Photos from Vanity Fair's Oscar Party

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Madonna, Go Away.

I sure as hell don't know what to make of this. Quoting this rumor:

Madonna looks set to make her movie directing debut. An entry on Hollywood.com lists her as director of an upcoming movie entitled 'Blade to the Heat'.

The story is a:

"boxing story loosely based on the 1959 bout between Emile Griffith and Benny 'Kid' Paret".

I don't know, I don't really begrudge anyone a directing job but this seems futile. I didn't even like Clint Eastwood's boxing one, how in the world will this not turn into a cheesefest? My guess is she'll only produce it. Surely she still has some of her instincts left, the ones that haven't been eaten by a British accent.

Human Rights Organizations Want a Say in Madonna Adoption

Poor Madonna! First her NBC concert special flopped big time (seriously, it was outperformed by Fox's airing of Cheaper by the Dozen), and now everyone and their brother wants a say in her adoption of David Banda. On Wednesday, a Malawian judge ruled in favor of a coalition of 67 Malawian human rights and child advocacy groups who want to be party to the assessment of her fitness as a mother.

Madonna stirred up some local controversy when she took Banda to England soon after filing for adoption, when Malawi regulations require that prospective parents undergo an 18- to 24-month assessment in the country.

"I must stress that all along we have not been against the adoption but we only wanted Malawi's adoption laws clarified and followed to the letter," said one of the petitioners, a Malawian lawyer and human rights activist. "Today's ruling gives us the opportunity to clear (up) some gray areas surrounding adoption laws in Malawi."

At first glance, the implication of this seems crazy: how could this kid possibly be better off in a Malawi orphanage than living as Madonna's son? But the human rights activists want to protect the process of adoption in their country; if these rules can be circumvented by Madonna, they reason, they can be circumvented by pedophiles and human traffickers. It's an argument that makes sense, and I'm siding with the human rights folks on this one.

I'm sure this is hell for Madonna, though. I once took my cat, Max, who I found as a stray, to the vet for a routine check-up. The vet found a little chip implanted in him that said he belonged to a different owner. She had to call the owner, and she told me my cat would have to be returned if his original owner wanted him. It took about 20 minutes to get ahold of the owner, who had lost the cat long ago and already replaced him, but I spent all 20 of those minutes crying and being generally inconsolable. It's a stupid example, I know, but I can't even imagine the hell it would be to have to go through this with a child. Especially since the government's first assessment of her fitness as a mother isn't scheduled until next May. Hopefully this will work out satisfactorily for all parties, and we can return our attention to more interesting matters, like where Britney Spears will next treat us all to a look at her hairless goodies.

Picking up the Pieces

Oh hells no! Britney removes K-Fed from her top 12 on MySpace. That's what you get for writing mean things about her on shower walls, Kevin. [Faded Youth]

Kate Moss and Pete Doherty are turned away from the London world premiere of Casino Royale, after someone very wise determined that perhaps Queen Elizabeth should not share a red carpet with a world-renowned cokehead. [Agent Bedhead]

Madonna confirms that she plans to adopt a baby girl from Malawi, in order to "redress the balance" in her family. Madonna says things like "redress" because she's British. Oh wait. [Dirty Laundry]

Donald Trump is going to be a grandpa. Sadly, it's not because Lance Armstrong knocked up Ivanka. [The Bosh]

Madame Tussaud's unveils the new Ashlee Simpson wax likeness. What's that? Oh, I'm told that's actually Ashlee Simpson. [Celebrity Smack]

Okay, so, in college, some friends and I determined that Sexual Misadventures with Kimmy Gibbler would be, hands-down, the best band name ever. My reasons for mentioning this now are twofold. First, it's still true, and someone should get on that. Second, Bob Saget actually makes reference to sex with Kimmy Gibbler in this clip of his stand-up, where he sings "Danny Tanner Is Not Gay" to the tune of the Backstreet Boys' "I Want it That Way." [BWE]

Are you ready to masturbate to sneakers? Reebok sure hopes so. They've hired Scarlett to co-create a line of footwear and apparel and star in the ad campaign. [IDLYITW]

Finally! It's time for the Reese Witherspoon love interest rumors! Up first: Jake Gyllenhaal. [Hollywood Grind]

I Link We're Alone Now

Rachel Weisz says it's okay to drink while you're pregnant. "Amen to that," says Lindsay Lohan's mom. [Cele|Bitchy]

If there is, in fact, a way to get America to a film version of Sweeney Todd, it's probably Borat. [Seriously? OMG! WTF?]

