...but from what I've gathered, Madonna's latest Letterman appearance will be filled with more "pucks" than "fucks." Looks brill. I know much is already available online, but I prefer to wait. I'm not sure what surprises she has in store to garner attention to her new album, but this has already been done.

Courtesy of Mark Doctrow.

Paramore will allegedly ice out Mariah Carey from a #1 debut with their Brand New Eyes album on sales of 180,000-190,000. Mariah's Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, plagued by consumer indifference, is looking to end up with 160,000-170,000. And just for shits 'n' giggles, Madonna's much harder sell—a double CD of hits already available a la carte at iTunes—Celebration should move 60,000-70,000.

What does this mean? It means several things:

(1) Madonna is old, but Mariah Carey's act is getting old (though she decided to discuss wanting a baby to get some 'bloid love). She's putting records out too quickly.

(2) Nobody buys albums anymore, least of all Mariah Carey albums—she's seeing a 70% drop-off from her last first-week tally. (Bitch moved 463,000 her first week with E=MC2, and that was less than 18 months ago.)

(3) Madonna will be lucky to end up in the Top 10 with this offering. She'll likely be #8 or #9. If her next record is yet another dance-floor record she can look forward to debuting with under 100,000 with that, too.

(4) Paramore's stint on the Twilight soundtrack last year helped (a lot).

(5) It ain't over—Mariah's got some high-profile CD-selling lined up for this week, so she could still take #1...and believe me, if there is any human or inhuman way to do it, she will (at least she gives a shit...Madonna...).

(6) Mariah fans...chill, it's all in good fun.

(7) Hits could be wrong: Billboard sees both Mariah and Paramore in the 160,000 to 170,000 range. Truthfully, I can't believe Mariah won't do some extra work to cross that finish line. It would tie her with Madonna for most #1 albums (behind Barbra Streisand, who's only ahead of them by one album!), and she loooves the charts. If I had to bet $, I'd bet it on Mariah.

From A Cause des Garcons (where he shows off his "balls"): Sporto Yoann Gourcuff is on the cover of Sport & Style. See if you can guess who shot this by the style alone...yes, Bruce Weber:

More after the jump...

Thanks to YVY Mag: Brian Kehoe is photographed to best advantage by Lope Navo:

More after the jump...

Gore Vidal has always struck me as a bloody nightmare, someone I'd absolutely hate having to be around, yet someone with keen insight. In a wide-ranging interview with Times Online, he offers the following sunny observations.

On the future of the United States:

"We'll have a military dictatorship fairly soon, on the basis that nobody else can hold everything together. Obama would have been better off focusing on educating the American people. His problem is being over-educated. He doesn't realize how dim-witted and ignorant his audience is."

On President Barack Obama, whom he supported for president after switching from Hillary (whom he now believes would have been better):

"I was hopeful. He was the most intelligent person we've had in that position for a long time. But he's inexperienced. He has a total inability to understand military matters. He's acting as if Afghanistan is the magic talisman: solve that and you solve terrorism. We've failed in every other aspect of our effort of conquering the Middle East or whatever you want to call it...[I retain optimism in Obama] because he doesn't lie. We know the fool from Arizona is a liar. We never got the real story of how McCain crashed his plane and was held captive."

How am I not ghost-writing Belinda Carlisle's tell-all book Lips Unsealed: A Memoir? It's coming May 11, 2010, from Crown and you just know it'll be dripping with coked-out kernels from her early years, diet tips from her starving years and catfight post-mortems galore. It's already around #22,000 at Amazon eight months out. I can't wait!

Via Kenneth In The (212): I have to agree with Thomas Friedman in his assessment that the ongoing steady drumbeat from the far right that's attempting—quite cannily—to delegitimize the presidency of Barack Obama and to delegitimize him as an American is also delegitimizing him as a human being for a small but virulently unhappy sector of the public.

This can only lead to an atmosphere where violence could ignite. The only logical outcome of constantly saying that someone isn't an American, is a liar, is a scary "other" (in this case a secret or not-so-secret Marxist), wants to kill off our elderly, is "an enemy of humanity" and is the same as Hitler is that someone will eventually seek to snuff out this monster. Do the Republicans really believe that the logical outcome is merely political impotency? No. They know what kind of fire they're playing with. This is not about disagreement or passionate criticism or even political sabotage, it's about blood.

In the run-up to the primaries, I had friends openly saying they wouldn't want to vote for him because he'd just be assassinated like all the other big black leaders. This infuriated me—what black leaders had been assassinated in the past 40 years? But I was operating on the assumption that the atmosphere would be the same during his presidency as before; after all, if you're a crazed racist, wouldn't you seek to end a presidency before it begins? Wouldn't you throw everything at him politically to keep him from office? He took some hits, but the birther and deather and other controversies did not truly heat up until he was six months in, and only then because the right wing and the haplessly controversy-driven media have ratcheted things up to an extent I never imagined. If we can't count on the media and the leaders of the Republican party to reign in the kooks and crazies, what's to stop them from accomplishing exactly what they want?

Losing Democratic control of the Senate or the House in '10 would be bad for progressives, but losing a bunch of Democratic seats might be a blessing—most of them will probably be conservaDems who are usless anyway.

Like Senators Max Baucus (D?-MT), Blanche Lincoln (D?-AR) and Kent Conrad (D?-ND), who joined the Republicans (all of them) in the Senate to kill an amendment by my Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) that would have preserved the public option in President Obama's health-care bill. Baucus's reasoning for voting against this and also the more robust public-option amendment offered by Jay Rockefeller (D-WV)—which also had nay votes from Lincoln, Conrad, Bill Nelson (D?-FL) and Tom Carper (D?-DE)—was that he couldn't vote for anything that couldn't get a filibuster-proof 60 votes! So...we can't quite get there without my vote, so I won't vote for it???

They're all (D-Isgusting).

It's insane!

Now the only "option" is apparently to use the "nuclear option" of reconciliation, for which 50 votes are required. Which the Senate has. But will they have the nuts to do it? To actually do what we sent Obama to the White House to do, to do what 65% of the country wants (and which many more will actually benefit from whether they like it or not)? Actually, Harry Reid (DUH-NV) could merge bills and save the public option or it could be brought in as a floor amendment. There is also a way of bringing it in after a conference with the House. Am I right on these four possibilities?

UPDATE: I guess I'll calm down now.