If we saw our mother spreading her legs on billboards and in the window displays of old-fashioned CD stores, we'd probably either disown her, change our names or move to Mars. Unless, of course, she was Madonna. Then we might just have to put the poster up in our rooms. Madge is turning 50 this year, and she's not letting that stop her from putting out her single most explicit album cover to date. Even Erotica's open lips and Confessions On A Dance Floor's spread eagle from behind don't compare with the artwork for Hard Candy, which features the B12 shot lover posing as an S&M-inspired boxer (of sorts) waiting to "kick your ass" (just as Madonna promised the album would do). But just because Madonna's putting it all out there now doesn't mean her more suggestive covers weren't ten times sexier.

We have some troubling news to report: contrary to popular belief, Justin Timberlake is (spoiler alert) not funny. According to Radar Online, that masterful introductory speech JT recited at the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame on Monday night was more than just a fun series of anecdotes about Madonna's B12 shots and Britney putdowns. For those on the scene, it was a painful series of awkward silences and lame attempts at humor, made even more painful by Justin's Norton-like tries at improvising some jokes of his own:

As we noted earlier, living pop icon Madonna, who was once nailed to the disco-cross for our voguing sins, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last night at New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel. She was first introduced by recent collaborator/turning-out-victim Justin Timberlake, who warmed up the crowd with an amusing anecdote about the time Madonna injected his SexyBack with a B12 vitamin shot. (At least that's what she told him she was doing, though we suspect that syringe was pulling in the opposite direction, drawing the necessary genetic matter for a longer-term project that involves melding two generations of pop superstars' DNA together into a single, hybrid host body for her cryogenically preserved brain.)

At last night's Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, Justin Timberlake reignited some long-dead interest in Madonna's sex life by revealing one of her current flirting tactics. And while it doesn't compare with a simulated blow job, it may be more effective in today's health-concerned times. It seems that when Justin and Madge got together to work on her next album, Hard Candy, she dipped into her bag of tricks and fetched a liquid-filled syringe. And even though the injections in question didn't contain GHB or roofies, they did have this desirable effect on Timberlake:

Heroic woman of dance Madonna has been working for almost a year on a documentary about the obscure African nation of Malawi, her pet cause ever since she adopted a son from the country in 2006. The Material Girl tells Interview magazine (in editor Ingrid Sischy's farewell issue) that, at the time, she "didn't know where Malawi was." That's what makes adoption logistics so difficult [NYP]! To further help the imperiled nation, Madonna teamed up with the good people at Gucci for an ostentatious luxury fundraiser that coincidentally also helped to promote the opening of Gucci's flagship store in NYC. And now it's clear that Gucci's commitment has not flagged—they're selling some items that will be very useful for Malawi-bound "jungle doctors":

Got an extra six grand lying around with nothing to consume? Well, the folks at Guernsey's Auction House will be happy to solve your fiscal problem. What could possibly be more fulfilling than spending those benjamins on a previously worn wife-beater with holes in it, coupled with silk purple and maroon pants? Not buying it? Well, what if we told you said ensemble was worn by Jim Carrey in the legendary bird-calling scene from Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. And if you roll higher than that, say with 100 grand taking up space in your wife's shoe closet, get your ass to Vegas on March 15th because Michael Keaton's likely-sweat-drenched Batman Returns costume awaits. What else will the Pugliese Pop Culture Collection feature? More offerings, prices and images follow after the jump.

We realize Academy Awards season seems light years away, but a series of photobooth-style pictures taken at Madonna and Demi Moore's A-to-the-power-of-A-list Oscars night bash have surfaced in Australian celebrity news magazine New Idea. (How they got their hands on them is a story unto itself, requiring a 28-inch dwarf to be smuggled into the proceedings via dessert cart, crawl inside the mechanized contraption, and collect the still-wet strips as quickly as they could be spit out.) In the snapshots, you can spy some of the world's most famous faces—your P. Diddys, your O.Bloomies—mugging shamelessly for the camera, usually in the vicinity of a twice-as-nutty Rumer Willis, who was allowed to join in on the fun after stepdad Ashton Kutcher offered some strong, "Yes, this is my daughter, now please step aside, rent-a-cop" words for ill-prepared event security.

