Posted on 04/27/2008 7:07:48 PM PDT by AnAmericanMother
Okay, guys, I wasn't sure what to do with this or where to post it, but I just had to share it.
"KICK-OFF"!?!?!?!? What WERE these folks thinking?
And I'm afraid to ask what you DO at a funeral home's Family Fun Day?
The name of the place alone is a little scary.
I was thinking of the “Dance of Death” motif in the Middle Ages—the dancing skeletons—particularly following the bubonic plague in 1348. People went to the cemeteries to party — one big psychological defense against the raging diseases.
Maybe that’s what the funeral home here had in mind.
“Remember, kiddies: You can’t have ‘manslaughter’ without the LAUGHTER!”
What movie is the pic from?
If you've ever played Grim Fandango...
There's a place in Dover NH ... Dover Paint and Varnish. They sell paint, hardware, have gas pumps and auto repair, a couple of tow trucks, sell local crafts and used cars. You can also have your deer butchered there [at least at one time you could] and in season, pick up a holiday ham or turkey. ;)
To
garnering much rude commentary from the citizens.
Along those lines, years ago we had a mayor who was rather notorious for speaking his mind without much fear or favor, and who was famous for the wisecrack,
"Throw a tent over the county, and you'd have the biggest whorehouse in the State..."
And a typical citizen comment on that was
"Never work, they's too much competition from the amateurs who're givin' it away for an honest girl to make a livin'..."
That party is to die for!
I went to visit my sister some years back in Thibodeaux Louisiana and we decided to take a walk, trying to walk off baby weight (she had delivered about 2 months earlier). Anyway as we turned down one road, we both cracked up laughing. There at the end of the road was an old cemetary. On the fence, I kid you not, was a sign that read “Dead End”.
The manager of the funeral home was named Angelo Mania, like "Angel O' Mania!", as if they were running a special.
Diego Rivera's homage to Posada:
(detail from his Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Park)
Someone with more learning in the area than I will have to tell us if this "Totentanz" motif is present in black funeral traditions. I suppose there's an echo of it in the New Orleans funeral band tradition, with the funeral music played on the way to the cemetery, and the jazz played on the way home.
I've never noticed this sort of jolly embrace of the macabre in 50+ years in the South, and a reasonable number of black funerals, including my husband attending one at this very funeral home. But maybe I just wasn't paying attention.
This may be a cross-cultural miscommunication -- or it may just be an advertising miscalculation in the front office.
Reminds me of the scene in I, Claudius where the professional working girl loses a 'competition' with the notorious Messalina, and stalks off in a huff with the comment that Messalina's hobby is her work, and HER hobby is gardening!
Ouch! Please let us be refined. My dad speaks Parmese Italian, not sure if that’s current there or only in Naples.
I told that to my husband, a Scoutmaster (and former competitor in the adult class in the Cub Pack’s Pinewood Derby) and he woke up a couple of times in the night to have his laugh out all over again.
Sorry, I was just trying to see it from Leno’s point of view. Didn’t mean any offense. Thanks for being so diplomatic.
The comments about the Pinewood Derby hit home—I was a leader in a church group of boys about thirty years ago and we tried this for the first time.
We had visions of helping the boys paint and put wheels on their derby cars. When we opened our order, we were shocked to find a box full of wooden blocks.
We didn’t know you had to carve the shape of the cars yourself.
My husband was the official Wooden Block Carver for the Cub Scout pack.
He has a nice bandsaw in the garage. So the kids all started on an even basis, we had a Car Design session at our house -- The kids drew their design in pencil on the top and sides of the block, and hubby took each block to the bandsaw and cut out the design. All sanding, painting, etc. was done by the kids. The Cubs did quite well visualizing the 3-D effect on the block (a bunch of budding sculptors? maybe.) I really liked the one that put a little Happy Meal toy in the driver's seat - cute!
We had a separate event for the parents, so that the kids could do their own cars without being interfered with by well meaning parents.
My husband's car was a hoot - he painted it dead black, and I inscribed in gold paint the RingWraiths' slogan from Lord of the Rings around the sides. On top it said "Nazgul - Nine Horsepower".
He won with it, too (but that was due to the super-duper chemist's mixture on the axles, not the decor.)
Yep. There was a Jolly Funeral Home in Sturgis, SD. Don’t think it’s there any longer
Really ironic name.
LOL!!! That movie never gets old!
(I'm still trying to recover from laughing over *Gool's* Mortuary!!)
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