Celebrity style blogger becomes target of fake news!

You've probably heard how fake news is warping people's perceptions of the world with alarming frequency and consequences. As the line between reality and la-la-fantasyland becomes more and more blurred I decided to sacrifice this post to public service by presenting you with several news stories featuring me, international celebrity style blogger, to test your skills at spotting FAKE NEWS.

1. New Book by Mel Breaks the Presses 

The Ritz cracker and Spam canapes at my last party were such a hit that I wrote a cookbook! Here I am meeting one of my adoring fans at a gala book-signing event in New York. Serious business. A relentless workout regimen on the chin-up bar ensured that I had the stamina to keep up with the millions of autograph seekers who lined up for days waiting for a personal audience with me. 

Just between us, my agent has inked a record-breaking Hollywood deal for the cinematic version of my book starring Al Pacino and Anthony Hopkins as PB and J, and Helen Mirren as Bun. Shhhh - you heard it here first!

2. Mel Creates Cosmo Chaos
Another day, another magazine cover. It gets so tedious, cover after cover after cover. This photo is hot, hot, hot off the presses. I barely made the shoot after a night of frolicking with Brad Pitt and George Clooney in Trevi fountain in Italy. Happily exhausted, we took a 3AM time-out for bologna roll sandwiches I had jammed into my purse for emergency refreshment. Look for the recipe in my new book.

Brad kept doing imitations of Rocky and Bullwinkle (old cartoon series) and when the paparazzi showed up I knew it was time to scram. How lucky was it then that Javier Bardem and Robert Downey Jr. happened by on their vintage Vespas. Laughing and laughing at the pickle I was in, they towed me off to the studio on a skateboard just in time. Whew!!

3. Mel Goes Lunie!
This next story is top, top, tippy-top secret!! Prime Minister Trudeau, the supreme leader of Canada, secretly launched a Canadian moon mission earlier this year now that everyone is grabbity-grab-grab for real estate up there. And who headed it? Well, I did! I smuggled this photo out of the science labs after splash-down in the Arctic Ocean.

The discovery of a bathtub and a rubber duckie on the lunar surface is still hush hush and may have deep political implications globally. You may have read my tweet: "A duck on the moon is quackers! It's a disaster, I mean really." Religious leaders are at a summit as I write, discussing the significance of clean aliens. In between my Giant Twirls for Womankind, I staked a claim for my future hotel, Mel Fawlty Tower.

4. Another Story
And in this last photo I am dressed as a traffic cone. I dressed this way after a New Year's Eve spent rolling around my living room floor eating chips and drinking coffee and cutting up old magazines to make collages. I made a big mess.

So, how did you do? Could you spot the fake news? If you guessed that STORY 4 was fake, you were right. Who would wear such an outfit out in public?!

There is an international swat team assembling a task force of expert fake news spotters to protect the world. If you passed this test, you should contact them at 1-800-Everything-Is-Fake-Or-It-Sure-Seems-Like-It!! *To be clear, it is not the intention of this post to impugn the integrity of style bloggers who are exemplars of honesty, sensibleness, niceness, and realness with no photo editing whatsoever.

So it's Year of the Chicken, what did you expect?

I'll link something up with Patti's Visible Monday at Not Dead Yet Style and Catherine's #iwillwearwhatilike at Not Dressed as Lamb. There will be a better photo of this fake outfit on my instagram, @bagandaberet.

Edit: I'm also linking up to Catherine's Saturday Share Linkup of January 13, 2017, which seems a natural fit considering her post is called "Why you should never believe what you read in the paper."