Whoa. Sounds like Madonna refuses to take any heat for M.I.A.‘s recent Super Bowl halftime antics.

Which I kind of do not understand? Like, I’m a little surprised, actually. Since when has Madonna been one to shy from controversy? No offense, Madge, but M.I.A.’s gesture was a gift to you! It was the gift of sudden relevance! (We can argue that one, if you want.)

The Hollywood Reporter:

“I didn’t know about it until I left,” the singer said on a call to On Air With Ryan Seacrest. “I had no idea what goes on in front of me, the camera capturing things, so when I left, I found out about it in the elevator on my way to get into the car to go to the airport.”

[…] “I was really surprised,” she says of hearing about MIA’s gesture. “I didn’t know anything about it. I wasn’t happy about it. I understand it’s kind of punk rock and everything, but to me there was such a feeling of love and good energy, and positivity, it seemed negative.”

“It’s one of those things,” she continues. “It’s such a teenager… irrelevant thing to do, but on the other hand, there was such a feeling of love and unity there. What was the point? It was just out of place.”

We get it, Madonna: you didn’t plan the stunt. No, we know. But “teenager“? Teenager? “Irrelevant“? Irrelevant?

Madonna, I would watch where you point those soundbytes, because you have not been living in our dimension for a little while now. You’re the tastemaker, the provocateur, remember? You’re the one who made random shows of anti-authoritarianism cool and “now.” M.I.A. is your protégée! She just wanted to do you right!

Remember, Madge: when you point the finger, three point RIGHT BACK AT YOU. (I feel like I’ve typed this dumb idiom before? Oh, OK.)

Image via CNN. Thanks, CNN!

My mother informed me that she had just seen the Superbowl halftime performance starring Madonna.

Well? How was it? I asked her.

She sighed and looked at me really tired. “I think Madonna’s very talented,” she said. I thought this was really funny. Mom! It’s not like you’re gonna offend the “kid”; Madonna’s 53 years old!

I watched Madonna’s halftime performance online later. And—this is a little weird, because she is such an amazing dancer—those stiletto boots are obviously killing her. Sometimes she looks like she’s never walked in heels before.

By many accounts Madonna’s show elicited mixed reviews, with critics particularly maligning her latest, “Give Me All Your Luvin’.” (Yeah, I’m not into it, either.)

In the meantime! M.I.A. took the stage during the show (along with Nicki Minaj), and she threatened to make the night all her own. Deadline:

During tonight’s show, headlined by Madonna, one of the guest singers, British rapper M.I.A., gave viewers the finger directly into the camera, and NBC’s censors weren’t fast enough to obscure it. The network, which carries the Super Bowl this year, attempted to blur the gesture but was late by almost a second. “We apologize for the inappropriate gesture that aired during halftime,” the network’s spokesperson said. “It was a spontaneous gesture that our delay system caught late.”

Yep! M.I.A. flipped off the cameras, incensing the censors. Phew! I’m glad something happened last night; otherwise the show might’ve been a total bore.

(Image via Popbytes.)

This is bad, Madge. Just bad. It sounds like cheap video game music and are you singing with that stupid, affected British accent? Is that what I’m hearing?

As for you, Nicki Minaj and MIA, I get it. You want to be featured in an iconic legend’s music video. And that’s fine. Not many people can say they did that, and as far as furthering your career, I can honestly say I don’t blame you. If I were in your shoes, I’d probably do the same thing, and that makes me no better than any of you. I bow in submission.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m jaded because it seems like whenever Madonna opens her stupid mouth anymore, stupid things come out. And though that shouldn’t surprise me, it still doesn’t fail to leave me mildly appalled. Maybe it’s because I don’t personally think Madonna’s done anything worthwhile since ‘Ray of Light’, and everything thereafter has been poisoned because it just doesn’t stack up. Honestly, come on. What was better than this:

Honestly. “Oooh oooh oooh oooh – if I could melt your heart; oooh oooh oooh oooh – we’d never be apart.” That’s some good quality musical crap right there, folks. Even if she does kind of sound like Miss Piggy when she sings that song, it was one bad-ass song with one bad-ass video. This? This football game BS? Even if it’s for the Super Bowl? It’s overplayed. Ever hear of Gwen Stefani, Madge? ‘Hollaback Girl’?

