Where’s Bau Haus when you need them?

…because they need to write a song about "Anna Nicole Smith’s Dead".

I met Nicole for dinner tonight at Fuller Seminary and she told me the news on the way to the Refectory. She said that she heard about it on Christian talk radio this afternoon (I don’t get to listen to Christian talk radio at work).

While I was still reeling and not believing what I was hearing, I noticed, for the first time, a large bronze sculpture right there on the path. It was a sculpture of Jesus lying on the cross getting his hands nailed to it by two Romans. I’m not trying to make any comparisons, but I will never see that sculpture again without thinking that the first time I saw it was the day Anna Nicole Smith died.

Even now I only have the sketchiest deals of her death, but what other facts are necessary. Could a human being have had a more miserable life than her? The answer is Yes! Of Course! Think of all the lepers of Old Louisiana! Certainly they had it rough, but tell me how many of them were miserable despite stardom, riches, and (during certain periods of her earlier history) the, eh, adoration of millions?

The lepers, and those like them, suffered from merely garden variety misery. Anna Nicole Smith saw the view from the peak of the entertainment world cess pool and then took a nose dive to the very bottom of it. She swallowed a lungful. That Kurt Cobain guy probably had a similar experience, but at least he was a person of some depth. One always assumed that Anna Nicole Smith wasn’t tuned in enough to realize that she was a miserable person. It’s horrible to realize that she was apparently affected by the death of her son - I’d rather that she induced herself into a sort of oblivion about it that I could benefit from vicariously.

I think of that Kurt Kobain and the guy from the Germs as having killed themselves after having found no big answers in life. Still no word on whether Anna Nicole Smith killed herself, but I don’t think it was lack of answers that smote her. Too much plastic surgery, too much constant, global exposure, too much depression drugs for her teen son, too much money. These are all supposed to be good things! I guess Elvis had similar problems, but he was a little older than 39 when he split, and at least he left a legitimate cultural legacy. Even Elvis was less of a freak than Anna Nicole Smith.

I can’t explain why, but somehow the party is over. And it wasn’t even my party, but all I can say is Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid, yo.