February 08, 2007

Anna Nicole Smith is dead. She was found unresponsive in her hotel room in Florida and pronounced dead at a local hospital.
posted by Kimberly 17 years ago
  • Let 'if you don't have anything nice to say' be your guide.
  • When Cobain died, I understood it to be one of those generational markers. I felt it, even though I didn't particularly care for the guy. This has that same generational touch to it too -- but I don't have any feelings on her passing whatsoever. Odd.
  • she went through a lousy last year of her life... i feel for her and her very young daughter. .
  • I feel for that little baby, though. Yikes.
  • Huh. Unexpected.
  • When she was doing Guess ads around 92 or so I thought she was about the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. After hearing her open her mouth a year or two later, I didn't find her quite as attractive. Since then, she is one of those perpetual celebrities who is famous because she is a celebrity. I am not much of a fan of those folks.
  • One of my coworkers, from Australia, just told me that she was recently there as a guest of a Gay and Lesbian festival. At one of the "after-parties," she was supposedly taken away unconscious and revived at a local hospital. The person who is the source of this info said that she had vomit coming from her mouth, and she was pale as a ghost. The general assumption was drugs. Yes, they can fuck you up.
  • What a sad life she led. I predict the future: I foresee her grown daughter in court, accusing the lawyers in charge of her trust fund of bilking millions of dollars from it over the years and lo, she will be right. This family is doomed to be in the courts forever, in my opinion.
  • As cliched as they might seem at first, I don't think I've ever found the words of "Eleanor Rigby" so apt as they are in this case.
  • I suppose now they'll HAVE to do those paternity tests. What a strange, sad, short life.
  • She was someone I was only vaguely aware of, but from what little I did know, she struck me as being pretty repulsive. However, the waste of any human life is a sad and regrettable thing. If there is lesson in this tragic turn of events, it is that we should all enjoy every fleeting moment to the fullest.
  • I agree P-Boy! does that mean I can have a beer at 2:30 in the afternoon?
  • I'm really trying hard to enjoy this cubicle. Maybe if I hung streamers?
  • I'm with chimaera. This was beyond random. It's also awful for her baby girl, who's already had some pretty tough luck. Hopefully someone caring and responsible gets custody of her.
  • Her son Daniel, the product of a short-lived youthful marriage, died at the age of 20 in September, just days after Smith's daughter was born. Good lord how awful. Hope her daughter can grow up to have as 'normal' and as happy a life as possible.
  • I'm betting there's an interesting story to be told about her life. Secrets, and whatnot. Or maybe it's just another very sad but from the outside banal tale of addiction and woe.
  • . Even if I didn't know.
  • Not a fan, but still upset when I heard about it. Sad in the tragic sense, not the pathetic one.
  • I just feel horrible for the baby she left behind. Poor kid.
  • I really want to make a snarky comment, but all you people are being so nice. .
  • Monkeyfilter: All You People Are Being So Nice. Nicer than MeFi, anyway! (Which is about par for the course for this simian bunch.) My fave comment there so far is "This is one of those huge threads where you can only troll around favoriting comments, or you accidentally get sucked into some petty flamewar." If a person's greatest crime is probably just that they were an airhead, and they spent much of their adult life being the butt of fairly mean jokes, then lost the kid they'd had for more than half their life... well, I really mean "Rest in Peace." I think she deserves that much, you know?
  • Agreed, verbminx. Every life has value, and to see it wasted in such a pointless way diminishes us all, just a bit. Certain comments over there reveal more about the emotional paucity of their respective authors than they do about the desperately-confused person they denigrate so viciously; and feel so smugly superior about.
  • From the usually damn-near-unassailable ikkyu2: So you look around at your life. You've got no education, no money, no connections, no prospects, no manners, nothing to advance in life. Can you allocate capital like Warren Buffett or Abby Joseph Cohen? No. Can you give wise counsel, like Dr. Drew? No. Can you run the 100 meters in less than 10 seconds, like Flo Jo? No. You've got a pair of mammary glands that men seem to like and you know how to put on a sexy attitude and a million dollar smile. So you go try out for Playboy, and they like you, they really like you, and when they put you in the magazine you turn it into a modeling career, because you didn't want to end up a chain smoking old waitress in Mexia, Texas. You marry a wealthy old man whom you met in a strip club. You do the things they tell you you have to do to keep getting work - all the plastic surgery, all the drugs and parties, whatever everyone else is doing. You become wealthy and have a little success in your life. What do you get for it? You get mocked for the way you allocate your capital, for the way you don't know wisdom from foolishness, for the way you've chopped up your body, for the way you married into money. Your kid commits suicide and dies practically in your arms. All this because you didn't want to end up as a waitress in Mexia, Texas and you didn't have any other way out. Now everyone piles on to tell me how she deserved it. I feel sorry for the woman. I feel sorry for what she had to go through and I'm disgusted at what she has to go through now. Recquiescat in pace, Ms. Smith. You earned it.
