If fallen popster Britney Spears didn't post another crazy letter on her website, would the sunrise be quite as striking? Would the air smell quite as sweet? We think not. Thankfully, Britney has started the new year with new letter-o-truth, in which she declares her passion for directorial work (she's a total Fellini fan, we know it) and styling her own videos (in Juicy Couture, of course). Britney also invokes the wisdom of "True Masters," but we don't know if she's talking about Rabbi Berg or her husband's dealers. Ah, really though, who cares? She's got a new dog named Lucky and Lucky's room has a chandelier! What a precious, beautiful world we live in!
Britney:'But What I Really Want To Do Is Direct, Ya'll!' [Stereogum]
Related: Blogger Vividblurry anticipates a definite baby Britney in 2005 and has a handy guide to her imminent pregnancy: "Smoking interferes with your absorption of vitamins B and C and folic acid. Lack of folic acid can result in neural tube defects, which is, like, not very cool, y'all."

One year ago today, America's prefabricated angel, Britney Spears, entered into the holiest of matrimonies...with her first husband, that is. Yes, it's a sad day for childhood yokel-friend-ex-husband Jason Alexander, but the rest of us are celebrating our memories of the beginning of Britney's end. Do the holidays ever stop around here?!
[Image via Vegas Review Journal]

Before you snarf your office party egg nog all over the front of your red shirt in shock that Britney Spears' holiday card to her fans is [Ed .note—We can't believe we're going to say this.] classy, know this: Below the frame of the picture, the couple is naked from the waist down, standing barefoot in a filthy public restroom, and buried up to their knees in Cheetos. You can only see it if you peel off the green "Happy Holidays" sticker.

Because it would be tragic to let the remainder of this rapidly expiring work week slip away without a nod to the latest in foot-related Britney Spears news: The British Sun reports that Spears' bare feet emitted a stench so potent that it sent passengers on a recent LA to NY flight clawing at the emergency doors, clamoring for the relief that only a catastrophic drop in cabin pressure could afford. Luckily, quick-thinking flight attendants convinced Spears to return the offending podia to smell-dampening footwear, avoiding an air travel catastrophe that certainly would've resulted in every American airport adding specially trained, toe-sniffing dogs and foot-washing equipment to their already onerous security procedures. Disaster averted!

A lone voice from the Desert of Truth that is the anonymous Craiglist post, a Britney Spears pregnancy rumor we can all believe in:

—By now everyone knows that insufferable all-time Jeopardy smartypants Ken Jennings goes down in flames tonight after a mere $2.5 million in earnings, but that didn't stop Sony from strong-arming blogger Jason Kottke into taking down his spoilers from the show.
—Maybe CBS didn't like the weird sexual objectification subtly encoded in their MILF-invoking Julia-Roberts-gives-birth headline, because they changed it.
—Someone should tell E! that a bad back and a couple of twins being born does not a curse make. Call us if Brad Pitt gets murdered by a mummy, OK?
—Tara Reid begs for tabloid mercy while crowing about picking up Anna Kournikova's sloppy seconds.
—Bad idea jeans: Licking Britney Spears' feet.

Those sounds you hear are the simultaneous suicides of dozens of sitcom writers, despondent over the instant devaluation of their expensive Harvard educations.

Drawn like a cripple to the healing waters at Lourdes, we felt compelled to make a pilgrimage to a site similarly touched by otherworldly power: the Melrose Avenue t-shirt shop where one Britney Spears composed her incredible Graffiti of Truth on a wall.

Please, don't be alarmed. Britney Spears' face is NOT twisted into a mask of indescribable suffering because she's in the thrall of a fiery attack of an STD that Kevin Federline "forgot" to tell her about—she's merely desperate to use the toilet at a Malibu Jack in the Box. Other photos in the series seem to reveal that Spears' bladder-voiding needs were so urgent that she forgot to remove her shoes before entering the public bathroom, but it's anyone's guess as to whether they remained on once she was in the safety of her own stall.

· Porn star Traci Lords, on sex scenes with rival Ginger Lynn: "I was...disgusted by the thought of the upcoming lesbian scene I was supposed to have with this bitch on wheels. The thought of kissing her grossed me out. But I guess it's better than having to fuck a fleshy hairball like Ron Jeremy, I reasoned, still feeling less than lucky." [Page Six]
· Britney Spears sighted defying the Bloomberg smoking ban at Go. [Page Six]
· The bibliophile's event-to-crash tomorrow (ULA? Anyone?) : the P.E.N. literary gala at the Pierre tomorrowco-chaired by Tina Brown. [Page Six]
· Hotel mogul Vikram Chatwal's 5K media company is launching a Kama Sutra-themed lounge called K-space in Midtown next month. [Page Six]
· Eminem's favorite relaxation is a weekly facial at some posh spot in New York or Los Angeles. (That can't be good for his street cred.) [Liz Smith]
· Met catcher Mike Piazza says he still confesses to a priest after every time he and girlfriend former Playboy Playmate Alicia Rickter have sex. Rapper "Ol' Dirty Bastard" is changing his name to "Dirt McGirt." [NY Daily News]

"Don't fuck with me while I'm shopping!"

