Random Scenes of Hollywood: The Ramonuments Men

A couple of days after Riley died I had to go to the Hollywood Forever Cemetery to do some research (because insofar as I can be said to have a job, that's the kind of a job I have). Mary went along to keep me company, but mostly in the hope of seeing a ghost.

There were a multitude of familiar names from the Golden Age of Hollywood, several of whose remains sported exactly the sort of whited sepulchers you'd expect...

...and a few giants of the Silent Era whose monuments had acquired that decayed, Sunset Boulevard feel...

Douglas Fairbanks' reflecting pool suffers from the heartbreak of pond scum.

But I was a bit puzzled by the Ramones.  They're buried on opposite ends of the lake, with Johnny's body topped by a life-size statue on a marble plinth...

..while Dee Dee is tucked away under a pine tree, his grave marked with a comparatively modest, Boogie Board-sized slab...

But while Johnny's Ozymandius-grade monument boasts but a few faded lip prints, Dee's tombstone looks like it's been freshly French-kissed by half of France.  Curious.  Anyway, he's got a cool epitaph.

Generally, it was a bright, breezy, unspooky day, although I did learn one gruesome fact:

That back when I was living in Hollywood but teaching Karate in Ventura, I drove over Toto's corpse about six times a week.