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I’ll admit it: I didn’t predict that Donald Trump’s public snubbing of John McCain would become such a big deal. People are really outraged about Trump’s juvenile pettiness and lack of respect for an American hero. To those people I say: you realize that Trump is still keeping children in cages, right? You know he’s alienated all of our oldest allies and embarrassed America on the world stage about a million times already, right? You realize he’s a traitor who is doing a foreign leader’s bidding, right? But sure, the flag flying at half-mast is the straw that broke the camel’s back.

As we discussed yesterday, Trump shot down the official White House statement honoring McCain in the days after McCain’s passing. The White House flag flew at half-mast for less than 48 hours, then it was raised to full-mast yesterday morning. People were outraged at the disrespect shown to a war hero like McCain, especially veterans groups. Various veterans groups appealed to White House aides to lower the flag at half mast once again, and hours later on Monday, the flag was lowered again. The White House also issued a statement on McCain where they acknowledged his heroism:

New Trump statement on McCain’s death is still full of shade. pic.twitter.com/pa7NxIrOeh

— Alana Horowitz Satlin (@achorowitz) August 27, 2018

First of all, there is literally no way that Trump wrote this or even glanced at it before it was released (he can’t read). Second of all, I still think that on the scale of Trump Pettiness, this one barely even registers. I actually think the fact that Trump hasn’t hate-tweeted about McCain in death shows that Trump is trying to be *slightly* respectful. I also think Trump is just following what McCain and his family wanted, with regards to Trump’s lack of involvement in the funeral/memorial services. And all of that is hilarious to me – I could easily make the argument that this is Trump’s version of “being respectful to a dead man,” and it’s amazing that THIS is what has outraged everyone. All those good ol’ boys and American Legion dudes are SO MAD at Trump, when this is arguably his most respectful behavior (a low bar, but still).

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Photos courtesy of Getty.

Do I have to do some kind of exhaustive recap on the Asia Argento mess? I’ll try to do it simply: Asia Argento manipulated Anthony Bourdain into paying off the young man whom she sexually assaulted when he was just 17 years old. I can’t keep track of all of Argento’s explanations and lies, but I feel like that one-sentence summary covers everything. At first, Argento’s good friend (and fellow Harvey Weinstein victim) Rose McGowan told people to “be gentle” when dealing with Argento. Rose later deleted that tweet and now Rose has issued a lengthy and exhausting statement on the matter. Rose wants us to know several things. One, she’s dating someone and she refers to that person as “the being I’ve been dating – Rain Dove.” Two, Rose is backing away from Asia pretty hard. Three, Asia was lying to her friends about Jimmy Bennett a lot, it seems. Four, I guess Rose thought we were “demanding” that she chime in? We weren’t really. Some highlights from her statement (which you can read in full here):

She doesn’t know Asia that well: “I first met Asia on a red carpet, but it’s only been the past year through our shared experience of the HW case that we have bonded. Asia was a person who understood my trauma in a way that many others didn’t. We were able to talk through them together and champion each other’s voices. We even got matching dot tattoos!”

Rain Dove is involved: “I received a phone call and series of messages from the being I’ve been dating- Rain Dove. They said that they had been texting with Asia and that Asia had revealed that she had indeed slept with Jimmy Bennet. Rain also shared that Asia had stated that she’d been receiving unsolicited nudes of Jimmy since he had been 12. Asia mentioned in these texts that she didn’t take any action on those images. No reporting to authorities, to the parents, or blocking of Jimmy’s social media. Not even a simple message “Don’t send me these images. They are inappropriate.” There were a few other details revealed as well that I am not at liberty to mention in this statement as investigators do their job.

Rose always did the right thing, or so she says: “Rain Dove said that they were going to go to the police with these texts once we were done speaking no matter what. But that they wanted me to be aware of them so that I may be able to take further actions. I responded with “You have to. You must.” I wasted no time. It wasn’t hard to say or support. What was hard was the shell shock of the realisation that everything the MeToo movement stood for was about to be in jeopardy. An hour after our conversation was finished Rain Dove confirmed that they had turned over the texts and were in conversation with officers. Almost 48 hours later the texts were in the press.

She’s sad about Asia’s victim: “Its sad to lose a friend connection, but whats even more sad is what happened to Jimmy Bennet. Whether or not the extortion case is true- it wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right. It is the type of thing I fight against alongside so many. The reason I haven’t released a statement is because I’ve frankly been extremely humbled by this event. I had to take a step back and realise that in my own activism while I fight hard with passion- I need to evolve. In the past I have been occasionally angry. As a victim I was justified in fiery feelings. But I know that those accused are the friends, parents, and family members of other people. There absolutely should be no leeway or tolerance for sexual assault. Hard stop. NONE. Victims also shouldn’t be told how they should react or what they should say about their abusers. However as allies to the victim and voyeurs of an event we should find a better way to balance support of the victim with due process for the accused. I’ve never claimed to be perfect. This week especially has made me come to terms with the fact that we all have a lot of growing to do, including myself.

