Candid Camera

Britney Spears is reportedly suing US Weekly for reporting that she consulted with her lawyer to prevent a leak of a sex tape featuring her and K-Fed.

Christmas has come early.

I hope this is true. Wouldn't a Britney sex tape pretty much be the Holy Grail of celebrity sex tapes? With all the tapes that have leaked out recently, there's enough footage out there for a new cable channel. But this one could be special.

Now, I'm no expert of these things. I've only seen about a dozen or so of these things.

Almost without exception, these tapes aren't really titilating but rather curiousities. They all have bad lighting, one static camera, and feature the most boring sexual action since Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut.

The best that I've seen was the infamous tape with Tommy Lee and Pam Anderson. I accidentally watched it in a hotel room while I was on a business trip. Really. I was looking through the local television guide and saw that PBS was showing a documentary on the Pelopennesian War. I turned on the television to watch it, but I hit a wrong button (or six) and the next thing I know, I mistakenly ordered the Pam and Tommy Show.

And hey, $12.99 is $12.99.

This remains the gold standard of celebrity sex tapes. They shot it on their honeymoon, so they had exotic locations. And I must compliment Tommy's camera work. He didn't just put the camera on a tripod (shut up) and just shoot. No, he held the camera the whole time and provided effective cinematography. When you think about it, Pam and Tommy are practically porn stars themselves. It's no wonder that the tape turned out well.

The downside was because I saw it in a hotel, they pixelated most of the more explicit footage. But that's not really something that you can complain about to the front desk though, is it?

The worst tape was the Tonya Harding tape. It was shot right after her wedding. I mean she came into the room with her wedding dress still on and went at it with her skeevy then-husband and co-conspirator right away. It was shot with hardly any lighting and it ended with Tonya presenting to the camera the evidence of their love. It was the most disturbing and frightening thing I've ever seen since the last three minutes of The Blair Witch Project. Seriously, the tape should be shown in abstinence-only sex ed classes.

The funny thing is that Tonya says that the tape is a fake. If you see it (and I strongly recommend that you don't), it's clearly Tonya Harding. You can tell by the distinctive way she landed her triple lutz.

But most celebrity tapes fall closer to the Harding spectrum than the Pam/Tommy one.

But you would think by now that these celebrities would learn not to make these tapes. They always get stolen by some friend, burglar, or employee. The courts always refuse to block their distribution. And they always end up on the Internet.

So why do they make them?

Despite all the complaints about "pavorotti's" stalking them, I really think it's because they can't do anything without having a camera on them. This is especially true of Paris Hilton, who fought her partner for screen time, and literally can't do anything without bringing her cell phone.

These tapes reveal more about the celebrities than they'd like. No, not just the explicit sex and nudity. But the fact that underneath all the glitz and glamour, their sex lives are really pedestrian.

Except for Pam and Tommy. They should be in Cirque du Soleil.