Dear Mr. And/Or Mrs. Sarah D. Bunting: You Will Die Someday. Love, Your Junk Mail
There is so very much I do not understand about the mailing I received today from Pinelawn Memorial Park And Garden Mausoleums, starting with why I received it in the first place, and why it was addressed to “Mr & Mrs Sarah D Bunting.”
Then there’s the fact that it’s in Long Island. I have nothing against Long Island, but I’ve been there exactly four times in my life and therefore am not a likely candidate for interment there.
And then there’s the pamphlet itself, which resembles one of those dumpy picture-montage postcards from the fifties, or a series of shots from a Viewmaster. Clockwise from the top left, the photos include: a middle-aged couple “reading” an inscription from the Declaration of Independence, scored in gilt on a black marble wall of some sort; another couple admiring a Bellagiesque fountain between two Caesar’s Palatial columns (the woman is seated on a bench; the man is wearing what is probably the world’s only pair of stovepipe seersucker slacks); a bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson; the same couple from the first photo, but now the man is evidently giving the woman a tutorial on the right-angled bed of tulips they’re standing beside, and the woman is now revealed to be attired in not only the ugly white high heels from the first picture, but also an oversized silk camp shirt; a view between two columns of a fake-marble-y series of plinthy things, between which is nestled a very large…aloe?; and a third couple, looking up at yet another Revolutionary-War figure, this one clad in a patina of greenish age and plunked down in a bed of begonias.
I’m all for trying to make places of rest peaceful and pretty, but folding in a history field trip is perhaps a bit much.
It’s still not as egregious as the Pinelawn website’s homepage, though. It is kind of awesome that the mom in the picture has pegged her jeans with a Spanish cuff, same as I did in high school, and is wearing a rolled-bandanna headband and blucher-moc booties, ditto. But what is going on with the “Fun For The Whole Family!” vibe? Again, I’ve got nothing against spending time in cemeteries; I actually like it. I like to read the gravestones and wonder about people, and some of my ancestors are gathered under a really lovely tree in southern PA — it’s a nice place to spend an hour, and if I went down there and found someone reading and having a sandwich next to J.P.W. Bunting and the gang, I wouldn’t have any problem with that, but it’s not Dorney Park.
And I haven’t even told you the best part: the “Let’s Face It Now” booklet you can send away for. I swear to God, it’s like a Simpsons parody of itself, with the dove on the front, and the font reminiscent of health textbooks from the sixties that carried on about clipping menstrual pads to a belt and giving your hair a hundred strokes before bed every night.
Not in a million years would I leave instructions in my will for my loved ones to put me in a Pinelawn Garden Mausoleum, either. That one at the top left looks like a FEMA trailer with a giant decal on it.
Also in today’s batch of junk mail: a catalog consisting entirely of dried fruit. Because nothing says “I put a lot of thought into this gift” like two thousand wizened Bing cherries in a cheap tin with a snowflake on it. I’m serious — if, of course, the “thought” in question is that you secretly hate the recipient.
Tags: hilare sites
“if, of course, the “thought” in question is that you secretly hate the recipient.”
It’s a whole new category of gift giving!
You know we’ll probably break their website after we’ve all gone over there to snicker. hee.
Just you wait until you start getting the unexpected phone call trying to sell you a cemetary plot. I told them that I didn’t need one, because I wasn’t planning to die, ever, thanks very much.
Oh my- dried fruit? Sars, I hope they didn’t try to “lure” you in with pictures of wizened, dried tomatos!
Can I have that dried fruit catalogue-seriously, my mom and grandmother LOVE that stuff. Sad, but true.
Can I just say, thank you for mentioning the proper term for “that thing I used to do to my jeans”. I tried to explain it to someone under 30 and I think she thought I made it up.
Boy, my junk mail is never that fun. I just get to contend with AARP applications. Which I get monthly. Since I was 20.
That’s 6 years of destroying the credibility of old people, if you’re counting.
I haven’t been (or, for that matter) thought about Dorney Park since I was at camp in the Pocono’s in the late 80s, but as I recall, Dorney Park is no Dorney Park. Although their website assures me that had I gone in 1870, I could have enjoyed hours of “Bowling-on-the-Greens, Quoits, Russian Ten Pins, Archery, Glass Ball Shooting, Safety Swings, gardens and conservatories,” which does sound pretty awesome. Better than a tin of dried cherries, at least.
