Pink Caskets & Cruel Cribs | 4M #99
Welcome to the ninety-ninth edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #99, where we’ll serve up bite-sized, easily-digestible nuggets of the deathcare news you need to crush conversations in the week ahead. Bon appetit!
This newsletter is powered by MemoryShare, a funeral livestreaming platform that you can set up in 30 seconds or less.
Poor thing
When the movie Poor Things (sometimes translated as Poor Creatures) hits theaters in 2024, you’ll want to check out the sewing skills of actors Willem Dafoe and Ramy Youssef, who went to “mortician’s school” to prepare for their roles. The movie, which Dafoe calls “not a normal film,” is the story of “a woman reanimated with a mis-matched brain and body, who experiences an accelerated adolescence as she adjusts to her new physical form.” Apparently, the actors were required to learn “19th-century anatomical slicing-and-dicing.” Says Youssef: “Willem got really focused on it. I’d be joking around, stitching something up – I kind of had a knack for it because my hands are a little bit smaller, I was able to get in there – and Willem would be like, ‘What the fuck?’ But once he got it, he really got it better than me.”
Art for aliens
A Brazilian-American artist has partnered with Celestis — the company that has launched cremains into space since 1997 — to deploy his holographic art into an infinite orbit around the sun, 186 million miles from Earth. Artist Eduardo Kac’s “near-microscopic square of glass,” which displays the Portuguese word Ágora in cyber-green letters when a laser shines on it at an angle, will join the cremains of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry and the DNA of George Washington, John F. Kennedy, and Dwight D. Eisenhower on the flight, which is scheduled for launch in late 2023.
The Barbie bandwagon
A funeral home in El Salvador is taking advantage of the renewed interest in all things Barbie (inspired, of course, by the new Barbie movie) by offering pink metal caskets with inlays showcasing the 64-year-old plastic icon. Before the movie even hit theaters, the owners of Alpha and Omega Funeral Home in the city of Ahuachapán launched a promotional campaign around the caskets, and has already sold 10 of them to both at-need and preneed clients.
Not a good week
It wasn’t a great week for a few deathcare professionals who found themselves in hot water, although for different reasons:
- Two Kentucky funeral directors are facing fines and suspended licenses for their involvement in administrative violations including falsification of documents.
- Two Florida funeral directors have been named in a lawsuit by the local medical examiner who alleges “libel and/or defamation, tortious interference and civil conspiracy” after the directors wrote letters with concerns about the examiner’s handling of autopsies and bodies.
Dangerous hacks
Moms can once again thank Lauren the Mortician (@lovee.miss.lauren) for warning them about yet another deadly TikTok “hack.” One of Lauren’s latest posts describes the dangers of crib nests, or crib tents, which have gained popularity on the channel as a neat way to keep toddlers from escaping their cradles. In the stitched video, Lauren describes three different ways children have died or have been injured because of the crib contraptions, which are not regulated.
Umm … Thanks?
The American deathcare community has received a rather odd compliment from our friends across the pond, and we’re not sure how to take it. A headline in last week’s Irish Independent newspaper reads “One thing Americans do really well is death.” Although the full article exists behind a paywall, we can gather from the visible portions that two friends are converting a former Ireland race track into a “US-style” memorial garden, complete with a coffee shop, tree-lined pathways for joggers and cyclists, and a children’s playground. Apparently, our multi-use cemeteries are what they refer to as “the American way of ‘doing death.’”
Say goodbye to Facebook
If you’re using Facebook for live streaming, does this sound familiar?
- Copyrighted music is silenced (even with proper certifications!)
- Advertisements out of your control pop up during the livestream
- It’s difficult for families to access because it requires a Facebook account
This is why Carlton Stevens Jr., Operations Manager and Mortician at Stevens Funeral Home in North Carolina, said goodbye to Facebook and switched to MemoryShare—a live streaming platform built specifically for funeral professionals.
“Now, families don’t have to worry about Facebook accounts. It works, and it’s easy to use,” Carlton said. “It’s the best, I’m telling you. It’s liquid gold.”
After he started offering live streaming during the pandemic, Carlton saw Stevens Funeral Home call volume bump from 20 calls to 41 calls.
Today, Stevens Funeral Home live streams a service every other day.
And with MemoryShare, all they have to do is push a button.
“It’s a no brainer,” Carlton said.
Read how Carlton is using livestreaming to grow his business in our latest case study—click here to read it!
