Naughty girls need love, too

Maybe, just maybe/
Naughty girls need love/
Too!

Samantha Fox, "Naughty Girls (Need Love Too)," 1988

I'm not sure I want to live in a world where I'll never again hear the phrase, "TrimSpa, baby!"

To be honest, I don't even really understand what TrimSpa is. Some sort of instant strumpet tablet, modeled after the concept of Fizzies? "Hey kids, try Floozies! Just drop into a glass of peroxide and stand back! With just one application, you'll be standing before the U.S. Supreme Court entertaining the justices with your overripe cleavage while arguing over your late husband's last will and testament!"

But now it's too late to even ask the question of that great orifice (ah, I mean, oracle) of trashy celebritydom herself.

Because Anna Nicole is dead. May she rest in peace. And may her piece take a much-needed . . . oh, never mind. Far be it from me to speak ill of the dead.

So . . . where shall we start?

* * *

It goes without saying that I find the whole National Week of Mourning over the early demise of Anna Nicole Smith (née Vickie Lynn Hogan and lately Vickie Lynn Marshall) a bit odd. Oh, to be sure, in our drunk-on-celebrity-effluvia culture, it shouldn't be too surprising that a modicum of attention has been paid to the early passing of that blonde, busty, famous-for-being-infamous Goldigger of 1993. But it's all gone a bit out of control, a bit above and beyond, so very OTT--oh so quickly and without the batting of even one false eyelash.

I knew we were in trouble when on Thursday night, 8 February 2007, the very evening that Anna Nicole's lifeless body was found in her room at the Hard Rock Hotel in Hollywood, Florida (a double whammy of celebrity trash-n-class, that is--if she'd only died while on the toilet as well), already MSNBC's Joe Scarborough was asking tough questions about the media coverage of Anna Nicole's death. Is it too much? Is it important enough an event to cover? What does it all mean?

If you have to ask . . .

Like a nymphomaniac who gets a job passing out towels at a sex club, however, the minds behind CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, et al., can hardly be trusted with a light touch or a reasonable approach to the latest trashfest. (Even when there's a perfectly good story about an astronaut driving halfway across the country bedecked in an adult diaper, all for the benefit of giving a mama-done-knocked-you-out to her rival for Spaceman Spiff's affections. Honestly. How could you not focus on that?)

Anywho, I come not to bury Anna Nicole, but in a weird sort of way, to praise her--even if it may seem like somewhat backhanded praise. But that's me.

Like the poor and red lipstick, I figured Anna Nicole Smith would be with us forever, so I was surprised to hear of her sudden death. There were so many loose ends to tie up in her life, or, more importantly, how would she next draw attention to herself?

Nonetheless, despite the ongoing saga of Anna Nicole's very public life, I follow the philosophical school that believes that public figures like Anna Nicole aren't really real, that in fact, they are figments of our collective consciousness. We as a culture, for whatever reason, need Anna Nicole Smith to exist, so we believe in her existence. We create her in our own minds. Anna Nicole = God. Too strong? Then perhaps Anna Nicole = Angel (of the "Honkytonk Angel" variety). Better still--Anna Nicole = Elvis on black velvet.

But now you're dead, Anna Nicole, and following the reasoning of my amateur belief system, that must mean we lost faith in you. But why? Was it something you said or did? That can't be it, Anna Nicole--you never said or did much of anything. It's hard to get too upset or offended by the unintelligible slurrings of a bleached-blonde Jessica Rabbit. "TrimSpa, bab--hunh, whut wuz ah sayin'?"

As far as I'm concerned, there's always room in the Church of Notorious Celebrity's hot tub/baptismal font for an icon of Anna Nicole's . . . uh, proportions. Thus, it makes no sense to me why Anna had to die. So young. So tragic. And so pneumatic. A blow-up doll come to life. A drag queen of Wagnerian dimensions. One part Mae West, one part Marilyn Monroe, one part drug-addled pole dancer.

Still, now that she's gone, who can we expect to replace her in our collective celebrity-worshipping consciousness? Certainly, we can't be expected to rely upon that scrawny, lazy-eyed Paris Hilton for the sort of trashy frolics and headline-grabbing antics that Anna Nicole provided us. And while Lindsay Lohan is certainly trashy enough and just as likely to show up drunk for work, Lindsay actually seems to take herself seriously, something I never thought Anna Nicole did, even as she was weeping crocodile tears over the death of her Texas billionaire husband on Entertainment Tonight. (But who am I to venture into the scariest place on early, Anna Nicole's mind, and determine her intents? Her father walked out on the family at an early age, so maybe she was attracted to J. Howard Marshall as a father figure? Or even a great-great-grandfather figure?)