My junk mail isn’t nearly as interesting, but lately I’ve been flooded with pieces for car and life insurance. I haven’t bought a new car or …life (?)… in years so I have no idea why I’m receiving so many now.
I’ve also somehow gotten on the list for campaign pieces from conservative Republican candidates in my area, too. And I’m one of maybe four registered, very liberal Democrats living in my southern city, so I’m not sure what they’re aiming for, other than wasting a stamp and some trees.
But that website for the cemetery entertained me for almost an hour. That was great!
Mer, the AARP sent me a “Welcome!” letter and membership card when I was 19. The card enjoys a proud, proud place on my fridge.
“Spanish cuff”? Really? I am more than guilty of that particular 80s fashion (“fashion”? HA!) but until this very moment I had NO IDEA it had a name.
I was also guilty of the poufy bangs, spiral perm and giant hair-wings. God, are there official terms for those, too?
The picture that serves as the link to the mausoleum page is kinda weird as well. It looks kind of like a Greek warrior, which sort of makes sense, what with the pictures of the quasi-Greek columns and the Parthenon with no roof on either side of it, but the Greek warrior seems to be protecting Mary and baby Jesus. Huh?!? Did the decorator just throw various ancient cultures into a blender and hit puree for 5 seconds?
“I swear to God, it’s like a Simpsons parody of itself, with the dove on the front, and the font reminiscent of health textbooks from the sixties that carried on about clipping menstrual pads to a belt and giving your hair a hundred strokes before bed every night.”
Omgz, I am dying of laughter over here, I swear. I totally remember those pamphlets about proper use of menstrual pads… reminds me of reading “Are you there God, it’s me, Margaret.” /sigh
That’s so strange that you called it a Spanish cuff, as the term we used upstate was French cuff. Or French roll. Apparently unnecessary (and unflattering!) stylistic flourishes = european.
“if, of course, the “thought” in question is that you secretly hate the recipient”
Hee. I used to work in a gift shop and once got asked if we stocked birthday cards… for an elderly sister… that the customer never liked but felt obliged to get a card for anyway.
Maybe she should have just bought her some dried fruit.
1. Funniest blog post I’ve read all year!
2. Funniest funeral related website I’ve read – well, all my life actually. Two aces in one day, and I haven’t even had breakfast yet…. internet, I love thee.
I can beat the 19 year old AARP member.
They sent me one at 14.
Also, that’s the great thing about moving to England. I don’t get any junk mail anymore. That’s also kind of the sad thing. . .
I’ve never head the term Spanish cuff and I can’t quite tell from the picture if they are just cuffed, or ” tight rolled” as we called it. It could be either, as I remember spending…pretty much the entire day, fixing the rolled jean. The better to show off the bright colored ribbed socks underneath. Attractive.
A Spanish cuff (or French cuff; we also used that term) is a tight roll: fold the leg lengthwise onto itself so it’s pegged to the leg, then roll up.
I’m so happy I had a different ’80s than you all; my scary perm time was teh ’70s. My ’80s were full of Betsy Johnson, and vintage dresses, and…well, it looked a lot like a “Human League” video, actually. But I confess that I love the photos I have of myself from that time. I looked great, man.
But the dried fruit catalog? I think I got the same one yesterday. Meduri, right?
Oh, man, I did that to my jeans at one point. Good times!
I actually LOVE dried fruit from the Manhattan Fruitier catalog. We got it as a holiday gift one year at work and I have coveted it ever since.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I don’t think the mom’s jeans are French/Spanish/Belgian cuffed. It looks like they’re just tapered-leg, and turned up once at the bottom. I have to do that with mine, because I have such short legs, but she doesn’t seem to have the stumpy limbs like I do, so I don’t know what her excuse is. Maybe she just likes all the bits of grass and dirt that accumulate in the cuff.
We called it “pin-roll” or maybe it was “pen-roll” I’m not sure. LOL Anyway, I have no idea WHY we called it that, but that’s the name it had. The girl who works under me is only in her early 20’s and she’s never heard of Hypercolor. Remember those? God I’m old.
