Anna Nicole Smith and the South Side girl

Okay, I had this coming.

I had a friend over the other night for an evening of tequila shots and cutthroat billiards.

(Bonus Tip for escaping the Midwestern Suburbs tea party circuit: find a South Side friend. They swear like sailors and can hold their liquor. Plus they take off their shoes before dancing on your pool table.)

All right, so it was a couple of mommies and some wine... Anyway, without warning, the conversation suddenly takes a detour toward tabloid city – a place I do not visit, even on vacation.

I’m a bit of a snob about this I will admit. I am the only person left on the planet, apparently, who has never, EVER seen an episode of American Idol and I do not know who was missing their underwear in last month’s celebrity bad behavior chitchat. (Now someone is going to email me the answer. Fuck.)

As a writer, there are drawbacks to this particular form of cultural isolation. I missed out on the use of "kicked off the island" as a metaphor, for example.

The point is, I have a very low tolerance for celebrity news of any kind, but least of all for the kind that manages to show up in the A-section of an otherwise respectable newspaper.

I have been known to scream all kinds of obscenities at the paper when I run across this kind of news. "You have got to be kidding me," I will scream. "You will debate the GOOD TASTE AND PROPRIETY of running images of the fucked-up execution of the dictator we spent a gazillion dollars and 3,000 lives to arrange but you will include in your NATIONAL section an item about whether some American Idol contestant is straight or gay?"

My husband thinks this is very funny and so he tries to bait me at every opportunity.

The other day he tells me that my "beloved" New York Times has a front-page story about the death of Anna Nicole Smith. He was lying to distract me from the fact that his "beloved" Chicago Tribune had in fact, run the story on 1A. The Times had only teased to it on the front - which was bad enough - but still, the story was inside.

So when my South Side friend begins a conversation with the words "Anna Nicole Smith" I shut her down with a friendly, "Don’t Care."

She persisted however, so I was forced – forced I tell you! – to give her my speech. I bored her with the details of our recent marital/journalism debate on the same subject. "That is why I read the New York Times. So I don’t have to know stuff like that," I said.

At this point, she was almost certainly thinking, "Is everyone from South Florida such a pompous windbag?"

(The answer is yes, but when you are sitting under the palm trees drinking Corona and flicking shrimp shells into the candy-colored shrubbery, you don’t notice it as much.)

The conversation finally shifted after I resorted to the Best Debating Trick I Ever Learned in Kindergarten: I put my fingers in my ears and sang a few bars of the "La La La, I Can’t Hear You" song.

The next day, I find the above "late-breaking" edition of the New York Times on my doorstep.

Touché, South Side Mommy.

As further punishment for my bad behavior I will now actually read the two inside pages you so thoughtfully gluesticked into my New York Times. No, no, I deserve it. It is the least I can do. I will even summarize it for you:

*Anna Nicole’s death is a big mystery.

*She struggled "famously" with her weight.

*The Broward County medical examiner is "not a prophet."

But here is my favorite paragraph:

The shocking death of Smith is a huge story for celebrity journalism, Star magazine editor Bonnie Fuller says. "This is such a mysterious death," says Fuller. "It’s going to be a really big story."

Stay tuned.

photo: Bonnie Fuller guest edits The New York Times.

Comments

[Rene ala Carte]

You really need to meet my wife. Not only has she never seen American Idol, I don't think she even knows what it is.

I just tease with the line:

"You're not normal and you're not average!"