Hi, and happy mid-October, Trash Pandas! It’s me, Elinor Jones, here again to talk about the latest news and gossip with all of you, because you deserve it (in a nice way.) I went to a pumpkin patch over the weekend, because when you’re a parent sometimes you have to spend a perfect fall afternoon waiting in line for apple cider, despite having some at home and dodging clueless adults in ugly clothes staging full-on photo shoots on the hay bales that children are trying to play on. When I say I’m a fall girlie, I mean it’s the color story that goes best with my face, and I like drinking red wine on the couch when it’s cold outside. Not all that other shit.
Okay, what is happening? Oh wow: a LOT.
National Trash
With the midterm elections just a few weeks away, Republicans nationally are clenching their sphincters to avoid shitting their pants at what will likely be a very bad outcome for them. Trump and JD Vance have both been out stumping for candidates in close races, with varying degrees of normalcy. At a campaign rally in Texas, a man in the crowd yelled “I love you” to Vance, to whom Vance responded, “I love you too, sir. In a platonic way. I’m the vice president, not James Talarico.” I have been thinking a lot about how great of a nickname James Talafreako is, and I feel bad, because I really don’t like when people are like “Trump is despicable, but he sure is funny!” Because the funniness can excuse the evil for a lot of people and that is how he holds on to power, which is bad. So I was delighted to realize that it was Talarico’s opponent, Ken Paxton, who coined the moniker. So we can let our Talafreako flags fly without guilt. Anyway, Vance insinuated that James Talarico was gay, which he thinks is gross, shortly after telling a man he loves him. Mmmkay. Not to be out-weirded, at a campaign event in Ohio, Trump said that he had examined the body of Ohio Senator Jon Husted, including his ass. Hey, is it just me or are these homophobes gay as hell?
Portland > Portland
Up in Maine, Republican Senator Susan Collins is facing a tough bid for reelection against Democrat Troy Jackson. Collins’ PAC tried to air some commercials, but in a hilarious boo-boo, they bought the airtime in our Portland instead of their Portland. HA HA. Imagine time traveling from now back to that meeting when they flipped a coin to name our city to explain that something like this would inevitably happen. “You see,” I would say (if they let women speak in public back then?) “in the future we will all be able to connect instantly through a series of tubes and there will be personalized talking advertisements sent to shiny rectangles we keep in our pockets, and it’d be easy to send them to the wrong Portland.” They would have been like, “oh sure, lady, if you wouldn’t mind holding on to this rope, we’re just going to check and see if you can float real fast.” Back to present times: What hubris of the Maine Portlanders, to just say “air this in Portland,” forgetting that there are two, and not realizing that *we* are the most important Portland. They may be the “Maine” Portland, but we are the MAIN Portland.
In local midterm news, Jane Fonda has entered the chat around our gubernatorial race. Her PAC donated $5,000 to Governor Tina Kotek’s reelection campaign for being a champion of environmental causes. Jane Fonda was right about Vietnam, she was right about the importance of aerobic exercise, I say we trust her on this, too.
The Most Important Story of our Time
I am sure you have all clicked into this column today because you want to know what I have to say about Kelly Clarkson’s failed attempt to purchase a $15,000 animatronic bird from a Brooklyn toy store. Great news: I have A LOT of thoughts. Obviously, my first instinct was to be insulted on Clarkson’s behalf, as I am also an average-sized woman in her 40s with bangs and long brown hair that is dyed into a soft balayage, and we are a people who deserve to be WORSHIPPED, not snubbed by retail staff. So I’m on Kelly’s side? Well, I don’t really think it’s a big deal that she couldn’t buy the bird. Many of us—perhaps most of us—do not have robotic bird toys in our homes, and we are getting by just fine. And then when I read that employees of the toy store are receiving death threats, I have to wonder: Who loves a celebrity so much that the thought of her not being able to have a $15,000 robotic bird in her home makes you want to murder the person who refused to sell it to her? “Your honor, it’s just that she wanted the bird.” These are but a few of the MANY things I’ve been thinking about, and this is the best thing to have ever happened since Aunt Becky and one of the Desperate Housewives got caught lying about their children playing volleyball to get into USC, and I cannot wait to casually refer back to it for the rest of my life.
