MSNBC gossipoid Jeanette Walls has a "source" who claims that Anna Nicole Smith is shopping "exclusive" photos of baby daughter Dannielyn Hope to various tabloids, selling them to the highest bidder, and using the cash to finance her Bahamian lifestyle. This would seem perfectly in line with Smith's earlier commercial efforts, from her dead son to fake wedding to poignant Caesarian video. If she's indeed selling the pics — and we have a hard time believing she could be pulling down Suri Cruise money — then where are they? The only real shot of wee Dannielyn out there is the crop from the widely seen AP photo at right. Are we to believe the tabs are waiting for just the right, tasteful moment to run the photos? Far be it from us to suggest that Walls is being played with a planted tip, but given that her item ends with a reaction quote from Smith's nemesis (and self-claimed babydaddy) Larry Birkhead, the photos' lack of publication seems telling. But Anna Nicole, if you're reading this, we'll trade you the shots (or the baby) for some T-shirts.

Behold the slow-spinning wheels of Island Justice, as an investigation by the Bahamian police department into the fatal overdose of Anna Nicole Smith's 20-year-old son Daniel back in September has at last been presented to the D.A's office, bringing them that much closer to a decision over whether or not a formal inquest into the death will be necessary. Director of Public Prosecutions Bernard Turner defends the delay:

The sands are draining from the hourglass counting down Anna Nicole Smith's last few days before a court-ordered paternity test determines who really fathered Dannielynn, her earmarked-for-doom infant daughter. With feasible options quickly running out—one ill-conceived plan involved rolling Howard K. Stern into the testing center in a giant baby carriage, disguised in a pink onesie with a baseball-sized binky in his mouth—Smith is now resorting to creative accounting to make sure former boyfriend Larry Birkhead gets nowhere near the J. Howard Marshall inheritance money she's still fighting for in court. Reports The Scoop:

A Los Angeles judge has put a deadline on the paternity test that would determine once and for all who is the natural father of Dannielynn Hope Marshall Stern, the last good thing to happen to Anna Nicole Smith before her life turned into a nightmarish blur of toxicology reports and Bahamian compound evictions. Anna Nicole has until January 23 to submit the baby to testing, according to ex-boyfriend Larry Birkhead's attorney. Smith, of course, has been insisting all along that the child belongs to longtime lawyer and suspicious satellite presence Howard K. Stern, the man, according to sworn testimony, about whom Smith once said, "EWWW...GROSS!!! No way!! I would never [date him]!'" only to later take his hand in non-legally-binding marriage shortly after her son's methadone-induced death. Now that a deadline is set, we can finally look forward to seeing some sort of resolution regarding the persistent ex-boyfriend vs. creepy lawyer babydaddy scenario, and with the amazing recent advancements in modern genetic testing, not only will we know with certainty who sired the child, but exactly what Anna Nicole secured in the verbal barter that immediately precedes any of her romantic transactions.

Larry Birkhead, the photographer who has had sex with Anna Nicole Smith on multiple occasions and is seemingly OK with the world knowing this, has won a major legal victory: An LA Superior Court judge has ruled in favor of subjecting mama's little miracle, baby Dannielynn, to DNA testing in order to determine who is the child's natural father. From the AP report:

It's been too long since last we paid a visit to the real world soap opera that is Anna Nicole Smith's life—Generally Hospitalized? All My Surviving Children?—in a year that has tested her like a busty, methadone-addled Job being toyed with by the Almighty. And yet through it all, and we hate to have to keep going back this, she somehow managed to limit our unobstructed views of her C-section scar and beyond to the one she sold to Entertainment Tonight featuring her baby being pulled out of it with forceps. When last we checked in, former Smith sugarpapa G. Ben Thompson had turned off the power in the Bahamian estate he helped her buy, which she insists was a gift. Now, the final steps are being taken to have her booted from the property completely:

Despite having raked in untold millions selling every available photo, video, and autographed autopsy diagram relating to the death of her son and birth of her baby daughter, Anna Nicole Smith is still having difficulties making the monthly mortgage payments on her Bahamian home, which she insists was a gift from real estate developer G. Ben Thompson. TMZ is now reporting that Thompson, as part of his ongoing effort to evict the sedated new mom, has had the power turned off:

On last night's installment of ET, the show finally broadcast the magically exploitative centerpiece of their deal to help Anna Nicole Smith extract every last dollar and publicity opportunity from the recent, tabloid-ready birth-death cycle represented by the near-simultaneous arrival of her new daughter and loss of her son, airing video of Smith's recent C-section. Don't worry if you're still confused about the paternity of the child seen extracted from her womb in this (really graphic—please, don't watch it if you've just finished your breakfast burrito) clip—Smith and omnipresent life/business partner Howard K. Stern will be back on ET tonight to swear up and down that the adorable little moneymaker is the fruit of his loins, sworn statements to the contrary be damned.

