There are a handful of milquetoast royal stories percolating today, and I have no idea if any of them will turn into something. The Sussexes and Cambridges split up their foundation and everything is still being formalized. We still don’t know for sure whether the Sussexes are really going to call their new foundation something like “SussexRoyal.” But we do know that the Cambridges have officially removed the Sussexes from their foundation:

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s charity has removed Harry and Meghan from its title, marking a final step in the split between the two couples. Documents published by Companies House today show William and Kate’s foundation is now just called ‘The Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’.

It follows Harry and Meghan’s decision to move out of Kensington Palace, where William and Kate are based, and set up their own Sussex Royal foundation. The move sparked reports of a rift growing among the so-called ‘fab four’, first between the two Duchesses, then future king William and his younger brother Harry.

[From The Daily Mail]

I like how the Mail (and other outlets) continue to frame everything as “Harry and Meghan decided to walk away from Will and Kate,” which… is not the whole story. I do think the Sussexes decided to walk away, but they had good cause, as we can still see today. Will and Kate were constantly undermining the Sussexes. Now the Cambridges are still undermining the Sussexes, but at least they’re not sharing an office or a foundation anymore.

There was also this interesting little story…

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry wanted to move in with his grandparents and set up home in Windsor Castle, reports say. It’s claimed the Duke and Duchess of Sussex asked the Queen if living quarters in the historic castle could be made available for them after they were married but the answer was a firm ‘no’,so they went on to renovate Frogmore Cottage in the grounds of the estate. The five-bedroom cottage was given an extensive makeover recently, costing the taxpayer an estimated £2.4million.

Windsor Castle is the Queen’s official residence over Easter and June and she spends most of her weekends there as well. Hugo Vickers, a royal author and a deputy lord lieutenant of Berkshire, told The Times: “There are empty bedrooms and suites in the private apartments which the Sussexes may have had their eye on, or perhaps some former living quarters in the castle grounds converted into other things. But I can see how it might not be entirely appropriate to have a young family living there.”

[From The Sun]

My first thought was… why not? Why not move into one of the Windsor Castle apartments, if some of them are open and available? My guess is that the Queen thought it would seem too much like she was “giving” the Sussexes the whole castle or something. But Her Maj really screwed up with the Sussexes’ living arrangements anyway – she should have given them a property or apartment as soon as they were married. She should have given them their own Kensington Palace apartment, honestly. And I still don’t know why they can’t have one now.

There are also a handful of stories this week in the lower-tier British tabloids about how Harry doesn’t “want to be royal” anymore, and how he and Meghan are truly thinking about living part-time outside of the UK. These are part of the “coming and going” stories for the British tabloids – if Harry and Meghan stay in the UK, the press gets to continue to abuse them on a daily basis. If they complain about the abuse, the press will mock them. If the Sussexes leave the UK, however temporarily, all hell will break loose and the tabloids will not stop until they set fire to Frogmore Cottage.

Photos courtesy of WENN, Backgrid, Avalon Red.

Which demographic does the MTV VMAs appeal to? I watched the show with my cousins and their children, so we had an age range of like 7 years old to late 40s, with myself right in the middle. That meant that I heard the question “who’s that?” directed at both Missy Elliot AND Lizzo. Also, apparently,…

As we’ve discussed before, we used to have an site-subscription to the New York Times. CB cancelled that sh-t during one of the NYT’s “Nazis are just like us, they like cats and pasta!” trend pieces. Which is to say, I’ve never read one thing by NYT columnist Bret Stephens. I trust that he’s an a–hole. He’s apparently one of the “conservative voices” on the NYT’s op page. Just from a few minutes of online research, I see that he said some skeptical words about Trump once, and that he’s a climate-change-denier and that he hates Millennials. Add one more thing to your Random Knowledge memory banks: he’s the kind of person who obsessively searches his name on Twitter, freaks out when someone makes a silly joke at his expense, and then contacts the jokester’s employer to get the guy fired. For real. This was the joke that started everything:

The bedbugs are a metaphor. The bedbugs are Bret Stephens. https://t.co/k4qo6QzIBW

— davekarpf (@davekarpf) August 26, 2019

Which is funny! And it’s just a silly NYT joke, which is funny because the New York Times is a clown show already. But then this happened:

This afternoon, I tweeted a brief joke about a well-known NYT op-Ed columnist.

