Lying awake at night, fretting over Jenny's plight

“It’s for you,” Wendy said, holding out the telephone handset in my direction and rolling her eyes heavenward, “It’s Jenniferrrrr – again!”

I also rolled my eyes, but took call.

“Hi, Rache,” I said. “S’up?”

She hates me calling her by her Friends name, but let’s face it, that long-running TV series was her brief moment of glory.

“So, hon’,” I said. “Yes, I’ve seen all the tab covers about poor you versus that bitch Angelina. And stop reading Perez Hilton. Actually, ‘read’ is too approving a word in the case of his gossip-mongering, but you get my drift. “He is obsessed with so-called ‘Brangelina’ and there’s nothing you can do about it. His readers are OC 17-year-old girls who fail to appreciate that Brad and weird alien Angelina are the same age as their parents – and about as exciting.”

The foregoing is, needless to say, a representation that doesn’t reflect any sort of reality.

But, it struck me yesterday at the supermarket, as I scanned the tabs that despite the fact the world’s economies are going to hell in a handcart, Jen and Angelina still make the preponderant copy. in those rags.

Even Canada’s self-christened ‘National Magazine’, Maclean’s – for readers outside Canada, Maclean’s is a north-of-the-border equivalent of Time and Newsweek as they were back in the days when they offered a little more reading than a Denny’s menu – has an article inset (and accompanying ‘analysis’ story inside) title Aniston’s fall from sweetheart to spinster. How that must sting. ‘Spinster!’ Spinster connotes hair-in-a-bun, sensible shoes and knees always held always tightly together except during private communion with the commode. Good thing there is about as much likelihood of Jen actually scrutinizing Maclean’s as there is of her browsing through Plato’s Republic.

It must be a galling thing for a public personage to find themselves an object either of derision or, worse yet, pity. ‘Jenny the loser’ is the underlining message. Dumped by her hunky hubby and left to while away her tabloid fodder by getting ‘involved’ with one nonentity dude after another, it must ultimately make it difficult to get up in the morning. How did it all go wrong? I mean, aside from that incursion by that bitch Angelina who, while she is out saving all the children in the world, seemed to see nothing morally offensive about trolling for other women’s husbands. Oh well, none of my business.

Jenny reminds me of those sorority chicks in my university days, much as did Meg Ryan before she astonishingly decided to trash her own lovely face in some sort of bizarre ‘enhancement’ process. You know, the sort of sweetie who would respond with a “Hi – whoever,” when a downmarket guy like me had caught her eye. She was too busy checking out which frat-rat was drving the hottest car that corporate daddy’s money could buy.

But, maybe I sell her short. Maybe she has more depth than a sheet of paper. Maybe all the silly stories about her pining away for her erstwhile Muffin Man are just that, silly stories.

Finally, though, she should probably grow up and face the grim reality that maybe “he just wasn’t all that into you.” We’ve all had to do that at one time or another, hon’, so this time it’s your turn. And, you can take a little solace in the fact that your straying former spouse actually has to live with and be ‘nanny’ for a woman who once carried Billy Bob Thornton’s blood in a vial around her neck.