Madonna, like Prince, will outlive us all. Madonna is our generation's Elizabeth Taylor.
Wasn't there some controversial video with Madonna dressed sexily and a small boy? Madonna's next step will be to track down the man that boy has become, and sleep with him.
Also the boy on the cover of Nevermind. and all three brothers in Hanson. and the world's last surviving World War I veteran.
The calculated "shocker" that left you both slightly embarrassed and truly impressed?
Was anyone "truly impressed" by this? Madonna hit her Fat Elvis stage a while ago.
#2. "Open Your Heart."
Madonna's next step will be to track down the man that boy has become, and sleep with him his son.
But has Madonna ever done this?
http://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com/2008/07/20/cripple-creek/
And let me see that Edge of the West is giving y'all a run for your money in non-work-safe preverted weirdness. I recommend merger.
A-Rod is the greatest ballplayer I'm grateful the Red Sox missed out on. What a talent. What an asshole.
6: Merger? Economist, please. Our investors wouldn't allow it.
To Madonna's credit, A-Rod, who turns 33 next week, narrowly meets the 1/2+7 age appropriateness standard.
Well, they just took down your video. So y'all here at Unfogged no longer have the opportunity to surf over to ari's to listen to muppets singing about the evanescent pleasures of the drunken, bi-weekly booty call with underage partners...
11: Nah, it's still there. Wait, you're just trying to drive down our share price, aren't you? So your site can gobble up ours and sell off the parts at a huge profit. Well, you should know that you won't get much for Eric. He's played out the string, I think.
The "cougar" line is a bit cringe-y, I think.
11: if you're feeling bereft, darB, I could hook you up with a weird, falsetto voicemail along the same lines.
10: man, why are the superstar athletes closest in age to me so darn douchebaggy?
13: the "hyperbaric", slightly, as well.
On the subject of pop culture phenomena adapting to new eras, the Jim Henson studios people are posting new Muppet Show sketches to YouTube:
Makes sense when you think about it, since people no longer go to a vaudeville show to see weird stuff; they just watch viral videos at home instead. The best part is that Statler and Waldorf appear at the end of each one, as if they are watching it on their own computer, and issue their normal scathing one-liner reviews.
#19: It's been a while since someone's told me that.
19: That flag in One is hung backwards (blue should be in the upper-left hand corner, per US Code). And the timpani player in Two has seriously bad technique.
Why do muppets hate my freedom?
20: Well, you've just provided me with some ammunition in what seems to be a Muppets blog-war with my co-bloggers. I'd kiss you on the lips if you were close by.
#21: Sam the Eagle starts out by asking plaintively, "World Wide Web? Can't we put it on just the American part?"
Obviously the skit creators meant this to be evidence of Sam's jingoistic nearsightedness: He's not hip to the global Internet culture. But in fact, YouTube itself does use geographic filtering to block users in foreign countries from accessing certain videos. Oh, the irony!
18 is wonderful. Especially the second video. It's almost enough to warm my cold dead elitist classical snobish heart.
It's perhaps instructive to think of A-Rod as the Princess Diana of baseball.
From the other A-Rod/Madonna article.
Must agree with Stras. Madonna started of downhill and continued in the same direction. Her main talents are brandnaming, reinvention, and marketing. She was the single person who did most to convince me that the sexual revolution had not been a good thing, and that the relationship world was hopeless.
||
Completely irrelevant to the discussion, but this would spoil your appetite.
|>
||
Michael Savage, still a prick.
|>
Radovan Karadžić has been captured. This makes Žižek the most prominent ex-Yugoslav psychiatrist and poet still at large.
At one time he was thought to be hiding in the town of Celebici. I can't think of the punchline, though in the U.S. celebicy is a state and not a town. That's not where he was caught, though.
The EotAW'ers aren't thinking merger; they're thinking hostile takeover. Already they have sureptitiously acquired shares in unfogged well in excess of SEC reporting thresholds through a web of anonymous offshore holding companies and hedge fund derivatives transactions.
Their plan is to acquire a working majority on the board and, after taking effective control, dispose of the abundant non-operating assets on the balance sheet to generate cash and pay down the acquisition financing.
32: He's obviously projecting. He says to himself, "Would I be such an unbearable blot on the universe if there was someone standing next to me to punch me in the face every time I said something stupid and vicious? Probably not." And it's sad to think of him going for decades without the daily ass-kicking he so desperately needs.
History has established two fates for pop icons: (a) Die young or (b) Fat Elvis
What about the (c) Skeletor/ Keith Richards option? Or is that just a variant of Fat Elvis?
34: The non-disclosure agreement you signed (accompanied by a healthy retainer, you may recall) is binding for close to 72 more hours, Mr. Ruprecht. We'll have to ask that you stop this slanderous chatter at once or face legal jeopardy.
Fortunately the EotW people don't know about our debt load and carveouts. Little do they know that they will be taking on enormous debts incurred to finance the little do-nothing spinoff companies supporting us in our customary opulence. The debt-ridden wretches might get an occasional invitation to visit me on my Greek island, if they're lucky.
New Muppets yaaay! Thanks, Gaijin Biker!
Maybe you've already seen this, basically my favorite internet.
Norah Jones was careful to change the lyrics to her hit single so as not to suggest that she was having an affair with the letter Y.
38: Unfogged's S&P bond rating is detailed in comment 193.
Her main talents are brandnaming, reinvention, and marketing. She was the single person who did most to convince me that the sexual revolution had not been a good thing, and that the relationship world was hopeless.
In a long screed they published about the time Erotica came out, TNR called her a prostitute and made exactly that argument. So I'm afraid you'll have to decide who you hate more, John: Madonna or Marty Peretz.
#41: How about Feist singing "1, 2, 3, 4" on Sesame Street to teach kids how to count? Ironic, since in the original song, she counts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10.
(Strangely, this morning my eyes want to read "TNR" as "GN'R.")
La-la-la-la la-la-la.....can't hear you, Populuxe.
Meetup Board meeting in the Caymans! Yay!
Usually I spend winters in the Caymans to escape the harsh Greek winters.
Ironically, I spend winters in Greece in order to escape the caimans.
I like the basic thought behind the post's quote, but I still look at Madonna and think, yawn, there you go, being "provocative" again. Allegedly there's a sex tape but damn, I hope not.
I was about to ask, rhetorically, if we could safely assume that neither Becks nor the article's author intended the deeply sexist double entendre in "well played", but then I realized the question was hardly rhetorical.
If the Showbiz Pizza Band's rendition of "Love In This Club" hasn't been linked here yet, it really should.
Maybe you've already seen this, basically my favorite internet.
I love you, 'smasher. That was great.
52: tom linked that a while back on his blog. Do you know how they pulled it off? Looks way too good.
54: There's a whole Rock-a-Fire Explosion documentary kicking around on YouTube that provides the backstory, but I can't find it at the mome.
History has established two fates for pop icons: (a) Die young or (b) Fat Elvis.
With due allowance for the fact that magazine journalism could not exist without a modicum of oversimplification and hyperbole, there are other avenues available for aging celebrities.
1. The Clint Eastwood: Reveal a hithertofore unsuspected artistic talent (see also Howard, Ron)
2. The Sally Struthers. Devote yourself singlemindedly to a signature cause, and maybe do a little community theater on the side.
3. The Grace Kelly. Marry a prince/billionaire and age gracefully as a fairytale royal. (See also Fonda, Jane.)
Not that any of these were necessarily viable options for Madonna, but still.
4. The Sonny Bono: Parlay fame into a career in politics. See also Schwarzenegger.
And Jesse Ventura.
5. The Tom Cruise: keep your looks and talent but decline visibly into creepy barking madness.
Skunk Baxter: invent something that you claim has military applications.
Sonny Bono: after being a b-list politico for a decade or so, brain yourself on a tree.
Lots of guys: manage your investments.
Howard Hughes: the above, plus amphetamines and clinical paranoia.
Yulia Tymoshenko was a PhD and Pemier first, and only later became a sex object.
Hedy Lamarr's invention, which had actual military applications, came before her Holywood career really got going.
4. The O.J. Simpson/Phil Spector/Robert Blake. Wig out, commit a crime, become a byword for sleaze, brutality, or bad hair.
5. The Howard Hughes/Michael Jackson. Retreat from the world. Occasionally dangle infants from windows.
Subsets of managing investments:
Pink Floyd: Spend the rest of your life threatening to sue your fellow band members.
Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Mick Jagger: Become a member of the establishment.
Bill Bruford: Spend your pop fortune making interesting music.
i thought i should like Muppets a lot and Sesame street too and now i think i know why i don't, i mean i like it but not that much, it's b/c when i first saw the program it was translated and the voice making artists were speaking in very high falcettos imitating children's voices, so i couldn't stand hear that and never watched one full episode, pity, always think nicely made toys though
the Grace Kelly final is great, i mean not the crash of course
i know only one song by Madonna, Don't cry for me Argentina, others i never listened till the end so can't recall
the other day i saw their photo on some magazine's cover while shopping, they looked like siblings! i mean not their age, but facial features
so maybe it's their fate
54: The dude's a Rock-a-Fire programmer, apparently. Native to C++, Rock-a-fire environments.
Stanley, I think you might appreciate the Teenage Mutant Hardcore Turtles.
