Get ready to get filthy rich... in gossip. by Elinor Jones Happy New Year, Trash Pandas! It's me, Elinor Jones, here with the latest in gossip, nonsense, tomfoolery, and whatever else I've scrolled past that made rub my hands together and say "I could make a joke about that!" Not to be a downer, but I predict 2025 will be one of our worst years yet; if I'm right, this validates my analytical mind, and if I'm wrong, hey, at least we had we had a good time! Wanna check out what delicious morsels of gossip 2025 have gifted us thus far? It can't hurt! Cool People with Tacky Necklaces President Biden hosted a little get-together to give out Congressional Medals of Freedom to a bunch of fancy people like Bono, Jane Goodall, Magic Johnson, and others. These medals are basically handed out to whoever the President thinks is cool and wants to meet, so I imagine he was like, "Shit, I gotta move out of this place in like two weeks and I haven't even had Denzel Washington and Bill Nye over yet to see my stuff!" Imagine what this ceremony will look like when we get a millennial president? We're gonna see one of those medals handed out to Britney Spears and Dan from Gossip Girl (the character, not the actor), and Lil Bub (RIP.) I can't wait. Congrats to all the winners, but aren't medals so tacky? If I'm ever honored by a US President I'd like a nice brooch. The Congressional Brooch of Freedom. All those honorees had to ruin their expensive outfits at a fancy party with that gaudy shit around their necks, like Flava Flav just did at the Olympics. No thanks. My resolution, and I think it’s doable, is to run so fast into a chain link fence that I come out as cubes. — Daniel Kibblesmith (@kibblesmith.com) January 1, 2025 at 12:00 PM Nuptials? More like NO-ptials.  Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos and his fiancée Lauren Sanchez were allegedly planning to get married over the holidays with a $600 million wedding in Aspen, but called it off when the public caught wind of it. I think calling it off was the right cal—spending nearly one billion dollars on a party is grotesque any day, but especially when striking Amazon workers are getting hoses turned on them and a woman who was hit by a car and shot during the New Year's attack in New Orleans was initially denied time off to heal by her employer, which is—you guessed it—Amazon. That said, I'm so curious what a $600 million wedding would even be. How do you do it? That NY Post article I linked to above said the wedding would be set up like a winter wonderland including twinkling lights, and like, is there a different HomeGoods that the megarich go to? Because I could pull off that decor with two hundred bucks and a free Saturday afternoon. Page Six has had a lot of nice press coverage of Lauren Sanchez in the proceeding days and it all reeks of PR. Nobody cares that Lauren Sanchez sparkles in a slinky silver dress as she wishes for shared light in 2025. A billionaire's fiancée hoping for "shared light" is so fucking bleak. Bitch, the sun is free; how about you share some of that money? In other "clueless rich lady" news, Alec Baldwin's very white, very American wife Hilaria Baldwin has again been busted pretending to not speak English. She was recently featured in a friend's cooking video where she appeared to forget the word "onions" and instead said "my husband hates... cebollas." The parts that she does say in English are said in a thick fake accent and it's so weird! Your name is Hillary. Nobody hates onions. Be honest!! Sports! I care about sports in three circumstances only: when the Oregon Ducks have done well at something, when the Blazers do well and I'm at that specific Blazers game, and women's gymnastics generally. I'm so pleased to see that the GOAT Simone Biles was awarded Sports Illustrated's Sportsperson of the Year. She truly was the star of last year's Olympics and an incredible person in general, and now I wonder why Biden didn't have her over for one of those Congressional Medals of Freedom he's passing around? Or maybe he did offer, but she was like, "Oh actually I'm good on medals." She probably would have gone for a brooch, though. Something to think about.  New Year, Same Clothes One goal that I made for myself for 2025 is to not buy any new clothes. Thrifted and trades are okay, but not NEW new. This is both to save more money, to be kinder to the planet, and to give myself back the precious minutes I spend looking at Zara's app and getting filled with white-hot rage at how bad its layout is. (Humans are meant to scroll DOWN, not OVER!!!!!) Is it because I'm not shopping for new stuff that I'm endlessly intrigued by the $70 knock-off Birkin bag that Walmart is selling now? It's not that I want the Birkin, but I do like that rich snobs are pissed that their $10,000 status symbols might be mistaken for something any schmoe could put into a shopping cart with some tampons and a six-pack of White Claw. Of course, appropriation of design and fashion is a real problem—Zara does it! I hate that I shop there, this is why I have to stop!—but in this instance it's funny. I mean, it's one purse, Michael. What could it cost? 10,000 dollars?  Speaking of fashion, the Golden Globes were last night. A lot of people wore gold, which is a little on the nose, don't we think? Overall though, the night was pretty boring. I will spend my life chasing the high of when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars a few years ago. We used to be a country!  And speaking of limitations, I am a few days into Dryuary and annoyed to report that I'm sleeping way better than usual and I also look and feel great. It's very annoying! Good timing, though, as the office of the US Surgeon General just dropped that alcohol is closely linked with cancer. While it does feel good to get validation for a decision I have already made, this is doubly annoying! I, for one, think there should be a cigarette or drinkable poison that is both fun AND good for you. WHY is Jeff Bezos spending almost a billion dollars on a wedding he didn't even have when he could be putting it towards that kind of cutting edge research? Goodbye, everyone. I am off to read and sleep well.