This Week in Tabloids: Ariana Grande Screams Whenever She's Thirsty

By Jia Tolentino | October 29, 2014 | 8:20pm

Welcome to Midweek Madness, in which your friendly neighborhood idiot goes door-to-door looking for chicken wings and ends up with suspicious-looking nuggets instead. This week, Oprah’s car runs over an anonymous foot, Kanye threatens to crack the Kardashian Safe of B-Roll Lies, Tommy Mottola is maybe tryna holler at Mariah and Blake Lively “wants the sex to be a surprise.”

US Weekly

Most Popular

RENEE’S SHOCKING PLASTIC SURGERY

Let’s just count ourselves lucky that more magazines didn’t put Renee on the cover and plunge ourselves elbow-deep into the shithole. Good news for Samaritans: The pregnant Duggar woman is registered at a Walmart in Rogers, AR if you want to buy her gifts. Items on her registry include Subway gift cards and Fanta. Babies, am I right? They’re always like “GIVE ME A SIX-INCH TURKEY ON HONEY OAT, EXTRA FANTA,” you know? James Blunt regrets his song “Beautiful,” Madonna is gonna need like $30 million before she ever sings “Like a Virgin” again. I too regret my greatest accomplishment (once eating 18 pieces of pizza at lunch in the dining hall in college). The Billy Bob blood vial that Angelina Jolie used to hang around her neck was “barely two drops,” says Billy Bob. So not a vial, really, just a casual couple o’ blood drops. It’s like how “you wear your [kid’s] baby hair in one.” Yes, exactly! A tiny baby boy named Hunter Hayes is telling us things we don’t know about him. #23 is “I can’t sleep in the middle of the pillow. I get claustrophobic” and #24 is “Every time I think I’m getting into a book, I don’t.” Very cool! What’s your name again dude?? Taylor Swift’s friends used to ask her: “ARE YOU AN ELF?” This is purportedly because she grew up on that dang Christmas tree farm but it is also because of my 9000-word essay linking Elfness to Whiteness all the way from its medieval Germanic etymology (albh for white, alpt for swan, elbe for girl who’s never actually been inside a bodega, etc). Someone wanted to put together a photo spread of celebs eating donuts (which they spell “doughnuts”: NOT canon) and they had to go back SIX YEARS in the archives in order to put 10 pictures together. “Glazed and confused,” the caption chortles through a gentle waterfall of tears. “Pete Wentz handed out pastries in LA to promote a 2008 album.” Oprah Winfrey’s driver ran over a fan’s foot in Miami and Oprah immediately jumped out of the car and yelled, “That’s worth a picture!” Oprah in a studio making it rain broken bones. “U get a fracture!” she screams into ether. “U GET A FRACTURE TOO!!!” The SNL women who have babies are all on a group text that Tina Fey describes as “so dirty.” Poop dirty? Sex dirty? SEX AND POOP DIRTY?? Publish it as an oral history please please please. Oh no here’s the Renee situation. Not into any of this except for the sidebar of other celebrities who talk about their plastic surgery proudly: Courtney Love’s like, “I took advice from Goldie Hawn [that] I should get a face-lift at 35.” Yeah! Lift that face, eat those toast soldiers. Blake Lively and the action figure she lives with “want the sex to be a surprise.” Ooohh, I loooove surprise sex, it’s like, you think that action figure is inanimate, and then all of a sudden it pops a bone!! Lively also likes to take baths with “lots of good salts.” *Harlan Pepper from Best in Show turns to the camera* “Sea salt… kosher salt… picklin’ salt… that Himalayan pink stuff…” Here’s a feature on celebrity riders!! Things that ride on top of celebrities include Katy Perry’s “off-white egg chairs” and Pharrell’s “one framed picture of Carl Sagan.” Also Beyoncé loves eating lots of backstage chicken and last year spent $2,200 at a Nando’s, which I think we can all agree sets an unattainable model for femininity in 2014.

Grade: 1222 (the number of chicken wings you can get at Nando’s for $2,200)

Star

ASHTON CAUGHT IN BED WITH ANOTHER WOMAN

Let’s check in with the simmering, explosive Gender Expression Police Jubilee currently being held at the K-Name Crisis Ranch: latest in is that Kris Jenner is dating a young dude and “reserving her venom.” Eeek but don’t hold it in too long because you’ll get an infection!! Ariana Grande has an assistant follow her around with a bottle of water with a straw in it, and when she gets thirsty she screams “WATER!!” and the assistant scurries over to fill her up. But beware if the water gets too warm from all the scurrying because Ariana will just spit it right back out like she did in public at the BBC Teen Awards! “Yablaaawbeeeee mayyyy bayeebeee,” garbled Ariana by way of explanation. Here in the magazine is a photo of Ashton Kutcher in bed with another woman from June 2012. They are clothed (and all the clothes match clothes Ashton was wearing out and about around that time) and also seem like it is the morning and they are only pretending to be asleep. Who took this picture??? The woman is a Swedish makeup artist who “didn’t want to go all the way” and just settled for Ashton going down on her?? “Settled.” This happened around the same time Ashton started seeing Mila Kunis again so they are trying to make it very scandalous but it seems pretty chill, honestly. Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott’s “champagne tastes are colliding with their beer budget.” Just buy cheap champagne guys! More about Renee Z: apparently an attendant at Soho House thought she was a party crasher and Jennifer Lawrence had to throw in the positive ID. Yeah, everyone is over this face thing, may we never speak of it again. I love that Renee Z is like “Yeah guys I look different…. IM IN LOVE.” Yes you are, babe. Hey: if you’re looking to switch up the HUE of your TRESSES, the magazine suggests BRONDE. Like Jennifer Lopez! Scary Spice kept all her Spice Girls outfits and plays dress-up with her 15-year-old daughter in them. Does McNulty come over and take a bunch of kewl pics???

