Jacksons Gone Wild!

Following celebrity gossip, even just casually, is a thankless business. You have to slog through way too much Kardashian and (shudder) Tara Reid in order to get the occasional quality, Johnny Depp-caliber nugget. But I feel like 25 years of sort of paying attention to all of this has finally paid off.


This one "All of the Jacksons are Kidnapping One Another" headline will sustain me through another 1000 Lindsay Lohan bits. If you aren't paying attention (and you really should be), apparently some of the Jackson siblings have kidnapped Katherine (the matriarch) in order to brainwash her into challenging Michael's will (they took her to Arizona to play Uno, naturally). Paris, who is rapidly becoming the nation's favorite Jackson, took to Twitter to reveal her aunts/uncles malevolent scheme. There may or may not have been a physical altercation between Janet and Paris as a result of Paris's airing the dirty family laundry on Twitter and the whole kidnapping of the grandmother business. TJ, Tito's son, has been granted temporary custody of Paris, Prince and Blanket. Conspicuously missing from all of this is LaToya, who may have actually been the most normal Jackson all along. Who would have thought?

Edited to add:

Gawker has just published a handy user guide to Jackson family craziness, here

Barbie gets a haircut

Caroline rediscovered her Barbie stash last week and has been playing with them pretty much nonstop ever since. She set up a spa for them, and one thing led to another, and the next thing I knew she was asking me if she could cut their hair. My first instinct, of course, was to say no, you can't cut their hair, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that she would probably get more enjoyment from giving one Barbie haircut than she would from not cutting the hair on 1000 Barbies. Or something like that. I issued the standard disclosures: "Caroline, with Barbies, the hair is not going to grow back. Once you cut it, it's gone forever." And she responded: "I know! But it's a spa!" I just couldn't argue with that logic, so I got her a pair of kid scissors and told her to have at it. She was in heaven.

10!

Jacob just turned the big 1-0. He was nearly insane with excitement in the days weeks months leading up to the big day. And I do not think the day disappointed. He spent the morning at a state park with his cousin; spent the afternoon bowling with friends (and then battling them with a cornucopia full of Nerf weapons); and then had a "flat round food" party* (pizza and a cookie cake) with family and frinds. *He is 10 now so it seemed like the right time to dispense with a party "theme," but I found the lack of a theme to be oddly disconcerting, so I seized on the flat round food and mentally made that my own secret theme, although I didn't communicate it to anyone else.

At the end of the day I told him about how I'd never forget about the time a few hours after he was born, when he was in the nursery and I started sobbing uncontrollably because I missed him so much. So David helped me hobble down the hallway to the nursery, sniffling the whole while (me, not David) until I could finally retrieve my baby and take him back to the room with me. David and I both remember how easy it was for us to spot Jacob in the room -- up until that point I thought that all newborns looked the same, but once I had one I realized that your own newborn looks totally different, go figure! I told Jacob that story to illustrate to him how immediately and completely we loved him {although I suspect the story also has sub-themes about post-partum hormones, etc.}.

In any event, it's ten years later and I still can't imagine life without him. Happy birthday Jacob!