At 3pm on March 31st, the fun started. This was all pretty new to me... I haven't been to too many normal funerary services, let alone ones on which the departed had not yet departed. The service was in the local Lutheran church, about 6 miles or so east of the Vegas Strip. Nice little Church, and presumably they knew what they were in for, so kudos to them.
Keeping with the Egyptian theme, these were the chairs Lonnie and his wife
Sandy sat in during the ceremony.
(At this point I'd started to wonder about whether she'd have to climb into the
tomb with him at the end of the day. As it turned out, no, but that was a
fun thought to play with for a while.)
Note the authentic Egyptian padding. Lonnie gets credit for improving upon the ancients.
I was initially a little worried about the dress code for this whole shebang. There's not a lot of overlap between church wear, jazz parade wear and entombment wear... at least not in my wardrobe.
When we sat down, I saw that the ladies had come out in with a little extra flair.
And then, in came Lonnie, complete with purple tux. I hope I can pull that off in my sixties.
The minister tried to give us a warning that we were about to enter some uncharted waters...
And then, the Sign Design Theatre Company, a youth group that does musical performances in American Sign Language, came out and did a sort of dance version of "Circle of Life" from the Lion King. In ASL.
Afterwards, a woman came and sang an exquisite passage from the ancient Hindu script Bhagad Gita... in Hindi.
Next, a video dedication to Lonnie by guests who couldn't make it. Including Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons and Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, who claimed that Lonnie's greatest achievement hadn't yet been revealed... he is actually the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby. (This was sadly disproven several weeks later, but only with 99.99% certainty.)
Sweet Louie from The Checkmates came out and sang "What a Wonderful World".
The Checkmate are frequent "Best Lounge Act in Vegas" winners... and if you win
Best Lounge Act in Vegas you've effectively won "Best Lounge Act On The Planet".
Finally, came a series of family speeches and dedications, which were generally a little more interesting than I'd imagine one usually gets at a funeral, since you're giving the eulogy to someone standing ten feet away.
The whole experience was a little different, but on the whole you'd recognize it as a funeral ceremony if you weren't watching too closely.
Things didn't start getting a little weird until...
or...