I Can't Resist

After posting the new People cover Wednesday morning I lasted 48 hours without a snarky Kimye post, but I can't resist linking to an article on the website of the British edition of Brides. In the course of evaluating a very exclusive hotel in Ireland ("one of Ireland's most stunning and exclusive stately homes," according to Tom Sykes at The Royalist) the writer had a surprise encounter with Kimye on their honeymoon.

It's all very low-key except for one slight element of wretched excess. Although they left daughter North at home with granny Kris, which is understandable, K and K apparently can't get through their honeymoon without the services of a bodyguard and not one but two personal assistants. 

Read it here.

Update: I still can't resist. Really, the more information that leaks out about the big wedding, the tackier the whole thing appears to be. Check out the latest from Page Six, which is so juicy with over-the-top/wretched details that I found myself wondering if it could be a parody. 

Genetically Blessed

Back in the early days of the blog, I linked to a Vanity Fair poll of the World's Most Handsome Man. (Here's my story, but unfortunately the actual poll's no longer online, so I can't link to it.) After carefully inspecting photos of the candidates, I choose Argentinian polo player Nacho Figueras. I'd never heard of him before but he sure looked good in the pictures. Check this out:



Now Buzzfeed has a cute feature about boy band singer Siva Kaneswaran, saying he's got the most perfect face in the history of faces:

 

What does it all mean? Once again, absolutely nothing. Just some fun eye candy on a nice summer afternoon.  Enjoy!

Note: I corrected this post. Nacho plays polo, not soccer. Also note that according to Nacho's Wikipedia entry, he came in second in Vanity Fair's poll, behind Robert Pattinson, who won, and just ahead of Brad Pitt.

And Then There Were Four

Another city has dropped out of contention to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. When the Sochi games kicked off there were 6 cities in the semi-final stage of preparing a bid, then Stockholm dropped out in mid-February.

Now Krakow, Poland has withdrawn due to a lack of public support. That leaves 4 cities on the list:

Almaty, Kazakhstan
Beijing, China
Lviv, Ukraine
Oslo, Norway

gamesbids.com, a site that obsessively tracks all things related to Olympic host bidding, say Lviv and Oslo could also withdraw their bids, Lviv due to the conflict with Russia and Oslo for a lack of financial support. There's beginning to be some news coverage of the apparent disinterest in hosting the games; here's how The Guardian's playing it.

No Comment

The Guessing Game

What will be on the cover of People magazine this week? 

The Wedding: Two narcissistic twits got married in Italy this week-end and based on the obsessive coverage at people.com I'm assuming that will be the main cover story. As I write this on Monday morning, the website currently has a "Breaking" banner announcing an "exclusive" picture: "Kanye smiles sweetly at his bride, Kim." Really, this whole thing could be a sign that the apocalypse is upon us.

Tuesday Morning Update: There were a few other lower-tier celebrity weddings recently: Lisa Edelstein (Cuddy on House,) Lisa Niemi (widow of Patrick Swayze) and Christopher Lawford (a Kennedy, an actor and author) also got married over the week-end.

Two "real-life" stories might rate the cover if it weren't for the tsunami of Kimye coverage: Edward Snowden's interview with NBC News and the shooting at UC Santa Barbara.

More From Page Six

See, I'm not the only one who thinks the Kimye marriage won't last.

Page Six at the New York Post has a great little story with the headline "Is The Kimye Marriage Doomed?"

For the record, the oddsmaker quoted in the story gives Mr. and Mrs. Kimye a year and a day.

Read it here.

Wikiality: A Coati Is Not A Brazilian Aardvark

The New Yorker has a fun story about how a small mistake on Wikipedia, intentional or otherwise, can take on a life of its own:

This kind of feedback loop—wherein an error that appears on Wikipedia then trickles to sources that Wikipedia considers authoritative, which are in turn used as evidence for the original falsehood—is a documented phenomenon. There’s even a Wikipedia article describing it. Some of the most well-known examples involve Wikipedia entries for famous people, such as when users edited the article on the British actor Sacha Baron Cohen to say he had worked at Goldman Sachs. When a Wikipedia editor tried to remove the apocryphal detail, it took some convincing. Because it had since appeared in several articles on Cohen in the British press, the burden was on Wikipedians to disprove the myth. 

