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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Because of wow. / Late Evening Open Thread: An End of Life Planning Question Not Asked Nearly Enough

Late Evening Open Thread: An End of Life Planning Question Not Asked Nearly Enough

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In light of yesterday’s post about caregivers, it is important to grapple with the difficult end of life questions. Specifically, how many strippers do you want at your funeral!

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, funeral strippers are not uncommon. In fact, China’s Ministry of Culture has publicly asked that people stop hiring them. As far back as 2006, China Central Television aired an exposé on the practice, which states it has “severely polluted the local cultural life.” Obviously, the performances are intended to attract crowds, which is seen as good fortune for a bumping afterlife. One villager told CCTV, “It’s to give them face,” adding, “Otherwise no one would come.” Wow, burn.

Reader Interactions

127Comments

  3. 3.

    JGabriel

    WSJ:

    According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, funeral strippers are not uncommon. In fact, China’s Ministry of Culture has publicly asked that people stop hiring them.

    You know, the strangest thing about this is that it didn’t start in the US.

    Specifically, Appalachia. Or Portland.

  4. 4.

    Hal

    Is the Cornell West Obama sucks article via the Guardian only being shared on facebook by Bernie supporters. My Bernie supporting friend just posted it. Oh well. Where have all the Cowboys gone?

  5. 5.

    NotMax

    Nothing says “sympathies and condolences” like a spangly G-string.

    Scene in the waiting for a Dracula movie, with the stake protruding upward from the coffin.

  6. 6.

    Miss Bianca

    “Funeral Strippers”?!

    Dear God. I cannot…cannot even…

    BTW, “how many strippers do you want at your funeral?” just seems like such a..a *personal* question. I’m not sure I could share the answer even with my most intimate Internet acquaintances!

  9. 9.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Hal: Rachel Maddow was getting on my nerves tonight, getting all concern-trolly about how Obama hasn’t undone the election results.

  10. 10.

    Suzanne

    how many strippers do you want at your funeral?

    So many. So, so many. I want the goddamn naked Rockettes. Hell, have my corpse naked in the casket for extra weirdness.

  13. 13.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Miss Bianca: I’m looking forward to having this conversation with my Mom this week. She’s quite healthy, but you want to make sure the appropriate provisions are made.

  17. 17.

    Miss Bianca

    @Adam L Silverman: OK, *that* was fall-down funny. Silverman for the win!

    ETA: Just make sure you don’t ask her while she’s eating or drinking anything, or you may have to think about those arrangements sooner than you were bargaining for!

  19. 19.

    Major Major Major Major

    I was reading in one of my history of magic books about Egyptian burial rites and whatnot. You can get to paradise if you know the answers to a bunch of riddles in the land of the dead. You don’t actually have to believe the answers–they’re stuff like feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless–you just have to know what to say and how to say it.

    So I don’t imagine strippers would matter one way or the other, so why not??

  25. 25.

    Feebog

    Ok, I was going to have my ashes scattered around the 11th hole of my favorite golf course, followed by an open bar in the club house, but now I may have to take it to a whole new level.

  27. 27.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Mai.naem.mobile:

    Obviously, the performances are intended to attract crowds, which is seen as good fortune for a bumping afterlife. One villager told CCTV, “It’s to give them face,” adding, “Otherwise no one would come.” Wow, burn.

  28. 28.

    JPL

    The Clemson/Bama game is pretty good, as it should be for the top two teams in the nation. Deshaun Watson is quite the competitor, and it will be fun to see where he plays in the future.

  37. 37.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @efgoldman: You are dead to me.

    FWIW, Jimmy Cliff’s version of “Many Rivers to Cross”* and Joe Strummer’s version of “Redemption Song” must be played at mine.

    *Yes, blatantly stolen from the movie version of High Fidelity.

  39. 39.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Omnes Omnibus: I think I said Zevon’s “Keep Me in Your Heart For a While” to start, then the Kinks “Better Things*” as they leave. But I’m not sure I put that in the will

    * I know it’s a break up song, but we will after all never be seeing each other again after it’s played.

  40. 40.

    NotMax

    @mdblanche

    Oddly enough, funeral clown was a lucrative and highly competitive calling* in ancient Rome, with only the most famous and celebrated clowns being hired to perform around the bier and dance atop the grave of a dead emperor.

    *As was gymnasiarch, but that’s a whole ‘nother kink.

