LAS VEGAS – All I can say is that my life is pretty strange.
One minute I'm at ultra-glamorous Cipriani interviewing the likes of Tea Leoni and first daughter Barbara Bush at a UNICEF event, the next I'm on a train heading home to my wife and daughter, two cats and yellow Lab puppy, who's got more energy than even Britney Spears' publicist.
And I'm just covering events. I can't imagine what it must be like actually "being" the event.
This is why I can bring my brand of Grrr! perspective to the glamorous world I cover. I try to stay level-headed, but I'm not perfect. Nobody is.
Which brings me to the water-cooler topic of conversation.
On New Year's Eve, I broadcasted live from PURE nightclub on top of Caesars Palace overlooking the Las Vegas strip.
It was a clear and beautiful Nevada desert night, and the fireworks didn't even clash with the omnipresent neon glow that makes the strip so famous.
We were there when Spears made her champagne toast. And while I did witness the pouring of an estimated $1 million bottle of Dom Perignon, the biggest magnum I've ever seen, Britney was not so drunk as has been reported the last few days.
I did not see Britney being helped out by five bodyguards. Please, the woman is five-foot-nothing, and I can assure you, one of those giant bodyguards would have been sufficient if she needed help.
Not to mention, if Spears collapsed and had to be carried out, there's a perfectly fine back door that would have made her exit virtually unnoticed, and believe me, the bodyguards and the public relations folks there are well aware of it.
It almost makes me sad for Spears. Almost. It's not like she hasn't brought all of this negative publicity and "let's talk about Britney at any cost" firestorm among the media on herself.
But I can tell you that I was there, and so were plenty of people I am acquainted with who witnessed Spears as she made her champagne toast and counted down to midnight -- as she was contracted to do. She was coherent, and did not appear to be all that drunk.
Britney was on a tour bus all day. She had a few glasses of bubbly. She nodded off. It really is as simple as that.
How many of you were up at 1 a.m. on New Year's Day, either inebriated or ready for bed? Unless you were working, most likely you were one or the other.
Why should Britney Spears be any different? And anyway, if I were Britney, after the year she had, I'd be celebrating pretty hardy myself. I'd be celebrating the fact that Kevin Federline is out of my life.
I'd be celebrating the fact that more reasonable heads prevailed, and the recent presence of Paris Hilton in my life is now a thing of the past. I'd be celebrating the end to 2006, perhaps the worst year in my young life.
If anyone deserved to get drunk on New Year's Eve, it was Britney Spears. She made some bad decisions in '06.
Drinking too much on New Year's Eve was not one of them.
Lay off.
Your GRRRs
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