Pop Icon

In Me'Shell Ndegeocello's apartment, Robert Hilburn notes: "One surprise is the photograph of Jesus in a frame on the table next to her bed" ("She Can't Hide Her Feelings," Aug. 25). You're not kidding! Who was the photographer? Who has the negatives? Does the Vatican know of this? The Shroud of Turin is nothing compared to this fantastic discovery! RICHARD EVANS Sherman Oaks Poor Me'Shell Ndegeocello. She's black, she's gay, someone looked at her the wrong way. Man, it must be the '90s.

Madonna has put her mansion in Beverly Hills up for sale in the Multiple Listing Service at $22.5 million. During her nearly decade of ownership, the pop icon has extensively remodeled and expanded the estate, which sits behind gates on 1.25 acres of landscaped grounds. The compound includes a 500-foot tree-lined driveway, a nine-bedroom main house, two guesthouses, a resort-size swimming pool and a tennis court. There is a two-story dining room, a gym, a theater/screening room and 17,000 square feet of living space.

Oprah Winfrey is No. 1 on VH1's assessment of the "200 Greatest Pop Culture Icons," a 10-episode ranking of actors, musicians, politicians, academics, sports figures and fictional characters that debuted Monday. She edged out Superman, who came in second, followed by Elvis Presley. Eminem is No. 31, sandwiched between Bill Cosby and former President John F. Kennedy. The wrestler the Rock is at the bottom, just below Queen Latifah (199) and the "South Park" cartoon character Cartman (198).

Visual art with a pop-cultural bent (or is it pop culture with a visual art bent?) has turned into a running theme on the Los Angeles scene. The latest is “American Icons,” a photography show that not only focuses on pop cultural heroes, but will take place starting Thursday in that most populist of venues, the outdoor commons of a shopping mall - the Americana at Brand in Glendale. Daniel Miller, who owns Duncan Miller Gallery, says he first conceived of the exhibition of 21 images of star performers and a boxing great, Muhammad Ali, as a regular show for his usual space on Venice Boulevard.

John Nelson, 85, jazz pianist formerly in the Prince Rogers Trio, which inspired the name of his son, the pop icon Prince, died Saturday at his home in suburban Minneapolis. In the 1950s, Nelson married the trio's young singer, Mattie Shaw, who nicknamed her new husband "Prince Rogers" after the group. When they had a son, they named him Prince Rogers Nelson.

A judge Monday approved a merchandising agreement expected to deliver $15 million to Michael Jackson's estate but postponed a ruling on a deal for three-city tour of memorabilia because of objections by the pop icon's mother. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff set a Friday hearing to allow Katherine Jackson's attorneys to call witnesses and present evidence highlighting what they say are weaknesses in the proposed deal between the singer's estate and concert promoter AEG Live.

Ten years from now, when Saddam Hussein has disappeared into the darkest archives of the world's collective memory banks, will Madonna remain a universally omnipresent cultural icon? Not if Luc Sante can help it. As Sante portrays her in the Aug. 20-27 issue of New Republic, Madonna's blond ambitions make mere territorial imperialism seem small time. "Madonna," he writes, "wants to conquer the unconscious, to become indelible."

If you've thought that Madonna has often seemed petulant and self-indulgent in her rise from sex goddess to media mogul, you're not alone. She thinks so too. One reason her new "Ray of Light" is the most satisfying album of her career is that it reflects the soul-searching of a woman who is at a point in her life where she can look at herself with surprising candor and perspective (review, Page 88). In both her singing and writing on the album, which is due in stores Tuesday from Warner Bros.

A small, stylishly dressed woman stands in a narrow corridor at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, staring up in awe at a row of huge photographs of writers and artists, all persecuted or forced to flee Nazi Germany. Eyeing the melancholy visages of Max Beckmann, Franz Werfel, Ernst Barlach and George Grosz, she says quietly, "They all look so sad, like doomed men." Stephanie Barron, the curator who assembled the museum's widely praised "Degenerate Art" exhibit, explains that the art displayed here, which includes work by Chagall, Kandinsky and Klee, was loathed by the Nazis, who vilified it as "degenerate trash."

Ginsu knives have been slicing for 30 years. Now Rhode Island drivers can use the Ginsu to cut their commute. A stretch of road in Warwick is called Ginsu Way to honor the cheap knife that's now a pop icon.

