At two weeks into your garden variety tabloid scandal, the regular spiel starts to get a little old—yes, yes, we know, that brainwashed third-baseman has been giving the aging pop diva the hot beef injection—and so new angles are required. For example, we have Page Six's item today which claims Madonna has been "loving" the attention, and plans on hitting today's All-Star game at Yankee Stadium. "'She doesn't care about the press it will get - she loves it,' said a spy. 'It just gets her more publicity for her upcoming Sticky and Sweet tour.'" How this spy managed to crack the complex Madonna Motivation code we'll never know—but crack it they did!

We realize it's challenging to keep up with this whole A-Rod/ Madonna/ affair/ divorce/ something-about-Lenny Kravitz business, a convoluted celebrity love-polygon which we wouldn't be the least bit surprised to learn also involved Gary Coleman, Eliot Spitzer, and a Coors Light Twin. Still, you wouldn't want to be caught at some swanky dinner party filled with effete liberal elites and not have your talking points straight. Here's a round-up of the latest:
· A personal trainer present at the exact moment Kravitz learned he was embroiled in the primordial tabloid ooze said he "looked like he was going to throw up." The link between he, Madonna, and A-Rod is manager Guy Oseary, who told Kravitz he was going to "pimp out" the singer and Yankee. Whatever that means, Kravitz disapproved of it, and fired the manager a couple weeks later. He claims to have never had an affair with Cynthia Rodriguez; this was just a retaliatory smear campaign. [NY Post]

But what of little David Banda? For whatever reasons, that was our first reaction to rumors that the marriage of conical-bra-popularizer Madonna to lad-flick director Guy Ritchie was all but over. Well, when we actually stop to think about it, we can figure out the reasons: Lourdes and Rocco are half Ciccone—meaning their DNA is hardwired to withstand just about anything life could throw at them. What's more, were there a divorce, the two elder siblings could access their respective biological dads at virtually any moment with little more than an international mobile calling plan. But not little David: His known world would be splintered apart, one parent flouncing off to the country of hot dogs and baseball, the other staying put in bangers-and-cricket land. His real dad, meanwhile, was a world away, catching glimpses of the domestic unrest in his local Malawian celebrity tabloid, and second-guessing all the while his decision to sell his son to the global pop icon for a year's salary and a signed copy of "The Immaculate Collection." We prayed—oh, how we prayed!—that somehow these two would make it work. Clearly, God hates us: