Madonna's rare public appearance was to promote her latest album, Celebration. After being carried out on the aforementioned shoulders of hockey players (a stunt that was supposed to be ironic? Yes? No? No idea), she complained that her fingers were pinched in the process. In the clip above, she talks about the two meanings of the name "Madge" (and settles on the one that means "majesty") and compares her eight year marriage to "The Bush Years."

After a stunt in which Letterman ordered Her Majesty a New York pizza (unbelievably, her first, because she's "not a cheese person"), Dave asked Madonna about her daughter and parenting in general:

Surprised by my reaction to this entire interview (I thought Madonna came off as completely out of touch, watching herself in the monitors the whole time and rarely acknowledging the audience, and totally ungraceful, dissing the father of her children), I asked a friend what she thought of Madonna. "I'm neutral," she said, before reconsidering: "Well, I hate Gwyneth Paltrow so I guess I hate Madonna by association." Both women have chosen, for whatever reasons (and possibly wise ones) to remove themselves from American society while still counting on our interest for their paychecks. And on the rare occasions when they deign to appear before us, it always seems so obvious that they don't want to be here. Madonna would have been better received last night if she'd dropped the royal act and respected her audience enough to at least try to sound interested. She is, after all, in America now. None of this matters when choosing whether or not to buy her album, but again, she just isn't likable.

[New York, September 30. Image via INF]

• After barring a woman from helping her autistic sister try on clothes at the chain's Mall of America outpost, Abercrombie & Fitch was fined $115,264 for discrimination. Now we can say it definitively: Abercrombie doesn't like disabled people. [StarTrib]

• There are pictures of Threeasfour's inspiration boards, fabrics, and the in-progress pieces of its collection with Yoko Ono, which will be shown next week in New York. Ono contributed original artwork and inspiration to the collection, and the dot drawings that were transformed into original prints look fantastic with their repeated circular-organic shapes. [The Cut]
• Oprah is going to co-host next year's Met Ball. Oprah. Let that sink in. Co-hosting, of course, will be the woman who made her lose 20 pounds to be fit for the cover of her magazine: Anna Wintour. [Yahoo! News]
• This year's Met Ball model co-host, Kate Moss, stormed out of the GQ awards show in London because host James Nesbitt made a joke about her naked appearance on the cover of that magazine. She managed to interrupt Dizzee Rascal, who was being interviewed after accepting an award — twice. Once to storm out, and once to ask if anybody had seen her lipstick. [Telegraph]
• GQ anointed comedian and Little Britain star David Walliams as the most stylish man of 2009. He accepted the award wearing goggles and denim hotpants. [Mirror]
• Craig "Radioman" Schwartz, apparently some sort of serial movie set hanger-on, nearly rode his bicycle into Sarah Jessica Parker while she was filming for Sex And The City outside Bergdorf's. She stumbled over the curb. Do people really have nothing better to do than flashmob the SATC set? For the rest of the day, Parker was protected by ten bodyguards between takes. [WWD]
• Meanwhile, co-star Kristin Davis' line with Belk department stores has been discontinued, and the actress' planned New York Fashion Week show canceled. Belk and Davis say the decision was mutual. [The Cut]
• Three words: Lady Gaga Headphones. (No, she's not doing a side project with David Bazan.) [Engadget]
• The house of Ungaro has tapped Lindsay Lohan as an "artistic adviser" and relatively unknown designer Estrella Archs as its chief designer. When the Lindsay-for-Ungaro rumor started — back before the young, talented Colombian designer Esteban Cortazar had been fired — it sounded like crazy talk. Now it's happening. "Odds are it could work," says C.E.O. Mounir Moufarrige. [WWD]
• Heidi Klum, on that time Karl Lagerfeld sneered that he didn't know who she was, and that she was obviously fat anyway: "It's bizarre to me that he says he doesn't know who I am because he's dressed me in the past. I've worn Karl Lagerfeld. Not even Chanel – his line. Lagerfeld doesn't just send random things everywhere." Klum in fact wore Lagerfeld to the CFDA awards a few years back. [P6Mag — story not online yet]
  
