Based on the past press coverage of Anna Nicole’s legal woes, one might get the impression that J. Howard, her aging wealthy husband, left her a vast amount of his estate in his will and that the litigation that made its way up to the Supreme Court was about the J. Howard estate. But Anna Nicole’s litigation woes were for the most part, not about probate at all. J. Howard actually did not leave her anything in his will: his son, Pierce, was the sole beneficiary of the estate. more »

The crew at Overthinking It are committed to reflecting thoughtfully on even the most crass of cultural phenomena. We’re like doctors: you can tell us all your embarrassing secrets. We will nod sagely, and prescribe a cream you can put on your junk.

The life and career of Anna Nicole Smith (née Vickie Lynn Marshal) could be called the most telling artifact of American culture at the opening of the twenty-first century (not by us, but by some bloviating twit or other). The woman became a canvas onto which a culture could project its darkest fantasies and consuming obsessions—celebrity worship, plastic surgery, fad dieting, greed, drugs, boobies—a demented clown enacting in distorted parody the most decadent aspects of late capitalism.

Today, Friday, February 8, 2008, we pause to remember the one year anniversary of the woman’s death. The posts may be irreverent. They will almost certainly be in bad taste. But they will not—you have my word here—be underthinking it.

I didn’t know about Eugene Mirman before he came through New Haven a couple years ago. His show alternated live bits with videos he had made. One of these, Eugene Mirman: Secret Agent, contained the memorable threat: “I’m gonna kick you so hard in the dick, you’ll cum fear.”

He now has made a parody of the blogfamous Tom Cruise Video.

Eugene Mirman: Scientologist [23/6 via Defamer]

Above all else, America is dedicated to the proposition that “what happened to other countries isn’t going to happen to us.” As such, our variations on the tragic hero struggle to buck free of their core restrictions, often with startling results.

John Rambo (the movie hero and cultural icon, inseparable from Sly Stallone) is an example of one such effort — The Reverse Tragic Hero. more »