In lieu of context, please accept this "Ewwwwwwwwwwwww!"

TMZ.com has scored a major find in the Anna Nicole Smith three-ring tragedy circus: A sworn declaration by a woman named Laurie Payne, who befriended Smith in 2005 in the Florida Keys when they were introduced through a common acquaintance, Smith's friend-with-benefits G. Ben Thompson, a real estate developer from South Carolina. The declaration contains several bombshell revelations, among them that Larry Birkhead is indeed the father of Dannielynn, and that Payne had witnessed Smith take "a rather high dose" of Xanax, in addition to having herself "personally administered" Anna Nicole pills from a bottle unsubtly marked "Methadone" during the pregnancy. An e-mail allegedly sent from Smith to Payne also came attached to the declaration:

Why Anna Nicole Smith chose to go to Entertainment Tonight to break her silence, the same TV rag that gave Larry Birkhead—he of the baby-hair-dyeing suspicions—a platform to announce that he and not Howard K. Stern was the child's true birth father, we have no idea. We suspect Smith wanted to entrust her story to a media outlet she had actually heard of, and once the small matter of ET meeting her quote was addressed, bygones such as the fact that they had broadcast a two-part interview calling her a bald-faced liar just days after her son's death were quickly forgiven. The "World Exclusive" interview, to air tomorrow, features a grieving Anna Nicole who has clearly seen the inside of a salon recently, but whose edgy, new haircut does little to lighten an understandably heavy heart. ET correspondent Mark Steines reports from the Bahamas on the (wait for it) ET field blog:

While she hasn't yet gone so far as to take the enterprising step of leasing out her baby daughter as a human billboard, Anna Nicole Smith has proven to be a savvy businesswoman when it comes to bartering her family's most private moments of joy and sorrow for cold, hard cash. Larry Birkhead, the photographer who steadfastly insists that he, and not Smith's always lurking lawyer/fake-husband Howard K. Stern, is the child's real father, is now accusing Smith of knowingly tinkering with her baby to make her paternity story seem more plausible:

With All Hallow's Eve quickly approaching, we thought it might be appropriate to pay another visit to the old Smith place—surely the most terrifying house on the block, where Anna Nicole's hollow, permanently lit pumpkinhead glows ominously in the window, and a neverending cast of ghoulish, payout-seeking relatives are ready to jump out at any moment, curdling your blood with exclusive excerpts from their ghostwritten tell-alls:

That hissing sound you hear is the razor-sharp talon of Anna Nicole Smith, which has just punctured our hopes that she would take her finger off the morphine IV long enough to reconsider sticking her baby daughter with the name "Dannielynn."

In an astonishing turn of events that should upend everything you thought about you knew about celebrities' lawyers and the ease with which they can find a way to stomach their clients' reprehensible behavior once the check clears, one of Anna Nicole Smith's many attorneys has quit: Not fake-husband-lawyer Howard K. Stern, and not lawyer-lawyer Ron Rale, but a third counsel named Michael Scott, who, besides sharing a name with a character in a popular TV sitcom, now can also lay claim to another unique biographical footnote: "Told drug-addled, crackpot celebrity client to 'take a long walk off a short catamaran.'"

