Jan. 17, 2008

Cops, cameras and caboose-flashing -- yep, Wednesday was just another night in the sad, attention-seeking life of Britney Spears. Here's the latest:

The Cousin Itt-coiffed custody hearing deserter fueled up for her evening on the town by chowing down on Mexican food and sucking down some Starbucks with paparazzo beau-cum-purse carrier Adnan Ghalib, who, ironically enough, is rumored to be growing increasingly frustrated with the constantly shadowing shutterbug horde.

For the nosh stop, Brit donned ripped fishnets and a ruffled skirt that wasn't so much mini as microscopic, a butt crack-exposing choice the paparazzi were happy to capture -- for the umpteenth time.

Amazingly, she escaped an indecent exposure charge when police pulled her and the trailing photographer convoy over around 11 p.m.

Spears didn't receive a ticket, but four of the cameramen were arrested for reckless driving.

"She didn't want those paps to get arrested, though," her hanger-on Sam Lutfi told Ryan Seacrest on his radio show Thursday morning. "She tried to stop that from happening, but they wouldn't allow it."

Despite narrowly dodging a moving violation, Britney was far from ready to call it a night. After an unsuccessful attempt to enter a closed Rite-Aid, her preferred hot spot du jour, she headed for a Ralph's supermarket to stock up on supplies.

As she loaded grocery bag after grocery bag into her car ($600 worth, according to PageSix.com), a lensman asked about the results of the pregnancy test she made a very public show of shopping for on Tuesday with Ghalib (not so coincidentally, his photo agency scored the alarming snaps).

"I never had a pregnancy test," Spears pooh-poohed on video (via TMZ). "It was for my friend."

Given that her inner circle currently consists of Ghalib, pretty newcomer Chad Hardcastle and Lutfi, we're not quite sure which of her so-called pals might have needed to pee on a stick.

"It's all bull***t. They're just toying with the paparazzi," Lutfi told "Access Hollywood" of the E.P.T. photo op, adding to Seacrest, "I don't know if they even bought one. I think they were just [bleeping] around."

Brit's 2 a.m. shopping spree at Kitson apparently didn't include buying pants.

Speaking of [bleeping] around, Lutfi accompanied Britney on her post-Ralph's expedition to clothing store Kitson, which opened its doors at 1:30 in the morning to accommodate her need for retail therapy (hey, at least she's getting some kind of therapy).

After about 20 minutes, says Us, she exited with several shopping bags and proceeded to hit the nearby Kitson Men's store, which she emerged from a short time later kitted out in a striped, button-down shirt, black tie and no pants.

Spears, who had been speaking in her normal Louisiana drawl earlier in the evening, slipped back into that grating British accent she's grown so fond of as she asked photographers, "Where is your driver when you need them?"

But were Kitson staffers asking where are some blindfolds when you need them? A spy tells E! News that Brit was browsing the store while butt nekkid, a charge Lutfi denied during his tête-à-tête with Seacrest.

Still, this isn't the first time in recent days she's been accused of stripping down while shopping. Life & Style claims Spears pulled a similar nude move as she tried on dresses with Ghalib at a Los Angeles-area Betsey Johnson store on Jan. 13.

"I was blown away. Britney's private parts were right in front of me!" a seemingly traumatized employee tells the tab. "I grabbed a dress to cover her and she screamed, 'Get away from me! Don't you [bleeping] come near me!' Then she disappeared in the dressing room with Adnan for 45 minutes. They were making weird noises. It was disgusting."

Unfortunately, Spears appears incapable of breaking out of her routine of purposeless, paparazzi-crammed outings (typical schedule: gas station, drug store, shopping, gas station again), despite having resources at her disposal of which most can only dream.

Lutfi told Seacrest the Kitson trip was prompted by "boredom," and during the Ralph's adventure, when a photog asked the sense-needing cautionary tale about her future, slyly suggesting the possibility of some higher learning, she responded, "Oh, I wish I was in college."

Us, too, Brit. Us, too.

Meanwhile, Britney's redeemed (and far more responsible) ex Kevin Federline is hoping she'll get it together enough to regain visitation with sons Sean Preston, 2, and Jayden James, 1 (something the general public seems more interested in seeing happen than Spears herself).

"Kevin's not indifferent to how difficult it has to be on their mother and on the kids," his unflappable attorney, Mark Vincent Kaplan, tells People. "It's a sad situation. There's no victorious feeling."

Federline, he says, "wants nothing more than to be able to parent his children with participation by their mother. But the best interest of the children require that they be in the most sound, safe, nurturing and consistent environment. That is paramount ... He can't replace their mother in their life but he is going to try to minimize the hardship."

But is their mother trying to replace them? At the same time Spears and the still-married Ghalib checked out pregnancy tests, OK!'s latest cover announced she's "trying to get pregnant" by him (and -- wait for it -- convert to Islam).

A wedding dress-clad Spears and Adnan step out on Jan. 11.

"Britney hates when things are taken from her," a Federline insider asserts to the magazine. "The court's taken Preston and Jayden away, so she'll just have another kid to take their place. That's the way she thinks."

Not so, says Lutfi, who responded in the negative when Seacrest asked if Spears was hoping to get knocked up.

"No, not at all," contends the minion, who earlier this week denied an In Touch report that Spears had left a suicide note when she was carted away after her Jan. 3 custody standoff with police.

He also brushes off knot-tying rumors, which were sparked when Britney stepped out in a minidress she wore to her K-Fed wedding and sported a diamond ring on her all-important finger, discounting them as "not true."

Another hopeful sign: During his chat with Seacrest, Lutfi "busted in" on a showering Spears (yes, we're surprised she was awake and sudsing up, too), who not only ordered him out ("I'm naked!"), but also exhibited some sorely needed self-awareness by acknowledging, "I stink ... Shut the door, I'm nasty!"

Baby steps, people. Baby steps.

Next: Eddie and Tracey: What Went Wrong?