So I'm standing in Longs Drugs at the corner of Laurel Canyon and Ventura in Studio City, trying to decide between Colgate and Crest, when I feel a presence behind me.

I turn and see a brunette in huge sunglasses with a thin blonde escort in a Joan Jett t-shirt. The brunette looks like she's been laying out at her pool. She's wearing a kaftan cover-up and is slightly sunburnt. To say the least, she looks nothing like the entertainer in the photo you see above.

I turn back to my ever-important toothpaste decision when slowly it dawns on me: I'm standing in front of Britney Spears.

I turn around again, but she's gone.

It leaves my mind. After all, I live in Studio City and star sightings are fairly common in my neck of the woods.

I continue on to browse for incense, deoderant, and spray starch. Then I make my way up to the checkout stand only to find myself standing beside Ms. Spears who is now in the next line over with the Joan Jett girl.

I look at the magazine rack between us.

There's Brit on the cover of a gossip rag looking exactly as she looked at that moment. Brown hair tied back, bug-eye sunglasses, no makeup. The headline: Brit's Carrying My Baby.

How surreal.

As we stand there, side by side, making our ways through our respective lines, I must say I actually feel sorry for the girl. I know it's the trend to bag on Britney. No doubt, most people would criticize the way she looked at that moment, but I only feel one emotion for her and that is pity.

Sure, she's gonna go back to her mansion in the hills while I return to what I refer to as the "Love Shack on Sunshine Terrace." But didn't her parents just try to take her house away from her by having a judge rule them as conservators?

Who can she trust?

Everyone wants something from her.

Even the men she attracts are pathetic and parasitic.

From Doris Duke to Brit, I am stunned by the isolating power of wealth and fame. Her own parents have suspect motives as far as I'm concerned. Geesh, if you can't even trust your own parents...

Twice in the last few months, I have turned on the nightly news to see Brit in an ambulance being rushed to the psychiatric ward of a hospital. I can only guess she threatened to kill herself for the police to have the authority to take her in this way.

The crush of paparazzi (I was surprised there were none in or around Long's Drugs), parasitic friends, boyfriends, management, and perhaps even parents -- not a recipe for a happy life.

I guess I'm starting to understand why so many musicians turn to drugs and alcohol. They want the lives they have while at the same time they want to escape those lives altogether.

What a schizophrenic existence. What a nightmare.

March 2008

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