May 2003
Also in the news: Lisa Marie Presley on Lisa Watch
- It just wouldn't be Vegas without Elvis
By Rich Wachtel
(News Journal, May 22, 2003)
You can see just about anything you can imagine in Las Vegas. Want to see pirate ships battling over a bounty? It's there. Ever compete with a chicken in a game of tic-tac-toe? They have it. Have a desire to watch two female impersonators wrestle in a tub of chocolate pudding? That one will probably cost you extra, if you know whom to ask. On our recent trip there, my wife and I weren't looking for anything quite that exotic. In fact, we wanted to see one of the most famous icons in Las Vegas. We wanted to find Elvis.
He's not hard to find in Las Vegas. His likeness appears on everything from billboards and taxicabs, to T-shirts and slot machines. He stands on the sidewalk and poses for photographs. He performs wedding ceremonies. He even stocks shelves at the 7-Eleven. In fact, you can hardly crawl out of bed in Las Vegas without stepping into a little of Elvis Presley.
But we didn't want to just scrape Elvis off the bottom of our shoes. We wanted to actually see him perform. It's not that we're big Elvis fans. It just seemed like the thing to do at the time. Let's face it, going to Las Vegas and not hearing Elvis sing would be like going to Nebraska and not looking at corn.
There are so many Elvis acts that it's difficult to decide which one to see. The best ones are headline impersonators in the glitziest hotels on the Vegas strip. The worst one stands on the street corner and does Elvis imitations for spare change. He doesn't actually sing "Jailhouse Rock." He eats a bucket of chicken, slurps down a milkshake and snarls out of the side of his mouth.
We opted for something in between, so we planned to see one of the free casino lounge acts. Of course calling an act "free" when it takes place in a casino is kind of a misnomer. Sure, you don't have to buy a ticket to see the performance, but you'll lose 60 bucks in a slot machine just waiting for him to take the stage. The act we chose to see was billed as "Big Elvis," the world's largest Elvis impersonator. The fact that it took place in the Barbary Coast Casino should have tipped us off on the quality of the show.
... When Big Elvis finally appeared, it was obvious his nickname was well earned. He weighed at least 600 pounds, or roughly what the real Elvis would weigh today had he not collapsed on the toilet back in Memphis. Upon entering the stage, he wiggled his hips and belted out a tune from his movie, "Blue Hawaii." I must admit he had an incredible voice. If you closed your eyes, you'd swear it was Elvis himself singing before you. Until he sat down exhausted from the first song, and began panting into the microphone like an obscene caller.
Fifteen minutes later, when he started singing a song from Bachman Turner Overdrive, we decided we had heard enough. When I see an Elvis impersonator, I want to hear him sing "Blue Suede Shoes," not "Takin' Care of Business." ...
- New Tell-All Book On Elvis' Manager Due in July
(Yahoo! Launch, May 22, 2003)
A new book, The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story Of Colonel Tom Parker And Elvis Presley, is scheduled for publication on July 15. Author Alanna Nash, who also wrote the 1995 book Elvis Aaron Presley: Revelations From The Memphis Mafia, calls Elvis' legendary manager a "conman, illegal immigrant and wanted murderer, who more than anyone was responsible for Elvis's success, his legend, his sad decline, and his death." The book even makes the shocking claim that Parker once bludgeoned a woman to death. ...
- Boren's show-business life could fill books
By M. SCOTT MORRIS
(Daily Journal, May 20, 2003)
Bill Boren is a self-confessed loudmouth, but that's OK because he's got a lot of good stuff to tell. Over his 65 years, he's dated Elvis Presley's girlfriend, introduced sex education to Itawamba County, kicked a tambourine from here to Guam and that's not the half of it. "Son, it'd take a pretty thick book to fit it all in," he said. ...
Boren eventually found his own voice, and the singer won the Mid-South Fair Talent Show in the early 50s. A few years later, he hooked up with another Mid-South Fair winner, Anita Wood.
"She dated Elvis Presley, too," he said. "They came down to the Tupelo Fairgrounds one time."
