Hello and welcome back. Consider today to be kind of like a review lecture- you know, the one your teacher saves until the last fifteen minutes of the class before the exam. In other words, we’ve got a load of information to cover. Turn your music down, settle into your chair and push all that pesky homework off your desk and right onto the floor- you won’t need to know calculus in the real world! I’m practically a guru. I thought we’d go over a few recent incidents that have been blowing up the tabloids recently.   

My first topic is almost too pathetic to write about. You’ve probably heard all about how Lindsay Lohan left a jewelry store with a necklace worth $2,500 and then had her assistant return it to the LAPD a few days later. The funny part of this story is that LiLo never paid for the necklace and right before it was dropped off by the assistant, police had obtained a search warrant to go through her house in order to find what had better be a gorgeous piece of jewelry. If Lindsay is convicted, she could be charged with felony grand theft and serve three years-ish in jail, which is definitely one of the more laughable aspects of this story. I mean, my God. Lindsay has allegedly already stolen tons of other stuff in the past, she parties harder than the guy Russell Brand plays in ”Get Him to the Greek,” she’s supposedly been addicted to multiple substances and has been linked to several DWI incidents. Her rap sheet is longer than an entire roll of toilet paper, yet she’s never had to face serious consequences, and stealing a necklace really isn’t going to spark a fire under a judge’s butt. I feel like LiLo represents those girls who puke at a party, only leaving after they steal your North Face. In other words, maybe the incarceration of Lindsay would be good for society. I’m nothing if not a humanitarian.  

Like filthy resin floats to the top of murky floodwaters, a more hilarious story surfaced this week when Billy Ray Cyrus gave an exclusive interview with GQ and ohmygod it was pretty much the sobbiest sob-story I’ve ever read. As someone who dealt with kids and beestings this summer at a camp, I can tell you that a young child has more integrity than Billy Ray. Honestly. When BRC started talked about Miley’s career and how he failed her as a father, all I could think about was how kids who had pooped their pants dealt with their situations in more dignified manners. YOU DON’T JUST COME BACK FROM THAT! Ol’ daddy Cyrus talks about how he regretted doing the one show/thing he’s actually known for: “I hate to say it, but yes, I do [regret Hannah Montana]. Yeah. I’d take it back in a second. For my family to be here and just be everybody okay, safe and sound and happy and normal, would have been fantastic.” What the heck happened to this guy? I haven’t been faced with such a lonely life since I saw Secret Window and basically watched Johnny Depp nap and generally look groggy for an hour and forty minutes.
Souce for quote: http://theblemish.com/2011/02/billy-ray-cyrus-regrets-letting-miley-do-hannah-montana/  

The final miscreant whose personal failings I plan to mock is Sir Charlie Sheen himself, a professional avoider of consequence- that is, consequence of both the legal and sexually transmittable variety. I can’t say I don’t have a high amount of respect for his lifestyle; Sheen’s face is nothing but utter nerd, yet he gets more women than every character Matthew McConaughey has ever played in movies. The reason he’s recently been in the news is because in late January he was rushed to the hospital for treatment of “severe abdominal pains”, and just for the record, as he was wheeled out of his mansion into the ambulance, two other women also exited the home. So that’ssss nice. He was released from the hospital and surprisingly, even though Charlie’s presence in the hospital was allegedly most likely drug-related, he didn’t go into rehab faster than Luke would’ve if they had rehab on the Death Star (I mean, you can only flirt with your sister for so long). Instead, Charlie’s people insisted that he was in the hospital because of a hernia, the pain of which had been alleviated by “allergies and [Charlie’s] laughing too hard at the TV”. There’s a lot of speculation about this- surprisingly not because people don’t believe the TV story, but because Charlie was in a room full of porn stars at the time, and they probably weren’t watching “The Fox and the Hound” (although that’s the saddest movie Disney ever made). I really couldn’t make any of this up, and it just gets weirder. Charlie kept denying that he needed rehab and his stint on “Two and a Half Men” was postponed for a while, and now he’s testing at-home rehab, which is literally the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. Seriously? In-home rehab? So like, you sit in a mansion, watch movies, have food delivered to you, and basically live a better life than 94% of America, while pretending you’re learning to ignore the temptations- hookers and cocaine- that every rich person has to deal with?  Source: http://www.thesuperficial.com/charlie-sheen-was-laughing-too-hard-at-the-tv-of-course-01-2011  

All I know is, these people have it way easier than we do and yet they still find time to mess their lives up, far more so than we ever could hope to. So the next time you’re running late to class, and fall right in the middle of a huge group of people, just look at that giant water stain on your backside and remind yourself, “At least I’m not holed up in a gorgeous mansion in California, getting paid to not hire prostitutes or do hard drugs!” And don’t ever forget how lucky you are.

Maddie Drake can be reached at [email protected].