I am not going to make fun of Britney Spears. She is, after all, a human being with a heart and a family and, evidently, more money than sense.

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Instead, I am going to make a constructive proposal for how she and her fellow girls gone wild can pull their socks up, put their underwear on and start behaving like grown-ups.

Not that they'll get much encouragement. What we're into right now as a culture, if that's even the right word, is obsessively following celebrities so we can immerse ourselves in the details of their lives and forget our own, which are so lame that we have to self-medicate with relaxing happy drugs and more flashy new stuff than we can, technically, afford or fit into our homes. Which we also cannot, technically, afford.

We're pretty confident we can buy happiness, even though that is yet another luxury that we quite possibly cannot, technically, afford. (I direct your attention to the average household credit-card debt figure, which, unlike average SAT scores, gets higher all the time.)

People think buying a new TV, for example, will make their lives better because celebrities will look even bigger and sharper on a new TV. The bigger the screen, the more of your own life it blots out and replaces with some acid-trip grotesque like Paris Hilton or Anna Nicole Smith.

(Sorry to speak ill of the dead. But I'm still reeling from the revelation, based on pictures of her fridge, that in order to get a really knockout figure over 35 you have to go on the TrimSpa, Slim-Fast and methadone diet. I'm not sure I can afford the TrimSpa.)

Celebrities exist to perform for us. Some of them do it by singing, some by acting in movies and some by acting like village idiots. The latest antics of Bad-Hair-Day Britney or Nicole Richie or whoever aren't unique. The L.A. Daily News pointed out that celebs have been coming unglued for years, and many, like Britney and Nicole, have gone to the San Fernando Valley to do it.

It's the fashionable place to lose your marbles. It's where Jack Nicholson took a club to a Mercedes, Alec Baldwin socked a paparazzo, Margot Kidder played hide-and-seek in her nightie, Martin Lawrence did some armed jaywalking and Richard Pryor set himself on fire.

The Daily News's sources seemed to think the beautiful people like to flip out in the Valley because it feels "very far from home" for them, a place where they can melt down in privacy.

Can you spot the teensy flaw in this reasoning?

Never fear, self-indulgent, unstable glitterati: I have a solution. Don't go to the Valley. To be really safe, try Flyover Land.

Come stay with me in the beautiful South Hills of Pittsburgh.

I won't even charge you rent, but I will expect a donation, commensurate with your latest picture gross or record deal, toward the repair of Dormont Pool. We'll even go there if you come in the summer and it will hold water.

During your stay, you won't be bothered by paparazzi. Cab drivers and waitresses here are actually cab drivers and waitresses, and nobody will press a script or song into your hand at the Foodland, though you might have to accept a religious tract or two outside.

We have some nice restaurants and nightclubs, but I don't want to tempt you. Mostly, I think, you should probably eat with me. I have more in my fridge than methadone, but you might not fit into a size 2 dress after a week or two. I know I don't.

And then you can roll up your sleeves and do the dishes, maybe mop the floor and take the garbage out. You might not booze it up so much when you have to carry all those heavy glass bottles out to the curb for recycling.

In winter, you can help shovel the walk. And if you absolutely must do something bizarre, there are parts of Fayette County where you could probably get away with it.

There will be very little media scrutiny here, unless you show an ability to control the weather or play football.

Oh -- about the weather. It builds character. Bring an umbrella and a coat.

And whatever you do, don't say anything disparaging. Sienna Miller did the one thing guaranteed to blow a celeb's cover here. Nobody even knew who she was until she outed herself. We thought she was just another skinny chick in a belly shirt yapping on her cell phone.

Britney, I'm talking to you: Think about it. There are lots of nice people here to watch your kids and take them to a ballgame or block party. And you'll fit in. Lots of people shave their heads and have tattoos.

Book a flight. If I can't pick you up at the airport, I'll send you a 28X schedule. My couch is very comfortable. You like Yahtzee?