Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re a true fan of Britney Spears, then you should already know that today, Dec. 2, is the pop queen’s birthday. If you’re extra obsessed, then you might even know some basic trivia like how she was originally in a girl group called Innosense or that she awesomely had a stripper at her 20th birthday. This list, however, digs even deeper into Godney lore and draws from little known stories of the early millennium involving Justin Timberlake, “Crossroads” and even a team of psychics.

If you can’t say the word “oops” without “I did it again,” then you should make sure to learn the nine things below.

1. Before the “Crossroads” kissing scene, Anson Mount ate a “big spoonful” of garlic to prank Britney Spears.

While promoting the iconic 2002 movie, “Crossroads,” star Anson Mount told Entertainment Weekly that he had a disgusting surprise for Britney Spears when they filmed their big kiss:

After we kissed a couple of times, I took a big spoonful of minced garlic and washed it around my mouth real good. When we did the scene, Brit amazingly kept a straight face. After they yelled “Cut,” I asked her, “Did you even taste that?” And she goes, “Oh, sweetie, I just didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”

Gross. At another point in the promotional tour, Rolling Stone asked Spears to confirm the prank and she responded by laughing and said, “Yes, I didn’t appreciate it, but boys will be boys!”

2. Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake bought each other custom-made, $21,000 toilet seats that had their own faces on them. Britney’s seat had Justin’s face and vice versa.

This comes from 2002 gossip reports, but apparently while redecorating their $4.2 million Beverly Hills mansion, the two pop stars bought lavish toilet seats covered with each other’s faces. Spears is quoted as saying:

I just couldn’t resist ordering one for me and one for Justin. People might consider spending that much on toilet seats excessive, but for us they are a reminder of how far we’ve come since our days on the Mickey Mouse Club.

This doesn’t seem like an adequate explanation for wanting to sit on your bae’s childhood face while using the toilet, but this is the same couple that once wore all denim formalwear, so who knows.

3. An unfinished glass of orange juice that Britney Spears took a drink from from went on “tour” around Germany and then a fan got to drink the leftover juice.

During an interview with the Cologne, Germany radio station EinsLive in 2002, Britney Spears drank from a glass of orange juice. Normally, this would be an innocuous event, but instead of just washing the glass, the hosts of that radio show decided to take the remaining orange juice on a tour of Germany. They stopped in at least five different cities, doing their show live while the glass sat on a pedestal. “It is definitely her glass,” said EinsLive spokesman Andreas Neuhaus at the time. Apparently at the end of the tour, a fan was rewarded with the opportunity to drink the remains of Spears’ orange juice.

But the end of the initial radio tour was not the end of the road for Britney Spears’ glass of orange juice. In 2003, the now moldy glass became the “star attraction” for a German cultural exhibition in the city of Bochum.

4. Britney Spears has almost accidentally burned down her home on multiple occasions and also trashed her mom’s Lexus while growing up.

Britney Spears used to have a habit of leaving candles lit in her house, which at one point almost caused her Manhattan apartment to burn down. Lynne Spears, the pop star’s mom, wrote on the official Spears site at the time:

Britney went to New York for four days. She and Jenny, her friend, shopped every day. One of those nights, they all came in to a real mess. Brit left a candle burning. The wall caught fire and the fire department had to put it out. Brit has really learned a lesson this time.

Lynne Spears also mentioned that her daughter had accidentally set a similar fire in her family home’s bathroom by failing to blow out a candle.

In 2011, Britney Spears shared “25 things” about herself with Us Weekly and in the last line admitted, “I wrecked my mom’s Lexus in high school.” For all those choreographed dance moves, Spears seems to have a bit of a clumsy streak.

5. Britney Spears had her own psychics at one point.

For a cover article in Elle Magazine (pasted online at BritBrit), Britney Spears talked about the origins of her new bed saying, “The person I bought it from said it belonged to the English royal family 40 years ago.” Sort of crazy by itself, but then Spears continued excitedly with an explanation for the bed’s origin that came from a pretty amazing source:

One of my psychics said that in another lifetime it used to be my bed. And they said that it belonged to a princess! She could be totally wrong but it’s a nice thought right? Anyway she said the princess used to travel with the bed and they used to piece it together and ship it on boats to wherever she was. Isn’t that cool? And what’s so weird is that my Grandmother is British!

