BRITNEY AND MADONNA ON THE HILL

What's the hill?

" ...You never know exactly the minute, the place. You climb the hill all your life and you're going on and on. You reach a flat place now and then but a flat place is going someplace on the way up your hill. And then ... Well, it feels the same. The wind's the same. You're still walking but ... but the top of the hill is gone and done with and you're going down. Not up. Going down. You don't quite know how or when going up got to be going down. But you're going ... down ..."

That's a quote from my play "Bdway Arts." Jim, a tap dancer, part time janitor says it, as he's eating peanuts, drinking beer, polishing the mirrors in a rehearsal studio.

Is Jim me? Am I on that hill? I felt that I was. Jim was, and still is a way of expressing my thoughts.

Britney Spears -- on a comeback, back to looking beautiful, is singing and doing her sexy dance moves -- once again thrilling her audiences and paparazzi. There are still headlines in columns, but rarely major attention being paid to her right now. Here's "On the Run," (if you see an ad first, be patient, the next clip is Britney nowadays.

(Whew ... how would you feel if people were looking at a clip of you in your life, running to the john? NOT GOOD!)

Madonna made a surprise appearance at Britney Spears' sold-out show a few months ago, in New York City.

Shortly before Spears, 27, took the stage, Madonna, 50, arrived with her manager and several bodyguards. She walked up the main stairs to the VIP "suites" -- everyone noticed her -- celebrities don't need to use the main stairs to get to their VIP seats in a suite.

During the 90-minute show, Spears gyrated her way through mostly tunes from her last two albums. Just before Spears' encore, Madonna left, with hordes of screaming fans gathered around her. A columnist wrote -- "The little smirk on her face tells us Madonna loved being a distraction to her friend's final number."

Madonna gets a few headlines, not as much as last year when things between her and A-Rod were serious -- quite a few comments about where, what spots on her face have been improved with plastic surgery. Here's a recent video of "Give It 2 me," by Madonna.

I'm not a gossip columnist; they're both professional celebrities, doing what every famous female can do -- to look great, be admired, adored, loved, emulated, and continue to be more famous, sell more albums, be seen everywhere, all over the world.

Me ... I never was in that league. So why am I writing this? Why do I pick them, not other Grammy, Emmy, Oscar, major leading ladies? Is it because their names have been so marvelously promoted, that even I, who shy away from shows like "Entertainment Tonight" and "Access Hollywood," nevertheless absorb the gossip?. (It's an osmosis process -- that's why you need a staff of PR people if you want your NAME to be a NAME, remain a NAME for more than fifteen minutes.)

A hill is a hill -- a slope, an incline, a rounded natural elevation of land lower than a mountain. So here's the big question again -- why did I write this? If you clicked the link, you saw the clips. They were the most recent ones I could find.

"... You don't quite know how or when going up got to be going down. But you're going ... down... " I wouldn't want to be on the mountain with Britney and Madonna.