I was there, with my daughter and her friend, to see Britney in person. We had about an hour to kill before the gates slid open. All around us, 8-year-old girls clutched homemade “I luv you Britney” posters. Magic Marker tattoos — “I heart Britney” — appeared on every other arm. Behind me, a suburban mom dialed out on her cellphone: “We’re in line at the gate. We’ll see you inside.” On my left, two Latino boys, maybe 14 and 10, braced Britney pictures against the gentle breeze and the sway of the crowd. One of the sponsors of the event, I-Zone, had set up a huge banner, about 12 feet by 6. We were encouraged to autograph this banner, which presumably would be presented to Ms. Spears for storage in her hope chest. A typical entry: “Hello Britney, I’m John and I would love to meet you.”

I-Zone makes little cameras that produce sticky photographs — kind of a Post-It/snapshot combo — that young people can plaster on book bags and clothing. But since these photos are only slightly larger than postage stamps, any identifying characteristics of the people pictured are lost. This somewhat diminishes their value as mementos. Still, the banner was covered with these little snapshots, giving it, despite the bright colors and logos, a somber air — the kind of artifact one gives to a grieving family after a funeral service.

My daughter has the door to her bedroom plastered with pictures of Britney. The door, in fact, is called “The Britney Door.” In the middle of her collage is the written statement, “I’m not obsessed with Britney. You just don’t understand the concept.”

In my case, that’s true enough. When I was her age, was there anything even remotely resembling Britney? We had Annette, I suppose, and Hayley Mills. Sandra Dee. That sort of thing. If they made personal appearances, they were at car lot grand openings in Encino, Calif., where they’d wave at the crowd, then move on to the next “event.”

Some of them made records, and probably toured behind them. But teen events back in my day were afterthoughts — held in high school gyms or the auditorium at the Elks Club. The teen market was not the focus of the entertainment industry.

Britney is miles beyond that. She has sponsors. Besides the sticky-pictures people, she had Youtopia.com. An alarmingly healthy young blond woman was passing out postcards on its behalf throughout the crowd. On its front was a picture of Britney (of course); on its back was a list of the “cool stuff” available on the site, including “live virtual experiences with Britney,” “chatting with Britney,” “virtual dating” and MUCH MORE!

Britney’s tunes were playing over the loudspeaker. Everybody knew the words to every song. Moms, dads, teens, preteens — all of them were mouthing the words. Eight-year-olds were doing gesture-perfect imitations of Britney’s moves.

Behind us, the DJ was saying, “We need to see some moves up here.” A 4-year-old had taken the stage. I couldn’t see her, but she was wearing a fairy princess hat and a pink cone with a ribbon at its tip. As she sang along with “Baby One More Time,” I could see the top of the pink cone wobbling just above the heads of the crowd.

Herbal Essence was another sponsor, as was the “Got Milk?” campaign. Pictures of Britney endorsing these concepts looked down on us as we moved forward. Signs warned us that weapons and illegal drugs, among other things, were not allowed inside. Rounding the pathway, coming around the hill, the amphitheater beckoned on the left, and on our right: souvenirs, beer, bratwurst, lattes and Radio Disney. The DJ there kept shouting at us to “make some noise” as we walked by. He also claimed to offer “awesome” prizes, many of them Britney-related.

I-Zone and “Got Milk?” had partnered up in that irritating new-economy way. They had a booth in which you could be photographed next to a life-sized poster of a milk-mustached Britney. You were provided with a milk mustache of your own: a piece of white tape. Walking by, I noticed half a dozen or so unclaimed photographs lying on a table. The show was emceed by a fellow named Slam (he spelled it for us), who was also Britney’s drummer. After the obligatory “Wassup!” he reinforced the benign but firm zero-tolerance attitude of the facility by asking us to buy the blue and green glowsticks being sold and hold those aloft, instead of the potentially dangerous cigarette lighters, matches or cigarettes (forbidden, of course).

