Where were you on 2/8?

What’s that word for when famous people die and you aren’t really sad or surprised? (Maybe they had an – I don’t know, just spitballing here – lifelong history of drug use.)

I’m coining it Schadenfraud.

Where were you when our generation’s Kennedy assassination happened? I was in the concourse under my building and there was a TV tuned to CNN for the Anna Nicole Smith coverage. Strangers bonded together, wondering what killed her – Trim Spa, her husband/lawyer/baby daddy (for the inheritance. Der. He was also there when the son died), or just plain old 25-plus years of uppers and downers, quaaludes and horse tranquilizers. Someone lit a candle and sang a hymn. In the distance a woman cried out “Dear God!” and fell to her knees.

I even got to hear Wolf Blitzer say “buxom Playboy playmate” in his Wolf Blitzer-y voice, which made my day. Larry King must be wetting himself (more than usual) about his show tonight. So much old footage! And the Supreme Court angle makes it totally legit to cover.

All I know is that there’s one happy diaper-wearing astronaut with adultery and malice in her heart and a smile on her face because she’s not the lede story tonight.

I await the inevitable pile of roses and teddy bears in tribute from people who don’t at all want to be on TV, but just need to express their grief for a stranger/train wreck and if a camera happens to be there, so be it. I assume these people, who posted online in the comments section of a Midwestern newspaper, will be the first there with their homemade (poorly punctuated) signs. Please oh please let them misspell her name.