Welcome to Hella Immaculate, I love you.
I’m Dave, a comedian and budding abolitionist. I love making light of heavy shit and taking frivolous things too seriously. Hella Immaculate is my existential, spiritual, political, creative-process-and-culture-obsessed alt-weekly.
You can support my work by sharing it or paying me to keep making it! Do that through Patreon, and you’ll get hella goodies and other chances to connect.
The audio above is a bonus clip from my podcast this week with Cameron Gillette.
I asked him about funeral planning, and he said “not open casket” because open casket funerals disturb him. A few years ago, he and I attended the same open casket funeral, and I concur with Cam.
My take on funerals is that they’re for the living. Normally, I’d be like, “Who cares? It’s the loved ones’ body now. Let them do whatever they want.” But seeing your friend embalmed leaves a lasting impression. I’m not suggesting it’s enough to overshadow an entire bank of memories, but the not-right sense from the sight is an unwelcome deposit.
Part of my support for closed casket funerals is because the image at an open casket is not a mutual experience you’re having with the person who died. It’s an experience with the embalmer and the corpse, not your friend. It doesn’t fit.
Of course, there’s a morbid and experience-collecting desire to look. And I don’t think looking will ruin your relationship postmortem, but it can loom large. The funeral Cameron and I attended, that friend has been dead almost as long as I knew him, and the unexplained blue chalk marks (is there measuring in embalming?) on his face and hands linger.
Choosing a closed casket is less about saving the deceased from disrespect and more about saving their loved ones from distraction. If we stipulate our own closed caskets, our friends and families won’t even have to know the discomfort and heartache we save them.
THIS IS MY PODCAST, THIS IS YOUR AFTERLIFE
My guest: Cameron Gillette, another one of my favorite comedians you may not know. He just released his first special, “The Best Set I Will Ever Have.” He’s funny like this:
And like this:
We covered: Screaming “thank you” at a waterfall, learning firsthand how people talk about you when you’re not around, Christian bodybuilding performance teams.
THEY’RE JUST, LIKE, MY SUGGESTIONS, MAN
Watch This Is Pop on Netflix, a docu-series on super-specific topics in pop music history. The Boyz II Men, Auto-Tune, and Swedish influence episodes are especially good. So many gems about the creative process, finding your place in your craft and the world, and how to weather ups and downs as an artist. I would watch shows like this 24/7 if I could (and never create anything).
I’ve held off listing fundraisers here the past couple weeks because I want them to be meaningful, and if I’m being honest, I’ve got some fund-needing-org-finding fatigue. Let me know what you’ve been supporting, financially or otherwise!
Got a response to something here? Reply or comment, and I’ll hit you back.
MAY I PLAY YOU A SOUND?
Superwolf is one of my favorite albums. It came out in 2005, and one night shortly thereafter I blacked out in my dorm room ripping the borrowed CD to my hard drive and woke up to paramedics speaking loudly and my vomit all over my laptop, so even if I hated the album I could never forget this collaboration between Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Matt Sweeney (of Chavez, one of the most underrated bands ever).
Superwolves is the 16-year follow-up, and it’s a worthy fucking successor. I find Superwolf’s music hard to describe (I’m just gonna call them Superwolf). “There’s a guitar and a voice and opaque lyrics”? “Mellow and menacing”?
Rather than tug the boat any longer, I’ll turn it over to BigBewtieHoles, the YouTube commenter who summed up Superwolf best:
“Make Worry for Me” is the opener and early-favorite jam from Superwolves, though “Watch What Happens” is also a beautiful, seemingly straightforward and earnest creative/life exhortation.
I’ve got melody on my mind,
DM
The case for a closed casket