Madonna is killing me in these pictures. The Madge graced the lovely Malawi people in her most elegant black and grey sack and Jackie O-style sunglasses on Monday. She first broke ground on the Raising Malawi Academy For Girls, then planted a small tree. A shrub, if you will. She did all of wearing some (lovely) strappy black stilettos. In some of these pictures, it looks like Madge might be losing her balance in the loose-looking dirt. The school is supposed to cost in the neighborhood of $15 million, all of it funded by Madge and Raising Malawi. Also note – The Daily Mail seems to be hinting that Madonna might have been giving off the whiff of colonialism with her Malawi appearance:

As Madonna launched the construction of her school for girls in Malawi, the pop star seemed to channel movie stars from films based in the colonial era.

Evoking Meryl Streep in Out of Africa with her flowing clothes and straw hat in hand, the pop star smiled as she opened the proceedings yesterday.

Madonna wore a silver and black patterned shawl wrapped over a conservative, knee-length black dress.

But as the 51-year-old singer laid the foundation stone of the school she decided she needed no more practical footwear than a pair of strappy black heels.

The singer has previously been criticised by conservative Malawian groups for her
outrageous fashion sense.

Madonna is funding the £9million Raising Malawi Academy, in Chinkhota village, about 15 kilometres outside the Malawian capital Lilongwe.

It is expected to be completed in two years and will admit 500 girls from the small southern African country’s 28 districts.

Holding a colourful bouquet of flowers, she smiled curtly to waiting photographers. The star laughed as she cut a ribbon at the ground-breaking ceremony and was even snapped shovelling earth and planting a tree – despite wearing the high heels.

She said: ‘Growing up in a privileged life, I took education for granted, but coming to Malawi has taught me a lot of things and I have learnt to appreciate what life gives.’

She concluded: ‘People always ask me, “Why did you choose Malawi?” But I have always said: “Malawi chose me”.’

Madonna was accompanied by her four children – daughters Lourdes and Mercy, and sons Rocco and David.

The pop star adopted Mercy from Malawi earlier this year and adopted David from the country in 2008.

Madonna’s Raising Malawi, a charity founded in 2006, helps feed, educate and provide medical care for some of Malawi’s orphans.

[From The Daily Mail]

The Daily Mail also puts a picture of Meryl Streep in Out of Africa so we can have a little side-by-side colonial comparison. I don’t really see it. But I’d like to see a side-by-side comparison of Madonna and Meryl in The Devil Wears Prada. Yeah… Madge wishes. As for the whole “Madge is a neo-colonialist” thing, I’m not really buying that either. I mean, I do think her Raising Malawi organization is sketchy, and I do think Madge is a raging narcissist, but I really do think she’s trying to help in her own way. She doesn’t expect the Malawians to crown her queen or anything. She seems to want to give back, and I can’t bash her for that.

Photo credit: Barcroft/Fame Pictures

This is one story from the Daily Mail that I really, really hope is 100% gospel. The Mail’s sources are saying that Katie “Zombie/Robot” Holmes stood up to Tom Cruise – and won! Allegedly, Katie put her foot down about Suri’s preschool education, and enrolled Suri in a Catholic pre-school rather than some Xenu-approved, Church of Scientology-affliated, barley water-drinking, Thetan-shunning, brainwashing academy. While the family is staying in Massachusetts (while Tom works on a film), Katie is making damn sure that Suri is getting a real preschool education. The Mail claims that Tom and Katie fought about it – but that Tom is going along with it for now:

Katie Holmes has won a battle with her Scientologist husband Tom Cruise to enrol their daughter Suri in a Catholic pre-school.

The Church of Scientology has always been a bone of contention between the couple and Tom wanted three-year-old Suri to be raised a Scientologist. But last week Katie enrolled the toddler at the Catholic Charities Yawkey Centre For Early Education And Learning in Boston, Massachusetts.

The family are living in the city while Tom, 47, films his new movie, the spy comedy thriller Wichita. Katie’s mother also flew in for her granddaughter’s first week at the pre-school.

‘Katie has been listening to her parents who are devout Catholics,’ I’m told.

‘She is not convinced by Scientology and has told Tom that she wants Suri to be educated as a Catholic – as she was. They had been having huge problems agreeing on her school. To say they were having arguments is putting it mildly – but Tom came around to the idea in the end.’

