Britney In The Center of the Ring

Photo Courtesy of MTV.COM

Last week I attended the third and final Britney Spears show at Madison Square Garden and before you judge me let me just say this--I got $60 tickets for $18. WHO in their right mind WOULDN'T go see that hot mess for $18?? Ya feel me?? I go to plenty of real shows and see plenty of awesome bands so I think it's perfectly acceptable that I wanted to see the pop icon of my generation on the cheap before she can't even be propped up to pretend to sing any more. And really, who doesn't want to hear a little "Toxic" or "Womanizer "wasted with smoke machines and jumbo trons? That's right, YOU DO! Now that you've admitted it and we're all on the same level let's move on...

So thankfully my friends and I decided to skip out on the opening act (Jordin Sparks, barf) and made it just in time for the count down to Brit. We had our $9.25 fountain soda, sippy cup sized beers in hand as we huffed it up to our nosebleed seats, which were shockingly not so terrible!



The show opened with a techno overture--no live instruments of course--along with performers from the Big Apple Circus. Midgets and legless girls jumping on trampolines abound (I have no idea how jumping on a trampoline with no legs wasn't killing her business with every bounce) and it was... entertaining? Ehh, not really who am I kidding, it was dull. I get that it was a Circus themed show and all but if you're gonna go all out circus go ALL OUT CIRCUS! Where were the elephants and tigers jumping through hoops? And clowns!? Well, maybe tigers wouldn't be a good idea since Britney's reflexes aren't at their sharpest these days and clowns are kind of scary, but at least a baby elephant would have been good!

Finally after about 20 minutes of circus freaking Britney, our ringmaster for the evening, was revealed via the prerecorded Queen of the Circus, Perez Hilton, and to everyone's relief she looked good! Really good! She definitely got her shape back and she knew it. But the moves, still not quite there unfortunately. It was much better than her disastrous "Gimme More" comeback performance at the VMA's but it was still mostly a lot of hand movements, strutting and posing and not much real dancing. Her backup dancers we really good, though they probably needed to be to distract you from the lack of mmmph coming from Britney herself.

The token "wtf?" moments of the night included a video of Britney dancing, or not so much dancing but slinking around in a teddy with more carny freaks and gay backup dancers to Marilyn Manson's "Sweet Dreams," and then some sexy cartoon versions of Britney on the jumbo tron that were actually kind of entertaining. Another random highlight was Ed Alonzo, aka Max the magician from "Saved By The Bell," who is a real illusionist whom I also caught on an episode of "Top Chef" recently.



Ed, aka Max, made Britney disappear from inside a box...

Courtesy f MTV.com

and then reappear in nerd glasses and red spandex pants that seemed to disappear on the jumbo tron, highlighting only a green underpants line below her waste. DOUBLE ILLUSION! Classy Britney.












Courtesy of MTV.com

The best songs of the night were definitely the older hits such as "Boys," "Hit Me Baby One More Time," "Slave," and "Toxic." The new songs didn't fall short either "Gimme More," If You Seek Amy" and "Womanizer" were the biggest crowd pleasers but then again it's hard for prerecorded pop songs to fall short when you know exactly how everything is gonna go down. And when I say this show was prerecorded I mean this bitch didn't actually speak or sing one word on her own. Apparently she yelled "what's up NY" at some point but my second fountain beer on top of the two glasses of sangria I had consumed earlier that night must have kicked in because I totally missed that part.

All in all it was a good show for $18. Had I spent $60 or more (which I would have NEVER done!) I probably would have been a little disappointed in the lack of energy but I got what I was expecting and hoping for, a ridiculous and entertaining spectacle with drunken dancing and to see a recovering pop legend get a second or third or 8th chance at doing what she does best... taking off her clothes and lip syncing. Hey give her a break, she's Britney Bitch.