Presley: "You're the one who's dating Anita when I'm out of town." Boren: "I'm the one."
Presley: "Are you good to her?" Boren: "I'm probably better to her than you are." "I think he got a kick out of that," Boren recalled.
- Black Elvis brings Vegas, Memphis to Montgomery
(Montgomery Advertiser, May 20, 2003)
The Black Elvis - the artist formerly known as Bibby Simmons - doesn't look that much like the King of Rock 'n' Roll. But he's got the outfit, an all-white ensemble complete with sparkly gold and rhinestone accents. And he's got the sound. "... But I can't help falling in love with you ..., "Simmons crooned, closing with a "Thankyaverymuch" - the ultimate in Elvis.
Montgomery area Elvis fans will be "All Shook Up" when they see the Black Elvis during this year's Jubilee CityFest. He has the 2 p.m. Saturday slot on the Miller Lite/Alltel/Hot 105 Stage.
- Elvis gig to help young duo in need
By RACHEL WILLIAMS
(www.examiner.com.au, May 20, 2003)
King by name, king by nature.
Elvis, aka Robert E. King, was at his pelvis-swinging, toe-tappin' best yesterday as he practised a number of Elvis classics ready for a fund-raising concert at the Country Club Resort on Friday.
King will be joined by a group of Prospect High School music students, who for the past two months, have been working on 24 classic Elvis tracks, including Can't Help Falling In Love, All Shook Up, Blue Suede Shoes and Heartbreak Hotel. Two disabled Launceston children will not be able to sing along to Elvis at the concert but they will be the benefactors of the fund- raising event.
King, a Queensland impersonator who was born and raised in Launceston before moving interstate to join the RAAF, is funding the concert himself and will donate all profits to local seven-year-olds Steve Roetz and Jacinta Anderson- Colegrave. Steve suffers from a rare brain condition while Jacinta developed meningococcal meningitis as a nine-month-old baby and neither can walk or talk. Jacinta's grandmother Pauline Anderson said it was heartwarming that the public helped out. "We need to buy her a new wheelchair and that will cost between $10,000 and $11,000 and she needs a special chair which will be about $2000," she said. The resort also held a fund- raising day for Steve last year, which raised about $5000 for a car lift.
King, who has no children of his own, said it was important to help out kids in need of support. He is in the State to visit his father, who turns 88 next month. He invited the Prospect students to accompany him after hearing them at a Launceston horse race meeting earlier in the year.
- Bored to death by no-life sad puppies
By Jane Bowron
(www.stuff.co.nz, May 20, 2003)
I have just watched TV One's DNZ: 10,000 Miles to Graceland and I would have to say that it takes the biscuit for outstandingly boring television. Let me state right up that I have nothing but contempt for impersonators and souvenir people. People who live their lives being human sandwich boards for dead idols have to be the saddest puppies around. And when you get a whole collection of them together - as seen in 10,000 Miles to Graceland dragging their enthralled backsides through the Elvis landscape of Memphis, Tennessee - they add up to television hell.
The Kiwi fans from The New Zealand Memories of Elvis Fan Club came across as underwhelming people. With their Elvis side burns, tacky belt buckles and endless T-shirts emblazoned with The King's effigy, they seemed like so many badgeland others, tragically trapped in an Elvis time warp.
Okay, so Elvis was a singing, guitar-playing, twitching, entertainment genius, but he's dead and well gone and the notion of keeping his spirit alive in a buck-making Graceland pseudo afterlife, is venal and cultish.
Watching the Kiwi fans weep as they placed their flimsy plaque in the ground to commemorate their pilgrimage summed up the cheap tone of this dreary documentary. For starters, the idea of following a group of local Elvis fans to Graceland is not sufficiently interesting as a documentary concept. We've now been thoroughly exposed to scores of Elvis impersonators and bored rigid by fans who dwell in the over-postered dead zone of Elvis iconography. In the words of The King, these first zombies of celebrity culture are living in `the ghetto'.
