I'm Britney's Neighbor, Bitch

For some reason, my wife and I never got around to baking brownies for Britney Spears and bringing them over in a welcome wagon. That's probably for the best since I'm pretty sure that armed guard outside her gated community wouldn't have let us in anyway. Besides for what now seems like forever, our little stretch of the Hollywood Hills has regularly been besieged by a tireless pack of bottom dwelling scumbags -- oops, I'm sorry, I meant dedicated professional tabloid journalists apparently committed to documenting and perhaps expediting a little human tragedy in an area with a view.

Though she probably doesn't remember it, Brit and I actually have, shall we say, a little history together. No, I never slept with her, but I did briefly hang out with her and Justin backstage once upon a more carefree and poppier time at some now canceled award show. Our next encounter was when I wrote a few lines for her at the Grammy Awards when she presented an award with Matthew Perry.

From there our non-relationship got more complex. I happen to be there when Britney, Madonna and Christina Aguilera extensively and, I will confess, entertainingly rehearsed their famous onstage kisses for MTV's Video Music Awards. Later, weeks after she married that guy named Jason Alexander, we were this close to having Britney do a send-up of that short-lived matrimonial bliss with that other, funnier Jason Alexander of Seinfeld fame on yet another Grammy show. Not for the last time, Britney dropped out at the last moment, and so we ended up replacing her with someone who we knew we could count on -- Snoop Dogg.

Sure, there are so many other stray and decidedly non-sordid memories of my so-called life with the Britster that I could share here. But I'm writing this now simply to say at long last, there's good news to report. I watched Britney earlier this week as a needy receptionist on How I Met Your Mother and was genuinely happy to see that this recovering pop tart came off as once again being plenty cute and functionally funny.

For what it's worth, I just want to say that it's so very nice to see a sweet girl from the neighborhood finally get a shot in show business.