  47. 47.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Sab: Sorry to hear about your Dad. I’m guessing my Mom is going to look like she just walked into a sliding glass door for a second until she figures out I’m joking.

  49. 49.

    burnspbesq

    @Hal:

    s the Cornell West Obama sucks article via the Guardian only being shared on facebook by Bernie supporters.

    Please tell me where it is, so I can avoid it until my dinner is well digested.

  51. 51.

    Mnemosyne

    @Yutsano:

    Fingers crossed! I still suspect that Republican Senators have gotten many calls from healthcare lobbyists screaming, WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU ASSHOLES THINK YOU’RE FUCKING DOING?!?!

    As Ned Beatty’s character warned Howard Beale in Network, they’re not just messing with people, they’re messing with corporations.

  53. 53.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Norm Eisen ‏@ NormEisen 1h1 hour ago
    Thx 2flood of calls, DeVos hearing postponed as @ rwpusa and I and many others called4 (see our oped below). PEOPLE POWER WORKED AGAIN!

    ETA: I don’t think this is a parody account

    American Patriot ‏@ svonewsletter 5h5 hours ago
    @ PattyMurray @ PPFA Why don’t you shut up Murry. Stop crying. You lost. We won. We are repealing Obamacare not the ACA

  55. 55.

    Temporarily Max McGee (Until Death!)

    @Temporarily Max McGee (Until Death!):

    Only the two I’ve dated, and one who’s just a friend.

    Wait. Strike that. One I dated and the one who’s a friend. The other one I dated did nothing but bitch about The Big Lebowski as we were watching it in the theatre. I lasted all the way through Titanic for her and pretended I liked it.

  58. 58.

    Temporarily Max McGee (Until Death!)

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    The defense had a great siixty muinutes. Offensively, I knew they had it when they scored after the Giants made it 14-13. Aaron, when he’s in rhythm, is a beautiful thing to behold.

  61. 61.

    seaboogie

    @hovercraft:

    Does Chippendales do funerals?

    The range of experience in my life often surprises me, when I can reference familarity with things that kind of surprise me, in retrospect.

    I did hire a Chippendales guy to sign Chippendales calendars in our Queens NY poster shop. While working for that same company, I also hired a stripper to do a strip-tease in a surprise fake job interview (that the whole company got to witness from outside the office window) for my boss, who had hinted around huge that he wanted something special for his birthday.

    WRT the latter, boss’ girlfriend and her father who was the big boss not only signed off on it, but big boss was complicit in the subterfuge.

    I live a pretty monastic life these days, and then I’m all – “oh yeah…that happened”….

  70. 70.

    seaboogie

    @Steve in the ATL

    Is there an option to get the strippers prior to my death?

    Best case scenario – the stripper event is your death, and then they show up again for the funeral feeling very sentimental, rending and tossing their garments – it’s a win/win situation.

  75. 75.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @seaboogie: I have a friend who says that she hopes that she dies peacefully in her sleep like her grandfather. Rather than screaming in terror like the passengers in his car.

  78. 78.

    Sab

    We actually did our funeral planning about five years ago. Just purchased the the cemetery plots last week. Creepy fun to drive by them. So now we have to discus this. I don’t want them (strippers) at my funeral but if spouse wants them I suppose I’ll have no choice, being dead. If he wants them he better work on the kids to stand up for him, because I am having none of it and I will stamp my foot and yell until I very way, unless his kids think.it is important.

  81. 81.

    Mnemosyne

    Pussyhat #1 complete, though I still need to weave in the ends.

    I admit, I was skeptical that merely doing a three-needle bind-off of the top would make it look like cat ears, but I tried the hat on and our oldest cat immediately got weirded out by it, so mission accomplished!

    ETA: That’s a link to the project website, not to a photo of the hat. I still need to weave in the ends.

  82. 82.

    trollhattan

    Best wake so far has to be the friend’s held at a nanobrewer in a light industrial park with catering by a Korean fusion food truck. Sadly lacking strippers or even the pole.

    Obligatory Fuck Cancer.

  87. 87.

    Cacti

    @Steve in the ATL:

    Hell of a game. I hope to pick up a houndstooth hat tomorrow at 90% off.

    Ouch.

    It also has to smart that the “greatest college defense of all time” just gave up 21 fourth quarter points.

  88. 88.

    cmorenc

    The most difficult question would be whether to hire topless strippers of full-nude strippers for a funeral. Also, should you have them stick around after the graveside service to dance on the grave before going to the after-party, or should they instead go directly to the after-party? You should probably hold off on the open bar until the after-party, but as with all these crucial choices, it would be tacky to not take the wishes of the deceased topmost in your considerations.

