jQuery异步函数调用，没有AJAX请求

This seems silly, but I can't find how to do an asynchronous function call with jQuery that doesn't involve some server-side request. I have a slow function that iterates through a lot of DOM elements, and I want the browser to not freeze up while this function is running. I want to display a little indicator before the slow function is called, then when the slow function returns, I want to hide the indicator. I have the following:This seems silly, but I can't find how to do an