Perhaps realizing that instructing her handlers to "just drop me in the armpit of Africa. Somewhere no one's ever heard of. I'm about to make an anonymous, destitute country famous!" for a demi-orphan shopping adventure may have come across like the self-serving act of an aging pop icon, Madonna returned to Malawi with little David Banda and lesser biological offspring Lourdes in tow, to follow the progress on the construction of her exciting charitable projects like the Little Red Kabbalic Reprogramming Schoolhouse. Also on the itinerary was a reunion with David's concerned father, which quickly devolved into mayhem when the army of international reporters who had descended upon the scene were fended off by a defensive ring of rock-launching teenage orphans:

• Grandma Cindy claims that Courtney Love and Bruce Willis's birthday kiss wasn't just a one-time thing. Also, that Bruce "leaves no moan unturned." Ew. [Cindy]

Rod Townsend (aka our commenter Momo), sometimes receives telephone calls from The Past, a mysterious entity that remembers where things used to be in New York before Starbucks and Whole Foods came to town.

Yet another life-shattering item we somehow missed early this week! (Can someone explain why this was buried in the bottom of a real estate column?) Anyway! We already knew that Madonna and the Lower East Side have plenty of things in common. Both love leotards. Both love to dance. Both trade on their at-this-point dubious Judaism. But we did not know it was only a matter of time before the pop star and the neighborhood joined forces.

So we're wading through the boring parts of the book proposal that Crown decided at the last minute that it was too classy to publish, finding out lots about ex-nanny Melissa Dumas and not a whole lot about her employer "M." It was interesting, though, to read about the goings-on in London's Kabbalah Centre. Melissa's first meeting with her new employer took place there, and while it was short, it wasn't exactly sweet.

You know, at first we thought we would post all 75 pages of Melissa Dumas's proposal for This Used to Be My Playground, including the section entitled "Marketing: Nannies in the Zeitgeist" ("The interest in the world of Nannies has been a mainstay in film and television and literature as far back as 1937 when the original book, Mary Poppins by P. L. Travers was published. Since then, there have been an additional six books published as part of the Mary Poppins series, all of which remain in print today.") But then we realized that, despite the legal fears that we assume motivated Crown to decide to un-buy the book, there really is not that much good stuff in there. Like: Madonna is hard to work for! Kabbalah is weird! And other than that, the proposed book seems to actually be about Melissa Dumas and, who cares. However, there were a few interesting tidbits about the state of "M" and Guy Ritchie's union, though. Like most married couples, they rarely share a bed.

The first thing you should know about ex-Madonna nanny Melissa Dumas's book proposal, which recently sold and then un-sold to Crown when the smart bunnies at that esteemed publishing house realized that they would rather drink a venti mug of hot lead than deal with Madonna's lawyers, is that it's not like other book proposals. For starters, most book proposals don't have a bizarre clip art montage featuring the iconography from Mary Poppins.

• Madonna's line for H&M greeted with enthusiasm, but not exactly mass hysteria, in New York. [Shophound]
  

Melissa Dumas may live, but for the moment at least, it appears that she won't be allowed to tell. The former nanny's memoir Live To Tell, about Madge's "home life," which had been announced earlier this week as having sold to Lindsey Moore at Crown Publishing with plans for a crash publication in September, will not go forward. Crown doesn't give a reason for their release of the rights, but an English tabloid speculates that Madonna's lawyers maybe, possibly have something to do with it. Ostensibly, Dumas will be moved to find another buyer for the secrets she has learned, and until then, they will burn inside of her.