@Laura: What about a tailor? Or, honestly, I do my jeans hems myself (I am in the netherworld in which regulars are too short and talls are too long). You don’t have to topstitch them, or anything, just do a quick tacked hem.
If I ever hear “Are you there, Margaret? It’s me, GOD!” I’ll fall over dead. Maybe I should get that booklet, huh?
Ah tightrolled jeans. I was just doing that the other day so as to teach my friend who never knew how. Sad for her. Awesome for me.
I haven’t received any mail from the cemetery yet, but I do see this place every day. They have a museum store.
http://www.forestlawn.com/About-Forest-Lawn/Glendale-Forest-Lawn-Museum-Store.asp
Yeah, I don’t know what to say about it either.
At least you have a bunch of famous people in Forest Lawn, which makes it marginally more explicable.
So much hate for these sanitized, mass-marketed, overpriced cemeteries with no character, no individuality, and no taste. They rip off their customers, and then expect to make you feel like you’re taking good care of your dead loved ones because the grass gets trimmed regularly. The whole death-care industry is incredibly sleazy; I don’t know if anyone remembers this anymore outside of Texas, but back when G. W. Bush was governor, there was a scandal about the wrongful firing of a funeral home regulator who refused to stop investigating the giant conglomerate Service Corporation International, the CEO of which was a family friend of GWB. Good times.
In the event of my death, hubby has a list of acceptable cemeteries where he is allowed to stash me or my ashes. None of them are easy to get to, and all of them feature waist-high weeds in parts of the cemetery from time to time. But at least they’re proper cemeteries that acknowledge that the inhabitants are, y’know, dead.
@Scarlett: I’m not worried about my jeans, really. I am perfectly fine with the grass clipping-gathering, and actually dislike with a vengeance the way jeans look when you turn them up to hem them and lose that original seam at the bottom.
I was just saying that the Dorney Park Cemetary woman’s aren’t really pegged. Though that revelation is kind of a buzzkill, so I’m glad it’s not so obvious.
I’ve long said that the worst thing about funerals (other than the, you know, death and grief) is the Time-Life Funeral Collection that comes with Pearlized Dove Embosser For All Your Printing Needs and the Southern Baptist Greatest Hits Collection CD starring The Gray-Haired Church Secretary on Her Lunch Break on the second-hand garage sale organ from 1972. If my family doesn’t have some at least listenable (if not enjoyable) music playing at my funeral while everyone is getting their hankies, shutting up their kids, and sitting down, I’m haunting their asses.
My lastest barrage of junk-mail has been about the fact that my car warrenty is about to expire. Followed up with a barrage of nearly threatening phone calls (almost like they care going to come over and beat on my car with baseball bats if I do not renew this warrenty). All of this would be considerably more alarming if I had a car–or a driver’s liecence.
Oh Lordy…my twin sister and I received one of those “What happens when you become a woman” type booklet from dear old mom…swear it had that same font.
And the 80’s – just had the big hair and a closet full of teal and magenta. The HORROR!
Growing up here in Columbus we called referred to that horrible jeans maneuver as pegging them. My fiance grew up in Dayton, and calls it a French cuff. Either way, it’s bad news.
But yeah, I think those are actually horrible stonewashed tapered-leg jeans. My mom has a pair that she still wears to this day, and they somehow are high water-y on her five-foot frame. It is no good.
There’s a local funeral home that has TV commercials that have that same “Fun for the Whole Family!” vibe you mentioned, Sars. They show a memorial service held at some baseball field, which I guess is nice, but the people definitely seem to be too happy when their husband/father/grandfather just died. I think this is the place. Creepy.
Re: Elizabeth’s link to a funeral home–Lakeview?
Oh. My. God.
They have an online page for scheduled services.
For the recently deceased.
I can see it now.
“Mommy, I’m bored!”
“Well, let’s go see what’s going on at Lakeview today! Look! Mr. So-and-So’s service is at 2–maybe we can get souvenirs this time, too! Remember the remembrance sachets you got at Mrs. Such-and-Such’s service?”
