Late To Her Own Funeral

I'm not much for dwelling on the deaths of celebrities from the days of yore. But I just learned something about Elizabeth Taylor's funeral that I found interesting and highly amusing. It's also something that I am going to implement into my own funeral service one day. (And that day will probably not ever come quick enough for me. I've thought about titling my autobiography "Sprinting Toward The Grave - The Story of Me". But, I'm sure that I'm going to live a very long life, filled to the brim with frustration and annoyance at every day occurrences, politics and bureaucracy. That would be just my luck.)

From the folks over at AOL News, we learn that Elizabeth Taylor was buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery yesterday and things did not start on time. No. According to her publicist (Elizabeth Taylor still needed a publicist?), Sally Morrison, "The service began 15 minutes after its announced start time in observance of Taylor's parting wish that her funeral start late." That's right. Taylor had left instructions asking for the tardy start and had requested that someone announce, "She even wanted to be late for her own funeral," Morrison said. I find that to be just awesome. That's what I want to do. Make people laugh one last time after I'm dead. That's a true entertainer right there. Nice job.

Whatchoo Talkin' 'Bout, Shannon? Part Deux

I was right. Shannon Price is the gift that keeps on giving. Man. Now, I really didn't mean to drag this out for three days. Why TMZ can't just put all of their footage of this whack job in one place, I don't know. But if I am to assume that this is the last of it (it being the odd, odd interview that she gave to TMZ), then TMZ saved the best for last because this stuff is pretty good.

It has become evident to me that this girl was far from intelligent. I'd call her dumb, but that just doesn't seem very nice. She appears to be under the impression that she is a hot item right about now in the aftermath of the demise of her pocket-sized husband. Yeah, she's not receiving all of this attention because we're so fascinated with her eloquence of speech. She's receiving the minimal amount of attention that she is because she has said some weird things in this interview. And none of them are what you would expect from the supposedly now grieving Widow Coleman.

Now, according to TMZ, this interview was shot the day after Gary's death. In the one part, she spends an awful lot of time discussing finances, mainly how she has none. Stick with me here and see if you can spot the irony in these segments.

"We went to Vegas a lot, 'cause I love Vegas. I love getting pampered there. I love shopping there. Obviously, I would buy the high end stuff. But...we always had to stay in Caesar's Palace, because that's where I would shop. But we always got the Bellagio fountain view room. Because we were obsessed with watching that fountain. We thought it was really cool."

Obviously she would be the high end stuff? Because Gary Coleman was such a big celebrity, he just had cash oozing everywhere, is that it? Tell me again why it is that I would have cared where you stayed? Or shopped, for that matter. Good for you? I don't rightly know what to say to all of that. But I DO know what to say after her next little bit.

"Um, you know, our life together has not always been the best...financially. And right now...I'm struggling. You know, to, to, to figure out what I'm going to do for funeral costs. And I don't know how I'm going to survive. You know. It's been a really rough while because Gary hasn't had much work because of his health."

Soooo...let me get this straight. You bought all of the high end stuff in Vegas where, according to your own admission, went "a lot". And less than a minute after bragging about all of your high falutin' ways (I have no idea how to spell falutin', so I guessed), you're telling me you don't know what you're going to do about funeral costs? I find that hard to believe, ma'am. Very hard to believe indeed. Tell me some more tales.

OK, then. She goes on to whine that "Our finances were great when I met him. I mean, we had, we had...he had fantastic...he had a lot of work and was doing a lot of projects and stuff, but, um...now...I basically have nothing. I mean, you know, I mean he was never able to have life insurance because of his renal failure. Because of his kidney disease. He was never able to get that. (long pause) Which is SAD because, you know, that could have helped with funeral costs and everything else. Soooo, I'm just wishing and hoping that people will pour out to us and really show their compassion like they have...have been sending the letters and the emails."

Again, let me get this straight. You brag about spending money in Vegas all of the time. Next thing out of your mouth is how you hope that people will (and I'm using your words here, cupcake) "pour out to us" just like they've been doing when they send "the letters and the emails". Are you dry shaving me? You piss away all of the money and now you want people to not just help you out, you want them to pour money to you? I don't think that's such a good idea. Tell me something, didn't it cross your teeny, tiny little brain that if Gary couldn't get life insurance, then there should be some sort of ::: gasp! ::: saving going on over there? You know...saving? It's where you don't spend!!

And it's probably not a real good idea to get me started on funeral costs. For those of you kind enough to have followed this blog after the predictable demise of Corey Haim, I pointed out that you don't need a lot of money to bury someone. A little cremation and an urn can be had for under $1,000. And you can get a swell cremains plot (still oogs me out that they call them that) for under $1,000 as well. Don't be spouting off that you need thousands and thousand of dollars for burial costs. That's just a bunch of crap right there.

