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.\

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