MEXICO CITY —  New York Yankees third-baseman Alex Rodriguez appeared in Mexico City on the same weekend as Madonna — a turn of events he called “very good.”

The 33-year-old baseball star spent two hours Sunday teaching kids to bat at a new sports center built on a landfill in the poor suburb of Nezahualcoyotl.

Pop star Madonna meanwhile prepared to perform for a sold-out second night in the capital as part of her “Sticky & Sweet” tour.

When asked what he thought about being in the sprawling capital at the same time as Madonna, Rodriguez said it was “very good,” without elaborating.

Rodriguez and his wife divorced in September, months after he made tabloid headlines for a rumored, but denied, dalliance with Madonna.

Less than four weeks later, Madonna and filmmaker husband Guy Ritchie announced their own split after nearly eight years of marriage.

Rodriguez, known by fans as “A-Rod,” was invited to inaugurate the sports center by Mexico’s richest man, Carlos Slim, whose Telmex Foundation sponsored its construction. The site includes two baseball diamonds and 25 soccer fields.

 

“It’s a pleasure to talk about baseball, to talk about the importance of keeping children off the streets, out of drugs and out of all the bad things that there are in this life,” the New York City-born Rodriguez said in Spanish.

It wasn’t immediately known of Rodriguez and Madonna met while in Mexico City.

Source: AP

PROMOTERS have scrapped Australian tour plans for superstars Madonna, Neil
Diamond and Paul McCartney because of the weak dollar.

Madonna had agreed to multiple dates in Sydney and Melbourne in late
January, and was holding talks about possible gigs in Brisbane and Perth,
with tickets expected to go on sale two weeks ago with a top ticket price of
$400.

“It got as close as anything ever gets,” a tour industry source said.
“Madonna was coming to Australia, the dates were resolved but then the
economics got in the way.”

The revelations follow a growing list of postponed tour plans by the world’s
biggest superstars.

Concert industry sources say Diamond, McCartney, The Eagles, Green Day and
Metallica have put visits on hold because of the bad economy.

“It’s unknown territory at the moment,” said promoter Michael Chugg. “A lot
of tours went on sale before the dollar crashed.

“We are only starting to see the effect of the economy on the tour
industry.”

Mr Coppel said the weak dollar had made promoters and touring superstars
cautious. “The risk level has gone up substantially for US-based acts
because our dollar is 35 per cent down from where it was three months ago.

“A lot of us have been caught out on deals that don’t make any sense. You
can sell out a tour and still lose a seven-figure sum.”

But there are exceptions.

Promoter Michael Coppel is touring US singer Pink, who has broken box office
records, including an 11-night stand in Melbourne. She will be in Brisbane
in July. Mr Chugg, touring Coldplay in March, says the right acts always
will do well. But Mr Coppel warns the weak dollar and exchange rate will
push ticket prices up.

While some superstars adopt a wait-and-see approach on the economy, top line
acts AC/DC and Tina Turner are set to include Australia in their world tour
plans.

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,,24725578-5003421,00.html

The Exhibit
From the iconic pink Material Girl dress to the wedding gown from Evita – London’s Truman Brewery will come alive with an exhibition of the world’s largest private collection of Madonna’s film and stage costumes and artifacts.

Pop pioneer, style icon, sex symbol and movie star – the month-long celebration will tell the story of Madonna’s career, spanning 3 decades – unearthing a treasure trove of over 300 film and stage worn costumes and artifacts on public view for the first time, as a single collection.

A stunning array of clothing, photographs, film props, costumes, concert outfits and personal items, will be showcased in an exhibition, enhanced by multi-media displays and installations. Bringing together timeless pieces such as the pink ‘Material Girl’ dress, black and gold ‘Open Your Heart’ bustier‘, ‘Like a Virgin’ tour wedding gown and a collection of over 30 dresses worn in the hit film Evita – the exhibition will represent the major performances, concerts and films that made Madonna Louise Ciccone a star.

From her breakthrough 1983 hit ‘Holiday’ to the present, Madonna remains one of the most influential and revered world music icons – embarking upon a huge world tour just a week after her 50th birthday.

Exhibition Highlights

* Pink dress worn in the 1985 pop video for “Material Girl”
* Black with gold tassel bustier worn in the 1986 video for “Open Your Heart”
* Baseball costume worn in the 1992 movie “League of their Own”
* Inaugural gown worn in the 1996 movie “Evita”
* Wedding dress worn in the 1996 movie “Evita”
* 2 x MTV awards given to Madonna personally for “Ray of Light”
* The complete outfit worn in the 1999 music video for “American Pie”
* The complete outfit worn in the 2000 music video for “Music”

To review a more extensive gallery on Madonna: http://www.marqueecapital.com/assets_list….;artist=Madonna

‘Simply Madonna: Materials of the Girl‘ opens at the Old Truman Brewery on February 21 2009 and runs to March 22.Sources: vogue.fr / Marquee Capital

Source: Madonnatribe.com

By FRAZIER MOORE, Associated Press Writer Frazier Moore, Associated Press Writer – 33 mins ago AP

She adopted one of those orphans, her 3-year-old son David. She is building a school there.