  • Nail on the head.
  • Yup.
  • .
  • It's scary how many former Playmates are dead now. It makes jacking off[1] to back issues of Playboy more than a bit disturbing. [1] I speak from second-hand[2] experience, of course. [2] Ha ha.
  • We'll always have Paris.
  • In later years, she reminded me of Dorothy Parker's "Big Blonde."
  • I didn't RTFP already, but I gather she lost a child. MCT: I too feel for the woman, as I do for anyone who has grief in their lives, but I don't want to hear her "secrets" paraded for public consumption. So I will continue to ignore whatever is printed in the news, as I have in the past.
  • This reminds me that I should be nicer to Courtney Love.
  • "There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn." Albert Camus (1913 - 1960)
  • Too much money+Not enough education=Bad news... the fact that dorothy parkers big blonde could become a huge star in our culture makes me really sad...sad about her, sad about our culture...this whole thing is a train wreck i never wanted to see, but should have known was inevitable...
  • Zsa Zsa Gabor, Sunny von Bulow: still alive.
  • It seems sad that she's garnered more sympathy in her death than she did in her life.
  • I always felt sorry for her, even in life. She just seemed like she was a fish out of water, trying to fit in and not quite making it. I wasn't a fan, but I hope she's at peace. And that her baby finds a good life.
  • The Aleutian Low hunkers down each winter, just off the West Coast of North America, spawning a bitter wind which scours the mill-towns and fishing villages of the North-West rain-forest. It's salt-water tang stings and reddens the milky skin of the under-dressed Party-Girls, chased by the Lounge-Lizards without-end amongst the cinder-block Legion-Halls, Hockey-rinks, and faux-mediaeval pubs. The small-town heroes are beyond tedious, with their vulcanized mullets, and Trans Am minds. Another Saturday night, another meat-raffle. The Party-Girl is positively going to scream. The sulfur of the pulp-stack is the last lingering reminder of her past, the scent she flees, in a clapped-out Pontiac. Down South in winter, life isn't a constant, deadly, struggle. Night-Clubs are side by side, even above one another. You don't even have to go outside to get a another drink, or find a new friend. The barred doors of the trendy after-hours joints magically unlock for the freshly-minted Party-Girls. You can boogie till dawn, no question. There is always a place for the Party-Girl, in some circles. Mostly , they were harmless fun. Others … well, not so much. This is true of both the places, and for the Party-Girls. At 18 or 20, everything glitters for Party-Girls. No Fear isn’t a Brand; it’s a lifestyle. Dawns are sparkling and full of promise. Before crack, crank, and HIV, the possibilities were limitless. But when the music stops, and the disco-ball quits spinning, no clear pathway lies amongst the empty bottles and discarded Baggies at the age of 30. Tips get smaller, the invitations aren’t so glamorous. Heineken and Harley Davidsons replace Dom Perignon and Porsches. Opening-parties and chalets become Strip-joints and trailer-parks. Occasional becomes habit. Friends are forgotten. Their wisecracks and jokes have turned into boring pleas and lectures. After all, She’s in control; she’s a Party-Girl. She can quit any time she wants. The way down is always swifter than the way up. Blink and you’ll miss it. Besides, you did your best. It’s not your fault. You had other priorities. You hadn’t thought of her in a decade, until you saw her picture in the paper.
  • very nice eulogy, pareidoliaticboy.
  • She took a case up to the Supreme Court, and IIRC, there was a lot of chatter in the Daily Journals (attorney's newspapers) about how surprised they were that she conducted herself with poise in the courtroom. 'Cause, you know, she was just a whore. That said, going by Wikipedia, it sounds like an OD (by which I mean, a healthy body neglected or indulged too long and a mind neglected past its endurance). I hate ODs.
  • I'm in Mexico City at the moment, and there was a discussion on the radio yesterday (a rock station) about Anna Nicole Smith's death. That was weird. And what mct/ikkyu2 said.