Number two thing wrong with this documentary was that there wasn't any talent. We kept zeroing in on the same bunch of people supposedly because this was a character-driven documentary, except for the very obvious fact that these people all seemed to be the same person. Apart from buying more Elvis souvenirs and showing up their hideous purchases for the camera's scrutiny, there was little to write home about, let alone stitch a documentary together with.
I'm not saying that Kiwi Elvis worshippers are worse than any others found across the globe. Indeed from the selection of Vietnamese, American and British Elvis fans plucked randomly from the Elvis mosh pit, the Kiwis came across on the conservative side.
To screen this at 8.30pm in the DNZ slot was an insult to viewer sophistication.
Looking at the semi-final of American Idol on Sunday night I couldn't help but imagine how Elvis would do on the show if he were still alive. And the answer is he'd win hands down because he was so electric, so pulsating, the consummate entertainer.
Compare Clay's half-hearted pelvic thrust or Ruben's slow fat-bound trajectories across the stage to Elvis' primeval swivels and inspired howls. Elvis was truly king but what would he have made of these time-frozen serfs he has left behind still serving a dead monarch?
- If I can't have a Pulitzer, I'll settle for a bobblehead
By GARY BROWN
(cantonrep.com, May 20, 2003)
It's kind of embarrassing to admit that I will consider my life a success if it culminates with a bobblehead doll. ... You might say that the only difference between men and boys is that boys collect bobbleheads and men are bobbleheads. Well, that certainly didnt come out right, but I think you know what I mean. Everyone of note seems to have a bobblehead doll. You and I may be the only ones in the free world without our faces on bobbleheads. ... Išve seen a lot of entertainers with bobblehead dolls being sold as souvenirs in tourist traps. I'll bet such legends as Elvis have multiple bobbleheads - Young Elvis Bobblehead, Fat Elvis Bobblehead, and maybe an Elvis bobblehead where both the head and the hips jiggle. So the saying, sort of, is true. The man who dies with the most bobbleheads wins.
- Rescued penguins find new home at Napier
(New Zealand Herald, May 20, 2003)
Five rescued penguins were settling in for a stint at Napier's Marineland today, after a 350km flight from Auckland by Origin Pacific yesterday. The five include sightless Blind Elvis and another penguin that rejected wilderness freedom on an island near Auckland. After release there it turned around and swam all the way back to Auckland, losing half its body weight in the process.
Auckland Bird Rescue members delivered the five newcomers to Marineland's penguin recovery centre during the weekend, bringing the number of penguins at the marine zoo to 32. Manager Gary Macdonald said they had settled in well in the seal pool, where they were in quarantine.
Blind Elvis, which seemed destined to become a star because of the amount of noise he made, would stay at Marineland. The other four would soon be assessed for release back into the wild. Marineland tried to move recovered penguins out as soon as possible, usually after a couple of weeks, before they became accustomed to handling and hand-feeding.
- Elvis lives... and he's 68
By MARCIA STEFFENS
(Niles Daily Star, May 19, 2003)
What would Elvis be like -- at 68? Ray Minix, who graduated from Edwardsburg High School the same year as Elvis and is the same age, mused on this very question -- but took it one step further. He answered that question for all those who would like to "look though a keyhole" and see Elvis at 68.
Though he has never been to Graceland, Minix has written a one-man show and taken it to the Elco Theatre in Elkhart, Ind., just down the block from his apartment building. He was given a chance with the play he wrote centering around Elvis, now a janitor, cleaning up after a karaoke contest. In it, Minix ends up revealing his true identity and performing 19 songs during its two acts. Interspersed are stories, trivia of Elvis' life and interaction with the audience.
Minix's relatives flew in from around the country for his debut, but he was well received even by those who didn't know him before, or had sat in one of his classrooms. During the '60s, Minix taught in Niles, Cassopolis and Edwardsburg. If is students remember him, he hopes some will come see his show and say hi. On Saturday, May 31, at 7:30 p.m., Elvis will live again at the Battell Center Theatre in Mishawaka, Ind.
