Posted 5:28 PM by Gene

I suppose the hacks are busy comparing Anna to MM. The comparisons should stop now. MM had beauty and brains; more to the point she had a long and memorable acting career. It was hard not to think of Anna without deprecating terms -- certainly golddigger comes to mind, and airhead appeared too often (we regret to using it ourselves) -- and maybe all that deprecation signed her death warrant, but her rep might owe less to her than to our sordid age. She was famous for being famous, and had nothing to fall back on except the rep. That her publicist was "not surprised" points to some sort of overdose. Oh well, she was still the stuff of dreams, if only the debased pornographic dreams of the age of Slick, and we hope she has finally found the peace that seems to have eluded her in recent years, especially after the death of her son.

P. S. I notice many news Web sites are using pictures from her Nine Fingers gig. That was not typical. I suspect the hacks will be overwhelmed by the story while overwhelming us with its trivia -- not least by having to maintain a fake decorum covering a self-proclaimed party girl, which is why those pictures don't seem right.

Then again, it was one of the few times she didn't flash her teeth and her boobs, and her somber mode is fitting, and human.