This is not for those who think Justin Timberlake is bringing sexy back (what no Screech from Saved by the Bell look-a-like, castrato, accountant was available for the job). This is about someone who is bringing soul back. Yeah, I could be talkin’ ‘bout singer Amy Winehouse. She sorta counts. She certainly has had the quote of the year. Y’know the one ‘bout not worrying ‘bout the bruises on her face, cuz it wasn’t that her boyfriend hit her or anything it was just that she was about to do crack with a ho, and he stopped her. But, tho I like her record, she doesn’t have the record of the year. That accolade belongs to, well, don’t tase me bro for saying this but it’s Britney bitch!

I may be the first to use the poet Wallace Stevens and Britney Spears in the same sentence (I am afraid to google it tho cuz it might turn out I’m not as original as I thought-I hate when that happens), but see Stevens wrote this great piece o’ po called Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, and for some reason while I was reading it recently I kept thinking ‘bout “the legendary Ms. Britney Spears.” Among twenty snowy mountains /, the poem begins / The only moving thing / Was the eye of the blackbird.

Well, she is um, in the news. Her recent, ah, performance where she looked like she’d been dipping into Siegfried and Roy’s animal tranquilizers (“what happens in Vegas ... seems to be the template for all contemporary entertainment”), is this generation’s zapruder tape, you know the pre-youtube grainy video of our president getting shot that a previous, previous generation obsessively poured over.

[this just in, the commission report is out, and it has been decided that Britney was “dancing” alone]

Kidz were playing that video one million times each. Look, look, that’s where she trips, I love that. Kidz chill. All this is is what happens when people don’t rehearse! Like the Iraq war. Oh, but we’re not talking ‘bout that. It was awful. But here’s a question, how awful would it have been had she executed the whole thing flawlessly. Now that would have been awful. And that would be what we’ve had for 25 f’ing years ever since the M Word helped us confuse aerobics with dancing and miming with singing, and the artist’s heart with discoveries in stainless steel.

Britney’s new record, Blackout is great. It is great for many reasons, but especially cuz it’s a techno record drippin’ in the grease and oil of humane-beanness, not robotics. It comes with a scratch ‘n sniff of her nu perfume, but you don’t need that. You can smell her without it, like a Klimt drawing. I always sorta wondered at the fact that Britney seemed to nose dive after the M Word gave her that brutal staged kiss a few years back. But maybe it wasn’t a kiss of death, maybe it was mouth to mouth, with Britney breathing life into a tired genre. We are humane beans. We do shave our heads, and show our pussies, and are not always perfect with our kids. Now let’s dance and stumble a lil’ bit. O.k.?