Britney Spears: Criss Angel, The VMA Performance, And Xanax, Oh My
I know this is kind of old news, in a way, but there are a few new things I’ve discovered which shed light on Britney, her performance at the VMA’s, and her life in general, that I thought might help piece together the puzzle.
Before the VMA’s, Britney Spears and Criss Angel were seen everywhere together. Eating cozy meals, coming out of restaurants, driving in cars, going into hotel rooms, staying in hotel rooms…and staying…and staying….well, you get the idea. The air was rife with rumors of Criss and Britney, sittin’ in a tree…or maybe that was just the stench of Paris Hilton for Men and Curious. Then, suddenly, the night of the performance, he was nowhere to be found, and hasn’t been seen with the Britster since. Well, Criss decided to clear the air about Britney, himself, and that disastrous VMA performance:
“We were supposed to do a creation of stuff that we worked on and it took a lot of dedication and work to do the things that we wanted to do,” Criss, on the set of his new NBC series Phenomenon, recalls exclusively to OK! about Britney’s planned VMA performance. “Unfortunately for me, she didn’t really want to put forth that type of effort.â€
Criss, who has also been romantically linked to stars Cameron Diaz and Minnie Driver tells OK! that he just wanted what was best for Britney. “Basically I said, ‘Don’t worry about me. Do what you want to do. This is a big opportunity for you to do the VMAs, so if you don’t feel it, go with something else.’ And she chose to go with something else.”
As for reports that their backstage differences had ruined their friendship, Criss tells OK!, “We’re still friends and everything’s cool.â€
Which is of course why he hasn’t been seen with Britney since.
But in doing some digging for this post, I found a few tidbits about Brit’s weekend in Vegas that surprised me.  They came from Robin Leach’s Vegas Luxe Life website, and shed some interesting light on Brit and her lifestyle.
First one told of how Criss had prepared a huge magical illusion spectacular for Brit, including a mirror disappear/reappear illusion and an act involving levitation (all that for a three-and-a-half minute song? Were they doing the extended club remix?), but Brit axed it a week before the VMA’s:
However, after originally agreeing to give them serious rehearsal time, Britney felt they were just too difficult to learn and perform successfully, so she nixed them – to his disappointment and frustration. Hours before her actual appearance, she also had the dance choreography routine shortened and made simpler. She actually went as far as to tell the dancers she doubted they’d even do it at all! She swapped rehearsal chores for major nightclub party time, only winding up with a couple of dance run-throughs - cutting out two significant moves at the very last moment before show-time.
“She just wasn’t willing to give the time to Criss for the rehearsals,†I was told.
And Criss himself commented: “I simply stepped out of the picture and I was watching to see how interesting it would be if they took my advice.†She didn’t, as we all now know!
Hmm. This was posted September 18. A “frustrated” Criss saying “I simply stepped out of the picture and I was watching to see how interesting it would be if they took my advice,” sounds a bit different than, “Don’t worry about me. Do what you want to do. This is a big opportunity for you to do the VMAs, so if you don’t feel it, go with something else.” It sounds like, at the time, he was stepping back and basically saying, “Okay, you think you’re so smart, you think you can do it, go ahead. I’m just going to stand back and watch.” Kind of like a parent does to a little kid who is so sure they can ride their bike without any help, only realizing they can’t after they’ve busted up both the bike and themselves.
But here’s another little piece about that weekend. Apparently, a friend of Leach’s named Jack Colton was in Brit’s suite at 5:30 AM, when Brit stumbled back in after a night of party-hardying:
Jack says that she remained up and awake until 10 a.m. when she was given Xanax pills. The timeline makes that exactly eight hours before “curtain up,†and doesn’t include the additional prescription pills she allegedly took at 4 p.m. when she erupted in to a frenzied rage about her hair and her costume.
