QUOTE OF THE DAY

"I really have no idea if anyone ever shoved it up the shitter. I'm not there watching it every day. But there was, at the time, a load of excruciatingly painful campness that went on."

- Keith Richards to British GQ, on Mick Jagger's "sexuality"

KYLIE MINOGUE HANGING OUT WITH MATT LAUER

Lady Minogue is taking America by storm this week, in celebration of the U.S. release of her latest album, X.

The Australian dynamo kicked off her media blitz on the Today show this morning.

Click below to check out her interview!

Kylie will be performing (yay!) two songs on Dancing With the Stars on tuesday.

I'm really hoping Kylie's cd does well in the States, because it's amazing. I also wish she would do a small club promo tour so folks can get a taste of Kylie fever! Welcome back to America!!!!



PSS: I don't think "All I see" is the right single to release in America. Should have been something more upbeat, like "Wow," "Speakerphone," or "In My Arms". The video for IMA was flawless!

IT WAS A TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE "ACCIDENT!"

After deliberating for less than two hours, a jury in the Bahamas has just determined that Anna Nicole Smith's son, Daniel Smith, died from an accidental drug overdose and is recommending no criminal charges.

The inquest began in November 2007 to determine what killed the 20-year-old.

Island police have maintained there is no evidence of homicide.

An autopsy found that Daniel likely died from a combination of drugs, including methadone and antidepressants.

Accidental my ass! no one accidentally overdoses on methadone and antidepressents. I'm so sick and tired of celebrities and the children of them (I use the word celebrity loosely for Anna Nicole) who always get a pass because there's a lot of money at stake if a celebrity get's well. U would think people who work for celebrities would learn that you are no good to anyone dead. let's call it what is was. Daniel was an addict like his mother, and he went overboard with the amount of drugs he inhabited. Case closed!

CELEBRITY QUOTE OF THE DAY

"When I'm in a relationship I'm very loyal and committed. I give a lot. But it's been nice not having a boyfriend for the past year. In fact it's the first time I haven't had one in ten years and I'm enjoying what I'm getting out of this moment. I could be in a relationship if I wanted to be but I haven't finished doing what I'm doing."

- Cameron Diaz tells the new issue of British GQ

NEW VIDEO: TRINA FT KEYSHIA COLE "I GOT A THANG FOR YOU"

“I Got a Thang For You” is the second single off Trina’s new album Still Da Baddest, in stores next Tuesday. The song and video feature Keyshia Cole.

Trina Feat. Keyshia Cole - I Got A Thang For You (New)
by wonderful-life1989

IS THE GHETTO WEDDING OF THE YEAR BACK ON???

Well at least if she's on good behavior, she can get condrigal trailer visits. Rappers Remy Ma and Papoose are moving forward to get married, even though Remy Ma now faces up to 25 years in jail.

Papoose denied the story claiming they were merely friends after rumors swirled of the nuptials earlier this month.

Now, the rappers have confessed they lied to the press simply to protect their privacy during the turbulent trial, which ended in a conviction on four counts of assault associated with a firearm.

Initially, Remy Ma shared her wedding plans with Egypt and Papoose has followed suit sending a statement to the BET personality.

“We always wanted to keep out personal lives personal so that's why we never went public with our relationship [until] right now,” Papoose said. “I just feel like she gotta live through me. Yes, we were scheduled to be married on a yacht April 27th but due to circumstances beyond our control we are now making arrangements to be married in prison.”



The couple intends to fight the conviction voraciously. Remy Ma’s attorney has already revealed plans to appeal the conviction.

Also, Papoose revealed the couple’s plan for a concerted grassroots approach to fighting the guilty verdict, which was levied on March 27.

Papoose requested people that feel that Remy Ma had a “positive influence on their life” to ask the judge to give the Bronx-bred rapper “the least sentence possible.”

Fans and supporters are asked to send these requests to lettersforremy@gmail.com.

Remy Ma, born Remy Smith, was accused of shooting her friend Makeda Barnes-Joseph in a July 2007 dispute over $3000.

She was convicted on Thursday, March 27 of two counts of first-degree assault, attempted coercion, and criminal possession of a weapon.

She was found not guilty of gang assault and witness tampering.

MARIAH HANGS UP ON DJ DURING INTERVIEW

R+B superstar Mariah Carey has left a British radio DJ red-faced - after hanging up during a telephone interview because he grossly underestimated her sales figures. Radio One DJ Reggie Yates was quizzing the star for Sunday's (30 Mar 08) Chart Show, when he inadvertently claimed she had sold 80 million albums - and the singer was far from impressed. After almost four minutes of Carey happily chatting and joking with the presenter, Yates launched into another question, saying: "You've sold over 80 million albums worldwide..." But before he could finish, the We Belong Together hitmaker interrupted him and asked, "Is that the right quote?" - then hung up the phone. Carey's worldwide sales are closer to the 160 million mark.

In addition, Mariah Carey has made another remix to "Touch My Body" which sounds horrible. They need to worried about the rest of the songs on this upcoming album, because like I've said a million times of the tracks I've heard so far...I'm not impressed!

50 TRYNNA DRAG RICK ROSS INTO HIS FAT JOE BEEF

In a recent interview with MTV News, 50 Cent sent out a warning to Rick Ross about the company he hangs around:


"Rick Ross is doing good," 50 elaborated. "I also complimented him that he had the #1 album. I said, 'Just don't stand too close to this fat piece of ...' I'm saying that because of what [Joe's] trying to do. He runs to Miami and hangs out with them like he's running Miami? Does Fat Joe run Miami? I don't think Fat Joe runs Miami. I think people from Miami would be upset you're even questioning that. The fact he can influence DJ Khaled on the radio, does that mean Fat Joe runs Miami? ... I don't care if [Khaled] ever plays my records. He's not important enough to what I'm doing for it to matter. Not to say Miami doesn't count. He doesn't count for it to matter to me."

Source: MTV News


This beef between 50 and Fat Ass Joe is about as tired as 50's monotonous hip hop music. Joey Crack is not running Miami (hell, he's not even running the Bronx!) and 50 ain't the King of NY. So both of you tired faggots just crawl into you big holes in your mansion, and shut the fuck up!

The Game roasting The White Rapper show!

Behind the scenes with DMX crazy ass!

28 SECONDS INTO THE VIDEO, CHECK OUT THE LIGHT SKIN DUDE THAT'S PRAYING WITH DMX??? I DUNNO IF IT'S JUST ME, BUT I DETECT SOME HOW YOU DOIN IN HER!

SNOOP DOGG GETS NOMINATED FOR BEING BANNED?!

A number of U.S. rappers have been embraced and nominated by fans at this year’s MTV Australia Awards 2008, including Lupe Fiasco, 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg and Wyclef, who was announced as host today (March 31).

Wyclef will preside over the award ceremony, which will feature eight live musical performances and eleven awards presented across of variety of genres in music, film, television and sports.

In the Viewers Choice category, Lupe Fiasco is nominated for Best Live Performance (Snow Jam), 50 Cent’s "Ayo Technology" is nominated for Video of the Year, while Snoop Dogg is up for the Television Moment award, due to his comedic MTV Citizenship ad campaign.

As Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews was banning the rapper from entering Australia in 2007, MTV Australia was airing the ad campaign, which featured Snoop telling fans he was upset that Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews denied him a visa to enter the country in April of 2007.

The ads featured Snoop on an earlier tour of Australia, as he searched for a home in an exclusive neighborhood in Sydney.

Snoop Dogg appeared in the commercial with Australian Pop star Sophie Monk where he promised to "get the girls ready … and put on the barbecue."

Hometown rappers Bliss n Eso are up for the Good Karma award for their charity single "Bullet and a Target," while Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews is the only candidate for the Bad Karma Award, for refusing Snoop Dogg entry into Australia.

He was nominated for saying "he [Snoop] doesn't seem the sort of bloke we want in this country," for defining ‘bad hair day’ and for all of the above, "especially the hair, and the Snoop Dogg thing."

The rappers join a list of previously announced nominees, performers and presenters, including 50 Cent, Eve, Fergie and numerous other celebrities.

"Look out, I am bringing the Carnival down under for one whirlwind MTV ride" Wyclef Jean said. "You already know that MTV Awards Shows around the world know how to bring the house down....and with me who knows what will happen."

