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by Elinor Jones

Hello my sweet angel baby Trash Pandas! Welcome back to the Trash Report. I’m Elinor Jones, currently recovering from the annual macaroni and cheese cookout I host with my friends. Ever eaten six kinds of macaroni and cheese in one sitting? There are worse things than a cheap rum hangover, and it’s being 40 and trying to digest 3,000 calories worth of cheese and noodles and wine in your sleep. Thankfully the only thing I have to do today is wade through the waters of gossip and news to deliver you the freshest, nastiest takes of all.

News!!!!??????

This last week was kind of a big one in the news? I write this as a question because I can hardly believe it and it seems portentous? To start, South Korea declared martial law and then the people rose up so swiftly and uniformly that it only lasted, like, six hours and the president APOLOGIZED and now everything is fine? Over in France, their whole government collapsed when lawmakers cast a no-confidence vote against their brand-new centrist Prime Minister and the leftist and rightist factions are looking at a massive showdown that could set the vibes for Europe’s return to fascism?? Then in Syria, rebels rose up to oust the ruthless dictator Bashar al-Assad, and in only two weeks were able to topple 50 years of their family rule and basically this was a series of events that is likely to have global repercussions for years, and we have no way of knowing how it’s gonna shake out except for just waiting??? So likes…yikes?!?!??!?!?!?   

All this to say: WHAT is WRONG with us that we can’t effectuate meaningful change in this country?! All this idiot voting and everything is still structurally basically the same! Greatest country on earth, MY ASS!!!!!!

Thankfully, there was just a large earthquake off the coast of Northern California. With any luck, the entirely of the Pacific Northwest might break completely free.

Biden His Time

Last week we talked about Biden pardoning his fuckup son Hunter, about which everyone and their most annoying cousin had something to say. Now, the annoying cousin of the day is Meghan McCain, who complained about the pardon while calling Hunter a nepo baby. Meghan McCain said that. Meghan M C C A I N. John McCain definitely would not have pardoned Meghan if he’d been president and she’d been a criminal, and he’d claim it was due to some strong sense of nobility, but it would actually be because he was sick of her shit and needed a break. That said, it is hilarious to call a 54-year-old man a baby. This is a net zero news story.

End of The Eras

Taylor Swift is performing the final shows of the Eras tour in Vancouver, Canada, after a million years and a billion shows (approximately). She also just released a special book about the tour, which fans gobbled up only to find it poorly printed and riddled with typos. Nobody needed that book anyway—Instagram is free, all that shit’s already available—but I gotta hand it to her for milking that cash cow for all its worth. It’s expensive to gas up a private jet! I can’t imagine being that rich and continuing to work that hard. The second I become rich and famous, I will cease to become famous, I can tell you that much for free! (Or wait—not for free! Shit, this is why I’ll never be rich, isn’t it?)

I’ll miss the hullaballoo surrounding the Eras stops and seeing celebrities and other mega-privileged folks share pictures of their experiences. Everybody seemed like they were always having a good time, including none other than former president Bill Clinton and his wife, almost-president Hillary Clinton. They attended a Toronto show, which they discussed with Kelly Ripa. When asked if he tried to use his status to score backstage access, Clinton said he did not, and that it probably wouldn’t have worked anyhow. Which I read as him admitting that he definitely attempted to score backstage access, but was rebuffed. Imagine how great it must have felt to tell Bill Clinton no? 

Eat the Rich. No… THOSE Rich.

Speaking of the immense and expanding wealth of the ruling class, Lizzo has been building her cred as an anti-capitalist darling on Bluesky, posting questions about the immorality of billionaires and wondering how to dismantle the evil that is capitalism. You love to see it! She hasn’t put out an album for a while, so I was like, hmm, what else is Lizzo up to? And I learned that what she has been up to is buying a $12 million dollar mansion that used to belong to Jeremy Renner. Click through for some pics of the interior—I truly cannot imagine a more luxe and tranquil setting for ruminating on wealth inequality. So maybe we sometimes like capitalism, like when it provides a few of the canyons.

In other celebrity news, horny gnome queen Sabrina Carpenter and Irish farmer who must have gotten famous in some sort of Aladdin genie wish situation Barry Keoghan broke up last week. Keoghan had been accused of cheating on Carpenter with some TikTok influencer, and was subsequently bullied clean off of Instagram. You know you’ve made it as a female pop icon when your fandom will gleefully ruin the life of any man who wrongs you. Like, the girl was touring with Taylor Swift, she was going to learn a thing or two about the ex treatment.

Nog on Your Life

This paper’s event site, EverOut, has a handy dandy roundup of where to enjoy eggnog this holiday season, and it’s a must-read for people like me who want exactly one-half of one cup of eggnog per year, and can’t stand buying the jug at the grocery store knowing that most of it will go down the drain. In related news, Mental Floss shared a history of eggnog and I learned that OG president George Washington was an OG noghead. Think about that when the sick freaks on the Supreme Court rally around originalism and the founders’ intents. All the founders actually had in mind when they came up with this dumb country was raw eggs and brown liquor. Now going back to my earlier rants about why we can’t have a better government, it kinds makes sense. This country wasn’t founded on freedom, it was founded on figuring out ways to use up eggs, but in a way that gets us fucked up. 

Hot Trash

Wow I can’t believe I got this far into the column without talking about the murder of that United Healthcare CEO in broad daylight by a hot man who has eluded capture! What a story! The words on the bullet casings and backpack of Monopoly money?! Get outta here. Any film editor would say this is far too heavyhanded and obvious. Alas, it actually happened, and the film adaptation is gonna be so fucking good. Jake Gyllenhaal has been needing a vehicle like this. The reward for information leading to the hot murderer’s arrest is up to $60,000, which is what the United Healthcare CEO made in two days of his job profiting off the pain and suffering of normal people. It’s almost as if the justice and law enforcement systems believe that $10 million dollars is simply too much money for a person to make. 

Okay kids, I worry that being upright for this long has upset my body in its struggle to digest ungodly amounts of salt and dairy. If you’re wondering, my entry to the macaroni and cheese bake-off this year was a Thanksgiving-inspired mac with turkey and cranberries, a stuffing crust on top, served with gravy, and I didn’t even win, because that’s how hard my crew rides for casserole. I love them, I love cheese, I love pasta, and I love you. 

Digestively,