Paparazzi Buried With Anna Nicole Smith

merica’s trailer park inhabitants mourned between talk shows and soap operas Saturday as the world’s public-access Marilyn Monroe was buried in the Bahamas. The modest celebrity and super-tabloid magnet was finally laid to rest after a month of court battles and life-draining media coverage following her February 8 death from over-exposure. Laid next to her son following his September 2006 death from a drug overdose, Smith’s burial was most notable for a judge’s order that allowed several members of the tabloid media and freelance photographers to be interred with the body.

"I’ve got a feeling this story is only going to get bigger after this," said photographer Ray Snable, still clicking away on his camera with fresh photos of the body as pallbearers nailed a large lid on the 125-man coffin containing the deceased starlet and her new entourage.

"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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This is becoming the Rok Finger motif as of late: Taking a rocky path, somehow surviving most of the way, coming to a bump in the road, inhale a huge breath and successfully jump over the bump in the road, just to land in dogshit.

Am I exaggerating? I've known for quite some time God Himself has it in for me—once again, look at the face. But this seems a little sadistic even for the Almighty. To use me as a tool to scare children with this scrapheap of a punum, to break up my 30-year marriage through my paranoia and impulsive temper, to do the same to my second marriage, to make Camembert paralyzed just so my future apartment would be inconveniently filled with ramps and railings, all of it is just so cruel as to make me doubt the existence of God, if I thought someone evil enough like Kathi Lee Gifford had enough power to affect my life. No, there's a God, and He most certainly gets his kicks drowning puppies and kicking Rok Finger's backside like a black and white Spalding.

Now my one little past discretion has come back to haunt me. No, not my out-of-wedlock children—they are neither singular enough in number nor small enough in individual quantity to count as one little indiscretion. I speak of the three month span in the 1980s where I was a professional wrestler.

It's nothing I'm proud of. Even my ex-wife Arvelyn and all my previous column publishers know nothing about it. It's hard to explain why in today's culture, where wrestling clearly is considered a mental disorder rather than a lifestyle choice. Let's just say I needed the money and was going through an unpleasant phase where holding half-naked men down to mats was what was important to me.

My wrestling league, the Dandies of America (D.O.A.), was small and cheap, but so am I; we were a match in heaven, where, I might remind you, the God who hates me so much lives. Our matches were quick and exciting, the way wrestling should have been, and boy, were our costumes fancy! I liked it, but I was always wise enough to wear a mask, to protect my journalistic career and save my cat from abuse on the streets. None of it helped.

I came home from, let's say a massage parlor, the other day just to find Camembert and Lee sitting on the couch and watching some home video wrestling tape. They rented it from a video store under the auspicious title, "Douches of the Ring." You can imagine my surprise when I saw a familiar costume appear in the midst of these badly-edited clips of smaller wrestling events. It was me, under my ring name of The 4-Foot Nightmare, wrestling with an old foe called "Amazing Sack" Ryan. I shuddered in fear, but the next words were what stopped me dead in my tracks:

"Damn, Rok, he's as short as you," Lee said, deadpan face on the TV. "Well, a little bit taller."

That was Saturday night. I haven't been home since. Curse that Lee! He has it all: A handsome face, long, luxurious hair, except for the top of his head, a beautiful apartment with fantastic roommates like me and Camembert, abundant bass playing ability, a never-ending supply of funny weed, and his mother likes him. Now he wants everything I have, to boot—my commune stipend of $36 a week, my fancy desk, my lousy craphole of an apartment with my turd roommates, and worse yet, my pride. I imagine, I didn't really give him time to make any demands after he made me in the video.

Well, I'll be damned to be victim of blackmail! I'm coming out, right here in my commune column, so at least Red Bagel will be reading it. Probably. Yes, America, I used to be a pro-wrestler. It's nothing I'm proud of, though the "Stamp of Approval" move that was my signature was pretty sharp. It was a long time ago. I ask for your forgiveness, and to let me move on. And be quick about it, they won't let me live in the office another day so I've got to get home again.

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That's the fact, jack. Given my recent falling out with Camembert and Lee's eternally-disappeared status as of late, I decided it's better to have my pride than a roof over my head. And if I can have neither, what with the extreme damage I did to the roof with my New Year's Eve fireworks show and my complete shame at being me, I'll at least not live under the roof with a card-carrying communist like Camembert. Actually, the card said Brown County Public Library, but if the free loaning of books to disabled people isn't an early sign of communism, I don't know what is.

"But Rok," you ignorantly begin, "if you're so anti-communist, why do you work for a place called the commune (lowercase intentional)?"

Christ, I never thought about it before. You confound me, wise imaginary talking-aloud reader. Oh, that's right, I have thought about it before. The rationale I came to was that I am the voice of dissent for this politically peculiar powwow of pundits. Any fool can see, as I easily do, that the commune is not strictly communist, though that Bludney Plud always seems to be going through everybody's desk like he believes in state ownership, him being the state. In practice the commune is merely a source of left-wing propaganda and seldom-reported news and fun conspiracy theories. What role does a mook like me have in a place like this? Simple. I provide the voice of the counter-culture, which is to say the Establishment, which is counter to this counter-culture, which makes me counter-culture here.

What happened? Oh, yes, I was discussing being homeless. I certainly know what those without homes are complaining about now. It is quite a scary experience for a guy like me, short, unattractive, but unquestioningly sexually alluring, to be out amongst the dregs of society without any walls separating them from me. Not to mention the experience of being pelted by water when it rains—or worse, when it doesn't.

Things are more difficult than in the past, the other times I've been unceremoniously thrown out of wherever I was living. Acting-Asshole Ramrod Hurley has instituted a ridiculous new policy of locking the doors when everyone leaves at night, so now I can't sleep in my desk anymore. I'm really, honest-to-God out on the streets again. For the first time.

Now, I'm a huge fan of Dickens like every other ancient person. But like railroad work, homelessness is only fun for spectators, not for participants. The sooner I can get into a place for living, a what do you call it, house or apartment, the better. Much like prison, I'm too delicate to survive on the streets. I would never consider something drastic like, say, prostitution, but I have been considering it lately. Still, I don't think it will come to that. No one in the world is mentally ill enough to pay me for sex.

I have asked Ramrod Hurley for an advance on my next paycheck, which is to say I've told him I need to be paid with money instead of Raleigh cigarette coupons from now on. When I have enough in the bank, the bank being my ragged slacks pockets, I will find an apartment and begin living there. It will be nice to be out on my own, inside again. No one but the desperately poor should be forced to live like this.

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