In a strange end to the Summer of Death (RIP Capt. Lou Albano, BTW), the crypt above Marilyn Monroe has gone back on the open market.

After an e-Bay listing resulting in a $4.6 Million high bid whose payment mysteriously fell through, bidding on the spot in the wall will resume at $500,000, starting Oct. 19 and ending Oct. 29.

That’s right, obsessive fans and retarded rich people looking for some form of post-mortem status! You too can be laid to rest above the rotting corpse of a famous superstar like Marilyn Monroe! Not only that, but you’ll be sharing the cemetery with such names as Dean Martin, Rodney Dangerfield, and the recently deceased Farrah Fawcett! Bid early, bid often, and you could be pseudo-famous for being shoved into a marble hole a mere 3 inches of stone, 6 inches of air, and 2 inches of wood away from the decaying body of one of the all-time most beautiful people in Hollywood!
Wonder in amazement as friends who come to visit you spend more time staring at and talking to the graves of the celebrities surrounding you than your actual grave! Sure, they’ll bring you flowers, but you know that really big bouquet is either for Marilyn or Deano or even Jack Lemmon. Be shocked by society as you realize that people you once thought as close to you are merely using your grave as an excuse to enter the cemetery and ogle dozens of dead celebrities!

Or, you could simply do things the way nature intended by doing nothing at all and realizing that YOU’RE DEAD and it doesn’t matter whose corpse you’re layered above in the mausoleum.

Standing next to someone famous doesn’t do anything special for you when you’re alive. I mean, you could say hi to that famous person and maybe even share a brief conversation, handshake, coffee, or whatever depending on the circumstances. In no way does this actually rub anything off on you. Sure, you might experience a sudden burst of popularity among your circle of friends because “oh my God, I shook hands with [celebrity]” or “I was standing behind [celebrity] while I was in line” or “I had this really cool moment with [celebrity]”. People will like it when you tell these stories because it makes you feel like you were there, like you experienced the real person, and it decreases your Bacon number (if anyone still uses that scale of measurement).
If nothing, no secret glowing power or shining halo of righteousness, is bequeathed by a chance meeting with a celebrity while you’re alive, what use is it to be interred above one when you’re dead? You don’t even get the luxury of being able to tell that cool story! If there’s an afterlife, maybe you could brag about being buried above Marilyn Monroe to your friends, but I still very much doubt that she’s going to talk to you in the hereafter. You’re not going to be able to put the ghostly moves on her just because you live (or, rather, remain dead) upstairs from her.

The owner of this crypt thinks that it will “fetch millions of dollars” according to the AP.

Sure, they’re probably right. It’s the ultimate collector’s item. It’s one of a kind and it’s absolutely permanent. The thing is, it won’t go to a collector of Marilyn memorabilia unless they’re a multi-millionaire. Chances are, it will probably go to someone rich who only cares about the status involved. I guess being slabbed over a famous corpse can be more validating for someone with not much more than a gigantic bank account. You know people will at least cruise near your grave because devotees of said celebrities more than likely haunt that place better than any ghost ever could.
It’s patently ridiculous to think that buying this crypt will make the prospective auction winner look like anything other than a flippant asshole. It’s not like they’re vying for some kind of place of honor, even though it may seem to many fame-obsessed people that it’s a Holy Grail of burial sites. It’s a marble slab in a rack full of dead people.
She WAS Marilyn Monroe. She IS mostly skeletal at this point.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not talking smack on cemeteries or mausoleums or any sort of conventional burial. I’m not even talking smack on the lady who wanted to be buried in her Corvette last week (look it up, she got it). I visit my Grandfather’s grave on as regular a basis as my schedule allows. I respect the dead and all of the customs associated with death in America. I’ve been known to have long conversations with my Grandfather’s headstone, as crazy as that may sound to some people.

My only problem comes with the auctioning of this cut-marble hole just because it happens to be located above someone (in)famous. It’s a random person’s blatant exploitation of someone else’s final resting place. I know, graves and mausoleum sites are considered private property and that they are well within their rights to sell said plot, but that doesn’t make the markup right. If anyone pays more than face value for a vault just because of who they’re being interred near, they should be quickly killed and placed there so they can start appreciating their purchase as soon as possible.
That money could have gone to a better cause rather than paying for your dumb ass to be bereft of life and lying above a rotten starlet.

If you really do want to spend that much money on your burial, hire some bagpipers, make them pour Krys at your wake, and get a master artisan to design your marker to be the most incredibly badass headstone in the entire cemetery.
Personally, I dig the angel collapsed and weeping over the headstone. When I die, I want something with my headstone to inspire an urban legend. Like, if you stare at the headstone that’s a life-sized carving of St. Michael beating down Satan, it looks like it’s moving. If you stare at it at midnight, they come to life and get you… or something.

But, who am I kidding? I can’t die.

Keep fighting the good fight.

—end transmission—