It is a weird thing to me that the single most pursued, watched and written-about celebrity within the "thirty-mile zone" of Los Angeles continues to be a young woman whose most commercially viable days as a pop musician seem to have come and gone. On the other hand, Britney Spears could always make a real musical comeback. God knows unlikelier things have happened in the long, strange journey that has already been her life, and things lately seem to be looking up.

Will Britney show up at the VMAs? Will she perform? Present? Even speak? How will she look? What will she wear? Who will she be with? A rapt nation will have to wait a few more days for those answers. Meantime, I can't help but recall, as I often do every time that she is back on the public's radar, the first time I met Britney — and the entire Spears clan — in the town she put on the map: Kentwood, Louisiana. Read more...