Read it here. 

The Most Remarkable People Of Our Time

Who? Who? Our soldiers? Bill and Melinda Gates? The Pope?

Nope.

The most remarkable people of our time are... wait for it... The Kardashians.

So says Kanye West.

Note: this blog isn't going to be "all Kardashians, all the time," at least I don't think so. It's just that this week-end's wretchedly obnoxious and tacky wedding is like manna from heaven for a snarky blogger and in spite of my best intentions to ignore the whole sorry mess, the posts just keep coming. But fear not, it will all be over soon - the K postings for sure, and possibly the marriage as well.

The Republic Still Stands

From the New York Post: 

A Kennedy, I Heard

Wretched excess? Yes
Over-the-top? You bet
Just plain tacky? Absolutely

The deed is done, K-watchers. Kimye is officially a married couple and info about the big do is slowly trickling out. I just counted *seven* wedding stories on people.com, plus the exciting news that more photos will be in next week's issue of People magazine, on newsstands Friday. I haven't written my Guessing Game post yet, but it's a safe bet what the main cover story will be. If my math is correct, 72 days takes us to August 4; presumably the marriage will last a bit longer than that. You know lots of folks will be watching and counting.

The Daily Beast has a story too, including this fun tidbit:
For those who are obsessed with the popular reality show, the wedding was a pinnacle moment. For the rest of the world, it was a curiously bizarre event. Most Florentines didn’t even know who the couple getting married was. “A Kennedy, I heard,” Beatrice Cigarini told The Daily Beast as she walked her dog around the perimeter of the castle. She had never heard of the Kardashians. 
Love it! 

"Bride Of Kanyestein"

This is it, K-watchers, the big Kimye wedding is taking place today, somewhere in Europe. I hadn't decided whether to blog about it or not, but when I saw the Bride of Kanyestein headline (and deliciously snarky article) on Page Six page of the NY Post, I decided to dive right in. Author Kirsten Fleming hits just the right tone, describing Kim Kardashian as a "soon-to-be Stepford wife," a "bootylicious bride-to-be" with a "scantily clad clan of reality riffraff" who will soon be Kanye's "vacant Barbie doll to dress up in all of the finery the top designers have to offer."

Wow. What a great way to start a holiday week-end and I'm sure there's more to come. I'll try to keep up with all the juicy coverage; in the meantime, read the whole Post article here.

Things I Don't Care About

Tony Vlachos (who?) won Survivor: Cagayan and Caleb Johnson (who?) won American Idol. Seriously - I didn't even know these shows were still on the air.

The Reality Of Food, Part 2

The Fed Up Challenge to give up sugar for 10 days ended yesterday and I'm so glad I did it. I wasn't absolutely perfect at it but overall my sugar consumption was way down and my plan is to continue to minimize, if not completely eliminate, sugar from my diet. I was surprised that it wasn't that hard to skip the overt sugars, i.e., the candy bars, cake, cookies, ice cream, etc.

For me the biggest challenge of the Challenge was the "white things," specifically pasta and bread. I had switched from white bread to 100% wheat bread quite a while ago, thinking it was the best choice, but as I wrote in an earlier post, that bread is made with added sugar and molasses and has 4 grams of sugar per slice. I've tried wheat pasta in the past too and some brands are OK but it's not the same. I know the real answer is to stop, or at least cut way, way back on eating bread/pasta at all, but that will be a lot harder for me than skipping a bag of M&Ms every afternoon.

So the battle continues. This morning I saw another article about the power of the food industry and how difficult it is to get accurate information and make smart choices about food. Dr. Barbara H. Roberts, writing at The Daily Beast, lays out the ways the American Heart Association is influenced by Big Food, sticking with recommendations that are no longer scientifically supportable. If you've ever bought something at the grocery store based on the Heart Check "this food is healthy for your heart" label, this will make your blood boil:

The AHA introduced the Heart Check Program in 1995 and it has been quite the moneymaker, as the AHA sells the Heart Check stamp-of-approval to food manufacturers. Food companies shell out between $1,000 and $7,500 to be certified by the Heart Check Program—and then there are yearly renewal fees. The program currently endorses 889 foods as “heart-healthy.”

