John Gray Is A Local Columnist For Our Newspaper

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I always get a good chuckle when John writes his cleaver and funny articles! By John Gray Kim Kardashian has a nasty prenup and Tori Spelling wears a bikini even though she's like 20 months pregnant. How do I know such personal things? I went to the gym. While burning calories I think I discovered why America is so stupid and the answer was found not 12 feet from my treadmill on the community magazine rack. This is a place where Joe and Suzy Sixpack dump their old magazines for strangers to read. I was looking for some intellectual stimulation; instead I was hit with an avalanche of gossip, nonsense and downright meanness. First up was something called US Weekly which answers important questions that would have stumped Aristotle. Things like: “Who wore this dress better?” They show you three celebrities in the same exact outfit with the goal of humiliating two of them. A page over I learned that Scarlett Johansson and Sean Penn are breaking up. Did you know these two were together? I mean I'm all for a May/November romance but couldn't Sean be her Dad? A few pages away is a section called “Stars do it too,” which is meant to show you that millionaire celebrities do regular, mundane stuff just like you. There’s a soap actress drinking a cup of coffee and oh how cool the guy from CSI is getting the mail. Does this really excite you? I kind of assumed that even the biggest stars drank water and went to the bathroom. Thinking it may be just that one magazine driving me insane I pick up Entertainment Weekly. The first thing that hits me is a full page advertisement for something called “Pretty Little Liars.” I have no idea what this show is but the ad features four very young girls dressed like strippers in roller skates. I'm wondering who the target audience is for this show but based on this photo I'm guessing they have lots of 15-year-old boys watching. Maybe it's the dad in me but I immediately feel bad for the parents of these girls. I need to get away from these gossip type magazines and look for something more suitable for a guy working out in the gym. Ah, a fitness publication with a girl on the cover who looks like she's never eaten a potato chip in her life. It has several helpful articles on the proper way to lose weight including one written by a woman who lost 40 pounds just walking. Opposite the article though is an advertisement for a miracle powder that will make the pounds disappear. I notice as I thumb through it that all of the ads are for miracle diets. This makes no sense since this is a fitness magazine and anyone who knows anything about fitness will tell you a sensible diet and exercise is the safe way to lose weight. I wonder how they can preach being healthy but then take money from these snake oil salesman. I give up on the magazines and look at the TV set in front of me. Oh goody, its supermodel Cindy Crawford trying to sell women a moisturizer will make them look just like her. Something tells me God and good genes gave her that face. The guy who invented this magic cream has the word “doctor” in front of his name but he looks like a game show host. He's holding a melon that he claims contains a secret “youth molecule.” I can’t take it anymore so I make like a banana and split. A recent report on education in America found a majority of fourth graders could not identify a picture of Abraham Lincoln. I didn’t believe it until I spent 10 minutes at the gym magazine rack and realized this is the literature parents have lying around the house. Now, I’m quite certain most kids think, “Four score and seven years ago” is a reference to last nights Yankee game. I'd love to keep talking about our crumbling education system but that singing show with Christina Aguilera just came on and I have to see how she does. Normally I wouldn't care but US Weekly tells me she's gone through a divorce, drunk driving arrest, public humiliation and (gasp) she just turned 30. Luckily she has a son named Max and a hot new boyfriend named Matt and she calls them her little “M& Ms.” As I wrote that last sentence it’s quite possible I just melted my brain. Just to funny, and I really did need a good laugh after the day I had.