What an incredible life. For whatever reason.
No one has better epitomized America's desperation to create pop culture icons with little more than glamorous looks and bizarre behavior than Anna Nicole Smith, who died mysteriously today at the Seminole Hard Rock and Casino in Hollywood, FL.
Of course, you already knew that as soon as it went public. You talked about it for most of the afternoon. It didn't matter that you didn't know why.
Such was Smith's magnetism, which largely defied logic.
Maybe it was the endless Marilyn Monroe comparisons which certainly won't stop after her mysterious, premature death that resulted in her body ending up at Joe DiMaggio Memorial Hospital.
Maybe it was that she'd become a punchline you couldn't help rooting for.
That she died in a place called Hollywood that wasn't the real Hollywood was poetically par for the course.
Her whole career, in fact, was nothing but a series of contradictions. She was a star who couldn't sing, dance or act a lick.
A decade after being named Playmate of the Year, she was best known in for losing 70 pounds while pitching a weight-loss product called TrimSpa. And, despite marrying an 89-year-old oil, billionaire oil tycoon, she filed for bankruptcy shortly after his death.
Somewhere in there she also had one of history's highest-rated reality shows showcasing, among other things, her desperate struggle to get a driver's license.
Considering her life and the way it was magnified, her story couldn't have ended any way but in a sensationalistic death. And she died just like a pop culture idol is supposed to die -- beautiful, controversial, and still young.
But Smith did have an immense natural talent that's hard to teach: an amazing sixth sense for getting attention, a valuable trait in American culture.
She made herself famous for being famous.
Quite simply, she was always the biggest personality in the room. She demanded our attention and got it -- whether she was posing nude, rambling drunkenly at awards shows, starring in a reality show, or marrying a man 60 years her senior and having the chutzpah to call it love ( not to mention taking the fight for his fortune all the way to the Supreme Court after he died 14 months later).
Naturally, her never-ending, somewhat mystifying ability to capture our imagination had a flip side -- the inescapable aura of a soap opera.
It followed her when she went to the Bahamas last September to deliver daughter Dannielynn. Was it such a surprise then when her 20-year-son Daniel died suddenly and mysteriously in her hospital room days three days after her baby's birth (it has been attributed to drugs, but remains under investigation)?
And were we surprised when a battle erupted over the identity of the baby's father? That case remains ongoing.
Comparably, more recent news over new tattoos and a class action lawsuit filed against her last week were minor blips -- but still on our radar.
Even if she wanted to, there was no escaping the life she'd created.
Was there anything else to talk about on Thursday? Not a chance.
With war raging overseas, Iran announcing it's ready to go nuclear and take on all comers, and nasty weather killing people back East, there was Wolf Blitzer on CNN, solemnly trying to explain the death of Anna Nicole Smith.
To wade hip-deep into an analysis of Smith's impact on popular culture -- or why the world seemed to pause when she died -- would be to put more thought into her life than perhaps she ever did.
Maybe we just liked her because she was so screwed up, it made her accessible.
She was definitely likable beyond her looks, which were jaw-dropping in the early '90s when she gained fame as a Guess jeans model and Playmate of the Year. She had the classic, buxom blond physical aura of a Marilyn Monroe, perhaps with a bit more intensity, but certainly with less talent.
Smith was the girl who made us smile and roll our eyes.
There was a sweetness about her that was less forced than with someone like Jessica Simpson. It made it difficult not to root for her, whether you liked what she was up to or not.
And even in death, the story isn't over.
Unsettled legal matters over her inheritance, her baby daughter's parentage, and now the mystery involving death itself. She's not even close to being done demanding our attention. Which, despite any sadness over a tragic end, somehow seems appropriate.
Tony Hicks is the Times' pop culture and music critic. Reach him at 925-952-2678 or .
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