The mystic of what Elvis would be like, is given credibility by Minix's voice, praised by radio announcer Bill Darwin, who said he could hear Elvis when he closed his eyes. Not only is this the golden anniversary for Minix's Class of 1953, but he married that summer on June 27 to another graduate, Mary Bigelow, who had been born and raised in Edwardsburg by Jim and Naomi Bigelow. Minix had come to the community in his freshman year.
- Tres Shook Up Again by Johnny Hallyday
By KRISTIN HOHENADEL
(New York Times, May 18, 2003)
WITH Elvis as his muse, Johnny Hallyday became a rock idol in France in the early 60's - a status he retains today, at 59, to the longtime amusement of American rock critics. To understand why the French have made a legend of this American-sounding, bleached-blond, Harley-driving, jeans-and-T-shirt-wearing cover artist and sometime actor is to appreciate their insatiable appetite for American cheese.
- Tres Shook Up Again by Johnny Hallyday
By KRISTIN HOHENADEL
(New York Times, May 18, 2003)
WITH Elvis as his muse, Johnny Hallyday became a rock idol in France in the early 60's - a status he retains today, at 59, to the longtime amusement of American rock critics. To understand why the French have made a legend of this American-sounding, bleached-blond, Harley-driving, jeans-and-T-shirt-wearing cover artist and sometime actor is to appreciate their insatiable appetite for American cheese.
"Everybody calls me Johnny," says Mr. Hallyday, ne Jean-Philippe Smet, with a proud glint in his famously blue-eyed, cosmetically enhanced gaze. "Even my mother." Mr. Hallyday's stage name is actually less manufactured than it appears - he was brought up in France by a surrogate father, a Kansan named Lee Hallyday, who nicknamed him Johnny and made him part of a family musical act in the 1950's. A few years later, Johnny had an epiphany watching the Presley film "Loving You" - he decided that France could use its own Elvis. His translation has lasted some four decades, during which he has sold 80 million records, entertained 17 million concertgoers and maintained a race-car-driving, remarrying, fast-living yet hard-working, regular-guy image that has earned him a permanent place in the French tabloids and a soft spot in every French person's heart.
- Finger lickin' bad
(Guardian Unlimited, May 17, 2003)
From Elvis's penchant for fried peanut butter sandwiches to Noel Gallagher's KFC cravings, John McKie finds the recipe for success includes bad taste. ... While it's pointless to question the taste of a man who appears to have a charge card account at Milletts, Noely G's KFC is the latest in the sorry tale of rock stars who just can't help acting on impulse.
Ever since Elvis sent out a Graceland flunky to replace the telly he had just shot - he also routinely sent his private jet to fetch fried peanut butter sandwiches - pop stars have been bad at hearing the word "no" (except, possibly, for that bloke in 2 Unlimited), and often have someone on the tour payroll who seems unnecessary to us mere civilians, such as eyebrow pluckers, fencing instructors and Art Garfunkel. ...
- If you go to Kauai
(Seattle Times, May 18, 2003)
Things to do (Paragraph 3)
Horseback riding, kayaking, ATV and other tours are widely available, but be prepared for high prices, which can run $80 or more. There also are sail-and-snorkel trips, hiking and helicopter tours plus excellent golf courses. To see movie sites, Hawaii Movie Tours, 800-628-8432; www.hawaiimovietour.com, offers entertaining land tours that include a (fairly) clever commentary and film clips with visits to island set sites, including the Coco Palms Hotel where Elvis Presley often stayed. (Most of the hotel was destroyed by Hurricane Iniki in 1992, and the site isn't fully redeveloped.)
- June Carter Cash dies
(CNN, May 15, 2003)
June Carter Cash, a scion of a pioneering family in country music and the wife and Grammy-winning duet partner of singer Johnny Cash, died Thursday of complications from heart surgery. She was 73. ... Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters had worked with Elvis Presley on tour in the mid-1950s, and were booked by Col. Tom Parker, who was Presley's longtime manager. She once took Presley to see "A Streetcar Named Desire," where they sat with playwright Tennessee Williams and Kazan.
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