Word: mama
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...like the true cultural icon/diva/ice queen/anathema that she is and always has been, Madonna has found--and promptly appropriated--the newest fad. It was Erotica Madonna, then Evita Madonna, then Mama Madonna, then Om Shanti Madonna, and now--gasp!--it's Geisha Madonna. Obsessed with Arthur Golden's Memoirs of a Geisha, Madonna has turned into a pop culture juggernaut. She has declared herself "Hatsumomo," the malevolent nemesis of the book's protagonist. (In a recent interview she clued us in to the disturbing fact that baby Lourdes seems to like calling her mom "Hatsumomo...
...Boys hollering, "You gotta fight for your right--to party!" and Public Enemy saying, "Don't believe the hype," and Hammer's harem-style balloon pants. Then gangsta rap: N.W.A. rapping "F____ tha police"; Snoop drawling "187 on an undercover cop"; and Tupac crying, "Even as a crack fiend, mama/ You always was a black queen, mama." Then Mary J. Blige singing hip-hop soul; Guru and Digable Planets mixing rap with bebop; the Fugees "Killing me softly with his song"; Puffy mourning Biggie...
...this?" Williams asks a fellow heavenite played by Cuba Gooding Jr., who replies, "He's up there somewhere, shouting down that he loves us." Not only is this dialogue unplayable (kudos to Gooding for not even sniggering); it makes God sound slovenly, like a bosomy mama hanging out a tenement window in an old Italian movie. The denizens of hell, meanwhile, appear to be damned for their lack of self-esteem--a quintessentially '90s view of sin. Forgive yourself, and cue beautiful music...
...romantic comedy The Wedding Singer, it appeared that Adam Sandler had reached a new level of maturity and subtlety. Appearances are often deceptive, and if you've seen Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, and the recurring "S.N.L." skit "Canteen Boy," then you can piece together Sandler's stupid, bayou-bred mama's boy, Bobby Bouchet. Bouchet, after learning how to channel his aggression into solid hits, goes from being the village idiot/waterboy to being a tackle that makes William "The Refrigerator" Perry look like the Maytag repair man. The plot is weak, but Sandler's hilarious physical comedy is reminiscent...
...learn something about spirit. This opportunity is doubled in Dubner's case: his Jewish-born parents embraced a fervent Catholicism; decades later Dubner made the same trip in reverse. He capitalizes neatly on the humor, pain and mystery implicit when a father breaks into the song My Yiddische Mama between rosaries only to have his altar-boy son later edit the writings of the Lubavitcher rebbe; and on the "dead parents and overbearing parents...the fears of emptiness and the hopes of bounty" that inform such God-wrestling. So generous and natural a memoirist is Dubner, however, that awareness...