Holmes, 30, has not been seen at the Church of Scientology for more than five months. But Cruise, who was also raised Catholic but converted to Scientology in 1990, remains an ardent follower.

[From the Daily Mail]

While I hope this is true, something tells me that I shouldn’t hold my breath. Even if Suri is getting a taste of life without Xenu, that doesn’t mean that a few years from now her education won’t be totally CoS. Also, there have been rumors about Suri’s education for months now – once, another British source once claimed Tom and Katie were spending $1 million a year on special tutors and advanced classes for Suri, and I didn’t really buy that either.

In one other piece of Holmes-Cruise news, OK! Magazine (via Showbiz Spy) had a totally different spin on their relationship this week. While In Touch Weekly made it sound like their marriage was in danger because Tom wouldn’t just leave Katie alone with her zombie thoughts for two damn minutes, OK! claims that Katie is trying to convince Tom to lose weight – by having sex. With her. Not David Beckham.

A source told OK!: “Tom had been complaining about how hard it is to keep off the pounds, so Katie vowed to help him out… Katie read somewhere that you burn up 600 calories just by having sex three to four times a week. So she’s told Tom to think about how much they’d burn up if they put daily sex sessions on their schedule! Tom thinks the sex order is the best part of Katie’s diet plan, and he’s promised to up the bedroom romps whenever they are in the same town just for the sake of his diet!” Oh, for the love of Xenu. Yeah… I’m sure Katie and Tom both want to lose weight by having sex. That must be why all of the photos in the past few weeks have been of the two of them jogging. Methinks neither of them wants to try the “sex workout”.

Tom, Katie and Suri are shown out in Boston at the park on 10/10/09 and getting Starbucks on 10/11/09. Some of these shots are absolutely beautiful. Credit: Fame Pictures

There’s nothing to worry about with Ali Lohan’s education, y’all. The 15-year-old Ali is being home-schooled, so says mother-of-the-year Dina Lohan. Some were concerned when it seemed like Ali was skipping a lot of school to … you know, to go hang out in Hawaii and go shopping with her sister and stuff. It turns out we shouldn’t have worried, Dina’s taking care of everything. Except that there’s no mention of an actual tutor, so I’m guessing Dina is actually doing Ali’s school lessons herself. Mother of God.

Celebu-sibling Ali Lohan’s taking a serious time out with her big sis Lindsay … but shouldn’t she be in school?

From an extended vacation in Hawaii to red carpets in L.A., the 15-year-old Lohan has been her sister’s favorite post-break-up accessory, leaving many to wonder whether she’s been skipping class for the past, oh, nine days.

But relax, hall monitors: Dina Lohan says she’s got it covered.

“She is home schooled,” Dina Lohan tells the Daily News. “I’m a firm believer in staying in school but, in the business, it’s gotten difficult for Ali to be in school.”

The younger Lohan started studying from home after leaving her Long Island school earlier this year – and she’s using the same program Lindsay took up after starring in “Mean Girls.”

School is “a little tougher for Ali,” says Dina of her youngest daughter, who complained about classroom bullies during an episode of “Living Lohan.”

The aspiring singer, who modeled Lindsay’s hand-me-downs from an ’07 MTV appearance alongside her sis in Los Angeles on Monday, has repeatedly said she wants to be just like her famous sibling.

“I grew up watching Lindsay, and it made me want to do what she does,” she told Teen Vogue last year. “Just the whole vibe. Being there, being on camera, or onstage, with everybody listening to you … it’s so cool when people look up to you.”

While Ali is currently making the rounds with her troubled sis, Dina insists she’s not trying to make her little girl grow up too fast.

“People are saying I took Ali to a club, which is absurd,” she said, addressing recent reports. “I don’t go to clubs and I wouldn’t take a 15-year-old to one.”
Lindsay, on the other hand …

[From The New York Daily News]

So, yes, we can now assume that Ali Lohan will officially be more screwed up than her sister. I’ve really had enough with this whole family, but stories like this actually renew my sympathy for Lindsay and Ali. They really didn’t even have a chance, did they? With that mother, they could only be this way.

