March 23: Gwyneth Paltrow, Psalm 15, and da GOOP

I haven't been a Gwyneth Paltrow fan for a long while.  I used to love/lust her after she won the Oscar for Shakespeare In Love.  But then she had to go and be with Brad Pitt and Ben Affleck.  And then she had to marry Chris Martin from Coldplay, become too cool for words.  She dropped out of sight; had two kids, Apple (PUH-leez) and Moses; and didn't do a whole lot of anything that I cared about.  Seems like she's on a hot streak right now.  She was just in that movie about country music (not interested); sang with Cee Lo Green on the Grammys; and did a couple guest spots on the TV show Glee.

Last night, I saw a rerun of her first Glee episode.  I missed it the first time it aired.  It really rocked.  My whole family enjoyed it.  The only issue I had with it was at the end, when the writers had to make a joke about Mary Todd Lincoln possibly being bipolar.  For a show that's all about tolerance, making a joke about mental illness seemed like a pretty cheap shot.  I have to let that go, since mental illness still remains the one condition in the world that it's socially acceptable to stigmatize and make fun of.  (Ryan Murphy, are you listening?)

When I started thinking about my poem this morning, Gwyneth Paltrow was still on my mind.  Now, I'm still not quite as big a fan as I was when she won her Oscar.  I'm not really into her GOOP blog, where she writes about her fabulous travels, her fabulous diet, her fabulous possessions, her fabulous clothes, her fabulous life.  Gwyn sort of makes herself an easy target for critics and cranks.  However, I really have begun to like her again.  And, in the spirit of my Lenten pursuit of positivity, I wrote the following poem.

This is Saint Marty's first attempt at composing a Tweet.



Gwyn doing Cee Lo on Glee

Psalm 15:  Praiz Tweet 4 Gwyneth Paltrow

Dear Gwyn, fill da universe w/yr gold hair, yr thigh high boots, yr GOOP.  Tell this peep how 2 Go, Get, Do, Be, See, Make himself in2 U.  Yr rock goddess body, yr rock goddess voice, yr rock goddess life.  I wld hike w/U thru Spain, eat squid, oyster, goat fried in olive oil, swim naked in da Mediterranean C, climb da Pyrenees, 4 just 1 nite of Shakespeare in Luv w/U.  Unwrap yr boy chest in2 womanhood.  Tweet Spanish 2 me, words 2 make me Twitterbate in da dark.  Let me B yr Coldplay.  U B my groupie.  Teach me.  I will follow yr posts & Tweets.  I will eat them w/Cweed, macrobiotic chardonnay.  I will look 2 heaven, LOL w/U in da stars, da comets.  Chase yr nucleus, coma, tail thru da stratosphere, past Mars & Jupiter.  Da edge of da Milky Way.  Where God took Adamz rib.  Cre8ed U.