"Mickey Easterling... causally [sic] sitting on an iron bench, wearing a magnificent hat with a glass of champagne in one hand and a cigarette holder in the other."
“She's in a Leonardo outfit,” says Sammy Steele who did Mickey’s hair and make-up. “And I actually dressed her tonight for the occasion.... It’s like something out a department store window in New York. On 5th Ave.... This is what she requested. She's sitting in a garden scenery to depict her back yard. This is what she wanted. No stone was left unturned for this memorial.”"[Miriam] Burbank’s daughters had a vision and presented it to funeral directors at Charbonnet Funeral Home...."
“She looks wonderful,” says one bystander. “She looks just like Mickey.”
“They said they didn’t want a traditional religious type service,” Intern Funeral Director Lyelle Bellard said. “That she was just one of those people that just enjoyed life enjoyed living, just enjoyed people.”
Burbank is sitting at a table wearing Saints colors. Her fingernails are even painted black and gold. She’s got her Busch beer and menthol cigarettes....
“When I walked in, I feel like I was in her house and I didn’t hurt so much,” sister Sherline Burbank said. “Because it’s more of her, and it’s like she’s not dead. It’s not like a funeral home. It’s like she’s just in the room with us.”
ADDED: They say nothing is certain but taxes and taxidermy.
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39 comments:
I'd like to be warned in advance if this is done.
This is so awesome.
But don't they need to add a robotic insert with speakers so the dead body can speak and sign autographs. Then when viewing is over the funeral home guys can at really "pull the plug."
Isn't that basically what Norman Bates did with his mother?
Apparently, life imitates "My Name Is Earl." John Waters made a guest appearance as a creative funeral director who would pose the deceased doing what they liked most in life: watching football on TV, playing online games, etc. Like the best Earl episodes, it was outrageous, hilarious, and ultimately poignant.
Weekend at Bernie's
I want to be slumping in front my computer, wearing the speedos, filthy bath robe hanging open, an Althouse Blog comments page open on the screen.
If this kind of thing catches on it could open new frontiers in taxidermy.
But they do bury them eventually, don't they?
I see a couple of practical issues:
How do you bend the corpse to sit? Then how do you bend it back straight for the coffin?
What about clothes? I understand that the back is often ripped out of the clothing to allow the corpse to be dressed. Won't this be visible this way?
John Henry
Jeremy Bentham should be exhibit A. I knew that his corpse had been sitting in a glass case for years but had thought it had finally been buried.
Nope, he still attends board meetings. Doesn't look all that bad for having been dead almost two centuries, either:
181-year-old corpse of Jeremy Bentham attends UCL board meeting
http://metro.co.uk/2013/07/12/181-year-old-corpse-of-jeremy-bentham-attends-ucl-board-meeting-3879586/
John Henry
The bodies are still dead, and the soul doesn't care.
It's been done before: "Prop me up beside the juke box if I die", Joe .
I agree that advance warning is required. I attend open casket funerals, but I would not attend one like this. I think that photo displays and videos are better ways to memorialize a person's life at a visitation.
There was a strong tradition in the late nineteenth century of dressing up dead children and teenagers for postmortem photographs, often posed with living family members. Maybe this is sort of like that.
What the article does not say is if family and friends of Ms. Easterling posted with her.
It's a shame they couldn't afford animatronics.
What's a "Leonardo outfit" and why is her being dressed in one important enough to note in the story?
Looking at the picture, she looks like she is wrapped in some 1940's style living room drapes.
Now if she had been dressed in a Daffy Duck costume rather than a Leonardo outfit, that would have been important enough to mention.
Though if she was dressed in a Daffy Duck costume, it would be fairly obvious and would not need mentioning.
John Henry
Dead Marilyn Monroe Sexbot says:
Powering on...
You look beautiful, Marilyn: so peaceful.
____(beep)
It is OK: you can speak. It won't ruin the illusion.
But you specifically purchased the Marilyn Monroe Deceased Model.
I'll pretend the conversation is just in my head.
You know there is a Living Marilyn Monroe Sex Robot with many wonderful features: warm skin simulation, for one. Wet lips.
The living intimidate me.
Oh honey, I was that way too: you've just got to smile and make your way in the world.
If it were only that easy. Roll over onto your stomach.
I am not capable of independent movement: it is part of being dead.