And the Heart Check Program is not the only way the AHA benefits from Big Food companies. In their annual report for 2012-2013, the AHA lists among its lifetime donors of $1 million or more Conagra, Quaker Oats, and Campbell Soups, among others.

Read the whole thing here.

Kanye And Jay Z, Beyoncé And Kim

Before last week, if I had seen a headline saying "Rap star attacked by sister-in-law," I would have assumed one of the Kardashian girls had gone off on Kanye West. (Yes, they're not quite in-laws yet but you get my point.) Because of a leaked surveillance video tape, pretty much the whole world knows that it was Beyoncé's sister who attacked Jay Z, and it was fascinating to watch the so-called "scandal" play out last week. Things seem to have settled down in Bey and Jay-land this week, however, just in time for the third-time's-the-charm wedding of Kim K and Kanye.

When Kim married Kris Humphries in 2011 I gave the marriage two years, which turned out to be just a tad optimistic. They lasted 72 days. A few weeks after the Kimye baby (a.k.a. Miss North West) was born last summer, I gave Kim and Kanye two years, which would take them until August, 2015. We're now about halfway through my 24-month estimation and with the big wretched excess/over-the-top/just plain tacky wedding apparently set for this week-end all appears to be well in the land of Kimye. Maybe they will still be living happily ever after a year from now, or even five years from now. To me the whole thing looks like a narcissistic, self-reverential made-in-PR-heaven fantasy that can't possibly survive the day-to-day reality of marriage, but hey, I could be wrong. (Can you imagine them sitting down to eat breakfast together? What do you suppose they talk about, beside their own fabulousness?) Even though I find the whole Kardashian "thing" to be monumentally annoying, I admit I'll be keeping an eye on Kimye and I know I can count on the tabloids to keep me informed.

Drew

I've been away from the blog for a few days and I didn't do a Guessing Game post this week, but even if I had I'm not sure I would have thought of Drew Barrymore. I had Elin Nordegren on the list a few weeks ago.

Day 4, Hanging In There

Challenge tidbits from day 4:

The Tomato Sauce: I made tomato sauce again and the new recipe was so much simpler than the first one. They're both from America's Test Kitchen, which is one of my favorite food sites, and generally I'm happy with all their recipes. Right now however, I'm still scratching my head over that first recipe for tomato sauce and wondering who could possibly have thought putting hot sauce in a food processor was a good idea. No worries now, though. The second recipe was so much easier that I'm confident I'll keep making it. I may never buy tomato/pasta sauce in a jar again! 

The Bread: Bread is a problem, because I normally eat a lot of it. Pre-challenge I was eating Brownberry "Whole Grains 100% Whole Wheat Bread," thinking it was the best choice. The label proudly announces 22 whole grains per slice, "good source of fiber" and no high fructose corn syrup. However, a closer reading reveals that sugar is the third ingredient on the list, and there's molasses in there too, resulting in *4 grams* of sugar per slice, yikes. I switched to Brownberry Country Sourdough, which lists sugar as ingredient #7 and only "less than 1 gram" of sugar, which is better. Still, technically the sugar is there, along with the processed flour. Sometimes it really is hard to know which choice is "healthier."  

After I asked for suggestions on Twitter several people recommended Ezekiel bread and I bought a loaf yesterday. The one slice I've eaten so far wasn't bad but I admit I didn't love it. It was also a lot more expensive than "regular" bread, although I suppose the cost is offset by the money I'm not spending on M&Ms and cake. 

