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It might seem obvious that a couple of Oscar nominations might sour a person on the artistic worth of an MTV-manufactured, panic-jigging pop star, but without our operatives overhearing a fascinating conversation like the one below, how would we know for sure?

Flew from LAX to JFK this past Sunday night, and while I was disappointed to not see Quentin Tarantino hitting on small Asian women, I did bump into Sigourney Weaver. I guess Ted's right about her star wattage [Ed.note—Speculation can be found here.], because girl was riding in business class and not first. She appeared nice & friendly, smiling and seemingly enjoying herself. Ran into her again at the baggage carousel, as she & the family waited for their luggage. While Dad went to get a luggage cart, Mother & Daughter got into a very loud debate over the merits of being an Ashlee Simpson fan.(For the record: Daughter pro/Mother con).

Daughter is a big fan of the MTV show, which Mom HATES. After a discussion of the merits of young Ashlee, daughter turned to Mother and bitterly said 'It's tough singing and dancing and performing all at the same time...you wouldn't know...all you do is act." Mother then went into a speech about artistic output and creativity and then compared Ashlee to someone the daughter should admire — Natalie Portman. "Someone who is attending school, with strong creative output and is even visiting Israel." She then mentioned that if the MTV show featured Ashlee doing "geometry" she would then find it admirable and Simpson would be a person to emulate. The debate continued a little longer, but Daughter could only just whine about liking her and Mom continued to whine about creative output. Luggage came and I was on my way.

The kid might've scored some points for Ashlee if she'd mentioned that Portman dated Zach Braff and nearly bared all of her goodies in Closer, but, alas, we shouldn't dwell on missed opportunities. She'll learn. At least their debate contained at least one genius-level idea: An entire show about Ashlee Simpson studying geometry easily would be more fascinating than Cameron Diaz and her pals tandem-jumping over Paraguay to raise awareness about global warming.