It got 9 likes and 0 retweets. I did not @ him. He does not follow me.

He just emailed me, cc’ing my university provost. He is deeply offended that I called him a metaphorical bedbug.

— davekarpf (@davekarpf) August 27, 2019

Dr. Karpf also tweeted a copy of the email!!

Alright fine… here is the email: pic.twitter.com/A4E5I6CoB6

— davekarpf (@davekarpf) August 27, 2019

So that’s why “Bret Stephens” has been trending on Twitter for much of the past 16 hours or so. Because Bret Stephens is a clown who doesn’t like bedbug jokes. Honestly, I’d love it if someone I joked about (on Twitter) tried to contact Celebitchy to complain. She would laugh her ass off.

People keep clowning on Bret Stephens. WHO IS NOT A BEDBUG, HOW DARE YOU.

pic.twitter.com/aVNitSHXfr

— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) August 27, 2019

pic.twitter.com/iZunWYsGVK

— Jon Green (@_Jon_Green) August 27, 2019

I am posting this everywhere today pic.twitter.com/75PIUGkMKa

— MishMei with brooding tushie (@MishMei) August 27, 2019

Photos courtesy of Meet the Press.

Halsey brought the weirdness to the VMAs last night in a Dundas Couture gown that was just a ruffley sheer overlay over a bra, granny panties and a studded corset. She always dresses like this but I think she took it up a notch with the styling. Her roots were painted to look like a rainbow and she had some kind of orange stuff on her cheeks. It wasn’t in the typical highlighting or contouring areas either, it was on the sides, which was weird, and on camera it didn’t look even on both sides! Come on with that. The rainbow roots should have been longer, in my opinion. I’ll say something nice, she’s so pretty even with all this weirdness.

This is what she wore during the show. Normani did it better
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Alison Brie was in Elie Saab. This is just OK for the VMAs but wouldn’t fly most other places. She presented with French Montana and I swear he was staring at her boobs.
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Presenter Hailee Steinfeld was working this red Aadnevik dress. Love the detailing on this and how it falls. This looks like it should be sheer, but it’s not. She can really sing and her tracks are surprisingly good, but she only has a handful of songs out. I’d like to see a full album from her.

Keke Palmer was in a gorgeous yellow Yousef Aljasmi column dress with Swarovski crystals. I’m including her because her old school bedazzled cell phone purse is the best. I want it! This reminds me of Lady Gaga’s purse at the Met Gala, remember that?

photos credit: WENN, Backgrid and Getty. Thanks to RedCarpet-FashionAwards for finding the designers!

I have been obsessed with Miley’s “Slide Away” since she first released it a week and a half ago. It’s catchy as hell, I’ve been listening to it on the drive to and from work, which is partly a depressing way to start your day, but it’s also liberating and freeing at the same time. Because that’s wh…

I really love that Lizzo and Lil Nas X are now big deals, respectively. Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts” became the slow-burning jam of the past year (and it’s still at the top of the charts) and Lil Nas X basically broke the conventional, old-school music-industry charting standards with “Old Town Road,” his brilliant rap-country mash-up. Both artists were on hand to perform at the VMAs and both killed it. Lil Nas X looked like Nu Prince and Lizzo looked like Divine (she did big hair and a Moschino gown for the carpet).

Here’s Lizzo performing “Truth Hurts” and “Good As Hell.” The set, you guys. The giant butt which changed colors. It was… amazing. And it jiggled!