Mustard and Mayo: I made an easy vinaigrette recipe to replace my regular bottled salad dressing and it was pretty tasty, but the recipe included small amounts of dijon mustard and mayo. Both of the brands I use (Grey Poupon and Hellman's Light) list sugar in the ingredient list but zero sugar grams in the nutrition info. Since I only used 1/4 teaspoon of each, I'm choosing to believe that the vinaigrette is OK. It's sure a big improvement over the stuff that comes in the bottle. I've looked at recipes to make my own mustard and mayo, but I"m not sure I want to go there yet.   

Finally, The Fruit:  Or at least one fruit. I generally don't buy fresh fruit but the oranges at the grocery store yesterday looked really good so I bought 3 of them. I just ate one, in all of its natural glory and I have to say it tasted pretty good. 

So far so good!  

It's Angie

Angelina was on the list last week, and here she is, along with Sherri Shepherd. I'm surprised there's nothing about Beyoncé/Solange
and Jay Z.

The Guessing Game

What will be on the cover of People magazine this week? My guesses:

Katie Couric, or possibly Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson: I would love to see coverage of the Fed Up film and the 10-day challenge to give up sugar, and Tom Hanks may have enough star power to get it. He was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes; he and his wife Rita Wilson attended the premiere of Fed Up and they're talking about the benefits of giving up sugar.
Michael Sam: First openly gay football player in the NFL; possibly a story tied to Modern Family's wedding of Mitch and Cam
Chelsea Clinton: Gets her doctorate from Oxford
Barbara Walters: Retiring after 50 years
Sherri Shepherd: Getting divorced and having a child via surrogate
Elin Nordegren: Tiger's ex-wife gets her college degree, gives a great speech and looks great in her cap and gown
Solange/Beyoncé/Jay Z: What happened in that elevator, anyway?
Alec Baldwin: In the news again, arrested in New York City for riding his bicycle the wrong way
Clay Aiken: Wins his congressional primary in N.C; his opponent died

On-going: The Kimye wedding, the Sterling controversy and Monica Lewinsky, plus the kidnapped Nigerian girls.

Little Sister

It can't be easy to be the sibling of a really rich and famous star, especially when you're trying to succeed in the same business. Chad Lowe, DeDee Pfeiffer, William Mapother (brother of Tom Cruise), not to mention all those Jackson brothers, are all examples who toil, and live, in the shadow of a sibling who's a lot more successful than they are.

So why, exactly, did Solange Knowles attack Jay Z in an elevator?

Musings From Day One

It's Day 2 of the Fed Up Challenge and I'm feeling good! Yesterday wasn't perfect from a "no sugar" point-of-view but I'm still calling it a great start. Officially, or at least in my own head, I didn't start until after breakfast. I had some leftover (frozen) pizza from Sunday night and in an "Oh, what the hell" moment I nuked it in the microwave and finished it off for breakfast. Why? I'm not really sure. Partly just because it was there, although I did rationalize to myself that once it was eaten and gone, it wouldn't be a problem anymore.

After that things went pretty well. For lunch I had pasta, topped with the last cup of my first batch of homemade tomato sauce. I usually top pasta with Parmesan cheese, and although the cheese doesn't have sugar in it I skipped it anyway, saving myself from a few grams of fat and some calories, perhaps an example of what can happen when you really start thinking about every morsel of food that goes into your mouth.

Dinner was a chicken salad - lettuce, celery, chicken and homemade vinaigrette. Like tomato sauce, salad dressing, specifically Wish-Bone Robusto Italian, is something I eat all the time, not just on actual salads but sometimes on pasta as well. Also like jarred tomato/pasta sauce, the label promises lots of great nutrition, but the ingredient list and nutrition facts chart tell a different story. Health claims on the label:

• Get More from Your Salad
• Naturally helps better absorb vitamins A & E
• A splash of Wish-Bone doesn't just add delicious flavor, it helps you get more goodness from your salad
• Excellent Source of Omega 3 ALA 
• And, of course, No High Fructose Corn Syrup

The ingredient list has about 18 things and I'm not going to type them all, but sugar is listed fourth. The nutrition chart informs me that a 2 tablespoon serving contains 3 grams of sugar and 340 mgs of sodium. Not good, so I made an easy vinaigrette. If you're sensing a trend here, you're right - a big part of giving up sugar is cooking your own food and today's focus is Tomato Sauce, The Sequel. Stay tuned...

