Madonna wants to start a revolution. No one will take her seriously. So she’s made this video with photographer Steven Klein. This is what she wants to know: “If I was a black man and had an Afro would you take me seriously? If I was an Arab waving a hand grenade would you take me seriously?”

This sophomoric nonsense is the product of a 55 year old woman whose view of the world really comes from her own isolation from reality. Without having Malawi to concentrate on, this is apparently what Madonna is doing in her spare time. If you couldn’t fast forward through it, it would be completely unworkable. I am impressed, however, with how many double jointed dancers she found. I also kept thinking of Susan Hayward behind bars.

It’s called “secretprojectrevolution.” It’s dedicated to anyone who’s suffered persecution. Beginning with the viewers of this video. Did anyone ask Madonna to make an annoying 17 minute art film? No. But Lady Gaga’s just getting ready to release a new album. I have to think there’s some connection.

Justin Timberlake, music man of 2013, is streaming his new album on iTunes. There’s a “secret” track buried at the end of the album called “If I Had a Pair of Wings.” Close your eyes: this is a Michael Jackson impersonation. Let’s call it a tribute to Jackson. The song is a ballad sung with minimal acoustic guitar and strings, and sounds very much like the King of Pop. It’s actually uncanny.

Timberlake has buried the track inside what’s marked as an 11 minute track that starts with the 5 minute long “Not Such a Bad Thing.” At first you think, oh no, an 11 minute song. But halfway through. “Not Such a Bad Thing” fades out and “Wings” launches. I wonder what Jackson fans will say.

Meantime, “20/20 Experience Part 2” is a mixed bag. On first hearing I really like the opening track, “Gimme What I Don’t Know (I Want)” plus “Take Back the Night,” “TKO,” and “Not Such a Bad Thing.” That first track opens sounding like a Queen record, and then picks up the bass line and beat from Herb Alpert’s “Rise.” Still, it’s very, very catchy.

It’s not possible that Timberlake won’t win the Grammy for Album of the Year for the whole “20/20” enterprise. Sampled, reinvented, twisted, turned on its head, “20/20” was the most ambitious and cleverest release of 2013.

EXCLUSIVE Stevie Wonder, Alicia Keys, John Mayer, Kings of Leon and Elvis Costello are playing a free concert in Central Park this Saturday for an organization called Global Citizen. The concert is free, so going to hear these terrific artists is no skin off your nose. But knowing about Global Citizen is important. There are a lot of questions about them.

I first wrote about Global Citizen back in July. It’s part of something called the Global Poverty Project run by an Australian named Hugh Evans.

Global Citizen– as I wrote in July– is part of an Australian clothing company called Cotton One. (You can read about them here.) What’s the interest of  Cotton One, which seems to be somewhere at the root of all this? Says Hugh Evans: “They have 153 stores in the US now, and they’re planning a thousand more in the next year.”

http://www.showbiz411.com/2013/07/11/sumner-redstones-ex-stewardess-girlfriend-donates-1-5mil-to-stop-global-poverty

There’s a strange connection to Viacom chief Sumner Redstone. The Sumner Redstone Charitable Foundation is listed as a sponsor of the concert. But there’ s more: The sole donor to GPP is one Elizabeth Malia Andelin of Beverly Hills, a former flight attendant on  Redstone’s private plane and a purported gal pal of the 90 year old mogul. According to federal tax returns, Andelin donated $1.5 million to GPP in 2010-11. Pictures of the couple are pretty much all over the internet, and they look about as couple-y as Redstone will allow given his checkered romantic history.

More importantly: the Form 990 for Global Poverty states that it made no– zero– donations to anyone in 2011. None. Zip.  (Their 2012 form hasn’t been filed.) But of the $3 million they had on hand in 2011, more than half– $1.6 million–went to salaries, advertising, travel, and legal fees. They spent $899,000 on advertising.

Hugh Evans is the extremely well spoken founder of the group. I spoke to him this morning. He has the Australian gift of gab, which isn’t a bad thing when you’re raising lots of money and chatting up celebrities. Evans is passionate about ending global poverty. He insisted during our talk on a couple of things:

One– that Redstone and Andelin “are not a couple. She isn’t his girlfriend.”

Two– that all the money raised by Global Citizen goes to the cause of ending extreme poverty. He seemed unaware of the Form 990 expense listings.  Evans was featured last year in the New York Times and he’s a celebrity in Australia. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/arts/music/hugh-evans-29-force-behind-global-festival-on-great-lawn.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Evans said Global Citizen doesn’t make charitable donations. “We’re an advocacy group. We got $1.3 billion last year in commitments from other groups and corporations,” he said. “You can see them on our website.”

Indeed, Global Citizen is very invested in ending polio around the world. Last year, according to the CDC, there were only 223 cases of polio on Earth. Most were in three countries– Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Dr. Jonas Salk invented the Polio vaccine in 1952. It has been available since 1955. Global Citizen doesn’t bring the vaccine to the countries where outbreaks are reported. It just tells them that it exists.

Evans also told me hat a committee of people in the music industry and with big agencies like CAA, WME, Live Nation and AEG Live met to organize the concert. He told me that all of the musicians in this year’s show are performing for free. At 30, he expressed shock that I had attended the famous concert on the Great Lawn in Central Park, back in 1981, with Simon & Garfunkel. “You don’t sound old,” he said. I assured him I had aged naturally.

No one seems to know much about what happened, but actress Marta Heflin died on September 18th. She was 68. Someone put a paid obit in the New York Times but I guess no one bothered to make a real announcement. Heflin was a favorite of late legendary director Robert Altman. She was also a great friend (and I’m not sure but I think long ago ex girlfriend) of Al Pacino. Heflin was always invited to any Pacino opening and treated like a VIP. Her father, Martin Heflin, was a famous PR man. Her mother, Julia Heflin, was a rabble rousing journalist. Uncle Van Heflin, of course, was a famous actor. And aunt Frances Heflin was beloved by viewers of “All My Children” as Mona Kane, mother of Susan Lucci’s Erica Kane. She will be sorely missed.