A message to Asia: “Asia you were my friend. I loved you. You’ve spent and risked a lot to stand with the MeToo movement. I really hope you find your way through this process to rehabilitation and betterment. Anyone can be be better- I hope you can be, too. Do the right thing. Be honest. Be fair. Let justice stay its course. Be the person you wish Harvey could have been.

[From Variety]

I wasn’t shocked by Rose’s simultaneous attempt to make this all about how she’s feeling AND all about how she knew everything weeks and days beforehand. Rose always saw herself as the most important person within the Harvey Weinstein case, the biggest victim and the one who stage-managed his downfall (or whatever). Of course she would cast herself in the lead role in Argento’s drama as well. As for her concerns that “everything the MeToo movement stood for was about to be in jeopardy” – not really. Most of us have known for a long time that women can be abusers too. I’m shocked that Rose didn’t claim to have known that before everyone else too.

Official @rosemcgowan statement on @AsiaArgento: “Asia you were my friend. I loved you. You’ve spent and risked a lot to stand with the MeToo movement. I really hope you find your way through this process to rehabilitation and betterment.” #MeToo pic.twitter.com/U6oQEvmXPC

— Errol Lewis (@ErrolLewis) August 27, 2018

Photos courtesy of WENN.

A post shared by Kevin Smith (@thatkevinsmith) on Aug 21, 2018 at 12:19pm PDT

This may not be a big story for most of you this story but I got quite inspired by Kevin Smith’s Instagram post over the weekend so I want to talk about it. Six months ago, director Kevin suffered a near-fatal heart attack. Fortunately, Kevin took the scare as a wakeup call to look after his health. After he was released from the hospital, doctors advised Kevin that should lose 50 pounds for his health. And by gum, that is exactly what Kevin did – 51 to be exact. According to his post, Kevin is following three diets/lifestyles to achieve his weight loss. The first is the plant-based diet that Penn Jillette suggested, which allowed Kevin to shed 17 pounds in just two weeks. Layered on that is the fact that daughter, Harley Quinn, is a vegan so she was able to help him modify his diet to cut out animal products. And thirdly, Kevin was brought on as a Weight Watchers Ambassador and has been following their program through their mobile app. With 51 pounds gone and potentially 10 more to go, it sounds like he’s found a winning formula.

This @weightwatchers Ambassador is thrilled to announce that I’VE LOST 51 POUNDS! Six months ago from right now, I was in the hospital recovering from a heart attack I’d had the night before. When I went to my Doctor a week later, she told me “The best thing you can do for yourself now is to lose 50 pounds.” Half a year later, I can report that I followed Doctor’s orders: I started at 256 and now I weigh 205. This is the lightest I’ve been since high school! My hope now is I can slowly lose another 10 with #weightwatchers and get down to my birth weight of 195! But for now, I’m ecstatic to have reached this chunky milestone! I wanna thank #pennjillette for his book #presto, @raycronise for getting me started with his potato famine, and the good folks at #weightwatchers for their app-based program that made it easy to keep track of and control my eating! And I also wanna thank my kid @harleyquinnsmith – the little vegan astronaut who explored this meatless/milkless galaxy ahead of me, leading by example. Since I never wanted to see the inside of a hospital ever again, I simply copied the Kid. So this wasn’t a diet: these results came from a total lifestyle change of eating solely plant-based foods (which is tough because I hate vegetables). But mostly, I wanna thank all of you as well – for the kind and encouraging words along the way. Never underestimate the power of positive feedback: you folks telling me I looked better or healthier helped me stick with it. An encouraging word can really make a difference in someone’s life and your compliments kept me going! And just look where I went! #KevinSmith #WWambassador #WWFreestyle #WWFamily #WWBros #weightlosstransformation #weightloss #WWCommunity #ad *People following the Weight Watchers program can expect to lose 1-2lbs per week.

A post shared by Kevin Smith (@thatkevinsmith) on Aug 26, 2018 at 12:56pm PDT

I am still not a believer in the plant-based diet that Jillette follows but if it’s working for Kevin, all power to him. I put more weight (no pun intended) in Harley Quinn’s influence with her knowledge of a balanced vegan diet, though. I, personally, have benefitted from the Weight Watchers program. The apps (I use Livestrong now because it’s free) really help me stay on top of it – when I use them. As I said, this post inspired me. I’ve mentioned a few times that perimenopause has really kicked my a$$ in more ways than one and my weight is a big part of it. Just this weekend I promised myself I would take control of the situation. Basically, my energy has been depleted so I am exercising less. Not so much doing it less, but not being able to exert the same level as before. So I need to adjust my diet because I’m burning fewer calories. I don’t need to go back to pre-peri weight, but 10 pounds would be nice. Maybe Kevin and I could be weight loss buddies for that last 10, sending each other inspirational messages and new recipes for zucchini.

