One event I'm pissed about missing is the Elvis Presley Anniversary Vigil at Graceland this year.
I wouldn't say I'm a big Elvis fan, but I'm a big after-he-died velvet Elvis/Elvis Impersonator / Elvis is working at Sears/a gas station fan. As if the man wasn't tacky enough when he was alive, his adoring fans have succeeded in rhinestoning his memory to death.
Elvis must be turning in his grave … or is he even in the grave?
The greatest Elvis impersonator of all time downloaded into my life a couple of years back via Napster. Eilert Pilarm, the Swedish Elvis, has mastered the art of successfully trainwrecking Elvis' most sacred songs; Pilarm jumps into the driver's seat of 'Hound Dog' and drives the '50s classic 100 m.p.h. straight into a brick wall, after which he climbs out unscathed, grinning insanely like a backward child, and leaving the song totaled.
Napster I miss. Worse … I actually mourn the passing of Napster. Without it I never would have heard Ozzy Osbourne and Dweezil Zappa doing the Bee Gees disco anthem 'Stayin' Alive,' or Michael Stipe strumming his guitar and singing 'I Will Survive' in a way the song should have been sung in the first place.
And without Napster I would never have collected so many deliciously appalling versions of Elvis songs.
The King is dead. Long live the King.
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Zoologist, Clive Bromhall, has come up with an interesting theory that 'kind-of' makes sense. Uk.gay.com reports that he was speaking at the Edinburgh Book Festival in Scotland and described gay people as the 'pinnacle of evolution.'
' … Bromhall said that mankind's evolution has resulted in a present state of 'infantilism,' where we break the primate mould by being playful, creative and child-like right into adulthood.
'From men's obsession with swollen breasts to our constant search for a pseudo-parental God, everything about the human species is infantile,'
'Like baby chimps we have soft downy bodies, flat faces and large rounded heads. Like them, we too want to be kissed, cuddled and stroked, and we remain playful, compliant and comparatively mild-mannered for the whole of our lives.'
He goes on to say that straight people lose this with age, and because gay people maintain their creative and playful character we are superior.
I don't think we're superior, but he's got a point about gay people being more creative and playful later in life. Look at Quentin Crisp. Look at me!!
I think it's got more to do with straight people having kids. (Contrary to gay news reports, very few gay couples have offspring.) If you've got three kids under 10, throwing on a tutu and a black pill-box hat, doing three lines of coke and heading out to a circuit party isn't really an option.
You're stuck there in the house, and maybe after negotiating a complicated shift system with your wife, you may get in a round of golf on a Sunday afternoon.
… or that's what you tell your wife anyway. Do the words 'Forest Preserve' ring any bells?
Gay people are not superior, just more honest. That's what bothers me about 'Gay Marriage,' 'Gays in the Military,' 'Gay Adoption,' etc.
Do we have to become cookie cutter fags (and there's plenty of them around already) to achieve legal recognition of our romantic and sexual desires? Are we supposed to follow Madonna into the Gap and wave our credit cards around?
I hope not, because, quite frankly my dears, I'd rather be discriminated against than have to live with a poverty of the imagination.
