Personality Parade

In junior high and high school, I used to look forward to reading the Sunday Papers. Not to catch up on news, but to read the celebrity Q&A columns in USA Weekend and Walter Scott's Personality Parade in Parade. Then celebrity blogs came along. I read Perez Hilton (until it was all about Perez), then Pink is the New Blog (until Trent sold out). I'll pop into DListed occasionally, but I don't really get into celebrity blogs these days.

Last summer, I read a wonderful book titled Girls Like Us, which profiled three wonderful women of song: Carole King, Carly Simon, and Joni Mitchell. The book prompted me to dig out my old Joni Mitchell CDs (and buy a few more), and wound up listening to Mitchell almost exclusively most of the summer.

This morning, I took a look at USA Weekend's celebrity Q&A column, and lo and behold, there's a question about Joni Mitchell, submitted by someone who had read Girls Like Us:

Judging by how the columnist answered this, I wondered if they read the book at all, because if they had, they would know all this information was in the book. I feel sorry for the person submitting this question.

These days, these Q&A columns seem to be only for people who are computer illiterate. I wonder how long it takes them to dig up all this "insider" information. Somewhere, Joni Mitchell is cackling.