Does anyone else feel betrayed by her lately? Maybe it’s just me. I used to feel such a kinship with her. When she first came out with “…Baby One More Time,” the great unheralded domestic abuse diatribe of our generation (I would pay a great deal to hear the Tori Amos cover), I felt she was overrated and overexposed. It was nice to see that the oft-ignored ellipse had finally forced its way into that inpenetrable fortress of pop culture, but beyond that, I felt the song was catchy but otherwise unremarkable. But Britney kept at it, and to some extent I found a place for her in my heart. When she released “Oops!…I Did It Again,” I cringed with the rest of the grammar cognoscenti, but I related. I was 19, like Britney, and had suffered my share of heartbreak. I had done it again, I had become caught up in the game, &c. I felt we were really growing up together — like the way my mother developed an obsession with Princess Di when they were pregnant together (my mom with me, Di with my betrothed, Prince William) — Britney and I were facing young womanhood head-on, side by side. We were in this together. She had my back, much like Lil’ Kim and Christina Aguilera would down the road. “I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman” really sealed the deal for me, because, YES, Britney, I was not a girl anymore, but I was not quite yet a woman. It was a tough time. I understood you. The Justin break-up was real rough, but I was there with you. I fought tooth and nail for ya, Brit. I was even with you through the Kabbalah, Brit, as a fellow Jew-when-it’s -convient, even though I could have told you from the start that Madonna was Bad News Bears. She only wants you when you can help her career. You should have known that. I would have told you. She’s on to Lohan now. So sad.

When you married Kevin, I stood up for you. True love knows no social barriers, Brit, and he clearly had weed hook-ups that money can’t buy. You can’t help who or why you love. I would have advised against “Chaotic,” but if you needed the whole world to know you’re a stoner, hey, that’s kind of like Step One, right? I backed you up. It must be hard to grow up in the spotlight, and you were doing the best you knew how. I was right there with you.

Then you did this, and the whole world realized that Leslie Sloan Zelnick was not as overpaid as we’d previously believed. (Rachel Zoe still is. Please, Rachel, get Lindsay out of the leggings and ballets. No, not later, right now.) Britney, sans publicist, make-up artists and hairstylists: you are a moron. You can take the girl out of Kentwood, Brit, but you can’t take the Kentwood out of the girl. You are a gum-smacking, kid-birthing, hick-fucking, algebra-failing, Grade-A moron when left to your own devices. You don’t make any sense. You ramble like an drunk. You air-quote everything. You twirl your hair. It is truly crushing. I’d bought into a manufactured image of you, and I was so disappointed when it all came crumbling down. I don’t hate you; I’m sure you are genuinely trying to do what’s right by yourself and your family, but you are so painfully misguided when it comes to the execution that it’s difficult to watch. You are infinitely watchable now no longer as a rock star but as a trainwreck. It’s really too bad, Brit.

You’re like the guy I never wanted to date in the first place, but he was so confident; he was so sure he could offer me everything I ever wanted, so in-my-face, pushing his product every way I turned; I gave in and said yes. I bought into the hype. You both broke my heart. But it’s okay, sweetheart. I forgive you both. I will toss aside my Britney Spears Life Guidebook, pick up the new Christina Aguilera album, and trudge forward, discouraged but never without faith.

This is not entirely true. To be fair, some of them just have a pilot. But they are all very, very good pilots — kind of like Sex and the City meets Entourage — and they all have a very, very well-connected friend. None of them would be doing this if they weren’t really confident that they could get this thing sold. Really.

