ABOVE: Pete's nips.

BELOW: Keep reading for an underwear overlord, Pompeo's taxpayer-funded dog walker, Karl Rove's racist rhetoric returns, the face/dick challenge and more ...

Yeah, teen mags in the '80s were advanced. (Image via Teen Stars)

Gotta love Bruce Penhall, today's Mantique. Keep reading for a full gallery of the blond bombshell, and follow Gr8erDays here ...

ABOVE: Oh, God, this amazing Jamel Shabazz photograph!

BELOW: Keep reading for hot sci fi covers, that sad rona party, Lil Nas X showing some skin, Trump avoiding a mask in a mask factory and more ...

I didn't get to see Madonna on the street, but I do now own that signage, inset. I guess this is a good example of why collecting ephemera has so much power — it's a substitute for, or reinforcement of, memories.

 

Thirty-two years ago today, on May 3, 1988, Madonna made her Broadway debut as David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow officially opened. Jennifer Grey, Billy Joel, Jennifer Beals and others showed up that night, and such luminaries as Jackie Onassis watched during the run.

 

 

The play received solid reviews (it was Tony-nominated for Best Play and Best Direction of a Play, and the late Ron Silver won the Tony for Best Actor), but Madonna was mostly panned. Frank Rich, in an outlier New York Times, review, controversially wrote:

 

Although her role is the smallest, Madonna is the axis on which the play turns —  an enigma within an enigma, in the manner of the Lindsay Crouse heroine in House of Games. It's a relief to report that this rock star's performance is safely removed from her own Hollywood persona. Madonna serves Mr. Mamet's play much as she did the Susan Seidelman film Desperately Seeking Susan, with intelligent, scrupulously disciplined comic acting. She delivers the shocking transitions essential to the action and needs only more confidence to relax a bit and fully command her speaking voice.

 

I made my first trip to NYC in order to see my idol late in the run of Speed-the-Plow, even though money was hard to come by. With $110 in my pocket, I landed in a thunderstorm on August 25, 1988, and told my cab driver, “Take me to the — “ well, to my friend's apartment building. Cost $18.

 

 

I saw Madonna & Co. on the day before the original cast ended its run. Imagine having so much invested in the belief that Madonna, who had loudly proclaimed she was over the play by then, would show up for her second to last matinee! But she did.

ABOVE: Your occasional reminder that Bruce Weber has never said he's gay.

BELOW: Keep reading for a masked hottie revealed, Leslie Jordan's b'day blast from the past, Biden endorsed by Hillary, I don't believe Tara Reade, Hollywood getting trashed and more ...

ABOVE: One of the last things I did as a teen-mag editor years ago was spend time in Times Square with Gregg Sulkin and his parents. Little did I know he was heading to bigger things, and bigger biceps.

BELOW: Keep reading for Ryan Kwanten's killer body, Trump's China loan, a Trump Administration appointee's racist tweets, my interview with Cutting Crew's Nick Van Eede and more ...

ABOVE: More like that, here.

BELOW: Keep reading for a Bachelor's gay panic, a rimming strike, an Evangelical COVID-19 denialist goes down, naked Freud boys and more ...

ABOVE: Cameron's big ol' snake!

BELOW: Keep reading for Jenner ass, rich A-holes worrying that you'll get fat and lazy on the welfare, how to help drag queens who lost all their gigs and more ...