This just in on the wires: Paul McCartney has been overtaken in the rich league by Bono, who in 2009 invested $90 million in Facebook.

He’s not prettier, though.

It’s called Brendel’s Fantasy, and it’s out next month from Haus Publishing. Here’s the summary:

The Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani has been told she cannot return home after taking off her top in protest against enforced Islamism.

She has appeared topless in Madame Le Figaro and in a video commissioned for the Césars, the French Oscars. Farahani has worked with leading Hoolywood figures, among them Ridley Scott  and Leonardo di Caprio (in Body of Lies).  A Facebook support page has just opened. Join it.

Here’s the Césars video. And see previously here.

And if not, why not?

First pictures of Munich’s blue Ring elicit a number of questions, which I am sure director Kriegenburg will hasten to answer:

1 Why does he need singers to strip off in the middle of the harshest winter Europe has suffered in years?

2 Why is the eyepatch still an essential Wagner accessory? Yes, I know Wotan’s meant to be a one-eyed git, but in a concept production isn’t there a more original way of expressing that?

3 Is this a homage to Ken Russell’s Women in Love?

v

4 Couldn’t he find a nicer Marks & Spencer  nightie for Catherine Wyn-Rogers?

5 Wtf are these Rhinemaidens going to do next?

with Johan Reuter (Wotan), Sophie Koch (Fricka).

Her redoubtable manager, Charley Marouani, told me a few months back that she was preparing a new tour.

‘A farewell?’ I checked.

‘Pah!’ said Charley.

She’s performing the first of three shows tonight at the Chatelet, in Paris. Bonne anniversaire to the performer who was Madonna, before anyone imagined Madonna. Ah, those hands, those expressive hands!

(and yes, that is her with Miles Davis. It’s from milesdavis.com)

Here‘s one I could not resist:

A man claiming to be resurrected multi-award winning maskandi (traditional Zulu folk music) artist Khulekani Kwakhe “Mgqumeni” Mseleku, has been taken in for questioning, KwaZulu-Natal police said on Monday.

“Police opened an inquest docket and we took the man in for questioning yesterday [Sunday],” police spokesperson Colonel Jay Naicker said.

“We have not done DNA tests or taken his fingerprints, but will be taking some samples to verify whether it is him or not. Detectives from the province will head the investigation.”

The singer apparently died in December 2009, after drinking something he got from a traditional healer. He was buried by his family in the KwaGxobanyawo cemetery in early 2010.

“I have been suffering a lot at the place where I was kept with zombies. It was hell there and I am so grateful that I was able to free myself and return to my family and you, my supporters,” The Timesquoted him as saying.

Investigations would determine whether the police needed to file a High Court application to exhume the body thought to be Mseleku’s.

After news broke on Thursday of the man’s arrival at his family’s homestead in Nquthu near Dundee, hysterical fans went to the village, according to weekend reports.

Naicker said investigations would continue on Monday.

Apparently, fans are flocking to Khulekani’s home, claiming a miracle.

And he’s on the telly. Here’s an SABC news report.

Ludivine Cazares, wife of the Bremerhaven conductor held for seven months by a brutal Mexican drugs gang, has spoken for the first time of the ordeal of his abduction, which happened while they were visiting Rodolfo’s parents in Matomoros, a town near the US Border.

‘My mother was forced to lie down in the boot of a car,’ Ludivine told Bild magazine. ‘As she tried to stretch, she touched corpses in plastic bags.’ Held captive in a suburban house, ‘the windows were blacked out, we were finally allowed to remove blindfolds. Our guard played demonstratively with their cartridge belts. I was scared to death.’

Madonna’s appearance at the SuperBowl provoked a slew of commentaries that appear to fall into roughly three lines of argument:

– who knew she was still alive?

– amazing she can walk unaided

– how come they let a wrinkly of 53 loose on a pulic channel at prime time – actually in front of the children?

The diva appeared, needless to say, with a troupe of Roman gladiators and a new release to promote. The voice, to be frank, is no longer the piercing instrument of yore and some of her moves were prudently slowed down. Nevertheless, the force of her personality was not to be denied, as the video (just launched on youtube) forcibly attests.

So why the onslaught of ageism? Because the freedoms of the internet encourage a dangerous conformity, a sclerosis of public opinion. The entitlement of youth and the marginalisation of maturity have become all the more prevalent as establishment media crumble and personal media prevail. Madonna, in this perspective, becomes a heroine of resistance, a fighter for age diversity. Who’d have thought?

Here’s a trenchant blog reflection, well worth reading, from the Canadian broadcaster Catherine Kustanczy.