First off, Spears is implying that she used to be a princess in a previous life, which is awesome. More important, though, is how she starts by saying, “One of my psychics.” Did Spears have a whole team of psychics? Did they get the job by telling her stories of her past-life as royalty? Here’s a psychic who claims to have read Spears’ future at one point, but who knows how many more are out there. If anybody knows a psychic, could you ask them to try to use their abilities to locate the members of the Britney Spears Psychic Super Team? They probably looked something like the group pictured above from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “The Holy Mountain.”

Image: “The Holy Mountain”

6. Not realizing her microphone was on, Britney Spears swore and cursed out the stage crew right before she started singing during a concert in 2001.

Britney Spears was only 19 at the time, but regardless of age, being overheard by around 170,000 fans saying things such as, “Don’t tell me they’re just letting the audience just f-cking stand out there like that. This is ret-rded” and “Oh sh-t. Oh, no. What are they doing? Oh, my pants are too short! I grew! I’m not just gonna stand out there” was not the best of moments.

From the recording, it seems that Spears was mostly upset that an intro song had not been played before she went out on stage so the crowd was waiting in silence for her performance to start.

Spears has had swearing outbursts throughout her career, notably in 2008 when she apparently lost it on a mall employee who failed to get Spears’ black American Express card to work, saying, “F-ck these b-tches … F-ck you, f-ck people, f-ck, f-ck, f-ck!” Who hasn’t wanted to yell profanities while having to endure the mall though?

7. Britney Spears sent emails back and forth with Prince William, but then he stood her up on a dinner date.

Hit send baby one more time.

The year was 2002 and at the time, Britney Spears was 20 and Prince William was 19. The movie “You’ve Got Mail” had only come out a couple of years before and now the perfect sequel was playing out in real life between the potential future king of England and the rising queen of pop. But then Prince William was just like nah.

Spears sort of explained what happened during an interview with the British “Frank Skinner Show” in 2002 saying, “We exchanged emails for a little bit and he was supposed to come and see me somewhere but it didn’t work out.” The host then asked her flat out if she was blown off and Spears responded, “Yeah.” Apparently the prince had gone fox hunting instead of being the perfect Joe F-O-X.

8. Before becoming famous, Britney Spears acted in theater productions and was even an understudy along with Natalie Portman for an off-Broadway play.

More than two decades ago, Britney Spears and Natalie Portman were both understudies for an off-Broadway play called “Ruthless!” According to Peter Conrad of The Observer, Spears played an evil infant that “hollered and rampaged through the theater in a fit of devilish ecstasy.” Spears and Portman have been good friends for a while, even hosting a huge New Year’s party together in 2002.

If you’re curious what it’d look like if their careers had been switched, there may be some precedent …

Spears has said that she wants Portman to play her in a biopic and back when Spears and Justin Timberlake were dating, N*SYNC famously got cut from “Star Wars Episode II” so the band made “Star Wars” shirts featuring Justin Timberlake as Anakin Skywalker and Spears as Queen Amidala, a role that Portman played.

9. Britney Spears thinks chocolate is as good as sex saying.

Presumably on the same tour of Germany where she drank the orange juice mentioned above, Britney Spears stopped by the Imhoff-Stollwerck chocolate museum in Cologne, Germany where she was gifted a large white chocolate heart. While receiving the heart and standing outside the museum in front of fans, Spears was quoted equating chocolate to “an orgasm.”

BONUS: Here’s what it sounded like when Britney absolutely killed it on “Star Search.”

Unfortunately, Britney Spears actually lost during this performance to some kid named Marty Thomas. The boy who defeated Godney now performs on Broadway.

Britney Spears has always been the Queen.

All images Getty unless otherwise noted.

Last week, I shared with you how to get a handle on your identity. You should now have the answer to the question: “Who do you think you are?” If you don’t, take a few minutes now to go back and review “Why You Should Get a Handle on Your Identity”.

Why is understanding your identity so important? Because your Mojo depends on it. To understand how you are relating to any activity, person, place, or thing, you need to understand your identity–who you are. To change your Mojo, you may need to either create a new identity for yourself or rediscover an identity you have lost.