I do have something against home-schooling in general, because I tend to think that everyone has a rotten time in school, so suck it up. I had to, now you should too. But I acknowledge there are some circumstances that home-schooling is better and/or more beneficial for a kid. This is not one of those times. Dina Lohan has pulled Ali out of school to hang out on the beach and audition for porn directors.

Here are Ali and Lindsay shopping in Hollywood on April 21st. Images thanks to WENN.com .

Paul McCartney wants every student to learn how to meditate. He wants it to be taught in British schools, saying that “an ancient cure may be the solution to a modern problem.” To be fair to Paul, he doesn’t want meditation to be for a whole class period, just 15 minutes of every day. That’s really not so bad, but The Sun’s report on McCartney’s comments reek of snark – here are the basics:

SIR PAUL McCARTNEY has backed plans for school kids to have meditation lessons. As a huge believer in the benefits of transcendental meditation, the Beatles legend reckons it could be the key to making nippers more intelligent.

…Macca reckons 15 minutes of “mind gym” is just the ticket to get the grey matter ready for reading, writing and arithmetic. The wobbly eyebrowed Scouser said: “I believe that in the future meditation could be as commonplace in schools and society as eco-awareness is now.”

“It interests me that an ancient cure may be the solution to a modern problem.”

Paul McCartney, George Harrison and bandmate John Lennon famously learned the ancient Indian art from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi during the Beatles’ Sixties heyday.

Apparently 20 minutes of TM can help to lower blood pressure, reduce stress and assist the learning process.

[From The Sun]

Meditation is quite effective, if done properly. It’s a bit of a joke to suggest that young kids will be able to really learn how to do it though. Perhaps Paul and other meditation proponents should suggest a “deep breathing and relaxation period” for kids. Teaching kids to relax, to concentrate on their breathing and to “tune out” certain things is a valuable tool in the modern world, and if they want to call it meditation, so be it.

Sidenote: My father is Indian, and he always claims that he’s “meditating” when he just taking a catnap. Growing up, my family always used “meditating” as an inside joke for going to sleep. I would bet that if it’s ever introduced to public schools, more than a few students will just take a catnap instead.

Here’s Paul McCartney with girlfriend Nancy Shevell (wisely wearing Stella McCartney) at the Natural Resources Defense Council’s `Forces For Nature’ Benefit in New York City on Monday. Images thanks to Fame Pictures and WENN .

No one in the Lohan family is known for their brains. Or their academic commitment. What they are known for is their incessant attention whoring. So it should come as no surprise that young Ali Lohan has decided she prefers hanging out with older sister Lindsay in L.A. to going to classes at her school in Long Island. According to her friends, Ali has skipped so much school that her teachers are wondering if she’s ever coming back.

If Ali Lohan has her way, school would be out – forever! While she’s been spotted parading around L.A. with her famous big sis, a friend tells Start that Our Lady of Mercy Academy in Syosset, N.Y., has been wondering if she plans to walk their halls. But the 15-year-old, who recently enrolled in the private all-girls institution, loves the lure of fame out west so much, she wants to play hooky indefinitely! Unfortunately, the law may have something to say – she’s required to attend classes full-time until she turns 16.

[From Star, February 2, 2009, print ed.]

Yes, Ali can’t drop out until she’s 16, but she could get a tutor. There are plenty of kids who don’t attend traditional schools – many of them in California. If she likes it there so much, it seems to make more sense that she and Dina move. Missing a ton of school to hang out with partying Lindsay doesn’t seem like the best solution. Perhaps living in L.A. full-time and going to school full-time would be better. Then Ali could still be corrupted by Lindsay after 3 o’clock every day.

Worst case scenario, Ali should have a tutor traveling with her if she’s absent from school for long periods of time. Obviously hanging out with Lindsay is a terrible reason not to be in class, but she’s Ali’s sister – there’s no way to keep Lohan from morally bankrupting the girl. With that family, it’s just bound to happen. The best you can hope for is to make the young ones follow the rules for as long as possible, just in case they surprise us and end up doing something useful.

Here’s Ali going shopping with Lindsay and their mom Dina on January 23rd. Images thanks to Bauer-Griffin.

