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Eye on Soaps' October 16, 2006 Holy Frickin' Moses, Where to Start? I guess I'll start at the beginning, which is where all good stories should start. My BFF, Sherry Mercurio and I were IM'ing and she pops out, as she is wont to do, with a real stunner. "Did you hear that Anna Nicole Smith married her lawyer?" I responded with utter confusion, which *I* am often wont to do. "Huh? That Howard guy or a new one?" "That Howard guy." "The guy from the show and the Anna Nicole Game?" (This was a flash game on E! Online that I fully intended to link here, but while it was up and running just fine yesterday is now listed as unavailable -- hmmm, the conspiracy theory thickens) "Yup." "Well son-of-a-whore." "Yeah, he died." OK, so I'm taking some liberties with the conversation here, but I swear to you, it went something like that. I do not log AIM conversations because I don't often leave written evidence around of my own dullardness and there is nothing more dullard than me on AIM. Usually I am doing about 15 different things at once, including AIMing, so there are a lot of single syllabled responses and emoticons, often followed by a diarrheatic spilling of some verbose, lightning-bearer thought, followed by more single-syllabled responses and emoticons. It's a rather psychotic experience, actually. Sort of like Anna Herself. I knew of Anna as the chick who married the old guy and who worked hard to get the Marilyn thing going. That was about it. Then, in 1992, came forth her E! Entertainment series, "The Anna Nicole Show." That's when I, and I presume most of America and some other countries, found out she's not just another pretty, gummy face, she's nuckin futs. Eric used to say, "How can you WATCH this shit?" I'd quickly reply with, "How can you NOT watch it! It's like having a choreographed train wreck on TV every week!" or, if I was feeling more peckish than that, something along the lines of, "Because I'm an AMERICAN, goddammit! I eat a McDonald's combo meal and order a diet coke with it. Why do you think I watch it? Because I can!!" If I happened to be on a literary tangent at the moment, the answer would be, "How can you NOT watch it? The woman blasts through every single one of the Seven Deadly Sins like they are rice paper on every single episode." Regardless of the reason, I watched a good bit of the show and was knocked over that someone would allow themselves to be taped in such a state. Of course, she was knocked over all the way to the bank. This was in the olden days before everyone had a reality TV camera following them around, so the concept was still very, very new. I watched as she was snotty and abusive to Howard and Kimmy, her sidekicks. Howard was her lawyer and Kimmy was her hopelessly besotted, butchy, lesbian groupie. Daniel was her persistently embarrassed but obviously adoring son. It was a match made in HE!aven.
The glow wore off around 2004 when E! canceled the show after a 2 year run, which is right around when Anna Nicole really started to go even more batshit than before, crawling around on all fours, talking to her boobs for half an hour and such. Fear not! Anna Nicole continued to wow the world with the occasional stage appearances where her behavior became more and more whacked, making Farrah Faucett look positively stoic. At the 2004 American Music Awards in November of that year, she showed up to introduce "a freakin' genius," Kayne West, and was cuh-learly hepped up on some kind of goofballs. The good news was that she'd shed almost 70 pounds allegedly using TrimSpa, the diet supplement, going from looking like this:
To looking like this:
The bad news is that on that particularly night, she looked like this:
and like this:
Weeee doggies. I'd rather be fat and, well, not stupid. Referring to her behavior at that event, she later wrote it off to an addiction to prescription drugs in an interview with "The Early Show," saying, "I actually went into a coma, you know. I almost died. And I had to learn how to walk again and all this and that." Witnesses said she had about 20 too many before getting on the stage (too many what was not mentioned). One could say it was quite a clever move because you'd better believe that Usher and Outkast were the only ones who were talking about their sweeping wins the next day. Everyone else was talking about freaky Anna Nicole. She also got her "Like my bawwwddddy?" catch phrase from that appearance that went on to be used in her TrimSpa commercials. Jimmy Kimmel's comment was, "I told her to stay away from Snoop's brownies." If it was a conquered addiction as she stated, she should fire her physical therapist because it didn't look like she was doing too good of a job walking in April 2005 at the Australian MTV Awards when out of the blue, she whipped off her shirt to review a good sized "MTV" logo on each good sized boob:
It got even uglier in the press room afterward when she again disrobed, this time without the benefits of the MTVs:
She also did a little MTV dance at the same event. Anna Nicole informed, "For Him Magazine" that when she lived in Texas, "A ghost, hung like a horse, an f-in HUGE horse, would crawl up my leg and have sex with me at an apartment a long time ago in Texas...I was freaked out about it, but then I was like, Well, you know what? He's never hurt me and he just gave me some amazing sex, so I have no problem." All my ghosts do are hide my car keys and talk to each other. How does she get the helpful ghosts, huh?
Then there was the above event, which doesn't really seem to help her case any. I'm too lazy to look up what particular fete this was (I'm sure some of you little tabloid hounds will know anyway), but it is definitely in that 2005 area of time. Of course, that was all just typical Anna Nicole Smith until a little over a month ago when the real shit hit the fan. This went past the, "Do you like my body and I'm so messed up on Godknowswhat entertainment" and well into, "OK, what's really going on here?"
