Just What Your Funeral Needs

A few pictures of some of the more flamboyant sights at the National Funeral Directors' Convention in New Orleans. I call that top one origami urn. There appeared to be a language barrier between myself and the sales dude so I can't tell you what it is really called, but I think with some papier mache, twine, and couple of beers we could make this happen at home.

I loved these tree balls. Again it was the language barrier, but I did catch that they take very little time to dissolve. A reminder from me and my funeral buddies: cremains are inert. You will not be fertilizing your tree with Uncle Gerardo's ashes. They will just be peacefully co-existing. See my previous post and you'll find where you can procure some horse manure for fertilization.

This is a closeup of the jaw-dropping glazes on the snazzy handmade art urns. I wonder if Mama would mind if I made her into a lamp.

And the Steinway shiny black casket would be good for the man we call in my family Grandaddy Babe. Babe has created multiple generations of Star Trek fans in our family. I think it only appropriate that we bury him in something that looks like what Mr. Spock was briefly laid to rest in.

An SUV hearse for when you need that extra room. Or is it the horsepower? Driving in snow? Who do they think they are kidding? This is all about the bling.

Speaking of bling: a gold casket because you are worth it and you want to look like Liberace in your final moments above ground. Earth to gold casket maker: we are NOT pharaohs. If this can convert into a hope chest, a 7 foot mirror, and a dinette set, then you have yourself a deal.

For some reason, they did a big reveal on that hearse below. I think it is this year's new model. Call me an old fuddy duddy, but I think your brother would get over his car fixation at death and be satisfied with the lovely horse drawn caisson at right. Or with you giving him the ole' fireman's carry to a shady spot under a nice tree free of golden caskets and horse manure. But truly, if it makes you happy... go for it.

As for me, funeral conventions make me happy. I like the death work I do because it makes people less anxious and helps them through their grief. I like many funeral directors because many of them are characters. That's like looking in a mirror but the reflection has an uncanny knowledge of anatomy, life insurance, cremation regulation, and how not to stop a fistfight at a funeral home visitation. I like all the things pictured on this page because I may not want it for myself but I am glad there are many, many options out there.

I still want to be wrapped in a quilt and laid right down in the ground so the earth can take me back a little at a time and a I can be a tasty treat for worms and microbes. Maybe one day plants and a tree could grow up right through me and take a little of me back above ground for a new life as a leaf, or a seed, or even a petal.

That's what I like but it is hard to exhibit that in a convention center.

Thousands of Funeral Directors Again

Time for another year at the National Funeral Directors' Convention. This time it was in New Orleans and it is a wonder I survived and came back home again. I'm pretty sure if feather dude here had offered me and mine jobs as feather tamers or tambourine tuners, I would have not returned to the lovely Commonwealth of my birth. Thanks to this convention I could also be employed as a keg taster of NOLA craft brews, a gumbo ad campaign chairwoman, and a professional wanderer of side streets in the Garden District.

This was the best convention for incorporating local funeral customs as a jazz funeral was conducted in honor of those funeral directors and their loved ones who have died in the past year. Great music, a good homily, and everything ran smoothly as one would expect from the pros represented. Then there were the elements of the jazz funeral: from the dirge to the costumes, the horses, the band, the waving of the white hankies, the move from sorrow to jubilation, and the dancing in the street. I was very pleased that Emporia, Virginia's divine Miss Edna whom I eulogized this past summer was one of the honorees. I danced and waved a hankie in her honor.
In addition to the jazz funeral, there were classes on everything from embalming to marketing, from green cemeteries to business management. I did not include pictures of those, because the fantastic dancers from the funeral are better looking and more interesting to readers of this blog.

My son is old enough to read this blog now so I will point out that the horses did unload a pile of manure inside the convention center but funeral directors are good detail people so precautions had been taken due to the likeliness of such an event. (In other words, Little Man: there was a special carpet and a guy with a shovel who took care of the problem.)

Per request of one of the most faithful followers of Auspicious Jots, I am including some very nice urns here. Each one is handmade. The artist is a crafty and inventive woman who determined that we all aren't wooden box and ginger jar people. If my faithful reader posts a comment, I can provide the link to this gal's website to help you procure one. Prices ranged from $600-$1,000. Beauty ain't cheap but I like the symbolism of that bird one.

You know I won't lie to you. Not every minute of the convention was spent in classes, going to funerals, in cemeteries, or checking out the latest in funeral stuff. I did a lot of that. But much of a convention entails networking. In the funeral business that seems to involve a bar and good food, no matter where the convention is. With this one being in NOLA, there were just a LOT more choices for the food and beverages. Let's just say that we made the most of what the city had to offer and utilized its fine public transportation system on a daily basis.