Here’s Lil Nas X performing “Panini.” I really enjoy that he’s doing his own thing and the performance doesn’t really have a connection to the song and it’s fine, he just wanted the sh-t to look like TRON.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

This is Normani looking like the sexiest mermaid in Nicolas Jebran at the VMAs. Look at how perfectly her hair is blowing back! If you have not seen the video for Motivation yet, do yourself a favor, watch it and come back. If you don’t have four minutes, watch from about 1:55 until 2:30. She does an actual backflip, so not only can can dance, she can do amazing gymnastics moves. Maybe that was achieved through editing, but it looks real enough. Plus the song is so good. Combined with the choreography, it gives me goosebumps. This is Normani’s debut single after breaking away from Fifth Harmony and she delivers. (The other breakaway artist from that group underwhelms. I said it.) Normani performed “Motivation” at the VMAs last night and she did a floor routine too!! That part is at 2:30. She wasn’t doing flips but she did a split and a bunch of floor moves, it was impressive. Here’s that video:

This is similar to the music video except they switched the routine up enough so it’s still fresh for people like me who have watched it over ten times. I can’t find any solid details about when her solo album is coming out, but I will definitely listen to it the day it does.

I’m including a couple of other performers in this post as we’re trying to cover the major fashion and acts from the VMAs. Here’s H.E.R. in Valentino. She had on an actual snake on the red carpet! It was a nod to Britney’s Slave 4 U snake in 2001, and Cosmo points out that Tana Mongeau, who is a YouTuber I haven’t heard of before, wore one this year too. OK, those are live creatures. I’m not about to defend snakes’ rights but this feels wrong. Plus a lot of people, like my aunt, have a phobia of them. (She could not watch Temple of Doom.) H.E.R. performed “Anti” and you can see that here. I really liked the visuals and the feel of it. There were a lot of good performances last night.

Here’s Spanish singer Rosalia, she did “A Ningun Hombre,” “Yo x Ti, Tu x Mi” & “Aute Cuture” and you can see that performance here. I’m not familiar with her but she has pipes. I also like what she said when she was presenting, that she sings in Spanish and is from Spain. There were a lot of pointed and necessary references last night to the artists being immigrants.

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Embed from Getty Images

“Dear Maddy,

Happy 30th Birthday from your Boast Bitches! We are lucky to be included in your narrative and hope you continue to question the official story! Here’s a picture of your youthful inspiration Shakira. Her and your hips don’t lie.

From The Boast Bitches aka Ais, Al, and Jess”

…

The turnout for last night’s MTV VMAs was okay. I mean, I’m old enough to remember a time when the VMAs were wall-to-wall A-list celebrities and musical acts, but I have to give MTV some credit: this year, they really did a lot with live music and special, one-of-a-kind performances. The guest list was just kind of meh though. A lot of the “audience” cut-aways were to Bella and Gigi Hadid, who were seated front row with Halsey. Gigi wore Tom Ford and Bella wore Charlotte Knowles. Both outfits were bad for different reasons, and it’s weird to see them so coordinated? Also: Bella got fresh face work, right? In some of the cutaways (not to mention these photos) her face looked jacked to hell.

Lil’ Kim killed a Muppet, and I kind of think Bella Hadid went to Lil Kim’s plastic surgeon.

Bebe Rexha looked cute as hell in this silver Christian Siriano.

FKA Twigs in Ed Marler. Such a mess and what is going on with her?

Diplo is still doing the country thing (and yes I would still hit it, please don’t @ me).

Lenny Kravitz is still going to be showing up to the VMAs shirtless when he’s 70 and we’ll still be into it.

Cardi B wore Déviant La Vie. Is it just me or was Cardi kind of *scattered* at the VMAs? Was she on something?

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Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Getty, WENN.

Dear Gossips,

If you’ve watched Missy Elliott’s performance from last night’s MTV VMAs more than once, that is correct. Here’s me sounding like a bitter old aunt, quoting Kathleen who, by contrast (in her mind), is forever young: these kids don’t deserve.

She was actually saying that about Q…