One day Nicolas Cage is going to die. It will be sad, maybe shocking. Hopefully, in rightful madman form, he will spontaneously implode, eyes bugging, equine teeth gnashing, receding hairline beading with sweat, perhaps a cackle or two.

If we’re not prepared to lose this most erratic of thespians and eccentric masterminds, he apparently is. As you may know, he already has his own tomb erected in New Orleans’ oldest cemetery, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, which was founded in 1789. He bought the tomb in 2010 for a reported $3.2 million. He has big plans. Dying is one of them.

Amid mossy, decaying, crumbling graves from the 18th and 19th centuries stands, with majestic incongruity, Cage’s 9-foot-tall pyramid, resplendent in polished white marble and engraved with the Latin maxim “Omnia Ab Uno,” meaning “Everything from One” — fittingly enigmatic. (The cemetery is also home to late New Orleans voodoo queen Marie Laveau, one reason it’s said Cage picked this lot, though he’s never publicly explained why he settled on New Orleans’ most revered cemetery with a 9-foot-tall pyramid.)

I just got back from touring the cemetery and of course Cage’s ostentatious, rather comical spectacle is a big draw. Women plant lipstick kisses on the marble surface (giggling facetiously we hope), and selfies are mandatory. Locals detest this empty pyramid of death, as it befits the environs with the stylistic subtlety of a Popeye’s Chicken on the Champs-Élysées.     

The actor incidentally just visited the mausoleum a couple weeks ago during Mardi Gras with a gossiped-over “mystery girlfriend.” They wore matching black leather pants for the occasion, dig.

Cage is not a native New Orleanian, but he’s owned homes in the city, including a place so haunted it caused him ghastly tax problems (it’s called evasion), cratered a soaring movie career and kinda made him crack up. 

You don’t say.