It’s been done to death. Nada Surf? ‘Popular’?

I rest my case. Let’s get real, shall we?

I have this dream. Do you want to hear it? Ok, it’s a reality show. It’s like a lot of other reality shows in that a group of people live inside a house together, but it’s just a tiny bit different because the cast members are Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow, Lea Michele, Scarlett Johannson, Kristen Stewart, and Lady Gaga. They live in a house together, but they can’t leave. Not for the duration of the filming anyway. They’ll be inside a modest house and they’ll live a simple middle class lifestyle, and there will be cameras absolutely everywhere, and those cameras are on all the time. The show is called Bitches on Lockdown, and we’ll finally be able to see why these ladies are the way that they are.

That idea came to me while I was reading Madonna’s interview with The Advocate:

On the media: “I mean, I certainly don’t engage [with the media] as much as I did,” she says. “When people are writing about you in the beginning and they’re saying nice things, you’re like, ‘Oh!’ You feel this lift of energy. Then they say bad things, and of course, you’re affected by that too.”

Madonna spent a lot of time caring about the bad, but she claims to have moved on. “I don’t really dwell on it anymore. I used to be kind of fixated on it and think, It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair, but it is what it is, and I just have to get on with my life.”

On haters: “If you are threatened by me as a female or you think I’m doing too much or saying too much or being too much of a provocateur, then no matter how great of a song I write or how amazing of a film I make, you’re not going to allow yourself to enjoy it, because you’re going to be too entrenched in being angry with me or putting me in my place or punishing me.”

On happily ever after: “If you are threatened by me as a female or you think I’m doing too much or saying too much or being too much of a provocateur, then no matter how great of a song I write or how amazing of a film I make, you’re not going to allow yourself to enjoy it, because you’re going to be too entrenched in being angry with me or putting me in my place or punishing me.”

On her gay following: “I never left them,” insists Madonna, echoing a lyric from Evita. “When you’re single, you certainly have more time to socialize and hang out with your gay friends, but then you get married and you have a husband and you have children, and your husband wants you to spend time with him. I’m not married anymore, but I have four kids, and I don’t have a lot of time for socializing.”

On Lady Gaga: Recently Time magazine referred to Madonna as “the Lady Gaga of the ’80s.” When I ask about this, a bit of a chill sweeps over the room.

“I have no thoughts,” she says. “What’s the question?” So I ask it a different way: What do you think of how Gaga connects with her fans, and is it parallel to the relationship you had with gay fans early on?

Madonna pauses for a moment, composing herself. “It seems genuine,” she says, also seeming genuine. “It seems natural, and I can see why she has a young gay following. I can see that they connect to her kind of not fitting into the conventional norm. I mean, she’s not Britney Spears. She’s not built like a brick shithouse. She seems to have had a challenging upbringing, and so I can see where she would also have that kind of connection, a symbiotic relationship with gay men.”

On directing: “I’m magnificent!” Madonna says initially when asked what she’s like as a director. Then she gets serious. “I don’t know — I’m pretty methodical and detail-oriented, very specific with everybody from the camera crew to the actors to the costume designer to the hair and makeup people. I was very specific with everybody all the time. I love giving actors as much information as possible and helping them as much as I can and then leaving them alone if they want me to.”

See? Wouldn’t you love to see that ridiculousness on a reality show? The cattiness between Madonna and Gaga alone would be more than worth it, right?

In short, you’re living in America. You can scratch up $300 for a stupid f-cking Madonna concert ticket, you cheap ass. It’s not like you need to pay that third of rent this month, you know.

If you’re anything like I am, you are becoming more obsessed with Madonna by the day. I don’t know—it’s like I forgot to be obsessed with Madonna from 1984 to 2008, and then some wire was tripped.

Of course you’ll want to read all the best snippets from this L.A. Times interview with Madonna, director of the award-winning-but-only-for-the-music film W.E.

Here is a thing Madonna said in the interview: “I don’t like to repeat myself.” (Which is weird to me, because Madonna sure talks about Lady Gaga enough.)