What Is Mojo?
Your Mojo is “that positive spirit toward what you are doing now that starts from the inside and radiates to the outside.” The most striking evidence of Mojo is to compare it to its opposite, what I call Nojo, which is “that negative spirit towards what you are doing now that starts from the inside and radiates to the outside.”

The contrasts between Mojo and Nojo are so daunting that I wrote them down on a cheat sheet:

Mojo

• Take responsibility
• Run the extra mile
• Care about doing a great job
• Love doing it
• Appreciate the opportunities
• Make the best of it
• Be inspirational
• Have a great attitude
• Be determined
• Have a zest for life

Nojo

• Feel like a victim
• March in place
• Just want to get by
• Have to do it
• Tolerate the requirements
• Endure it
• Painful to be around
• Lethargic
• Lazy
• Zombie-like — living dead

How’s Your Mojo?
How can we recognize Mojo or Nojo in ourselves and in others? Start by evaluating yourself and the people you meet on their Mojo or Nojo qualities, using the table above. What is your attitude toward what you do? Is it positive or negative? What do you radiate to others? Think about this a bit.

When I think about the truly successful human beings that I have met in my journey through life–the people who are succeeding at both what they do and how they feel about themselves–I realize they all have MOJO. We see people with MOJO in every occupation and at every level of an organization. I was recently working at a health-care organization. I watched as their CEO gave awards to employees who best demonstrated their organization’s values. I was amazed at the great attitude–the Mojo–shown by award-winners in such diverse occupations as cafeteria workers, technicians, nurses, and administrators. These people were all demonstrating Mojo.

While I enjoyed observing these exuberant and motivated people get their awards, I thought about the thousands of people in similar jobs around the world who don’t demonstrate Mojo, the people who had a negative spirit toward what they were doing. That, too, starts from the inside and is apparent on the outside.

When There’s No Mojo
When you get the chance, observe two different employees doing exactly the same job at the same time. One could be the embodiment of Mojo while the other is the poster child for Nojo. Case in point: flight attendants. For 32 years, my work has taken me around the world. On American Airlines alone, I just passed the dubious milestone of more than 10 million frequent flyer miles! All this flying has given me the chance to interact with thousands of flight attendants.

Most are dedicated, professional, and service-oriented. They demonstrate mojo. A few are grumpy and act like they would rather be anywhere else than on the plane. They demonstrate Nojo. I’ve seen two groups of attendants doing exactly the same activity, at the same time, for the same company, probably at around the same salary, yet the messages that each is sending to the world about their experience is completely different.

Mojo Living!
By increasing our understanding of our identity, we can increase our Mojo. We can learn how to get Mojo, how to keep it, and how we get it back if we lose it. We can let go of what does not create happiness and meaning in our lives, and strive for what really matters to us–we can live a life full of Mojo, meaning, and purpose!

* * *
Please view the Marshall Goldsmith Thinkers50 Video Blog. The short video in the series Personal Advice: Creating Identity Part 2 accompanies this article. I’ll post these blogs once a week for the next 50 weeks. The series will incorporate learnings from my 38 years of experience with top executives, as well as material from my previous research, articles and books, including What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, MOJO, Coaching for Leadership, and Succession: Are You Ready? The blogs will also include material from my exciting new research on engagement and my upcoming book Triggers (to be published by Crown in 2015).

How long do you usually wait for doctor’s appointment? The average wait in DC is 17 days. If you live in Boston, it could be as long as 72 days. And once you get there, you may have time to go through all the year-old magazines before the nurse comes to take you into another room where you’ll probably wait again.

After hearing years of complaints, two Seattle, Washington physicians designed a program called MD2 (Mdsquared). This new concept of ‘concierge medicine’ offered families their own private doctor on call. The only challenge they had was the annual retainer –$20,000. Medical care was now more convenient, but too expensive for most.

Finally, in the past few years, more and more membership models have sprung up, making primary medical care accessible and more affordable. Many companies offer fees as low as $100 per month for individuals, to $200 for families.

As any new concept that arises, the model morphed into different shapes, sizes and products. Today CVS and other pharmacies offer walk-in clinics, where people with minor health problems can immediately see a physician’s assistant or nurse practitioner. If walk in isn’t quick enough, you can find websites advertising online doctors. They say that with a video chat, the doctor can make a proper diagnosis.