  89. 89.

    Sab

    I cannot respond because I do not understand your comment but I probably deserve it (my access to the internet makes sophisticated punctuation like contractions difficult, so I just pretend I live in the eighteenth century before contractions were common.)

  90. 90.

    The Dangerman

    @Cacti:

    It also has to smart that the “greatest college defense of all time” just gave up 21 fourth quarter points.

    Bama gonna be bitching about 2 of those being on pick plays but … oh well … may have been picks, but they are almost never called, and certainly not when it’s the last play of the game.

  91. 91.

    Mnemosyne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Sorry. I’ll try to post a photo tomorrow — Ruckus half-promised to wear it to the LA March since I can’t go and he can’t do too much actual marching so he may need to cheer from the sidelines. A pussyhat will give him street cred, I told him.

    ETA: Damn! Accidentally revealed the secret trick that lets you use forbidden words!

  93. 93.

    Mnemosyne

    @cmorenc:

    It also depends on your local liquor laws. In California, the fewer clothes the strippers have, the less alcohol you can serve. I’ve been told that the all-nude places can only offer soft drinks, no alcohol at all. Not sure if there are similar restrictions for private parties held in public locations.

  94. 94.

    seaboogie

    @Sab: Maybe you were responding to me? No “reply” button hit on your end, just a general comment. If so, I was keeping the thread alive for you, so you didn’t feel bad about being last. Thread’s not dead, it’s the latest post of the evening, which sometimes goes to morning for the early risers.

  95. 95.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Cacti:

    “greatest college defense of all time”

    Impressive, but not even the best SEC defense of all time, which is the 1899 Sewanee Tigers, who finished the season unbeaten and were unscored upon until until Auburn managed to get in the end zone in the championship game.

  96. 96.

    Temporarily Max McGee (Until Death!)

    @efgoldman:

    Although they are going to have to play defense against an actual NFL offense, somewhere along the line.

    The front seven, when it’s healthy and is focused on doing it, can shut down a running game. If the Packers can do that early in the game against either the Cowboys or Seahawks, and if the offense clicks early, I like the team’s chances.

    I’ll admit, I’m scared of Atlanta. I was scared of the Saints the last time we won the Super Bowl, but Seattle took care of that problem. Hopefully Seattle can do that again.

  98. 98.

    Mike J

    Dave Weigel ‏@daveweigel 3 hours ago
    Schumer on call with progressives tonight says GOP is unwinding over ACA: “Not a single Democrat is negotiating.”

  100. 100.

    trollhattan

    @Temporarily Max McGee (Until Death!):
    Scratching my head over Saturday; regardless of beating Atlanta in the regular season it’s a very different team traveling there this time. My hopes revolve around a suddenly discovered running game vs. Atlanta’s cellarworthy defense. Falcons will score plenty; how many points do they surrender?

    And no frostbite!

  103. 103.

    Sab

    @Adam L Silverman: Due to the dementia he seems to be reasonably happy ( as reasonably happy as one can be with no rational thought processes.)For most of my life my siblings and I agreed that if Mom died first he would be dead within a month. With dementia he misses her, but mostly he forgets her if I don’t remind him. We spend most of our days riding around in the car with him looking out the windshield and the 15 year labrador retriever hanging out the back window. Intellectually they are on a par, although the lab can’t speak. My dad used to be scary smart. As a physician he was mostly into science, but when my sister came home with her new Chinese artist husband my dad could take him to the local art museum and point out that the Egyptian art was older than the han dynasty art that he thought was the center of the universe. Sad and weird to watch a polymath become smarter than my best dog.

  104. 104.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Major Major Major Major:

    You can get to paradise if you know the answers to a bunch of riddles in the land of the dead.

    He who would cross the Bridge of Death
    Must answer me these questions three,
    Ere the other side he see.

  106. 106.

    Temporarily Max McGee (Until Death!)

    @trollhattan:

    As Omnes pointed out, that’s not the game the Packers have got to play, but if there’s one thing that concerns me about a Packers-Falcons game it’s team speed.

  107. 107.

    Mike J

    @trollhattan: Looks like they just gave up on zone blocking, but it seems to have worked.

    Of all the assistant coaches to lose to another team, you have to wonder if losing Cable the o-line coach to SF would hurt the Hawks that much.

  109. 109.