Shocker of shockers. Justin Timberlake is out and about, being a self-absorbed ass. [Girls Talkin' Smack, Pop on the Pop]

Oprah and her couch are not invited to the TomKat wedding. [Bossip]

If Paris and Nicole can be BFF again, perhaps there's hope for Britney and Madonna? [The Bosh]

You should return that bulk purchase of lube to Costco, guys. There won't be an Eva Longoria/Beyonce lesbo flick afterall. [Junkiness]

Michelle Trachtenberg and DJ AM? In my mind, this is the definitive answer to "Which B-list celebs do you care about the absolute least?" But apparently they're also banging. [A Socialite's Life]

Madonna INJURED!

Madonna is sporting a bruise on her left cheek after a scuffle with paparazzi at Heathrow airport this weekend. She was holding her (kind of) adopted baby, David, at the time. According to a source, "When she landed in London, there was a lot of pushing and shoving. She was jostled around. She got hit in the paparazzi's commotion." The baby was not injured.

Madonna was returning to London from NYC, where she's been promoting her latest children's book, Too Good to be True and her upcoming NBC television special, Madonna: The Confessions Tour Live from London. She's also been appearing on a variety of talk shows to address the controversy surrounding her adoption.

Madonna Has Put a Kabbalah Bracelet on Her Goddamn Infant

Weekend Round-Up

Rapper Snoop Dogg is arrested on suspicion of illegal drug and gun possession. At an airport. If he were smart like Paris Hilton, he'd keep his damn weed in his teddy bear when traveling. [CelebSlam]

With a Teen People camera crew following her, Brooke Hogan spends $900 at LF in NYC. After the cameras leave, she sends a flack to return most of it. [Page Six]

Aw, Mischa Barton is crying. That means she's hungry. [Celebrity Smack]

The extended trailer for the sixth season of 24 is online, so you can have some brand new imagery for your Jack Bauer fantasies. [Tabloid Whore]

Check out side-by-side pictures of Madonna in 1979 and daughter Lourdes this year. My guess is little David will not bear the same resemblance. [WOW Report]

Steve Irwin's widow is not happy that the guys from South Park are already poking fun at his death. [HGW]

Won't You Stay for a Link?

Dude, Naomi, mellow out a little. Light up a joint, cut a line, just relax. Supermodel Campbell is arrested -- again -- for assault, this time for scratching up the face of her drug counselor. [Staralicious]

A run-down of your favorite TV show theme songs, complete with video clips. You don't know how wonderful it is to listen to the 90210 theme over and over again until you've tried it. [Pajiba]

I think Howard K. Stern paid this woman to file court papers claiming she's the real mother of Michael Jackson's children, because she makes Anna Nicole look like Isaac Asimov. [Glitterati]

In case your TiVo malfunctioned, Hollyscoop has a good summary of Madonna's Oprah interview. [Hollyscoop]

Cute new pics of Madonna adoptee David Ritchie (nee Banda). [Just Jared]

A game of mad libs as played by Rachel Zoe and Wes Anderson, respectively. [The Gilded Moose]

America loves Karen Walker. Megan Mullally? Not so much. [Jossip]

Weekend Round-Up

Burkegate trudges forward, with new revelations that Grey's Anatomy star Isaiah Washington has a history of violence and general on-set assholery. [TMZ]

Madonna will appear on Oprah on Wednesday to defend her kinda-sorta-legal adoption of Malawi orphan David Banda, and, probably, to plug her upcoming adoption. [Hollywood Grind]

Studio 60 is taking a one-week break from mildly amusing a viewership rich and liberal enough to know they should love Aaron Sorkin unconditionally, as NBC "quietly" slips a drama about Texas high-school football into the timeslot. What could possibly go wrong? [Defamer]

If there's anything Kate Moss and Pete Doherty need right now, it's a goddamn infant in their care. [MollyGood]

For being a billion years old, Sharon Stone still has some really nice nipples. [Yes But No But Yes]

If you thought I'd gotten all my classlessness out of my system with a Sharon Stone nip-shot, you were wrong. Wanna see up Nicole Richie's skirt? You only get to laugh condescendingly at me until you click the link. [Faded Youth]

Check out Pink's new video for her next single, "Nobody Knows." [Perez Hilton]

Madonna to Adopt Her Three-Year-Old Malawian Twin

In case you weren't tipped off by the rock-hard body and Kabbalah-inspired name change to "Esther" and on-stage urging of her fans to put a certain cylindrical part of our President's anatomy in their mouths and apply pressure (hint: it's not a finger!), Madonna does not half-ass anything. The singer, who has two biological children, and recently adopted a Malawi infant, is coming back for more.

Loathe to let this adoption-related publicity die down, Madonna is already talking about adopting a three-year-old girl from the same Malawi village where she found her last human-interest story. Says Madge: "I looked at this child with questioning dark eyes and the saddest smile. I thought, 'She looks just like me.'"

Now, I have not seen a picture of this child, but I am going to go out on a limb and guess that there exists not a single three-year-old Malawian orphan who looks -- in any way -- like Madonna. Also: "questioning dark eyes and the saddest smile?" What? Is it possible we are edging closer to the ultimate Madonna reinvention, at last unveiling the angsty, brooding, piano-heavy Madonna that the gay community is so, so hoping will tour with Tori Amos? Oh, let it be so!