• Apple's miraculous iPhone has exponentially increased the productivity of scuzzballs like sometime Britney Spears boyfriend Adnan Ghalib. Though paparazzo Ghalib has his hands full shopping for pregnancy tests with singer Spears, getting uppity with his former coworkers and maybe cutting exploitive photo deals, the iPhone allowed him to also have internet sexytime chats with other women. Britney found the messages and threw Ghalib's iPhone in a pool, then threw the pap out of her house. He wrote a stupid note offering her "milky soup."

With the party circuit looking more anemic than ever, leave it to the least likely culprits — Hepatitis-scare victims Madonna and Demi Moore — to throw a last-minute bash for the rudderless A-list masses looking for an Oscars night soirée. To be held at "a home in the Westside hills," the party will start Sunday around 9 p.m., featuring a guest list with "everybody on it. It gives the A-list Vanity Fair crowd someplace to go to. It will probably be pared down to where it's 85% talent, not a lot of suits." Security, of course, will be ultra-tight, with guests forced to undergo not only friskings and metal detectors, but also having their blood drawn and read by high-speed diagnostic computers. Anyone with so much as a slightly elevated LDL cholesterol level will be turned away at the doors. [Variety]

Mid-February must be Hepatitis A season, as nearly a year-to-the-day from the Wolfgang Puck scare that made rubber surgical gloves and gas masks the accessories of choice at awards season soirées comes another potentially devastating celebrity contagion. Ashton Kutcher celebrated his 30th birthday [ed. note: Again?] two weeks ago at a club in New York, but it's only just now surfaced that a waitress working there at the time was infected with the jaundicing disease, putting such luminaries in attendance as Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow (and, to a lesser urgent-extent, Molly Sims and Rachel Zoe) at risk. Star magazine reports:

Give some credit to Harper's Bazaar photog Jeff Reidel for convincing Frances Bean Cobain to strike an Evita Peron pose in the newest issue of the magazine. While we're pretty sure that the meta-ness of dressing up as a character that one of her mother's biggest rivals once portrayed on the silver screen was lost on the young Miss Cobain, we here at Defamer HQ are eating it up as if it were a late-afternoon sandwich made by none other than Marshall McLuhan himself. Speaking of which, we can't wait for the day when a wildly drunk and bloated Frances Bean crashes a televised interview of Lourdes Maria Ciccone Leon. We're sure the look on the animatronic Kurt Loder's face is gonna be priceless. [Harper's Bazaar via Gawker]

Feminist icon Jane Fonda used the word "cunt" on the Today Show, rather than Oprah-approved vajayjay, and the moral guardians shuddered, but with less conviction than they once summoned. Swearwords found safety in numbers: John Edwards thinks Barack Obama is a "pussy"; and the likely Republican nominee, who survived years in a prisoner-of-war camp, is a "sissy", according to Salon. In preparation for a limp-wristed political future, 24 dumped its torture-loving creator. Sissy: not something one could say about Hayden Christensen, star of Doug Liman's new science-fiction movie, Jumper: he manfully squired co-star Rachel Bilson round Manhattan to establish his heterosexual credentials, but not so conclusively that female or gay fans would think him unavailable. (Amazingly, Madonna's new movie got better reviews.) Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman took the opposite tack, playing to male sapphic fantasies on the cover of W to promote their new movie, The Other Boleyn Sister. (We thought Scarjo looked more like a Slovak model.) Talking of pseudo-siblings, Julia Allison's 17-year-old "adopted" little sister, with whom the Star magazine talking head enjoyed posing, hooked up with Men's Vogue cad, Hud Morgan. There's a diagram. Even more complicated: the relationship between fashion designer Marc Jacobs, his boyfriend, and the gay porn star they've adopted. The New York Times adapted to these shallow times by splashing a game show, Deal or No Deal, across the front of its Arts section. But this belated populist appeal wasn't enough to staunch the loss of readers, and advertising: the Gray Lady is joining the Los Angeles Times and most every other newspaper in the US in cutting newsroom jobs. For these stories, and more, here's one page with the week's top stories. (Or just click on any of the names listed, above.)

Filth & Wisdom, Madonna's debut as a film director, recently premiered at the Berlin Film Festival. The reviews have actually been not that bad, and the singer is, in her own words, "Chuffed, as they say!" Madonna is really one of my favorite British people. The bizarre, off-putting Gypsy punk Eugene Hutz is the star of the film, which, to quote Madge again, "is about two things: the duality of life and it's also about the struggle with that duality." Watch a video here of Madonna, looking exhausted and vaguely sad, talking about the film. Hutz, who seems to have just wandered out of a Brecht play, pops up too, playing a little ditty of revolution. (Also note that one of the related clips is, ominously, from the Russian silent film about people dying, Battleship Potemkin. Mental!) After the jump, a clip from Madonna's most recent film disaster, Swept Away.

