The Family Plot Blog: Funeral Planning for Those Who Don't Plan to Die

The wind blew wickedly through Nederland today, playing havoc with the outdoor Frozen Dead Guy Day events. The parade of hearses took place, but the polar plunge and the coffin races have been postponed to tomorrow. The wind tore through the two big tents where the music was taking place.

Thank goodness we were inside the Black Forest Restaurant showing the Grandpa’s in the Tuff Shed documentary and playing two rounds of The Newly-Dead Game! Here is video of the second go-round at 5:00 p.m.

Many thanks to the couples who played!

Nederland, Colorado is getting ready for the crowds to descend this weekend to celebrate Frozen Dead Guy Days. Driving into town, this ice sculpture created by Cool Hand Ice Carving greets visitors. The finishing touches were just being applied when I came by. The temperature was 20 degrees in town.

Bill and Kay Lorenz (pictured below) are the proprietors of the Black Forest Restaurant, where I’m showing the documentary, Grandpa’s in the Tuff Shed. It tells the story of how Bredo Morstoel came to be the Frozen Dead Guy. We’ll also play The Newly-Dead Game at the restaurant.

Volunteers Ozzie and Colleen, pictured below, prepare to sell T-shirts and sweatshirts for the festival. These and other festival goodies are at the Dog House Video store.

Here’s a look at the Carousel of Happiness in Nederland, recorded at last year’s Frozen Dead Guy Days. Stephanie West Allen provided some history about this on her blog.

Hearse in parade FDGD 2011

Mark your calendars for March 2-4, 2012 for the 11th annual Frozen Dead Guy Days festival in Nederland, Colorado! I’ll be at this wild and wacky celebration of all things dead and frozen, bringing back The Newly-Dead Game™ which debuted there last year.

Frozen Dead Guy Days is enjoying a surge of publicity over the past few days. The New York Times recently did a story about how festival manager Amanda MacDonald bought the festival from the Nederland Chamber of Commerce. I love how reporter Kirk Johnson opened his story:

DENVER — It was probably not, in the end, an idea with huge franchise potential or a killer smartphone app in its future. After all, a gleefully macabre weekend celebration built around a frozen corpse — complete with coffin races, tours of the shed where the body is kept on ice and, of course, lots of beer — just might not be as fun beyond the skewed sensibility of Colorado’s hippie-tinged mountain belt.

But now it’s official: Frozen Dead Guy Days are staying put in the small town of Nederland, about an hour northwest of Denver, as are the mortal remains of one Bredo Morstoel, a Norwegian man whose strange and unlikely saga in death — and long-term storage — inspired the whole thing.

Read the whole New York Times story here.

Coffin race team in the FDGD 2011 parade

Other media have also been reporting the news, starting with the Boulder Daily Camera. That story by staff writer Laura Snider started out:

Amanda MacDonald knows how to bowl a frozen turkey, toss an iced-up salmon and organize a coffin race.

And those are good skills to have if you’re organizing a winter festival in the quirky mountain town of Nederland designed to celebrate the fact that the corpse of Grandpa Bredo Morstoel is being cryogenically preserved in a Tuff Shed above town.

MacDonald is the new owner of Frozen Dead Guy Days, but this year’s event will be the fourth one she has organized. MacDonald bought the icy affair after the Nederland Area Chamber of Commerce put it up for sale last summer.

“The chamber really wanted to keep it local, and they did make it affordable for me (to buy the event), I think, with this kind of understanding that rather than some promotion company from Denver (taking it over), I wouldn’t really change it drastically,” MacDonald said. “Honestly, I just wanted to see it stay in town. It’s really Nederland’s event.”

Read the whole Boulder Daily Camera story. You can also see this TV news brief on Denver’s local CBS station. Even the Huffington Post picked up the story.

One of the new developments this year is a VIP pass that festival goers can obtain in advance. The pass is a VIP wristband with benefits such as:

• 1 Blue Ball ticket
•1 Dead Guy Tour ticket
• A bottomless VIP cup, good for all beverages, all weekend at both music tents; you must be 21 and be wearing FDGD VIP wristband
• VIP parking pass (centrally located)
• Specialty FDGD VIP long sleeve shirt and your picture in the FDGD 2013 brochure
• Free participation at frozen turkey bowling, brain freeze, frozen salmon toss and polar plunge
• Entrance into Tuff Shed FDGD VIP catered lounge

Such a deal! Find out more at the Frozen Dead Guy Day website.

Couples compete: The Newly-Dead Game in 2011

And last but not least, I’ll be back for this year’s festival, engaging couples in The Newly-Dead Game! It’s a free event at Frozen Dead Guy Days.

Remember the old TV show, The Newlywed Game? The game pitted newly married couples against each other in a series of revealing question rounds to determine how well the spouses knew (or didn’t know) each other.

The game was first on the air in the 1960s and 70s. Now all those newlyweds are long-married couples (we hope). With Baby Boomers sliding into retirement, it’s time to play The Newly-Dead Game!

The Newly-Dead Game debuted at last year’s Frozen Dead Guy Days festival. It’s based on elements of The Newlywed Game, but the questions in The Newly-Dead Game revolve around how well the couple knows each other regarding their last wishes.

Couples who have played come away with a fresh appreciation of how much they still need to know about each other when it comes to funeral planning. Last year, so many couples wanted to play The Newly-Dead Game, a waiting list was started. Register early in the day and come on out for a fun time!

Chillin' out in Nederland