Madonna, Your Order Has Shipped

The totally adorable and pseudo-legally adopted David Banda arrived in the U.K. yesterday. The Ritchies were nowhere to be seen, but Madonna's publicist says David will join up with them "in the next few days."

Late-Night Link-o-Rama

Apparently Madonna isn't adopting an African child so much as she's kinda stealing one. Rule-bending in exchange for cash? In Malawi? [I'm Bringing Blogging Back]

Lindsay Lohan and Keira Knightley are going to hook up. On camera. I'm serious this time. [Pop on the Pop]

And the first interview with Michael Jackson since he left the U.S. in June 2005 goes to...Billy Bush? [Access Hollywood]

After her riveting turn making a whore of Christian Troy (like that's hard) on Nip/Tuck, Rosie O'Donnell may get her own spin-off. [NY Post]

Today in cost-cutting: Moviefone conducts its Ashton Kutcher interview via IM. [Moviefone]

PR folks everywhere continue to realize that banning Paris Hilton from your event is a surefire way to score some publicity. I'm still totally okay with that, Esquire Show House in Los Angeles. [Hollyscoop]

ScoJo signs a deal to record her first album. The working title is Scarlett Sings Tom Waits, but they're thinking of changing it to Hipster Masturbation 3000. [Junkiness]

We're Gonna Call This One: Madonna Adopts African Boy

Although her publicist is still keeping busy making denials (I assume in an attempt to increase publicity surrounding the event), as E! Online says, "we'll just have to settle for the word of the child's father and a Malawi village chief and the director of the orphanage and an African judge and a pastor and the secretary for the Ministry for Gender and Child Welfare."

The deputy registrar at a local courthouse tells Reuters that "Madonna and the husband filed their papers for an interim order this morning at Lilongwe High Court, and the judge gave the ruling at 2 p.m. this afternoon."

The lucky little man is one-year-old David Banda, whose father placed him in an orphanage after his mother died days after his birth due to complications. "I am very happy," says the father. "As you can see, there is poverty in my village. I know he will be very happy in America." Although Madonna and her husband, Guy Ritchie, currently live in Britain (Duh, isn't it obvious from her accent? Madonna was clearly not born and raised in Detroit), I suppose it's still a small step up from a Malawi orphanage. Congratulations to The Ritchies, and to the luckiest adoptee since Baby Suri!

Madonna Really Just Window Shopping for Orphans

Despite her publicist's insistence that she does not plan to adopt an AIDS-orphaned African child, Madonna continues her AIDS-orphaned African child sight-seeing tour in Malawi, which I'm told is kind of like an African safari, but, instead of admiring elephants and zebras and leaving them in peace in their natural habitat, you admire human children who have lost any remnant of hope for a life involving love and regular meals, briefly flash that hope in front of them, and then leave with it in a Hummer which, if sold only for parts, could feed and shelter each of them well into adolescence. It's the next tourist hot spot! You heard it here first!

Afternoon Delight: Vaughniston Implodes Under the Weight of its Own Gravity (and over the phone)

• Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston broke up over the phone.
• Madonna selects an African child to adopt with the same obsessive attention to detail and God complex that make her live performances such extraordinary spectacles.

• Mischa Barton and Nicole Richie are dunzo. Barton says Richie's "fickle," by which she of course means "starving."

• Having properly atoned for a year of sins on Yom Kippur, Mel Gibson's drinking again.
• Ashlee Simpson denies hooking up with Nick Carter while he was with Paris Hilton, using her own special brand of eloquence: "No! That is so random. When I heard that, I was dying laughing."

While You Were Sleeping: The Edition Where Patrick Dempsey Grabs Your Ass While His Wife's Not Looking

WAKE THE FUCK UP, LOS ANGELES!

Omigod you guys so much has happened since COB yesterday. So pop a couple Tylenol, get that Visine in, and have your morning beer so we can get started.

• Tragic news! Patrick Dempsey's wife had another one of his kids, making you even more of a naughty homewrecking slut when he shows up in your sexual fantasies. Hm. Maybe not so tragic.






• Madonna wants Russia to send her to outer space in 2008. They say no, but they'll consider it for 2009. There's a Lance Bass joke in here, but I can't find it. I'm open to suggestions.




• Orlando Bloom buys his very first computer. The fact that this coincides with his break-up with long-term girlfriend/stick figure Kate Bosworth strikes me as interesting. First person to find his Match.com profile gets a hug.




• 24-year-old rocker Ryan Cabrera is dating Elvis Presley's granddaughter, barely-17-year-old Riley Keough.




• Tori Spelling's first husband reveals the obvious: even her own family thinks she's a spoiled, crazy bitch.