[see the paragraph near the bottom of the personalization page ]
Wow. The things I think of…but not without provocation…
Did anyone else do this strange thing in the 80s where they twisted the legs of their sweatpants? We’re talking old school sweat pants with the elastic at the ankle to give you that horrible I Dream of Jeannie look. We would twist each pant leg and then pull them up to about mid- calf. I don’t know what this was about or why on earth we did it. And I swear I don’t know anyone else who did this. I found a picture of myself recently with that foolishness going on and had to shake my head in shame. (We also did the pegging/French cuff on our jeans.)
Bb! We used to do that to our sweatpants too! In fact, to this day, when I put them on I instinctively start to twist…and then I remember that it’s not 198anything. (In my own defense, I only wear sweats these days when I’m seriously ill so I think that lets me off the hook…)
WHERE did we ever get these ideas?!
amy, we always called the spiky bang look “Statue of Liberty” bangs, but that may have just been a bunch of lonely girls in Burns, Oregon in the early ’80s, with our feather and ribbon barrettes (remember those?) and fierce envy of the one girl in junior high who had a green neon dress (remember NEON? What were we thinking? Was there a better color palette for bringing out that “dying of consumption” shade in our complexions?).
And Stormy, I too have received the threatening phone call/mailings about the about-to-run-out warranty on my nonexistent car. I too have never had a driver’s license and my husband sold his car five years ago and hasn’t driven since. I usually file them next to the offers for aluminum siding (on my apartment.)
Well, now I know what I want for my funeral–neon dress, Statue of Liberty Bangs, and an aluminum sided casket. Klassy.
Sarah, what I love (besides the jeans reference – they were “pegged” in WV, too, for you linguists out there) is that they’re going to think this was a hugely successful mailing! They’re going to look at their web stats in relation to this large mailing they did, and think, “Wow! That last mailing really created some web traffic!” And they’re going to think it worked. And keep sending it.
The other thing I wonder about junk mail is exactly what list my name showed up on that somehow resulted in a cross-reference to burial plots or dried fruit or reproduction Victorian hardware.
And finally, my husband’s grandfather is buried in a cemetery with a section for children. Lamb sculptures, balloons, and a big sign that reads, “Baby Land.” Ew.
@Katherine:
I cannot recommend highly enough the book “The American Way of Death Revisited” by Jessica Mitford. It’s an updated version of the book that Mitford first wrote in 1963 as an expose of the giant rip-off that is the American funeral industry, their bullying tactics that prey on guilt-ridden loved ones of the deceased, and for good measure, a morbidly fascinating if gut-turning look at *exactly* what goes on in the modern embalming process. IIRC, the updated version deals a lot more with how the funeral industry switched from trying to stamp out the practice of cremation, to figuring out how to embrace it (like unto a boa constrictor) and wring a profit out of it, too. (I.e. if you see the way the tide is turning and you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.)
I have to admit that before I read the book, I had a jaundiced view of the whole funerary process anyway, ever since going through the death of my father. He’d left specific instructions — despite being a Catholic (they frown on this), he wanted to be cremated; and having been a Marine, he was entitled to a Naval burial at sea, and he wanted that. Therefore, upon his death, my mother arranged for that, and then called our local parish to arrange for a memorial mass that folks could attend, as there’d be no funeral. The parish (this was in the Philly area, and there is some truth to the observation that Philly is one of the most conservative Catholic dioceses in the country) asked where he was being buried, and upon being told he was being given a Naval burial, replied that oh no, they couldn’t offer a mass for him, as he wasn’t being buried in consecrated ground. Rightie-ho, said my mother, calling up the funeral home and immediately requesting that they split the ashes into two boxes. One box therefore went to the Navy, and the other box was buried in the family plot in Holy Cross.
Now, I realize that story is more about becoming disillusioned with the Catholic church than with the funeral industry. I guess it was just that it opened my eyes to the absurdity of the whole thing. But I was already skeptical about the idea of “this is the ‘normal’ way that everyone has to do it” idea of funerals, and then I read this book, and… man, I will do everything in my power to ensure that when I kick off, the funeral industry will not get one red cent from my estate.
So if you’ve got a healthy morbid curiosity, and would like what I would characterize as a fairly entertaining read, really, check out the book.
I Spanish pin a certain pair of slacks, but mostly so they don’t bunch up in my tramp boots.
The Pinelawn website is horrible, just from a web design point of view. No text, just image after image! I’d love to see the confusion of those on text-only browsers, though.