If there is any type of surveillance camera or security at the St. Joseph Mausoleum then I could not find it. Maybe they are hidden in the light fixtures, which I happened to notice today for the first time. Even those were beautiful. Browsing the niches feels like I am shopping for lives, or browsing the shelves of a supermarket for humans.

It looks like they are building another structure across the parking lot. Maybe I will consider that for my final arrangements, not that I’m in a hurry to execute them. Calvary would make more sense, given my bottomless fascination with and countless hours spent there. But the mausoleum there is at 3rd Calvary, which I never liked. I think they are building a new mausoleum at 4th Calvary, if the foundations I saw a few weeks ago are any indication. That would put me near the puzzling pair of 54th Avenues, so that all who make the pilgrimage to my vaunted niche will stop to contemplate its mysteries. If it is in fact a new mausoleum then it would also be near the bathroom. Very convenient for anyone who finds that my memory makes them nauseous, or if my memory makes them so ill that nausea is skipped and they move straight ahead to projectile vomiting. I suppose that I could request, in lieu of one of those dildo-shaped containers for flowers, the cemetery could leave a supply of barf bags at my site.

If not for the risk of looking disrespectful I might try and record a monologue at St. Joseph. Acoustics are good, and the background Gregorian Chant sets a good mood. In fact I think I will record that music and use it as the background track to the voice recording at the usual Calvary Chapel.

It really is, as I surmised some time ago, a gold mine of sorts for manufacturing content, or material. Just read the names and make comments about the cremation urns. Or maybe supplement the names with what can be found of them on that Internet thing. That might be kind of tacky, though, especially if real names are used.

UPDATE, November 9, 2017. Here are some pictures from this February 26, 2017, visit to St. Joseph Mausoleum in St. Michael’s Cemetery, Astoria.

I never entered the mausolea for a long time. I thought they housed some kind of administrative activity, or that they were convents or monasteries. I don’t know where I got that idea, save for the fact that I felt nervous entering these structures with no idea who might be sitting at a desk, waiting to see what business could be transacted from me. The first community mausoleum I discovered was, by accident, at St. John Cemetery. It just sort of crept up on me, as if it had camouflaging itself into the pattern of the trees. When I realized what I was looking at I was actually horrified. It felt like nothing more than a glorified morgue. This mausoleum had no columbarium portion. That’s where the niches and cremation urns are found. St. Joseph, it should be mentioned, is a dual mausoleum and columbarium. Or is it? I thought it was but maybe not. Will circle back on that.

St. John is where the unlikely meeting of John Gotti and Charles Atlas remains for eternal contemplation. Oh, and Robert Mapplethorpe.

I realize, perhaps retroactively, that Joe Frank is as much a comedian as a dramatist. There is that Ben Katchor-like lunacy to his premises. I remember someone who described Woody Allen in a similar way: Ludicrous. Frank, in the Philosophy program I heard last, describes how he changed the way he shot dream sequences. This was just out of nowhere, I’m not aware that he did much or anything in film. It seemed to be a ludicrous premise, as is his wont.

He said that he started filming dream sequences by having the actors walk backwards, and do everything in reverse, as much as possible. Then the film would be played back in reverse, creating an atmosphere of dream-like unease and queeziness. That’s Joe Frank.

…

I walked far today, to St. Michael’s and onward to Ditmars. I saw a building called Pistilli Grand Manor. I don’t remember ever noticing it. I think the building itself used to be a public school but I could be off. It looked like a somewhat out-of-character-for-Astoria residential building. In some ways that stretch of Astoria feels like another country. I think I remember seeing an in-ground swimming pool at one of the houses up there. It feels more like Bayside than the Astoria I inhabit.

A restaurant up there is named Forno Italiano (I think). The F looks enough like a P that I thought it the place was called Porno Italiano. That would be such an ace name for a porn shop. Or just, simply, Porno Store That’s making me laugh. The O at the end of “Porno” makes it sound as cheesy as it is.

Or, in keeping with yesterday’s incident, PORNO FABULOSO!. I can just see Ron Jeremy holding court at that establishment.

“Porno Store” sounds like a passing gag from The Simpsons. Just imagining a pornographer with just that touch of class who would actually name his shop “Porno Store.” I should stop laughing. I might commit the undesirable sin of drawing attention to myself. I am probably laughing louder than I think, what with these noise canceling headphones.

Well, more to say but I gotsta eat.