Britney Needs a Break

Britney Spears is ceding the cover of Us Weekly to "all of the other overexposed blondes." The most overexposed blonde of them all just wants to catch up on Sex and the City.

In a long-awaited "letter of truth" posted on her official Website, the honeymoon-bound Spears says she has learned to say "no" to advisors who have long lorded over her career--and "yes" to vacation.

"Going & going & going is all I've ever know[n] since I was 15 years old," the pop tart writes in the missive dated Friday. "Right now, I have to go--I really want to watch Saved! with Mandy Moore and reruns of Sex and the City."

Spears apologizes to fans if it "seemed like [my life] was all over the place the past two years, it's probably because IT WAS!"

The 22-year-old singer is presently on her second marriage of 2004. Her first, to childhood friend Jason Allen Alexander, was annulled within 55 hours. Her second, to dancer Kevin Federline, was clouded by questions as to whether or not the union was legit.

In her letter, Spears likens a knee injury suffered on a video shoot in June to a sign from "the Man upstairs."

"My body was shutting down and needed rest," she writes. "I want to enjoy all of the simple things that I missed over the past few years due to working way too much."

It was unclear exactly when Spears planned to start leading the quiet, retiring life. Her new album, Greatest Hits: My Prerogative, is due out Nov. 9. Her 2005 calendar is now on sale. Her new perfume, Curious, is available at fine department stores near you. Her Web musings, she promises, will be posted "as often as possible."

If it seems Spears is sending mixed messages to her public, the entertainer notes her "newly found freedom" hasn't been an easy concept for those around her, either.

"Its [sic] like people don't know how to act around me," she says. "Should we talk to her like we did when she was 16, or like the Icon everyone says she is?"

Spears does not specify which title is her preference.

In an interview with Britain's OK! magazine last month, Spears said she'd been working on the letter, which she called "The Letter of Truth: I Hope You Can Handle It," virtually nonstop since attending a "life-changing" performance of the Broadway musical Wicked.

She called the drafting of the communiqué an educational--and, yes, "life-changing"--experience. "I feel like I am at Harvard!" she said.

In the resulting letter, the would-be Ivy Leaguer shows a firm command of the exclamation point, deploying the emphatic bit of punctuation eight times, and a bold disregard for grammar conventions, routinely uppercasing words to MAKE A POINT and eschewing the spelled-out "and" for an ampersand.

A typical bit of Spears prose reads thusly: "Being married is GREAT and I can't wait to start my family!"

In her deftest turn, Spears manages to plug her new single (the title track from the best-of CD) and take a crack at Us Weekly, which reported about her last-minute prenup hassles with Federline, in just one sentence.

"My prerogative right now is to just chill & let all of the other overexposed blondes on the cover of Us Weekly be your entertainment...GOOD LUCK GIRLS!!!" Spears writes.

Ken Baker, West Coast executive editor of Us Weekly, says staffers were debating Monday which "overexposed" cover girls Spears was referencing--"Cameron Diaz, her ex-boyfriend's lover, or Jessica Simpson, the woman who got the role in The Dukes of Hazard that [Spears] really wanted?"

For what it's worth, Baker thinks Spears would be wise to "go away" for a while.

"Right now, she has nothing but bad fashion choices, and a really oddball husband--and that's just not very palatable to her fans," Baker says.

As for Spears, said to be off on her honeymoon with Federline on a Fiji island used for the 1980 movie The Blue Lagoon, she asks only that the "next time you see my face, hear one of my songs or even if I'm the topic of your next conversation, please remember that times are changing & so am I."

'NUFF SAID!!!