And she has told Malawi’s harrowing story in her documentary, “I Am Because We Are.” With an audience thus far limited to isolated theater screenings, it will be screened for everyone with its TV premiere on Sundance Channel at 9 p.m. EST Monday (World AIDS Day).

The feature-length film was written, produced and narrated by Madonna (directed by Nathan Rissman). It consults experts including President Bill Clinton and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

But the film’s real power is its images, which are often dismaying but, here and there, reflect hope and a remarkable will to survive.

“I had many goals,” said Madonna during a phone conversation from her Manhattan home a few days ago. “I did get to a point where I thought, ‘I’m being overambitious, I’m trying to say too much, I’ll never accomplish it.’ But I feel proud of the fact that I did get to make all my points.”

Among her points: an insistence that any crisis comes with solutions, however hard-won and piecemeal.

The film offers its audience a menu of constructive responses.

“If all you can do is live life in YOUR world in a way that shows you are responsible for the people around you, that’s a course of action,” said Madonna. “People can be of service in large ways and small.”

The first wide exposure of “I Am Because We Are” may be coming at a propitious time, which befits the pop superstar who made it, with her knack for anticipating and identifying cultural trends.

On the eve of a new presidential administration, Americans seem set on a more idealistic path, however alarmed they may be by economic threats along the way.

“People really are going, ‘Wow! I can no longer ignore what’s going on around me.’ There are changes in the air,” she said.

Madonna’s busy schedule continues apace. But the artistic life that drives it “is a world you create and you inhabit, to express yourself, and to inspire and reach out to other people,” she explained. “It’s also a consolation, a place you go to to protect yourself.” That’s true now, in particular, during her highly public split with Guy Ritchie, her husband of eight years, which she described as “not easy, I’m not going to lie.”

Though on a brief New York break from her concert tour, Madonna said the day’s long to-do list called for this AP interview to be followed by interviews she would be conducting herself: with prospective head mistresses for the girls school she is building in Malawi.

“We’re all going there together at the end of March,” she said, referring to David, 8-year-old son Rocco and 12-year-old daughter Lourdes.

“I’m very involved in a lot of things that are going on there,” she said, and as she makes return visits with her kids, she wants them to gather insights into the plight of the world’s underprivileged. “And David’s always going to understand where he came from, and what his life could have been like.”

Meanwhile, she hopes her film can spread the message to millions more.

“It has an impact on the people who see it,” she declared. “The more people, the bigger the impact.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081128/ap_en_tv/tv_madonna_s_documentary

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zint4697i_Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zint4697i_Q

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL8eoV1r_mA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL8eoV1r_mA

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H85c-dtmAqw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H85c-dtmAqw

Thanks Dave G.

“Is it harder for women in the industry in general? ‘Definitely,’ she says. ‘I was trying to make a case for Madonna the other day, saying that she’s to be admired for her longevity in a genre that has mostly been for younger acts. Men are able to sustain a career into their 50s and 60s and still present themselves as sex symbols. With women on the other hand, people say, ‘Why doesn’t she retire?’ It’s just so unfair. So I have to give props to Madonna.”

- Tracy Chapman tells The Guardian

 

Los Angeles (E! Online) – Madrod has finally made its public debut.

As Madonna completed her second song before a sell-out crowd in Miami‘s Dolphin Stadium Wednesday night, New York Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez handed her a bottle of water.

“It was easy for him to hand it off because he was sitting in the front row,” a witness tells E! News. “He was all excited watching her perform.”

And, just like that, Madonna acknowledged in public, less than a week after her quickie divorce from Guy Ritchie, that A-Rod is indeed the superfan (and waterboy) he’s reportedly been for most of this year in private.

The two arrived in town together on Monday and spent most of Wednesday hanging around town with pal Ingrid Casares, a prominent Miami party promoter, who introduced the pair.

Madonna, 50, hit the stage of her last Sticky & Sweet American concert two and a half hours after the show was supposed to start. The Material One played from about 10 p.m. to midnight, including a guest appearance by Pharrell Williams during the closing set.

A-Rod, 33, who very publicly spent Tuesday with his family at a local restaurant, stayed throughout the entire performance.

 

Suzanne S. Brown | The Denver Post

For Gina Brooke, the magic of a Madonna concert isn’t when the pop star is strutting onstage with a full set of backup singers and dancers, but when she drops out of sight.