The passing of Whitney Houston was a sad undertone to this year's Grammy Awards show. But several marquee artists -- including Celine Dion, Usher and Jennifer Hudson -- will pay tribute to the pop icon in a telecast special that airs Nov. 16 on CBS and tapes in a concert in Los Angeles.  The telecast , "We Will Always Love You: A Grammy Salute to Whitney Houston," will be taped at the Nokia Theatre on Oct. 11. The event features sets by...

The inspiration for Cirque du Soleil's new show, "Michael Jackson: The Immortal World Tour," began in the late 1980s when Michael Jackson hopped into a van (sans security) with his longtime attorney John Branca to see the French Canadian performance troupe for the first time in Santa Monica. The mega-pop star was fascinated by the avant-garde circus and asked to meet the cast backstage, said Branca, who was named co-executor of Jackson's estate along with music executive John McClain in accordance with Jackson's 2002 will.

Michael Jackson's former personal physician hired a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney this week to help his existing legal team combat a potential manslaughter prosecution in the pop icon's fatal overdose last summer. Dr. Conrad Murray retained Glendale attorney J. Michael Flanagan on Tuesday, the physician's lead lawyer, Ed Chernoff, confirmed. Flanagan previously won a manslaughter acquittal for a nurse tried in what is believed to be the only other L.A. criminal case involving a death from propofol, the powerful anesthetic blamed in Jackson's June 25 death.

Michael Jackson won't be buried on his birthday. In the third announcement regarding the pop icon's interment this week, the publicity firm Sunshine, Sachs & Associates said Friday that Jackson will not be buried at Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park on Aug. 29 -- on what would have been his 51st birthday -- as had been previously announced. Instead, the superstar will be laid to rest in a private ceremony for family and friends on Sept. 3 at 7 p.m. The site of his interment, Forest Lawn's Holly Terrace in the Great Mausoleum, will remain the same.

A judge Monday approved a merchandising agreement expected to deliver $15 million to Michael Jackson's estate but postponed a ruling on a deal for three-city tour of memorabilia because of objections by the pop icon's mother. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff set a Friday hearing to allow Katherine Jackson's attorneys to call witnesses and present evidence highlighting what they say are weaknesses in the proposed deal between the singer's estate and concert promoter AEG Live.

It was a night meant to honor the top songwriters and publishers of 2008, and it did. Winners shuffled to the stage Friday at ASCAP's 22nd annual Rhythm & Soul Music Awards, posing for photos as they clutched onto their trophies. But it was also the night after Michael Jackson's death, and the ASCAP ceremony at the Beverly Hilton took on the feel of a tribute, with Alicia Keys, Ne-Yo, Berry Gordy and more paying their respects to the fallen pop icon. The event began with a moment of silence in honor of the "King of Pop."

Re "Madonna, Only More So" (by Robert Hilburn, March 1): "Pop icon"? Never has so much acclaim been afforded to so mediocre a talent. Her videos are laughably self-indulgent, her music sub-pedestrian. Please, enough already. MIKE OWENS Glendale

The passing of Whitney Houston was a sad undertone to this year's Grammy Awards show. But several marquee artists -- including Celine Dion, Usher and Jennifer Hudson -- will pay tribute to the pop icon in a telecast special that airs Nov. 16 on CBS and tapes in a concert in Los Angeles.  The telecast , "We Will Always Love You: A Grammy Salute to Whitney Houston," will be taped at the Nokia Theatre on Oct. 11. The event features sets by...

Pop music is the wallpaper of our lives. And the delicate floral patterns designed by Burt Bacharach and Hal David define the lovesick mood of a bygone easy-listening era. Actually, the music never stopped, as the theatrical celebration "Back to Bacharach and David" makes clear. The show, which opened Sunday at the Music Box @ Fonda, keeps pulling out the timeless hits, like a magician yanking endless multicolored scarves from the same canister. Inspired by the singular sultriness of Dionne Warwick, this songwriting team (Bacharach wrote the music, David the lyrics)

Ginsu knives have been slicing for 30 years. Now Rhode Island drivers can use the Ginsu to cut their commute. A stretch of road in Warwick is called Ginsu Way to honor the cheap knife that's now a pop icon.