• And you don't even have to be any kind of Equinox trainer! Coopie will be subbing on Live With Regis and Kelly tomorrow and the next day while Reege gets his aorta scrubbed out. [B&C]
  

Madonna has been maximizing her time spent in L.A. by making multiple trips to the Kabbalah Centre, family in tow, for various Purim celebrations and lectures about the latest hi-tech advancements in evil-eye-warding fabrics. But paparazzi captured the singer driving off from once such visits with recently absconded Malawian demi-orphan David Banda seated in her lap, and not safely secured in a rear-facing car seat, putting her in the same, baby-endangering league as Britney Spears:

Saturday's annual Fake Purim festival at the Los Angeles Kabbalah Centre always promises a great time, where costumed revelers can pound Manichewitz and Red Bulls while stuffing their hammentashen-holes to their hearts content. Madonna and Guy Ritchie were there, opting for less controversial costumes than the year they showed up dressed as a nun and a Pope; instead, Madonna put together a 1920s flapper number, and Guy came dressed as a character from one of his very favorite movies, Officer Captured, starring Garrett. Not pictured: The parents chose to go the traditional route with newest Ciccone-Ritchie addition David Banda, dressing him up at the most extravagantly adorned King Achashverosh the Kabbalah Centre has ever seen.

Madonna made a rare, live appearance on The Today Show this morning to promote her voice-over work in the U.S. release of Luc Besson's Arthur and the Invisibles. (Madonna: "I don't like getting up and talking to people this early." Meredith Vieira: "So then what possessed you?" Madonna: "Um, Harvey Weinstein.") She touched briefly upon the subject of OrphanGate, merely to assure the world that David Banda—whom she admits she probably chose because of his physical resemblance to herself—couldn't be happier. But it's her thoughts on the far more pressing and controversial topic of the Donald vs. Rosie feud that have been making headlines:

While the birth father of Madonna's catalog-ordered Malawi orphan may have recently expressed frustration that, since parting with his son, he has received not so much as a postcard of Big Ben reading, "Dear Ex-Daddy: My new daddy Guy can play bagpipes and drives an Aston Martin! Love, David," he may be comforted by the findings of the Malawian child welfare ministry, whose initial assessment of Madonna during her 18-month trial period came back with a gold star:

Things have been relatively quiet in the months since the international uproar that followed Madonna's adoption of a Malawi boy. The courts have opted to monitor little David Banda over a period of 18 months, scanning all the while for any areas for concern such as involuntary Vogueing or references to an "Auntie Donatella," whereupon a final decision will be made as to his permanent absorption into their clan. Meanwhile, the child's single, surviving parent, father Yohane Banda, has recently expressed concern over a lack of updates. Reports Reuters:

The coalition of human rights groups insisting on a full review of the circumstances surrounding Madonna's relatively swift adoption of an African demi-orphan have won a crucial legal victory, allowing them to join the court in ensuring David Banda wasn't traded for an autographed copy of "Confessions on a Dancefloor" with a starstruck orphanage guard with a Chichewa nickname that translates roughly as "the Gay One":

As little David Banda continues to adapt to his charmed, new life at an English manor, where he's getting into all sorts of adorable trouble crawling into his mom's closets and delighting in her secret stash of recreational riding crops and chainmail panties, Madonna's swelling heart is now set on giving David the sister he never had (not counting Lourdes, who has the disadvantage of being a less-desirable, biological child). But as with her first Malawian adoption, the follow-up tour is set to meet with much resistance and negative publicity, as 18-month-old Jessica has already been promised to an Australian missionary couple whose charity work in the impoverished African nation predates Madonna-come-lately's by seven years:

Madonna just wandered along like everyone else. I recognized her as the girl who went to my gym—as the girl who would sit around naked longest in the locker room. Now that I think back on it, how could either of us have afforded a gym membership? She still had a last name at that point, and when I told her I worked for the Voice, she said, "Oh, that's so funny. They're reviewing my first single this week."

• InterActiveCorp overlord Barry Diller prepared for total interweb domination.
  

Madonna's ongoing "Confessions That Justify My Ambition To Keep My Baby Tour" of our nation's media outlets stops today at the AP, where she tells an amusing anecdote about a comedy of errors that came out of the Malawians having their own definition of the word "madonna":