What's up, besties? It's me, Elinor Jones, here with your weekly dose of news and gossip and cute stories. I don't know about you, but I have been very sad lately! Hopefully the next few minutes together can provide you the briefest respite from the beginning of the end. Let's Trash Report this bitch.

The Helpers are Agents of Chaos

According to a meme that always surfaces in the hardest of times, Mr. Rogers once said that in scary times, to "look for the helpers." Helpers can come in many forms, and this week they came in the bespectacled spectacle that is New York Freshman Congressman George Santos. Recently, while doom-scrolling Twitter, someone shared a picture of Santos bustling down a hallways with an infant in his arms, and that when asked if it was his baby, he said "not yet."

See, look:

I don't know if there is a funnier response to "is that your baby?" than "not yet." Like the baby is someone's, but Santos intends to make the baby his? With the passage of time, or what, exactly? If not now, when?

Honestly I'm not sure if it has even occurred to Santos that having a baby could be in any way harder than pocketing money meant for the dying pets of veterans.It's like how a bunch of credit card numbers used to belong to his donors and then, poof, now that is George Santos' money. You want to have been a star volleyball player at an elite private college, you simply say that you were. You want baby, you get baby. 

I wonder if he is trying to pull an Elizabeth Holmes by hoping that parenting a newborn will help him evade jail time for one of the many investigations into him for fraud and theft. It didn't work for her, and she actually birthed those babies, unlike Santos, whose parental vibes are more akin to Billy Zane grabbing that random kid in Titanic to sneak onto a lifeboat. "You wouldn't hurt a man with a baby, would you?" Perhaps George Santos should read the news; we don't live in a world that cares about the safety of babies! Get real, buddy!

Crap, reality got in the way of a kind of good run of jokes there. Long story short, the man shouldn't be in Congress, but I do hope it takes a while for him to be brought down. He's so fun.

Jada Pinkett Smith is also doing her part as a helper by occasionally reminding us all of the time that her children's father Will Smith slapped Chris Rock across the face at the 2022 Oscars. The latest twist: he is not her husband! Pinkett Smith (or should I say Pinkett?) quietly dropped that the pair has been separated for several years, so when Smith was like "don't talk about my wife like that," I guess she was scanning the crowd, like, "ooooh, who?!" 

Taylor Taylor Taylor? Taylor!

While I'd love to be a better and more interesting person, I will not deny that I'm hitting refresh on my Taylor Swift news alerts like a junkie mouse tapping the feeder bar for more cocaine. And friends, this weekend was rich in that particular kind of high. (The Taylor Swift one. Not the drug one. Please. I go to bed at 9.) Her Eras Tour Film had a gigantic opening weekend, Beyoncé went to the premiere, and Taylor delighted the crowd at SNL with a surprise appearance to introduce Ice Spice and then spent the rest of the night making out with her football star boyfriend Travis Kelce. Bless her for giving us so much; it is truly dizzying. 

(Also dizzying: the movie itself! I saw it on the big screen at OMSI over the weekend, and while experiencing the show in a huge stadium must have been akin to a religious experience, paying only $20 to see her three stories tall was also incredible. Great view of all the little kids dancing to "Shake it Off," which wasn't until late in the movie, when I was on probably my third can of rosé, and it was so wholesome and cute that I cried despite "Shake It Off" not being my favorite song by a longshot; anyway, Suzette's review for the Mercury will run later, and if she says that all the middle-aged crying moms in the crowd were a distracting embarrassment, no problem, I will simply crawl into a cave and die.)

In other celebrity news, Gigi Hadid was spotted over the weekend with intriguing himbo Bradley Cooper. Gigi Hadid has been teasing a relationship with Leonardo DiCaprio for the past several months despite her being far too old for him at 28. Fun fact: DiCaprio and Cooper are both 48, and would have been voting in their second presidential election at the time of Hadid's birth! That's so fun. Cooper and Hadid were papped in New York, but also allegedly spent the weekend in Rhode Island at the coastal estate of... you guessed it, Taylor Swift! The girl is fucking everywhere, but she's careful with what she gets her hands on, so I'm guessing this situationship is going somewhere. 

Elder Gossips

Our lord and savior Dolly Parton recently joked about her high-maintenance look, saying that the only time people would see her without makeup is if she was laid out on a stretcher. Fellow country icon Reba McEntire confirm Parton's old-school tendencies by stating "Dolly does not text." And like, yeah, no shit. You think you've got an emoticon in your pocket that's worthy of her time? Please. Save your lols, your likes, your thumbs up. She's put a whole face on for you, forever. You wanna talk to Dolly, you do it in fucking long form.

And Sir Paul McCartney added some fuel to the decades-old feud with John Lennon's wife Yoko Ono by stating that Ono's presence in their recording sessions was distracting. He said this on his podcast that he, an 81-year-old man, hosts. Grow up, Paul. It's not like Yoko prevented you from being a part of the most iconic rock and roll band of all time. You were one of only a handful of people so diabolically famous that starting a podcast is straight-up cringe and it's not like Yoko was standing in a recording studio making that decision for you now, was it?

Animal Queens

Congratulations are in order for the winner of fat bear week, and absolute brick house of a specimen known as 128 Grazer. She's beauty, she's grace; she'll disappear salmon in her face. 

Local Trash

Portland Public School Teachers are gearing up for a strike because the district won't pay them what they are worth. I don't understand the stalemate when unions are winning left and right and public sentiment for organizing is higher than it's been in decades. That the district is choosing to enrage local families who rely on schools for food, education, and childcare, and who tend to love their teachers but hate bureaucracy, when they will most certainly cave eventually anyway is definitely a choice! (Disclosure: Many of my best and smartest friends are public school teachers; I can never complain about being tired or burnt out because I'm sure they are always more tired, and more burnt out, while also being infinitely more noble, and at the very least they deserve to be rich, too.)

I feel like I could keep this going all day, so desperate am I to not refresh the regular (non-Taylor) news to learn of the latest horrors. I'm grateful at least that we can find the time to be stupid garbage monsters together. I hope you are all safe and warm.

Compassionately,

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