A Sugar By Any Other Name...

... will still make you fat and crazy!

A Good Start

In the spirit of the Fed Up Challenge I'll add one more rule: Avoid food with sugar (which means *added sugar*). By the way, did you know food companies can hide sugar behind more than 50 different names? Eve Schaub, author of "Year Of No Sugar" has the list.

The Reality Of Food

It's day 1 of the Fed Up Challenge, or as I like to think of it, 10 Days Without Sugar and I have a feeling I could spend most of my time linking to articles that really piss me off about the reality of food. This is the first, from Mother Jones. The reporter is writing about the two-day annual conference of the California Dietetic Association and it's a pretty good demonstration of the power of "Big Food." I've cut and pasted a couple of key paragraphs below but the whole article is rage-inducing. As one of the attendees says to the reporter, "No wonder Americans are overweight and diabetic. The gatekeepers for our information about food are getting their information from junk-food companies."

The sessions—the real meat and potatoes of the conference—had food industry sponsors as well. The Wheat Council hosted a presentation about how gluten intolerance was just a fad, not a real medical problem. The International Food Information Council—whose supporters include Coca-Cola, Hershey, Yum Brands, Kraft, and McDonald's—presented a discussion in which the panelists assured audience members that genetically modified foods were safe and environmentally sustainable. In "Bringing Affordable Healthier Food to Communities," Walmart spokespeople sang the praises of (what else?) Walmart.

After lunch, I attended "Sweeteners in Schools: Keeping Science First in a Controversial Discussion." Sponsored by the Corn Refiners Association, whose members produce and sell high-fructose corn syrup, it included a panel composed of three of the trade group's representatives. The panelists bemoaned some schools' decision to remove chocolate milk from their cafeteria menus. Later, one panelist said that she'd been dismayed to learn that some schools had banned sugary treats from classroom Valentine's Day parties, which "could be a teachable moment for kids about moderation." The moderator nodded in agreement, and added, "The bottom line is that all sugars contain the same calories, so you can't say that there is one ingredient causing the obesity crisis." The claim was presented as fact, despite mounting scientific evidence that high-fructose corn syrup prompts more weight gain than other sugars.

The more I learn about food in this country the madder I get. Giving up M&M's is just the beginning. We need a revolution. Read the article here. 

This Is Why People Don't Cook

Yesterday, as promised, I made homemade tomato sauce. How did it go?

The Good: It tasted great. 

The Bad: It was way more complicated and time-consuming than I anticipated.

The Ugly: By the time I was finished my kitchen looked like several cans of tomatoes had exploded and (cue small violins) I cut my finger while slicing up the vegetables (the "mirepoix.")  

Thoughts: 

Read the recipe carefully. I was so focused on the ingredients, and in particular on the sugar and salt content, that I didn't read the recipe carefully enough before I started. If I had, I probably would have gone looking for a recipe that didn't require me to pluck the seeds out of a whole can of tomatoes, or pour the hot tomato sauce from the sauce pan into the food processor and, after puréeing it, pour the still-hot sauce back into the pan. Very messy. 

Read the labels carefully. The recipe called for one 28-ounce can of whole tomatoes and the label on the can said it contained 3 grams of sugar and 170 mgs of salt. That didn't sound too bad, but oops, I fell for the "serving size" trick. Since I was going to use the whole can in my sauce, I assumed those amounts were for the whole can. Wrong. It turns out that a 28-ounce can of whole tomatoes is considered, at least by the manufacturer, to contain *seven* servings, which means I was getting 1190 mgs of sodium and 21 grams of sugar. The ingredient list didn't include sugar, so the sugar must (I hope) occur naturally in the tomatoes, but do they have to add so much salt? 

Estimate your time carefully. The recipe took twice as long to complete as I expected it to, only partly because I had to stop and find a band-aid when I cut my finger. Chopping the onion, carrot and celery, seeding and crushing the tomatoes, and puréeing the hot sauce all took a lot longer than I expected. It also took a lot more bowls and utensils than I expected, and cleaning up the kitchen afterwards took longer too. 