Also purely coincidental: I have finally gotten around to watching Veronica Mars and I just watched the episode that Kevin was in, in which he made fun of his weight. Oh how times have changed.

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Wide World of Jorts, Then and Now. Years ago, a paparazzo snapped the infamous shot on the left of me wearing my giant jorts at my all-time heaviest. The photo on the right was taken at the same gas station today. I’m very near the goal weight I was told to shoot for after the heart attack, so big thanks go out to @weightwatchers, #pennjillette, @raycronise & @veggiegrill for reshaping my district, so to speak! #KevinSmith #wwambassador #wwfreestyle #vegan #weightlosstransformation #weightwatchers *People following the Weight Watchers program can expect to lose 1-2lbs per week.

A post shared by Kevin Smith (@thatkevinsmith) on Aug 4, 2018 at 5:07pm PDT

Photo credit: Instagram and WENN Photos

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Spice Girl and America’s Got Talent judge Mel B, revealed in an interview with England’s The Sun that she has been diagnosed with PTSD. This disorder stemmed from her recent divorce from garbage person Stephen Belafonte and the loss of her father, which she has brought up many times on AGT.

Mel has been working on her biography, Brutally Honest, which is set to be released on November 27. She mentioned that the process of putting the book together was “unbelievably traumatic.” She has been in a course of therapy called EMDR, or eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, and, after crowning Hans this season’s America’s Got Talent winner (I hope, I hope) she is planning on spring some time in a UK-based therapy center. Mel told The Sun on Sunday,

”The past six months have been incredibly difficult for me. I’ve been working with a writer on my book, Brutally Honest, and it has been unbelievably traumatic reliving an emotionally abusive relationship and confronting so many massive issues in my life.

“I am being very honest about drinking to numb my pain but that is just a way a lot of people mask what is really going on. Sometimes it is too hard to cope with all the emotions I feel. But the problem has never been about sex or alcohol — it is underneath all that.

“I am fully aware I have been at a crisis point. No one knows myself better than I do – but I am dealing with it. I have made the decision to go into a proper therapy programme in the next few weeks, but it has to be in the UK because I am very, very British and I know that will work best for me. I am still struggling but if I can shine a light on the issue of pain, PTSD and the things men and women do to mask it, I will do. I am speaking about this because this is a huge issue for so many people.”

[From The Sun]

Mel has been through a lot in her 43 years, and I hope that therapy is beneficial for her. She needs to get healthy as she’s going to be a busy lady in 2019. The Sun also reported on Sunday that a Posh-less Spice Girls will reunite next year for a 13-city UK tour, including a three night stand at Wembley Stadium. Apparently Mel wasn’t just crying wolf, but I’m not booking my tickets to London quite yet. Get better soon, Mel B.

My face when @howiemandel tells a joke. #AGT

A post shared by Mel B (@officialmelb) on Aug 22, 2018 at 6:18pm PDT

Photos: Getty, WENN

My mom was a teacher and I was educated thoroughly through public schools, so I do tend to have strong feelings about education in general and private schools specifically. I understand why wealthy parents might feel the need to send kids to elite private schools for middle school and high school – that’s when the difference between public and private schools is really notable, and you can see if your kid needs more specialized education. But I do wonder if parents are really getting their money’s worth when it comes to exclusive, private early-childhood education. Take Prince George, for example. His fancy school costs £20,000, which… seems like a lot for nap-times and drawing and kid stuff. But because fancy schools want to make it seem like you’re paying for SO MUCH, they’re making it seem like 5 and 6-year-olds are learning how to code and ballet dance.

Like children everywhere, Prince George will soon be heading back to school for the start of the new term. The five-year-old royal will next month join his classmates in Year One of the £20,000-a-year Thomas’s Battersea, south-west London. Not only will George be settling into a new classroom and meeting a new teacher, he will also be taking on new subjects like Science, History and Geography, as the curriculum becomes more challenging.

According to the school’s website, Year One pupils will build on what they learned in reception and develop key skills including joined-up handwriting, fluent speech and a greater understanding of Maths. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will also find themselves doing more homework with their eldest son, with pupils expected to read for 10 minutes a night and to complete a weekly spelling assignment.

George and his classmates already know some basics in French and will expand on this through learning fairy tales and songs in a weekly 35-minute class taught by a specialist teacher. They will also expand their vocabulary with winter clothes, days of the week and classroom objects.
In Religious Studies, taught by George’s Form Teacher, children will ‘develop knowledge and understanding of Christianity’ and be taught to ‘appreciate the cultural differences in Britain today’. Bible study will introduce the children to key stories including Noah, Joseph and David and Goliath.

