Today’s Links: Your Daily ANS Reader

Posted Feb 9, 2007 by Jeff Houck

Updated Feb 9, 2007 at 02:06 PM

Here are some of the links floating around online today as news organizations scurry to get on the bandwagon:

FORBES
Anna Nicole Smith’s Mother Blames Drugs
Associated Press story says: “A medical examiner began an autopsy Friday on Anna Nicole Smith, whose mother blamed drugs for the former Playboy playmate’s sudden death that ended an extraordinary tabloid life at just 39. ``I think she had too many drugs, just like Danny (Smith’s late son),’’ her mother, Vergie Arthur, told ABC’s ``Good Morning America’’ on Friday. ``I tried to warn her about drugs and the people that she hung around with. She didn’t listen.’’ ``She was too drugged up,’’ Arthur said. ``By the last interview I saw of her, she was so wasted.’’


MIAMI HERALD
A turbulent life, and a sudden death
A video filmed outside the hospital showing a paramedic working on Smith was sold to media outlets for nearly $500,000, WFOR-CBS4 news reported. This was Smith’s fourth visit to the Hard Rock..


Local fans react to Smith’s death
Barry Lee, 37, recalled Smith’s recent history of yo-yo weight gain. ‘‘It made me think about getting back into shape a little,’’ said Lee, who was shopping during his visit from Brooklyn.


CHICAGO TRIBUNE
A life and death that had us talking; Anna Nicole Smith’s job was to live an entertaining life. Why her death dominated the day’s conversation.
She seemed to relish her fame, but let’s not kid—we were complicit. We took a pretty girl from Texas, literally stripped her down, made her famous and ridiculous, fat and skinny, big-bosomed and rich and pitifully irresistible.


SALON
Goodbye, Vickie Lynn; No candle in the wind, Anna Nicole Smith was more like a bonfire in a hailstorm—and we couldn’t pry our eyes away from her.
Cintra Wilson writes: So many stars are doing so badly, trying to withstand the collective hex of unkind limelight, what is really incredible is that there haven’t been more deaths lately. Nothing shows so well how unkind we are, as a society, than the way we report on our falling women. Hollywood has been restless, cruel and itchy, jonesing for a real tragedy. It was getting bored merely humiliating people on “American Idol.” Drug-addled Hollywood strumpets like Linsday Lohan, Courtney Love and Nicole Richie have all been on various deathwatch lists for quite some time, and the tabloids have been licking their chops, waiting to be fed a body.


NEWSWEEK.COM
Trash, Cash—and a Life Lived on Her Terms; Anna Nicole Smith left the chicken shack for the Playboy Mansion and reality TV stardom. She got what she wanted, but tragedy stuck to her like lint. (With a photo gallery.)
Unlike so many women who cash in on their bottle-blonde sexuality—Paris Hilton, Madonna, Charo—Smith also had something genuinely sweet about her. She was vulnerable. She was needy. She adored her son. She was the ex-stripper with a heart of gold. She was also something of a joke, but at least she seemed to recognize that. “The Anna Nicole Show” was an inane and mundane look at Smith’s allegedly daily life: eating pizza, shopping, playing with Sugar Pie the miniature poodle, and a lot of whining about being overweight and undersexed. But the last line of the theme song (arguably the best part of the show) was, “It’s not meant to be funny. It just is.”


THE SMOKING GUN
Remembering Anna Nicole Smith; Model rose from Krispy Fried Chicken waitress to oil baron’s wife While awaiting police and autopsy reports regarding today’s death of Anna Nicole Smith, we’re reprising portions of a court ruling that offers a detailed account of the late model’s life, from her days as a waitress at Krispy Fried Chicken to her marriage to an aged oil baron.


FINDLAW
Links to Anna Nicole Smith’s legal cases.
Read the U.S. Supreme Court Opinion sending Smith’s probate claims to her late husband’s estate back to a lower court for futher review and litigation. Marshall v. Marshall (May 1, 2006); See the The legal challenge filed by Anna Nicole Smith in Texas Probate Court seeking a share of her late husband J. Howard Marshall’s estate. See the Supreme Court Docket in Marshall v. Marshall case. (Feb. 2006)


DEFAMER
Anna Nicole: The Morning After Round-Up
Any attempt to deal with all of the updates about Anna Nicole Smith’s death on an individual basis would probably result in “mysterious” and “unexpected” heart failure, so here’s our best attempt to round up the developments for your perusal over your first cup of coffee.


