My Britney Spears Fantasy

I saw Brit on NBC the other night, looking every bit the pregnant Louisiana hick with false eyelashes and cleavage you could drive a Hummer through. (Who the hell wears false eyelashes any more?) And it reminded me of my old Britney Spears fantasy.

No, not that one.

It's the one where I imagined that she woke up one morning, back before she became a mommy, looked in the mirror and had an epiphany; to wit, "I am a complete joke. Having somehow parlayed a so-so singing voice, a certain girl-next-door blandness, and dancing skills that look like a drunk trying to kill cockroachs into a $100 million fortune, I have become the only thing more annoying than trailer trash: rich trailer trash. The world thinks I'm an idiot - and I certainly act like one. That marrying-Jason thing: What the hell? Promising to be a virgin till I got married, and then posing topless on the cover of Rolling Stone? Look at Julia Styles and Kirsten Dunst - they are successful and respected because they are not stupid. I am heading for a full-blown Garland. I need to get real!"

So she cuts off her hair with some pinking shears and dyes it black. She ditches the makeup and flushes the eyelashes down the toilet. She rounds up the most normal looking things in her wardrobe and takes off the designer labels. She pays one of her bodyguards $6000 cash for his 1999 Camry, leaves a note to her mom, and heads east.

She gets a job at a Starbucks in Greenwich Village, probably the one at Spring and Varick. She learns who "FICA" is, and moves into a one-bedroom sixth-floor walk-up with seven other girls, all of whom swear they are really actresses. She tells everyone her name is "Kendra Kozak." She starts hanging out in used bookstores on her off-hours, and struggles through some Kundera and Camus, occasionally actually getting it. She takes a few course at CCNY, being careful not to flash her way-too-sunny Mouseketeer smile too often.

And lo and behold, her IQ starts going up. She holds intelligent conversations with anti-globalization protesters in Washington Square Park, pointing out why exactly they are so full of shit. Her clothes tend more towards utilitarian black. She stops thinking about all the bling her bank account back in LA could afford and tries to think of something noble to do with it. She volunteers at a homeless shelter. She misses her family, but realizes that what she's doing will mean more in the long run.

Then, of course, someone puts two and two together - after all, Britney Spears is missing - and Kendra is unmasked. Every tabloid shows up in the Village. It's the lead story on every network broadcast. She grants her first exclusive interview, not to Matt or Barbara or Katie, but to the Village Voice. She sounds halfway sophisticated, and doesn't use the word "ain't" once, except ironically in the pull quote: "I ain't no fucking trailer trash any more!"

Within two years, she wins a Oscar for playing a concentration camp detainee who smuggles heavy-water plans to the Allies . . .

Well, maybe that's enough. She didn't do it, and now she's going to name the next kid Amber or Tiffany or Crystal, and above all won't understand this blog entry at all.

But a fella can dream.