The MTV Australia Awards 2008 will broadcast on MTV on Monday April 28 from 7:00 pm.

Rumor: Did Heath Ledger father Another Child???

Ledger's Uncle Claims the Actor Had Affair at Age 17:

It was only a matter of time before folks started coming out of the woodwork with some left field bullshit. In the old days, the death of a celebrity meant the death of gossip-mongering around them. It was a level of respect afforded to the fallen star, their family and fans as a whole. But that was before Princess Diana, before the tabloid explosion and before the Internet.

Now, it appears, nobody -- dead or alive -- is too taboo for a headline, as Heath Ledger's uncle claims the actor may have fathered a child when he was 17.


The latest Daily Telegraph report claims that the fallen actor may have fathered a child while he was still in high school brings new debate to the forefront of post-mortem reporting. Should the press have an unwritten rule to back off of non-essential news following a death? Or is this something that the public will be interested, and therefore, it's fair game?



The "love child" report quotes Ledger's uncle, who claims that "there is a very real possibility that Heath" fathered a child when he was 17 and dating a 25 year old. The report contends that if it's proven to be Ledger's child, it could cause an estate battle for his ex-fiance Michelle Williams, with whom Ledger had their daughter Matilda.

Ledger's acting credibility and quiet family life also add fuel to the fire. When a celeb goes out of their way to stay in the spotlight and repeatedly acts inappropriately in public, they give the media a green light to cover them. But Ledger was always a private individual, preferring family over red carpets or clubs.



Ledger was unexpectedly found dead in his New York City apartment in January. As one of Hollywood's most promising young talents, the loss reverberated around Hollywood, seeming to unite film fans to mourn the loss. His last completed role was as The Joker in the upcoming Batman sequel, 'The Dark Knight.'

I just wish there was a law passed where people were garnered some aspect of respect. is nothing sacred anymore??? All I have to say on this matter is thank god for DNA testing. All this could be over in a New York minute until the child winds up being his, and the babymama tries to stake calim to her piece of the pie.

carammelo

Getting ruff with my negrito

JTR121

Got a little excited while at work exchanging dirty texts with my man so I went out to the car, drove to the back of the lot while it was raining and rubbed one off. Let me know what you think.

smnsez

tecladeouro

freezeninja

FREEZENINJA BRINGING SEXY BACK

D VARGAS

I LOVE D. VARGAS. I WANT TO BE LIKE HIM WHEN I GROW UP. HERE HE IS GIVING THE TABITHA STEVENS/VANESSA DEL RIO/CHULO SPECIAL TO MYNYSHIT AKA THE RULER

FULL VANITY FAIR INTERVIEW!

Cover Story
Madonnarama!

As she nears 50, Madonna's narrative is shifting. Yes, there's
another
new super-pop album, Hard Candy, with Justin Timberlake and Pharrell
Williams. But there's also Filth and Wisdom, the feature film she’s
co-written, produced, and directed, and I Am Because We Are, her
documentary on Malawi, the aids-ravaged country where she
controversially adopted her third child. Whisked to L.A. for an
intense prep session, followed by an almost two-hour interview, the
author explores the evolution of the Madonna myth as she harnesses her
image-making genius to a cause, a philosophy, and the search for her
true self.
The world is a series of rooms, which are arranged like concentric
circles, or rooms within rooms, joined by courtyards and antechambers,
and in the room at the center of all those rooms Madonna sits alone,
in a white dress, dreaming of Africa.

To reach her, you must wait for a sign. When it comes, if you are pure
of heart, you begin to move toward Madonna, and move fast. One moment
you are in Connecticut, wondering if it will snow, the next moment you
are swept up by a force greater than yourself. You're in a car on the
highway, flashing past sleepy towns, moving closer and closer to the
center, which you approach deftly and humbly, in the manner of a
pilgrim. Like a pilgrim, you set off before first light. Like a
pilgrim, you remove your shoes—to pass through security at the
airport. Like a pilgrim, you read and reread sacred texts: profiles
and reviews, the first published in the early 1980s, the most recent
published just a second ago, which constitute a kind of record, the
good news, the Gospel of Madonna.

Taken together, these chronicle the career of Madonna, each different,
but each telling the same story, which is so established and
archetypal it verges on folklore: the girl from suburban Detroit,
which can stand for anywhere other than here; the early years in Eden,
memories of which Madonna describes as grainy and beautiful, when
her mother was young and alive; then tragedy, the wound that never
heals, the death of her mother from breast cancer when Madonna was
six; empty days plagued by tormented dreams. You're aware of a
sense of loss, and feel a sense of abandonment, she told me. Children
always think they did something wrong when their parents disappear.
Then her father's second marriage, the stepmother, the drudgery,
because she was the oldest girl in a house filled with eight children
and so was pressed into adult service, cleaning and wiping and
changing, when she was still a child herself; secrets and desires, her
life before the mirror, which has followed her everywhere; high
school, where she was beautiful, but punky and strange. I didn't
fit into the popular group, she said. I wasn't a hippie or a
stoner, so I ended up being the weirdo. I was interested in classical ballet and
music, and the kids were quite mean if you were different. I was one
of those people that people were mean to. When that happened, instead
of being a doormat, I decided to emphasize my differences. I didn't
shave my legs. I had hair growing under my arms. I refused to wear
makeup, or fit the ideal of what a conventionally pretty girl would
look like. So of course I was tortured even more, and that further
validated my superiority, and helped me to survive and say, I'm
getting out of here, and everyone is a heathen in this schoolyou
don't even know who Mahler is! She found refuge in dance
class and went on to the University of Michigan to study dance, but for just a
year, because then she was gone to New York.

Because this is mythology, a short struggle was followed by a quick
ascent to stardom. When was it? Nineteen eighty-two? Nineteen eighty-
four? The birth of the music video? Borderline? And just like
that, every girl in every school is Madonna Ciccone, with her slutty
magnificence and lacy driving gloves and bare midriff and spangles.

Here is my favorite quote it's an editor at Billboard talking to
Jay Cocks in 1985 for Time: Cyndi Lauper will be around a long time.
Madonna will be out of the business in six months.

I felt the presence of Madonna as soon as I landed at LAX. It was as
if she had been there a moment ago, and, in fact, while waiting for my
luggage, I scanned a copy of the New York Post and came upon a picture
taken the day before which showed Madonna, having come through
customs, holding her two-and-a-half-year-old son, David, whom she had
adopted in Malawi in 2006, the cameras an inch from her face. “The
paparazzi are out of control, she would later say. I haven't
been to Los Angeles in quite a while, and I don't watch television here or in
England, and I was told there’s now a television show where the
paparazzi are the stars of the show—is that true? That they film each
other doing paparazzi jobs? Which gives them more fuel. I usually
found that type kept their distance—they definitely do in England,
because it's illegal to photograph children. But that's not how it
is here. They get this close, and don't care how much they scare your
children. Being famous has changed a lot, because now there's so many
outlets, between magazines, TV shows, and the Internet, for people to
stalk and follow you. We created the monster.

I was rushed to Century City from the airport, to the towering new
office building of CAA, the talent agency that represents Madonna, and
seated in an empty screening room, which was spooky in the same way an
empty church is spooky. The lights went down, and for 90 minutes I
watched a documentary Madonna has written and produced, I Am Because
We Are, which is African folk wisdom that means something like “It
takes a village. It too is about community about identity and how
it's rooted in place. The movie sings of Malawi, a landlocked little
nation in sub-Saharan Africa, ravaged by aids, filled with orphans a
world without adults that has become, in her middle years, the great
cause of Madonna's life. With this movie, it seems, she hopes not
only to raise awareness but also to explain her own obsession with the
motherless children of Africa.

It opens with Madonna walking in a crowd of Africans. Then her voice,
which is the voice of the upper Midwest painted in Oxford glaze:
People always ask me why I chose Malawi. And I tell them, I
didn't. It chose me. I got a phone call from a woman named Victoria Keelan.
She was born and raised in Malawi. She told me that there were over
one million children orphaned by aids. She said there weren’t enough
orphanages. And that the children were everywhere. Living on the
streets. Sleeping under bridges. Hiding in abandoned buildings. Being
abducted, kidnapped, raped. She said it was a state of emergency. She
sounded exhausted and on the verge of tears. I asked her how I could
help. She said, You're a person with resources. People pay attention
to what you say and do. I felt embarrassed. I told her I didn't know
where Malawi was. She told me to look it up on a map, and then she
hung up on me. I decided to investigate, and I ended up finding out
much more than I bargained for, about Malawi, about myself, about
humanity.