Xanax carries a warning: “This medication can cause side effects that may impair your thinking or reactions. Be careful if you do anything that requires you to be awake and alert.†Well - that surely explains that dance routine.
Her eyes look dead in that photo. In fact, if you look at the high-res photos, her eyes look glazed, hooded, and dead in all of them. She just doesn’t appear to be…there.
And here’s one last little snippet, which is surprising in that it claims Brit is actually trying to kick prescription drugs and alcohol, but is simply replacing one problem with another:
In checking with Britney contacts at the weekend, I learned she was devastated about her downfall since appearing at the Palms. She is desperately trying to stay away from both prescription drugs and alcohol, but has friends concerned about her sudden and dramatic desire to shed weight. She believes she was completely out of shape and overweight for the ill-fated VMA opening song, but feels with serious workout sessions and some plastic surgery she could strike a hefty financial deal with Playboy boss Hugh Hefner for a nude layout when she’s back in shape. However, her closest remaining friends are again frightened for her as she is over-using over-the-counter pharmaceuticals to suppress her appetite.
IF indeed she is attempting to kick drugs and alcohol on her own (and I’m not so sure that’s so, but let’s just say she is for right now), coming down can be just as symptomatic as getting high or getting drunk. It could go a long way in explaining some of the more eccentric behavior, but not all of it (the underwear, for example…she told a friend she just doesn’t like to wear panties, and besides she likes to shock people). Could the recent lip injections be the start of the plastic surgery route?
My personal opinion about the drugs and alcohol is this…she may want to get off them, but she can’t do it on her own. She’ll stay away from it for a while, maybe replacing them with other, OTC meds, but after a while it gets to her and she gorges on drugs/alcohol/both.  Then she realizes what is going on and starts the cycle all over.  It could explain why some days she seems to be okay, if perhaps ditzy or goofy, and other days she seems slow and logy and lethargic, and other days she seems angry and hostile.
I also believe she is bipolar, and all this legal/illegal drug-taking and alcohol-imbibing doesn’t help the symptoms. People don’t normally swing that wildly from one extreme to another unless there is some sort of chemical imbalance there to start with and all of this could juts be making it worse.
Plus, I don’t think her continual thumbing her nose at the legal system has anything to do with just being eccentric…she really believes in what she says, and that’s the sad part. She has a warped view of life, and when real life doesn’t conform to her view she just can’t handle it.
 Her family/friends need to stage a tough intervention, and fast.
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good call! Sounds about right. The one thing I heard tho’ was that Criss Angel played her. They had pix of him in LV hooking up with a number of girls the weekend of the VMAs (he seems like an attention whore). Maybe she bailed and drugged herself up bc she met yet another winner. She doesn’t appear to be attracted to the most virtuous of men.
Comment by ebayer — October 23, 2007 @ 11:35 am
I couldn’t agree more and great investigative reporting!
Comment by D — October 23, 2007 @ 1:13 pm
Great job on ferreting out these tidbits of information, which do seem to be helping to put the puzzle pieces together. One has to wonder what it was she took at 4:00, which doubtless had more of an immediate effect on her than the Xanax from 10:00 am. And you’re right about that close-up photo. At first I didn’t see it, but then I looked a little closer and looked at her left eye…and I saw exactly what you were talking about. It’s scary. You described it perfectly, I have nothing to add to that. I guess this is what happens when a celebrity shell shuffles up on stage and tries to lazily flop her way through a big dance routine, huh?
Or then again, maybe it was just that the heel on her boot broke. Right?
Comment by Mitsu — October 23, 2007 @ 1:21 pm
How sad that she appears to be thinking that the only thing she is good for is a nude playboy spread. As if all she has to do is take her clothes off and that’s that. She seems to forget that if she does it, it won’t be anything the world hasn’t already seen.
Tell me though, you think Hef is gonna touch that?