As one of my new funeral friends likes to query, "Do you undertake what I'm saying?"

I will be posting a couple of the quirkier finds from the exhibit hall in a separate post. You know you can't help but check it out.

Honky Tonk Queen

There are times when life is just flippin' perfect. My day with Whitey Morgan and the 78's was even better than flippin' perfect.

They came to my town because I begged them to. They liked the Southern food my homies and I whipped up for them. (Homemade fried chicken, hush puppies, cheese grits, the world's best green bean casserole, biscuits made with LARD, olive spread, brownies, bean salad, and deviled eggs all washed down with beer and some jello shooters.) They were kind enough to hang out with me and mine when they could have been napping. We got to know each other and then they rocked the house. It was great.

Their new CD is very different from their first one and I love them both, much in the same way that I love the 78's and the Chiggers who opened for them. It was great to have local honky tonk buds hanging with national honky tonkers. I would happily follow both bands all over the country if it weren't for that whole raising kids, family business, not a dime in my pocket thing I've been workin' here lately.

A quick review of the pics that don't speak for themselves: *Dancing with Chiggers frontman Wes who dances as well as he sings and that is a major compliment on both parts. Not pictured is me dancing with Mrs. Chigger who can cut a rug on her own with her fine self.

*Up next is Whitey himself who is surprisingly tall. You watch the YouTubes and you don't pick up on that. Reason being, the rest of them are pretty tall, as well. Some would argue that it is the boots, but as a later shot shows: we were all wearing boots.

*I am snuggling with friend of almost 15 years and Chiggers pedal steel player, Tim. He helped sweeten the deal to get the 78's to play by offering the Chiggers as an opening band. It was a great match and both bands liked each other immensely. That is the victory grin that Tim and I are sharing.

*The orange shot is of the bassist of the 78's, Jeremy. He was the one I talked into this insane adventure. As a buddy of mine who has passed his 70th year said that night, "That man is a darn fine bassist." I agree. He is just a fine person who has translated that into some fine musical talent.

The night was a dream come true and I will be smiling about it for years to come. There is a track on the new CD called "Honky Tonk Queen". Please see that it is played in my honor when I pass on to the great dance floor in the sky.

Positive Obsessions

Last night at gayraoke (gay karaoke) I was stunned as two women and three men sang every word, every note, did the drum parts and the spoken parts to the dreadful 1987 abomination "Naughty Girls Need Love, Too". My stun turned to nausea when I realized I was one of the women. I am only able to write this because just one of us had the mic and blessedly it was not yours truly.

Your Honor, I plead guilty by reason of obsessive teen behavior to the charges of creating a public nuisance, curse and abuse (at Samantha Fox and Full Force for unleashing that demon hymn into the world), and impersonating a pouty British accent. My defense is that my co-defendants and I were teenagers when the song was released and thus had no immunity to what Billy Collins calls "a mad fan belt of a tune".

I think it is a decent defense. But I have my own bail bondsman and lawyer just in case I'm wrong.

I have a brain full of Nick Hornby which leads me to believe that obsessions are a necessary part of life. Unfortunately, I happen to know that when he wrote his most famous odes to obsession: High Fidelity, Fever Pitch, and About a Boy, Hornby was a functioning madman. I've read all three of these works in the past month as part of my grief abatement program, so as a somewhat functioning obsessive, I know of which I speak.

But let's go back to songs that grab you this time focusing on the better aspects of that phenomenon. When I hear Paul Simon I can remember the sound of my mother's record spinning in our living room. I remember rapping along with my classmates to "La-di-da-di, we like to party. We don't cause trouble; we don't bother nobody." I remember stopping what I was doing in Germany to find out who Lisa Stansfield was in 1990. I remember the first time I heard the voice of Roger Carroll, a talented local singer and saxman.

And I remember when emusic offered me a free song that they thought I might like based on previous downloads. Anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of these things knows that they are hit or mostly miss. If you followed the four hyperlinks of the previous paragraph you can imagine what the iTunes genius and programs of its ilk are up against when they have to guess what I am going to like. I downloaded warily.

The song was "Crazy" by Whitey Morgan and the 78's. After a few weeks of listening to that song more and more, I downloaded three more songs by this band. Within a month I had downloaded the whole album in this day and age when whole album commitment is either a sign of abundant wealth or maniacal obsession. For me it was the latter.

Since I had become fanatical about this Flint, Michigan Honky Tonk band I decided to take the next step: I wrote a fan letter. I asked them when they thought they would get this way. That probably would have been the end of it except soon after I sent the letter I found out that they had been this way and had performed at a small place with no promotion. I sent a quick PS saying "XXXXX?!? You played at XXXXX? That's like booking George Jones at the Krispy Kreme. Look, if we can lure you back to Richmond, my friends and I will come out to party with you and we'll feed you a big ole' Southern meal at my place before the gig."