Trump’s Gals
Back to national politics: Trump’s former almost-daughter-in-law and his appointed ambassador to Greece, Kimberly Guilfoyle, was fired last week for brazenly asking European officials to pay down her credit card bill in exchange for access to MAGA elites. A leaked message said “Babe, please wire me money.” This is an appropriate thing to send your partner when staring down an animatronic bird at a Brooklyn toy shop, but it’s not okay when you’re a government official threatening to topple an ancient democracy.
Elsewhere in the MAGA-Barbie neighborhood, Trump appointed a new blonde press secretary named Katie Zacharia who was fired after just five days on the job. In her short time in the position, Zacharia went from being a person nobody knew anything about to being a person everyone knew had flunked the bar exam.
Celebrity Lighting Round
There’s so much going on, there are a few things I have to discuss that I can’t do a full paragraph on, because I do have an actual life to attend do. Okay, People reported that Matthew McConaughey once spent two days in a desert reading 20 years of negative reviews about himself that had been compiled in a “big thick book.” I can’t even read the comments on Instagram when this column goes live, so it’s definitely not a choice I could have made, but good for him. Maybe I need to take my phone to the desert? Speaking of lanky blond men, Glen Powell recently said he prefers to stay quiet on politics, which is what Nate Bergatze said for years before showing up at a White House cage fight, so I think we all know what Glennyboy meant. And in final lanky blond man news, Alexander Skargard attended a premier of his new film Wicker, where he plays a basket who fucks Olivia Coleman, while wearing see-through shoes. As in, they were oxford-shaped, with laces and everything, but made of clear PVC. And you know, I could see this shoe becoming popular among the people who take off their shoes and socks on airplanes, as it would provide them undeniable germ protection while still exposing their toes to unwitting strangers, which seems to be their main thing. And finally, Jenny McCarthy recently said that she had attended the wedding of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes with her then-boyfriend Jim Carrey, and she thought Holmes was in trouble from the jump. And while that is probably true, as a famed anti-vaxxer, I am hardly trusting McCarthy’s opinion of someone’s wellbeing. She probably just thought Holmes just needed some colloidal silver or a moonlight enema.
Pet News!
Robert De Niro apparently has 18 small dogs, but I don’t know how we got that number. Woody Harrelson said he was shocked to be greeted by like nine dogs when he went to De Niro’s New York City apartment. Back in 2022, De Niro said that he had many dogs, “more than 10,” and so many he didn’t know all of their names, but not a number. Regardless: too many! I love scents and perfumes and I love learning what celebrities smell like, but for him, I think I’ve got a hunch, and it’s probably not great. In other celebrity pet news, Megan Thee Stallion adopted a cat that had been hanging around her recording studio, and she named it Miso. Aww. It’s cute that she may be one of the baddest rappers of this generation, but she’s still your basic girlie next door naming cats after Asian food.
Local Trash
Johnny 5, the robot character from the Oregon-filmed Short Circuit movie, is now back in Oregon. He (they?) can be visited at the Clatsop County museum in Astoria, where the film was shot. I am glad the robot is in a museum and not for sale, although this does decrease the likelihood of Kelly Clarkson visiting Astoria.
Also from the O: A recent study of Google searches shows that Oregon’s most popular candy is salt water taffy. But (pushes glasses up nose) I disagree with this methodology. The study doesn’t show it was our most popular candy, just our most searched-for candy. My guess it was just smart Oregonians googling things like “salt water taffy gross” and “salt water taffy why” and “who is eating all this salt water taffy” or “why do places at the coast sell salt water taffy instead of the superior coastal treat, cheese curds?”
Okay, that is it for this week, babes. Reminder that the midterms are closing in on us, and you should have received your ballot by now. Some of my genius colleagues at this genius publication put together a very handy cheat sheet if you’re not sure which little bubbles to fill in. Voting is hot and so are you.
Electorally,
