EulogyTube

YOU CAN argue about whether it’s better to live here or New York or San Francisco, but one thing is for sure: Los Angeles is the best place to die.

The rest of the country is still stuck in the somber, generic, sterile, 20th century funeral mind-set, the kind that’s all focused on death. In the L.A. mortuary community, on the other hand, it’s not even cool to use the word “funeral.” Now it’s an End of Life Celebration. And, at 35 years old, I was already a little late in planning mine.

Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, author of “Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death,” told me that if I wanted to have a decent video -- a basic staple for any End of Life Celebration -- I should start shooting now. When I asked Cullen if making my mourners watch a movie about me would come off as a little self-absorbed, she told me that I had wisdom to pass down and that I was stuck in a pre-YouTube mentality. “Nobody would find it strange if they went to your funeral and saw your giant face on a screen talking incessantly about yourself,” she said. “In fact, they’d expect it.”

To plan my party, Cullen sent me to Lynn Isenberg, who turned her novel, “The Funeral Planner,” into Lights Out Enterprises -- a kind of party planning service for dead people. Isenberg, who charges $1,000 per fiesta, has planned some sweet end-of-lifers. One includes a $75,000 video complete with animation and underwater photography; another established a fund so a guy could force his family to see the Detroit Red Wings every year. Though that was clever, I figured I could up the ante by making my family see every new Kevin Smith movie.

Isenberg sent me two long forms to fill out: one for me and one for my wife. After reviewing them, Isenberg impressed me with her can-do attitude. Regarding a question about whom I’d like to speak at my funeral, she wrote back: “As for Thomas Pynchon, I would try to contact now and see if there’s something he’d like to write about you or say about you on audio/video so that you have it to show, assuming he precedes you in death.”

We agreed on an end-of-life dinner at the sixth-highest Zagat-rated restaurant in L.A. I’d have a very small guest list because I don’t care who gets mad for being left out, me being dead and all. They’ll show my movie, and I’ll pick four people to speak for four minutes each. Three if Pynchon comes through.

Like every event in L.A., I’d need a gift bag. Lash Fary, who runs the gift bag company Distinctive Assets, thought he could hook me up with two bags: one for any celebrities in attendance -- which might be a problem because my one celebrity friend is Robert Goulet -- and one for everyone else. Fary was pretty sure he could get chocolate-covered Altoids and some copies of the L.A. Times. And, if I mention the products in a posthumous column, probably Solstice sunglasses and a T-shirt with the Star of David in Swarovski crystals. Done and done.

For my cemetery, I decided on Hollywood Forever, right next to Paramount Studios. Not only do they show movies there in the summer, house lots of celebs and a tremendous amount of headstones with Russian faces etched in that ‘80s county-fair, computer-drawn T-shirt style, but they have a hot receptionist, road signs written in that “Addams Family” font and a general ironic-cool vibe that says: Sure I’m dead, but I get it.

I was leaning toward being cremated (everyone’s doing it, Cullen assured me) and put into a compartment in these adorable, tiled, 5-foot-tall Thai stupas in the Buddhist garden. Then, on a tour, Jay Gianukos -- who, for prices starting at $2,500, directs bio movies for the cemetery -- told me about a new virtual plot up in Fernwood. They’ll wrap your body in cloth, let you biodegrade into the ground and mark your body only by a GPS machine that will show your video when visitors arrive on the correct patch of land. Even more than a huge statue of myself, like Johnny Ramone has, an eco-burial seemed like the most effective way of telling everyone that I’m better than them.

Finally, because my wife, Cassandra, who is always looking to embarrass me, told Isenberg that before we go to sleep I say “Good night my sweet girl. Sweet dreams,” Isenberg suggested that I record that so she can hear it for a little while after I’m gone. Because what could help you fall asleep better than a dead guy talking about your dreams? I might even put on a brown fedora and some metal finger extensions for it.

So I’m not going to do any of it, other than having my ashes scattered. Because all this is still nothing more than striving for immortality, and immortality is the foolish fantasy of weak egos. Everything is eventually forgotten anyway, and I’m OK with that. In fact, it might work in my favor.