Welcome to the hundred-and-sixty-first edition of Morticians’ Monday Morning Mashup, 4M #161, 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!
Creepy cocktails
It’s that time of year again … time for Bacardi Rum to release their limited edition Halloween bottles! Above you’ll see a few of the most recent versions, including the 2024 mummy version. Although the Halloween bottle isn’t necessary to mix up a classic Zombie cocktail (recipe follows), it sure might help to set the mood.
To make a Zombie: 1 oz BACARDÍ Superior, 3/4 oz BACARDÍ Black, 1/2 oz Triple Sec, 1 oz Orange Juice, 1/2 oz Lime Juice, 1/2 oz Simple Syrup, 1/4 oz Grenadine
Pour all ingredients into a shaker full of ice, and give it a good shake. Strain and pour into a highball glass filled with crushed ice. Give it a stir with a bar spoon. Garnish with a cherry and orange slice.
Mort’s backstory
Have you met Mort? He’s the latest (and greatest?) offering from deathcare phenom Titan Casket, and he’s now available for just $19.99 on the Titan website, along with Mort hoodies and t-shirts (pictured in the screenshot above). As far as mascots go, Mort’s got it all: a goofy grin, all-seeing eyes, a recognizable shape, and even a backstory.
“He was a funeral director in a former life, and he sold a lot of overpriced caskets, and now he’s been reincarnated as a team mascot to make up for some of his misdeeds and let people know that they have these options out there,” said Joshua Siegel, COO of Titan Casket, in a recent interview. Siegel added that the name “Mort” is short for — you guessed it — mortician. Hey, whatever it takes to get folks talking and planning for the inevitable.
Gone but not forgotten
Cemetery maintenance has to be a constant battle with nature — especially when it comes to grass that inexorably crawls across monuments. If not constantly managed, dirt and grass can easily reclaim flat markers — and that’s exactly what happened in one California cemetery. Family members contacted a local news channel to help them find several gravesites that seemed to have “vanished.” The reporter and cemetery workers used poles to identify and then unearth several sunken and grass-covered markers (some were under 12 inches of sod), while vowing to file official complaints. Interestingly, the same news channel had reported on a similar situation in another area five years ago; they revisited that cemetery after this recent incident and found that the flat grave markers were still visible and well-tended.
Getting the gang back together
Speaking of unearthing things in cemeteries … you might want to add the upcoming movie Seven Cemeteries to your Halloween watch list. Danny Trejo stars as a recent parolee who gets a Mexican witch to resurrect his old posse from their respective resting places so that they can help him save a woman’s ranch from a ruthless drug lord. It’s billed as a comedy-fantasy-horror-thriller-western, which covers pretty much all the genres except romance, which is probably a good thing.
The old man would have bought it
If you’ve ever seen the A+E show Pawn Stars, you know that second-generation Las Vegas pawn shop owner Rick Harrison will buy pretty much anything … thus the show’s enduring popularity. However, he apparently draws the line at 19th century iron caskets. The potential customer wanted $3,500 for the “Fisk Mummy” model casket, which was touted in the Civil War era for deflecting grave robbers and “preventing putrefaction.” Although the guy said he’d take $2,750, Rick said it was still a no-go, as the casket was “too creepy” for him.
