Famous Podsters: 31

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Your Favorite Mortician Episode Four!

Unless you spend your death care days working as a full time embalmer sequestered in the dark recesses of a funeral home’s preproom or on an eight hour cigarette break working as a crematory operator, you’re going to be a funeral director who is very acquainted with the local cemeteries. Around my neck of the woods we have every type of cemetery you can think of: a National Cemetery, one of the biggest mausoleums in the country, numerous Catholic and Jewish cemeteries, hundreds of high priced commercial cemeteries, thousands of city maintained Pioneer Cemeteries, and an astronomical amount of backwoods cemeteries that are used half the time by derelict yokels for target practicing the local vermin and empty flower vases.  

All of these types of cemeteries comes with their very own eclectic mix of owners and caretakers ranging from business professional yuppies waiting to take as much of your money as possible, to bumpkins who ‘can’t remember if we buried Ethel here or over there.’ One of my favorites that I had the pleasure of working with was the befuddled old caretaker I met at Laurel Hill Pioneer Cemetery. He became quite upset with me when I pointed out his illegal method of grouping his outer burial container and the opening and closing charge as one ‘Cemetery Fee.’ See kids, when cemeteries require an outer burial container for their cemetery and the crooked old bastard only accepts them if bought through their own cemetery, that’s a clever way to charge clueless consumers whatever they want. After I pointed this out to him, he blubbered on about some non-sense through his jack-o-lantern teeth and every subsequent conversation I’ve ever had included both he and his wife getting on two different phones in their home and reciting bible verses mixed with threats about never recommending our funeral home. Those kooky old bible thumpin’ caretakers.

The horror flick that got me reminiscing about cemeteries is 1958’s, I Bury the Living, that just happens to be based in the ostentatiously named Immortal Hills Cemetery. And yes, that cemetery has a kooky old caretaker named Andy McKee, but ol’ Andy isn’t nearly as nefarious as the aforementioned law breaking evangelist. 

Andy is the grounds’ stalwart being around Immortal Hills Cemetery for over forty years of service. His list of skills acquired over those forty years reads like a true renaissance man: digging graves, chiseling headstones, picking up dead flower arrangements, and locking the gate. He is a lighthearted old timer and is quite excited to meet the newly appointed Chairman of the cemetery, Robert Kraft, of Kraft Department Stores. When Robert arrives at the cemetery his dapper appearance and flashy car, no doubt bought at the Nazi Party’s going out of business sale, contrast Andy’s drunk Irish stereotype look, and he’s covered in mud!  They both hit it off well and Andy immediately starts showing Mr. Kraft the stunning attributes of his work shed with the same zeal as a dirty caveman showing an alien fire. 

The first thing on Mr. Kraft’s list however isn’t a tour, it is to discuss Andy’s retirement with full pension for years of hard work. Andy isn’t too keen on that idea and tries to reason with Robert against the offer saying that will basically kill him because he’ll have no purpose anymore. They say youth is wasted on the young, but life is wasted on the elderly. I don’t care what kind of pride I might have doing any job, getting a full pension upon retirement as a cemetery’s caretaker is a pretty good score for Andy, because judging by his looks he’d probably end up some frozen guy found behind a grocery store after a snowstorm.  

Back at Kraft’s Department Store the other board members level with Robert about his role in the cemetery and how important that role is in perpetuating their good standing in the city regardless of the non-gratis salary that comes with being Immortal Hills’ new Chairman. Although Kraft’s is a department store, this is something that happens a lot in funeral homes and it’s a side of the funeral industry, amongst scores of other issues, I absolutely hate. 

When you are low on the totem pole trying to get through school or an apprenticeship you get forced into doing crap like this all the time instead of the owner whose name is on the front sign. Whether it’s volunteering time after hours to visit retirement homes to host some ridiculous Q & A session catered with coffee and See’s Candy or getting stuck at another drunk driving assembly at the High School, all of these so called community service functions are awful, glad handing, brown nosing nightmares with the purpose of keeping the mortuary’s name in the public view hoping that the payoff will be dragging another customer back to the funeral home once the Almighty swoops in.   