Then I will roll you over....
(beep)
I like to pretend that I'm the first to discover your dead body.
Sadly, that is in my programming.
First I gently remove your fluffy pink robe...
Vaginal, Oral or Anal?
Anal.
You know, you could've bought an Anal-Only Model and saved yourself some money.
I was worried that buying an Anal-Only Deceased Marilyn Monroe Sex Robot would make me look creepy...
No worries, honey: I saw a lot of creepy things when I was alive: it was Hollywood, after all.
I've seen a lot of creepy things, too: I once found my friend's grandmother dead and naked in bed...
Permission to enter Silence Mode?
That might be a good idea.
Funerals, like moments of silence and Father's day, are among those annoying ceremonies that the superstitious and religious keep on imposing on the rest of us.
Voted NMB, but have to add -- this is funny
I've told my wife that I want NO hymns. Rather, play my favorite rock songs that mean something spiritual to me, such as Pink Floyd's "Learning to Fly". Or "Awaken" by Yes.
She's not happy with this, so it'll probably be hymns anyway. :-)
In New Orleans, we like to say we put the "fun in funeral".
When "Uncle" Lionel Batiste died a couple years ago, they had him standing at his wake.
Charbonnet Funeral Home is renowned for their creative wakes.
Grotesque and creepy. A sort of emotional necrophilia. Funerals may be for the living but that doesn't give them the right to play with the corpse.
I don't have a problem with any of this, it should be up to the family.
As for me, I just want my ashes spread along the shores of the Cal-Sag Channel at 127th & State right outside of the abandoned ACME Steel plant on the south side of Chicago with music provided by Major Lance, "Um, Um, Um, Um, Um." and Commander Cody, "Down To Seeds & Stems Again Blues." See ya all in Hell.
Families should be free to bury their dead as they please. As for me, my instructions are simple, blunt and to the point: "Strip me for parts and burn the rest."
My wife and I both hate funerals so neither of us want one or a memorial service. We'll leave this world as unhearlded as we arrived. We see no need to put our family through the expense and hassle of a funeral or memorial service. If they want to get together, that's fine but we don't want to obligate them to do so.
John said...
What's a "Leonardo outfit" and why is her being dressed in one important enough to note in the story?
I would think dressing her as any of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would be equally newsworthy.
Amexpat, check again. There is video.
It's sort of in the tradition of the New Orleans Jazz funeral, but IMO this goes too far toward denying death instead of celebrating life.
Ann's poll had the correct (and, unrepresented response) by pointing out the the entire purpose of the exercise is to confront the reality of the person's death. While it may be fun and whimsical to pose the body in a living way, it's a grotesquerie to position the deceased in any way that does not firmly communicate this reality.
However, if I am to be made a human cartoon, please ensure that I display a supremely fine johnson.
- Krumhorn.
@ Mike, thanks.
"... My likeness cast in brass
Will stand in plastic grass
While hidden weights and springs
Tip it's hat to the mourners filing past...."
Tom Paxton, John Denver: "Forest Lawn"
How about if a famous musician dies they prop his body up next to his piano and pose it like he's playing his songs, with a shit eating grin on his face.
It would be like Madame Tousseau's wax museum only with corpses.
What would be fun is if they stand the corpse up by the front door and have his hand out in a handshake so when you go to the funeral parlor you have to shake the dead guys hand upon entering.
Funerals are for the living; the dead don't care. As long as it doesn't creep out the people attending the ceremony, I got no problem with it.
FWIW, I already have my music picked out. As tempting as it is, I don't think "Comfortably Numb" will fly with my pastor...
I don't get the problem.
Why not a hologram of the recently departed like they did with Michael jackson?
Now, we know. There is a marionette waiting in our postmortem.
John,
How do you bend the corpse to sit? Then how do you bend it back straight for the coffin?
I think you misunderstand rigor mortis. It comes on, but then it goes away again. A few days on, you're once more totally limp.
I have to say that this discussion does creep me out. Taxidermy, indeed.
This discussion made me think of:
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
Better still had the memorial service been postponed for inclusion in the half-time show on a Game Day in Mercedes-Benz Stadium, home of the Saints: Mickey's decomposing but stylishly got-up corpse could have been dragged, a la Weekend at Bernie's, in the ranks of a marching band.
She probably would have wanted it that way.
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