I love it when celebrities embrace higher education. Especially when they do it under the radar, or years later than most. Like when Rivers Cuomo of Weezer graduated from Harvard, more than ten years from when he started. Or news that Shakira was taking classes at UCLA and no one even realized who she was. When I was in college Duff McKagan of Guns N’ Roses and Velvet Revolver was in my art history class, and was about to finish his degree in finance. I am a huge fan of smart celebrities.AQQ

Though I don’t think there’s any comprehensive list of the smartest celebs out there, if there were I’m pretty sure Queen founder and guitarist Brian May would be near the top. May just finished publishing his doctoral thesis in astrophysics. I’m going to just give you a little bit of the highlights, since I have no idea what any of it means. Which tells you something about the usefulness of my degree.

The founder of the legendary rock band Queen has completed his doctoral thesis in astrophysics after taking a 30-year break to play some guitar.

Brian May’s thesis examines the mysterious phenomenon known as Zodiacal light, a misty diffuse cone of light that appears in the western sky after sunset and in the eastern sky before sunrise… May’s work focuses on an instrument that recorded 250 scans of morning and evening Zodiacal light between 1971 and 1972. The Fabry-Perot Spectrometer is located at the Observatorio del Teide at Izana in Tenerife, the largest of the Canary Islands.

The completed thesis appears as the book “A Survey of Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud” (Springer and Canopus Publishing Ltd., 2008).

“I have thoroughly enjoyed my years playing guitar and recording music with Queen, but it’s extremely gratifying to see the publication of my thesis,” May said. “I’ve been fascinated with astronomy for years, and I was happy to finally complete my Ph.D. last year and record my studies of the Zodiacal Light in this book.”

[From Live Science]

For any of you science-y sorts, I bet you were just really impressed. For you liberal arts/soft science people like myself, I bet you were just really confused/impressed in theory. Though I don’t understand a word of it, I’ve got to say it’s pretty impressive for a guy to still care enough about astrophysics and academia to keep working on his PhD after thirty years.

Here’s Brian May appearing at the ’46664′ concert honoring Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday at Hyde Park in London on June 27th. Photographer: Danny Clifford; Images thanks to WENN.

Those Lohan women really have it rough. Lindsay’s getting sued right and left, Dina’s reality show Living Lohan is being widely panned (and by that I mean I’m assuming it’s going to suck so let’s just go ahead and say that) and Ali, the littlest Lohan girl (yet oddly the oldest looking of the three) is being mocked at school.

“A little while ago … a couple of girls in school made up a video of me and put it up on YouTube,” Ali – whose E! reality show, Living Lohan with manager-mom Dina, debuts on Memorial Day – tells PEOPLE exclusively. “They used disgusting words. Like if my mom ever heard me say that stuff, I’d be grounded for life! … They’re disgusting kids. I got really aggravated.”

School authorities were notified, the 14-year-old adds, “and [the students] got suspended.” Such problems are a thing of the past, now that the eighth-grader is being home-schooled (to accommodate her work and travel schedule). “You learn so much more – it’s just hard to focus when girls are giving you problems,” she says. “No one’s talking about you behind your back. It’s definitely easier.”

She may have a famous sister – and a burgeoning career of her own – but, Ali says, that’s not what makes her a target. “I don’t think it’s just because of my sister and who she is,” she insists. “I think it happens to all the other girls out there, because girls are just mean. It doesn’t happen with guys. When I asked [my little brother] Cody, he was like, ‘No, Guys don’t care!’ “

[From People]

Though I’m not inclined to be sympathetic towards any Lohan, simply as a matter of principle, being a teenager can’t be fun these days. There are so many more public ways to be mocked. When I was a senior in high school, two former friends wrote mean things about me in all the bathrooms. Yeah, classic. Unfortunately they were things that implied I was slutty – and they wrote them in the women’s restrooms. Yeah they weren’t the smartest girls, to say the least. I can only imagine how much it can suck to be a teenager now. Between MySpace and YouTube, you can really get hammered.

Obviously Ali Lohan would be a pretty big target. I’m sure being Lindsay Lohan’s little sister doesn’t help things, but Ali’s right, this happens to a lot of teenage girls. Maybe she should borrow a page from Mean Girls and feed them a bunch of fattening diet bars. Or go all Carrie on them. That’s probably a better movie to draw from.