So under duress Robert Kraft accepts his fate as the new Chairman and stops by the cemetery to go over some more paperwork with Andy when his friend and new wife stop by to select graves in the family plot. Because? They just got married! An odd request but Robert’s friend insists he choose the plots right then because he is not going to get a cent from his family trust unless he selects the graves for him and his new wife, logical enough. But Robert accidentally puts two black pins, indicating someone is dead and buried, in their two plots on the gigantic cemetery map instead of white pins, which are placed when someone has purchased the grave plots in advance. Eerily, the young couple violently die shortly after and Robert can’t help but feel it could be more than a coincidence.

Now if that had happened to me........I would get a little freaked out and probably steer clear of the gigantic map of the cemetery in the work shed, unless it killed people who didn’t use their blinkers-I HATE that. Robert Kraft on the other hand decides to replace another white pin with black, and that person dies. And then he does it again, and they die. After that the police officer Robert contacts insists he does it again, and they’ll keep an eye on the person, but they die too! Finally the fellow chairmen of Kraft Department stores also, incredulously, convince Robert to switch the pins on ALL of their OWN plots just to show him HE’S crazy, and you guessed it, THEY DIE. 

  

After the pile of bodies mounts Robert Kraft gets the brilliant idea of taking all of the black pins out of the graves and replace them with white pins again to undo all the death he is recklessly responsible for. I Bury the Living was made in 1958 remember, so this is a pre-George Romero timeframe and Robert doesn’t have any precedent of the hell that resurrecting the dead could bring. Do the dead come back to life? Does Robert find out what powers he ultimately possesses? 

What I will say is there are some good twists through the rest of I Bury the Living and Your Favorite Mortician, ME, was very entertained. There are a lot of well shot scenes full of authentic headstones from a very profitable period in cemetery sales. I also enjoyed the genuine aesthetic of the groundskeeper’s shack full of old flower easels, bible stands for pastors, a lot of dirt, and a slew of traffic signs to guide the bereaved through the cemetery driveways.   

So next time all you potential apprentices out there are thinking about going to a cemetery to ponder suicide, take selfies staring at the ground with mascara running down your face, or take nudes draped over some moss covered headstone, weigh out staying at home and watching I Bury the Living instead. Trust me, all the cemetarians out there are tired of your morose loitering and discarded Djarum Blacks amongst the headstones.

Your Favorite Mortician at the Movies Numero Tres!

It can be a lonely, strange trip living your life at the mortuary. Always being on call and having an erratic schedule will make you appreciate even the simplest of pleasures when they occur. I can’t tell you how good a meal can taste when you can actually sit down and not worry about the phone ringing with someone’s needs or how rejuvenating sleeping a straight six hours can feel after wrenching dead bodies out of the nooks and crannies of a city for four days straight. 

Physically, death calls can deteriorate your body over time like a wide ass continually bearing down on a leather wallet in a tight back pocket. Mentally, the responsibilities of a Mortician can cause your mind to become a deep well that’s dark enough to hide any ripple of sympathy, or god forbid - empathy. When morticians snap it’s juicier than any headline in tabloid magazines and darker than any abyss on the earth. 

For example, between 1981 and 1984 Mortician Pat Omsberg of Newport, Oregon decided to stockpile sixteen corpses in his garage instead of burying or cremating them. Some of the bodies were so decomposed forensic dentists had to verify their identities. Before he was arrested Omsberg had recently been overhead by the bartender at a bowling alley complaining about how people were too cheap to pay their tabs at the funeral home. He later tried to sexually assault a woman unsuccessfully and killed himself before police could arrest him. If you shoot yourself in the head wrong your body goes into shock and the person usually dies from inhaling their vomit well before blood loss of brain trauma. 

With all of this tragedy within an arms length, this Mortician likes to take in a night of cinema to bring the madness down to a slow hum. If misery loves company then the movie, The Undertaker starring Joe Spinell, should be considered a theological document.

The Undertaker is a love letter written to anyone who has had their lives consumed by their careers. Joe Spinell plays Uncle Roscoe Holland, owner of Holland Mortuary, and ol’ Roscoe might have had himself a few too many deep inhalations of formaldehyde over the years.  Not only is he overweight, mildly crippled, and has the complexion of cigarette burned bacon, he’s also a murdering necrophiliac - all a result from his inextinguishable love of the death care industry. Uncle Roscoe is a case classic old school mortician who feels he is above everyone, yet still schmoozes and manipulates people of affluence like the local Mayor and Police Officers.  He also loves kidnapping and brutally murdering women to ‘stir up some business’ and utilize their corpses for his own sexual whims. 