The changing face of medical practices show that in today’s busy society, many people not only demand immediate gratification, but convenience as well. Hence, the growing number of distance learning institutions, and now spiritual seekers increasingly clicking online to spend time with their favorite guru.

Some pilgrims will continue traveling to Mecca, Lourdes, and other sacred places around the globe. But millions of 21st-century people would rather have their spirituality delivered — like pizza or books from Amazon. This fact has been proven by the popularity of online spiritual courses and meditation series. Google ‘online meditation’ any day, and almost 10,000 pages will pop up.

Why has this phenomenon recently mushroomed?
1. No missed work or family time
2. No waiting in line at busy airports
3. No expensive hotels
4. No sitting in a room with hundreds of people

Turn on your computer or hand held device and you can bring the greatest spiritual teachings right into your living room. It doesn’t matter if you’re an early riser or night owl. One click and they magically appear — 24/7. Most meditation series are offered free, with the option to purchase at the end of two or three weeks. Some of the more popular sites feature four to five series per year, while others repeat their most popular programs.

One company, Mentors Channel is breaking ground by offering a subscription program. Featuring a variety of the finest spiritual teachers in the world, you can purchase a NetFlix type membership and enjoy your favorites for up to an entire year.

You can visit your guru on a remote mountaintop, drive to a doctor, school, restaurant or spiritual workshop, or use a keystroke and have it all brought to you, in the comfort of your own home. The choice is yours.

by guest blogger Renee James, humorist and blogger

We’re in the midst of “the travel season,” the final six weeks of the year. Although my own holiday travel won’t involve more than a drive out of state, I find myself thinking about this Helen Bevington quote: “I have learned this strange thing, too, about travel: one may return to a place and, quite unexpectedly, meet oneself still lingering there from the last time.”

That has to be true, right? How else could do we explain school reunions or oldies bands or any number of occasions we contrive so we can “run into” our past? In those cases, we all hope to meet our former selves, or some semblance of our former selves. To relive some moments of our youth, our exuberance for the future, and the adventures to come in the years that stretched out before us.

But the travel quote suggests something a little different than that: the element of surprise–the idea of finding a bit of us “lingering” when we return somewhere, maybe a place we thought we had left behind. It implies a longing, a desire to spend more time there. For many, the end of the year invokes that “lingering” kind of feeling.

And the holiday season is the perfect time to linger in our own childhoods as we imagine the sounds or smells or sights that made us feel safe and loved and connected. We may even visit our childhood homes and look around, hoping for a glimpse of the people who made us feel that way, only to be startled back to the present when we remember they’re no longer there.

This year, I find myself missing my mom and dad so much. This is the third holiday season I’ll spend with my Mom in my heart, not in my house, (the tenth year for my Dad) and for reasons I can’t explain, I feel even more bereft than I did immediately after losing each of them. I miss them. And I miss the familiar comfort that greeted me each time I walked into their home, the place I grew up.

I pulled the door closed on that house three years ago, and I haven’t been back. I know a place is just a structure, but still. Still. I can’t help feeling there is a bit of me lingering there, although I’m not entirely sure who she is, wandering the rooms silently, remembering the hard and the soft moments that made up a life. The girl who was the quintessential “middle child.” The girl who did the right thing–almost always. The girl who realized at a very young age–although she’d never be able to explain exactly why–that alcohol plus family was never going to equal anything but a disaster. Who realized–too late–that despite every single flawed moment she shared with him, her father was a kind and caring man, far more complex that she could have ever understood as a child; a man who fought demons she would never fully know. Who realized–far too late–that her mother was one of the strongest people she would ever meet, with her own secrets and a few demons of her own.

Stay! I want to linger. I want everyone to linger with me. “One day more,” as the song says. Just one.

And then, just like that, I’m here again, a woman well into her middle age, with adult children who may be just a few years away from their own yearning to linger. As I watch my sons grow older, I silently wonder about two things: What will they take away with them as they leave, and what will they meet when they return?