Comment by crazymom — October 23, 2007 @ 2:01 pm
Well and that’s the really sad thing about her - it seems like she really believes that all she has to offer the world is a sexy body and not much else. It’s as if she got that message when she was younger, and she really internalized it to the point that she’s even carrying on the illusion that she’s still the hot young thing she was, by going out in public dressed provocatively and whatnot, because otherwise she would just crumble. Although she could presumably find new meaning and value in being a mother to her children, she seems incapable of getting out of her own little world doing enough to do that, so she’s left with the shadow of her sex-kitten status hanging over her and permeating her entire world, influencing everything she does. Her entire self-worth seems to be based around being a sex symbol. And that’s what’s truly sad.
Comment by Mitsu — October 23, 2007 @ 2:33 pm
Sadly, it appears that she is not going to grow at all from any of these experiences (motherhood, meltdown etc). My money is on the bet that she won’t even be able to get herself together enough to do Playboy and that’s scary considering the even Anna Nicole Smith was a successful centerfold.
Her parenting coach said it all: she won’t listen, she is an absentee parent when she is with her children and she lives in her own little world.
It’s just a matter of time until all of this BS catches up to her and she spontaneously combusts. Personally I think she is being held together by spit and glue. It won’t take long for it all to unravel.
Comment by ebayer — October 23, 2007 @ 6:16 pm
ebayer…I don’t doubt one bit that Criss is an attention whore. He may even be a man-whore. I don’t care for him myself, and I hope the article didn’t come across like I was pro-Criss.
But for all that I don’t like him, I do have to admit he is very media-savvy when it comes to his illusions, and he could have helped Brit with her show had she chose to put the effort into it that she does with her pap appearances.
And rumor is that this went down seven days before the VMA’s, so plenty of time for him to find new arm-candy….or maybe for new arm-candy to adhere to his shoe.
Comment by k — October 23, 2007 @ 7:46 pm
No it didn’t come across that you were pro criss - just adding a little info that I had heard on the grape vine. You know I think Brit was lucky they didn’t work with mirrors and illusions. It could have been more of a disaster than it was! Mirrors aren’t too forgiving if you crash into them.
Comment by ebayer — October 23, 2007 @ 8:10 pm
Nah, I’m not saying that you were, I was just second-guessing myself. It’s my hobby.
You know, now that I think about it, you might be right. Can’t you see Brit walking into a mirror?
Comment by k — October 23, 2007 @ 9:24 pm
I’m not ashamed to say I’m kind of pro Criss in all this. He is an attention whore to the worst degree, but he’s slso really dedicated to his illusions and it didn’t really shock me when he wasn’t there because I didn’t really think he’d take a chance on her nutty ass ruining his career as well. He’s really morphed into a douchebag over the past couple of years, but he’s a smart douchebag when it comes to his career.
Comment by Isa — October 24, 2007 @ 8:54 am
K, comment #9 — I can totally see Britney stopping in front of the mirror to pose and check herself out and getting totally distracted from what she was supposed to be doing!!
“GIMME, GIMME, GIMME…DAMN! I’M HAWT!!!”
Comment by crazymom — October 24, 2007 @ 10:42 am
LOL!!!
Comment by k — October 24, 2007 @ 10:45 am
Criss is NOT an attention whore. He is not any kind of whore. I saw the pictures of him with that other girl, HE WAS SIGNING AN AUTOGRAPH FOR HER. Because criss is such a sweet person, and HAS THE SAME MANAGEMENT, he was going to help, and because she was such a lazy skank, he quit. Get your facts right.
Comment by J — October 24, 2007 @ 12:09 pm
I never said “Criss is a documented attention whore,” as though it were fact. I said that I thought he was an attention whore. My opinion. Feel free to disagree.
And as far as the other girl…first, you don’t know what happened after the autograph (unless you are her), and second, if not her then some other girl. I’m sure Criss has no shortage of magician’s assistants willing to help him with some sleight-of-hand.
Comment by k — October 24, 2007 @ 1:43 pm