GOOP!!! Celebrities Have Advice. Listen Up.

We’ve all grown accustomed to celebrities trying to give us poor commoners a nudge in the right direction. The attempts at correcting the unfortunate, little souls who curiously don’t know how to live their lives come in many forms. It might be as simple and innocuous as some diet, exercise, or lifestyle campaign.

Step 1 – Get rich, so as to free up a bit of time.

Step 2 – Have no discernible value beyond being pretty, so as to avoid being tempted into filling that time with some manner of productive activity.

Step 3 – Doesn’t really matter what Step 3 is.

The keen advice on life and everything in it might also come by way of appeals to charity, and otherwise goodly deeds and partnerships. They might tell you to donate to hungry children, or save animals, or join in whatever other sort of cause is really hip at the time. They’ll plead with you, and all the while what is clearly behind their eyes is some bit of confusion that the little simpletons are not already on board with the One True Way.

They want your 30 bucks a months, because is it really so much to ask, but somehow manage not to donate everything they earn minus… oh, let’s say… half a million a year. It’s sweet, but some of us know where that $30 is going. And, of course, they pretty well figure they have to get some serious love if they support loving all the wittle, fwuffy animals. What’s someone going to say, that they’re anti-dog? Well… and well…

And, okay, celebrities might even have a plan for conquering the universe, and want you “on board.” I know, this is really old, but I love it, and I love the little spoof below it too.

Well, now Gwyneth Paltrow has a more interesting tactic. She just wants to be your friend. She wants to hang with you, and give you some advice. It might just be where to find a good restaurant. Maybe it’s “…some thoughts of one of my sages….” Whatever the case may be, Gwyneth has started a new website, goop.com, where she not only expresses the idea that Goop is, “… a little bit of everything that makes up my life,” but also includes this sentence in the brief soliloquy that is the sum total of the site at this point… “Goop.” That’s right, Goop. Apparently, doing all the things that Gwyneth has deemed living the good life (or whatever the story is precisely) is to in fact be Gooping.

Goop, which stands for Gwenyth… uhhh… oop, is about: treating yourself, visiting a city you’ve never been to before, not being lazy, and a few other phrases that are really, really shiny. My favorite little bit of wisdom, which is not just on the fortune-cookie hollow side, but actually without referent is, “Invest in what’s real.”

Shazam!

The website hits on the heels of Gwyneth’s new PBS show, Spain… on the road Again (I don’t know, that’s how they write it), and I suspect the two go fabulously together. You’ll have to check your local listings, because there is a wide range of airtimes for the kickoff. You may have already seen it, it may be on today, or you may have to wait about a week.

Spain… on the road Again is a sort of documentary road trip which plays up the culinary. Gwyneth and three other people (who have names and are just frickin to die for!!!) sashay around Spain, walk barefoot through the water in that very fall catalog sort of way, and are really brilliant at you. It’s like Spain is just so quaint and adorable, and don’t you just want to gobble up all the little Spain people. Look at them scurry around.

For now, you can only sign up for the newsletter and read the little introduction.

Thanks in advance for the advice Gwyneth. You can hang onto the “take a month tour of Spain” edition of your blogaletter, I’ll catch it on the tube. And really, before you go to the trouble of pulling one of your sages down from the shelf, I think I’m okay for right now.

If I can quote The Soup’s Joel McHale –

“Fans are said to be particularly looking forward to Paltrow’s tips on how to be born into a wealthy show-business family, how to date men such as Ben Affleck and Luke Wilson, how to win a Best Actress Oscar and become the highly paid face of Estée Lauder’s perfumes, how to marry a rich rock musician like Chris Martin and purchase lavish homes in London and New York. Without wasting time.”

Get his take here.

And, take a look at the show’s preview.