Catching Up on People (Magazine)

As you who have slogged your way through my blog know, there are five regularly issued publications that I read:

Discover Magazine
Scientific American
Human Resources Management
National Geographic

and...

People Magazine.

You can see the weirdness in that list... I read all these science and professional publications, and - sleazy, sleazy - People Magazine. Now, it is not all sleaze and slime. It does showcase other articles and it is not making stuff up the way that disgusting rags like The Enquirer does. That is really scraping the bottom. Most of the grandstanding famous people like articles about Jennifer Aniston wanting to have a child sans husband is something I might skip. More often than not I do. Some of the articles about Sandra Bullock I have read. When it comes to the famous people, it is a hit or miss. The other more human-interest articles are better.

But there are some things you just can't miss.

So let me dig through them. Nancy is away and I've got about eight weeks worth of People that she has not read. I wanted to post about them but you have seen how often I have been online of late...

OK, where am I?

I'm waaaaaay behind, but really, most topics only warrant a few comments, not pages and pages of it. And most things don't even warrant commentary of any kind. So this should not be too long winded. (I say that now...)

The publication of 2 August (which showed up in the mail between Thursday, 22 July and Saturday, 24 July) has Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt on the cover. I like them both. Angeline Jolie is a little unusual with the tattoos and the family baggage but that makes her more rather than less "normal" or someone you can identify with. Certainly their attitude about children and adoption is something I think very highly of them. None of this grandstanding and none of the invitro and trying over and over and over to have natural pregnancies if it did not work. They adopted more kids - or maybe the same amount - as they've had naturally. I tend to feel nothing warm toward Celine Dion, who could adopt many, many children from anywhere in the world but instead of feeling that their 9-year-old son is enough, continues to fight with invitro fertilisation to have another child.

I got all that from just the cover... maybe this will be a long-winded post.

Many times the most interesting part of the issue is the MailBag section. Readers from all over write in via e-mail or letters to comment on different articles. I haven't done it (maybe I did once) but it's never been published. I suppose if it moved me enough I'd do it. But others do, frequently, and some I like and some I want to slap.

Everyone likes Sandra Bullock and slaps Jesse James around. It's rather amusing. Elin and Tiger Woods, by way of contrast, are both looked down upon but for different reasons. It's unusual to find unanimous comments on different marriages ending for the same reasons. Elizabeth Edwards, like Sandra, gets the warm fuzzies and everyone looks down on John Edwards and his lower than dirt girlfriend or whatever she is and f0r the obvious reasons. The other woman, whose name I cannot recall and don't care to, has publicly slammed Elizabeth Edwards but also petitioned for a dollar amount of child support that is just absurd. She has made herself someone to revile.

Star Tracks is very often just pictures of the rich and famous in the outside world and generally there is not a lot to say about these tiny tidbits. Famous people - and rich people - do what you and I do. The only difference here is that far more people recognise them and they have a bank roll far larger than mine. Shrug.

However, Scoop rarely disappoints. The people focused in it do, but that is normal. So for this issue, we have Lindsay Lohan, with a picture that looks terrible. It's tough to know if this is really what she looks like or if she is putting on to some degree. But if she is looking for sympathy she is unlikely to get it. I don't know anyone who thinks, "Awww, poor thing..." about this one.

It's entitled "Lindsay in Lockdown" and reads: "On July 20 Lindsay Lohan, 24, began a 90-day jail sentence at Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood, Calif., for violating probation in a DUI case. In the hours leading up to her surrender, a source says Lohan--who had been staying at a Los Angeles sober-living facility started by lawyer Robert Shapiro--"was a nervous, fidgety mess." Luckily for Lohan, she'll likely server just a few weeks due to overcrowding. She's then required to enter a 90-day inpatient rehab program, which may coincide with the Sept. 3 release of her film Machete, opposite Robert De Niro. When Lohan emerges, she's expected to start shooting the biopic Inferno (about 70s porn star Linda Lovelace) and continue expanding her 6126 clothing line. Says a source: "There's an expectation that out of this drama, she'll get more gigs and money."

I would really hate to see that going to jail makes her more rather than less marketable. I personally think she should leave the movie business altogether - this is not for everyone. I can't help but think that with the fame and money taken out of the equation, she might not have all these addiction issues.

As always, the morons that make up the show The Jersey Shore manage to get into just about every issue of People Magazine. It is disappointing. In this one, there is a small blurb in Scoop with a photo of Snooki (who looks terrible) with this kid with the unlikely nickname "the Situation" (I have not a clue what that means. None). The blurb reads "JERSEY SHORE ROCKS - The Jersey Shore cast toasted the release of the show's soundtrack July 13 at New York City's Marquee. Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi rocked a new poof-less haido, Ronnie Magro downed shots of Three Olives Vodka and DJ Pauly D traded off on the turntables with rapper Lil Jon."

Snooki looked old and really bad with pouting lips and the kid "the Situation" had a very bemused look on his face. Maybe it was all the alcohol, I don't know. Whatever...

Under the TV section, there it is again... Jersey Shore. The world's worst representatives of the state I live in and have been living in all of my life. It really bugs me that people think this is what New Jersey people might be. But the review restored a bit of my faith:

"Season 2 of MTV's instant trash classic moves the Situation, Snooki and Co. down to Miami Beach for a little change of scenery and no apparent change in attitude. Actually, the scenery hasn't changed that much, either. The producers have somehow managed to make the Miami as ugly as Seaside Heightes, N.J.: An aerial shot of the Atlantic looks like an enormous pea-green shag carpet. In the premier, Angelina, who bowed out in season 1, rejoins the group, setting off all sorts of tense vibrations in their exquisite group dynamic. Then they all go out on the town and drink a lot and talk sloppy and fight. Snooki is what makes the show watchable. One of the greatest found objects in reality-TV history, she resembles Cher poured into a Chianti bottle, and every word out of her mouth is remarkably bone-headed. Washing clothes in the sink, she complains, 'I feel like a pilgrim from the friggin' 20s!'"

I rest my case. She is beyond an idiot.

In the bigger stories, Mel Gibson has turned into a nut. Not that this doesn't happen to rich and famous people, but he really seems to have lost his marbles. He certainly has bad taste in women. This winner, Oksana, is the homeliest woman in the star circles. She is butt-ugly.

Which brings us to the bigamist bride, Bobbi Finley. YIKES. This woman has been absolutely beaten with an ugly stick and she wracked up anywhere from 12 to 39 (!) husbands with multiple aliases and a rotation of servicemen. She said, "I know I have problems but I'm not a grifter." Really? Putting all of those men into debt for herself doesn't make her a lying sack of grifting shit? I think not.

And meet Crystal Renn, a "plus-sized" model. She's plus sized the way I'd like to be plus-sized. (Which is to say she isn't really plus-sized.) It wasn't really worth reading - she is not much to look at. She should be but isn't.

And that takes care of that one week...