BOOKS IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

VOL 1: WAITING FOR BRITNEY SPEARS

INTRODUCING:

the first book in the series of books I’ve found on the street & a certified five-star read…

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WAITING FOR BRITNEY SPEARS

BY JEFF WEISS

TO BE PUBLISHED: JUNE 10, 2025

FOR FANS OF: Mike Crumplar’s Crumpstack, Cat Marnell’s How To Murder Your Life, Being Smart and Literate but Still Actively Loving “The Hills”, Reading Gossip Girl in the Year 2005, Feeling Like a Somebody.

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jack & i finishing up the book in prospect park

I came to Variety Coffee to start a little series I want to sleepily call, “Books in the Neighborhood”, because, well, I’ve been finding a good assortment of secondhand books in South Slope.

The barista, a mustached man in a white cap, compliments my rings to which I respond eBay. I praise the institution of eBay – having sold on it for 13 years and counting, a 100% positive feedback rating, 500+ items sold. It gives my love of books another relevant link to share what I find with strangers across the globe. Just a slow slog of income, utilized for selling books that I’ve scouted and brought home from thrift stores or found on the street. Few massive wins, few quick sales.

The barista wants the name of my eBay which feels like a mortifying secret, like a Reddit username, except with customer feedback and pictures of books laying on my old wooden floorboards or held by my square, fat hands. I give him my username, not spelling it, hoping he is only pretending to chicken-scratch it out on his order pad, and I tell him not to judge my wares because it’s not an aesthetic account at all. It’s just old books.

I’ve thought of my books more like bottles of wine as of late. Sometimes there’s an occasion to take one off the shelf and pop it open. It’s not always a Vino Verde day. It’s not always the moment for a Natural Orange WhateverTheFuck. How long can a Chardonnay just sit there untouched? The answer is a very long time.

The first few (really, really) good books that were worthy of note found in my neighborhood were those signed Evergreen Review issues (Ginsberg, Ashbury, Henry Miller, Gregory Corso, etc…) but I’ve also found books that were good, not because of *old-school* credibility or from being signed first editions, but because the contents felt like they were being flung onto my SOUL. That good kind of sticky. Mama’s oats, or whatever. That is why we love to read, no? To feel seen through space and time while holding something so fragile – prone to mold, to must, could very well be eaten by your pet rabbits… somewhat immortal tumbleweeds of words collected into hands over and over and over and then into mine and GOD! – I feel alive again. And that’s what happened here with Waiting For Britney Spears.

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THE BOOK:

Two weeks ago, inside my block’s Little Free Library I found a preview edition of “Waiting for Britney Spears” by Jeff Weiss, which is set to be published on June 10th, 2025.

To be fully honest — in my fullest truthhood — in my unabashed heckler era, the cover deterred me. The author’s name is JEFF. How close could a man named JEFF be to Britney Spears? Who okayed this Microsoft Pink Paint cover? It was giving too easy, it was giving, “for the girls”.

I let this pink 388-paged book pose on my coffee table for a few days then wiggled it in between some slightly less-loved books on my shelf. John Updike’s The Early Stories. Bukowski’s Ham on Rye. When I finally popped it open four days ago… I was so, so pleasantly surprised.

Jeff Weiss is a journalist who happened to stumble into the world of tabloids when tabloids were at their very hottest. Think Truman Capote outside of Hyde and he’s definitely not on the guest list. Think Hunter S. Thompson in Fred Segal steps away from an oblivious Mischa Barton.

He first encountered Britney Spears in her nearly-nobody era when he waddled into being a (sneaky) bleacher-seated extra on the “Baby One More Time” music video that was shot at his high school that fateful summer; the rest is history… and, well, luck via Craigslist job listings.

I’ve never read a book from the bygone era of the paparazzi’s perspective and you know what? It rocked. Hell, this dude was even at the famed Britney-with-a-shaved-head-bashing-a-car-with-an-umbrella scene. You cannot be a more credible pap than that. Jeff manages to balance the narrative with true human empathy: this book doesn’t have a core of gossip rag, but something more enlightened. Something softer with moralistic wrestlings of what it means to wrench into a human’s privacy, no matter how massive the star and how public their life may seem.

