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Realizing the same camera-equipped menaces tailing her every baby-fumbling, crotch-flashing, and head-shaving misstep might actually be of service to her, troubled pop icon Britney Spears enlisted the help of the paparazzi to locate Lynne Spears, in order to personally serve her estranged mother with a threatening legal letter. The elder Spears's crimes: "Gettin' all naggy n' stuff" about her daughter's hard-partying lifestyle, while cozying up to former pimp/dependent, K-Fed. The entire exchange—not at all staged by the public histrionics enthusiast for the benefit of the lurking video cameras—somewhat fittingly played out on the steps of a trailer. From the NY Post:

The singer's bodyguards had asked some of the fotogs who camp outside her Beverly Hills home if they knew the whereabouts of Lynne Spears.

When the shutterbugs said the elder Spears was holed up nearly an hour away at a TV studio in Valencia, the singer grabbed her two kids - Sean Preston, 21 months, and Jayden James, 9 months - and hit the road in her Mercedes.

With security men in a pair of SUVs flanking her, Spears arrived at set of the kiddie show "Zoey 101," on which little sister Jamie Lynn Spears co-stars. [...]

Spears - wearing a tank top and denim shorts - then handed Lynne, 52, a picture frame and set of papers, including a lawyer's letter warning her to stay away from her grandkids if she's on any medication that might cause her to be impaired...

There may be a connection between this heartwrenching moment of mother-daughter strife and yet another inscrutable message posted to the singer's website earlier this week: "Mother to Grandmother, and my my, you're grand." Whatever the implications of that mysterious phrase (a condemnation? A new entry in her album-naming contest? A sneak preview of her multi-generational maternity wear line?), we can only hope that the once tight-knit family will soon resolve their differences, even if it requires Jamie Lynn barricading the two steel magnolias inside her Zoey 101 trailer to hash things out through some old fashioned bottle-hurling and tears.