Look, Madonna’s on the cover of Vanity Fair this month. Doesn’t she look pretty and dewy and unretouched and like the sort of woman who could act so well — once she figures out how to move her eyebrows and mouth again — that she could make you forget you ever heard the name Ingrid Bergman?
Has anyone ever told her the truth? Even her poor husband, who had a bit of promise when they married but whose talent appears to have been drained by his succubus of a wife? Someone should, so Madonna, listen to me: The reason you can’t act isn’t because you haven’t had the right training, or the right script, or the right director. The reason you can’t act is because in order to pretend to be another person, you have to become aware that other people exist, and they have lives and private thoughts and emotions that have nothing to do with whether they think you look fabulous at 49. Only a narcissist could say something like this with a straight face:
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.”
Because of course you’d know. You get out so much these days.
Another thing a non-narcissist wouldn’t say:
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.
Now that you’re pushing 50, you’re going to learn something unpleasant: One by one, your friends are going to start getting sick. Just you wait. One day you’ll get a phone call, and it’ll be someone you’ve known for years, and she’ll say she found a lump in her breast, and she’s going to be starting chemo soon, and she just thought you’d want to know. When this happens, be sure to tell her her soul chose cancer. Unconsciously, of course.
Also, because I am still feeling very, very mean, ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States:
I believe I just unconsciously chose this headache I’ve had all day.
Harl Delos said on March 31, 2008 at 5:07 pm
This telecast is copyrighted by Major League Baseball for the private use of our audience. Any other use of this telecast or any pictures, descriptions, or accounts of the game without the written consent of Major League Baseball is prohibited.
Screw them.
Madonna, too.
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Colleen said on March 31, 2008 at 8:29 pm
At least he didn’t spit and grab himself….
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A Riley said on March 31, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Good for the Nats fans for booing the guy with such vigor. It’s probably the first time he’s heard the unfiltered voice of the people in a decade. (Boooo!)
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Surcie said on March 31, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Boooo!!!! (Just had to add mine to the video.)
Madonna is getting on my nerves, too. I’m not sure if she’s just over-Botoxed or what, but she sure looks strange.
I loved the comment you left for Bossy today, so I had to come check you out. I’ll be back!
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ashley said on March 31, 2008 at 11:15 pm
Surprised chimpy didn’t have the entire crowd screened to ensure that nobody would boo.
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LA Mary said on April 1, 2008 at 12:14 am
What a nice natural photo of Madonna. She seems to have taken care of the nasty stringy harridan look she was showing in other recent photos.
Lately I’ve chosen to have a pinched nerve in my neck that causes me lots of pain in the right arm and hand. Stress and repetitive motion, the employee health clinic tells me. This is what comes of quotas and stupid computer programs that require nearly no typing but literally thousands of mouse clicks a day. My employer will now be paying for daily physical therapy sessions for six weeks.
And I had another interview today, and it went well. I have another this week, and follow up interviews for today’s. I really need to get a new job. Where I’m at now I am doing a good job by any measurment, but I am being told daily that I suck and it’s getting really old. And painful. Why on earth did I chose this sort of shit when I could have chosen to be Madonna?
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Colleen said on April 1, 2008 at 1:17 am
I definitely chose this cold. AND the insomnia…I thought they’d go great together.
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Dexter said on April 1, 2008 at 3:00 am
It’s baseball season , true, and every single one of the teams I follow lost. It’s windy and rainy and only a fool would choose a climate like we have had since the warm days of last October. But joy! It is our day! Wait the horrible winter for baseball to return and all your teams lose? APRIL FOOL! Where’s Sidd Finch when ya need him?
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Hoaxipedia/Sidd_Finch/
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alex said on April 1, 2008 at 7:14 am
And I so desperately wanted an abscess in my fingertip because it meant I could get antibiotics from my doctor so I could pee out my ass. In fact I think I’ll choose to do it this way from now on and save the wear and tear on the colon.
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Mindy said on April 1, 2008 at 7:27 am
If Cyndi Lauper hadn’t chosen to have health problems back in the day – her stomach, as I recall – she likely would have rescued us from the emptiness that is Madonna. At least I like to think that. I remember how both of them were all over MTV around the same time. But then Cyndi opted to be miserable rather than write and perform, and MTV was left with Madonna as a filler. We’ve all suffered since.
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del said on April 1, 2008 at 7:45 am
I may have mentioned it before, but in 1984 I was coaching and car pooling with Madonna’s younger half-brother when the guys in the car told me to turn up the radio as Mario’s sister was singing. (I figured she’d be a flash in the pan.) He then asked if I knew who Jellybean Benitez was as that was his sister’s boyfriend. He produced Michael Jackson’s Thriller album, so that gives you an idea of how she may have found her big break. And while I’ve never bought any of her music, some of it sounds okay. She really pissed off Catholics with the Like a Virgin, etc.
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del said on April 1, 2008 at 7:46 am
Cyndi Lauper, now, she was really alright. Attitude, fun and good sense of herself.