I have neither a screenplay nor a pilot. I’m not much of a writer. What I do have is a limitless supply of solid-gold reality show pitches. My latest is truly a gem: America’s Next Top Poet. Here’s my vision: you scour the country for 15 aspiring poets. These are people who honestly, as adults, will answer the question “What do you do?” by speaking — aloud — the words “I’m a poet.” I’m pretty sure you could put these people in a house in the Valley with video cameras and leave it at that, and you have a fairly solid mid-season replacement. But let’s take it a step farther and give them weekly poetry-related tasks. You leave them in a room alone with a rusty, dripping sink and let them write a poem about it. Or you van them all to Six Flags (they drive there to everyone’s favorite stock footage of the 405 meeting Sunset), stick them on a rollercoaster with a pen and pad and make them write a poem while they’re on the ride. You host a spelling bee. You leave them alone with refrigerator poetry magnets and a refrigerator. Even better — leave all of them alone together with a fixed set of magnets and 15 refrigerators. They can fight over who grabs “parallax” and “gauche” first. They all have blatantly self-appointed names that stretch the boundaries of language and normalcy more so than their poetry ever could — names like Phurie and Djordj and Seaszhell — and they meet weekly for elimination ceremonies at the Getty gardens. They read their poetry and they argue with one another over who deserves to go home and why. They say things like “anapest” and “trope” and “enjambment” and “lying whore;” they breach alliances. They are all dressed inanely — quilted skirts and bike helmets and AC/DC tees — and you’ve assembled some panel of utterly unknown “professional poets” to kick one of them off each week. The winner gets $100,000 (to kick-start their poetry “career”) and some series of poems run in The Atlantic. Jeff Goldblum hosts. You can’t lose.

My contact info is on the blog.

Unfortunately, I appear to be the only client in the place who doesn’t know any of them. I’ve been going there for years for the same fill-and-French (that sounds kinda dirty), and at least a few of them seem to know mine — they greet me by name when I walk in — and I haven’t the foggiest idea how. Did they get it off of my checks? I have never introduced myself by name to any of them, and I don’t really talk to them much while I’m sitting in there. In fact, every time I go in there, no matter which young Vietnamese manicurist I’m paired with, we have the same conversation:

Manicurist: You want French?
Me: Yes, please.
Manicurist: We do gel?
Me: Yes, please.
Manicurist: And cuticles?
Me: Yes, please.
Manicurist (noting that I’m wearing business attire): You work today?
Me: Yes.
Manicurist: Ah.

It goes like this every. Single. Time. I think they like to confirm that I am still employed and then, with renewed faith in the check I will later write out to cash, focus on my nails and engage in subsonic Vietnamese-language conversations with their coworkers (honestly, I will hear what sounds like brush rustling at the other end of the salon, and the woman working on my nails will nod, pick up the third nail file from the left, and walk it over to someone who I swear is fifty yards away from her, yet clearly just requested its delivery — it’s unbelievable and raises all sorts of embarrassing points about how incredibly loud we are as Americans, but I won’t get into that right now).

All of this is beside the point. The point is that, on cursory inspection, all the clients in the place seem to have a relationship with these women similar to the one I have. No one is having an animated conversation with her manicurist; there is an obvious language barrier and, to our crude American ears, most of what these women say is inaudible anyway. Everyone has her face buried in a magazine or is talking to a friend. But I noticed something today: they all know the names of the women who work here. A client will walk in, be greeted by name, and say hello back, by name. Here is my question: when does this name exchange happen? I am not unfriendly, I am not cold, I am not stupid, I am not forgetful, but I have absolutely no idea what the name is of a single one of the women who work here. Is there a Coast Nails facebook that someone forgot to send me? Am I not on the Coast Nails happy hour email distribution? Not a single one of them has introduced herself to me. They do not wear name tags. I tip quite generously. What am I missing?

I woke up this morning with Paris Hilton’s single running through my head. This is discouraging in and of itself, but what’s worse is I spent a good portion of my morning routine thinking about the song. It’s pleasantly ironic, I think, that a young woman widely regarded as America’s Whore chooses to spend the entire three minutes and fifty-four seconds of her first music video writhing around half-naked on a beach singing a song — a damn catchy song, if we’re all being honest — about how stars are blind.

Use only as directed.

Please, Tim Allen, convicted drug trafficker and sometime comedic juggernaut, share your thoughts on capitalism with us all.

Enjoy!

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