Grade: Medical (the type of hazmat suit we are going to need to buy Ariana’s water girl)

InTouch

DIVORCE BATTLE OVER BABY NORTH

Selena Gomez is trying to seduce Legolas Greenleaf, son of the elf-king Thranduil, Prince of the Woodland Realm. The circle of revenge and slap-fights goes on and on!! But also, hands up if you don’t really believe that Legolas’s ex Miranda Kerr would ever fuck Justin Bieber!! Jay-Z and Beyoncé renewed their vows in Paris but “they are not out of the woods yet.” Are they out of the woods are they out of the woods are they out of the woods are they out of the woods yet (NO) are they in the clear yet are they in the clear yet are they in the clear yet (WOODS). The Kardashians have a secret safe that contains tons of unseen, damaging footage from the show!!!!!! *burglarizes the Kardashian home and types 420 into safe over and over until I die of madness* This is from a story about how Kim and Kanye are about to get DIVORCED or whatever, because Kim and Nori are “art projects” and every time Kanye goes to Paris it is exactly like a “sucker punch to the head.” Evidence for Kanye wanting to split includes the speculation that, “if he’s single, Kanye can strengthen his ties to Kim-haters Jay Z and Beyoncé.” Kendra Wilkinson and a piece of artisanal furniture (a “Hank Baskett”) have to establish sexual consent through the use of puppets. “Hank would hold up his puppet and ask Kendra Do you want to have sex?” howls the article. “Kendra’s puppet would respond No, not really or Hurry up and get it over with.” LOL Cobie Smulders and Taran Killam are expecting baby number two! Let’s get the whole family matching Robyn sweaters!!! Paul McCartney went to a 16 Handles on the Upper West Side. ALL YOU NEED IS FRO-YO? sputtered the dying hamster, hopping from key to key. Here is a VERY cool spread highlighting winter 2014’s hottest accessory: CELLULITE! *checks thighs* Im sooooooo on trend

Grade: 16 (the number of handles on a handmade Hank Baskett)

Life & Style

SICK, PREGNANT & TORMENTED BY THE QUEEN

This week in CAN U NOT, Tommy Mottola called Mariah Carey to ask if she needed any advice after her split with Nick Cannon. And then a giant house fell on his head! So sorry, Tommy Mottola! Goodbye forever, Tommy Mottola! Here’s the headline story, in which Queen Elizabeth orders Sick Kate to GET BACK TO WORK. Kate has been on bed rest because of hyperemesis gravidarum, but the queen was “unimpressed” and made her commoner Cinderella go put on a respectable skirt suit and try not to vomit in front of the president of Singapore. She looked “queasy and off-color,” says the magazine. But maybe it was an illness of the social conscience stemming from Singapore’s recently-upheld ban on gay sex? I bet that was it. Anyway, QEII says “she worked through her pregnancies” (VERY thin definition of “work” here in this article, let’s acknowledge) so Kate can too. She ALSO, for the second year running, hasn’t invited Kate’s family of gutter-rat Eliza Doolittles to Royal Christmas. William is gallantly stepping in to say “ELLO MUMMY, PLEASE LET MY BISCUIT HAVE SOME MORE BED REST.” Ali from the Bachelor CONFESSES…….. *holds breath for two minutes* that she doesn’t NEED to get married. *faints* Ashton Kutcher had to do three years of probation in the ’90s because he stole money out of his high school vending machine. And look how far he’s come.

Grade: 3000 (potentially how many dollars Kutcher could’ve gotten out of that machine)

OK!

TOM AND LINDSAY: IT’S ON

Some source is claiming Mischa Barton wants to get endorsed by a diet company like Weight Watchers but might have to settle for going on the Biggest Loser because “to a major diet company, signing Mischa would be the same as signing a random person.” NUH-UH she’s Marissa Cooper, please step off the hate or we are going to end up with another TJ situation on our hands. More about Legolas: he “magically appears every time Selena and Justin break up!” IT’S NOT MAGIC, he’s an elf. He also “has a beef with Justin.” One single beef. *calls the butcher and orders a beef* Ashlee Simpson is super broke and like, DIANA ROSS, YOU’RE MY MOTHER-IN-LAW, GIVE ME TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. Diana Ross is like, “On a Monday, I am waiting, for you to stop asking me for ten thousand dollars even though you are married to my son” etc. Lindsay Lohan and Tom Cruise are both in London for work, which means they are about to hook up errday and then get married!! The bells are ringing, the romance is “steaming,” Lindsay is “buzzing.” WHAT ARE WE GOING TO BUY THIS DUO OF STEAMY BEES? Evidence for their nonexistent coupledom includes the fact that Lindsay was one of the girls tapped for the 2005 Mission Impossible 3 casting call that was actually a Scientological Lifetime Servitude Cruise Ship Test Shot to be Cruise’s wife. Taylor Swift has been dressing so cute lately just because New York. “I just feel like when I walk out onto the sidewalk, I have to try a little harder.” Finally you’re talking some sense here, Taylor. If there’s one criticism people have ever had of you, it’s that you don’t try hard enough!!

Grade: 2 (number of beefs I am going to order tomorrow in the interest of incremental change)

Addendum:

Fig. 1-3, In Touch