Madonna

To date, Madonna has adopted just the one child from Malawi, David,
who has joined Madonna's other children, 11-year-old Lourdes and 7-
year-old Rocco, in a town house in London. It was the birth of
Lourdes, in 1996, that put Madonna on the road that ended in Malawi.
If you have children, you know you're responsible for somebody,
she explained. You realize you are being imitated; your belief systems
and priorities have a direct influence on these children, who are like
flowers in a garden. So you start to second-guess everything you
value, and the suffering of other children becomes much more
intolerable.

If anyone ever won a lottery, it's this child, David, who one moment
was living in poverty in Africa and the next had been flown to a
palace in the great frozen North. You see him in the film, bowlegged
and stocky in the endearing way of the destitute man-child, looking
adult, wizened. It's no mystery why Madonna picked David. Look at
him, he's adorable. It was this adoption the fact that Madonna went into
an orphanage of aids-infected children and somehow came out with a child
who did not have aids and is not an orphan—that set off the furor,
especially in the British press, that the movie seems meant to
address. Laws had been brushed aside, the request expedited. As if the
dynamic of colonialism or First World/Third World were being played
out between this one superstar and this one child. Then David's
father, Yohane Banda, turned up. He told reporters he had placed his
son in the orphanage only temporarily, and let him be adopted at the
urging of authorities. The government people told me it would be a
good thing for the country, he told The Christian Science Monitor.
They said he would come back educated and be able to help us.

What a strange life for David, being carried off to London like
Pocahontas, the beautiful Indian girl found in wild America because,
as Conrad wrote of London, “this also has been one of the dark places
of the earth. Like Pocahontas, who marveled at the brick buildings
and endless streets and was shown off and fêted, but still lonely,
because the Empire has everything but what is most important—a kind
of purity or righteous connection to the land. “Africa is not doing
great, Madonna told me, “but, on the other hand, how much have
they contributed to the destruction of the world? Nothing compared to what
we have, and we have everything. In other words, Madonna brings this
boy into her house and gives him everything, but gets something in
return: a living totem of life as it was lived before machines.

After the movie, I was brought to the office of Madonna's manager,
where I sat in a boardroom and listened to Madonna's new record (Hard
Candy) on an iPod. It was a long day. The morning flight, the
articles, the movie, the record, then the interview. It was like being
brainwashed. Like being dropped in a vat of Madonna. But it's how
they wanted it's how I was purified and prepared. Like they do in the cults.
Make sure the mark is softened before he sits with the eminence. As
Madonna herself told me, I just wanted you to know where my head is
at.”

Madonna made the record with Justin Timberlake, who co-wrote five of
the songs and sings on four, Pharrell Williams, and the producer
Timbaland. “I didn’t have any idea what kind of music I wanted to
make,” Madonna told me. “I just knew I wanted to collaborate with
Pharrell and Justin. I needed to be inspired and thought, Well, who’s
making records I like? So I went, ‘I like that guy and I like that
guy.’ It’s not like we hit it off right away. Writing is very
intimate. You have to be vulnerable and it’s hard to do that with
strangers. I had ups and downs before everybody got comfortable, but I
grew very fond of Pharrell and Justin.”

Many of the songs are hybrids, traditional Madonna super-pop, workout
tunes giving way to white hip-hop, Justin Timberlake showering
cascades of rhyme. I was listening to the music, and it’s a record I
think Madonna fans will like, because it’s filled with songs you can
imagine blasting from the room where they hold spinning class, but I
kept thinking about Britney Spears. I mean, here is Madonna, singing
with Justin, whose very public breakup with Britney marked the moment
the pop tart began her battle with the furies. And, of course, I was
also thinking of those MTV Video Music Awards in which Britney,
already well on her way to madness, frenched Madonna. In light of this
record, and all that’s happened, I wondered if, in the course of that
kiss, Madonna somehow extracted Britney’s soul from her body, or
implanted the crazy chip. When I began to ask Madonna about Britney—
specifically in relation to the paparazzi—she stopped me (before I
even said Britney’s name) with a raised hand, saying, “Yes, I know.
I
know exactly what you’re going to say. It’s very painful. Which
leads us back to our question: When you think about the way people treat
each other in Africa, about witchcraft and people inflicting cruelty
and pain on each other, then come back here and, you know, people
taking pictures of people when they’re in their homes, being taken to
hospitals, or suffering, and selling them, getting energy from them,
that's a terrible infliction of cruelty. So who's worse off? You
know what I mean?

I took notes as I listened to Hard Candy. There are a dozen songs. Now
and then, I took a break. Now and then, my mind drifted. Now and then,
Liz Rosenberg, Madonna's longtime publicist, who wore heavy glasses
with dark frames, came in to see how I was doing. Later, when I looked
over my notes, I found just a few bits worth preserving:

Madonna is turning 50 in August. Madonna made her fortune selling sex ”what will she sell when the thought of sex with Madonna seems like a fetish?
What if there were just the songs ”no videos, no movies, no concerts.
How would we judge Madonna?
How closely does the movie career of Madonna parallel the movie
career of Elvis? (With the first film being the only one that
matters.)
First you sit alone in a screening room, watching Madonna among
Africans, then you sit alone in a boardroom, hearing Madonna with
rappers.
To reach Madonna, you must pass through many rooms.
The lyrics to her song Candy Shop
I'll be your one stop
Candy shop
Have some more
Sticky and sweet



Madonna

This is a big moment for Madonna. There is the documentary and the
record, but also a dramatic film, Filth and Wisdom, which she co-
wrote, produced, and directed. Madonna’s debut as an auteur. The
movie, which started as a short and grew into a feature, will be
released on iTunes, which, depending how you see the world, is a
desperate act or a bold gesture. Its first showing was at the Berlin
Film Festival, where it received some snotty reviews (much mocked was
a press release in which the names of two of Madonna’s heroes, Godard
and Pasolini, were misspelled) and some positive. “Madonna has done
herself proud,” James Christopher wrote in The Times of London.
Her film has an artistic ambition that has simply bypassed her husband,
the film director Guy Ritchie. She captures that wonderfully
accidental nature of luck when people's lives intersect for a whole
swathe of unlikely but cherishable reasons. Altmanesque would be
stretching the compliment too far, but Filth and Wisdom shows Madonna
has real potential as a director.

I've been inspired by films since I started dancing, and I'm
married to a filmmaker, and I think it was one of my secret desires, but I was
afraid to just say, ˜I want to be a director,she told me.
But then one day I said, O.K., stop dreaming and do it. But I didn't want
to do it the Hollywood way, and talk through agents. I decided it all
had to be generated by me, so I wrote it.

She then said, It was my film school.
Filth and Wisdom stars Eugene Hütz, the Ukrainian lead singer of the
downtown New York gypsy-punk band Gogol Bordello, whose vocal style is
somewhere between Joe Strummer and Borat. Hütz is lanky and wears an
elaborate mustache, and is so charismatic he holds the movie together,
almost, while it follows a half-dozen people around London as they
search for truth.

I feel this film was seriously influenced by Godard,Madonna
said. He's the one filmmaker I was always inspired by, but I have a lot
of other filmmakers I was inspired by, all dead Europeans. I went to the
University of Michigan for one year, and fortunately they had a
foreign-film cinema, and I discovered it, and I thought I died and
went to heaven. I discovered Fellini and Visconti and Pasolini and De
Sica and Buñuel.”

