My son is one from Elvis.
As are a lot of Portland musicians. There's an old-timer from one of Elvis's bands who plays around town.
I have a friend here who's one from Buddy Holly. Much rarer.
I like Buddy Holly. I love Roy Orbison. I have a soft spot for crooners in general. Oooh! And the guy from the Mavericks!
That video is like Elvis's entire career in microcosm. Starts out well, then gets more frenzied to the point where he's not even singing all of each line.
Getting killed was a good move from the memorabilia point of view. He should have stocked up and established a cartel to dribble it out a little at a time.
Apparently "Shove it up your nose" was a standard Elvis joke. From a review comparing two versions of the film Elvis That's The Way It Is.
Schmidlin also made some questionable decisions in replacing some performances of songs with others. The most dodgy of these was including a version of "Suspicious Minds" with the lame "shove it up your nose" joke that Elvis used so often in later years instead of the straight version Sanders picked.
Huh, if by lame they mean comedy gold.
7: Sure, for an unconventional person like you, but how would it play in Ottumwa, Iowa?
I happen to have my finger on the pulse of Ottumwa, Iowa.
In the recent election Al Franken was significantly hurt by his comedy routines. A lot of Minnesota liberals are nice old church ladies. A lot of morons also couldn't distinguish between a character (Stuart Smalley) and the actor who played him, most of them were Republicans anyway.
Who would prefer Norm Coleman to Stuart Smalley? Stuart would have never voted for the invasion of Iraq (unlike Franken).
Also, what do you mean when you say My son is one from Elvis?
the work pc downloads utube clips 30 min, just watched it and it reminded me the funny singer character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall which i watched the other day, how he moved on the scene
that singer was the funniest in the movie
i also thought that grown men never cry like that in the movie, i at least never saw anyone crying aloud like that even if from heartbreak or else
12: He's actually Elvis's kid. John's relationship with him is more of a Joseph-Jesus kind of thing.
He's played music with a guy who played with Elvis.
7: And these folks agree with you.
You might be an Elvis Fan.....
...when you've listen to "Suspicious Minds" 100 times and you still chuckle when he says, "Shove it up your nose."
But you have to pick what kind of Elvis fan you are:
There are all kind of ELVIS FANS: the 50`s Fans, the rebel Fans, The Concert Years Fans, The Collectors Fans, The Follow in His Footsteps Fans, the From Outside US Fans, The Music Fans, the Nonpracticing Fans, The Elvis Saved My Life Fans, the Pilgrimage Fans, the Taking Care of Elvis Fans, The Impersonator Fans, the ELVIS is Still Alive Fans, the I Became a Fan After His Death Fans, the Cyberspace Fans, the Best Looking Man Ever Fans, the Trivia Expert Fans, the Next Generation Fans and the Elvis Couple Fans.
I think I'm an Elvis Fan Fan.
13: just watched it and it reminded me the funny singer character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall which i watched the other day, how he moved on the scene
Russell Brand's character? Or Jason Segel with the funny songs about Dracula and van Helsing? Either way, I like the thought that Elvis reminds you of them.
Russel Brandt's character
the other guy's weeping i was kinda critisizing, not seriously of course, a comedy coz
There are people who have been listening to Elvis regularly for 52 years now. Their median age should be about 67, a bit older than me. The ones I knew seemed to get married and live happily ever after.
In the late '70s and early '80s I had occasion to drive between Houston, Texas and Ohio/Pennsylvania a fair number of times and it seemed like every other gas station and convenience store in between sold copies of Elvis's will (it had nothing exceptional in it). More interesting are the paraphernalia associated with his meeting with Nixon in 1970.
Of all the requests made each year to the National Archives for reproductions of photographs and documents, one item has been requested more than any other. That item, more requested than the Bill of Rights or even the Constitution of the United States, is the photograph of Elvis Presley and Richard M. Nixon shaking hands on the occasion of Presley's visit to the White House.
It includes his handwritten letter to Nixon in which he suggests becoming a "Federal agent-at-large" to help combat drugs, and a note from Dwight Chapin suggesting that they honor the request for the meeting. (HR Haldeman gave approval but wrote in "You must be kidding" beside where Chapin had written, "In addition, if the President wants to meet some bright young people outside the Government, Presley might be a perfect one to start with.")
