A cocktail for a dead bombshell

ANNA NICOLE SMITH died today at the age of 39, and there is little we can add to the media circus that is already setting up its three rings and tents in response. She was, at best, a camp figure -- she was va va va voom made cartoonish, as though a caricaturist had been invited to create a human form out of nothing but blond hair, large breasts, and bulbous ass. If her reality show was any indication of her actual personality, she was gapingly lecherous, given to simply humping anything or anyone that might be nearby. The show also presented a woman who was monstrously lazy and stupid, sometimes possessed of so little energy that she wouldn't bother to even climb out of bed, although she always seemed to have enough spunk in her to quarrel, generally about trivialities. She seemed to adore all seven deadly sins, and made her fortune, or what of it the courts alloted her, from the most potent of them all: lust. But she was also very much a glutton, as her ample pre-Trimspa body demonstrated.

Gluttony is a misunderstood thing. Laymen tends to simply interpret it in terms of food, but theologians have long argued that the core of gluttony is overindulgence. And even before Anna Nicole Smith's weight ballooned, she was a magnificent glutton in the broadest theological sense -- perhaps the closest humanity has ever produced to a physical embodiment of overindulgence. We could join the rest of the bitter world in mocking her for it, but we at The Bottle Gang prefer to celebrate her for it. After all, she loved to drink.

Her drink of choice, according to a 2003 interview in Hustler Magazine, was Cristal champagne, which seems absolutely perfect. Although Cristal is a superb sparkling wine, Smith probably didn't enjoy it for its taste so much as its price tag, retailing, as it does, for about $300 a bottle. After all, Smith's taste in beer was typically declassé: She confessed to Hustler a fondness for Budweiser. But Cristal is the drink of choice for the nouveau riche but otherwise terrifically tasteless. Thomas Aquinas had a name for this specific form of gluttony -- he called it Laute, and defined it as the gluttony of indulging in that which is too expensive.

It is in honor of this deceased, magnificent glutton that we offer a new cocktail, and, in the spirit of Laute, we insist it must be made with Cristal, although to use a top-shelf champagne for a tacky mixed drink is a sin. So be it. We are sinners all, and if sinners had saints, one of them died today. So, in honor of Anna Nicole Smith, we raise a champagne goblet and toast her memory with a Cristal cocktail, colored her favorite color: pink.

CRISTAL PINK

1 cube sugar
Angostura bitters
Chilled Cristal champagne
1/2 ounce Chambord

Soak sugar cube with a couple of good splashes of Angostura bitters and place in the bottom of a large champagne flute. Add Chambord.

Fill slowly with sparkling wine.

Garnish with a strawberry.

Drink until someone calls the medics. (SPARBER)