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nancy said on April 1, 2008 at 8:27 am
It’s been my experience that Catholics walk around looking for something to be pissed off about. It’s to her credit that she figured this out at a young age.
As to Jellybean, et al, of course you’re right. Showing the entrepreneurial skills of a young Wall Streeter, Madonna quickly figured who she had to fuck to get ahead in the world. (Not that I’m knocking; it’s a time-honored path to the top for many, many women.) What always bugged me, as someone who at least kept half an eye on the world she was plundering, culturally, was how dumb and blatant it was, and how it never would have worked without a far dumber and less-aware audience, but that was American pop-music culture in the ’80s.
That said, I have half a dozen Madge songs on my iPod. Didn’t pay for any of them, but I consider them tributes to whatever producer she was working with at the time. One is “Don’t Tell Me,” which I sort of stumbled upon one day, never much of a hit for her. But years later, I heard a smart singer/songwriter on “Fresh Air,” and late in the interview Terri mentioned that he was the songwriter for that one, and further, that he was married to Madonna’s sister. Interesting.
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Jenine said on April 1, 2008 at 9:46 am
I was thinking of you this morning in the shower, Nancy. Not that I make a habit of that, but I was trying to pin down what it is that I like most about reading on this site. I think it’s that you don’t apologize. You have opinions and interests and sometimes you get cranky but you tell it all in a dry and factilicious way and you don’t ever apologize for anything. So thanks for that.
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Deggjr said on April 1, 2008 at 11:32 am
It’s an old but great sports joke: they’re not saying boo, they’re saying boosh.
But in this case I think they’re saying boo.
To paraphrase a line from Ron Luciano’s book: They’re not booing Bush’s performance as president. They’re booing his entire life.
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sue said on April 1, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Don’t know if anyone’s commenting here anymore or if we’ve all moved to the cuss-o-meter, but I wanted to wish LAMary lots of luck in getting a new job. I am currently in job heaven because I outlasted my old boss and his replacement is wonderful. My old boss was so bad (how bad was he?) that by the time he announced his retirement, everyone who worked for him was job-hunting. So he left and we stayed. It’s been a few years, but we can still barely talk about him without starting to twitch. I heard of a statistic once (don’t know if it’s true) that 70% of the job hunters out there aren’t trying to quit their jobs, they’re trying to quit their bosses.
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joodyb said on April 1, 2008 at 5:22 pm
x = fingers crost for lamary, also – good job, sue. and i don’t know if that stat is legit either but i would certainly believe it.
harridan: ha! one of my FAVORITE words.
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michaelj said on April 1, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Madonna: Cyndi Lauper wrote several better songs, and she’s a far better singer. In that vast wasteland, Time After Time, vs. Like a Virgin. No shame? Any taste? And, if you don’t like Girl’s Just Wanna Have Fun, you need some sort of transplant.
Anything approaching rock ‘n roll songs, there are few women that aren’t in some Pantheon that are good rock singers.
Dreamboat Annie? The Robert Plant imitation? Fairly impressive. Yeah. Merry Clayton? Incomparable. Joni? No rock. Judy Collins? Listen to Pretty Polly with her ex-boyfriend. But can a voice so impossibly pure be a rocker? Please tell me I’m not just some lowbrow dumbass.
So how does this gender separation come about?
We’ve got Excene. Look up Lone Justice. Listen to Koko Taylor sing Whang Dang Doodle. Metal? Metal vocals are hilarious. So actually, ‘m interested in who’s the best girl drummer. I apologize for saying girl, but I thought they sort of said that first. Well, there’s Mo. Baseline. I’d say that ‘s Georgia Hubley next.
But what woman is a great rock singer? PJ
So all of y’all following the NCAAs. Who cares. Georgia outplayed Xavier by miles and got screwed over by the refs.
I wouldn’t havn’t caught that. Harridan, better word virago.
Lamaseries? Feudalism, Human sacrifice. They didn’t do this in this last Century? Is somebody joking? There was no feudalism? How dummnb and whatever are these morons that have the monks innocent.? They ran a feudal society. If you believe the lamas , I sure as shit don’t. What they did to they’re , peasabts. They practiced a particulaurly particuliarlialy odius brand of brand of feudalism.
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michaelj said on April 1, 2008 at 7:07 pm
I’m not abought here to make a cckaun abiut a singer. And . I swear i
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Kafkaz said on April 2, 2008 at 2:18 am
The Runaways. That was good girl rock for a few songs, anyway. “Hello, Daddy. Hello, Mom, I’m a ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-cherry bomb.” Hah!
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Kirk said on April 2, 2008 at 8:43 am
Deborah Harry.
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LAMary said on April 2, 2008 at 10:50 am
Debbie Harry is from Hawthorne, NJ. My home town. High school class of ’63.
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Harl Delos said on April 2, 2008 at 3:39 pm
“Ain’t nothing uglier than a skinny old white woman” – Redd Foxx.
I guess that means that at 62, Deborah Ann Harry is still young.
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