Epistle 3 – Elvis
I don’t know if Elvis is in the building, but even if he’s gone, I’m surprised he lived as long as he did. Adults in the 50’s believed he was the anti-Christ, sent here to corrupt their fledgling Boomers with his long hair and swiveling hips that actually moved to the music. Can you imagine? Moving your hips to the music? Well, I never!
A guy named Ed Sullivan who had a live variety show for about fifty years on Sunday nights booked Elvis on the show. It was beamed out to millions on black and white TV’s (yes, children, black and white, it’s true!). Ed only televised Elvis from the waist up. Thank you, Ed. I’m a better person for it.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Elvis mumbled! After decades of teaching kids proper grammar and enunciation by whacking them on the head with a ruler, their hero mumbled! The youth of America was going straight to hell.
I’m not talking about the Las Vegas Elvis with the sequined white jumpsuits here. I’m talking about the real Hound Dog, side-burned, pre-army Elvis. The Elvis who deftly lead my brother’s crowd right down the drain, a rather short trip. The Elvis who challenged the Generation of Sacrifice with his rebellion . . . and WON! In a rout!
They could beat Hitler but they couldn’t beat Elvis. In short order they even started saying “I’m all shook up”, and wearing little belts on the back of their pants. I never understood the belts since they didn’t connect to anything—my first lesson that fashion doesn’t have to make sense.
In any event, Elvis was the first Boomer superhero. That’s why Boomers still park their overweight, high blood pressure bodies in overpriced seats to see some doofus impersonate him . . . sort of. You just can’t let your heroes die.
Need I now explain how pimply, awkward, prototype Boomers evolved into the bomb-throwing, revolutionary radicals or the flower power, long-hair, psychedelic hippies of the 60’s? Elvis taught us. If one man could stand up to our parents, surely the rest of us could reform the world, right?
Wrong. Nobody pointed out to us that Elvis also had charisma and talent. By the time we got to the 60’s, he had gone over to the dark side with his inane movies and Vegas act that met the establishment half way. We were forced to stumble forward on our own and tried to cover up our lack of talent, and good sense for that matter, with drugs.
For some reason that never seemed to quite work. I don’t understand how the world could fail to see our genius. Maybe we were just too far off the ground. My wife still has to yank me back out of the ozone now and then.
But the 60’s weren’t our fault. It was Elvis. And he’s still in the building . . . thank God.