Not having the benefit of binoculars, it seemed to me that the opening acts were all the same procession of tiny people wearing shiny pants, moving around energetically, if not always appropriately, to pop songs. From time to time, I retreated to the rear of the amphitheater to watch the sun go down. We were stationed on a blanket on the lawn in the general seating section. Each time I returned, I had to step over dozens of homemade Britney signs, which would be held aloft when Britney finally hit the stage, and which Britney would never see.

There was perhaps a 45-minute lag between the time the last opening act left the stage and Britney Spears took it. Every time a song would end on the sound system, the huge crowd took its cue to chant “Britney! Britney!” Or “We want Britney! We want Britney!” As the wait wore on, the crowd became restive. A 7-year-old behind me would groan “Urg!” whenever Britney did not appear. At one point, a vast moan went through the audience — with a distinctively female preteen timbre to it — as though an entire generation of girls had simultaneously and spontaneously tasted despair.

But this was not a lasting despair, if such it was. Soon enough, the big screens lit up to show Britney commercials — one for Herbal Essence, and one for “Got Milk?” Strangely, the audience did not seem irritated by this.

Then Britney’s head appeared on the screens — rather, a starburst with three Britney heads in it, shooting through a tunnel or swirling vortex. The crowd was screaming so loudly, it was difficult to make out what the computerized Britney heads were saying, but I did hear: “You have accessed the Britney Spears experience.”

And so we had. The lights went down, the Britney heads blinked out and blue lights appeared in the monitors, mirroring the blue and green glowsticks waved aloft in the audience.

A glowing silver disco ball, accompanied by gyrating dancers, descended on the stage. Britney emerged from it and began to sing and dance “Crazy,” to the delight of the audience.

Regarding Britney’s career so far, my daughter has ventured the opinion that her first album presented the teen crooner as a needy mess. The only thing she wanted out of life was for her boyfriend to come back to her.

On her second album, however, she’s her own woman. “Oops! … I Did It Again,” the title tune from that CD, is the singer’s half-hearted apology to a poor sap who keeps falling in love with her. Britney keeps forgetting herself (“To lose all my senses/That is just so typically me”) and seducing the guy. She’s just too absent-minded. It’s not her fault.

Onstage, she did her revised version of “Satisfaction,” in which she complains that, while watching her TV, “A girl comes on and tells me/How tight my skirt should be/But she can’t tell me who to be/I’ve got my own identity.” The impact of this mild outburst against being misunderstood was undercut somewhat by the fact that she was sitting on a throne while she was singing it, flanked by two dancers who were fanning her with giant feathers.

OK, she went from angst-driven loser to angst-driven teen queen in one short year. Maybe there hasn’t been an image revision this major since Dylan went electric. I’m not qualified to judge.

Yet, watching her frenetic performance — full of her trademark groans, growls and even a few Michael Jackson yelps thrown in, and exhibiting her distinctive, somewhat eccentric choreography — it’s still hard for me to imagine just who she is. A more interesting question, though: Why does she tower above her competitors, the Mandy Moores, the Christina Aguileras and the Hokus?

One of her new songs proclaims, “Baby, what you see is what you get.” But what are we seeing? This is simplicity itself? Her show is a cross between a public appearance at a county fair and a Las Vegas extravaganza, full of dancers and explosions, and enhanced by video monitors as big as SUVs.

At one point, video footage of ‘N Sync appears, and the members “ask” four audience members, who’ve been pulled onstage: “What would you do to meet Britney?” These four are then asked to bark like a dog, flop like a fish, belt out a Britney favorite and walk like a chicken, respectively.

The winner (the chicken imitator) had his picture taken with Britney on her Toon Teen bedroom set, and then was whisked offstage as she launched into “I Was Born to Make U Happy,” one of several “my boyfriend left me and I’m worthless” laments from her first CD. Supposedly, certain segments of our culture — those segments that are required to worry about this sort of thing — wonder if Britney is a bit too sexy for the room, if you know what I mean. I can report that Britney closed her show with “(Hit Me) Baby One More Time,” dressed like a Catholic schoolgirl (kind of). At one point during this song, she flashed her panties at us. (This may, however, have been just another spin on “What You See Is What You Get.”)