Oh well, there's always Britney Spears. But note to Brits: You can only wear your vagina on the outside of your clothing so many times before America will become bored and disenchanted with you. You need to keep amping up the Gulf Coast crazy to make us notice you, darlin'. If you were to ask me for advice, Britney, I'd say it's about time you reunited with K-Fed just long enough for you both to travel to Burkina Faso to adopt a few Third World babies.

Anna Nicole, however, was no celebutard-wannabe, no blank amateur. She was the real thing--in as much as anyone whose major food groups are sillicone, peroxide, and spray-on tan can be real anything. She knew how to keep us guessing and gawking. She gave us tawdry marriages to men 63 years her senior! She gave us one of the first (and one of the weirdest and most entertaining) celebrity reality TV shows! She gave us fierce, interminable legal wranglings to rival those of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce in Bleak House! She gave us references on primetime television about her various itchy private body parts! Heck, she gave us a baby with one, no two! no three! no four! potential fathers--one of whom is Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband!

So much sturm und drang in such a short span of a life. Thus, I think I know the real reason Anna Nicole died: She just plum gave out.

I will miss that about you, Anna Nicole: Your sincere audacity, your outrageous honesty. Madonna faked it for years, trying to get us all to belief that she was some sort of Detroit raggamuffin-made-good, a beau sauvage of the pop world, when all the while she was just waiting to take up the life of a lord and lady in merry old Whatsit-upon-Thames. And take Paris Hilton--please! No matter how many home pornos you release of yourself on the internet, you're just a downwardly mobile poseur at heart, a bit of weekend rough, the sin forgotten as soon as the sun comes up on Sunday morning, and then it's time once again to have brunch with Mummy and Daddy Hilton in their little 33-room Hamptons bungalow.

But you, Anna Nicole, were the real thing--White Trash on a mission, a true Grit, scratchin' and clawin' your way out of the rotten potato patch and, with The Star and The Inquirer as your witness(es), everyone knew that, even with your yo-yo weight and oh-so-dubious talents, you'd never go hungry or nekkid again.

Unless the part called for it and the money was really, really good.

* * *

This is how I'll always remember Anna Nicole.

In my first job in Texas, in 1995 or so, I used to talk with this fellow new employee in the breakroom about various and sundry aspects of Texas craziness and culture. (Don't get me wrong, pardner, I love the Lone Star State, even miss it terribly every now and again. Nonetheless, you can't ignore the fact that people in the state "accidentally" run over their cheating spouses multiple times and try to bump off the mothers of their cheerleading daughter's rivals just for fun. It's the Texas mystique, y'all: Loco from the heat, wacko/Waco in the heart, until death or road rage do us part, forever 'n' ever, lord have mercy.) The colleague was sort of a native, in that she had been born in Texas, but her family was all from New York, so she fit in no better (and probably far worse) than I did.

One day we arrived at the topic of Anna Nicole Smith, probably prompted by the headlines emanating from Houston at that time and maybe an article in Texas Monthly (the state's seminal chronicler of Texas culture and personalities, not to mention the world's best magazine, imho) about the marriage of Anna Nicole to octogenarian lovegod J. Howard Marshall and the volcanic feud between père Marshall et fils Marshall over distribution of Pa's billion-dollar estate.

The colleague mentioned that she had once watched with her boyfriend the Anna Nicole Playmate of the Year (1993) video. Her favorite moment in the video was when a chesty, pre-TrimSpa-but-not-the-Anna-Nicole-Show Anna Nicole stood in front of the welcome sign to her hometown of Mexia, Texas. With bosoms front and center, Anna Nicole explained the nuances of pronunciation of her hometown's name as only she could.

"Y'all, it's not called MEX-ya. It's Muh-HEEEEEE-ya!"

When the colleague said this line, she swung her hips, heaved her chest, and belted out the name Mexia like she was calling hogs at Spiveys Corner. All in perfect imitation of Anna Nicole.

The colleague and I spent pretty much the next week going around our office belting out the same phrase. "It's not MEX-ya. It's Muh-HEEEEEE-ya!" [Editor's note: I've also heard it called "Muh-HAY-ya." Where the truth lies, I, a non-native Texan, cannot say.] Each of us swinging our hips and heaving our bosoms, especially when we got to the "HEEEEEE" part in Mexia. After a while, we just cut to the chase, yodeling only the "Muh-HEEEEEE-ya!" part, as if it were some Southern Plains war cry.

We did this every chance we got and, really, for no good reason other than it felt good, was entertainingly stupid fun, and, by our boisterousness and excessive calling of attention to ourselves, was irritating as hell to our fellow employees.

And that, dear readers, is what Anna Nicole Smith means to me.