On her daughter, Lourdes:

“Sometimes she will do certain things or say certain things and I’ll feel like I’m looking in a mirror. I’ll get really irritated with her and then I’ll stop and think, ‘But that’s what I used to do. Or that’s what I do.’ If I complain to my friends and say, ‘Oh, she’s so strong willed’ or ‘She’s so opinionated,’ they look at me and go, ‘Well what did you expect?’”

And on her latest, W.E., which Madonna wrote and directed:

“I liked the idea of examining the cult of celebrity. That Abbie’s character would be looking at this story and thinking, ‘Wow, I want that,’ the way people do with famous people. They think that they have this kind of a life, and so they follow them around with this fairy tale notion of who they think they are.”

That’s… kind of insightful, actually. Hmm.

And how did W.E. get funded? The L.A. Times has the answer:

Madonna said she supplied the bulk of the movie’s $15-million budget, as well as several of her own furnishings and pieces of jewelry. While filming one scene, she was unhappy with the curtains and sent an assistant to tear down some gray satin drapes from her home.

That’s, wow. That’s some dedication.

Oh, great. Just great. Now I am sitting here liking Madonna. What is happening to me? This is terrible!

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Madonna ought to be flattered by Lady Gaga. But is she?

Tough to say.

First there was that quote in Newsweek Emily mentioned yesterday.

Then, in an interview aired on 20/20 last night, Madonna tried to play coy. (Unfortunately for Madonna, her “coy” is everybody else’s “ridiculously obvious.”) From the New York Daily News:

Madonna is finally expressing herself on Lady Gaga’s song, “Born This Way.”

Critics had pointed out similarities in the hit 2010 tune and the Material Girl’s 1989 chart-topper, “Express Yourself,” but Madonna herself had been quiet on the subject until Friday night’s interview on ABC’s “20/20.”

“When I heard it on the radio… I said that sounds very familiar,” Madonna told ABC News.

When pressed further, Madonna added that the song “felt reductive.”

Asked what that means, a smiling Madonna added, “Look it up.”

Jeesh. Without looking anything up, I can tell you Madonna thinks Gaga’s music is derivative in an artlessly unnuanced, shallow way. Just a guess.

By the way, this is on the front page of dictionary.com today:

I thought that was funny.

But Madonna sounded comparatively complimentary on last night’s “Graham Norton Show”:

“When I first saw her, I saw her performing at a very small club in Manhattan a couple of years ago, maybe it was like three years ago. I was actually really impressed by her. I thought she was really cool and she did remind me of me back in the day. I liked her rawness and there was something fresh about her and ballsy, and when she spoke to the audience, she sounded like she had a similar sense of humor to me, quite ironic, and I liked her. So I do think she is very talented.”

Wait, what? Gaga is talented because she’s ironic? Oh, no. No. Let’s not overthink the compliment: for all we know, it’s the only compliment Madonna has ever paid anyone.

Sort of well played, Madonna. Sort of well played.

Oh, Madonna. I don’t even know where to start with this lady, I truly don’t. I started off with an interesting quote of hers about Lady Gaga, then I found some more interesting quotes about marriage, and then when I went to find a photo of her for whatever I decided to write about, I found these pictures from a premiere for W.E., that movie that Madonna directed and co-wrote. Yep, you’re seeing it right – that photo up there is of Madonna adjusting her cape with her hand. Her hand that is wearing a fingerless glove.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s go back to where this all started, shall we? And the beginning is that, in an interview with Newsweek, Madonna was asked what she thought about Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.” And, like, remember how Madonna’s kind of a bitch? Well …

“I thought, What a wonderful way to redo my song. I mean, I recognized the chord changes. I thought it was…interesting.”

Zing! So catty, right? I kind of love it, but only because I dislike Lady Gaga so much, and, hey, she did kind of redo Madonna’s song.

But then, as if Madonna hadn’t given us enough already, she went and discussed the topic of marriage:

“It’s not that I ever believed in perfect love,” the mother of four explained. “But if you are a romantic like me, you want to be swept off your feet by a knight in shining armor. Unfortunately, we are raised on those fairytales, and even if we are sophisticated, educated, intellectually evolved human beings we still, in the back of our mind, think that Mr. Right is going to come along and we are going to live happily ever after.”

Could Madonna — whose twelfth studio album, out in March, is called M.D.N.A. — see herself getting married for a third timie?