• Fashion success story Christopher Kane, on childhood: "I was this wee kid who just stayed in the house, watching The Clothes Show with my mum and scrooging all the money from my first communion." [ToL]
• Model Crystal Renn, who was directed as a 14-year-old to lose 9" off her hips in order to work in the industry, and struggled for years with anorexia and exercise bulimia as a result, says that Glamour magazine was the only client who ever noticed her eating disorder, and took action by calling her then-agency, Next. Not that she was appreciative as a frightened young teen: "At the time, I was really embarrassed because someone had figured me out. They called it and brought it to light. I wasn't only not only not pleasing my agency but I wasn't pleasing Glamour. When I became a healthy model like I am now, they were one of the first people to shoot me at this size, and that says something." Renn, whose memoir Hungry came out yesterday, would like to have a plus-size clothing line because she says her rock 'n' roll aesthetic is under-represented in the larger sizes. [GlamChic]
• Tara Moss, who modeled for 10 years, now writes crime novels. And she does her own stunts: to research events for her books, she tries to experience the things her characters feel. In addition to spending days in morgues and courtrooms, flying fighter jets, and being set on fire, she has had an Ultimate Fighter choke her until she lost consciousness. [Reuters]
• Hadley Freeman says, of the attempts by models too numerous to name to raise awareness about the industry's working conditions, "The fact that all these efforts have come from models as opposed to the outside media (which gets too distracted with painting models as evil fem-bots and harbingers of eating disorders to see them as underpaid homesick teenagers), suggests maybe people find the idea of models making them feel fat more upsetting than the very real fact of models being raped." The serial rapist designer Anand Jon Alexander was sentenced to 59 years in prison this week; other sources interviewed for this story express amazement that any of his victims, all young models over whom he had authority, came forward at all. [Guardian]
• Anna Sui's Gossip Girl-inspired Target collection launches this weekend online and in 600 stores nationwide — and today, if you live in New York and are willing to go to a pop-up store in a townhouse on Crosby St. [WWD]
• A woman told the Post that sometimes she goes to Yigal Azrouël's Meatpacking District store to try on clothes "just to be naked in the same room with him." Azrouël is sexy and all, but that's just creepy. [NYPost]
• This story about Fashion's Night Out, which is tomorrow, includes an unexpected reference to Fitzgerald. Then Anna Wintour says, "What am I looking to buy? Something in red, some new boots, and some kind of savage fur (that's American Vogue shorthand, so you know, for a rough, shaggy stole or collar of some kind). It's not a lot, but isn't that the whole point of shopping these days." [ToL]
• Club Monaco locations in New York City will be serving champagne until 11 p.m., and the SoHo store will have a cupcake truck outside until September 12th. [FWD]
• The Financial Times' coverage of Fashion's Night Out casts Wintour as Ben Bernanke in a grand fashion stimulus plan. [FT]
• Wintour's appearance on Letterman drew slightly higher ratings than the show's average for the week and month, but ABC's Nightline still won the timeslot. [WWD]
• "Would I think twice about buying a dress that costs $2,000? Yeah! Of course I would. I'd try it on and go home and think about it before I bought it," says Victoria Beckham. Nonetheless, she says that demand for her uber-expensive dress line is outstripping supply. [People]
• Robin Givhan reports that now, the time just before Fashion Week, is a period of "soul-searching and hand-wringing" for designers and the industry. [WaPo]
• Neiman Marcus suffered a $168.6 million loss during the fourth quarter. Revenues decreased 24%. [WWD]
• Yesterday, Gap-owned e-tailer Piperlime started selling designer clothes, in addition to shoes. [NYTimes]
• Same-store sales at Laura Ashley rose 6.7%, to £101.5m. [FT]