A 7-year-old who'd been adopted by a woman in Tennessee was sent back to the Motherland—by himself—earlier this week with a note explaining he had psychological problems and she'd been deceived by the adoption agency. What a country!
The earliest available photos of me were taken when I was five months old, just after I was adopted. I have dark hair and freakishly large eyes that seem far too big for my face, like a Japanese anime character. In fact, they're so big and dark that the rest of my facial features seem almost invisible. All you see are eyes.
Nuns don't understand Lady Gaga. Small children understand Michael Jackson and Heath Ledger's deaths. And Martha Stewart can't comprehend Jessica Simpson's dead dog surprise. Welcome to your Friday gossip roundup!
The world has changed since Madonna sneaked, Grinch-like, into a little African Whoville and stole a Christmas tree. I mean baby. When the singer/aging woman adopted little David Banda from Malawi, the demand for exotic foreign babies (but not the disease-riddled ones!) skyrocketed. This is a good thing, yeah? Well, actually, maybe not so good.
It's been far too long since orphan-addicted baby-collector Angelina Jolie has opened up about her complicated feelings on biological childbirth, a selfish practice that invariably disrupts the color-coordinated harmony of any painstakingly racially balanced brood. But Jolie is once again ready to defend her still-controversial decision to use her uterus instead of a Third World nation's adoption system to add to her family last year, this time to Reader's Digest:
Angelina Jolie's mission of orphan-gathering mercy, it seems, is finally complete: Despite a last-minute sprint in which she barely evaded the giant butterfly nets of corrupt Vietnamese adoption officials trying to capture new son Pax Thien in hopes of reselling him to another wealthy celebrity, Jolie managed to board her plane with her precious cargo, safely stowed the child in its urchin-hold, and successfully smuggled him onto the cover of this week's People. The actress exclusively! tells the official in-flight magazine of Air Jolie:
There have been precious few developments in Angelina Jolie's ongoing attempts to smuggle newest acquisition Pax Thien out of Vietnam with a minimum of governmental meddling since Friday's installment of the AdoptionTracker, but today brings the happy news that her family's International Toy Shortage Relief Committee voted three-to-one to approve a resolution to leave behind their playthings for the unadopted children of Tam Binh orphanage , a decisive, pro-sharing victory that kept mother/chairman Jolie from having to cast an awkward tiebreaking vote that may have alienated the selfish faction who strenuously objected to giving up his favorite Tonka dumptruck. Reuters further reports that Jolie has arrived in Hanoi to obtain a visa for young Pax from the U.S. Embassy, but not before she fell victim to a devilish urchin at the Ho Chi Minh City airport who tricked her into overpaying for the "magic" umbrella pictured above, whose mystical, paparazzi-deflecting properties were vastly exaggerated by the greedy imp.
Orphan successfully adopted! Us Weekly follows up on yesterday's reports that Angelina Jolie was on her way to the Tam Binh orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City to personally collect her latest child purchase and save on exorbitant international shipping charges, revealing that the newest member of the rapidly expanding Jolie-Pitt clan is now safely in her possession. With Maddox's new little brother officially her property, Jolie is wasting no time customizing the three-year-old boy to her liking:
Madona has a heart of gold. If majority of people can keep house pets & treat them like family members, then what's wrong adopting Malawian boy, David Banda.
Us mag kindly supplies this photo of Madonna arriving at "the airport" in New York today with her recent Malawian acquisition. Note the Kabbalah-fied red string on little David Banda's wrist, said to ward off the evil eye, bad luck, unfortunate publicity, etc. Three cheers for prescience! Talk about too little, too late though.
Despite initial denials from Madonna's publicist, various Malawian relatives of the alleged newest addition to the Ciccone-Ritchie household claim that the adoption of one-year-old David Banda is proceeding apace. Madonna's publicist, Liz Rosenberg, earlier tried to finesse the adoption thing as Madonna's metaphorical adoption of Malawi in general. But Banda's father says his son will be "very well looked after in America," though he will make "regular" trips back to Malawi so as to "know his roots." (Apparently the little tyke won't be welcome in Madonna and Guy Ritchie's London home.) In response to the Bandas' joy, Rosenberg robotically intoned, "I am unable to make any official statement at this time," before self-destructing in a shower of sparks. Expect wee David and family to manifest a well-financed public silence very, very shortly.
