Britney Spears is 30 years old today. That makes me feel really old, because the first time I saw her, she was 17 I think, and that was well under half my age at the time. Now, at 30, she is finally more than half my age, which is cool, but she’s no teenager any more.
30 and looking good
We haven’t heard too much about her for awhile, which is probably a good thing, considering her rather turbulent life. We haven’t heard of her being put in any more mental institutions, shaving her head for no apparent reason, flashing her hoo-ha for the paparazzi, recklessly endangering her children or any of that stuff which prompted the short lived fame of Chris Crocker.
See, there’s the deal with Britney. She was so famous that some crazy gay dude who lived with his grandparents in a small town in the deep south and had no particular talent could post a video on youtube just of him standing in front of a white curtain and screaming “Leave Britney Alone!” while sobbing so hard that his mascara ran down his cheeks, and it was a hit. Crocker got just about the amount of fame Andy Warhol predicted everybody would get, but it was a key moment in youtube’s steady path to total cultural saturation.
When Madonna grabbed Britney and kissed her at the VMA awards, hundreds of millions of men got simultaneous boners. That’s power.
I like Britney. Her songs might be pretty much totally devoid of social and political comment, but that’s O.K. She’s got a fair voice, she’s a great dancer, a hell of a good looking woman and, something I respect very much, she’s a hard worker.
Sure, she went a little crazy for a while, and she’ll probably never win the mother of the year award, but she keeps churning out the albums. That’s quite different from Lindsey Lohan, who is not only an insane party animal, but probably the laziest actress in Hollywood.
So, on her 30th birthday, I wish Britney Spears all the happiness in the world. May she stay out of trouble and have great success in her professional and personal life. She deserves it.
www.gurukalehuru.com 
I always use her to reassure myself; she is my age, and I could have been famous, ex-famous, crazy, married for a matter of days, etc…