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Hello, Trash Pandas! This week is Spring Break for Portland public schools, so don't be surprised if children on the brink of going feral start clogging up your favorite outdoor space in the middle of a weekday. Give their frazzled caretakers some grace and a winkand maybe a puff of your j if you've got one; it's rough out here, and we are doing our best.

Would you like me to talk through some recent news and gossip that I pepper with my own little quips? Great!

All Some eyes have been fixed on Utah this week as the Trial of the Gwyntury is underway! A man is suing Gwyneth Paltrow for allegedly plowing into him on her skis and causing severe distress like no longer being able to enjoy wine-tasting. Jesus H, why do all the wrong people have cool stuff happen to them?! If you get into a skiing crash with Gwyneth Paltrow, you should have the best time wine-tasting! It doesn't matter if you can't taste the wineeverybody will love to hear the story about how Gwyneth Paltrow crashed into you, and they will probably comp your flight! If I'm ever skied over by a celebrity, I'm never leaving the damn wine bar, I can tell you that right now.

Gwynnie's consciously uncoupled ex-husband Chris Martin was also in the news this week, but for something much less joyful. Martin went on Conan O'Brien's podcast to share that he is using his one life of immense wealth and privilege to eat just one meal per day. He claims he's doing it to be like Bruce Springsteen, which, sure. Who doesn't want to be like Bruce Springsteen?? But Bruce knows how to fill out a pair of blue jeans, and Chris won't be able to make that happen on 800 calories a day or whatever. That's pretty much Bruce Springsteen 101.

In other celebrity uncoupling news, Reese Witherspoon just announced via Instagram that she and husband Jim Toth are divorcing after 12 years of marriage. This is wild, because gossip site Lainey Gossipwho is never wrongjust said the marriage trouble whispers were probably wrong! Excuse me while I die of shock that a muckraker like me could ever be wrong, like, ever. But cheers to Reese for getting divorced again. Divorce rules, truly more people should try it.

Mayor Ted Wheeler is moving forward with his unpopular plan to force the city's homeless population into internment camps. KPTV reports that the city "is planning to upgrade the facilities of its homeless camps by replacing tents with 'sleeping pods'" which Wheeler calls "an improvement." Sleeping pods are better than tents because they are structures with walls and a roof. One might even call them... buildings. And a building that houses a person is commonly known as... a house. They're so close to admitting that the solution to homelessness is housing. But can they get there??

In other Portland newsthis one isn't jokeyI'm one of many Portlanders mourning the loss of Walter Cole, the man behind local legendary drag queen Darcelle. I really can't get over the fact that hateful people are so deadset on restricting or eliminating drag when Darcelle has been such a beacon of joy and light in our community for so long. We were lucky to have had her here. Rest in peace, queen. Read Andrew Jankowski's piece here for more.

The latest in Elon Musk's slow and steady destruction of Twitter is that he wants to take blue checkmarks away from everybody, except for the accounts that give him $8 a month. The blue checkmarks are used to identify notable people, but now they'll just be used to identify the most insecure dorks on the planet.

They for real wanna idolize this fuckin' guy?

You know what other famous guy is really making an ass of himself? Zachary Levi, who stars in the Shazam movies. Levi posted a very cringey rant blaming everyone, including Dwayne The Rock Johnson, for poor box office numbers for Shazam 2. Whatever, people can be upset about their projects not going well. But THEN I learned that Levi is an anti-vaxxer who once went on Joe Rogan's podcast to praise the conservative misogynist personality Jordan Peterson, which is as three-strikes-and-you're-out a sentence as I've ever had to write. You can now feel free to put Levi on the list of white dudes you can ignore from here on out. I know it's a long list, but it's important to keep up-to-date.

Awolverinewas recently spotted on the Columbia river near Portland! I for one welcome our new wolverine overlords. I learned a lot inthis OPB article about the sighting, including that wolverines haven't been known to live in Western Oregon since the 1960s, that they need to spend winter months in areas with a solid snowpack, because they use the snow as a freezer to feed their babies all through the winter (geniuses!), and that wolverines are the largest creature in the rodent family. I guess I never thought about what kind of animal a wolverine is, but I assumed it was more dog-adjacent than rodent? Now the Hugh Jackman character from the X-Men movies seem much less cool. Like, there are all those mutants one could idolize, and everybody's always fawning over a freakin' weasel? Stay mad, Cyclops.

In other wild animal updates, to maximize snackage, I officially endorse bowties on all Trash Pandas.

Okay. Back to Spring Break, but with the energy of this Cardi B tweet:

Not as meanly,

Link:
Gwyneth Paltrow's Defense, Chris Martin's Misplaced Hero Worship ... - Portland Mercury