The movie is organized around Madonna's philosophical notions,
beliefs she has taken from Kabbalah, which is a Hebrew word for the teaching.
Kabbalists believe there were two revelations on Mount Sinai: what God
told Moses to write on the tablets, and a secret teaching, what the
Infinite whispered to the Finite, which was then passed from father to
son. Most celebrity religions, which is what Kabbalah became in L.A.,
offer distinct levels of understanding—one for the masses, another
for the elite which echoes the existing celebrity worldview: outside or
inside, onstage or plunged into darkness. For Madonna, Kabbalah, as
taught at the Kabbalah Centre, had the advantage of seeming to
reinforce what she already felt to be true: there is no good and evil,
no right and wrong. All such distinctions are artificial. “Ultimately
everything’s good,” she told me. “Even bad is good, because bad
is there to help you resist it. You need to have that resistance to be
good, and, let’s face it, the worst things that happen are always the
best things that happen. If you look back at your life and say, Well,
what did you learn? What happened that changed your life, that made
you strong, that made you grow, it's always things you perceived as
bad.



So is there bad?

What's Madonna's genius?

It's not her work as a singer, nor as a songwriter, nor as a
director, certainly not as an actor, nor as a maker of videos, even if that's
what Norman Mailer said in 1994 in his Esquire interview with Madonna:
She not only made the best music videos of them all, but they
transcended personality. She was the premier artist of the music
video, and it might be the only new popular art form in American
life.

In the end, Madonna will be remembered as a minter of images. Think
back on her career. It's not songs you remember, or not primarily,
nor films, nor videos; it's the scenes or little tableaux. Madonna is the
Joseph Cornell of pop music. You recall her career as a series of lit
boxes, face cards in a marked deck: Madonna as a street urchin, in
spangles; Madonna as Marilyn, in satin; Madonna as a deflowered
virgin, writhing onstage in a wedding dress; Madonna as Saint Francis
of Assisi, covered in icons and weeping for fragile things; Madonna on
the Cross, like Jesus, but better, because did Jesus ever come down
from the Cross to sing a song?


Fashioning images: images that riff on Scripture, images that riff on
junk culture, images that riff on other images that's been her
genius.

If you go back and consider her career because Madonna is one of the
stars of the age so presumably tells a story greater than her own,
about her people or time you will see there has been nothing but
images, spun off one after another, like souls flying off the mighty
wheel. Beautiful artifice, puzzles, surfaces, masks. So you decide
that only the first Madonna was real, the sexy round-faced girl in
lacy gloves, but when you go back and look, you see this Madonna too
was borrowed as she borrowed from Marilyn, as she borrowed from
Evita.


It came from the downtown dance joints and club kids, the last of the
70s punk and art scenes. (In the early 80s, Madonna dated the painter
Jean-Michel Basquiat.) So you decide that only Madonna before Madonna
was real, the girl whose mother died, who let hair grow on her legs,
who pestered her father to send her to dance class, then lit out. But
when you go back and really look, the details seem so vague and
generic that that too dissolves. It's like a tub filled with suds,
and you search and search but never find the naked lady. I think Madonna
is aware of this, which, in part, explains her interest in Kabbalah,
which is a search for timeless things, for depth. She is hunting for
what might be salvaged, for what will remain when she is 65, when she
is 70. For a pop star, there are, in a way, two deaths—or maybe more:
maybe a pop star dies again and again.

I interviewed Madonna for almost two hours. Liz Rosenberg took me in.
We went down a nondescript hall, made two turns, went through a door,
and here, finally, was the room at the center of the maze. Madonna sat
bolt upright on a leather couch. She wore a white dress at least,
that's what I think she was wearing. She was stunningly beautiful. I
mean, you've seen this person only on TV or in movies, in two
dimensions, now here she is. What's more, when I was in high school,
I dated so many girls because they looked like Madonna that I had the
feeling I had slipped off my chains and made my way out of Plato's
cave and was seeing the real thing at last.



Madonna's hair was blond and pulled back from her face, which was
porcelain and perfect in the way of Grace Kelly in Rear Window, when
she moves in to kiss Jimmy Stewart, who is sweaty. Something clean in
a dirty world. I turned on my tape recorder. Liz Rosenberg sat in the
corner, working on her BlackBerry.

Madonna spoke of Africa: If you've got one iota of compassion, you
can't ignore what's going on. You have to figure out a way to be a
part of the solution.

Madonna spoke of New York, how it's changed: It's not the
exciting place it used to be. It still has great energy; I still put my finger
in the socket. But it doesn't feel alive, cracking with that synergy
between the art world and music world and fashion world that was
happening in the 80s. A lot of people died.

She spoke of the music business: Well, there's one thing you can't
download and that's a live performance. And I know how to put on a
show, and enjoy performing, and I'll always have that.

She spoke of the long career: Honestly, it's not something I sit
around ruminating about. Who is my role model and how long can I keep
this going? I just move around and do different things and come back
to music, try making films and come back to music, write children's
books and come back to music.

She spoke of Guy Ritchie: We make different kinds of movies. I
don't have the technical knowledge he has. He's got a vision, and his films
are very testosterone-fueled. Mine are much more from a female point
of view, and I can't help but be autobiographical in everything I
do.

She spoke of having children, how it changes everything. I asked her
to name her favorite children's books. She said Winnie the Pooh,
Pippi Longstocking, Horrid Henry. I told her I had never read Pippi
Longstocking.


madonna: Do you have a daughter?
me: No, three sons.
[Madonna looks at me accusingly.]
me: I didn't choose it it just happened.
madonna: Do you believe that? You think things just happen?
me: I think that just happened.
madonna: Mm-hmm.
me: So who's making the decision?
madonna: You are, you and your missus.
me: About what kind of kids we want?
madonna: You chose it. Your soul chose it.
me: No. Do you believe that? That my insides wanted boys?
madonna: Unconsciously. Yes.
me: I kind of like the idea, three sons ”it's like having a little
army out in the woods.
madonna: And all the work they can do, and you can teach them
carpentry and then build houses for you in Old Greenwich, or wherever
you live.

I asked Madonna about Kabbalah. She looked at me as if to gauge the
nature of my interest, then spoke.

A lot of people join the group, but don’t know why, Madonna
said. I was raised a Catholic and was never encouraged to ask questions, or
understand the deeper meanings or mystical implications of the New
Testament or the history of Jesus, or the fact that he was Jewish, or
anything, you know? So I rejected that, because who wants to go
through life being told you do things because you do things? When I
started going to classes and studying [Kabbalah], I did it out of
curiosity. I was told it was the mystical interpretation of the Old
Testament.

She said Kabbalah is a philosophy, a way of understanding, lessons.

Like what? I asked.

She said, One is that we are all responsible for our actions, our
behavior, and our words, and we must take responsibility for
everything we say and do. When you get your head wrapped around that,
you can no longer think of life as a series of random events you
participate in life in a way you didn't previously. I am the
architect
of my destiny. I am in charge. I bring that to me, or I push that
away. You can no longer blame other people for things that happened to
you.

The other is that there is order in the universe, even though it
looks like chaos. We separate the world into categories: this is good
and this is bad. But life is set up to trick us. It's a series of
illusions we invest in. And ultimately those investments don't serve
our understanding, because physicality is always going to let you
down, because physicality doesn't last.

She looked out the window. Los Angeles was there, the hills studded
with houses, marbled by streets and ablaze in light, rising and
falling, ending at the sea. It seemed to beckon in the way of those
crystalline landscapes in old Flemish religious paintings, where
Jerusalem looks just like, say, Holland, not because the painter was
stupid, or untraveled, or did not know, but because, when you believe,
every city is Jerusalem. You have to get to a point where you care
as little about getting smoke blown up your ass as you do when you become
a whipping boy in the press, Madonna said, because ultimately
they both add up to shit. You just have to keep doing your work, and hope
and pray somebody's dialing into your frequency.

She then said, If your joy is derived from what society thinks of
you, you're always going to be disappointed.

bigcockflasher

This is me wanking on the cab.

SHE'S ONLY GOT 4 MINUTES TO SAVE THE WORLD

Madonna! Madonna! Madonna!

She's EVERYWHERE.

Her Madgesty, looking ferociously fabulous, on the cover of the new Vanity Fair.

The new cover was shot at Smashbox Studios, in West Hollywood, by Madonna’s longtime collaborator Steven Meisel. The idea for the image came from V.F.’s editor, Graydon Carter, who was inspired by a midcentury fashion-magazine cover. A custom-made globe of the world (measuring four feet in diameter) served as the centerpiece, and at the end of the shoot Madonna agreed to autograph the globe so that it can be auctioned off for charity. (Details on the auction will be posted soon.)

