Which side were you on?

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ADDED:

“Kelly Clarkson has put us all in danger” might be the most unintentionally funny sentence in the history of mankind.

— smootoshi (@adamsmoot) October 13, 2026

AND: Here's the bird that started it all:

 

I’ve been to Art of Play many times for magic shows, and Molly the purely mechanical bird is really cool. Here’s a video I shot last year. I can see why Kelly Clarkson would want to buy it. But also, Kelly Clarkson + Art of Play’s Molly is so random a collision that I’m upgrading my belief in the simulation hypothesis

— Eugene Wei (@eugenewei) October 12, 2026

"I was always praised for my body, and I felt like people had expectations from me that I couldn’t deliver."

"I felt very vulnerable, because I can work out, I can eat healthy, but I can’t change the fact that both of my kids enjoyed the left boob more than the right. All I wanted was for them to be even and for people to stop commenting on it."

From "Gisele Bündchen Reveals She Got a Boob Job After Breastfeeding Kids — but Instantly Regretted It."

"When I woke up, I was like, ‘What have I done?’ I felt like I was living in a body I didn’t recognize," but her best husband in the world, Tom Brady, said "I love you no matter what," and that taught her, "What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger."

I'm blogging this as refreshment from other, more dire problems afflicting women. Body image can be troubling for many of us, but this is Gisele Bündchen, famously beautiful, rich for her beauty, married to a beautiful man who is rich for his physical prowess. You don't get any more beautifully elite than her. She was always praised for her body, and that creates an exquisite problem: other people expect you to have a beautiful body, and they notice and talk about little things that have gone wrong, things that for all her hard work on her body — exercise, eating right — were something she could not control. Two babies enjoyed the left boob more than the right. It's those outside forces, the people with their expectations and the babies with their left-boob preference, that drove her to seek outside help. In search of perfection, she got the surgery, and surgery, she learned, is another imperfection, an alien imperfection. Better the unevenly sucked breasts than the surgically invaded ones! But she learned. She learned through the wisdom of her gorgeous husband and the hoary old aphorism that maybe he taught her or maybe she found for herself:

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Now, back to Christine Blasely Ford and Brett Kavanaugh. Did what didn't kill them make them stronger?

ADDED: If you Google "What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger" (or "What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger"), you don't get a lot of interesting stuff about Nietzsche and the uses of his aphorism, you get a screenful of stuff about Kelly Clarkson and her hit song "Stronger." If Nietzsche weren't already dead, it would make him stronger, presumably, to see that.

"American Idol has nailed down its first alum turned judge: Jennifer Hudson."

"The other two spots are also intended for former Idol contestants: Kelly Clarkson and either Adam Lambert or Clay Aiken."

Is this something that can revive the old show?

A State of the Union quiz.

Did Obama ever intone the standard phrase "The state of the Union is..." and if so, what word followed "is"? (There's a hint in the tags.)

Avril Lavigne/Katy Perry.

What a contrast! Tonight on "American Idol." 2 guest judges, as the show did the first round auditions in L.A.

First half hour: Avril Lavigne bundled up in a hooded, fleecy jacket while the contestants and the other judges all visibly sweated. Kara DioGuardi was completely bare-armed and bare-shouldered, yet sweating. What was the temperature in there? I had to conclude they had the heat turned up for Avril Lavigne. What was her problem? She also didn't seem to fathom the project of judging the contestants. She idiotically doubted whether a guy who was a pastor could do the competition and still be true to his religion. Hey, judge the singing. Don't nose into their personal lives, or I'll nose into yours. Why were you so cold while everyone else was hot? And yes, her jacket had devil horns. Pure distraction. The important thing was that she was bundled up while the others were sweating. On camera. How did she get the power to make all of them look so bad? They couldn't have liked that.

Second half hour: Katy Perry! She's dazzling in a tight red dress with perfectly pink lipstick and rouge. And even in that getup, she doesn't seem phony at all. She's completely alert. How refreshing to see wide open eyes! And she chides Kara for falling for the soap opera aspects of a guy who grew up in foster care. This is about whether they can sing. Exactly. And when Kara tried to co-opt her into a "girl power" hug, Perry resisted. We're looking for real singing talent. Cool. Beautiful. Smart. Sharp. Great.

No contest: Katy Perry knocks out Avril Lavigne.

***

Remember when Avril shoved Kelly?