This Week in People

Yes, well, I know it doesn't really sound like my sort of reading material and mostly it is not, but I get People Magazine and read it. Mostly I tune out the stuff about famous people and who they are dating (clearly there is something about money and fame that severely clouds general judgment). I like to pay more attention to the stuff with regular people or those few famous and/or wealthy people that actually have a good head on his or her shoulders.

So this week's issue had some interesting tidbits... this is the publication dated 16 April (who knows why publications do that), with a heavy-set Valerie Bertinelli on the cover. Apparently she would like to publicly lose weight and they clearly put her size 14 body (which really is not that horrendous - I'm a size 18) in the worst possible shirt ever, to make her look really overweight. To me, this is quite transparent, but there are a lot of readers at the more common denominator level who will buy into the idea that she is that heavy...

There is a lot of fluff in the opening few pages, but there was one photograph of Gwyneth Paltrow and her daughter with Chris Martin - named Apple. This is a constant source of amazement to me as it is just criminal in my mind to name your kids something that will haunt them all their childhood and possibly their adult life, too. As if it is not hard enough to be a kid. Why make it that much more difficult?

Britney Spears - this is a woman who just underlines why famous people are such an incredible source of disappointment. This is someone who at one time was touted as being a wonderful role model for kids. (Of course, kids loved the Spice Girls, too - yikes!) Now she is a mother of two kids with a guy who is a known philanderer and clearly is just spreading the sperm around without thinking this through. He is an idiot. And she married him! And then she had two kids (and what a model - ha, ha - parent she turned out to be! Clearly owning a brain is not a prerequisite to having children).

There is an article in here called OVERBOARD! about two kids on a spring-break cruise that fell overboard and were successfully rescued from the water! The captain is the hero althought the article focussed more on the kids who went in the drink. It was a good thing, though and quite a success story. I loved it. Imagine that - they were in the water for four to five hours! Now, it was like bathwater - around 70 degrees - but the girl who went over hit the water in such a way that she broke a couple of ribs and a lung contusion. The guy only had some minor jellyfish stings. (He definitely made out better than she did!). Interesting!

There is a one page article about how a woman was saved by her two-year-old, 75lb golden retriever who heard her choking, knocked her down and gave her the Heimlich Manoeuver to get the piece out of her throat. Whether or not he really knew what he was doing is debateable, but he did it none-the-less and she is the better (which is to say alive) for it. I loved that, too.

And then there is My Life in Pictures... RICHARD GERE. Normally, again, most famous people are not all that and a bag of chips but I really do like Richard Gere. He has warm, friendly, intelligent eyes. He is a good-looking man but unpreposessing enough that he is not sort of "loud", if you know what I mean. But the first photo of him is an old one with him standing in front of an old car, with his hands behind his head as though he'd run them through his hair, wearing a sleeveless t-shirt, a pair of jeans and boots. YOWZA! I don't even mind that there is a cigarette hanging out of his mouth (normally there is nothing more unappealing than a smoker!). He has big biceps and a hell of a great figure! Very masculine. I love it. I may take this into work to put on the board behind me.

(I know I started off by saying I don't care much for the famous, but it seems that there are a lot of things to say about them this week anyway...)

Bono, someone for whom I have great affection and respect, has been made an honorary British knight. The signifigance and irony is not lost on me. However, because he is Irish and not a person originating from Great Britain or any of its owned lands, he cannot be called Sir Bono. So he joked, "You have permission to call me anything you want except Sir, all right? Lord of lords, your demigodness, that'll do." I really like that man so much!

Some designer's granddaughter (whose mother is the tackiest thing to walk the earth) has anorexia nervosa and really looks like a mummy, but without the wrappings and fun stuff to cover up the skeleton She just has pallid skin stretched over bones. Having seen anorexia up close a few times (the last time was one of our members on the squad), it is not a pretty thing. How anyone with this is incapable of seeing it is a mystery to me, but then, my struggle with weight is the opposite and more common battle. Still... I would rather be me and overweight than constantly living with one foot in the grave because I look like a victim of a German concentration camp.

And that concludes this week in People...!