PLAYBOY ONLINE (Warning: Adult-Oriented Material, NSFW)
Playboy Remembers An Icon
Anna Nicole appeared on the cover of Playboy magazine four times: March 1992, June 1993, February 1994 and February 2001. In her 1992 Playmate profile, we wrote, “As earthy and wide open as the North Texas spaces she hails from, she tells the truth no matter how uncool it may sound. ‘The people in [Texas] won’t believe it when these pictures of me hit the newsstands, because I was considered a goody-two-shoes nerd back in high school.’”


ROLLING STONE
Playlist of the day: Anna Nicole R.I.P.
No doubt the next days and weeks will produce more details about the circumstances surrounding her unexpected death at the Hard Rock Hotel in Hollywood, Florida, but for the time being, here’s a list of songs to say goodbye to a life in the limelight cut short.


US Magazine
Her Life In Pictures

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Dead Pools: Baby It’s Cold Outside

Posted Feb 9, 2007 by Jeff Houck

Updated Feb 9, 2007 at 08:34 AM

In the morbid world of celebrity dead pools (in which average Joes and Janes try to guess which celebrities will die in a given year), Anna Nicole Smith’s death was an unexpected bonanza.

Dead pools began to flourish after the Internet took off. The rules: You pick 10 celebs who are most likely to assume room temperature before the end of the year. You earn points every time one of your celebs dies. The number of points is usually a subtraction of the person’s age at death minus the number 100 (since few celebs live to the century mark).

As Wikipedia explains:

A dead pool, also known as a deathpool or a ghoul pool is a game of prediction which involves guessing when someone will die. Sometimes it is a bet where money is involved. The combination of dead or death and betting-pool, refers to such a gambling arrangement. A typical modern dead pool might have players pick out celebrities who they think will die within the year. There are several scoring variants. For example, a player might be rewarded few, if any, points for predicting the death of someone who is over 80 years old or is suffering from a terminal disease. Another common method to calculate score is subtracting the celebrity’s age from 100. Other pools require participants to form a list ranked on how sure they are that a person on the list will die, with points given based on how high a person on their list is ranked, and others award points based on how many other contestants selected the deceased celebrity. Another variant on the game has a single point awarded for each correct prediction, regardless of the celebrity’s age or medical condition. The advantage of this scoring method is that there is more scoring, and it rewards research (learning which celebrities are experiencing failing health) rather than luck.

One example of the concept is a series of segments on the Howard Stern Radio Show, where show regulars would place bets into a celebrity death pool, each trying to predict the next celebrity to pass on. The practice has been expanded to include wagering on such abstract entities as businesses.

Definitions of celebrity vary from contest to contest. Smaller pools may rely on consensus of the players as to who is famous. Others require an obituary to appear in a recognized newswire such as the Associated Press or Reuters. The Lee Atwater Invitational employed a Fame Committee consisting of non-contestants who assess ahead of time the name-recognition of each celebrity. The Rotten.com Dead Pool, the largest in the world, uses NNDB as its source of qualified celebrities, and as arbiter of their life status.

Including the Pope or a president is considered easy pickings for dead poolers. Picking someone young is much more difficult (and distasteful), but it has the potential to earn massive amounts of points. Young celebs like Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears, who have had their moments of public inebriation and reckless abandon, are popular picks.

So, you can understand why a 39-year-old blond bombshell with a history of bizarre public appearances and drastic changes in body size and surgical procedures would be an alluring choice.

Over at Rotten.com’s dead pool, ANS was selected by 249 participants, compared to only six for columnist Molly Ivins. Or three for chemist and Nobel laureate Alan G. MacDiarmid, who died the other day from leukemia at a Philadelphia hospital.

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Anna Nicole Blog Roundup: The Wild West

Posted Feb 9, 2007 by Jeff Houck

Updated Feb 9, 2007 at 01:02 PM

The celebrity blogs are having a field day with the Anna Nicole story. Things are getting ugly and bloodthirsty fast.

Usually the blogs would be chasing whatever salacious video or indiscreet photos they could find of the victim. In what certainly has to be a twist on the usual celebrity blogging playbook, the blogs are being forced to deal with the events surrounding the death (and custody of her daughter, her finances, her autopsy, etc.) because, well, all the naked photos and video of her have been out there for more than a decade.