  • I wrote that in anger Medusa, on the night that the Vancouver Missing Women's Task Force raided Willy Pickton's pig farm. I was pretty horrified to see that one of our mountain-biking trails exited at that farm, and that we had quaffed more than a few post-ride beers on the edge of that property. I mentioned this elsewhere, and some online commenters were being pretty snarky about the fate of the missing women, dismissing them as almost worthless; because most were Native Indian, and all were prostitutes. This cavalier attitude toward the fate of other human beings appalled me, so I tried to make those posters see that those women had value, by writing that fiction. I manufactured it from whole cloth, and tried to imagine how I would have felt had one of those women been known to me. I wanted those sarcastic self-sastisfied preachers to realize that these wowen were people, after all, and all of them were somebody's daughters, wives, sisters, or mothers. Imagine my horror then, when I opened the paper some six month later to discover that my grade school friend Cindy Feliks' name had just been added to the list. If there is some higher power somewhere, I'm not sure what message this horrific irony is intended to convey to me. I do know that Anna Nicole's story, or some other tragic manifestation like it, is much more common a condition than these smug moralizers realize.
  • Well-said, PareidoliaticBoy. The similarities are definitely there. It's easy to heap scorn on these people from our places of comfort and "higher morals", but how many of us would have made the same choices had our lives begun differently? Not to mention the fact that we help to create the culture that makes it possible for people like Anna Nicole Smith to become celebrities. Who are we to condemn her for taking advantage of it?
  • PareidoliaticBoy, I used to be a "sex worker" and know many, many women in the industry, so your story had a close and particular resonance for me. I have come to feel, very strongly, that a society can be judged by its attitude towards its "lowest" members. until prostitutes, prisoners, convicted felons etc., are truly accorded the basic civil and legal protections we westerners take for granted, we are nothing but barbarians.
  • oh boy, I wrote that before I even saw the prison rape thread on metafilter. now I'm having those annoying impulses to go to law school and become a (useless, futile) fighter for the rights of the underpriveleged, poorly represented, marginalized members of our lovely society. ugh.
  • Extra! Extra! Story Highlights • Pictures show Anna Nicole Smith with immigration minister • Both were fully clothed • Bahamian officials probing whether she got special favors
  • Okay, who's up for the Candle In the Wind rewrite? I'll start. Goodybe Anna Smith Though I never knew you were tall I suppose you'd have to be To avoid a frontal fall. You made your way from Texas To let Playboy snap your tush. All thought you were an imbecile Wish they'd thought the same of Bush. And it seems to me, you were the wife Of an old man with a grin. Who had something fine to cling to If not put it in. And I'll bet he'd like to've known you When he was just a kid But his candle burned out long before His lechery ever did. Next stanza...
  • I would just like to say that I am the father of Anna Nicole's baby. Don't ask.
  • I thought Mrs. Cartman was the father.
  • Thanks, Mr. Cheese Ad-Libby. You just gave away my secret identity.
  • I want some cheesy poofs!
  • Hahahah! You said cheesy!1
  • Custody of Baby Smith is hereby awarded to Frances Bean Cobain.
  • What a frikkin' mess. Is it really that difficult to determine who the father is? For a moment there, I thought I was reading a transcript from the OJ trial. Goo' lor' almitee! I do feel for that child.
  • Jeez, could this story get any sadder? I guess it's a lesson to us all to put our last wishes in writing. And even then it can still be contested.
  • As if it couldn't get stickier, her will has been released; Anna Nicole Smith left everything to her son Daniel, who died last year, and some language seems to exclude any of Smith's future spouses or children. I have intentionally omitted to provide for my spouse and other heirs, including future spouses and children and other descendents now living and those thereafter born or adopted, as well as existing and future stepchildren and foster children. I mean, if there's something to learn here, it's to keep your will up-to-date (especially considering your estate is worth millions). That's geared more towards the high net-worth individual. But regarding children, this is something that applies to a large proportion of the general public. If you have kids, you better take such things into consideration - - because you never know what may come along and....
  • The lawyer who drafted that will is a hack. When I did mine, my lawyer made me include wording to cover any of my heirs predeceasing me. Hopefully it all goes in trust for the daughter, and we can let this whole story rest.
  • Wow. What a lousy will. It doesn't contemplate what would happen if her son predeceased her -- which would be a pretty basic thing to cover. At the very least, the lawyers who drafted it better have hefty professional insurance. Since it didn't make that contemplation, that whole section fails, meaning that you're basically dealing with an intestacy. Depending on the jurisdiction involved, those laws are usually cut and dry in terms of what the spouse is entitled to, what the children are entitled to, etc. That will be fought by the guardians of the daughter, who will claim that she never intended to leave the daughter with nothing, and that she intended to treat all her children equally. A persuasive argument, perhaps -- and courts will usually do whatever they can to stretch a Will to work. Strictly speaking, though, it's not supported. There is also a possibility that Daniel's Estate could inherit, depending on the jurisdiction. If then, there may be a big battle on that end, or maybe the opposite, if it can be shown that Daniel's heir is his sister. Interesting. Sad and unnecessary, but legally interesting.
