Madonna Fans: Time to Rejoice

Overachieving Madonna fans who haven’t made summer vacation plans might want to consider Madonnathon ‘93, the three-day convention that Michigan’s Bassline Entertainment is offering.

The Madonna fest will start with tours of the singer-actress-pop icon’s former hometowns of Pontiac and Rochester. One of the many highlights is a stop at the school where Catholic nuns were the first authority figures to attempt suppressing the Material Girl’s verbal skills: The good sisters taped her mouth shut.

Aside from the chance to tread on sacred ground, organizer Bruce Baron says Madonna-philes are usually amazed by the area’s affluence. “Madonna gives off the impression she’s from a tough section of Detroit,” he says. “Pontiac is in Oakland County, the third-richest in the United States.”

Other parts of the event include contests for male and female impersonators of you-know-who, a party at Menjo’s nightclub in Detroit, where an underage Madonna discovered the dance world, and a bazaar selling “rare collectibles” including records, posters and “anything that has Madonna’s name or face plastered on it,” says Baron.

There will also be a Madonna film festival (“Bet you never thought that would happen,” he says), which will be showing “Dick Tracy,” “Truth or Dare” and “A League of Their Own.”

The event ends Aug. 16, Madonna’s 35th birthday, which is, coincidentally, the 16th anniversary of Elvis’ death. So if Madonna doesn’t interest you, there’s always Graceland.

A Whole Other Version

Sometimes the Social Climes staff thinks it should have a full-time ‘60s and ‘70s resurgence chronicler. We thought of that recently when we heard that the Whole Earth Catalog will be having another incarnation. The original hippie-commune-oriented edition was first published in 1968. It was updated in 1971 as the Last Whole Earth Catalog, in 1980 as the Next Whole Earth, and in 1986 as the Essential Whole Earth.

Essentially, it seems there will be a next one and it probably won’t be the last.

The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog is due out in Fall, 1994. While the 1968 original might have been heavy with info on building geodesic domes in New Mexico, this one will add a slant toward new communication technologies. “The electronic democracy stuff,” says editor Howard Rheingold.

“For 25 years we’ve been developing the human community for finding great stuff and evaluating it,” he says. “We want to put tools in people’s hands for evaluating other tools.”

A New Line of Work?

So many press kits come across our desk here at glamorous Social Climes Central that we barely have time to look at them all. But the one from the National Assn. of Margarine Manufacturers looked too intriguing to pass up. We didn’t even know there was an association of margarine manufacturers! And what could they possibly want with us? We read the pitch letter, which states: “We note that you’ve written articles about margarine and margarine products in the past.”

They obviously had us pegged. And because of that we’re lobbying right now to have our byline changed to “Times Margarine Writer.” Has a certain ring to it, don’t you think?