Dennis and Britney and Dave

As promised, today’s post is centered around Britney Spears. But first, an update about our stolen Dennis the Menace statue.

The short version is, it’s still missing. The longer version is happier.

Apparently the sculptor who created the statue also made two replicas that were given as gifts. One sits in the labor and delivery unit of Monterey’s Community Hospital, and the other resides with the family of Dennis’s creator, the late cartoonist Hank Ketcham.

The family has offered their statue to re-create a cast, from which a new statue can be made for the park. It will take a few months and about $10,000, but the park will eventually have a new Dennis statue. There’s a great Monterey Herald story here with more details.

The Ketcham family’s statue will also be used at a celebration to commemorate the park’s 50th anniversary, which, coincidentally, happens to be today.

So that’s your feel-good story of the day. Now, on to the crazy stuff.

***

I don’t know if you’ve heard this … but Britney Spears is getting divorced.

To anyone who likes watching music videos (yes, that would be me), this comes as fantastic news. It has the potential to be a remarkable comeback story – and I’m a sucker for a great comeback story. I’ve been waiting on this particular occurrence for about 25 months now.

The headlines also made me think of another comeback I’ve been anticipating for quite a while. And this is where the Britney saga intertwines with a running story. It’s the story of my friend Dave.

(To protect his identity, I’m calling him Dave. There are about 10 guys named Dave in our running club. But this guy’s name isn’t really Dave. Or maybe it is. The point is, I’m not telling. And if anyone guesses, I’ll never confirm it. So there.)

Dave started running with our group about 5 years ago. He was somewhat raw, but possessed great talent. It didn’t take long for him to develop his potential.

When he first joined us for workouts, his PRs were significantly slower than ours. But he dedicated himself to working hard, and within a year he was routinely smoking all of us at local races.

During one particular 18-month stretch, his ceiling seemed limitless. He was the overall winner at several local 10Ks, and placed in the top 10 at the Big Sur Marathon, Pacific Grove Triathlon, and San Francisco Marathon. He quickly became an alpha dog in our training group.

Shortly thereafter, Dave’s training hit some bumps in the road, and his running career veered into a ditch. He suffered a succession of injuries, started showing up less frequently at workouts, and gradually disappeared. The last time I saw him running was when I passed him during a half-marathon last November that he eventually dropped out of. I’ve only laid eyes on him about three times since then.

But he was such a good runner, and left such an impact on our training group, that we still talk about him often. Someone will say they talked to him in the supermarket, or heard that he switched jobs, or saw him riding his bike one day.

What is usually unspoken, but universally understood, is this: we want the old Dave back.

We miss the guy who always pulled away from us in the final half-hour of a 22-mile Saturday run. The guy who made us shudder when he showed up at track workouts because we knew the hammer was going to come down from the very first interval. The guy who came up big at the most important races. The guy who made the rest of us better runners.

All of which brings me back to Britney Spears.

When I first heard that Britney had finally dumped K-Fed and was discussing plans to resume her recording career, the whole analogy fell into place. All of the parallels were immediately apparent: Dave is the Britney Spears of our running group.

Let’s quickly recap Britney’s career: an originally unpolished talent with seemingly limitless potential, who worked her body into amazing shape and experienced a meteoric rise to fame and success. At the top of her game, she produced a mind-boggling series of performances before unexpected interruptions led to a sudden derailment. The amount of time she spent in the limelight was entirely too brief.

(Note that I did that recap in about 60 words. I could have done it in 600. I thought I’d be considerate of your time, though. No need to thank me.)

Britney left such an enormous impression on pop culture that even when she didn’t make a record for three years, everyone still wanted to talk about her. We speculated about when she was pregnant, we saw pictures of her shopping barefoot at the local 7-Eleven, and we all talked about the driving lessons she gave to her one-year-old.

Granted, watching trailer park Britney was fascinating, but what went unspoken for many of us watching was this: we wanted the old Britney back.

I want to see the girl who had the best abs this side of Janet Jackson. The girl who wore nothing but a bikini and a python at the MTV Awards. The one who danced so suggestively in Pepsi commercials that I got a caffeine rush just watching them (at least, I think it was caffeine. It may have been something else.) The one who performed in lingerie and kissed Madonna onstage. I miss that Britney.

(As I’m typing this, I’m wondering if there’s a female-fan equivalent to this Britney analogy. Maybe Tom Cruise? I would think most ladies prefer the Maverick/Lieutenant Kaffee/Jerry Maguire Cruise to the Scientologist/couch-jumping/psychology-bashing lunatic we’ve got today. I’m just guessing here.)

Like many others, I’ve long been hoping that Britney would come to her senses. With the news of her divorce, it appears that she may finally be turning the corner towards getting her act together again.

She’s announced plans to release a new album in 2007. As any VH1 junkie knows, a new album means new videos. She’s even talking about touring for the first time in two years. And something tells me that Britney won’t put herself onscreen or onstage if she’s still carrying a lot of excess junk in the trunk. In other words, I sense a full-scale comeback brewing, and it could be one of the most exciting developments of next year.

So it certainly appears that better times are ahead for the girl. And I couldn’t be happier for me. I mean, for her. Happier for her. OK … happier for both of us.

Truthfully, I can think of only one way that this story could possibly get any better. I’d like to figure out some way of getting Britney to call my friend Dave and give him a pep talk. After all, if she can stage this kind of comeback after spending two years married to a complete loser, having two kids, and surviving a horrendous reality TV show, there’s got to be hope for him.

I waited more than two years for Britney to return. I hope I don’t have to wait that long for Dave.