I unpack Christmas ornaments and begin decorating the house, and think: Maybe they’ll have fond memories of the discount-store Christmas stockings we hung every year, each name scrawled across the top in very, very bad glitter letters because Mommy refused to use a template and tried to write them freehand, with illegible results. Maybe they’ll subconsciously think, “imperfection.” Maybe they’ll think, “Next life: a mother who does needlepoint.” Maybe, “She tried, God love her.”

Maybe they’ll recall the manger scene that appeared each year, with an infant figure missing from the display until Christmas morning–the set that had a shepherd holding a broken staff and a king carrying a chipped gift in his hands. And they’ll think: “Super Glue” or “Glue gun.” Nothing says Christmas like adhesive materials.

They’ll meet three boys lingering in the kitchen. Boys who decorated hundreds of gingerbread men, creating crooked faces with far too much icing. They’ll remember those boys giving me rings or pins or earrings with clasps that never quite closed and stones that fell out on December 26, and they’ll remember that I wore them all.

I hope when they recall their childhood selves, it’s mostly the good stuff: the forts they built out of sofa pillows, the gerbils they sent sliding down elevated racetracks (poor things), and the times Daddy would “fly” them all into their beds at night. And when they find their way home, and meet that faint shadow of themselves “lingering there from the last time,” I hope the anger is rare, the sadness is shared, and the love and peace are abundant.

Renee A. James works at Rodale Inc. and also wrote an award-winning op-ed column for The Morning Call, the Allentown, PA, newspaper, for almost 10 years. Her essays were included in the humor anthology, 101 Damnations: A Humorists’ Tour of Personal Hells (Thomas Dunne Books, 2002), and are also found online at Jewish World Review and The Daily Caller. She invites you to Like her Facebook page, where she celebrates–and broods about–life on a regular basis, mostly as a voice in the crowd that shouts, “Really? You’re kidding me, right?” (or wants to, anyway), and she welcomes your suggestions, comments, and feedback to the mix.

For more from Maria Rodale, visit www.mariasfarmcountrykitchen.com

“Brooklyn Nine-Nine” star Terry Crews just dropped some serious knowledge about feminism, masculinity and manhood. And we’re definitely listening.

The actor and former NFL player sat down with The Agenda‘s Elamin Abdelmahmoud for the What Makes A Man 2014 conference to discuss Crews’ new book about masculinity and his thoughts on feminism and sexism.

Crews related sexism to civil rights, telling Abdelmahmoud, “The people who were silent at the lunch counters, when it was the black lunch counter and the white one or the schools were segregated.. and you were quiet. You were accepting it. Same thing with men right now. If you don’t say anything, you are, by your silence — it’s acceptance. I’m not going to be silent.”

Crews clarified that the feminist movement is about gender equality:

I want to be clear that feminism is not saying “women are better than men.” That’s not what’s going on. What it is is that we’re talking about is gender equality, true gender equality… but the problem is that men have always felt like they’re more valuable.. I have been that guy where I felt I was more valuable than my wife and kids.

Crews told Abdelmahmoud that he gets varied reactions from other men when he speaks out about the problems with modern masculinity. Some are supportive, while others ask him, “”What are you doing?! It’s man code, dude. Man code! C’mon!'” But as Crews pointed out, “Does man code work when it’s your daughter who gets raped? Man code — does that work when your mom gets abused?”

The 46-year-old actor explained that masculinity causes men to view women as prizes to be won. He told Abdelmahmoud: “What happens is they win and they go, ‘You know that girl? She’s my trophy. I deserve that girl. In fact, she don’t even want to be with me, but I don’t care. I’m going to take it.’ What kind of mindset is that? Never never never never never should that ever be accepted. That’s not ‘code.’ That’s Taliban. That’s ISIS.”

Later in the interview, Abdelmahmoud asked Crews what his thoughts were on “high-profile” sexual assault allegations against celebrity men such as radio broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi and comedian Bill Cosby. Crews expressed that the problem is a rape culture which goes far beyond the individual men who are currently making headlines:

We’re battling a mindset.. It’s like cutting a tree down by the leaves — it just grows back… The tree needs to come down and nobody’s getting at the stump and the stump is a mindset that people feel they’re more valuable than each other. And that’s what I’m attacking.

Mr. Crews, you sir are awesome.

Watch the entire interview below:

H/T Jezebel