Naked In The Steam Room With Ricky

Krishi Dutt, a huge Ricky Martin fan from Mumbai, was in Kolkata for official purposes and couldn't have asked for a better "surprise."

The lucky Krishi was able to share a sauna bath with Ricky at the Grand Oberoi hotel in Kolkata. Nude.

Krishi said Ricky was sporting a moustache and beard. When asked if he was the singer, Rick smiled and said, "you have the wrong person".

Bitch, please.

What he wanted to say was, "Get down on all knees and start sucking!"

Krishi also noticed Ricky had a large tattoo on his left arm and one on his lower pelvic area. He was wearing a beaded anklet and had henna on his feet.

After about 30 minutes or so in the sauna, Ricky left to then return and ask for some help finding his locker room keys.

He was trying to give him signals! Enriquetta was in heat!

After Martin got dressed and was about to leave, Krishi ran up to him and asked for an autograph. This time Ricky smiled, gave the autograph and left.

Turns out the singer was in Kolkata to visit the Sabera Foundation, a non-profit organization which helps homeless children, as well as widows and women who have been abandoned by their husbands. The foundation was founded by Spanish singer,Nacho Cano.

We still can't get over Ricky naked in the steam room!

That's so George Michael of him!

"Man Claims to Speak 'Australian' After Allegedly Being Raped by Wombat"

I couldn't make this shit up!

A New Zealand man has been sentenced to community service after telling police he was raped by a wombat and the experience had made him speak "Australian".

Arthur Ross Cradock, 48, from the South Island town of Motueka, called police on February 11 and told them he was being raped at his home by the wombat and he needed help, The Nelson Mail newspaper reported.

The orchard worker later called back and said: "Apart from speaking Australian now, I'm pretty all right, you know."

Cradock pleaded guilty in the local court to using a phone for a fictitious purpose. He was sentenced to 75 hours' community work.

Police prosecutor Sergeant Chris Stringer told the court alcohol played a large role in Cradock's life.

CELEBRITY QUOTE OF THE DAY

"I wasn't really the cool guy in school. I wasn't the skater dude or anything. I tried really hard. I got good grades. I was in advanced classes, if anything, you'd probably call me a nerd. I was the short kid in school. I didn't get much attention from the chicks. I was like, 5'6". But as soon as I left and started working, then I started to grow up a little bit."

- Zacquinetta Efron tells TeenNow magazine

I'm Not Gay! I'm Not Gay! I'm Not Gay!

Talk about protesting a little too much! GayC Chasez is getting so annoyed with all the gay couple talk circulating around him and his dear friend Chace Crawford.

Says the former NSync-er:

"The fact of the matter is I'm a straight guy and I'm allowed to have [guy] friends. I don't care about [people's] assumptions or anything, but when people outright lie, that's wrong. So I think that part of the rumor is outright stupid."

Gay rumors surrounding Chasez are nothing new, though. Chace has merely elevated the talk.

Where there's smoke, there's fire - we say.

Plus, GayC should be happy he's still on the C list and people are even talking about him!

RIDDLE ME THIS???

Usher's wife that nobody likes, Whatsherface, gave birth to a boy last November.

We have yet to see the baby!

What's up????

Does his child have some unfortunate deformity??? Is he just butt ugly???? Or does anyone even care?????

Why is Usher keeping his baby under wraps for so long???? Maybe we're looking at the black Tom Cruise, but at least we've seen his Asian baby with Katie Holmes.

THE GAYKEN'S NEW FRIEND

Seems like Clay Aiken is afraid of getting beat up, or he just really hates strangers.

The Spamalot "star" has been recently traveling with an extremely large bodyguard to protect him from all of the "fans" that mob him.

It seems Clay's obsession with protection is going even further.

Clay even took his bodyguard to the third anniversary party of Spamalot at Pigalle earlier this week.

You'd take a bodyguard to a celebrity studded event, where your "fans" aren't even allowed inside because… Is he afraid other celebs will mob or attack him?

Diane Sawyer was in attendance as well. Maybe he was afraid she'd dropkick him.

"Clay stood there with the bodyguard all night," said one partygoer. "He stays a few feet away from him and follows him around. Apparently, Clay gets mobbed by fans, but this party was just other celebrities, so it was peculiar."

Maybe it's not even a bodyguard, and just a hired escort?

You know he likes to roleplay!

"DREAMGIRLS" GOES INTERNATIONAL

Dreamgirls is coming back to the stage…but not in NYC (just yet)!

The upcoming $10 million revival will be launched in Seoul, South Korea — 6,883 miles away from the great white way.

The Seoul production is being put together by Broadway veterans. It will tour several US cities before landing on Broadway in the 2009-2010 season.

Interesting move, right?

There are a few reasons why the producers chose this path. First, those harsh Broadway critics might not make the trip to Seoul for the premiere run! The producers prob want to work out any kinks without the know-it-alls breathing down their necks.

Second, Korean investors are putting up $4 million. That's almost half the cost.

Smart move!

Broadway is going global!

Daddy Always Has an Opinion

Lindsay Lohan's spotlight-lovin' daddy (unsurprisingly) can't keep his trap shut when it comes to the life of LaLohan.

Michael Lohan was at the finale taping of Celebrity Apprentice in NYC on Thursday night and blabbed to reporters about his recovering(?) addict daughter.

First, Daddy Lohan isn't thrilled that Lindz is going to play a cult follower in the upcoming Charles Manson movie.

"I really hope that Lindsay gets back to the kinds of films that led to her success. I'd like to see her do more mainstream films," he says. "When you're the kind of star Lindsay is, you have to appeal to a general audience, not just a specific audience."

What? He didn't like it when she played a stripper recently????

Also, Michael is pleased that the Linds/Callum Best sex tape rumors have been put to rest, for now.

"You don't know what people put out there anymore," he says. "So many people have hidden cameras. Our private lives are our private lives — people don't respect that."

No wonder Linds seems to have 'issues'. She has the fame-seeking-at-her-expense Orange Oprah and Daddy Lohan as parents!

A STEPFORD WIFE TO HIT THE STAGE

Ever since Katie Holmes married Tom Cruise, it seems her career has been in the crapper.

It's not like she was such a huge star before Cruise either, but at least she had her fame on Dawson's Creek and a couple of independent films and such. But, she hasn't done much since her marriage, except for the "comedy" Mad Money, which no one saw.

It seems Katie might get another shot at reviving her career, though, by making a stage debut on Broadway.

It is being reported that Katie is in the final negotiation stage to sign on to a revival of All My Sons, a post WWII drama.

Holmes is set to play a woman who visits her former neighbors, the family members of a missing pilot she was in love with.

Already cast in the show are two Broadway veterans, John Lithgow and Dianne Wiest.

This would be Katie's first time performing in a play since high school.

She's bound to sucketh!

One theatre expert said "This play will be like a shop window for Katie. The aim is to remind people of her acting chops. It's kind of a neat idea. Nicole Kidman had Hollywood eating out of her hand when she was in The Blue Room."

Katie won't need to disrobe for her performance in this role, unlike Kidman. But maybe if she did, it'd sell more seats.

Let's hope controlling hubby Cruise will let her take this role. He'll have to go consult with the Scientology heads first to get approval, but it might happen.

Hi-yo Silver…Remake!

Pirates of the Caribbean writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio are teaming up with Disney and producer Jerry Bruckheimer again.

The money making grubby bastards hope to work their movie magic on the classic 1930's hero Lone Ranger.

We know. We know. Yes, another 'remake' will be hitting the screen. We're going to cut this team a little slack…they were able to pull off a movie based on an amusement park ride!

Refresher course for you youngins' — the Lone Ranger is kinda like a cowboy version of Batman. The Lone Ranger is a masked justice crusader. Batman has the Batmobile — Lone Ranger has his horse, Silver. The LR's sidekick is a Native American guy named Tonto. And the LR's famous catch phrase is, "Hi-yo Silver, away!"

We're getting ready to be 'sick' of hearing the William Tell Overture, the LR's theme song, when Disney starts promo'ing the upcoming movie.

Wonder which pop or rap superstar will be giving the Overture an update for the movie????