That's according to The Hollywood Reporter's review of Madonna's directorial debut, Filth and Wisdom. And they're not the only reviewers struggling to find a silver lining for the Berlin Film Fest flop. The story revolves around three bohemians living together in London: one's a pervy musician, one's a ballet dancer/pole dancer, and the other wants to go to Africa and save dying babies or something. Clunky plot line aside, Variety managed to drum up a positive aspect as well; the soundtrack features "cracky little numbers"!

Amazingly, it appears Madonna's debut as a film director and co-screenwriter, Filth and Wisdom, is not going to be embarrassingly bad. Given an exclusive early review, the Times of London declares the movie, which follows a diverse set of characters who share a house, a "frothy, life-affirming comedy" thanks to "sheer exuberance... celebrating London's ethnic stew." Also, the music rocks. There is "some clunkingly awful acting" and "stagey" scenes, blamed on Madonna's poor writing, but of course the terrible stuff was expected by film buffs and everyone else in the world. The Times is likely pulling some punches for its exclusive, the question is how many. This strip club scene from the film isn't genius, but it does hold out hope the movie might at least be smart:

Well, you'll be happy to hear that the purely altruistic GUCCI/ Unicef fundraiser for Malawi went off smashingly last night at the UN; no thanks to you, cheapskate, who didn't even buy a single $2000 ticket. Luckily for Africa, people like Madonna, Ashton Kutcher, Tom Cruise, and J-Lo are willing to put the welfare of refugees before their own needs. Some of them even showed up in new Gucci outfits, in order to help the company, which is a force for good in this world. Madonna took on the accusations "made mainly by bloggers" that the event is a sickening, decadent fashion orgy, a sham passed off as a benefit for a charity that is run by the co-director of the Kabbalah Center . The Material Girl doesn't pay attention to that talk, because it's that same old "controversy surrounding anything that involves change." You go! And Gucci CEO Mark Lee clarified that it is just "a coincidence" that Gucci is opening a new flagship store in NYC this Friday. To emphasize the point, they even scrubbed the original press release!

It's great that Tea Leoni, Madonna, Timbaland, and Alicia Keys can take time out of their shiny lives tonight to attend a fundraiser for UNICEF. Because they all support UNICEF, and are each determined to raise money for the suffering people of Malawi, you see. Purely coincidental is Gucci's co-sponsorship of the event. The high fashion brand is also extremely concerned with Malawi, and whatnot. And did they mention that this event will celebrate the opening of their NEW 5th Avenue flagship store? That is only a secondary concern, of course. Gucci is actually very popular in Malawi. And why wouldn't they be, with products like these:

Madonna is putting the final touches on her forthcoming album, due in stores April 29th, to be followed by a world tour in which the fauxtrage-exploiting pop icon will unveil her most blasphemous set-piece yet: A performance of "Papa Don't Preach" remixed to a dancehall beat, in which the singer will don a slutty, Gaultier-designed Mother Theresa habit, then proceed to be simulated-gang-banged by a group of background dancers outfitted as Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, and Martin Luther King. It promises to be nothing less than a show-stopper, but until then, we have her latest video, co-starring Timbaland and Justin Timberlake, to tide us over:

Incredibly, a fake lesbian "makeout" session with a hot friend is apparently still considered a savvy way to generate buzz, when really it's usually a desperate-looking appeal to the most drunken and knuckle-dragging heterosexual men and a clear marker of emotional vacancy. To wit, Paris Hilton and Elisha Cuthbert, reported snogging at Tenjune last night by a source who tells Us Weekly how Paris "loves putting on a show" (rilly?). After the jump,some landmark girl-on-girl couplings in the long, stupid history of psuedo-lesbianism:

Madonna and Guy Ritchie popped up in quite the most unexpected of places today—touring the slums of Mumbai, where she was "showered with rose and marigold petals," and dangled bottles of antibiotics in front of the locals' faces which she happily turned over just as soon as they signed a document ostensibly converting them for the rest of eternity to Kaballah. [AP]