I don’t know. There is a certain calculated “wholesome” look to her: what used to be Playboy magazine’s version of “the girl next door.” (But in what neighborhood would that “next door” be? None I’ve ever lived in.) Aside from the panty-flashing moment, there was nothing even remotely sexual about the show. It was mainly athletic, I guess. Some men may have fantasies about her, but I doubt in real life you could get her to sit still or pay attention long enough to fulfill them. She’s a busy gal. She’s got her tour. She’s got photo sessions. She’s got products to endorse. She’s got rehearsals. She’s got image makeover consultancy sessions. She doesn’t have time for us as sexual beings. Or for herself either, I’m betting. She is only 18, after all.

At one point, Britney stood at the top of a staircase, in a gown whose glittering train trailed down 20 feet or more. Reeking of a showbiz insincerity that seemed so false it may have been genuine, she said, “Oh my goodness. I would give anything to hold this moment, to see all your smiling faces. You have blessed me SOOOOO much.” (How she could see our smiling faces beyond her lights is another mystery.) Then she launched into “Don’t Let Me Be the Last to Know,” an overblown piece of Shania Twain twaddle that she worked like a pro.

Her encore, of course, was “Oops! … I Did It Again.” Its chorus, firmly embedded in America’s back brain by now, ends with “Oops, you think I’m in love/That I’m sent from above/I’m not that innocent.” This encore ended as flames shot out from center stage, and Britney was sucked down into them, as if into the very bowels of hell itself. And that was the show. Good night, everybody!

Waiting for the cars to clear out so we could make our long way home, my daughter, her friend and I discussed what we’d seen. They were grateful to have seen Britney, but expressed a little disappointment, particularly in her treatment of the current single “Lucky,” Britney’s “Sunset Boulevard”-ish song about a movie star who seems to have it all, but cries herself to sleep every night.

The tune had been staged in the Toon Teen bedroom set, with Britney singing verses into a hairbrush and bouncing on her bed as though she were a typical teen pretending to be Britney singing the song. And there were dancers swarming all over the room — her imaginary friends? Beats me.

Then they all ran off, and came back dressed like sailors. Then Britney ran off, and reemerged dressed like a Gilbert and Sullivan admiral, as American flags appeared on the monitors. By any reckoning, the presentation was bizarre. Any connection to the song itself was tenuous at best.

Then there was the question of, shall we say, “emotional distance.” Britney grunts and growls and sweats and seems to put her heart into her performance, but there’s something a little off about her. It’s as if she’s thinking about something else, no matter what she’s doing, some little chore she forgot perhaps. She’s vague, distracted. Between songs, she seemed a little dreamy. My daughter said she was going to her “Britney place.”

Huh? Maybe that’s it. Britney, after all, doesn’t even seem like a teenager any more. She looks about 30, and not a very interesting 30 — a parody of a teen. She’s a teen, but a teen deprived of typical teen experiences. Instead, she must provide those experiences for us.

She reminded me of a very competent flight attendant, really talented, there to amuse us until it’s time for our plane to take off. Only there is no plane. There’s just her. And she knows it. Sooner or later, her antics will fail to amuse, and we’re all going to drift away from the terminal, back to our cars and homes. And so will she, if she has a home to drift to.

As we sat in the parking lot after the show, all around us 12-year-old girls were dancing around their motionless vehicles, working up spontaneous routines, mimicking Britney’s moves. A car rolled by, filled with 18-year-old girls, hitting the horn and shouting, “Honk if you love Britney!”

Car horns echoed in the hot summer night. I thought of a pre-Disneyfied Britney, if there was such a person, bouncing on a trampoline, lip-synching Madonna songs and mimicking her moves. And where is that little girl? Wearing the fairy princess cone, I suppose, lost in a crowd of screaming heads, in a world where every event is sponsored to the nines, and every prize is awesome, even if it’s not.\

Thanks to Paula Abdul, the bar for speaking coherently as a judge has been set remarkably low. Paula was one of the original judges when “American Idol” began 10 years ago, and she made the jump with Cowell to “X Factor” last year, where she continued to vend her particular brand of addled kindness, never saying anything mean or insightful, and often saying it in spacey and strange ways. Spears is, of course, way more famous than Paula Abdul, and if she sits on the panel and says nice, meaningless things to the contestants each and every show, she will have earned her money. (It’s basically what the booted Nicole Scherzinger did all last season of “X Factor,” and just by virtue of being Britney Spears, Britney will be better at it.)