CONGRATS TO THE DONALD

Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice kicked some TV ass on NBC last night.

12 million people tuned in to the two hour finale.

What a comeback for Trump. The Apprentice format isn't tired after all!

Are you going to tune in to the next season?

SPOILER ALERT!

And the winner? England's Piers Morgan.

Congrats, matey! Now all they have to do is give Omarosa a perminate job as a judge on Celebrity Apprentice, and The Donald (as well as NBC) can continue to see numbers like that.

Corinne Thanks You

British singer Corinne Bailey Rae has released a statement, almost a week after the sad death of her saxophonist husband of a suspected accidental drug overdose.

Says her reps:

“Corinne Bailey Rae and her family have been touched by the huge amount of love and support that's flooded in from all over the world, and that is really helping all of us cope at this terrible time. Corinne is also very grateful for the privacy she is being given and the respect that has been paid to herself and Jason.”

BACKWOODS BARBIE ON "IDOL"

American Idol is about to get a whole helluvalot better!

A special guest will be appearing on AI next week, and it's none other than… DOLLY PARTON!

Ms. Parton will be a mentor to the finalists on April 1st and the night will be filled with her songs.

And, for all the lucky viewers, Dolly will return on April 2nd to perform live. Dolly will be singing Jesus & Gravity, the second single from her new album Backwoods Barbie.

It seems recent castoff Chikezie was set to perform Dolly's 9 to 5.

Someone else better be singing that next week!

Also performing next week will be The Clark Brothers. They're some bluegrass, country band that won The Next Great American Band. I've never seen that show, and don't care to.

Besides, everyone will be tuning in for Dolly, not those cookie-cutter cornball contestants.

Mission Failed

As of this past Wednesday, Fall Out Boy was on track to set the world record for shortest amount of time to play all of the world’s seven continents. The band and their crew made it all the way to Chile and were patiently waiting in their hotel rooms for the greenlight from organizers to proceed to the last continent on their list…Antarctica.

All FOB needed to do to get into the Guinness Book of World Records was play a gig on the continent at the end of the earth by this Thursday.

Unfortunately, the weather in unpredictable Antarctica wouldn't cooperate on Thursday. Conditions there weren't clear enough to allow for the safe arrival of the band and crew.

The band and their management made the tough decision to abort the mission.

FOB's Pete Wentz was utterly shattered by the decision to abort.

He says:

"It's an utter fucking disappointment. … It's so insane. We had this idea, and then to not be able to fulfill it is just disappointing, especially when you put it out there… It's the worst feeling I've felt in Fall Out Boy, [we were,] like, two hours away from being able to do it. … I read someone compared it to Geraldo opening Capone's vault, but it's worse than that, because, like, Capone's stuff is in there, you just can't get the light on. There's no spin for it; we got two hours away from Antarctica and we can't go."

There must be another way to get into the record books!

What should Pete and the boys do???????

Tyra or Tranny???

Belive it or not, that is not RuPaul. It's actually Tyra Banks.

And this is what we call "synergy."

Tyra is smart and a brilliant businesswoman. Gotta give her that!

On Friday, Banks hosted the 1st Annual Fiercee Awards on Friday in NYC, honoring the whores of America?s Next Top Model on The Tyra Banks Show.

Yes, she just invented that "awards" show! Basically, it's a reunion special with a fancy title.

But, she is promoting both shows and herself along the way. If only she had looked, you know, model-ish!

4/20

SNL star Kenan Thompson hangs out with people who smoke pot. *cough cough* And those people probably include him!

When Thompson was stopped by New Jersey police on Wednesday for driving erratically, the cops noticed his vehicle reeked of marijuana.

The cops found pot and rolling papers on Thompson's passenger, friend Kyle Mosley.

Luckily, Mosley didn't sell Thompson out and claimed sole ownership of the pot and stuff.

Thompson was charged for careless driving and Mosley was nabbed for possessing pot and drug paraphernalia.

It explains a whole lot why he can't lose all that weight. Having munchies is a bitch!

'Borat' Strikes Again

Sacha Baron Cohen is causing trouble again hard at work on Bruno, the follow-up film to Borat. This time the character is gay and fabulaux!

Local newspapers in Kansas have reported that a "European man" was "putting security on red alert" by "stripping down to tight shorts and dancing in the lobby of Wichita Airport".

A church in Kansas also reported that a 'European' crew showed up to their Easter play in chains. But in this case, the church sniffed out the prank and stopped what was likely Cohen's crew from disrupting the play.

Cohen's mouthpiece refused to comment about the reports.

Oh, Sacha, you bad bad boy.

Can't wait for Bruno!!!!!

The Hills Reach A Record High

Is this surprising news??????

The ratings are in and…..

The season premiers of The Hills was the highest rated telecast for cable all year long so far!

It was also the highest rated episode ever of The Hills.

It even beat out broadcast television channels with the highest ratings for the night!

The premiere averaged over 4.7 million viewers.

WTF?!?!

Are all these people seriously watching the show?

Or did everyone just leave the house with MTV playing on their TV.

After the premiere, the performance by Mariah Carey resulted in an over 180% increase from the regular ratings in that normal time slot.

Even MTV online received record highs, with an increase of 29% of people going online to stream the episode. MTV.com delivered a staggering 2.2 million streams.

Do people actually watch the show because they think it's real?

Let me know please! What the hell am I missing???

Man jailed for microwaving baby

A jury in Texas has sentenced a man to 25 years in prison for severely burning his two-month-old daughter in a microwave oven last year.

The jury rejected Joshua Mauldin's defence that he was insane when he placed his daughter Ana in the oven.

Prosecutors said Mauldin had a history of violence, lying about being mentally ill and was angry about his marriage.

Ana, now aged one, suffered second and third-degree burns to her face and left side and required two skin grafts.

Part of her left ear had to be amputated.

Her foster mother, Heather Croxton, told the court of the painful daily treatments Ana has had to undergo since being left in the microwave for up to 20 seconds.

"There is no excuse for your actions and I hate that one day you will be set free and allowed to move on with your life while Ana continues to pay for your actions," she said.

Mauldin's lawyer, Sam Cammack, said his client would not get the treatment he needs for mental illness in prison.

Kelly Bombs In London

When Last night
Where Hammersmith Apollo

Responsible for several amazing pop singles in recent years, Kelly Clarkson’s ‘My December’ tour is sadly named after her ill-advised mature third album, one which yielded no chart hits of note and tore strips from the success she had built from her first two records.

The lack of interest from tonight’s audience in the former American Idol winner’s attempts to flog the sadly-deceased horse of ‘My December’ is obvious when compared to the hysteria which accompanies any track plucked from her earlier releases. Songs from the disappointing album in question blur into a noisy mush of anonymity, leaving older numbers such as ‘Miss Independent’ and the incredible ‘Since U Been Gone’ to remind her young audience why they pestered for tickets in the first place.

Kelly’s vocal ability is immense and her pop credentials are never more evident than on standout performance, ‘Breakaway’. It is a prime example of how much can be achieved in the simple pairing of a phenomenal singer with a soaring pop song.

Somebody needs to get this woman a decent fourth album and fast – let’s not see her back on the road until she has the material necessary to showcase her world-class talents.

Michael Baggs

MAYA ANGELOU TURNS 80

Great American, Maya Angelou is turning 80 years young!

In honor of the special occasion, U.S.A. Today wrote this article looking back on her life.

It's a great read!

NEW YORK - In the dining room of her elegantly restored Harlem town house, beneath painted clouds on a light blue ceiling, Maya Angelou is asked how it feels to be turning 80.
"Exciting!" she says with a broad smile, then adds: "The body knows. The bones don't let you forget."

The woman who defies a simple label — Angelou has been a memoirist, poet, civil rights activist, actress, director, professor, singer and dancer — is getting an early birthday gift.

Two longtime friends and her niece, who is Angelou's archivist, have collaborated on an illustrated book, Maya Angelou: A Glorious Celebration (Doubleday, $30), a tribute and scrapbook, that will be published Tuesday.

On her birthday, April 4, she'll be treated to a party thrown by one of her best friends, Oprah Winfrey, who tends to think big. When Angelou turned 70, Winfrey hosted a week-long Caribbean cruise for 150 of Angelou's friends.