The fairytale Uncle Roscoe creates in his head with nude corpses gets splintered into a million frowns when he finds out his nosey nephew, Nick, caught an eyeful of him serenading a corpse one day and decides he must rectify that situation before it gets out of hand or brought to the attention of authorities. Nick does the right thing and doesn’t tell his girlfriend any of what he witnessed and, instead, runs to his sociology teacher Miss Hayes, who happened to be covering the topic of NECROPHILIA in her class that week. Nick tries to convince her to meet him at his Uncle’s Funeral Home to discuss something with her, but leaves it literally that vague with no further explanation as opposed to leveling with her about what he saw. Miss Hayes tiptoes around the potential student/teacher sexual encounter for awhile, gossiping with her frequently nude roommate about it, until she realizes maybe Nick did need help because he stopped showing up for class and isn’t answering his phone. Miss Hayes alerts the police and in wake of the mounting missing persons cases the town is currently being hit with, the police decide to give ol’ Uncle Roscoe a visit. The rest my friends you’ll have to see for yourself because this Mortician realizes yes, we all die, so why bother ruining the good things in life for others. 

As I mentioned before, I think The Undertaker is a fantastic movie that conveys the realistic potential for an epic mental snap from reality people who work in the death industry face. In fact the topic of ‘burnout’ is covered in mortuary schools and once you get involved in this industry you will from time to time hear about colleagues just losing it and deciding a stroll through a rushing river, downing a diazepam cocktail, or listening intently to the barrel of a revolver, was the last right decision they ever made. 

Aside from loving the batshit performance by Joe Spinell, I also really enjoyed seeing some old school mortician aesthetics in The Undertaker. One example is in every scene inside Uncle Roscoe’s preproom where a body isn’t on the embalming table the bare table is draped with a sheet. I know that sounds ridiculous, but if you have ever worked side by side with an old timer that is one idiosyncratic thing they do out of respect for the dead, the art of embalming, and to pacify the shock any potential warm bodies might get if they get a little nosey and decide to take a stroll through the mortuary. Normally I just leave the bloody embalming table out in the open and to hell with anyone wandering around; it could be a lot worse. Another example that Uncle Roscoe cut his teeth before the era of AIDS and the baby boomers Hepatitis explosion is Uncle Roscoe doesn’t wear an embalming gown or any type of personal protective equipment (PPE), he strolls around in his white lab coat. I suspect some of the readers out there in TV Land probably haven’t been splashed with blood or had a hypo injection site back flow formaldehyde straight into your eye, but that shit burns and that shit is SCARY!

So by all means kids, grab a copy of the Undertaker and enjoy because it is a great ride. Just keep in mind there are lunatics out there just like, or even WORSE than Uncle Roscoe and they’ll take great liberty in ensuring the care and safe handling of your family members.  

Your Favorite Mortician at the Movies #2

As before, ignore the intro. 

Hey kids it's me, Your Favorite Mortician, and I'm back at the movies and I assure you I washed my hands before I handled my genitals before I used the movie seat armrests! This week I had the pleasure of watching the obscure porn flick, Necrophiliac, and now I'm ready to yuck it up about a topic that’s always on the minds of the folks in the Funeral Industry, Necrophilia. Necrophiliac, the movie, could be seen as a nice little blurb on the detrimental effects that grief can have over the bereaved.........or it’s just a movie about a guy who fucks a corpse.

We begin in a funeral home, or the set of a funeral home that was built in someone’s garage, where the visitation for a nice young deceased lady is taking place. Enter her grief stricken boyfriend who is not only sad, he’s horny. A very common occurrence amongst the living is the feeling to fuck, a lot, and I've been told it's an internal evolutionary response to death to remind us WE'RE ALIVE! So let's celebrate with things that inflate and things that fold! The grieving boyfriend throws the casket spray atop his dead girlfriend's casket to the ground and rips open the lid - take note future apprentices, not locking the casket for a closed casket visitation is a very easy way to get fucking fired!