“X Factor” doesn’t need a hyper-articulate ballbuster to do this job and do it well. The time of sharp, critical insight on the singing shows — which initially seemed so crucial to “Idol’s” massive success — has passed. If viewers regularly lament how dull and plodding the judging rounds are now that even Cowell has tempered his honesty, “Idol” remains the biggest show on television with a judging panel that consists of Steven Tyler, Jennifer Lopez and Randy Jackson, a group as likely to insult a singer as call a newborn baby ugly.

But even if all that’s required of Spears is a season’s worth of banal compliments, that will add up to more sustained speaking than Spears has ever publicly done before. Rarely, if ever, has there been a person as famous as Britney Spears who talks so infrequently. Her most famous moments are all gestural — dancing in music videos, performing on the stage at some MTV awards show, shaving her head, bashing a window. Long before her breakdown, she displayed an uncanny tendency to speak in linguistic white noise, to say sentences that contained almost no content, just lots of y’alls and “you knows” and “oh my goshes” and a basic mood of sweetness, excitement, gratitude, eventually disconnect, and more recently, in her conservatorship years, anxiety and discomfort.

If this doesn’t make Spears a perfect judge for “X Factor” it should make her a perfect character for “X Factor.” The drama of Britney — how she will be, what she will say, and how she will hold up — is a story line at least as compelling as the one that will play out with the performers, if not far more so. We’ve been watching her for 13 years, not merely half a TV season. It’s possible “X Factor” will be as good for her career as “Idol” has been for Jennifer Lopez’s, but it’s more likely it will be uncomfortable and upsetting, a full season of watching a zonked-out Spears nervously navigate a live TV show. But we Americans owe Britney Spears a pension and worker’s comp for pain and suffering risked for our entertainment, and I’m happy a major corporation is paying it out (to the tune of $15 million). However “X-Factor” goes for Britney, I can’t wait to see what she says.

2. Britney Spears is a comedian now

The singer brings the gift of laughter (along with auto-tune) to her latest single “I Wanna Go.“  I’d tell her not to quit her day job, but she doesn’t have one.

3. “Footloose” remake gets a trailer

After Zac Efron took a pass on the film,  MTV hired unknown Kenny Wormald to fill Kevin Bacon’s loose shoes. His biggest advantage as far as I can tell is looking pretty much exactly like Zac Efron.

4. Watching the Internet is bad for the environment

Every time we use our computer, we unleash .2 grams of carbon dioxide into the air, according to this new video. Still less less harmful than cow farts, though.

5. Charlie Day stops by Fallon for “Long Pour” beer challenge

I will literally watch anything Charlie Day is in. This is why I now own two copies of “Going the Distance” and have already pre-ordered my tickets for “Horrible Bosses.”

But it’s 2011 and, as they say, Britney is back (bitch). She guest-starred in a “Glee”-themed episode revolving around her music, just purchased an $18.9 million mansion, and has released the first music video off her new “Femme Fatale” album, “Hold It Against Me.”

But just what are we looking at here?

So what’s going on here? An alien Britney falls to earth in a comet, but she spends the entire video inside of a metal room filled with wires, video feeds and Sony computers/televisions. In between rising above ground in a giant wedding dress with IV tubes plugged into her, Britney-alien-bot imagines a room where two other versions of herself are fighting. She goes and checks up on her PlentyofFish.com dating account. There’s a cute boy! Suddenly, paint sprays from the IV tubes, drenching the minions of dancers with no eye sockets who prance around her, waiting to get hired for a Lady Gaga video. All three Britneys (one in the room, two fighting in space) fall to the ground, spent after their paint ejaculation. But like Britney herself, these women-things are down but not beaten. They begin to rise once again and sing, as an angelic-looking Britney (circa 2003?) brings the world her message on a plasma screen.