18 months later Whitey Morgan and the 78's will be playing this Saturday at the Playing Field at 7801 West Broad St. right here in river city. It didn't hurt that the booking guru at the Playing Field also contacted them. Also helpful was that the pedal steel player for Richmond's own The Chiggers, another band I love, contacted them and asked (and were subsequently invited) to open. And then their record company was nice enough to send them out on tour - it was all meant to be.

Some think that my over-the-top enthusiasm for music is a sign of a stunted maturity. I say that if maturity is keeping your ass on a comfortable couch and watching whatever pathetic pablum American TV broadcasting has coughed up this week instead of kicking up your heels on a dance floor with people who are talented and drove 667 miles to party with you... then you are damn skippy I am immature. I also think being able to gush and effuse about a band I've never met, never heard live, and yet am as excited as if those four bowl haircuts just stepped off the plane at Kennedy in 1964; well, that just makes me damn lucky in this life. I think it could be worse. I could obsessively hyperlink. Oh, wait...

Speaking of obsessions, I am embarking on my 5th trip to the Gulf Coast to rebuild houses. Between working in the ninth ward on construction, eating gumbo, and listening to live music I doubt I will have time to be blogging. That's a shame because I am doing my annual pilgrimage to the National Funeral Directors Association Convention at the end of the trip and I know how y'all love my blogging from that event. You can wish me a bon voyage Saturday night because as soon as Whitey says "Thank you, Richmond!" and turns off the amp, my driving buddy and I hit the road to NOLA.

Thanks for reading when you could have been web surfing for bands. Word to your mama.

The past, the soccer, the evil within, and at the end: boobies

My mother used to say that her earliest memory was of family members gathered around her cooing and applauding as she did a dance number. She was the first born of the first born and was considered by a large web of loving family to have invented cuteness. I've seen photos and have to agree.

My earliest memory is of potty training. My parents are both in a very small apartment bathroom encouraging me in sweet "you can do it, little one!" voices. I am on the toilet and scared. Then I am in the toilet, wet, and scared. And can you guess what my beloved parents did in the face of this scarring tragedy of their only child?

Those peckerwoods laughed their tails off. I was furious at the two of them trying not to laugh and tears streaming down their faces as they coughed out, "It's okay, baby" between fits of giggles. I may have only been two, but righteous indignation was an instinct.

In those earliest memories my mother and I both learned lessons we have used the rest of our lives. For Mama it was: you can be adored by many, but you will have to dance your sweet fanny off to keep their attention. For me it was: they are going to laugh at you no matter what, learn to like it. (My lesson was closely followed by a fear of water and of falling. Mama has an aversion to lace trimmed panties and tap shoes. But that's another story.)

I share my first remembered life lesson to goad myself into sharing yet another humiliating story about myself: why I am not allowed to follow sports. This is on my mind for two reasons. First, I am immersed in Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch, an engaging look at his decades long obsession with the English soccer team, Arsenal. Second, I am off in less than two weeks on my fifth trip to the Gulf Coast to rebuild after Katrina. This time I will be working in the 9th Ward of New Orleans and am finding the lure of Saints football to be almost overwhelming.

It may come as a surprise that in the marital rules by which my long-suffering spouse and I have lived for almost twenty years, there is a provision that restricts me from observing any sporting events other than German World Cup matches, the Super Bowl, and the occasional UVA basketball game. I can do an annual live baseball or soccer game only because in person I always find a crowd and our squirmy kids far more attention grabbing than the sport itself.

I will save the long version of my sordid sportsfan past for my memoirs. Let's just say that I have an ugly side that reared its head twice in the early nineties following a season of abysmal Raiders football and another of spectacular but ultimately soul obliterating Knicks basketball. After these seasons he enacted the draconian law that I am not allowed to follow a team for a full season. It is the only marital law he has ever enacted. The rest are requests, strong suggestions, and a wish list.

I have only been able to stop scowling and begin to laugh about this 17 year law for about... um... three... months. But in the spirit of dunking one's bottom in icy water and grinning, and seeing as how football mania is under way, I am sharing my struggle here.

I can very easily put the fanatic in fan. I have all the attributes: a long attention span, loyal affection, quick to forgive (although not at the end of the season). I am willing to alter my schedule for things I care about. I enjoy dressing in costumes. I like beer. Most of my friends are dudes.

These are the gifts I long to bring to the New Orleans Saints and possibly, through the miracles of the internet, Bayern Munich's soccer team. To the latter I also bring a gift of being able to mutter curses and shriek in glee in the German language.