Photos of Ali and Dina at a youth center in Harlem where they were shooting scenes for Livin’ Lohan on March 28th. Dina broke out dancing. We obviously haven’t seen the episode yet, but it looks positively mortifying. And I actually picked the least stupid photo of Dina. God I hate that mouth of hers. Images thanks to Splash.

Update: This is indeed a Scientology school as many of you pointed out. Here are the full details.

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Will Smith has started his own private school in Calabasas, California for children from pre-kindergarten to grade 6 called the New Village Academy. It emphasizes learning by doing, technology and individualized instruction. According to the school’s website, which makes no mention of Smith, they will provide every child with a laptop computer, including pre-k students, and serve an all-organic low-fat sugar-free menu. It will cost $12,500 a year for grades 3-6 and $11,500 for K-2, with financial aid available for families who qualify.

Smith homeschools his two younger children, Jaden, 9 and Willow, 7, and told People Magazine last year that he wanted “to design the system that revolutionizes public education.”

Now Smith has paid about $890,000 to lease an existing school for three years, and classes will start this year, according to the school’s website and the May 26 edition of The National Enquirer.

I have a masters degree in education and many members of my family work in the school system. While the concepts on the website for Smith’s school are well described and sound like a good approach, it’s hard to know how they’ll be executed or if the school will be any good. What’s more is that Smith has made some arguably controversial statements about education. He doesn’t have a bachelor’s degree and never went to college, which is certainly not a requirement for starting a school and he’s been wildly successful in other endeavors in life. He is getting help from qualified experts, and even held a roundtable discussion with education leaders to help come up with ideas for the school. I know I started my son on computer education at a young age, and I do agree with Smith’s general concepts. It might be a decent school.

Smith told Reader’s Digest in an interview in 2006 that he could learn anything he set his mind to and that formal education was not necessary:

RD: Have you ever thought about going back to college?
Smith: The things that have been most valuable to me I did not learn in school. Traditional education is based on facts and figures and passing tests — not on a comprehension of the material and its application to your life. Jada and I homeschool our children, because the date of the Boston Tea Party does not matter.

RD: But there are some basics in education that need to be taught.
Smith: Of course there are. Reading, writing and arithmetic, because those are the languages of our country.

RD: When you say you homeschool, do you mean you actually teach them?
Smith: No, we have hired teachers who teach what we feel is important. For example, Plato’s Republic — kids need to know that. Why is that not taught in first grade?

RD: You think kids in elementary school should read Plato’s Republic?
Smith: Yeah. You cannot be an American without reading it and Aristotle’s Politics. That is what the forefathers of this country read, and they used them to create what I believe is the finest system of government that has ever existed.

RD: So, you don’t see any reason to go back to a formal education yourself?
Smith: I know how to learn anything I want to learn. I absolutely know that I could learn how to fly the space shuttle because someone else knows how to fly it, and they put it in a book. Give me the book, and I do not need somebody to stand up in front of the class.

RD: They put physics in a book, but I know I could never be a physicist.
Smith: The first step is you have to say that you can.

[From Reader's Digest via ICYDK]

The website for the school doesn’t say much about religion, except that it is tolerant of all beliefs, backgrounds, and cultural differences. Will and Jada may be closet Scientologists, but you hope that none of that will be pushed on the children in their school. It will be headed by Jacqueline Oliver, Ed.D, that former head of Gillispe private day school in La Jolla, CA. She has no ties to Scientology that I could find.

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Update: This is indeed a Scientology school as many of you pointed out. Here are the full details.

Will Smith is shown with his two children, Willow and Jaden, at the Nickelodeon’s Kids’ Choice Awards on 3/29/08, thanks to WENN. Thanks to the National Enquirer for alerting us to this story.

A lot of people would probably like to ban Brooke Hogan from being within 100 yards of them. I sure would. Imagine if the whole world could get a restraining order against her. How glorious that would be. Well three Florida universities have managed to ban her – or at least deny her admission to their fine academic halls. I know, I’m jealous too. I wish I could not just ban Brooke from places but also banish her to places – several volcanic, deserted islands come to mind.

Brooke, 19, wants to film her family’s crap-ass reality show Hogan Knows Best on campus – and in the classroom – thus totally disrupting the lives of the thousands of other students for her benefit. Luckily the first three schools she applied to were smart enough to say no.

