Big-Screen Ambition Swept Away

Oct. 15 — -- A personal goal can be as exhilarating as drinking rocket fuel. It can mess with your stomach and get relatively expensive compared to a Snapple, but the endorphin rush outweighs the downside.

I believe in going for the gusto. Why not try to reinvent the wheel? Make it smoother, rounder — more "wheelie."

The new wheel might roll better. If not, you can always fall back on the original wheel. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

However, there are some things you just clearly know not to do. I wouldn't bungee-jump off the 59th Street Bridge into the dirty waters of Manhattan. (It's enough of a feat just spending time with someone who did.)

I wouldn't try to start my own book club if I only read the pop-up kind. I also know better than to enter a Miss America pageant. Not only am I too old, but the perfect pear shape they strive for during the swimsuit competition would be lost to my baked-potato figure.

Even if the judges were obsessed with starches, and even if I were able to answer their inane questions about changing the world with some modicum of intelligence, I'd still end up losing out when I accidentally cracked Joan Van Ark's skull while twirling a baton on ice skates to Irene Cara's "What a Feeling" — assuming Joan were a celebrity judge.

Failure Comes as No Shanghai Surprise

Know your limitations! That's the point I'm trying to make here, which is why I can't tolerate one more minute of Mrs. Guy Ritchie — aka Madonna — getting in front of a camera and trying to act.

Before all you Madonna fans aim your bullet-loaded conical bras at me, know that I, too, am a fan of Our Lady of the Blond Ambition. She is a musical icon, and if you don't agree with that, then you must agree she's a marketing genius. She is the queen of reinvention. She knows how to MOVE. She moves her music, her body, an audience, men, and merchandise. But ladies and germs, she does not know how to MOV-IE. She just can't act.

This statement can be taken two ways, as over the years many have found her behavior to be rather unsavory. There's no point in arguing the entertainment value of the Sex book, her many documentaries, the "Justify My Love" video, etc. They were Madonna then and again. And as is her forte, presto change-o, she's now a mother of two and a "happily married" woman.