  • Medical examiner recommends that Smith's body be buried now As the legal battle over Smith's burial dragged Tuesday, a medical examiner called the judge to report that the condition of the model's embalmed body continued to deteriorate. So, James Brown died in December, and his body is fine. What gives?
  • I think it's because they didn't embalm her right away like they did Brown.
  • Which is why I always carry plenty of extra embalming fluid with me when I travel. Because you never know.
  • I love JB, but he looked more like he was embalmed in 1975.
  • This thread is going to start smelling soon. I can predict it.
  • Creating a tabloid perfect storm, O.J. says the baby might be his, cites his "slow-moving sperm". To steal someone's better joke from earlier this morning: "That glove didn't fit, either." (Link goes to Fox News -- somehow, that seemed appropriate.)
  • Who Profits
  • *faints* Please people, use the tag!
  • Whoops
  • DRUGS IN SMITH'S SYSTEM Toxic, lethal drug: -- Chloral Hydrate Therapeutic drugs: -- Diphenhydramine (Benadryl, an antihistamine) -- Clonazepam (Klonopin, anti-seizure drug, also used for panic attacks) -- Diazepam (Valium, used to treat anxiety) -- Nordiazepam (metabolite, produced in digestion of diazepam) -- Temazepam (metabolite, also produced during digestion of diazepam) -- Oxazepam (used to treat anxiety) -- Lorazepam (Ativan, used to treat anxiety) Other drugs: -- Atropine (a drug used in resuscitation) -- Topiramate (Topomax, used to treat seizures, migraines, and sometimes used as weight control drug) -- Ciprofloxacin (Cipro, an antibiotic) -- Acetaminophen (like Tylenol) That's a shitload of benzo's.
  • Wow. The report says it all, really. From fame and fortune all the way down to a coroner stating that you have an unremarkable anus.
  • Now there's a life goal. "Why... his anus... it's remarkable."
  • On the little elevator advertising/weather/sports screen, a headline flashed on that methadone was also found in her system. Goodness. What a crapload of shit to have in one's system! Human growth hormone? Even Cipro? I was on that for a week to battle stomach critters I ingested while living in Indonesia - - it rendered me completely battered and feeling even more worse (it wiped my immune system). How much anti-anxiety meds does one need? This is such a gut-wrenching story (aside from my casual dislike for Anna Nicole prior to her death). I don't think she cared much for her self anymore. It's almost as if she had a slow and deliberate suicide following the death of her son.
  • How much anti-anxiety meds does one need? a friend of mine is presently weening himself off a shocking amount of xanax. he uses it to control/alleviate severe panic attacks and was up to 16-32x the dose that would be effective for me, and it was barely affecting him.
  • Wow, that's frightening. I guess that I was referring to the vast amounts of *different* drugs that were found in her system. A large dose of one type, OK. But this, and that, and this... It seems quite excessive, to the point that common sense would step in and say, "Hello, you're taking a lot of different shit at once! Not good!"
  • . . . to the point that common sense would step in and say, . . Woah, woah, woah. You and your "logic" can just back off, there cowboy. *takes medz for logic*
  • I agree, SMT, it's like the Elvis phenom or something. makes you wonder what her doctor/s were thinking? if she had appropriate medical oversight?
  • what her doctor/s were thinking? $!
  • Very good point, Medusa. I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to have been in her shoes. With such celebrity and wealth, it doesn't seem far-fetched for me to believe that she probably came into contact with numerous practitioners. It seems absurd that one individual would prescribe such a vast array to be taken in conjunction with one another. She probably had a stocked med cabinet, and popped pills like daily vitamins. Pure speculation, yes.
  • One doctor authorized all 11 prescription medications found in Anna Nicole Smith’s hotel room the day the Playboy Playmate died of a drug overdose, according to documents released by the medical examiner’s office Wednesday. More than 600 pills — including about 450 muscle relaxants — were missing from prescriptions that were no more than five weeks old, according to information obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request. It was unclear if Smith took all of them. Ouch. The psychiatrist needs her head examined.
  • The story twists more: Larry Birkhead is the daddy-O
  • aww, i was rooting for Zsa Zsa's hubbie.