Director John Waters when asked whom he'd hex (Michael Jackson-style): "I'd never give my enemies the satisfaction of acknowledging them in print. But I'll tell you a hex that works: When the person you loathe leaves the room, lick their chair. Something awful will happen." Thanks, John. Now if you'll excuse me, Britney Spears just left the room, and I have to go pull the splinters out of my tongue.
Curses! [NY Mag]

· Ex-Variety editor Ramin Zahid says he was fired by Editor-in-Chief Peter Bart because he was gay. [Page Six]
· Angie Everhart is actually 33 and not 28, as previously reported. [Page Six]
· Tommy Mottola spotted dining with Harvey Weinstein at the Four Seasons, possibly hinting at a future collaboration. [Page Six]
· Britney Spears on why she walked out of a Sundance screening 45 minutes into the movie, raising Robert Redford's ire: "The official line is we had our schedules mixed up, so we had to leave, but I didn't like the movie...Sundance is weird. The movies are weirdyou actually have to think about them when you watch them." [Page Six]
· Arista Records honcho L.A. Reid is at war with American Idol producer Simon Fuller over Annie Lennox, who Fuller manages. Insiders say Fuller is a formidable match for Reid. [Page Six]
· Oasis singer Noel Gallagher on Christina Aguilera: "She looks like some fucking tart from fucking Newcastle." On the Beatles: "I've said it to them, you were so fucking lucky you were first because if Oasis performed in 1962...I'd be bigger than all of you." [Page Six]
· Mimi Hare and Clare Naylor's book, The Second Assistant, a roman-a-clef about being an assistant in Hollywood was expected to find a publisher by last night; Liz Hurley's new squeeze, Arun Nayar, is still married; and Luke Wilson doesn't want to talk to reporters because "I just want to be abstract." [NY Daily News]

· Tina Brown uses a word that's too big for the NY media community to understand. [Page Six]
· Submercer's "subversion" party features hotshot editors as DJs. Up next: Radar's Maer Roshan, Spin's Sia Michel, and Vanity Fair's Dana Brown. [Page Six]
· Macaulay Culkin had to teach Marilyn Manson how to smoke for his role in the Sundance film Party Monster. [Page Six]
· Page Six discovers Ken Courtney's controversial T-shirts. [Page Six]
· The Key West home of the recently-divorced Mr. & Mrs. Gerald Levin will be featured in an upcoming issue of Architectural Digest. [Cindy Adams]
· Sign in the Q3 bus to LaGuardia: "The driver reserves the right to kick your ass." [Cindy Adams]
· Robert Redford finds Britney Spears' Sundance invasion annoying. [Liz Smith]
· Paramount head Sherry Lansing is rumored to be the next head of the Carter Center; a movie about New York real estate heir turned transvestite fugitive is in the works; and model Angie Everhart has "fired everyone in her life" and is starting over. [NY Daily News]

This has to be a devastating blow to Britney Spears. And half the population of the East Village.
Hiphuggers' tingly thighs [via BoingBoing]

· New Year's Eve brawl at SPA: the bouncers vs. the promoters, and even people in South Beach have had enough of P. Diddy. [Page Six]
· Page Six realizes that one of their "Most Eligible Bachelorettes"Saturday Night Live's Tina Feyis actually married. [Page Six]
· Soprano's star Joe Pantoliano stiffs guests at New Year's Eve dinner in Hoboken. [Page Six]
· John Cusack and Woody Allen are making a film about the infamous 1972 New Year's Day robbery at the Pierre Hotel. [Page Six]
· Cindy Adams bashes Starbucks. (Bashing Starbucks is soooo three-and-a-half weeks ago.) [Cindy Adams]
· Britney Spears misses her own New Year's Eve dinner party at the Hudson Hotel; former boy band member Joey McIntyre (of "New Kids on the Block") kicked out of Brooklyn hipster bar; Luciano Pavarotti splits with his longtime NY rep, Herbert Breslin; and Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw spotted catching "Chicago" at the Ziegfeld on New Year's Day. [NY Daily News]

We've avoided it as long as possible, but we think it's time: Britney and Justin. (Yes, we know.) The princess of pop provoked a bar-room brawl at Bungalow 8 by flirting with one guy and then dancing with another. Britney's on a six-month career break (Thank you, Britney!) and has been spotted club hopping at Suite 16, Lotus, etc.,an early indictor, perhaps, of their impending declines. The 20-year-old "virgin" good girl has been getting down, tossing 'em back and lighting up. She and ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake are no longer together because he "doesn't trust her." On the readiest available alternative, Justin comments: "I'm not a huge fan of [masturbation.] I mean, it is what it is, a safe haven, there when you need it, and I don't feel guilty about it. But I always like to do everything at its best, and that just seems like settling, doesn't it?"
Britney starts fight [People News]
Justin time [Salon]

A twisted fan site for the pop princess.britney exposed!...