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Time for this week’s hot gossip grind! 

by Elinor Jones

Hihihihihihihi! I missed you! I didn’t put out a Trash Report last week because I was on a legit vacation, which was wonderful, but I barely kept up on any news while I was away, so now all the relaxing I did on vacation is mooted by how hard I have to work to get back into the groove. Talk about a ripoff! Let’s work on syncing our vacation cycles, mkay? Everybody else should rest when I am resting. Anyway, welcome back, apparently there is SO MUCH to catch up on!

I’m a Branded Girl, in a Capitalist World

The biggest things happening in entertainment right now are the releases of Barbie and Oppenheimer. Or at least this is what we have been sold by studios that seem really desperate to package Oppenheimer as comparably iconic as Barbie, which completely crushed Oppenheimer at the box office last weekend. And get real! How many biopics already exist about white men who did wars? That is not special! Whereas, how many movies have been made about iconic toys from our childhood that seek to exploit our collective nostalgia so cunningly that we pay actual money to watch a glorified advertisement for something plastic we stopped playing with 20 years ago? Wait, don’t answer that. The point is, the worst people are mad about Barbie and it’s so funny when that happens. 

My producers dragged me to see ‘Barbie’ and it was one of the most woke movies I have ever seen. My full review of this flaming garbage heap of a film will be out on my YouTube channel tomorrow at 10am ET. pic.twitter.com/Lptha0p3qx

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) July 21, 2023

Besides the fact that I don’t think anyone could actually hate Barbie, Ben Shapiro claimed to have taken “pages and pages of notes” and as a film critic, the fuck he did! Nobody takes notes on paper as big as what he’s holding there! Ben Shapiro is god-awful for so many reasons, but I think him lying about taking notes on large paper might just be pushing me over the edge. Why be holding the paper so as to indicate notes, but not a pen, which would indicate the requisite writing of the notes? Somebody help me, please, I am trapped in this paragraph and I’m so mad!

When You’ve Got a Million Actors Striking, Who Can Hear a Lousy Whistle Blow?

Nothing can break me out of a Ben Shapiro rage spiral like literally any opportunity to make a reference to Newsies. So, the other big thing happening in Hollywood right now is the concurrent strikes of the Writer’s Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild. It’s a tough time for guilds, generally. You know this is a righteous cause because all the hottest celebs are on the picket lines wearing their unflattering free union swag like a bunch of normies. (Pro-tip: if you want a piece of Hollywood history, hit up Goodwill stores in Burbank come January for all the SAG-AFTRA threads.) I appreciate how many informative memes I’m seeing on Instagram being like, “don’t worry, don’t cancel anything, you can still enjoy your little shows.” It’s the sacrificing nothing that makes me sooo supportive of this worthy cause!

JK. Solidarity forever. 🙂

A very interesting tidbit that has emerged from the strike isn’t just Fran Drescher as a Union president, going viral for her impassioned speeches, making all of us realize that perhaps The Nanny was so respected in her field because she sounded like an righteously pissed off Union boss the whole time. No, it’s that Drescher was possibly very recently anti-vax! In an interview for Variety (via Celebitchy) Drescher shared that she only got vaccinated against COVID because she was losing work for not getting it! WHAT?! Our highly-memed Union queen—nuanced?? This just proves that there are no perfect heroes, my friends. A bright spotlight can reveal a little grime on just about everybody, even the ones who have style, who have flair, who were there.

Thank U, Next

Since we last spoke, some noteworthy celebrity marriages have fallen to bits! One of these was Ariana Grande’s marriage to some guy whose name I don’t remember, but always gave me bad vibes, so good for her. If she is ever released from filming Wicked, I think some real bangers are going to come out of this relationship’s demise. Rumor has it she is moving on with her Wicked costar (who is married! With a baby!), but I’m saying it now: I bet anything that she and Pete Davidson will give us a Gen-Z Bennifer-esque reunion that will break the internet for one truly joyous news cycle. Mark my words, friends. This will happen.

The other recent celebrity divorce is Sofia Vergara and Joe Manganiello. I’ve never especially cared about either of them, but it confuses my average-looking, middle-class self when two people as hot and rich as them can’t make it work. Can one get bored of physical perfection? The stealthy minds over at Lainey Gossip actually did have this breakup on their radar based solely on the fact that Joe posted a really shitty picture of the two of them for their anniversary a couple of weeks back. So now I understand that something else must have been going on, because if you’ve got time to find a picture where those two human gods look janky, you’ve got to be really fucking pissed about something. 

Shark Revenge

Loving this clickbaity headline at CNN: He nearly died in a shark attack. Why he says sharks need to be saved.  I haven’t watched the video but it’s pretty easy to figure out that the man wants the sharks saved so that he can be the one to kill all the sharks, like an Inigo Montoya situation. Vengeance, pure and simple. They could develop this into a Liam Neeson vehicle and I will watch it, plus both sequels (for when follow-up vengeance is required on dolphins and, I don’t know, sting rays?) Wow, I hope the Hollywood strikes end soon so that I can get this great idea off the ground! Would never scab, but willing to take some initial calls.

Politics

Former Vice President Mike Pence said that he’s “not convinced” that Trump’s actions during the insurrection on January 6th were “criminal.” Lest we forget, some of those actions included praise for mobs that threatened to, in so many words, hang Mike Pence. He’s all “it’s not a crime if I actually wish I were dead!”

I usually like to pepper this column with tweets that I found funny that I think you would enjoy, too. Sadly, Elon Musk is really ruining this for me and now he’s rebranding the site as X. Twitter was already a successful recognizable brand. The whole thing strikes me as very Crystal Pepsi.

https://t.co/5avZFu4ukF pic.twitter.com/1DU7MYPoHU

— James Medlock (@jdcmedlock) July 24, 2023

Holy moly, this was such a long column! Clearly I can never go on vacation again. Much love to all of you unrested go-getters out there who I will never disappoint again.

Grinding,