Archive for the 'Madonna' Category

The Yankee slugger is making a big donation to the icon’s charity, Raising Malawi, a source tells us.

“They’ve asked him for a million dollars, and I hear he’s agreed to give at least $500,000,” the source confided.

A-Rod, who denied an affair with Madonna — despite being spotted with the pop superstar around town — may have some hefty alimony and child-support payments ahead after his divorce from Cynthia Rodriguez is finalized. But he has shown great generosity in the past.

He gave $3.9 million to the University of Miami to help build a baseball stadium, and he didn’t even want his name on it. And he can certainly afford to share the wealth. The 10-year contract he signed in December grants him $275 million, with $30 mil more should he break the all-time home run record — a distinct possibility.

A-Rod’s reps wouldn’t return calls, and Raising Malawi director Philippe van den Bossche told us, “Obviously when you’re talking about donors, these are private things. I would never reveal information about any donor.”

The charity’s effort to help the African nation’s 1 million orphans and others with food, medicine and education is a desperately important one, he says.

“We’re building a girls’ school, which will bring the best resources from around the world with a specific focus on medicine, education and the law. And we don’t want a brain drain. We want to develop the leaders of Malawi, who stay in Malawi and help their country.”
Madonna is reportedly preparing to adopt a Malawian girl, having completed her adoption of Malawi-born David Banda.
Van den Bossche denied the charity, whose co-founder is Kabbalah Center head Michael Berg, would start a school with a Kabbalah-based curriculum.

He said, “It will be based on the British system” — as is taught in private schools Madonna’s children Lourdes and Rocco attend.
And every step is a partnership, like with New York starchitect Markus Dochantschi working pro bono with a Malawian architect to design the school.

“We want programs that can be copied in developing countries throughout the world,” van den Bossche told us. “Not just a celebrity one-off.”

(source)

She might be known worldwide as the Material Girl, but there’s more than a little of the small-town Michigan girl left in Madonna.

The pop superstar arrived in this northern Michigan resort town Saturday to introduce her documentary, “I Am Because We Are,” a highlight of the Traverse City Film Festival. The event was co-founded by filmmaker, author and fellow Michigan native Michael Moore.

Hundreds of fans cheered from behind barricades as Madonna, wearing a black dress, high heels and sunglasses, stepped out of a black sport utility vehicle that pulled up in front of the State Theatre. She hugged a waiting Moore, who sported an orange baseball cap, and posed for photos with him.

Madonna and Moore shared the stage at the theater before a screening of the movie, which deals with the orphans of Malawi, the African nation where she and husband Guy Ritchie adopted a son.

“It’s great bringing my movie to a place that I feel familiar,” Madonna told the audience. “Not like the Cannes Film Festival, where nobody’s speaking English, or the Tribeca Film Festival, where no one sits down.

“There’s something poetic about coming back to the place where I used to come for holidays - camping trips with my dad and stepmother and my very large family,” said the 49-year-old singer, born to the southeast in Bay City and raised in the Detroit suburb of Rochester Hills.

Madonna was accompanied by her 11-year-old daughter, Lourdes, and the film’s director, Nathan Rissman. Ritchie was not present.

Moore, who won an Oscar for his 2002 documentary “Bowling for Columbine,” said he was humbled to be able to call Madonna a friend.

“She has such an incredible heart and such a generous spirit,” he said. “She does so much out of the glare of the lights to make the world a better place.”

Madonna had praise of her own for Moore, 54, a Flint-area native who has a home near Traverse City.

“There aren’t a lot of role models for us in the world, or people we can look up to,” she said. “People who are not afraid to stick their neck out, people who are not afraid to stand up for things and be unpopular, to go against the grain, think outside the box.

“And we need, and I need, Michael Moore in my life.”

Madonna appeared amid the release of a tell-all book by her brother and speculation about her relationship with New York Yankees star Alex Rodriguez. Madonna and Rodriguez both deny an affair. She did not address the dust-ups in her appearance Saturday.

Madonna and Alex Rodriguez might be distancing themselves from each other, but their common interest in Kabbalah is only growing stronger.

According to a source close to the religion, A-Rod has been assigned to Madonna’s spiritual advisor, Rabbi Eitan Yardeni, for all of his Kabbalah and spiritual needs. This speaks volumes about A-Rod’s importance to the organization, says the source.

“A-Rod is clearly bringing in enough publicity for them if he’ll actually study with Yardeni. (Yardeni) is Madonna’s direct contact. This is a very big deal,” says the source.

Yardeni did not respond to requests for comment.

What exactly will Yardeni do to help A-Rod? Says the source, “When there’s trouble with Madonna, when she needs help with a decision, (Yardeni) is dispatched. He calls the shots in her spiritual life. When she’s on tour and needs spiritual guidance, he flies to wherever he is. The same will go for A-Rod.”

So Yardeni will essentially hit the road with the Yankees? According to the source, it’s looking that way: “Basically, yes. I don’t know if he’ll be allowed in the locker room though.”

(source)

CHRISTOPHER Ciccone isn’t the only writer making a buck off Madonna this year. Her manager, Guy Oseary, is coming out in October with “Madonna: Confessions” - a 224-page coffee-table book of photos from her 2006 world tour. Don’t expect any shockers, though - she fully cooperated, helped handpick the snaps and provided quotes. The $39.95 volume is timed to hit stores just as the Material Girl’s Sticky and Sweet tour kicks off in the Meadowlands.

(source)

“The supposed scandal about [her brother] Christopher Ciccone’s book is bull[bleep],” an insider told Page Six. “She actually ghost-wrote parts of it with him, the way Princess Diana helped Andrew Morton write his book on her. That’s why there’s nothing too devastating in Chris’s book. He’s mean to others, but not so much to his sister.” In addition, Madge, now frighteningly rail thin, exploited Alex Rodriguez. “She flirted with him and manipulated him,” our source declared. “She didn’t count on wife Cynthia leaving him and naming her in the divorce, though.” Madonna is using the buzz over her relationship with A-Rod to her benefit. “She’s ordered three A-Rod Yankee jerseys she’ll wear in the finale of her upcoming shows. All of this was created to sell tickets for her tour, which hasn’t been selling so well.” A rep for Madonna didn’t return calls.

(source)

MADONNA’s estranged brother CHRISTOPHER CICCONE released his tell-all book about life with the superstar because he wanted to “watch her squirm”.

Ciccone published the controversial tome, Life With My Sister Madonna, earlier this month and he recently admitted that his revelations in the book left his famous older sister “very upset”.

But the 47-year-old insists the book was a watered down version of what he wanted to publish - because his lawyers forced him to omit much of the more controversial content.

He tells MSNBC.com, “There are plenty of things I left out of the book. And things that the lawyers and editors took out.”

But Ciccone still enjoyed Madonna’s reaction to the controversy.

He adds, “I will admit to a guilty pleasure in watching her squirm. (Releasing the book was like a) giant f**king orgasm. Therapy I already had; this was pure sex.”

(WENN)