Paparazzi Buried With Anna Nicole Smith

“The unusual burial situation came about from an order handed down by vaudeville’s own Judge Larry Seidlin when he released the Smith body and its bosom baggage for a burial in the sunny Bahamas. Judge Seidlin decreed that “America has a vested interest in following the continuing drama of the Anna Nicole Smith story.”

“Now more than ever,” said Broadway Seidlin, “as the country faces one tumor of dull-ass presidential election coverage and weak competition on American Idol, the people want and need the security of a sassy, beautiful corpse of no particular claim to fame and her everyday trials. Reruns are simply not enough.”

The court ruling allowed 124 members of the medias, including freelance photographers, to join the Smith remains in their underground adventure with a specified promise of keeping the public up to date on how the story continued to unfold. Will Smith learn to cope with the loss of her son? Will she tell the real identity of her baby’s father? Will she continue to live the sedentary lifestyle all of America witnessed on her too-short-lived The Anna Nicole Show? Judge Seidlin promised just because the body ceased to breathe it doesn’t mean Americans will stop caring about the drama.

After burial of the notably large coffin, the muffled screams of the more timid members of the burial coverage crew were drowned out by the sobbing of people who felt a bizarre kinship with the former Playboy playmate and grave-robbing skeleton widow, as well as the appropriately vacant song stylings of country music superstar Joe Nichols. Slash, of the band Guns ‘N’ Roses, was also in attendance, because what else could he have been expected to be doing.

Despite objections from some human rights advocates, Entertainment Tonight segment producer Lynn Hoddbody argued those reporters and photographers buried alive with the corpse of the peroxide blonde model were the lucky ones.

“This is probably the single most important media event of the century, and I can say without fear of contradiction Anna Nicole Smith will be the most tragic figure in history,” Hoddbody said. “Who wouldn’t gladly sacrifice themselves to be there when O.J. Simpson slashed the shit out of his wife and that guy, to witness that world-shaking event in progress and have a slim chance of telling us just what happened? In this case, we can all truly say we should envy the dead.”

Which begs the question—first O.J., now Anna Nicole: Is there a curse on all the stars of The Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult? Will George Kennedy survive?

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OH MY GOD SNOW

As if the world was sitting up at night, wondering what your particular camel toe looks like. And if you’re the type of man who prefers to see as much of the female anatomy as possible, consider this: before the advent of spandex leggings, you could see the legs themselves. That’s right, bare skin. How exactly is this an advantage for you men? I call “rip-off!” I sincerely hope you boys will join me in that call.

I submit, daring though my suggestion may be, spandex has brought nothing to this world. Sure, Batman could frighten the hell out of the cowardly superstitious criminal kind with his well-toned physique, but how did spandex help Robin? Or the rest of us, for that matter? Now any time we are dependent on focusing our minds on man-business, we run the risk of sexual thoughts pervading us at any given moment with a feminine physique perfectly outlined in lime green materials. Thoughts of baseball can’t be conjured fast enough. Good people, I say it’s a genuine threat.

I find the womanly shapes as appealing as any man, I admit that freely. But it doesn’t mean I want my eyes popping in and out of their sockets like some Tex Avery character while I’m trying to peruse the stock market. I have a lot of money invested in things in the world, and none of them have to do with stunningly curvaceous asses of a hot pink hue. One of these days the law will change and you teasing harlots will be financially responsible for every time you distract me and cause me to accidentally invest my money in ludditesonline.com.

Tell me, what happened to the good old days? I remember well a time a man could walk down the street and only find himself fixated on thoughts of sex a mere five to six times in the course of a minute. All this, of course, without any visual stimulation—unless you were one of those men who found wide-brimmed bonnets exciting. And many of us did. No, in those glory days you had to don a raincoat and purposely stumble into a theater of indecent movies completely by accident. Things were much more discreet in those days, and we all preferred it that way. If you ran into an associate in the line, you had to pretend you were looking for that new John Ford movie that had just hit the theaters, and you had pocketed a half-roll of pennies in case they sold candy. We all knew it was pretense to stimulate the manly function of a solo reproductive act, and we all kept quiet about it. It was just polite society.

Those were the halcyon days when gyms were strictly reserved for tubby joes sweating off the fat in a steam cabinet, or wiggling them off with a giant rubber band that would shake them violently. Certainly not the place for stimulating thoughts—you were lucky if you could eat again afterwards. Then they let the women in and, surprise, surprise, everyone’s obese now. We should all know why—with spandex around to remind us of the existence of the opposite sex, there’s only one muscle that’s getting a workout these days. That’s right. Your dirty mind.

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And who the hell decided to call this "Spring" training? I don't know where you live, but around here winter's just getting started. The last few months were just winter's way of saying "Howdy Doo?" I expect at least three more solid months of raining ice and frozen spinal fluid before the sun comes out again.

Regardless, baseball is carrying on as if it were hospitable outside, so we have little choice but to play along and take a jaundiced gander at what the upcoming season holds in store.

The Cubs show up at spring training this year amidst high hopes and nervous anticipation. After spending a record number of greenbacks this offseason in hopes of buying a title, fans know the Cubs are going to blow it somehow, but everyone is excited to see how they do it this time. Can the Cubs pull off another miracle collapse, or will they let their fans down by bringing a World Championship to Chicago? It hasn't happened since 1908, but the thought still wakes up many a Cubs fan in the middle of the night in a cold, terror-stank sweat.

What about the Yankees? The Yanks were embarrassed yet again in 2006 by failing to bring home their yearly trophy, which went instead to... whoever won last year. Don't pretend you remember who it was. Instead of their usual winter routine of shanghaiing all the competition's best talent over the offseason, the boys from New York took a different tack this year, instead casting off assholes like a hot air balloon sinking toward shark-infested pudding. First to go was historic malcontent Gary Sheffield, who was thrown to the Tigers like a Christian sightseeing in Rome. Next came Randy Johnson, the world's tallest asshole according to Guinness, who was sent back to the desert trailer park from whence he came in exchange for two jock straps and a copy of "Girls Gone Wild: Greenland." Somewhere in the mix Jared Wright was also shoved drunk onto a bus headed for Baltimore, a fine thanks for all the hard work he did in raising the Yanks' ERA to league average over the last few years.

The Giants handed former Oakland ace Barry Zito a blank check this winter and told him to fill in whatever he thought was fair, then shit blood for three weeks straight after seeing the figure Zito and secret agent Scott Boras had inked in. Ten bucks says they don't repeat that same mistake next offseason, when the contracts are up for several of their stadium's Haitian pretzel venders. Regardless, the Giants will be a better team for having Zito and his yoga dipshit shtick on board, but unfortunately the relevant question there is "Better than what?" and the answer is the Royals. Sorry, gays and other assorted San Fran residents.

The Royals also got a lot better this offseason, throwing money blindly at the free-agent class until some of it stuck to a guy nobody had ever heard of before. Too bad the relevant question with them is also "Better than what?" and the answer is the Topeka Devil Dogs on acid.

The Red Sox spent a massive pile of cash on Japanese import Becky Matsuzaka, though through a clever accounting loophole managed not to give the player any of it. American batters likely aren't ready for Matsuzaka's patented kamikaze pitch, which involves the pitcher charging home plate and diving through the strike zone with the ball in his back pocket. Matsuzaka, however, is unlikely to be ready for teammate Manny Ramirez, who so far has played all his spring training innings wearing a wedding dress that once belonged to Mariel Hemmingway. The Red Sox are poised to out-weird the competition this year, just like they did in their championship 2004 season.

Everybody else? They got worse. Sucks to be a fan, I know.

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