In another part of the interview, she begins to wax poetic about...something. It's very odd. You know how you can put your iPod on "Shuffle" and it just plays songs at random? I think that she put her vocabulary on "Shuffle" because she was just spouting word salad there for about a minute and a half. It begins...like this...

"I mean (puts her head down like she dropped a quarter or something), I mean, I feel bad you know, for Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan because they're so under the microscope. But, you know, I mean at the same time, I don't have any remorse for Lindsay. She parties all the time, you know? She's the one who makes herself look bad. You know, I...I...I used to really respect her because she had red hair and she was so cute in "Parent Trap" and stuff like that." Um...what now?

She feels bad. No, wait! She doesn't feel bad. But she...wait. She used to respect Lindsay Lohan because she had red hair? Did I hear that correctly? You base your respect of people based on hair color? Man, you must idolize Carrot Top. Seriously, what in the hell was she talking about. What do Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears have to do with her husband falling down and cracking open his dome?

"But like I said, I think that Gary would have been a good role model. Because he's not into drugs. He wasn't seeny like that. (Yes, I know I typed "seeny". I listened to it four times. She said "seeny". Not "seedy". Seeny. Clearly, her linguistic abilities did not play much of a part in why he married her.) He would go out to restaurants and, you know, do his thing. (He would go to restaurants and do his thing? What sort of a thing was that? Eat? That's my thing when I go to restaurants. I eat.) You know, and live his life. But he didn't want to be a part of...he didn't want to be friends with celebrities. He told me that. He was like I don't want to be in Hollywood."

She doesn't specify just who Gary could have been a good role model to. I certainly can't picture him being a good role model for Lindsay, only because I really can't see the two of them hanging out long enough for him to be a role model. And how many times was it that he was arrested for assault? At least twice, right? Hmmm...so she can't mean that his temperament was good role model material. He was a mall cop for a while. Would he have been a good role model for shorter statured mall cops? Hard to say. Hard. To. Say.

Let's wrap this up here. "And...I really respect the guy that he didn't want to be friends with celebrities. (long pause) Because a lot of them have issues. I mean, they have everything in the world, but a lot of them want to commit suicide. (long pause) You know, they just have a negative outlook on a lot of things."

Wow. She has the ability to look deep within the soul of celebrities and tell the world what's really going on in there. How does she know this, exactly? She seems to have the facts skewed just a little bit. See, Gary would have liked to have stayed in Hollywood. But Hollywood sort of chewed him up and spit him out a long time ago. There's a reason the little dude was so angry all of the time and that had a lot to do with it.

If you are thinking about sending money to this nutjob or if you know someone who is thinking about sending money to this nutjob, do I have a deal for you! Since you clearly have more money than you know what to do with, I'd like to propose that you send the exact same amount to me. It'll go to good use. I promise! I mean, I'm sure that I would enjoy getting pampered in Vegas and buying all sort of high end stuff! Seriously. I don't have a really short husband with kidney failure who died after he fell and I couldn't be troubled by the mess of the blood to go downstairs and help him or anything, but I swear that I'm worth at least every penny that anyone would consider sending to Shannon Price.

Funding Burials Through eBay

In case you haven't heard, Corey Haim is dead. In case you were like me and already thought that he was dead, he wasn't. He is now, but it's new dead, not old dead. But dead is dead. And drug addicts are drug addicts. A lot of them end up in that dead is dead category. What are you going to do? (Uhhh....stop doing drugs? Now there's an idea!)

Apparently, Mr. Haim's situation was that, because he was a difficult drug addict to work with (hard to do good work when you're not there, so I've heard) he didn't have a lot of offers pouring in. And without offers, you're without work. And when you're without work, you're without money. Now, when you die, as crazy as this may seem, folks want you to pay money to them in order to bury you. That's hard to do when you don't have any money. And it's really hard to do when you're dead. That's why the whole 'paying for your funeral thing' is left up to those who didn't ruin their lives by ingesting so many drugs that it eventually and likely played a part in their demise in a downtown LA apartment building when they were 38. (By the way, a bit of useless trivia for you: Singer and woman kidnapper Rick James died in the same apartment building whenever it was that he met his predictable demise.)

Turns out, however, that Corey Haim's mother didn't have any money either. She has apparently been battling cancer. Cancer makes it hard to work. I don't have a problem with that. (Nice job, Corey. Couldn't curtail your drug usage to the point where you wouldn't have croaked and where your cancer riddled mother wouldn't have had to deal with the death of her son. Man, Corey Feldman was right. You were just a stand up guy.) What I have a problem with is how she was raising money for her son's funeral. I mean, maybe there's something that is not weird about selling your son's belongings on eBay for funeral change, but I don't know what that something would be.

