It was one of those moments in time that beg you to blog about them.
One of those moments where, if you have a blog, you make a mental note and hope you can do the moment justice if only briefly. And if you don’t keep a blog but are a reader, you wonder if people will blog about it because, you know, it just beeeeeeegs for it.
And if you don’t keep a blog and are not a reader, is one of those moments that you will probably relay as a humorous anecdote and maybe one of your listeners will tell you, "hey, you should blog!"
Hmm… now that I’ve talked this up so much, I’d better get to telling you guys what it was before you do a collective eye-roll and deem that if you were writing this blog entry you’d make a mental note to get to the point sooner than this.
Like, way sooner.
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For all the hoopla and the collective disdain we’ve felt for poor Britney Spears and her horrid sham of a comeback, it’s amazing how much she is part of the Collective Unconscious of America….. nay, of the world.
Okay, wait. I feel an aside coming on.
Aside– incidentally she happens to be a celebrity who was screaming to be adopted, the poor thing, although, maybe I should have petitioned to adopt her kids, huh? But anyway, she does need to be adopted too, and maybe taught how to wear undies and how to comb her hair/pick a better wig and put on shoes when going to gas station bathrooms. Oh, and she needs to have someone tell her to stop talking to sleazy and desperate-looking guys and to scrub her face and remember to clean off the zit cream before leaving the house.
But yes. Britney is now as much a part of the American psyche as Mayberry, the Hollywood hills, and even John Wayne Gacy. (*cringe*cringe*shudder*)
Back in the late late 90s when her career started –that elysian time of naïveté– she was the poster girl for a modern-day Lolita. As a matter of fact, I would even question whether she would have had a pop career at all were it not for the fact that she was so naïve and specifically so short on intellect but large on ambition that she was willing to be cast in that role by studio executives without even weighing the future repercussions of such an iconography in her future life and psyche. But I guess that’s kind of self-evident, really.
I would like anyone who doesn’t know at least one hit of Britney’s and stumbles upon this blog to please pipe up, because I am interested in knowing your reasons for choosing to live under a rock (or for being so much more sophisticated than the rest of us, yes).
For the rest of you, you know the ear worm: "Hit me baby one more tiiiiiiiiime!"
As her career hit its "pinnacle" in those few months right after releasing "In The Zone" (which, for your collective information, I had to look up because I am NOT a big Britney fan but I still have a desire to be accurate) and then got to what most experts would deem "the good stuff", we all followed, entranced.
How can one person spiral out of control and keep on spiraling, somehow seemingly buoyed by perpetual motion?
As she struggles to reclaim her old glory days doing her humble but ultimately very pathetic lip-synching tour, it is then refreshing to know that a part of all of us will always remember the fun times when Britney had’t opened her big mouth and overshared; when she was a cute girl scrubbed clean and still freshly off the Mickey Mouse Club; when we had not been subjected to Britney’s thoughtless flirting and beckoning of the media, which the media turned into an ongoing savage hounding of someone who is really –underneath the trucker hats and the zit cream and the bad clothes– a poor lost girl who never had the benefit of having someone to give her a constant dose of Shutthefuckup syrup.
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On Sunday, I found myself over at Bad-Music Safeway. As I navigated the treacherous waters of the ice cream aisle and listened to impossibly upbeat Swedes while making a bit of small talk with another shopper over the endless choices when it comes to delicious frozen custard, it suddenly happened:
"OOPS! IIIIIIII diiid it agaaaaaaain! I plaaaayed with your heaaaaart! Got loooost in the gaaaaaame! OOOO bay-beh bay-beh!"
It happened very quickly.
Before anyone knew it, there was a head-bop close-by. There was a humming not too far away. And while looking for frozen Brussels sprouts, a whistler kept up with the delicious synth and drum-machine track. I stuck to my favorite method of mouthing the lyrics while contorting my mouth in dangerous angles. Out of the corner of my eye I swear I saw some dadly-looking figure channeling the video, the one where she wears the red leather suit with the fake boobs, but maybe it was a figment of my imagination. It was a gloriously giddy three minutes and thirty-one seconds, where we all became one with Britney.
Suddenly our reverie was eclipsed by some morose Phil Collins tune and by the impending gathering of the groceries and the spell was over.
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Somewhere, whoever keeps track of the world’s felicific calculations will tally up all the unbridled joy that Britney has brought us all and still does. And, of course, I hope that heaven or nirvana or "the beyond" works on felicific calculus, but that is a whole other post.
I hope that someday Britney realizes that too, and that she sees it’s good.
Or maybe she can have someone explain it to her.
A Daily Dose of Zen Sarcasm! 
ROFL! Freaking brilliant.
one would think that she would have enough appreciation for her fans to actually sing during her brief comeback tour.
poor, poor misguided britney.
Bwahahaha – dose of Shutthefuckup syrup. You’re hilarious.
One with Britney? Uhhhhh … I’ve never ever been one with Britney.
Yikes! I avoid the bad music Safeway at all costs and at all times. Now I’ve got more reasons to steer clear.
Shouldn’t that be ‘Collective Unconsciousness’ in Brit’s case? Celebrating naivety? What’s next? Ode to Oatmeal? Forgive me, my sarcasm is showing (tuck, tuck). Britney & The Bare Naked Ladies. Now there’s a World Tour.