In the internal White House memo describing the meeting, Nixon shows his political instincts, "The President indicated again his concern that Presley retain his credibility."
Elvis's offer to be an anti-drug federal agent can only be explained by the fact that he was on drugs at the time. He wasn't really that crazy.
My son had a friend who did anti-drug children's theater while he was loaded.
15: When will they get down to verifying the chains to compile a proper Hadith?
The Elvis channel on satellite radio is the only good thing about renting a car.
He's played music with a guy who played with Elvis.
See, "played music with" is not the verb phrase I was thinking of.
I was wondering if your kid hooked up with Cybil Sheppard.
Is Elvis wearing tzitzit in that video?
You mean like a four-cornered garment? It never occured to me that he was observant.
I saw an Elvis concert from that era at Christmas, and it came round to Suspicious Minds and I thought: now that's a great track, such a great performer, and what the fuck was the rest of that pap he was singing? And generally that sums his career up for me: There were awesome moments, but much of it was just a criminal waste of talent.
"Suspicious Minds" really is a great song. I've been humming it all day thanks to that rotten Heebie!
Elvis died the day he joined the army.
One shouldn't feel defensive about loving Elvis. He is the King, after all.
Also, this is some great Elvis of the same era. Socially conscious Elvis.
If love is truly going out of fashion forever, which I do not believe, then along with our nurtured indifference to each other will be an even more contemptuous indifference to each others' objects of reverence. I thought it was Iggy, you thought it was Joni Mitchell or whoever else seemed to speak for your own private, entirely circumscribed situation's many pains and few ecstasies. We will continue to fragment in this manner, because solipsism holds all the cards at present; it is a king whose domain engulfs even Elvis'. But I can guarantee you one thing: we will never again agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis. So I won't bother saying good-bye to his corpse. I will say good-bye to you.
32: I adore that quote. Oh, and now that I see who was channeling Lester there I am unsurprised.
The quotation in 32 is great, and I hadn't seen it before.
Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass!
The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass!
i am so-totally dancing like that at the next wedding I attend.
Okay, heebie, this post makes up for you disparaging Bocephus the other day. But just barely.
I love him. I agree with Sharon in 27 that so much of his life/talent was wasted. His appeal- his attraction- his Elvisness- is what took him from being risque' to conventional. His magnetism is hard to match.
I'd like to speak to you about the Peace of Westphalia, Fleur, if you have a few hours.
35: And then there's the third, contemporary, ironic tear.
Okay, John, Okay. You're going to make me say it, aren't you?
His magnetism is hard to match, unless- of course, you are John Emerson.
Happy now?
There are people who have been listening to Elvis regularly for 52 years now. Their median age should be about 67, a bit older than me.
My mother has a good friend who basically has a shrine to Elvis in the spare room in her house. Velvet paintings, tea towels, coffee mugs, newspaper clippings, and all sorts of Elvis-themed bric-a-brac. We love to tease her about it, but I actually think it's sort of sweet (if somewhat kooky, but I guess that's what I like about it). A couple of my sisters have contributed to the kitsch with some choice Elvis-related flea market finds. It's a subculture, I suppose, and a mini-industry.
If ever I don't know what to buy my mother for a holiday/birthday (which is the case most years), Elvis memorabilia is a reliable backup. I gave her a new Elvis purse his past Christmas. She loves it.
43: Or so the mamas would have you belieive.
Also: am I the only one who thought it was a bit weird of Nicholas Cage to tie the knot with Lisa Marie Presley (which bonds of matrimony lasted what? mere months? or perhaps mere weeks?)? No, of course not. I'm sure I cannot be the only one who thought Cage was carrying the collection of Elvis-themed memorabilia to strange new levels of fan-based fanaticism?
One of my earliest memories is seeing an Elvis movie at a drive-in on a summer night. On a mattress atop a station wagon.
On a mattress In a van atop a station wagon down by the river.
And he had a girl in each arm, and burst into song at the appropriate time.
Eh. I hate to say it, Brock, but 44 does raise a good point. My son (who's just a little kid, after all, but still, this may have broader relevance) bought me a necklace for Christmas, which he thinks is made of gold encrusted with diamonds, and which he couldn't wait for me to open on Christmas morning, because "it's so beautiful" and "I know you're going to love it." I know for a fact he bought it for under six dollars. Of course I wear it with pride, how could I not?