So would I do it again? I'll make tomato sauce again but I'm going to find an easier recipe. I like to cook so even though things didn't go exactly as planned I still enjoyed doing it. But for people who don't like to cook or aren't used to cooking, making this recipe would be a giant pain in the neck. I can totally understand the appeal of just opening a jar of Newman's Own and heating it up in the microwave, regardless of the salt, sugar and/or fat content, which pretty much sums up the heart of the Fed Up Challenge. Tomorrow's Day 1 and I'm interested to see how it goes. 

Saucing The Tomatoes

The Fed Up Challenge doesn't officially start until Monday but I decided to get into the spirit of things by cooking my own tomato sauce. I'm aware that one good way to get away from the "evils" of processed food and gain control of what you're eating, especially the big bad three additives of salt, sugar and fat, is to cook stuff yourself.

My usual, easy "pasta for lunch" meal is made with store-bought tomato/pasta sauce in a jar. Specifically I've been buying Newman's Own Cabernet Marinara, which, according to the front label is "All Natural" and "Made With Extra Virgin Olive Oil," and according to the back label contains the following:

Tomato puree (water, tomato paste, citric acid)
Diced Tomatoes
Cabernet Wine
Salt
Sugar
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Soybean Oil
Dried Onions
Basil
Dried Garlic
Spices

Pretty straightforward, right? No long, multi-syllable chemical enhancements or preservatives, just some regular food items that I can buy myself. The serving size is a 1/2 cup, which contains 70 calories, 590 grams of sodium, or 25% of the recommended daily value, and 9 grams of sugar. Before deciding to take up the challenge of giving up, or at least cutting way back, on sugar, I was mostly concerned about the sodium. 590 grams is a lot of salt, especially for 1/2 cup and that brings up one of the tricks food companies use to make us think their products are healthier than they really are: the so-called serving size is unrealistically small. I've heard that in Italy it's traditional to eat pasta with just a small coating of sauce, but I admit I like mine the American way, doused in sauce. My usual amount is closer to a full cup, which means I'm getting half my daily allotment of salt in one serving of pasta with sauce, plus 18 grams of sugar.

With all that in mind I set out to make my own tomato sauce. Check back tomorrow to hear how it went.

The "Fed Up" Challenge

Question: Can I give up sugar for 10 days?
Answer: Sure.
Honest answer: I'm not sure.

There's a new documentary out today, called Fed Up, with Katie Couric as a producer and narrator. It's about the really horrible stuff most of us Americans eat most of the time and in conjunction with the release of the movie, Katie has issued a challenge: give up sugar for 10 days, starting Monday.

Question: How hard can that be?
Answer: Really, really hard.

It's not just about giving up the obvious stuff with sugar, like candy, cookies, ice cream and Coke, where the sugar is easy to see. The harder part is the "hidden" sugar, which is in almost everything we eat. A quick check yesterday, as I pondered attempting the challenge, revealed sugar as an ingredient in such things as Wish Bone Italian salad dressing, the tomato sauce in a jar that I put on pasta and the mustard and mayo I put on my sandwich. The pasta doesn't have sugar, but it does have wheat flour, which apparently affects my brain the same way sugar does. The bread in the sandwich has sugar, too, although the label loudly announces "No High Fructose Corn Syrup."

Yikes.

So am I going to take the challenge? Yes, with one caveat: I'm giving myself permission not to do it perfectly. It's not going to be easy. I've already figured out that if I really stop eating everything with even a little bit of sugar in it there won't be much left to eat other than fresh fruit and vegetables, with the occasional piece of chicken or fish on the side. That's pretty much the point of the whole thing, but still. It's a big change to make.

If you're intrigued, check out the Fed Up website here.

Things I Don't Care About

The NFL draft.

Cleveland, One Year Later

I got 2 out of 4 this week. Michelle Knight is the main cover story, one year after she and two other women were rescued after 11 years of captivity. I'd been wondering why she is featured alone, instead of with the other two women, then I noticed the mini headline: "Exclusive Excerpt, from her shocking new book."

