If the Circus Were a Brothel...

So few things from childhood remain pristine through the transition into adulthood. While we remember our favorite TV shows and novels, when revisited they often sting us with the realization of distorted nostalgia. I mean, remember when Boy Meets World went through its "serious phase" and Fred Savage tried to rape Topanga? Yeah, like that.

The few things that do remain, however, are the sweetest and rarest. Where would we be today if the Spice Girls still toured, Clarissa was still explaining it all, and Saved By the Bell had gone on to the Grad School Years (with Slater writing his dissertation on the respective arts of Dance and Astronomy)? They would no longer be the things we loved, but rather worn out shadows begging the public to grant them relevance. I fantasized about the maturation of my childhood this week as I sat in the Staples Center waiting for Britney --yes, THE Britney-- to appear onstage. These are my musings.

Britney is Not a Girl, Just Kind of a Sad Woman

The only back story to my going to this concert is that an anonymous donor gave a few hundred tickets to Student Affairs, and I'm awesome. So Green Jeans and I put on the Britney playlist, bought tee shirts, and waited impatiently for the lights to go down. Which they did. And we descended into the crevasse known as Britney's Psyche. There were acrobats. And trapeze artists. And Max from The Max doing magic tricks. And fire. And a lady with no legs on a trampoline. It was, quite literally, a circus. Firey rings shot up around the stage, furniture descended from the ceiling, and a confused young man was strapped to a Victorian fainting couch and had to suffer though clowns thrusting in his face for a few minutes while Britney wandered aimlessly around the stage.

My theory is as follows: Someone bought "Eyes Wide Shut" from a discount bin at Best Buy and popped it in on Britney's last tour bus. Once the Masquerade Ball scene came on, her ears perked up. The second a naked beauty queen showed up wearing a mask, ole Brit stood up and pointed her finger shouting, "THAT. I want a whole concert of THAT."

So large mechanical wheels somewhere started turning, gears and gizmos started churning, and at the end of a long Mouse-Trap-inspired contraption, a chemical beaker steamed up and boiled until it triggered a bell, which heralded the arrival of the Britney Spears Circus Tour.

Though a far cry from her disasterous VMA performance, the concert was a pretty obvious cover for what Britney has become. The fire and acrobats, though pretty and distracting (when they weren't deeply disturbing) couldn't distract from the dulled edges of a once-great popstar; her body moved with the softness of a distracted child whose mechanical responses to your commands are really only the means to an end of eventually being left alone. Despite her being more in the audience than onstage, Britney put on a hell of a show; a circus, if you will.

Sometimes, our childhoods are resurrected by the Sandlot playing on TV one Sunday afternoon, the smell of popcorn wafting over the horribly rusted and unsafe rollercoasters at a church carnival, or a misguided wish at a Zoltan machine which results in wacky consequences. The process of aging adds a bitterness the to the sweetness of memory at its best, and brings a horribly clear vision of what once dazzled us at its worst. Too much time has passed over our diva, rendering the person she once was untouchable, try as we may to reach her as every new album comes out. As she slips further and further from us, her show just gets bigger and bigger; the spectacle of her life has been obscured by the spectacle of her absurd performances. And if it keeps her dancing to "Toxic," I suppose I'll take what I can get.

Also, a video of her lip syncing to Marilyn Manson's "Sweet Dreams" dropped down right after she ascended to the ceiling on a giant umbrella singing the ballad "Everytime." Seriously.