Pandas! It's me, Elinor Jones. I'm currently on vacation, but I knew I would have a horrible time sipping margaritas and getting a suntan knowing that all of you are starving for content, so I've put together this wonderful best-of-the-year column to tide you over. We experienced so much garbage this year* but these were my faves!

*It's technically not a full best-of-the-year because I didn't start writing this column until March. But January and February suck anyway, so who cares? Not me.

From March 14 

I'm really rooting for the lovely queers from this Craigslist missed connection who made eyes in the floral area of the northwest Portland Trader Joe’s. I mean, this line basically is a Phoebe Bridgers song: "I resisted the urge to say 'oh no' out loud when you dropped your bagels in front of the orchids." I hope these green-haired nonbinary cuties get their boba date soon!

From March 21:

It's weird that I've never wondered what a Prince of Crypto would look like, yet feel 100 percent validated that it is precisely like this:

From April 25:

Getting Stuck Places, Part 1

An English woman recently had quite the dramatic birthday brunch when she reached behind a booth to grab a jacket and got stuck back there. She's fine now but the world is forever changed because now we have this screenshot, which belongs in the Louvre:

 

Getting Stuck Places, Part 2

Thankfully there is not a picture of this one: Up in Washington state, a woman (gagging) got stuck (deep breath) at the bottom of an outhouse (vomits everywhere.) She dropped her phone into the poo zone, tried to retrieve it, and then fell in. But once she was down there she was able to grab her phone and then called for help. The woman declined medical help and insisted she was "fine"—although I suspect she'll forever suffer from PTSD (poop trauma stress disorder.)

From May 9:

The leak of the drafted Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade coming out during the grotesque display of opulence that is the Met Gala was like when you're staying at a hotel and jump quickly from the hot tub into the pool—but worse. To be clear, I love the grotesque display of opulence and will click on every slideshow of beautiful people in stunning outfits I can find. Now, people always have opinions on who followed the theme wrong, but this year was some next-level arm-chair Wintouring due to the choices of one reality star and to be honest 1) kudos to her, now she's even more famous, and 2) you all sounded like this:

From May 23:

Opposite congratulations are in order for Neil Patrick Harris, after a picture from a 2011 party surfaced online from when he—oh god, this is so awful—had a charcuterie board made to look like the corpse of Amy Winehouse. Harris is commonly known by his initials NPH, but from now on those letters will stand for Not 'Propriate Homage.

From June 13:

Congratulations are in order for Ms. Britney Jean Spears, who married her longtime boyfriend Sam Asghari. Asghari looks like he could model for the cover of a romance novel about a hardened billionaire businessman with no time for love, but softens when he meets the woman of his dreams—an artist trying to make it in the big city —who he then ravages in all sorts of creative and generous ways, but then there's trouble with his corporation because his dangerous and withholding father says he has no time for love, he has to do his duty to the family by carrying on the family business, and he's so torn, because does he want to live a life with power or a life with love (?), and for a minute she thinks he's choosing power, and then flees to her hometown, where she runs into an old flame, and she thinks maybe she could learn to be with him and have a simpler life, but then the main guy realizes what a fool he's been to let her go, so he goes to the small town, finds the girl, proposes in the town square, and they honeymoon on a yacht and have sex all over it. This is, of course, the highest compliment I can give a heterosexual man.

I mean, look at him:

From June 27:

Look, everybody is processing their trauma and pain and fear in different ways right now. We all need that space and grace for ourselves in a really scary time. There's no wrong way to do it. Except that this is a wrong way to do it:

From August 15:

I feel like anything I write about the FBI raiding Trump's tacky Florida mansion for a duffel bag of nuclear secrets will be out of date within moments of this post going live, because it's nonstop bombshells with all that mess, but I see it and I'm with you and I'm lying flat on my back during the storm with my mouth wide open, drinking up every delicious drop of that man's demise. I'm not smart enough to really grasp the global risk of nuclear secrets getting out, so I'm able to appreciate all the jokes about it:

From September 12

Queen Elizabeth II died last week at 96 years old, and everyone on Twitter is all "hear ye, hear ye" about it. Sorry, is it in poor taste to point out how the Queen dying is giving everyone else life?

From October 3

Lizzo played James Madison's crystal flute and a bunch of racists pretended to care about both James Madison and flutes. Classic musical instruments now join mermaids and hobbits as the kind of kitchen table issues that will drive red-blooded Americans to the polls in next month's midterm elections. 

From October 31

Friends star Matthew Perry found himself in hot coffee served in a charmingly oversized mug for dissing beloved kindness king Keanu Reeves. The gaffe came during Perry's press for his upcoming addiction memoir Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, in which he discusses having gone to rehab over a dozen times in the last 20 years. The full text of Perry's jab was "Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?" Very bad! But, surprisingly, I will be at Perry's defense here, because this is exactly the type of joke that a person who's spent the last 25 years on drugs or in rehab would say! This joke would have killed in 1997! Perry has had too much shit going on to possibly know that Keanu is untouchable now. As clear evidence of his current sobriety, Perry has since apologized. He was like: "Could I be any more sorry I went after absolutely the wrong guy?"

From November 28

Portland-based (for now?) ice cream company Salt & Straw is making salted caramel waves for their announcement that they're considering moving their headquarters from Portland to the vague "out of state" due to perceived lawlessness in our city. This instead of, I don't know, finding a different office space? KGW reported that CEO and co-founder Kim Malek "drove to City Hall in tears" as she sought solutions from local leaders. I hope that one of those local leaders was councilman-elect Rene Gonzalez, who knows all about getting deals on real estate! Perhaps Jordan Schnitzer could offer Malek a premium downtown office space for $250 a month (parking included!) and then she'll reconsider her threat? 

From December 12

Portland will be slightly less fun now that the Shroom House—a shop that briefly and illegally sold psychedelic mushrooms—has been raided by the cops. But what an exciting few days! So full of promise. I'm curious how many other friend groups started excited group texts about the shop, like "should we go?????" and then finding excuses not to go because the line seemed really long or it's cold out and then eventually everybody comes to the realization that we're perhaps too old to experiment with drugs. Thank you for your service, Shroom House. Now we know.


Wasn't that fun? I gotta tell you, it was wild reading back through these columns and being reminded of how many stressful and traumatic moments we lived through this year. Nearly every column started by acknowledging some unspeakable horror, and then being like, "welp, now I'm going to try to make you laugh, sorry." And I'll be honest, a lot of times it was really hard to make jokes! But I'm so grateful to have this column that forces me to find some levity on a weekly basis, and I hope it's been a nice refuge from doom-scrolling for all of you. Thank you so much for reading. I cherish every one of you.

From the dumpster, with love,