Feel better about your life this Monday morning with your latest Anna Nicole update, in an easy-to-digest, round-up format:
· About 50 of Daniel Smith's relatives, including his father Billy Smith, took it upon themselves to take the first appropriate step since his death and gather at the First Baptist Church of Mexia, Tex., pop. 6000, for a largely false-eyelash-free (but big-haired) memorial service. Most of the attendees hadn't seen Daniel since he was a young kid who loved horses and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And even though Anna Nicole nor David's body were present at the memorial, we're confident the business-savvy, grieving mom will find a way to sell the exclusive photos to the highest bidder. [People.com]
· The Scoop notes that the swiftness with which Anna Nicole was whisked through the Bahamian immigration system to become a full citizen—three weeks—has caused something of a local uproar. Amazing what you can get done with an alleged $10,000 check (or 1/100 of one People photo sale) delivered to the home of the Bahamas' immigration minister. [MSNBC.com]
· Debra Opri and Ron Rale, the attorneys for Larry Birkhead and Smith, respectively, are facing off in the media, with Opri's open appeals for a paternity test on behalf of her client eliciting the following response from Rale: "I will not discuss what was or was not said in chambers, but I do not believe Ms. Opri should make such comments to the press." To which he then added, "And just to make sure we're clear on this, I'm Anna Nicole's lawyer lawyer, not her 'creepy dude who exchanged nonbinding vows with her on a catamaran' lawyer." [ETOnline]

People has posted their $1 million get: the exclusive photos of Anna Nicole Smith and Howard K. Stern's symbolic-union-at-sea. From the looks of it, that fee further prorates to approximately $125k per zonked-out portrait of Smith and her legally unbinding lawyer/lifemate/rock exchanging "vows and temporary rings before a Baptist minister." (We'll assume any glasses being smashed after the "I do's" were purely accidental and probably methadone-related.) And while varying eyewitness reports have placed everything at the scene from Dom Perignon-powered speedboats to pasty-enhanced breast feeding sessions, the reality was that Smith's fake party-boat marriage was the kind of modest and low-key affair that is not at all out of place for someone who just lost their son to a mysterious drug overdose weeks before:

· Celebrities terminate their unwanted pregnancies, just like us!
· George Clooney kicks off his paparazzi-foiling master plan by allowing himself to be photographed with a Deal or No Deal briefcase-opening technician. He's really mixing things up right off the bat.
· Finding a dead, gay Republican in her bed was just too much for Carrie Fisher's sobriety to bear.
For the latest in Mark Foley-related fun, we once again refer you to page-protective sister site Wonkette, where dramatic readings of old naughty IMs and links to new, naughty IMs are readily available.
These fake Free Anna Nicole shirts only hint at the hastily designed, topical Cafe Press delights to come.

The Us Weeky blog has further details regarding Larry Birkhead's lawsuit against Anna Nicole. Birkhead isn't just claiming paternity—he wants full legal custody of the child, as he alleges that Howard K. Stern is enabling Smith's methadone addiction (the fatal key ingredient in her son's death), and that the reason she delivered in the Bahamas was to avoid tests that would reveal the baby had methadone in her system as well:

Blushing commitment ceremony participant Anna Nicole Smith and the main mensch in her life, Howard K. Stern, seemed to have taken the day off yesterday from their whirlwind mourning schedule in memory of her son Daniel; perhaps the two were solemnly atoning for a year's worth of opportunistic sins in a Dom Perignon-stocked catamaran off the coast of Nassau. In any case, the Anna Nicole circus is back in full force with its cast of payout-seekers, scoop-hungry editors, litigious ex-boyfriends and bumbling Caribbean law enforcement clowns. A round-up:
· Radar is reporting that People has purchased the photos of the couple's lucrative photo-op legally nonbinding hitching-at-sea for a cool $1 million, an expense the magazine justified by writing it off as another generous charitable donation to the worthy cause of eradicating poverty in Anna Nicole Smith. [Radar]
· Why would anyone in their right mind pay $1 million for a legally nonbinding hitching-at-sea? Because one photo has Anna Nicole holding her newborn wearing nothing but pasties. As if that wasn't enough of a cruel tease for hungry little Dannielynn, sources overhead Smith drunkenly asking her daughter, "Want some milk? Want a Viper? Like my body? TrimSpa, baby!!!" [Gawker]
· Smith, still in the Bahamas, was served with papers yesterday from the other creepy guy in her life, Larry Birkhead, who wants mother and daughter to return to LA immediately for paternity testing. The Royal Bahamas Police Force, meanwhile, is still not completely satisfied with Smith's private autopsy findings that son Daniel died of a methadone-and-antidepressants overdose, and are still pursuing several theories, including the, "Hey—let's drag this out and cash in on some more free publicity!" theory. [AP]