Hoping to film the VH1 reality show Hogan Knows Best with a nine-camera-wielding production team, the young member of the wrestler’s family was denied admission at those institutions [the University of South Florida, Florida State University and the University of Central Florida] out of concerns that she and her crew might disrupt the others students’ academic lives, the Palm Beach Post reports.

The upshot was, on Tuesday and Wednesday, Hogan (real name: Brooke Ellen Bollea) went to the southeast coast of the Sunshine State and toured the campus of Florida Atlantic University – where she met with Student Government president Tony Teixeira and sorority and fraternity members, as well as tooled around the grounds on two golf carts hired by the show.

No decision has been made regarding Hogan’s permission to film on campus – or even if she’ll be admitted as a student, says the newspaper, which does quote FAU spokeswoman Kristine McGrath as saying, “The university would not agree to an arrangement that would be disruptive to the academic setting.”

[From People]

All three of the universities that declined to accept Brooke said they declined to accept her because they don’t want a show filmed on their campus and in their classrooms. But here’s what confuses me: if Brooke applied to these schools and had grades good enough to get in, wouldn’t she have been accepted – but just told that she couldn’t film there? Something makes me think this is just some PR on the part of the Hogan family to cover up for Brooke not getting accepted into all three schools that she’s been blabbing about.

Here’s Brooke Hogan about to bust out of her top in a super classy dress at the Grammys on February 10th. Does she really look 19 to you? Images thanks to PR Photos.

Mischa Barton has been doing the Sundance press circuit over the last few days, promoting her movie “Assassination of a High School President” – which is actually getting some good reviews. But what she really wants you to know is that her empty-headed, party girl image is undeserved. I never knew Mischa Barton was so freakishly intelligent. According to an interview she just gave, she’s down to earth and smart. Mischa described herself as, “really academic.” And by that, it appears that she meant she has at some points in her life gone to school. She doesn’t give a single example of how she was academic, nor does she say anything that would lead a reasonable person to believe she possesses an ounce of intelligence beyond the very basics that get you through life. You know, the breathe in, breathe out, repeat thing. Not dodging in front of fast moving cars. She seems to grasp the basics that have kept our species alive, but not much else.

Mischa Barton didn’t seem so smart when she was arrested recently for suspicion of DUI. However, the star of the upcoming (and very buzzed about) “Assassination of a High School President” insists that despite her character’s mischievous ways, she was actually “academic” in her school days.

“I went to public school in New York until I was about 15, so I had a definite school experience, the whole nine yards,” the now super-blond starlet told Pop Tarts, curled up on the couch in her Uggs at Sundance.

“But I loved school, though. I was actually really academic, so I liked it … it was a lot of fun.”

[From Fox News]

School does tend to be a lot of fun when you skip most of it to film an occasional scene with a cute boy and hang out with your on-set tutor. Mischa goes on to talk about her upbringing in the film industry. Be warned, she uses the word “kinetic.” I think she most likely learned it from her Word-a-Day toilet paper.

And even though Mischa spent several seasons on the small screen as Marissa on “The O.C.,” the actress definitely seems to prefer doing films.

“I started doing film when I was 1, and I love it — it is the best experience for me,” she said. “Each film that you do — it is like a little group that you make friends with and you have that for life. When you go on a television series, it is a different thing. Of course you have it for life, but it’s a long-running show and it’s not the same kind of temporary kinetic energy that you get from a movie.”

[From Fox News]

Mischa you probably didn’t get that same “temporary kinetic energy” from your television show because you were supposedly a nightmare to deal with. You showed up late, hung-over, (sometimes still drunk…), were a total diva, refused to work with people, and generally made everyone’s lives such a living hell that they killed of your character by having her tumble off a hill in a car. Working on a film is probably a better fit for Mischa, since people only have to tolerate her for much shorter periods of time.

Picture note by Jaybird: Here’s Mischa with all of her free swag from Sundance. Splash notes: “Actress Mischa Barton has her hands full with some Sundance freebies including a Nintendo Wii Guitar Hero game and a couple of umbrellas as she makes her way through Los Angeles International Airport. Barton was attending the festival in Utah to promote her new movie ‘Assassination of a High School President.’” Images thanks to Splash Photos.