Here are some of the highlights (or lowlights, depending on your point of view):

DEFAMER

One of the snarkiest celebrity sites, Defamer’s post on Thursday “Defamer Remembers: An Unforgettable Year of Anna Nicole” acts as an unofficial timeline of the last months of her life. The headlines of these posts, “Anna Nicole Smith Mourns Loss Of Son As Blogosphere Mourns License To Mock Her,”  and “Anna Nicole Smith Allows ‘Entertainment Tonight’ Into Her Bahamian Compound Of Pain And Rebirth” should give you a sense of the tone of the chronology.

TMZ.COM

TMZ was posting so much Anna Nicole news on Thursday, it ws breathtaking. While E! Online was still fumbling with the basic posting of news about her death, TMZ was blasting the blogosphere with video and audio and interviews. How tasteful was it? That’s for debate. TMZ walks the line of being a celebrity newswire and being a court jester as evenly as just about anyone in the blog universe. But when you read posts about how Anna Nicole’s former friend Chyna (the ex-female wrestler) was arguing with Monique Goen, wife of TrimSpa CEO Alex Goen on “Larry King Live,” you feel like you need to wash up afterward.

PEREZ HILTON

At the time of this posting, Perez has nine entries on his celeb-blog about the events surrounding Smith’s death. The site’s reputation in the blogosphere is that it is well-connected to Hollywood and gets great dirt. But the tone of how it publishes and the conclusions it sometimes jumps to can turn readers off.  For example, here’s the first post after learning Smith had been rushed to the hospital:

Anna Nicole Smith has been rushed to the hospital!

The walking trainwreck was transported to Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Florida shortly after 2 PM EST on Thursday, Access Hollywood is reporting.

There is no reason yet for why she was rushed to the emergency room.

But it was probably drugs! Or a suicide attempt!

Read at your own risk.

PINK IS THE NEW BLOG

Although not nearly as comprehensive as the others, P.I.N.B. can provide some amusing analysis on the celebrity weirdness of the day. Their Anna Nicole Smith stuff? Just eh, so far.

THE SUPERFICIAL

The Superficial is known more for it’s hilariously written posts and embarassing (and sometimes lurid) photos than for being a comprehensive resourse. The sense of being in the deep end of the news pool was evident on Thursday by this post:

The story is still breaking so I’ll keep information posted as it comes in. If Anna Nicole’s life is anything like I’ve come to expect there’ll be a surprise twist at the end. Like a former lover tried to kill her or something, but he’s also her secret twin brother.

Still, the site is worth going back for the writing, which is some of the funniest on the Web.

DLISTED

At times raunchy and unrefined, Dlisted stepped up to the plate on Thursday with multiple posts, including video it found on iFilm of Rosie O’Donnell mocking ANS on “The View” just hours before her death. It’s not the most comprehensive site, but it does find some interesting nuggets most days. When, you know, it isn’t goofing on celebrity genitalia.

GAWKER

With its focus more solidly aimed at the social lives of celebs living in Manhattan, Gawker was on the right coast for the event. That ANS was a west-coast celebrity puts them at a severe disadvantage. Both in terms of being well-sourced and being, well, interested in the least. (They left most of the playground free for sister site Defamer to enjoy.) But that doesn’t mean Gawker couldn’t see an opportunity to whack the giant celebrity softball in front of it. So it tagged Smith with this toungue-in-cheek retrospective.

An excerpt:

Young Anna Nicole fulfilled a need to serve her country by working at a Wal-Mart. From that perch, she deigned to accept a spread in Hugh Hefner’s publication Playgirlboy in 1992. She was Playmate of the Year in 1993. She only then officially adopted the name Anna Nicole Smith, a moniker composed of an opaque series of extremely personal allusions.

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Survivor: Fiji (Season Premiere)—- 02.08.07

Posted Feb 8, 2007 by Chris Kuhn

Updated Feb 8, 2007 at 11:51 PM

He’s back. Jeff Probst and the island gang are ready for more primitive living, all-night coconut and fish buffets and the very best sandflea bites and hairy armpits south of the equator. Yep, we’re headed to Fiji and 19 new casualties – uh, contestants – are ready for their chance to win a million dollars. As the show starts, we learn that there was a twentieth player but just hours before filming began, the person had a panic attack and pulled out of the show. But 19 other fools remain. Let’s get to know them.

