In The Picture of Dorian Gray, the title character retains eternal youth because a painting absorbs all the negative affects of his aging. Madonna must have one of those locked away in a Calabasas Kabbalah Center. She’s nothing short of a demi-god. And last night, during her appearance at the SAP Center, every single walk of life came to worship at her phallic altar.
Attendees of this stop on her Rebel Heart Tour included: Thots in hitched-up one-pieces, three generations of selfie-snappers, wholesome nuclear families, Duck Dynasty look-alikes, Russian/Vietnamese/Spanish-speakers, leather lovers, trim cougars in slinky dresses, Material girls (and women), and tons and tons of well-groomed men.
EDM-er Michael Diamond opened for Madonna, composing an hour and a half of chest filling deep house laced with disembodied hip-hop samples. The demure cotton-topped couple next to me endured him politely with a game of Words with Friends.
The trendy opener reflected Madonna’s constant reinvention, tracked by fan-worn tour T-shirts ranging from the curvy, bushy-browed beauty of yore to the polished avatar of sex that she is now. She refuses to stagnate, refuses to fade. She only ever adds new dimensions to her dodecahedron self. She incorporates whatever the kids are doing and makes it her own. And does it just as well, if not better. Miley Cyrus copies Madonna. But Madonna also copies Miley Cyrus.
The Queen of Pop opened with a monologue about having tits and an ass and an insatiable desire to be noticed. Then she led a tightly choreographed rebellion against an army of templars that seemed like they had been plucked from a dystopian novel where Ancient China and Egypt had been smushed together.
Her eyeliner flared at the corner. Her high cheekbones absorbed golden light. Her arms rippled with muscle. Her dirty blonde hair flowed long in a wild mane. Her smoky blue eyes radiated a persistent sexuality. Her maraschino cherry red lips pouted. Her diminutive height disappeared above Dikembe-Mutombo-middle-finger-sized stilettos. Her forehead flushed, but didn’t leak one bead of sweat down her angular marble-smooth face.
She stood astride a pole-swirling stripper like a surfboard and spanked a dancer 15 times for dropping a maraca. She forcefully groped and got groped back, drew attention to how “penisy” the heart-shaped tip of her thrust stage looked, humped any surface offered to her, and presided over a simulated man-on-man sex scene, a gyrating topless transwoman, and an androgyne clad half in a tuxedo and half in a shimmery flapper dress.
She said the word “fuck,” a lot.
Skipping about the stage, she flung her hair into a messy mane during “Like A Virgin,” and thumb-strummed a ukulele alone, while crooning “La Vie en Rose.” She flung tuxedoed suitors down a raked platform during a futurized rendition of “Material Girl.” During “Burning Up,” she whipped out a Flying-V guitar, dropped to her knees and shredded. She moved from channeling Mariachi’s mojo in “Who’s that Girl,” to twerking cat-walking and sneering to “Bitch, I’m Madonna.” She warbled over military drums for “Heartbreak City,” then draped herself in an American flag for her encore, “Holiday.”
Finally, she ascended into the sky because where else could she go?
Despite the unblinking admiration of the jam-packed SAP Center, Madonna exists on an unreachable, astral plane—far removed from our mundane reality. She is an alien-envisioned ideal of a popstar. Hillary Clinton frequently came to mind.
But I think that’s the point. Madonna isn’t supposed to be like us. She doesn’t age, she merely levels up—reincarnates without dying. And this is why legions worship her. Because unlike all other things that wither, she preserves. She’s a constant in a world of relentless flux. She’s a beacon of immortality. Bitch, she’s Madonna.
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