That’s because Brooke, the diva’s makeup artist, is waiting along with a hairstylist and two wardrobe assistants to touch up Madonna’s face and hair, and help her change into a new costume. The routine takes 90 seconds, tops.

“That’s the most exciting part of the show — below the stage,” Brooke says of four quick-change segments during each stop on the Sticky & Sweet tour.

“If she doesn’t get her boot on straight, I can’t powder her properly, or she’ll go on late, and it can be a big issue,” Brooke says. The support crew also gets a private show by Madonna during the changes. “She’s really funny and witty.”

Brooke and Madonna’s hairstylist spend from 45 minutes to an hour prepping the star before each performance, and that ritual, too, is carefully orchestrated. “The look of the show is quintessentially Madonna,” says the artist. “When I’m doing someone’s makeup, I always look at their face and take what I think is their best attribute and enhance it. Madonna’s eyes and skin are her most beautiful features.”

The process starts long before the first sound check. “We go in three weeks before the tour starts and look at the costumes she’ll be wearing,” Brooke says. From that, the makeup artist will come up with some ideas about how the makeup will complement the costumes. “[Madonna] knows what she wants; ultimately it is a collaboration,” Brooke says.

When she’s not doing celebrity makeup for shows or photo shoots, Brooke travels to stores on behalf of makeup company Shu Uemura. The classes Brooke teaches start with a talk about the importance of skin care. “Beautiful makeup begins with beautiful skin,” she says. “If you don’t prime a wall properly, the paint doesn’t go on smoothly and the same is true for your skin.”

At good makeup counters, employees have been trained to find the right cosmetics for a woman’s skin, hair and eye colors, she says, and customers are shown how to properly apply it. It shouldn’t be a slapdash affair where you are sold whatever eye or lip color is in season and sent on your way.

That said, there are two trends right now that women can use to update their look. The one that Madonna’s wearing — metallic eye shadow — can be used for day and evening, Brooke says. The other is to experiment with bold lips in shades of pink, red or brown.

“I don’t believe there are rules to makeup,” Brooke says. “People should apply makeup according to what looks good on them.”

http://www.orlandosentinel.com

MTV goddess shines light on a brutally neglected AIDS-afflicted country

On Monday, the Sundance Channel airs “I Am Because We Are,” a documentary about the country where Madonna adopted David Banda, the now three-year-old Malawian boy.

The queen of music video delivers a program that’s painfully heartbreaking. Although she narrates some of the film, Madonna mostly steps out of the way and introduces us to Malawi, an extremely poor, landlocked country in southeastern Africa where many of its children are orphaned by AIDS.

Life is more enjoyable when you don’t have to think about places like Malawi.
A few years ago, a businesswoman, who knew Madonna through a mutual friend, told the pop star her native homeland was in a state of emergency. She told Madonna, “You’re a person with resources. People pay attention to what you say and do.”

Madonna told her she didn’t know where Malawi was. The woman told her to look it up on map. And then she hung up on the pop star.

With camera crews, Madonna explores the country and its orphanages. Death is everywhere. So many young kids are already without parents, but they are burdened with the seemingly impossible task of caring for other infants.

The more Madonna investigates, the more horror she uncovers.

If you thought by now that everyone got the memo on how HIV is spread, you haven’t heard the insane theories that African medicine men have dreamed up — for a man to cure himself of AIDS and other STDs, he needs to have penetrative sex with a virgin.

In this ever-depressing milieu, Madonna offers some glimmers of hope. She’s blown away by how these children have managed to retain their intrinsic happiness. When Madonna was six years old, she lost her mom to breast cancer. She can’t fathom how the Malawian children are able to still have fun. But miraculously, they’ve found the will to survive.

“I Am Because We Are” is nothing like a feel-good Joan Crawford publicity stunt. It’s overwhelmingly tragic. And if Madonna never filmed this documentary or adopted little David, everyone would just continue ignoring a country in desperate need of help.

— Daniel A. Kusner

Grade: B

Airs Dec. 1 at 9 p.m. on the Sundance Channel.http://www.dallasvoice.com/artman/publish/article_10153.php

THANX 2 ABSMAD member #1MFAN 4 the heads up!

 

By Ray Waddell, Nashville

Madonna wraps the North American leg of her Sticky & Sweet tour tonight in front of 50,000 people at Dolphin Stadium in Miami.

The 28 dates in North America have grossed about $91.5 million and moved about 550,000 tickets, according to tour producer Arthur Fogel, chairman of global music for Live Nation.

Next up is Mexico City, beginning Nov. 29. Counting her European run, Madonna is currently at about $207.5 million in ticket sales and on a pace to hit about $282 million when Mexico/South America wraps. That would make Sticky & Sweet the top-grossing tour ever by a female artist or solo artist.

The tour wraps Dec. 18 – 21 in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

http://www.billboard.biz