Britney Spears, Dick Clark Top New Year’s Wrap Up

LOS ANGELES – Britney Spears suffers from a rare form of narcolepsy. Dick Clark still talks funny. These are the top stories of the new year. What goes around keeps going around, but who’s keeping score?

Gossip blogs and celebrity news sources went into a feeding frenzy recently over reports that Britney Spears, 25, had collapsed about an hour after midnight at PURE nightclub in Caesars Palace this New Year’s Eve. The sometime singer, who hosted the club’s New Year’s party, had to be carried to her room by bodyguards, according to most early reports.

“Britney was like way trashed and couldn’t even count backwards from ten,” said one blogger.

While admitting that Ms. Spears “has always had trouble with numbers,” her manager, Larry Rudolph, denied that his client was snockered.

“She was not drunk,” Mr. Rudolph told THEM Weekly. “She was simply tired and falling asleep. By about one o’clock, she was just done, so we took her up to her room.

“This isn’t something many people are aware of,” continued Mr. Rudolph, “but Britney suffers from a rare form of narcolepsy that causes her to fall asleep at night. Most narcolepsy victims fall asleep suddenly during the day for no apparent reason, but Britney will often pass out suddenly at night.”

Mr. Rudolph further explained that people with narcolepsy are often stereotyped “as drunks or druggies or worse.” That stigma adds to the tragedy of this disease, whose victims “often cannot even remember whether they’ve put their underwear on or not,” said Mr. Rudolph.

In other New Year’s news, although Carson Daly and Ryan Seacrest deny they are vying to replace New Year’s Eve icon Dick Clark, 76, who suffered a stroke two years ago, Mr. Seacrest appears willing to stoop to any lengths to knock Mr. Clark off the New Year’s Eve perch, even if that means imitating Mr. Clark’s slurred speech.

“There’s a dirigible sea of Kwistina Ah, Ah, Goolayer fans fwudink Dimes Gware,” observed Mr. Seacrest at one point during the four-hour broadcast on ABC this New Year’s Eve.

After ABC’s switchboards had lit up with calls protesting Mr. Seacrest’s “mockery of a national treasure,” his agent issued a statement saying that Mr. Seacrest suffers from autonomic vocal impressionism, an ailment that causes people to imitate unconsciously the speech of those around them.    

If the public pratfalls of Hollywood’s overpaid, virtue-signaling drama llamas make your day as they make ours, check out these Celebrity Shockers — where meltdowns, mugshots, and micro-bikinis collide.