“I could actually,” she said. “Yes.”

I find that bit interesting mainly because of who Madonna is currently dating. Remember, she has her own little baby boyfriend, Brahim Zaiban, who she has been dating for a little over a year. Brahim is 24 years old, just like Jennifer Lopez‘s little boyfriend, Casper Smart! They should have play dates in the park, shouldn’t they?! Oh, how darling!

But for real, what’s the deal with the huge age difference, Madonna?

“I didn’t choose to, you know, I didn’t, like, write down on a piece of paper I’m now going to have a relationship with a younger man. That’s just what happened. You see, that’s the romantic in me. I just met someone that I cared for, and this happened to be his age.”

But when asked what she found appealing about younger man, the Material Girl tried to shut down the line of questioning with, “I don’t feel comfortable with this conversation.”

Always a barrel of laughs, that Madonna!

You guys, I almost totally forgot! The Entertainment Lawyer who scribes Crazy Days and Nights is finally “naming names,” as is his hallowed New Year’s Day tradition.

Emily hit on some of the year’s best, most salacious scandals, but you guys! THERE IS SO MUCH MORE.

- Now we know for sure: Lea Michele is starting to behave like a real diva.

- Chris Brown is kind of a dickwad—a “Don’t you know who I am?” kind of dickwad.

- Stars who hate each other: Rob Lowe and Amy Poehler, Evan Rachel Wood and Kate Winslet.

- Sean Penn once hit on Naomi Watts. When baby-daddy Liev Schreiber found out, he punched Sean in the face. Did I mention that Liev Schreiber is my favorite? Because he is.

- Is there a costar Robert Pattinson hasn’t slept with? Ew.

- In the late 80s, Warren Beatty was having sex with Annette Bening, Madonna, and Nicole Kidman, practically simultaneously. (Supposedly.)

- I used to assume Topanga could not really be that nice, but it turns out she is: she’s been tutoring kids for the last 10 years. That’s right, ever since Boy Meets World ended! Aww.

- Fellow good samaritan Rebecca Romijn pulled out all the stops when she helped a frantic woman catch up with her missing purse (which had been left on a bus). This Blind Item reads like an action movie, honestly. Rebecca Romijn! You’re totally a superhero!

- Sick of being “shunned,” Julia Stiles “begged for [a fellow actress's] forgiveness.” (The writer stops there, but I think we can safely guess who the other actress is. Yeesh.)

- X-Files fans, rejoice? David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson might actually be dating on the sly.

And there are plenty other scandals to read up on, kids! As Emily revealed earlier today, Christina Aguilera sleeps with a baby monitor so she doesn’t die of alcohol poisoning in the night, Sean “Puffy” Combs bought JLo a mansion, and Julia Roberts is catty. Also, the thing about how Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick won’t touch each other? That’s my favorite one.

This would be Madonna‘s most recent ex-husband, talking about what it was like being married to the Queen of Pop. While I think there’s probably a lot more to it than just that, I think he kind of clued us in on the fact that marriage to Madge was more than likely a f*cking three-ring circus, but a three-ring circus that made him rich in the end, and that’s apparently what mattered at the end of the thing.

Oh, that, and the kids. You go, Guy?

It’s in direct response to what her mother’s doing these days at the same social events that Lourdes herself attends. What could it be, I’m sure you’re wondering? Throwing hydrangeas at people whilst shaking a sinewy fist? No, that’d be too classy for Madge. Rescuing unwanted children from third- and fourth-world countries? Nope, too noble! This is what Madonna’s doing lately, right in front of her daughter’s appraising and bored – eyes:

Awesome, right? I mean, don’t you just wish you had a mom just like this? One that has boyfriends (who, ahem, completely aren’t chosen by their ages and lack of man-like facial hair) that you can, like, totally relate to, and maybe even snag if you play your cards right? Boyfriends like this?:

Yeah. You do.

Am I the only one who completely does not buy the fact that Madonna goes for her “lovers” because of their looks (and probably their wang size?)? Because if she was really interested in fostering relationships that were good examples for her kids – benchmarks so to speak – she might choose boyfriends that are a little bit closer to her peer age group than that of her high school-aged kids, eh?

Photo courtesy of Harper’s Bazaar