In a show of the school’s incredible facilities, George and his classmates will be given weekly Computing lessons in a dedicated suite equipped with 22 computers. There they will improve their mouse usage, be introduced to Microsoft Word and ‘develop a greater understanding of algorithms’. Outside of the classroom, George and his peers will enjoy Drama, Art and Ballet classes. Ballet is taught to all pupils in Year One by a specialist teacher in one 35-minute lesson per week and each class is accompanied by a live pianist.

[From The Daily Mail]

The idea of trying to herd 30 five-year-olds into doing soubresauts and grand jetés while the pianist stifles laughter is enough to make me need a drink. Bless all the early-childhood educators. My mom got slightly burned out on it too, and she loved little kids, but in the years before her retirement, she always referred to them privately as “those booger-eaters.” Seriously, you can spend all the money in the world trying to “teach” your five-year-old how to code and speak French and do ballet, but mostly what they’ll retain is how glue tastes good and how naptimes are nice.

Photos courtesy of WENN.

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I will admit that I have been guilty of this in the past, but it drives me crazy when people spend their entire time at a live concert filming the thing with their phones. The footage always looks and sounds terrible and, I mean, the artist is RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. This being said, I’m kind of gobsmacked about what happened at an Ariana Grande gig on Saturday night.

Ariana performed a private show for 1,600 fans to promote her new album Sweetener. The gig was part of a three-city mini-tour dubbed the Sweetener Sessions, held at The Theatre at Ace Hotel in Los Angeles. Ariana took requests from the audience and chatted with fans between songs, telling them, “We really don’t have any plans when we do these. It’s really spontaneous and we just hang out.”

I guess the “hang out” vibe was taken pretty seriously, especially by one particularly brazen audience member. When Ariana launched into a performance of her song “Raindrops,” she was interrupted by a fan who screamed, “Wait, start again. I wasn’t recording!” Ugh.

SOMEONE SAID “WAIT START AGAIN I WASNT RECORDING” AND SHE DID LMAOOOOOO pic.twitter.com/IEAhCM2YzX

— meliss (@majestcbitch) August 26, 2018

Instead of telling the fan to shut up, which I totally would have done, Ariana stopped and acknowledged the fan, saying, “Someone said, ‘Start again. I wasn’t recording.’ And I listen! I listen.” She laughed and asked the fan “Are you ready now?” before starting the song again. You are a better person than me, Ms. Grande, that’s for sure. The freaked-out fan also posted the video to social media.

OMG I SAID WAIT I WASNT READY START AGAIN AND ARIANA FUCKING HEARD ME AND STARTED AGAIN!!!! ??? #SweetenerSessionsLA #SweetenerSessions pic.twitter.com/uUnJgCVEcc

— Urge (@urge4sergee) August 26, 2018

Pete Davidson, Ariana’s fiancé, brought her to the stage and gave her a big smooch, so love could be the reason she was extra gracious to the fan. Of course, the love fest between these two rolls on. On Thursday, at a Q&A session at Auburn University, Pete described being in love with Ariana as only he could, stating, “What’s it liked being engaged to Ariana? It’s like what you would think it would be like but like a 100 times sicker. I’m a very, very happy boy who is very, very loved and I’m very lucky. And my d—‘s forever hard.” Umm…yeah. But I’ve been young and in love and probably said some stuff that was equally as cringe-inducing.

Hey, they’re cute together and I hope things work out for them. As for concerts, I don’t want to sound all “Hey you kids, get off of my lawn” or anything, but give your phones a rest at concerts, could you? And, for Pete’s (not Davidson’s) sake, don’t yell at an artist to restart a song because you weren’t recording. Just live in the moment and enjoy the show already.

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Photos: Getty and WENN

The head of the French Open (I will not do him the honour of printing out his full name, asshole) decided to shame the Greatest of all Time, Serena Williams, over her catsuit. Like right before the start of the US Open. Because, sure, that’s what she needs to stay focused as she’s preparing to compe…

The head of the French Open (I will not do him the honour of printing out his full name, asshole) decided to shame the Greatest of all Time, Serena Williams, over her catsuit. Like right before the start of the US Open. Because, sure, that’s what she needs to stay focused as she’s preparing to compe…

What? Did you actually think we wouldn’t be talking about Noah Peter today? My whole inbox this weekend was about Peter Kavinsky aka Noah Centineo. So many of you emailing from around the world feeling the way we felt last weekend when To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before happened to us. Lara Jean Cove…

What? Did you actually think we wouldn’t be talking about Noah Peter today? My whole inbox this weekend was about Peter Kavinsky aka Noah Centineo. So many of you emailing from around the world feeling the way we felt last weekend when To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before happened to us. Lara Jean Cove…