Phun with Fotos: Adventures in Derogatory Daguerrotype

Ready for a bombshell? People get old.

This isn't news. Not really. It's been happening for as long as there've been people. Not that this dissuades the press any from gleefully scribbling inch after inch of gossip columns pointing this simple fact out. Although, in their defense, it's not like they necessarily feel the need to hide paparazzo in the bushes outside Carla T. Bumwipe's trailer on the outskirts of Rising Gorge, Arkansas, hoping to catch a few snaps of the increasingly-wrinkled hostess in her housecoat and curlers. No, they definitely go after deserving targets: Spotlight-seeking, appearance-obsessed celebrity types who whore themselves for the cameras their whole miserable lives. That is, until they start to show the normal wear and tear we all do, at which point they begin to realize the folly of their ways. Because summoning attention is easy. Getting rid of it when you don't want it? Ay, THERE'S the rub.

The latest attention-magnet who likely wishes she'd never sought out the spotlight is Madonna Louise Ciccone Alotta Fagina Fusilli D'Artagnian Marinara con Carne, better known simply by her stage name of, "Madonna."

Madonna (a.k.a., "Madonna").

Madonna can be said to be an "entertainer," but only in the loosest sense. She kinda sings. She dances, in a way. But her real appeal has always been physical. Madonna is considered "attractive" by many conventional standards, even now, and even though she is fifty years old.

It's not as though she's not aware of this fact. Heavens, no. She's always traded pretty heavily on her sex-kitten image, being as she herself even realizes that she isn't very talented in a musical sense.

Twenty years on, and "vogue" STILL isn't a verb.

In the early part of her career, she made no bones about her carefree sexual exploits. She dated notorious Lothario types like Warren Beatty. Her videos had her writhing around on beds, vamping it up in peep-show booths, and generally wearing next to nothing but strategically-torn fishnet, ace bandages, and eyeliner. She even came out with an infamous coffee-table book called "Sex," featuring photos of her wearing even less than that. And a repressed culture lapped it up.

However, as Madonna's idol Marylin Monroe once said, "Sooner or later, gravity catches up with all of us." And so Madonna has been doing a whole lot of not much except aging lately. And, to her credit, she's mostly been doing it very well. To the point where the preder-azzi have been working 'round the clock trying to catch the odd snap of her simply busy with the act of being elderly. Largely, they've had to content themselves with pictures like this:


Okay, fine. So she looks a little oldER. But she far from looks like shit. She might be old enough to be a grandma, but she'd still be the hottest grandma on the block.

Oh, wait...She's leaving her house again! Quick, to the Dick-Mobiles!


CHRIST. Where does she get off looking like a well-preserved cougar at your dad's company Christmas Party? That's not gonna sell tabloids, assholes! Better Get a little more on the stick, you shitheads.

Uh-oh. I got a tip that Madonna's leaving the gym! Away, away, my flying monkeys!


"For fuck's sake, Parker! I don't pay you incredibly-generous freelance pittances to give me pictures where she just looks a little TIRED. Everyone looks that way when they leave the health club! I want SCANDAL! Scandal is what sells papers! I-"

"Pull back a little, Mr. Jameson."

"Well, I hardly see what THAT has to do with -"

"Just...Do it, sir."

"Okay, Parker, I'll humor you."

"Please do."

"Oh...OH my GOD..."


"Here's your check, Parker. Now please...If you see that out on the street again...Kill it. Kill it with FIRE."

"Yes, Mr. Jameson."

Personally, I don't know what's worse...Aging gracefully, fighting it and winding up with arms that look like the losing entry at the County Fair taffy-pulling contest, or living in a culture where it matters one way or the other WHAT we choose.

All I do know is that I will see Madonna in my nightmares. I just hope I wake up before she finishes strangling me with those repulsive, veiny tentacles of hers.