    Ruckus

    @seaboogie:
    My ex hired a stripper for my birthday one year. Of course she did this at a rather upscale restaurant’s banquet room to which she’d invited all the people I worked with to attend. About 30 people. She’s a great girl with a wicked sense of humor, this was typical. The only thing I could say was that if she was going to hire a stripper she could have at least found one with at least medium sized boobs. She just answered right back that she didn’t meet the girl till she showed up.

  111. 111.

    Ruckus

    @Sab:
    Hope it goes better for you than for my dad. Watched him go through that for 20 yrs. Alzheimer’s. At about 12 yrs in he couldn’t form a lot of words any more so mostly grunts or cries. The last 5 were far worse. It’s horrible watching someone regress from adulthood to infancy and there’s nothing you can do about it.

  113. 113.

    John Revolta

    Which is why I remark,

    And my language is plain,

    That for ways that are dark,

    And for tricks that are vain,

    The heathen Chinee is peculiar

    Which the same I am free to maintain.

  114. 114.

    Mary G

    This brings up something I have been dithering about since my mom died in 2010. She bought adjoining spaces for my dad and herself in 1967 when he died for $100. Current price is $2100-3465, so good investment, Mom. She had no wishes, just “don’t waste any money.”

    I had her cremated and bought a nice wooden box for my ashes, and she’s on the bookshelf in the family room. I think that despite what she said, she’d like to be with my dad, so I called the cemetery and they told me they would bury her ashes for $500. That seemed like a lot of money for digging a small hole. I can take the money out of savings, but I hear her voice in my head saying that’s crazy and she’ll haunt me if I do it. I thought about going out there with a folding shovel in a big purse and doing it myself, but they haven’t irrigated with due to the drought. The local adobe will be as hard as a rock, even after the rain we are finally getting.

    So she stays on the shelf. Her BFF says to leave her there, but she’s a real miser that my mom thought should be spending more.

  115. 115.

    J R in WV

    @Mnemosyne:

    The same for my Dad’s BBQ funeral. He wanted a picnic rather than a funeral, so that’s what we did. We had a ton of unidentified family photos in ziplock bags, and asked everyone if they recognized any of the folks in the pictures.

    Then at dusk, we drove down from the park on the Gorge Rim to the Park at Sandstone Falls, which Mom loved, and we poured their ashes together into the river they loved. It was pretty good. Mom dies in 1997, and Dad had her ashes by his bed until he died in 2004. We had the party the summer of 2005.

    I wouldn’t mind having young dancers at my funeral. We plan to be buried au natural in plain wooden boxes on the farm. There’s an old graveyard on the east ridge, a level spot with deep dirt, I just need to build a road over to it before it’s too late.

  116. 116.

    mai naem mobile

    @Mary G: I wonder if youre allowed to just go there and start digging? I doubt it. I uuess you could try and do it after its rained and nobody’s around. I have a friend whose parents had paid for plots and pre planned funeral. He still had to pay out something like $2k for stuff they said wasn’t covered. IIRC, $800 was because state law had changed and they had to dig a little deeper for the burial. Just another rip off.

  119. 119.

    WereBear

    @Suzanne: Countries that have little Catholic influence are fucking rad.

    Yeah, they know how to put the anti-zest-for-life in Western Civilization.

    (It’s free verse, people. Sue me.)

  122. 122.

    Spanky

    When I die, I want Dick Cheney shot in the face and launched into the sun.

    Hey, it’s a last request. Might as well go big.

  124. 124.

    satby

    @Mary G: Mary, my friend had the same problem (but not in California. He went out one day and planted a lovely mum on his father’s grave, right over the urn of his mother’s ashes he put into the hole first.

  125. 125.

    Ghost of Joe Liebling's Dog

    I know this thread’s long gone, but how can no one have brought up Tom Paxton’s (now clearly prescient) Forest Lawn?

    I want to go simply when I go
    And they’ll give me a simple funeral there I know
    With a hundred strolling strings
    And topless dancers in golden wings!
    Oh take me when I’m gone to Forest Lawn

    Really, people. I had hoped for better from yinz.

  126. 126.

    Birthmarker

    @satby: I had an aunt whose ashes were buried at her husband’s grave. Seems like a smart way to save what, $8000? When we got there the small hole was already dug, I assume by a relative. If my spouse predeceased me, I would bury him conventionally, then instruct my children to cremate and do this with my ashes, then just update the tombstone with my death date.

    Lesson-it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.

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