With no one around to stop him the boyfriend tilts the deceased’s head back quite easily and thumbs open her mouth, also quite easily. Out comes his purple colored liberty bell and into her mouth it goes. After a few pumps and groans he completely ruins her makeup; that'll be an additional restoration fee please.

But don’t count the boyfriend out yet, he moves on down towards her baby making center, pulls off her undergarments then pinches and pulls at her folds for a while before he reciprocates the favor she just afforded him - talk about hamming it up for the camera up folks! Now I know people think hair keeps growing after you die, but it doesn’t, you've just watched Indiana Jones wayyyyyy too many times! However it seems like the filmmakers wanted to propagate this urban myth because this woman is sporting one densely grown pubic area that looks like it would even give the topiary artistry of Edward Scissorhands a run for his money.  After the boyfriend gets her cadaveric motor humming (Gross!) he hops in the casket, flips the corpse around so her soul can't escape and finishes round two. His orgasm, worthy of Meg Ryan's performance in When Harry Met Sally, and erratic bodily jerks are a little too much and he causes the casket lid to come crashing down on him. The end.

Necrophiliac is rife with issues that makes THIS Mortician, Your FAVORITE Mortician, cringe.  If this was at my mortuary I would be following Mr. Romeo as soon as he walked through the front doors. Rule one: don't let anyone just wander around a mortuary alone, ESPECIALLY a boyfriend of the deceased. These mopey bastards usually have their own ideas on how to pay respects to the dearly departed. These can include putting rambling letters written in pink or purple ink, joints, or condoms into the pockets of the dead - I'm serious! My favorite example of a forlorn boyfriend is showing up drunk to the funeral home, climbing on top of the body then bawling out horrifically lurid details about their sex lives. In that story though the boyfriend chose to do that with the whole family in the chapel. I believe the deceased's grandmother was surprised to hear she got her pussy shaved in a shower by him when they were 'yo we were trippin' on molly.' Other bad habits that people get when they wander around a funeral home alone is stealing a ton of cookies and candy, refilling cup after cup of coffee, clogging the toilets, filling garbage cans with crap from their cars, and thinking of dick head questions to ask as they leave. A few stalwarts I love are 'so do they like ever move?' or 'are you guys like, hiring?'

Now let's address the actual scenario of having sex with an embalmed corpse.  I'm going to take a guess this movie was made in the late 70's or early 80's when embalming chemicals were still a little crude and the outcome was rock hard, gray bodies that had to get lacquered up with a lot of makeup and hairspray.  So I'm a little skeptical on how easy it was to prop the deceased's head back and open her mouth, since that should have been either stitched shut with twine or bolted shut with needle injectors.

Once the boyfriend gets done with her head, he moves to her magenta oven and I find this pretty impractical as well. When bodies are embalmed they can get a little taught; think of trying to fuck a basketball through the inflation hole. When I was slinging embalmed cadavers for medical conferences I had the horror of watching surgeons and anatomists try and figure out if the female cadavers had uteruses or not. This entailed grown men jamming their elbows into the abdomen of dead, little old ladies, in an attempt to push down their uterus into a 'feelable range' for their other hand that was lodged into old Betty's vagina. The bell shape felt on their middle index finger meant they had a cervix and more than likely a uterus.  These gals could then be utilized for certain labs over others.

Now, I feel I'm a crude person by nature - possibly displaying signs of Asperger Syndrome - but this was one scenario I didn't want to partake in and risk having it on replay in my conscious forever.  So I left this task to the professionals. In my protest the Allied Health Professionals told me the cadavers should be checked before they're embalmed because it's basically impossible to feel anything afterwards. Great, I grinned and gave them my business card with an invitation to play bowling ball with any and all vaginas at any point from here on out because there was no way in hell I was going to.........ever. I glanced over to another group surrounding a table with cold Ethel on it and then overheard, 'well these damn gloves don't help either, it's not like in the old days before we HAD to where them.' Think about that before your next checkup kids.

Necrophiliac is an odd 10 minute watch that's good for a laugh and a head scratch. It stars the “high-risk for immune deficiency disease” porn legend Jamie Gillis as the very animated and dedicated boyfriend and the alarmingly square jawed Tina Russell as the movable corpse who can’t seem to figure out that the dead don’t breath.  Both are dead now, in real life, so hopefully they reprised their roles in Necrophiliac when they met in hell.