Hey friends. I am writing this on Sunday. My daughter and I like to snuggle on the couch and watch dumb Instagram reels on my phone together on the weekends, and but yesterday ICE shot a man to death in Minneapolis, so I had turn my phone away from her to make sure a news feed wasn’t autoplaying his murder before I could click onto cat videos. So, yeah. How are all of you doing?
I still wanted to write some funny things for you, even though this is a really, really sad, and bad time. Maybe it was more for me than for you, I don’t know. Anyway, here’s the Trash Report.
I Guess the Couch Had a Headache
J.D. and Usha Vance announced this week that they are having their fourth child, a boy, later this year. This is psychotic. Normal people are too sad and depressed and bloated to do anything but look at our phones and cry right now, and these sickos are actually getting off on it. The cruelty is the point. I hope their son has a good and safe life. Really, I do. But his parents? I hope they lie awake in terror everything fucking night of their lives for the danger that their brown-skinned son will experience while living in America. I hope they never know a moment’s peace.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is also pregnant, as is Stephen Miller’s wife Katie. The worst people are getting laid right now. They’re not just “fine” with everything going on right now; they’re like into it.
Posh and Becks and Becks and Peltz
After years of rumors, Brooklyn Beckham took to Instagram last week to call out his famous parents for being horrible to his wife, Nicola Peltz, for a) ruining their wedding, b) trying to copyright and brand everything in their lives, and c) faking it all for social media. Bless this young man for giving us this news during an otherwise extremely bleak news cycle! He could have dropped this information at any time, but doing it during one of the worst Januaries of our lives was a gift. I checked, and Brooklyn was born in England, which means he can be knighted, and he deserves it for this alone.
Two Feud, Two Feudious
The ongoing legal drama between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni also hit new heights this week with the release of several emails from Lively’s camp to other celebrities and back. And honestly? They were pretty fun! After digging through the barely literate Epstein emails, this was some Shakespearean shit. That said, it’s not clear why they tried to rope Ben Affleck into the whole thing, except just to show Baldoni that their friends are cooler? That said, I’ve read Jenny Slate‘s books and I trust her judgment completely, so when she calls him a fraud, I definitely believe it. What I did not see in the emails, however, was anyone making fun of Baldoni for having a weirdly long giraffe neck. I definitely would have started all of my mean, complain-y emails with that. Plus he’s always wearing his shirts partway unbuttoned, so his neck looks even longer. His publicists truly do him no favors. Or maybe they hate him, too.
Feud 3: Tokyo Drift
There is just so much DRAMA this week! The newest season of Queer Eye is coming out on Netflix, and culture darling Karamo Brown backed out of doing press at the last minute to protect his mental health and because he was worried about getting bullied by Antoni, Tan, and JVN. Who would bully Karamo?! He’s the nice one! There needs to be another Queer Eye reboot where this cast gets Queer Eye’d and a future culture expert gives them the Karamo treatment and heals them all.
Okay. another TV thing (although I don’t think this counts as a feud): beloved judge Prue Leith is stepping down from Great British Bake Off. She’s stepping down because she’s kind of old—85!!!—and filming takes a toll, so I get it, even though it’s too bad. She’s so sweet and I always love seeing what kind of weird jewelry she’s going to wear. I just hope this doesn’t mean that Paul Hollywood thinks he’s holding down the show. Buddy, we watch it in spite of you, not because of you.
Awards Season
The Academy Award nominations came out last week and there were definitely some surprises! I say this not as a person who consumes all the smart movies (I am too busy and dumb), but as a voracious consumer of the culture. And I can’t believe that Wicked: For Good was locked out! I am not surprised, however, that The Rock was not nominated for his movie The Smashing Machine, although some were. I just don’t think we can live in a world where The Rock has an Oscar, but Amy Adams does not. You know? But I wonder if people have grown fatigued of actors trying to leverage fighting films into awards. Sydney Sweeney clearly tried this with Christy and that fell flat, too. If I was an actor I would take this as a sign that I no longer needed to get into shape to get a role. My imaginary acting life just got so much easier, you guys.
Speaking of movies, apparently a new Chris Pratt action movie called Mercy just overtook a third Avatar movie at the box office. There’s a third Avatar movie?? That was popular?!? Who is going to see these things?? There’s like, a whole universe of people who do very different things from me, I think.
Papal Trash
Harry Styles is finally releasing new music, and he’s also finally addressed why he was in Rome for the newest Pope’s conclave: It’s for the very relatable reason that he went to Rome for a haircut and since he was close by, he stopped by to see what the fuss was about. As one does.
Local Trash
ICE is everywhere and it’s scary AF, which is why the staff vs. leadership standoff between the nurse’s union and Legacy hospital leadership is extra stressful: as Taylor and Jeremiah wrote, the hospital is trying to say that the union’s public statement on ICE presence in the hospital might scare off patients from seeking care, when if you ask me, it might be THE PRESENCE OF ICE IN HOSPITALS SCARING OFF PATIENTS FROM SEEKING CARE?!?!?!?!?!! Maybe?!?
In other local trash that is much lower stakes, I’m sick of this weather. It’s not supposed to be sunny and cold in Portland in the winter. We’re already on edge and now our skin is dry and our hair is flat on top of that? Give us a fucking break, universe; we can only handle so much.
On that note, I’m off to find small joys to celebrate in between witnessing the horrors and thinking carefully about how to best be there for myself, my family, and my community, in this very shitty time. I remain ever grateful for the messy celebrities, and for all of you. Take care of each other.
Warmly,
