Mad Atoms

The embarrassing amount of celebrity trivia I’ve soaked up in my entire life, against all odds, has actually come in handy. It got me a job as a gossip columnist, which is more than film school ever got for me. Turns out I didn’t need to spend over one hundred thousand dollars on a top-rate college education when all I needed was an Us Weekly subscription. Guess the joke’s on me!

I began working in gossip during the peak of Britney Spears’ pink wig phase of insanity, when each day wrought forth a new tragic chapter in this girl’s life, worse than the day before. In our meetings at work, we talk about the Britney’s demise like it’s an inevitability we should all be prepared for, like bringing a coat in case it gets cold. An overdose, a car crash, or the spontaneous combustion of the world’s most famous woman would provide us with great items for weeks – nay, months! Suicide would be even better news, since we could analyze – and reanalyze – what could have possibly gone wrong to make this poor, sweet mother of two take her own life. My heart fills with cold, black oil just thinking about it.

Back in January, when she was dismissed from the Cedars-Sinai psychiatric ward, Britney booked herself into the Beverly Hills Hotel.

My boss sent me there to see if I could sniff her out. Ask the staff about her. Find out if anyone had visited her. I couldn’t believe I was actually ordered to find, follow and grill a 26-year-old girl with personal questions that if my own friends asked me, I’d slap them across the face. Unfortunately, locating one specific person, particularly one who is more heavily guarded than the Queen of England (in a city of three million people), isn’t as easy as you’d think.

When I got there, there were already a handful of paparazzi waiting outside the building, petting their giant cameras in their SUV’s, bored out of their minds. My guess is they sat there day in and day out, hoping that Britney would leave her hotel room, preferably without underwear on, and they’d catch the money shot. One perfect perverted photo could make them hundreds of thousands of dollars. I guess if I had a hunch that a fuckload of cash might fall from the sky in one particular spot, I’d probably be waiting there day in and day out, too.

I was never able to find Britney Spears, my white whale. Which is a shame, because I think we’d hit it off.

I imagine us running into one another on the street, striking up a conversation, and chit-chatting about politics at Starbucks over a Frappuccino with two straws.

It’s probably for the best we never meet, since stalking a girl with a mental disorder really makes me a part of the problem instead of the solution, and she really needs to get healthy and live a normal life.

Then again, Britney’s never-ending insanity allows me to pay my bills, so do I really want this nutcase to get better? Fuck her. I’ve got student loans to pay off.