Unfortunately, following sports even if allowed is pretty miserable for me because I become enmeshed. Ask my friends with whom I watched the World Cup this year. For the matches televised only on cable I arrived at their homes quiet and antsy. I failed at polite small talk. I barely spoke for the duration of the game unless it was in German directed at the TV. I was wearing German themed athletic gear. (And to think, I wasn't laughing at that point?!?) I exhibited a variety of nervous tics including sitting ramrod straight, holding my breath, and wringing my hands. God bless my friends. They laughed openly at me and let me drink their beer.

I handled it pretty well in the beginning. I mean who can't chuckle and enjoy the day when mopping the floor with Australia or cleaning the toilet with the jerseys of England? But there was never a point in Germany's meteoric rise through the tournament when I felt safe. After all, the pre-tournament talk was about France, the Africans, the South Americans, most anyone other than Germany's "young" team.

Like any good fan, I was wrapped up in the skills and failings of the players. I had fallen for the Polish powerhouses of Klose and Podolski four years earlier and was expecting good things from them. I had no hope for the newbie goalie, the aptly named Neuer, but was pleasantly surprised and soon gave him the pet name of the big Banana. It helped that I don't trust pretty men and thus had never been under the sway of former captain Ballack, so I was able to ignore the constant prattle that the team would be lost without him. (Is this talk creeping you out yet? It always stuns my family. I normally save this kind of detail for death, obscure theology, poetry, and rock and roll. Obsessive analysis of a sports team by yours truly is my equivalent of a sudden understanding of calculus.)

I could go on but I wouldn't want you to faint, so let me move on to my anxiety which reached its pinnacle in the days leading up to and including Germany's penultimate game that booted them from the final.

I was on pins and needles all week. I replayed the previous games in my mind. I followed World Cup news through a variety of apps and in three languages on my phone. I talked smack to Spain fans. I was so tense I didn't sleep well the night before. During the match itself I became increasingly unhinged as they were deftly over-powered by Spain. It has taken all these months to be able to stutter out that compliment to the World Champions.

But here is the best part. For that game I was in a van with my undertaker buddy and our kids on the way to South Carolina for his brother's wedding. In best-friend-enabling fashion he had let me watch as much as I could on his TV before we hit the road. Then we tuned in on some iffy radio stations. When those blitzed out another buddy... are you ready for this? ... gave me play by play analysis in a series of 90 some emails that I followed like a crazy woman on my phone.

When the game ended with Germany's loss I was green with carsickness and disappointment. In commentator buddy's last email he apologised to me and offered condolences on my loss. This from a man who probably gave himself acute carpal tunnel typing things like "Spain's striker rushes but Big Banana blocks it" for the better part of two hours. The undertaker held my hand and gave me his best undertaker comfort talk, while driving 75 miles an hour with the kids yakking away in the back in 95 degree heat. And folks, neither of these guys are German soccer fans.

It has taken me almost three months since the World Cup to realize why I am not allowed to follow sports and to laugh at long last on the marital moratorium: I am a sports menace. I have a natural ability to get people to jump in on my plans and in the sporting world this is called "inciting hooliganism."

"Hey y'all - let's go do karaoke even though only one of us sings and we all have stage fright." And the gang says, OK!

"If I lead a church will you come, even though you say you aren't religious and churches freak you out?" And the crew says, Sure, why not?

These are endearing and admirable traits when used for the good of humanity and honky tonk bands. (October 2, 8 o'clock, the Playing Field on Richmond's Broad Street. Be there and wear your dancing shoes.) But something about sports turns me into the Rasputin of the arena. Suddenly good, innocent people find themselves in bad places letting me act like an ass and bending to my fanatical will.

It is for YOUR OWN GOOD that I not be allowed to become a Saints devotee. If I were to follow the Saints this year, chances are some of my devoted readers would wake up in mid-winter with a giant Fleur de Lis tattooed on their backsides wondering how the hell that happened. At least one of you would be injured in a gumbo related accident. Far too many of you would be wearing feathers and flashing your chests come Mardi Gras. Mayhem would ensue and, should they start losing, quite possibly riots.

In the very best scenario I drink your beer and you have to email me play by play updates while I am at the opera. I just can't do that to you. So there you have it. My dark secret. My evil within.

But I know you did not read all this way for that. For my faithful readers who send me such sweet, supportive mail: boobies.

I was prodded, scanned, zapped, felt up, and squeezed by trained professionals and their high tech machines. Three well-educated medical specialists and two very expensive machines confirmed my high opinion of my faithful breasts. They are disease free. The diagnosis was another refrain of a mantra of my life: the problem is just another side effect from the nasty medicines I take.

Don't forget to get your mammograms! Save the ta tas and all that.

Thank you for reading. It keeps me from watching sports.