I'm trying to imagine what public office Madonna might conceivably win. City council member (or mayor, if directly elected) of a medium-sized city is probably within reach (Clint Eastwood managed this trick, too). State Assembly or State Senate might also be doably, depending on the jurisdiction. I can't imagine any circumstances under which she would have a shot at governor, and there's probably only and handful of Congressional districts in which she would stand a chance (the big hurdle would be winning the primary, where the support of the party organization counts for a lot).
My vaguely plausible, so crazy it might work scenario is for her to run as a Democratic candidate in a heavily Republican district; say, in the mountain West somewhere. She wins the uncontested primary, the GOP candidate predictably campaigns against the decadent liberal values she represents. Meanwhile, Madonna earns Strange New Respect from the locals for her visible concern for local issues and her surprisingly traditional views on parenting and education. The local newspaper, while endorsing her opponent, says nice things about her, which is all pretty safe because no one believe she stands a chance, not after the attack ad with the video of her in that cone bra and the lingering still photo of her leading a naked guy on a dog leash. And then--boom--a picture emerges of the GOP candidate in a sex club wearing a dog collar. The editorial cartoonists go wild! Madonna wins in a squeaker!
It's either that, or she runs for Supreme Court in South Dakota on an unabashed pro-choice platform.
Surprisingly traditional views on parenting and education....
That's what really pissed me off, the Catholic school for "Lourdes" and he pronouncements about Family. (Is there a hokier, phonier Catholic name than that for someone like her?) If she'd stayed scuzzy I might have found her endurable.
67: Actually I think she should just complete the 360 back to her roots (see Cat Stevens) become a nun and finish as a Mother Theresa type in someplace like Darfur.
Moldava. Darfur is too trendy.
Oman. Without air conditioning.
Yellowknife.
Stanley, I think you might appreciate the Teenage Mutant Hardcore Turtles.
You really are hell-bent on making my morning delightful, and I appreciate that.
According to wiki, Cat Stevens' father was Orthodox, his mother was Baptist and he went to Catholic school. So he's got pretty much a royal flush there. But not back to his roots.
Oman. Without air conditioning.
Egads, that would be a boring, horrible life.
71: Ah, had that wrong, I was under the impression that one of his parents had been Muslim. (So he's doing a reverse Obama.)
I liked this bit from the Wikipedia article that I had also never heard: In 1976 Stevens nearly drowned off the coast of Malibu, California and shouted: "Oh God! If you save me I will work for you." He converted the next year.
This has already been mentioned but the more I think about the line,
History has established two fates for pop icons: (a) Die young or (b) Fat Elvis.
The more obnoxiously wrong it seems.
Is Angela Lansbury an example of the "fat Elvis" route, or does she represent a model sui generis?
In general, is the Fat Elvis model an exclusively masculine model? You might think that, say, Kirstie Allie or Liza Minelli would present an obvious answer to this question, but I'm not so sure.
I'm suspect that Elvis, even at his most fat, sweaty, revolting, drug-addled worst, never had any shortage of fans willing to bed him. (Same goes for Keith Richards, minus the fat.) So the downside of totally indulging your vices--sloth, gluttony, etc.--is pretty limited. You can be a fat disgusting druggie slob and still have chicks waiting line to service you.
I'm not sure that option is open to women, and I count Madonna's pilates regime as evidence for my position.
That article irritates me for a variety of reasons, not the least of which every "music snob's" favorite idea about her, that she is not a musician. She's not exactly Mozart, but the woman makes good pop music. As for her "diminished creative output"...what the hell is he even talking about?
76: In fairness to the music snobs, it's her own contention in one of her movies (Truth or Dare, I think) that her main talents lie in areas other than singing or dancing. The diagnosis that there's nothing all that memorable about her music, especially her recent output, seems pretty valid.
I'm not sure that option is open to women, and I count Madonna's pilates regime as evidence for my position.
I don't think so. Being in shape is constituent to Madonna's performance in a way that it wasn't for Elvis's costumed Vegas galas and isn't for Richards's guitar playing. Madonna has to dance—she's a singer and dancer.
pilates regime
Both men and women want public adoration at least as much as private devotion, maybe different flavors. Pilates is for the cameras and the eyes of whoever is the competition more than private whatever.
People, you don't have to dislike Madonna's music to say that she has no musical talent. She is very good at surrounding herself with very, very talented writers, producers, and choreographers. Her voice is average at best, but the people who actually, you know, write and produce the songs make them work (often quite well) within her limitations. She's probably the best at identifying trends in underground dance music with pop potential and then exploiting them. Or at least she was, I've found her output since Music to be kind of meh. Rock the baile funk, Madonna!
I think Madonna may end up more like Frank Sinatra or Ray Charles- beloved elder statesman that still can top the charts with a duet with some young talent, just to keep relevant.
Bill Bruford: Spend your pop fortune making interesting music.
Bruford's pop fortune?