Unsubstantiated accounts report that Anna was heard to shout, "You killed him" to someone else in the room. The matter was quickly dispatched to the Bahama Police who began an investigation to determine whether or not a formal jury inquest should be held into Daniel's death. Their recommendations will be released any day now. Daniel's body remains, one month after his death, at a Nassau funeral home awaiting burial arrangements. From here on out, it gets even weirder, if that's possible. A lawyer, Michael Scott, hired by Anna Nicole, released a statement assuring the public that Daniel's death was in no way drug related. Days after that, a pathologist hired privately by Smith and Stern, Dr Cyril Wecht, presented his findings that Daniel died of a cardiac dysrhythmia brought on by an unintentional overdose of Zoloft, Lexapro (both are anti-depressants) and Methadone (a drug used to ease the withdrawal from heroin addiction, although there are no reports of Daniel having such an addiction). Since this is a privately hired pathologist, the findings of the Bahama Police and if recommended, a jury inquest, will be what determines the actual cause of death. Shortly after Daniel's death, Anna Nicole sold photos of him holding his newborn sister to "In Touch" magazine for a reported sum of anywhere from $375,000 to $750,00, depending on which info you read. On September 26th, Howard K. Stern appeared on the show "Larry King Live" and announced that he was the "proud father" of Anna's baby daughter, now named Danilynne Hope Marshall Stern.
Anna at this point has refused all testing and the court order is tough to enforce with her hiding in the Bahamas. Birkhead has a hearing scheduled for October 26th when a judge might get a little more aggressive about hauling her back with baby in tow to submit to the testing. A few days after the baby was born, Smith officially became a citizen of the Bahama Islands, which effectively complicates matters even further. It gets even better when we learn (bringing us back to the start of the story) that on the morning of September 28, just eighteen days after Daniel's death and two days after Stern's appearance on Larry King Live where he stated that he and Anna Nicole were in love and would marry at some future date, the mentioned future date arrived. Anna Nicole, Howard K. Stern, a Baptist minister and a few close friends, along with Baby Danilynne and her nanny, boarded a 41 foot long catamaran named "Margaritaville," where Smith and Stern were married (to each other). The ceremony is not legally binding since no marriage certificate has been submitted, but conspiracy theories abound. Is it a publicity stunt? (Is her whole life a publicity stunt?)
Not one to miss an opportunity, Anna Nicole quickly sold the exclusive pictures (some of which are above) from the wedding to "People" magazine for right at a sweet million dollars. I think that pretty well nails down the "publicity stunt" possibility. Among the 30 photos was supposedly a picture of Anna Nicole holding up Baby Danilynne while wearing pasties. It is not reported whether it was Anna Nicole or Danilynne who was wearing the pasties. Is it a legal move? Will a marriage certificate be submitted quickly if "spousal privilege" is needed to be invoked in the case of a testimony? Is it a financial move on the part of Howard K. Stern, who is painted as a kind of Svengali by several people, including Anna Nicole's own mother, Virgie Arthur? She told CNN's Nancy Grace such things as: "I just know Danny didn't kill hisself." "If Howard Stern marries [Smith] and she ends up dead, then who does [her] money go [to]?" Where indeed and how long before Anna herself is sitting dead in a hospital chair? Scary stuff, I'm telling you. Of all people to speak for Anna Nicole, her TrimSpa boss, Alex Goen, says that she and Stern, "Intend to formally, officially get married." On the heels of the "wedding," her lawyer, Michael Scott, promptly submitted his resignation to her in writing after consulting with his colleagues. While still citing attorney-client privileges, Scott did say that his decision was based on concerns about her conduct and that the split "was not an amicable parting." He says that there was considerable head-butting going on between himself and Stern over how to proceed with legal matters. He also was not pleased with the fact that Stern and Smith staged the pseudo-wedding before burial arrangements were made for Daniel. Billy Smith, Daniel's father and Anna Nicole's husband from 1985-1987, held a memorial service for his son on October 7th in his Texas hometown of Mexia. Anna Nicole once stated her life goals as wishing to be "Rich, famous and adored." She isn't far off from that. She's definitely rich after the money she recently made off of her children. She is both famous and infamous and while she may not necessarily be adored by everyone, she's certainly rarely "ignored." MY question is, "Just where the complete hell are Kimmy and Sugarpie in all of this??"
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Anna, then 38
and burstingly pregnant with her second child, made her way to the
Bahamas to give birth to a daughter on September 7th. On
September 10th, her beloved son, Daniel (right), flew in to visit
Mom and little sister, dozed off in a chair and did not wake up.
Reports of what happened after that vary. The general
consensus is that Anna Nicole woke up, tried to rouse Daniel and
couldn't get him awake. Her long-time friend and lawyer,
Howard K. Stern (not the radio personality, Howard Stern, this is
another one) was also in the room and they called for help.
Hospital staff tried for 22 minutes to resuscitate Daniel before
declaring him to be dead.
Promptly
after that, Anna's ex-boyfriend, a guy named Larry Birkhead (31,
left), hired himself a lawyer and took legal action against Anna
Nicole, obligating her to produce a baby DNA sample and to undergo
drug testing (he'd previously been told that he is the baby's
father). He alleges that Anna Nicole has a serious methadone
(there's that word again) addiction (I guess he saw the video
footage of the award shows) that is facilitated by Stern. Of
course, we have to consider that if this guy truly is the biological
father and can get custody, there could be some serious child
support issues at stake. His lawyer asserts that Anna Nicole
told him, "You will never see your child again."