(“every writer is always selling someone out.”)

I started this book while sitting up. I finished it laying down in Prospect Park. I felt something that I haven’t felt from a book in a long, long time: adrenaline. To be totally frank, I don’t even really care much about Britney Spears. She was, however, my second CD ever owned at the age of seven. My mind’s record remembers her perfect seeing-eye belly button, her doe-eyed pose in the center of beaded curtains. I wanted to go into that infinitely dark belly button; like it was the center of the universe or something.

aforementioned belly button

This book gave me the same adrenaline that a celeb sighting in NYC gives me — a sense of otherworldliness, a sense of holy shit I am in the same exact place in time as this uplifted individual.

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:::: (I text my mom when I sell Lo Bosworth goat cheese at the Union Square Farmer’s Market for her peach toast. I text my mom Bradley Cooper’s order. I tell her that he tipped more than 20% for his orange juice. Gigi Hadid asks me to charge her phone even though it’s “so annoying but…”, I tell my IG story when Amy Schumer stiffs me on a tip over her pancake breakfast, but rescind my statements when later she tips graciously on a takeout order for her family. The redhead from Degrassi comes in and I never ask this, but I do, her face copyandpasted in the 4th grade sneaky parts of my mind:

“Any chance you… were on Degrassi?”

She laughs, “Yeah, people will just stop me and ask, ‘How do I know you? Did we go to high school together or something?’”

I laugh, she’s charming, and I wish I had come up with something witty to introduce the question instead.

She keeps coming back and wants the back booth table. She starts bringing her own maple syrup. She brings her parents in once.

All of these moments give a push of adrenaline. I’m in a living tabloid only so briefly as I watch Christoper Abbott eat an avocado. As I tell Penn Badgley, “I’m sorry, the yogurt isn’t low-fat.” Sometimes his son sits on his shoulders. Em Rata calls the paparazzi as she crosses a busy street in front of my old job in the West Village. My coworker points it out, “See, here she comes”, and the cameras and Em disappear as fast as they arrive.) ::::

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you already know, don’t be cute

The adrenaline comes from the same place a UFO-sighting does. How can this be real? You’re real? Can I sell this? Who can I show this to? Who will care? Who will believe me? The wonder can’t live in a vacuum.

I read a large bulk of this book from my tub, reaching from time to time to grab my phone’s note app to add words that I couldn’t define offhand: ouroboros, cognoscenti. One doesn’t assume a book written by a 2000-something paparazzo is going to use phrases like “Medellin slalom”. Nobody expects a book about Britney Spears to juice up some of their brain cells.

The aughts were full of wordy, thesaurus-heavy tabloids (hell the NYP still is); nothing is a beachfront Malibu mansion, it’s a water-sidled faux-Italian palazzo. This book is not unlike that, but I think it’s all the better for it. This book got me wanting to say shit like “tawdry”. Don’t say Waiting for Britney Spears is over-written, because, well, it is, but also that’s what makes it gold. It’s lightly modeled after the language of early 2000’s rags, but it’s more than that, it’s smart, it delivers, it’s what most of us wish we sounded like on paper.

jeff wuz here

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This book is fucking fun and fucking good. It’s Holden Caulfield with a vodka Red Bull. It’s Perez Hilton with a PhD in Linguistics. It’s the feeling of swinging a ratty sequin mesh bag in WeHo while listening to Shwayze on your iPod. Just trust me. I do think the cover will deter some populations from picking it up, a c*nty cover of the iconic britney/paris/lindsay snap (yes, Jeff was there for that, too) with a more simple background and I swear to god it would sell like Just Kids, but don’t let that stop you. If you’re a nosey bitch, if you’re a wordy bitch, if you’re just a bitch, try this book when it’s out. Trust me, I’m shocked, too. One of my faves so far this year.

Xoxo,

Jamie

:~)