Harry gets a sidebar and there's also a Mother's Day story. Finally, in the small picture at the top right corner (Gowns & Glamour!) the distaff half of Kimye is front and center in an evening gown. Will her third wedding get the full cover treatment in a couple of weeks?

The Guessing Game

What will be the People magazine cover story this week? My guesses:

Prince Harry:  His break-up with Cressida and his week-end in Memphis
Ben Affleck: Busted for counting cards in Las Vegas
V Stiviano:  The woman in the Donald Sterling case
Kimye: Getting married
Craig Robinson: Michelle Obama's brother was fired as the men's basketball coach at Oregon State
The Circus Stunt: Apparatus breaks and 9 women crash to the floor
Michelle Knight: One year since the 3 women held captive in Cleveland were rescued
Miley Cyrus: Restarts her tour after hospitalization
Monica Lewinsky: Writes an article for Vanity Fair

There could also be a story about the kidnapped Nigerian girls.

Wednesday morning update:  Angelina Jolie's new movie, Maleficient, opens May 30 and I've started to see commercials for it, so she could turn up on the cover soon. Her daughter Vivienne has a small role as well. Will she and Brad ever get married?

Dixon!

A cool picture of one of my favorite dogs! Why am I posting his picture in my blog? Just because I can.

Waiting For Schadenfreude

For those who care about such things, there will be a lot of excitement in Kardashian-land over the next couple of weeks. The rumor is that "Kimye" will have their big wedding in Paris on May 24 and K-watchers want to know: Will it be over-the-top? Will there be wretched excess? Will everything be just plain tacky? Almost certainly to all of the above. It's also possible that there will be a slight "going through the motions" aura to the whole thing, because Kim and Kanye may have made it legal this week in California, presumably because of residency or other legal requirements that make it pretty complicated for Americans to actually get married in France.

Whatever. As Kim gets ready to marry husband #3, I thought it would be fun to look back on the publicity-stunt-gone-wrong that marriage #2 turned out to be, as seen through the filter of People magazine covers. The entire thing took place over the course of one year: The "I thought I'd be married by now" issue is dated November 30, 2010; she dated, got engaged to, married and separated from Kris Humphries by November 2011.

November 30, 2010


June 6, 2011


September 5, 2011


November 7, 2011


As annoying as I find the whole Kardashian saga to be, I sheepishly admit that I'm keeping an eye on Kimye, in a waiting-for-schadenfreude kind of way. People and the other tabloids will keep us informed.

Tell Me About Yourself

I'm now contributing to another blog, called "Blog To Work," and my second post, entitled "Tell Me About Yourself"  is now online. My first post, "Thanks, But No Thanks: When You Don't Get The Job" is dated April 28.

Check out the blog here; I'll be posting every Monday.

A Particularly Bitchy Sorority

The Royalist blog over at The Daily Beast has an interesting analysis of why Harry and Cressida broke up.

No Public Servants Were Harmed In The Making Of This Film

The FLOTUS, the VPOTUS, real and fictional, the Speaker of the House, current and previous, and a bright yellow 'vette.

Too Much Partying, Harry?

Looks like Prince Harry didn't get enough sleep before the big wedding in Memphis yesterday. More pictures here.

More Fun To Be An Ex-President?

Will Hillary run? Yes, friends, that is the question. At The Daily Beast, Tina Brown has some interesting thoughts about why Hill should just say no, and note that the grandchild-to-be doesn't come up until the last paragraph. Brown suggests that the reality of actually being president is exponentially more frustrating and depressingly less powerful than ambitious politicians realize as they look at the next president in the mirror and "measure the drapes" for life in the Oval Office. It's not until you're an ex-president that the real fun starts:

"Money, Nobels, the ability to leverage your global celebrity for any cause or hobbyhorse you wish, plus freedom to grab the mike whenever the urge takes you without any terminal repercussions." 

Brown advises Clinton to skip the drearyness of being president and jump straight to the fun part. Will Hill take the advice? Stay tuned...

Read it here.