That's right. She was selling his belongings on eBay. According to the folks over there at Associated Content (they're "The people's media company" doncha know?) "...most of Haim's personal belongings are being sold on eBay in order to raise money for the funeral." Now, I don't know if I was just late to the party or what, but I while there were plenty of Corey Haim items for sale on eBay (mostly autographed photos and the odd, odd memorial T-shirts that you can whip up 45 seconds after someone dies), I didn't find a lot that were his personal belongings. I did find this lovely dress shirt which sold for $99. Behold!

And I also found this Corey Haim toothbrush with a certificate of authenticity! So that's something! Behold!

Huh. The toothbrush, to my surprise, actually has one bid in on it and the bid is for $250! Who buys Corey Haim's toothbrush for $250? What are you going to do with that? See, I get buying memorabilia, but I prefer it to be relevant to the person that owned it. I mean, I would totally buy Elvis Presley's empty prescription drug bottles. Now THAT is memorabilia. I wouldn't go as seedy as to buy Bill Clinton's cigar box or anything like that. But I'd buy Whitney Houston's crack pipe. That'd be somethin'! David Carradine's belt? Sold! What can I say? I like a good conversation piece.

Side note: The personal items like the shirt are being auctioned off by a one Scott Schwartz. Apparently, the family gave the items to him to put on eBay, so it's not like he's doing it just to make money off of Corey Haim's boxer shorts or anything like that. He was a friend of Corey's. And if the name doesn't ring a bell, perhaps when I mention that he was the kid in the movie A Christmas Story who got his tongue frozen stuck on the flagpole. There's a claim to fame for you! You're known as "Tongue on the Flagpole" guy AND the merchant auctioning off Corey's Haim's dress pants on eBay. That's a job title if I've ever heard of one.

I have two points with all of this. The first point goes back to the absolutely reprehensible Corey Feldman. Dude, if you knew that your friend died broke, what say you kick in a bit and make it so that it doesn't go public, all right? If he was "your friend" and you want him to be remembered as "a legend" (he wasn't a legend, by the way, so that was never going to happen, I was just saying), what say you see if you can scrounge up some cash for his funeral and his burial? What say you ask the addle brained Larry King (whose show you're always on when one of your past cohorts kicks it)? Why don't you ask him to pony up some cash for this guy's funeral? Why don't you do anything besides shoving your face behind every microphone out there and saying how much you loved him, while at the same time, someone is auctioning his tube socks on eBay? What is wrong with you?

And my second point is more of just a point of contention. I understand that caskets and burials are expensive. I know that very well. But you know, there is an option. There is cremation. And it's a heck of a lot cheaper. Don't get me wrong. If you are planning on just burying someone in a casket and then you find out you're going to be going to cremation route, it's a bit tough to swallow at first. I don't know why. They're just as dead either way. What I'm saying is that it's not like there aren't any options if you don't have the cash for a casket. When my Dad died, I had no idea he wanted to be cremated. And learning of that desire was not exactly the easiest thing I've ever had to swallow. But the cremation by the Neptune Society was about a thousand dollars (and I'm in the heart of ridiculously expensive Silicon Valley, so don't be giving me any crap about my location or anything like that). We put him in a beautiful cherry wood container with a coastal scene engraved on it along with his name and everything for another three hundred bucks. (There was no way I was going with the stock, flimsy, fake brass container for $35!) We bought a plot for cremains (yes, that's what they're called and it oogs me out, too) in an awesome little cemetery in a tiny coastal town with massive pine trees everywhere and a view of a small ravine for $750. AND you're allowed to stack FOUR cremains in that thing! So technically, his portion of the plot was only $187.50! My Dad loved a good deal. I'm sure he was happy with it all.

So there are options. For a little over two grand, my Dad got the best burial I could have wanted for him. But beforehand, I wouldn't have known that I would have wanted that. In the end, it's all the same. He's exactly where he would have been no matter how we did it. And now he's where he is at a fraction of the cost of a full on casketed burial. I guess I'm just a little irritated that Corey Haim being penniless at death means that there needs to be thousands and thousands (the family is estimating twenty grand, by the way) of dollars raised for his burial. That's not what needs to happen. People need to stop acting like it does.

I just got done looking at a bunch of photos on Corey Haim's website. (Yes! He had a website!) Most of them were of him looking gaunt and strung out. You know, like a drug addict. But there were a bunch of them from when he was younger and before the drugs either had grabbed hold of him or before they had taken their toll. And I realize that the guy in those photos is the son that his mother lost. I'm sarcastic, I'm not heartless. My sincere condolences go out to his mom. Outliving your child does not sound like anything that anyone should have to go through. If you have a problem with whatever substance you choose, do everyone a favor and get off your drugs, try thinking about someone other than yourself for a change and edge yourself closer to making sure that you don't put your parents in the position that Corey Haim put his parents.