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Toolie: (noun) Adult who gatecrashes post-high school exam celebrations. He is generally older than the students, typically in his 20s, and considered to be acting in a predatory or annoying manner.<\/p>\n
Trudoolie: (noun) Festival-dwelling former world leader wearing backwards baseball cap and taking sartorial style notes from tennis brats everywhere, canoodling with pop-star-turned-astronaut girlfriend whilst eating two-minute noodles with chopsticks in a gutter. Generally older than everyone at said festival. Also acting in an annoying manner.<\/p>\n
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Former prime minister Justin Trudeau wears his cap backwards and eats some noodles with Katy Perry in a picture the pop singer posted from the Coachella music festival at the weekend.Instagram @katyperry<\/p>\n
You heard it here first, people: Coachella has jumped the shark-ella. Or perhaps that\u2019s too harsh. Maybe it\u2019s just that, much like its most recent attendees, Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry, it\u2019s in the middle of an identity crisis-ella. The Californian desert festival, which began in 1999 following an industry backlash against service charges on concert tickets, quickly became known as a trendsetting annual event on the fashion and music scenes, and has latterly (inevitably) become a haven for cashed-up influencers and beautiful people everywhere.<\/p>\n
But then in blundered 54-year-old Trudeau, aka Trudoolie, with his freshly ironed jeans and aforementioned-backwards baseball cap, and 41-year-old Perry, wearing a cropped white T-shirt whose slogan, rendered in text-speak and gobbledegook, carried a warning about not sharing vapes with her. Or something.<\/p>\n
Goodbye, Coachella cred. Hello, someone\u2019s dad raided his teenage son\u2019s wardrobe and nicked his Montreal Alouettes<\/a> cap, while his newish girlfriend borrowed her five-year-old daughter\u2019s bike pants for the day.<\/p>\n Related Article As a package, they looked uncannily like an AI artist\u2019s impression of Brooklyn Beckham and Nicola Peltz<\/a>, albeit 25 years, and less weird family drama later.<\/p>\n Cringe-ella.<\/p>\n Look, as middle-aged love on the rebound goes, it\u2019s hard to begrudge Trudeau and Perry a second (and technically in her case, third) chance at happiness. They seem nice enough. As anyone with a pulse and an internet connection knows, he\u2019s a former Canadian PM, and one of the few world leaders prepared to raise a metaphorical middle finger to Donald Trump while in office; she\u2019s one of the bestselling music artists of all time, the voice of Smurfette, and in a recent turn of events that no one saw coming, an astronaut.<\/p>\n She\u2019s also, in a recent turn of events that everyone saw coming, estranged from her baby\u2019s daddy, Orlando Bloom, while Trudeau is divorced from Sophie Gregoire, the mother of his three children.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a lot of baggage. No wonder they needed to blow off some steam. Which brings us inevitably to Coachella and the weird emotional space that he, in particular, seems to be occupying post-politics. In December, he and Perry were resplendent in besuited, cucumber-finger-sandwiches-and-drinkies-with-the-Japanese-PM-and-his-wife mode, photographed in front of a Christmas tree, with Trudeau posting on X that \u201cKaty and I were so glad to have the chance to sit down with you and Yuko. Thank you, Fumio, for your continued commitment to both the international rules-based order and to a better future for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n So far, so statesmanlike. Fast forward to this week, when Trudeau\u2019s evil twin, the Coachella-dwelling Trudoolie was calling the shots, snuggled up with Perry in whatever passes for a mosh pit at a Justin Bieber live show and then, as canvassed, rehydrating with some sort of noodle-based cardboard box affair while his fancy Oura smart ring (worn on every freshly-divorced man\u2019s ring finger of choice: the middle one) pestered him about how all the partying was throwing out his weekly sleep stats.<\/p>\n The gear change was enough to induce whiplash. It was also eerily discombobulating, like accidently running into your old school principal in the underwear department of David Jones and discovering that, tucked under the mountain of sensible flesh-coloured support hose and matching brassieres is a pair of crotchless undies, a whip and a set of edible suspenders.<\/p>\n Related Article It\u2019s possible, of course, that as a relatively new couple, Trudeau and Perry are just in the first flush of love, which is simultaneously sweetly endearing and phenomenally irritating to be around, and that, as such, all the handholding and oversharing will run its course. She\u2019ll start begging off the boring diplomatic gigs where no one cares that she once kissed a girl (even if she did like it) and he\u2019ll realise that anyone who goes out in public wearing a backwards baseball cap had better have an upcoming boy band album in the works, a forehand smash for the ages, or a death wish.<\/p>\n To be fair to Trudoolie, he did look faintly embarrassed in much of the footage Perry posted to Instagram, although whether that was a sympathetic response to Justin Bieber, who seemed to have forgotten the lyrics to his own songs, or hanger and boredom, or because the penny had finally dropped about the stupid baseball cap, is anyone\u2019s guess.<\/p>\n Ageing is a brutal game. And ageing at Coachella, with a younger girlfriend, a mid-life identity crisis in the offing, and an imminent berth on a concrete perch-ella slurping two-minute noodles, must surely be infinitely worse.<\/p>\n Michelle Cazzulino is a Sydney writer.<\/p>\n The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n![\"Katy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776136870_329_9c8ff2d596d0ad86dbd3a7f9c4cfa55fe6b7f2dba7dca0dbc86080ddc7e82182.jpeg\")
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The 54-year-old former Canadian prime minister and father of three with the pop singer in another picture posted by Perry.Instagram @katyperry<\/p>\n![\"Gwyneth](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/e4372f10dfcef4ff535339ed97eb018effbde9f2.jpeg\")
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