Culture

Kylie Jenner's $1,000 Sweet 16 Gift Bags

Today in celebrity gossip: Shockingly Kim Kardashian's sister had a gross birthday party, Drew Barrymore joins Twitter, and Jennifer Aniston knows Batman. 

By Richard Lawson
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Kylie Jenner, the half-sister of the Kardashian witches and daughter of Bruce and Kris "I Love My Friends" Jenner, recently turned 16. And like any young lady of the aristocracy, she celebrated this significant birthday with a grand debutante ball, known commonly as a "Sweet Sixteen" party. It was a lavish affair. The actor Aubrey Graham, from Canada's Degrassi: The Next Generation, appeared to perform one of his rap songs, and Kylie's famous sisters were there, posing for the conveniently ubiquitous cameras. The guests had a great time and, we learn today, walked off at the end of the party with gift bags worth $1,000 each. Yeah, there was $1,000 worth of crap — headphones, makeup, speakers — in each of these ding-dang bags, and each of the 150 guests got one. You do the math. Though, as TMZ points out, probably a lot of the junk in the bags was given to the Kardashijenners gratis, for promotional reasons. I mean, this family staged an entire hoax wedding just to be paid to do it, so they are pretty much willing to sell every experience of their lives to, like, the mediumest bidder. They're going to have a sponsored casket at Kris's funeral. (Look, we have to face facts. Kris Jenner is 77 years old and things happen. I'm sorry, but old people die.) It's just what this family does. So yeah, if you'd been invited to Kylie Jenner's Sweet Sixteen birthday party, if you'd swayed along to Aubrey Graham's little rhymes with everyone else, endured the harsh beam of the camera lights, put up with Kris trying to convince you that she was one of Kylie's friends from school, did all that terrible Kardashian stuff, then you would have gotten this gift bag, this luxurious thing, this token, this totem of something being terribly wrong. [TMZ]

Saints preserve us, Drew Barrymore has joined Twitter. She sent her first tweet yesterday, followed by two retweets of InStyle magazine, and that's been the extent of her activity so far. But she's on there. Lord she's on there. What will a Drew Barrymore Twitter account look like? Is she still doing the whole dippy flower thing? Is she past that? I don't really know. She's got a kid now, so maybe it will be lots of baby stuff. I'm pretty sure it won't be snappy little jokes about pop culture things. That doesn't really seem her style. I'm sure she can throw down with the best of them with her friends, but she's not going to do that publicly. No, I'd imagine that this Twitter thing will mostly be about love and/or light and then, y'know, retweets of brand things or magazine things. Which, fine, whatever. Why was this even necessary to begin with? Why is any of it necessary? What are we doing with our lives? And why does it take a Drew Barrymore Twitter account to finally make us ask ourselves that question? Remember Boys on the Side? Whatever happened to movies like that?

American Idol justification Kelly Clarkson is getting married in October, but you know what? She's "so over it." Just completely "over it." She's happy to be with her fella, who is Reba McEntire's stepson, but the whole wedding thing is not doin' it for her: "It's so overwhelming. We're just doing a lot: touring and the wedding and the Christmas album, so I'm over the wedding part." Over it! Done with it. You know what I'm over? The phrase "I'm over it." I know everyone else agrees with me, I am not the first to say this, but good heavens what an annoying phrase. Bury it under a mountain please, next to the words "media" and "amazing." It's the best thing for all of us. But back to Kelly. I like her a lot, she's great, but it's mighty strange that she's so over it, vis a vis her wedding, and yet she's so excited about her new wedding song. It's almost as if that song is a very cynically written thing meant to become a popular wedding anthem that will make her lots of money rather than a genuine expression of how she feels about the subject. Almost! But I'm sure it's not that. [Us Weekly]

Simon Cowell, who got his good friend's wife pregnant, oops, says he is "proud to be a dad." Which, good, I'm glad, good for that future kid. But then Simon goes and calls the kid's mother "a very special girl," which is probably not how you want to be talking about the mother of your child, calling her a "very special girl," a very condescending and backhandedly dismissive way for a man like Cowell to describe a woman. I dunno. I just can't imagine that he's going to be around for that kid much. Imagine being Simon Cowell's kid? Imagine being his girlfriend? Imagine being anything related to Simon Cowell, ever? Doesn't seem fun. [Page Six]

Here's a video of the terrible TMZ staff making fun of a former Puff Diddy intern who's suing the mogul's company because she worked as a free intern for him and that is illegal. You have to pay interns! The TMZ staff thinks it's hilarious, because she was just doing "menial tasks," saying that "this chick needs a refresher on what interns do!!" Ah yes, what a risible concept, that people get paid for work that they do. That the TMZ buttholes, while weakly saying "Well, yeah she probably should have gotten paid," mostly think this is such a laughable concept is a bitter and depressing sign of what is wrong with this country and our outlook on work and money and whatever we're calling advancement. A multi, multi millionaire should have paid the person who got his coffee and decorated for his parties and took lunch orders from the staff. That may seem "menial" to Harvey Levin and his band of ugly jackals, but that's also many people's job. As in they get paid to do it. And no it's not for Piddles, but still. It counts. Ugh. [TMZ]

Look what Jennifer Aniston was doing:

Jennifer Aniston was hanging out with her friend, Jason Batman. Son of Bruce and Alfred Batman, of Gotham. That's nice. [Daily Mail]

This article is from the archive of our partner The Wire.