Globe TV critic foresees Britney-pocalypse

I like Matthew Gilbert's writing, especially as he's gotten more, um, populist in his taste, and as someone who wrote a TV highlights column for years, I appreciate the effort required for him to deliver a joke or two day after day in his "Critics Corner" column in Sidekick. But in today's paper he's just spooky right.

One of his picks for tonight is "Zoey 101," starring Jamie Lynn Spears, Britney's little sister, who recently became a tabloid queen overnight by announcing that she is pregnant at 16. Gilbert's line: "Britney would probably kill to get the limelight back. Literally."

Well, she might not have murdered anyone, but she was taken away from her mansion in an ambulance overnight, acting oddly after ingesting what the celeb press calls "an unknown substance" amid a child-custody dispute. She got the limelight back, all right, just about the time Gilbert's gag was hitting newsstands around town.