Thank you, Salon Media, for keeping me abreast of pop culture tidbits. If it weren’t for the time I spend getting my hair colored and my hands and feet tended to, I would never know what was happening at the top and bottom echelons of society.
A few weeks ago, I had appointments for a haircut and color, manicure and pedicure, which is more time than you could ever want to spend in a salon. The TV and magazines that make up Salon Media give you a warped sense of “what’s news.”
In a salon, the magazines are People, Us and the National Enquirer, giving me more than I need to know about the rich and famous. The TV is stuck on soap operas and daytime talk shows, which is chock full of the weirdest, whitest trash you can imagine. In the salon, you can’t get your paws on a New Yorker or a CNN to save your life.
Here’s what I learned from Salon Media in one week:
● Michele Bachmann didn’t give 100 percent to her high school cheer squad, which isn’t doing much for getting her votes from her childhood friends. Although everyone at Anoka High agreed she was “a lot of fun.” Sounds like presidential material to me!
● Guys on soap operas are still douchebags with names of Western states or rock formations.
● Hugh Jackman can drink water, walk his dog and talk on the phone at the same time, just like regular, non-famous people. Except when he does it, he looks like Hugh Jackman.
● The only thing more brain damaged than the women on Jerry Springer are the men on Jerry Springer. The women are fist fighting and mf’ing each other, and the men are crying and hitting each other with bouquets of flowers.
● Britney Spears’ mom has thin thighs. For her age and for not her age. This makes Britney angry, for reasons I can’t figure.
● A bunch of people I don’t know (because I don’t watch any TV shows that have the word housewife in the title) are getting divorced, having love children, suing for the house, and having anorexic breakdowns.
● Mary Kate Olsen is perhaps the only person on earth who looks better with a cigarette in her hand than without. She can pull off a public meltdown/breakdown like nobody else.
If I decide to chuck it all and go natural, all gray and scaly, I’ll no longer know anything about the stars and the rednecks. And like the tree falling in the forest, if one of the Olsen twins has a melt/breakdown, if no one reads it, does it even happen?