(But probably your mother truly does appreciate the Elvis purse, that's the beauty of such a subculture).
Senior year of college I accidentally erased my senior essay while I was writing it. (We got a month off from class to write our essays and the whole thing was kind of a big deal.) It was only up to something like 10 pages at that point but I was pretty upset. A bunch of my friends (CA was among them, don't remember who else) saw a Velvet Elvis (hereafter Velvis) in the window of a Goodwill shop and bought it for me to cheer me up. Worked like a charm. Elvis is everywhere! Elvis is everything!
Am I alone in really not caring much about Elvis at all? I'd rather listen to just about any of his Sun Records contemporaries.
Elvis was never the same after his Momma died.
Probably that's all of them.
But actually, I meant YOU had a girl on each arm.
Chopper is a horrible person. I amy possibly agree with him, but I'd never say so.
The old Elvis people I meet around here are incredibly sweet. (Of course, I'm sure that some of them are totally fucked and probably dead, but I don't meet them). I think : these nice people are what I would be, if I were them and not me. But, you know.
One of my earliest memories is seeing an Elvis movie at a drive-in on a summer night. On a mattress atop a station wagon.
I remember the mattress atop the station wagon at the drive-in!
And though I was far too young at the time to actually remember this, I recall the recollections after the fact, which entered into the stock of family lore: apparently my parents took me to the drive-in when I was a young tot, to see a film called Two Mules for Sister Sarah, which my mother (o the innocence!) assumed was suitably family-friendly fare (well, it featured a nun, didn't it?), but which turned out to be a fairly violent Clint Eastwood film. Of course I slept right through it, I was that young. But my parents were mortified by their mistake for many years afterward.
I think : these nice people are what I would be, if I were them and not me.
Yeah, I know that feeling quite well, John. It's a bit difficult to properly explain, isn't it?
I remember the mattress atop the station wagon at the drive-in!
I didn't know you and Charley went back that far, MC.
I would ordinarily tell a story now about stumbling, somewhat impaired (or maybe "enhanced"), after a Grateful Dead concert in Spokane, into an Elvis competition at one of that city's more notorious dives. But that would ruin the image of innocence on a soft Texas summer night, falling asleep to Kissin' Cousins.
Night all.
I didn't know you and Charley went back that far, MC.
Oh, me and Charley go all the way back to King John at Runnymede, what with our shared habeas fetish.
Am I alone in really not caring much about Elvis at all?
No.
There were no Fenians at Runnymede, MC. They were growing turnips back home in the mud, in lieu of potatoes which hadn't been invented yet.
My dad had a cousin, by the name of Fitzsimmons, I believe, who used to take the pan of potatoes outside to give it a good shake, and he called himself "te' Potader King." He was way modern, of course, and he farmed on lovely loamy soil.
You're just trying to antagonize me, Emerson, aren't you?
You want I should roll around in the muck, drunk on cheap whiskey and quoting choice bits of Yeats? You think I don't know as how my paternal surname might be mistranslated as Irish for "moron" or something?
Well, I just hope you're satisfied, is all I can say.
There's no moral imperative to take an interest in all things Elvis, for sure. It's purely optional, I hope.
All I know about Ireland is what Flann O'Brien tells me -- but that's enough.
I don't believe the part about the guy turning into a seal, though.
I've heard that impotent men subject to unnatural desires dislike Elvis.
I've heard that impotent men subject to unnatural desires dislike Elvis.
Well, yes. But then again, some of them like Elvis too much, if you know what I mean, and some of probably don't really suffer from that malady to which you refer, all things considered.
Which was sort of my point about Nicholas Cage, though I didn't really mean to get so specific.
62; 68 if you must, but at least my taste in music has not also shrivelled.
Emerson treads into territory normally ocupied by read -- matching up commenters. I'm going to guess that the point of the exercise is to appeal to read, and so the flaws in the pairing can go unremarked.
I'm a little struck, though, that Emerson imagining relationships is kind of like former senator Santorum imagining deviant sex.
Am I alone in really not caring much about Elvis at all?
Not at all.