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If Angelou knows what's planned next week, she's not talking. Neither is Winfrey, who wrote a foreword to the new book. Angelou's niece, Rosa Johnson Butler, says all she knows is the party is in Florida, is top secret and "will be magnificent."

Butler says, "When we went on the cruise (in 1998), word got out, and there were crowds and helicopters and all. Dr. A is a celebrity, but she doesn't like that sort of thing."

What she does like is to be called Dr. Angelou. Although she never went to college, she has been awarded more than 30 honorary degrees. Since 1981, she has been a professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C.

She's an American study herself. "I created myself," she says. "I have taught myself so much."

She was raised by her grandmother, "the greatest person I ever met," in racially segregated Stamps, Ark. She has written about being raped at 7 and becoming an unwed mother at 17, and about the friends who changed her life, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and James Baldwin, whom she knew as "Jimmy."

Now, she's a great-grandmother. She has an 18-room house in Winston-Salem and two town houses in Harlem, black America's unofficial capital, which is enjoying a real estate renaissance. One she rents out, the other she uses as an urban getaway, perfect for dinner parties.

"The people have taken Harlem back," she says. "I see a flowerbox in a window, and that tells me, 'Someone is house-proud.' "

Famous friends

Her 12-room town house, which she gutted and restored four years ago, is filled with art she collected in Africa and works by African-American artists Phoebe Beasley and Romare Bearden. In her parlor is a 4-by-7-foot quilt by Faith Ringgold, commissioned for Angelou's 60th birthday by Winfrey.

Angelou's birth date coincides with the anniversary of King's assassination in 1968. For years she didn't celebrate her birthday. She and King's widow, Coretta Scott King, who died in 2006, would "meet or talk or send each other flowers" on April 4. Each year, she continues to say a birthday prayer, "a prayer for the country."

Angelou met Winfrey about 30 years ago in Baltimore when Winfrey was a local TV anchor begging for a five-minute interview.

In the tribute book, compiled by Butler, Marcia Ann Gillespie, the former editor of Essence and Ms., and Richard Long, a historian at Emory University in Atlanta, Winfrey describes that first encounter:

"I was careful not to take a second more than I asked for. At the end of the five minutes, she inquired with a quizzical smile, 'Who are you, girl?' "

Angelou remembers Winfrey "really listened, and we had a real conversation."

Later, after Winfrey moved to Chicago in 1984, Angelou happened to see her there on the street. She walked up and said, "Hello, Oprah Winfrey."

Angelou says, "She couldn't believe I remembered her name." Angelou invited Winfrey for a weekend at her North Carolina home. They've been friends ever since.

In 1997, Winfrey chose Angelou's The Heart of a Woman, the fourth of her six memoirs, for her book club. They discussed it at a televised pajama party.

They both call their relationship a "sister-mother-daughter friendship."

Angelou had only one child, a son (writer Guy Johnson, 62), "but she treats me and Oprah as the daughters she never had," Butler says.

A life of wonder

Angelou and Winfrey, 54, have gone separate ways in the Democratic presidential campaign. Winfrey drew large crowds when she campaigned for Barack Obama. Angelou has done radio ads and online videos for Hillary Clinton.

Angelou says their political differences haven't affected their friendship: "We've laughed about it. I told her someone complained, 'Our queen isn't backing Obama.' " (Some blacks think of Angelou as a kind of uncrowned royalty.)

Angelou says she has admired Clinton since the early '80s when she was the young wife of the young governor of Arkansas. She has met Obama once, briefly in Washington, D.C.

"I grew up in Arkansas," she says. "I know what it was like. Mean and hopeless. I know how hard the Clintons worked to change all that."

After he was elected president in 1992, Bill Clinton asked Angelou to write and deliver an inaugural poem — something that hadn't been done since Robert Frost played that role for President Kennedy in 1961.

Angelou doesn't question or criticize Obama.

His speech in Philadelphia last week was "brilliant," she says. "The best speech I've ever heard on race relations in the U.S. The problems and answers. What we've learned and haven't learned."

She sidesteps a question about the Democrats' choice between a woman and a black man. "The question is: Who's the best person to be president?" And that Obama and Clinton "are going toe-to-toe, I think it's wonderful."

Angelou, who is 6 feet tall, relies on a cane and is unsteady on her feet.

But her favorite word remains "joy." When she signs her books — she has written 31, poetry, children's and even one cookbook — she adds in artfully old-fashioned penmanship, "Joy!"

She talks about her life in quiet exclamations: "I've conducted the Boston Pops! Imagine that! Me! Maya Angelou! I've sang and danced at La Scala!"

She could go on, but doesn't, merely shakes her head at the wonder of it all.

Her first and best-known book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, describes how, at 7, she was raped by her mother's boyfriend, who was then murdered by her uncles. Angelou felt responsible and stopped talking to anyone but her brother for five years.

Work and play

Nearly 70 years later, she recalls what her grandmother said about her silence: " 'Sister' — she called me sister — 'Momma don't care what other people say about you. Momma knows when you and the Lord are ready, you goin' to be a teacher.' "

Now, she adds, "I'm not a writer who teaches. I'm a teacher who writes. But I had to work at Wake Forest to know that."

She describes the joy she finds in a classroom: "I see all those little faces and big eyes. Black and white. They look like sparrows in the nest. They look up, with their mouths wide open, and I try to drop in everything I know."

She has no plans to retire. She teaches one course each semester at Wake Forest. (Currently it's World Poetry and Drama Performance.) She composed a poem for the Summer Olympics, is working on a collection of essays, and hosts a weekly satellite radio show on the Oprah & Friends channel.

She writes on yellow legal pads and says that even after all these years, a clean sheet of paper scares and thrills her: "I see a yellow pad, and my knees get weak, and I salivate. I know that sounds like coyness, but I have less coyness than modesty, and I have none of that." She laughs.

After eight decades, any regrets?

"Oh, yeah," she says, drawing out yeah, as if it were four syllables.

"Regret is a very strong word. I hate it. But I wish I had more time. I would have liked to spend six months on a Greek island, living with the people, laughing and singing and dancing."

But "I work all the time. I don't know how not to work. I'm not complaining. I play hard, too."

INTRODUCING McCRAZY

Still crazy????

Justin Chambers might be thinking of heading back to the UCLA psych ward for more professional "treatment" after displaying some weird and disturbing behavior at a bar in ritzy Palm Springs, CA, recently.

Eyewitnesses tell Star magazine that the Grey's Anatomy star drifted in and out of consciousness, rambled incoherently, annoyed patrons and even hit on a waitress! Yeah, he's married! AND he's got a car-full of kids!

"He was acting as if he was on drugs, like some kind of downers. His eyes were glazed over. He slurred his words and staggered when he tried to walk," the mag reports. "At one point, he was hunched over a table, then abruptly woke up and shouted out of the blue, 'I am a father of five kids! I am a damn good father! Leave me alone!' It was really unsettling."

It gets crazier!

Justin, who was without his wife Keisha, began hitting on a waitress. When she showed no interest, he slapped money out of her hand.

"As she picked it up off the floor, he said, 'That's right, bitch, that's where you belong. Pick up the money!'"

I thought only women suffered from post-partum depression after they had a bunch of kids???

Another Reason Whu I Got Luv For RiRi

Rihanna is one busy bee. So, what does the multi-platinum chart topper do during her downtime?

Work some more!

RiRi is doing benefit gigs for underprivileged kids!

She kicked off the mini-tour in Chicago on Wednesday and then it's on to San Francisco and New York City.

The singer's charity, The Believe Foundation, and her label, Island Def Jam, "got together with a local foundation in three cities and Escada and [the label's fragrance] Moon Sparkle" to sponsor the benefit gigs.

"When I was young and I would watch television and I would see all the children suffering, I always said when I grow up I want to help," the Umbrella star said by way of explaining why she started The Believe Foundation.

"Not long after I was in the position where I could help. I started to visit all these children's hospitals and I have a soft spot for kids," she says. "I just want to help and make sure they are happy. They can come to a Rihanna concert or have toys or gifts at Christmas."

Earlier this month, she also played a major role in a drive that went into helping a New York woman find a donor for a bone-marrow transplant.