Fiji has a history of cannibalism and sharks. These people should fit right in. The group is a hodge-podge of different backgrounds and careers. There’s Yauman, the computer engineer from Borneo originally, and the man can open coconuts with his bare hands. There’s Cassandra, the college administrator, who is in awe of the man. Andria “Dreamz,” the cheerleader coach who was homeless as a kid and very appreciative of what’s he got now (oh and he also gets a bit loopy and chatty and doesn’t know how to shut up at sleepytime). And one of the funniest tribe members, James who goes by the nickname “Rocky” because he’s channelling Stallone. I mean, this guy REALLY looks and sounds like him. Or at least brother Frank. But everyone’s getting restless and just wants to know: where’s the machetes, what’s our tribe names, and who’s playing with him. Oh, and where’s Jeff?

Boats show up with a mystery box. The muscle men in the group toss it and whack it. Nothing opens. It takes scrawny little Yauman to open up the box. They have instructions to locate their supplies and build a shelter, kitchen, even a toilet.

They set out to find their supplies and stumble upon a pile of wood and shingles, complete with a floorplan for an island shelter. And what do you know? There’s an architect in the bunch. And boy, does she take over. Sylvia lets her profession get the best of her and starts barking orders and dropping big words that Rocky simply doesn’t understand.

Evening and rainy weather sweep over the island and the group huddles in their half-started shelter getting soaked. Day two arrives and the team knows they must finish the job or suffer through the storm again. People surprisingly get along much better than you might expect. One group works on the outhouse, another on the kitchen area. Their place is coming along nicely.

And then Jeff arrives and nothing is ever the same again.

The group tells Jeff how Sylvia stepped up and took charge with building the shelter. So Jeff pulls her out of the group and says she will be picking the two teams. Green is Tribe Moto. Orange is Tribe Ravu. After she picks the teams, Sylvia learns that she’s headed to Exile Island to hang out with the many sea snakes. The good news is she can’t get voted out this week and will rejoin whichever team loses a member at Tribal Council. But in the meantime, she’ll be deciphering a clue for the hidden immunity idol – and dodging Fang.

The tribes left are ready to compete in their first immunity challenge in a primitive chariot race and puzzle competition. The winner will get immunity and get to reside in the groovy new beachside bungalow they’ve been building. Losers will go to a new beach and find one pot and one machete. And not much else. Plus, they get the added bonus of voting out one of their own at Tribal Council. Bummer. I thought they’d get to at least stay in Trump’s Tent City.

The teams duke it out and it’s a close one, but in a final foot race, Ravu gets a big lead and reaches the puzzle table first. But both teams are pretty speedy on the word puzzles, and Moto actually solves all three of their words first, uses the numerical combination and wins the challenge. Moto happily heads to their new home and Ravu limps off to their mysterious destination.

Moto breaks in its housewarming gifts – a new couch, hammocks, silverware and china. Back at Exile Island, Sylvia is bummed out because her hidden immunity idol clue said – sorry, but the Idol’s hidden back at camp (or words to that effect). Ravu is trying to make the best of the situation and are in surprisingly good spirits. Well, everybody except Erica. She’s mad as hell about losing their little shelter they all built and can’t understand why no one else is. But Ravu members are already starting to form little alliances and the consensus is that Jessica should go. Well, once again everyone except Angry Erica and the Italian Stallion himself. They say they won’t put her name down but the walls of the Tribal Council cave can make people do some pretty wicked things sometimes.

The night of Tribal Council arrives, and as usual Jeff tries to pry for hints at who’s going. He puts poor Yauman on the spot about being the oldest. Everyone agrees that it will no doubt come as a surprise to whomever gets voted out of the tribe. Jeff reads the votes and Jessica gets 4 votes from the group, which is enough to be sent packing. But not before Mookie, Yauman and Rita get a vote a piece, too.

What did you think of this new group of players? I like Earl – he seems straightforward and pensive. Rocky’s just fun to listen to and man, does he look like Sly Stallone. Unbelievable. Andria “Dreamz” strikes me as having a real annoying factor as does whiny Erica. But if I had to name a favorite, it’s Yauman. I didn’t expect it but I like how he meekly takes control of a situation and he does it so respectfully, that no one sees him as a threat. But I think he’s smart and strong, and more of a survivor than they realize.

Next week, we’ll get to watch clumsy Boo on Team Moto hurting himself in multiple ways. See, that is exactly why I wouldn’t sign up for this show…that and the sea snakes. Stay tuned…

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Eyewitness: Smith Dead On Arrival

Posted Feb 8, 2007 by Jeff Houck

Updated Feb 8, 2007 at 10:08 PM

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel has video of an interview with an eyewitness at the hospital.

They also have a photo gallery and clips from various appearances she made. (Link)

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