Hello, my sweet baby Trash Pandas! If nobody has told you yet today, you are a darling goblin whose mere existence dramatically increases global average human sexiness by several points, and I cherish you. Welcome to my column, The Trash Report, where I will try (and probably fail) to deserve your time with the rottenest gossip I could find here on Al Gore's internet. 

Short Foes and Legal Woes

In our divided nation, where such basic things as body autonomy are somehow up for discussion, I am thrilled that this last week's biggest debate was who was hotter: young Al Pacino or young Robert De Niro. The viral tweet from writer Ashley Reese has received hundreds of thousands of votes and the results have been evenly split. The conversation has since trickled up to the late night shows and early shows and it seems like everybody's got an opinion. Not me! They could both get it. What I'm mainly taking away from all of these convos is that everybody wants to fuck a short king. For real, Pacino is allegedly 5' 6" and De Niro is 5' 9" which means I (5' 5") could have french kissed either one of them without barely even craning my neck, and that is hot as hell.

In my attempt at balanced coverage, I will follow that sexualization of old men by sexualizing an old woman: Rita Moreno recently shot her shot with Star Wars hunk Oscar Isaac, asking him after a play if he was single and if he dated older women. "I have a thing for brooding actors," she said. "I dated Marlon Brando, you know." Isaac is married and I do wonder if things would have turned out differently were that not the case? Rita looks good! (For the record, Isaac and Brando are both also 5' 9". #westanashortking) 

You know who is not short? Shaquille O'Neal. And is he in the news for being hot? More like for being in hot water! O'Neal has for months been evading service of a lawsuit against him for his involvement as a spokesperson for failed cryptocurrency FTX. The team representing the allegedly defrauded investors have tried everything, including straight-up hucking papers at Shaq's fleeing SUV. Shaq's strategy of "you can't sue me if you can't find me!" is so bananas it just might work, and his lawyers are requesting that the case against him be dismissed. I once prolonged a relationship by several days by simply refusing to meet up with the person who had the grace to want to dump me in person, and I support Shaq's plan completely. 

Fresh Danger Just Dropped

Unsatisfied with having some of the laxest gun laws in the country, the state of Indiana has recently upped their danger quotient with the reintroduction of throwing stars:

As everyone says, when throwing stars are outlawed, only outlaws will have throwing stars. Now everyone (in Indiana) can have throwing stars, just as the founding fathers intended.

Over in Colorado, a man pulled over for speeding also attempted to evade being arrested for drunk driving by hopping into the passenger seat and pretending his dog was driving the car. "But my dog is totally fine, he only had two beers," the man (probably) explained. Like Shaquille O'Neal simply covering his ears to avoid getting sued, I'm curious to see how well this "there's no law saying a dog can't drive a car!" defense plays out. (In researching that joke to see if there were in fact any laws saying a dog can't drive a car, I learned that Oregon at some point was putting together a law that would have banned dogs from sitting on driver's laps in a car, which thankfully never came to pass because seeing a dog looking at you from behind the wheel at a red light is one of life's small joys. I'm so glad our state makes it easy for dogs to vote!)

In Local News

Officials report several sightings of a black bear in Forest Park. I recently learned from the excellent movie Cocaine Bear the bear adage "if it's black, fight back; if it's brown, lie down." So if you do insist on strolling through those bear-infested woods, you'd better be ready to punch a bear. I, however, will simply avoid hiking.

In other local news, this very newspaper-turned-website was just turned back into a newspaper! Like, in print! If you feel like reading more from yer girl, or one of my genius pals, you can pick up a printed Portland Mercury at lots of places around town. It's a little love letter to Portland, which is still thriving, no matter how many shitty ditties John Cougar Mellencamp wants to sing about us. 

That's all she wrote, friends. I'm off to write a song about John Cougar Mellencamp but in the video it's only going to be pictures of Bryan Adams.

Hurting so good,