"So many people got involved, and it made such a difference. I'm so glad we were able to help give her life and give here to her family," Rihanna said of the outpouring of support that she helped to cultivate.

What good has Beyonce been up to lately?????

Quote of the Day

"What else is there for me to conquer? Hopefully my ego. How will I know when I've succeeded? When I stop caring what anyone thinks."

- Madonna tells the new issue of Q magazine

NEW VIDEO: ALPHABEAT - FASCINATION

You can't help but love Alphabeat!

Their indie-slanted pop music is just so damn infectious, and this band from Denmark is taking the U.K. by storm.

Fascination is the song climbing its way up the charts and it is like a yummy ice creamsicle!

The male and female co-vocalists and Alphabeat's sound evoke a modern-day B-52s.

And the video is super fun too! The video is colorful, and this song fits perfectly on The Breakfast Club soundtrack (if Hollywood decides to remake it. Which I hope they won't).

Joss To Release Her Inner Self

While most actors are trying to become "musicians", there's still a lot of musicians trying to become "actors."

Joss Stone is the latest to attempt her luck at acting! The soul singer has just signed on to star in a new British comedy, Snappers, set to begin filming next month.

And what type of character will Joss be portraying?

Stone is set to play a lesbian.!

Says Joss, "The Script is so funny. I've been giggling to myself every day just thinking about the characters and what they get up to. I just wanted to challenge myself. There are things in the film that are going to really push the boundaries, and that excites me! I can also confirm there will be a long lingering French kiss, but it won't be with a male!"

Ohhh, the excitement!

Snappers is about a British actress who's in town to film a new movie. While there, she's constantly hounded by paparazzi, so she decides to leave her hotel and stay with the cast and crew at a local caravan park to avoid the paps. Then the rest of the plot features comedic scenes with the paps, and the main actress getting romantically involved with a loser, and so on.

Damn, it sounds like they're filming Britney's life…

Joss is set to play an entertainer and bingo caller. She plans to research the role in depth. Because we all know how hard it must be to call out B-4 and I-12!

And coincidentally enough, she's also going to produce the soundtrack for the film.

Stone says, "I am bringing my guys over from America for three months to work with me on the soundtrack and original score. I have already started writing songs for 'Snappers', I have been sleeping with a pad and pen in bed with me for the last three days and I keep jumping out of bed in the middle of the night to jot lyrics down."

What a hard worker that Joss Stone is.

And we're sure she's going to be a wonderfully horrific actress. Can you say Glitter???!!

Still Not Worth Seeing

As I mentioned yesterday, director Oliver Stone is set to film W., a biopic on the life and presidency of George W. Bush, arguably America's worst president ever. And dumbest!

Now that George W. (Josh Broline) and wife Laura (Elizabeth Banks) have been cast, the next step is to fill the roles of the senior Bush and his wife Barbara.

Set to play George Herbert Walker Bush will be James Cromwell, and to play former first lady Barbara will be Ellen Burstyn.

James Cromwell recently made another similar biopic about a political figure. He played Prince Philip in The Queen.

The Stone film was originally going to be called Bush, but filmmakers are now calling it W. It is expected to be available for distribution sometime possibly in November of this year.

We still don't think we'll spend money to watch it. We wouldn't watch even if it were free.

If it were a musical, however, and the president is assassinated in the end, I might be interested in that!

Sorry, Spidey

In Touch Weekly is reporting that Kiki Drunkst is breezing through her 12 steps to sobriety!

According to a pal, she has been calling people to make amends, which happens to be step nine.

One of the first people Kiki reached out to was SpiderMan co-star and former boyfriend Tobey Maguire.

"Kirsten apologized for things she did to him when they worked together and dated in 2001," the insider reveals.

Maguire forgave Kirsten, says the source.

We really want to know how things went down when she called her other former b.f., Jake Gyllenhaal!

A little something like this, probably.

Drunkst: "I'm sorry for vomiting all over you while we had sex that one time."

GyllenHO: "It happened more than once."

Drunkst: "It did????"

GyllenHO: "Yeah. You gave me gonorrhea too!"

MIMI EN ESPANOL!

Mariah Carey did a Spanish-language version of her new Macy's commercial with Carlos Santana.

Hearing Donald Trump say "zapatos" is kind of freaking hilarious!

DAMN! NOW WENDY WILLIAMS INTERNS ARE TURNING ON HER!

THIS IS AN EXPLOSIVE EMAIL TAKEN FROM DREWREPORTS.COM. I HAVE TO SAY I AM LOVING ALL THE DRAMA, AND IF ALL THESE ALLEGATIONS ARE TRUE, HER SON WILL HAVE TO BE HOME SCHOOLED, AND KEVIN HUNTER WILL BE THE DOWNFALL OF HER CAREER ALONG WITH THAT CLOET FAG CHARLEMAGINA

I just received an e-mail from Wendy@TheWendyWilliamsExperience.com. I swear you can not make this stuff up!


From: wendy
To: info@drewreports.com
Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2008 2:04:33 PM
Subject: wendy williams

THE WENDY WILLIAMS INTERNSHIP PROGRAM IS A FAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




March 27, 2008. I wanted to know If I could give you inside scoop that "The Wendy Williams Experience" internship Program is a fake! Working on her show is considered "volunteered help" and not an Internship. Wendy is using college students to dig up her gossip via the internet, newspapers, magazine clippings, etc. If there is no "Volunteered Help", Wendy has no show! She is someone who isn't computer literate, not knowledgeable with audio equipment etc., so how else could she get this information? How do I know this? I am a former "intern" who has worked on her show. I actually got to know Wendy and her "staff" behind the microphone and from what I learned about her and the other "staff members", she is a typical black woman. I really hate to say that, but it is not fair that this woman is someone that many people look up to as an Icon in Radio and she does the human race like that. The college students are trying to build their name and be someone just like Wendy. She does not allow her "Interns" to do that. And for all the people who say “oh well, you an intern you suppose to get coffee and food all day and most internships are free” and think that what im sayin is false and I must be bitter. You all are outside listens and no yall don’t know how many NUVO’s she drink a day or how many NewPorts she smokes a day and hides the box in a Dior sunglasses case or that she calls wheat bread Diet Bread. And yes the internship is bullshit all of the interns worked hard as hell some more than others, but getting sent to deposit large amounts of cash in the bank and making returns and the H&M and sending you to get hair is different then gettin coffee and tea. Having intern sit in your Bentley for an hour double parked while you run into the Mac store and making us work from 11am-7pm with no lunch break aint right. we all came in expecting to work hard as interns not slaves. And as for the lawsuit , I believe every word Nicole said cuz wendy husband is crazy. and wendy scared as all hell of the man if she know he is in the office she run and hides in the handicap stall in the ladies bathroom or in starbuck down stairs. her son is 7 yrs old with a vocabulary of a 4 yr old running around the station talkin bout how rich he is. many interns even got fired for trying to network at the station cuz it was looked at as not bein “faithful to the experience” its about time someone said fuck whats goin on in this place. I hope nicole break the bank on that ass in court.

FIRST OF ALL, WENDY HAS ADMITTED ON THE RADIO THAT SHE'S NOT COMPUTER LITERATE, AND THAT THE INTERNS DIG UP HER CELEBRITY INFO FROM WEBSITES, NEWSPAPERS, MAGAZINES AND INACCURATE SOURCES LIKE MEDIATAKEOUT.COM. THIS IS NOT NEW NEWS. AS FOR THE TYPICAL BLACK WOMAN COMMENT, THAT JUST GOES WITHOUT SAYING. ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS LISTEN TO HER SHOW TO KNOW HALF THE TIME SHE HAS NO IDEA WHAT SHE'S TALKING ABOUT. PART OF BEING AN INTERN IS DOING LOTS OF WORK FOR NO PAY. WENDY DOESN'T EVEN WATCH A LOT OF THE SHOWS THAT AMERICA WATCHES, SO I DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW YOU CAN BE IN THE LOOP IF YOU DON'T WATCH HEROES, THE HILLS, OR THE COUNTLESS SHOWS THAT REFLECT POP CULTURE. THIS IS WHY AT TIMES I LISTEN TO OTHER SHOWS BECAUSE OF THIS DONKEY MESS.