Liz Kelly of the Washington Post called the video an “infomercial” for her own cosmetics brand, Make Up Forever, along with PlentyOfFish.com and Sony. But the first time around, I almost missed the makeup thing entirely. Sony is more indiscreetly placed. (Why would an alien mental patient — or whatever the hell she is — be using Sony?), while the PlentyOfFish shot doesn’t even make sense in the context of the video (which, to be fair, isn’t very coherent in the first place).

Still, it’s visually stunning, with a “Matrix” meets “The Cell” vibe that will have Lady Gaga wishing she had thought of IV paint drips first. If Britney’s metaphoric selves are actually duking it out in her brain as well as they are in this video, we can only assume that, for now at least, the good half has won out. 

The Max Martin- and Dr. Luke-produced song itself is quintessential Britney — all glitter and earworms and aggressive come-ons — and that’s obviously the point. After spending the better part of the last several years melting down, Spears likely doesn’t want to spring any surprises on her loyal fans. In the past decade, she’s been married twice, had two children, and done time in rehab and the psych ward. The woman has been to some dark places, and her very public failures and flubs are no doubt a huge part of her present success. Maybe another artist would choose to release some quasi-soul searching, been-through-the-fire and I’m-a-survivor empowerment anthem for her return, but Spears didn’t get famous for her pop gravitas. She knows what her audience wants: They want dancing with a snake at the VMAs Britney, not dead behind the eyes, missing her cues at the VMAs Britney. They want her blond, they want her horny, and they definitely want her head unshaved. Come to think of it, even people who aren’t her fans would likely prefer her that way. And by God, that is what she will give them.

But things have changed around the old place since you went away, Britney. There’s always room on the charts for a singer who can offer a few dance hooks in a girl-gone-wild package, but really, Ke$ha’s picked up that baton pretty nicely. In the meantime, Lady Gaga has almost single-handedly reinvented the blonde dance beast aesthetic, proving that a catchy tune, a degree of musical virtuosity, and a bold artistic vision are not all mutually exclusive. As a colleague mused recently, Britney after Gaga is like going back to the greatest bar in your midsize hometown after a year in Manhattan. It’s still comfortable; it just doesn’t seem as eye-popping.

Everybody loves a comeback, and while Britney has had a long and often humiliating road to come back from, she’s made a concerted and often shrewd effort not to detour from it over the past year. She’s managed to dominate Twitter,  amassing millions of followers with her innocuous observations. (She — or her Twitter handler — may not be as entertaining as Kanye, but she’s not as unhinged as Courtney Love either.) She cheekily whet the public appetite for her charms via last fall’s Britney-themed episode of “Glee,” a greatest hits package of her most memorable video moments repurposed for a new generation.

Yet as she seductively claws her way up the Billboard chart this week, leaving her stiletto footprints on Katy Perry and Pink, it’s hard not to question how classic Britney will ultimately hold up in the crowded field of pop tarts. There are worse fates that could befall a woman who’s seen such hard times than to stage a sales-shattering triumph. And she could keep pumping out coolly efficient disco beats from now until the apocalypse. When her new album releases next week, however, wouldn’t it be encouraging if it displayed even a whiff of Kanye-level introspection, of Gaga-caliber risk? She’s still the hot blonde. But as she veers toward 30, she can’t keep partying like it’s 2001 forever. And her career longevity depends on being the woman who doesn’t just ask the world to “Gimme More,” but shows her fans she’s learned she can bestow something more.

But the princess of pop isn’t the show’s only famous fan: Sir Paul McCartney also wants in. “I was gob-smacked,” Murphy remembers after receiving a note from McCartney along with two CDs full of classic songs the rock ‘n’ roll legend wished to hear on the show.

Unfortunately, neither Spears nor McCartney are scheduled to appear on the show. But fret not about the lack of star power — that’s where Susan Boyle comes in. The bestselling pop singer, who gained popularity after appearing on “Britain’s Got Talent,” will be playing a high school lunch lady in a Christmas-themed episode. Which is convenient since it was announced last week that Boyle will be releasing a Christmas album later in the year.

The second season of “Glee” premieres Sept. 21.