Friday, February 21, 2014

Would you like to know more?

What’s the mother lode of the good story? You got it, the follow-up tenuously based on it. When we posted about the bizarre burial of artist Ed Kienholz in his car with “His corpulent, embalmed body [was] wedged into the front seat of a brown 1940 Packard coupe” as Robert Hughes so elegantly put it, who knew the idea had such potential?

But now, exactly 20 years after the Kienholz drive-in, here is the classic life (read death) follows art story of Billy Standley who chose to be buried sitting astride his motorbike. “We’ve done personalization … but nothing like this extreme,” said Tammy Vernon, co-owner of Vernon Funeral Homes Inc. Standley was buried in a custom built box knocked up in the funeral parlour’s garage and lowered into the ground by crane. His body was held in place by a metal back brace and straps and the… well that will probably do.

Image: Standley’s last ride