Welcome To The Dead Zone; I'm Goin To Graceland

Currently Reading: Lamb by Christopher Moore

And so holiday number one is done. One down, two more to go. Welcome to the dead zone between them. That's pretty much what work is like right now, a dead zone. It's a temporary lull though. Think of it as the eye of the hurricane.

Last week, leading into Thanksgiving, we were doing easily more than double our normal volume on the weekend and during the week, well it was like every day was Saturday. In fact, I actually had to give up one of my days off because we knew we'd need more people in the salon. Not that I minded. Makes for a better paycheck and Christmas shopping is right around the corner.

We hit Thanksgiving and BAM, nothing after that. Dead. Even on Saturday it was dead. Sunday was worse because it rained. Same with Monday. Rain really kills our walk-in traffic. Seriously would you want to pay someone to wash your dog knowing your yard is going to be one big mud puddle to play in? No, of course not. That's just silly.

And even though we had our staff dressed up as Christmassy as possible, people were more interested in hitting the mall and big box stores instead. I can't really blame them of course. There were some pretty decent deals out there if you could afford to pay for bundles. That's my boss by the way. I think she had a little too much holiday cheer for Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving went well for CC and I. We ate over at my parents' house along with the rest of the family. CC and I were in charge of veggies.

The kids brought over an Xbox and we spent a decent amount of time playing Guitar Hero. We really like that game. Unfortunately the older versions didn't have much music that we actually recognized. I think, in the one they brought with them, we only knew maybe 2 or 3 songs out of the whole thing. Not good. However, when we were out on Friday, we DID come across the latest version of Guitar Hero, Legends of Rock. Now on THAT one we know just about every song and even better, they make it for PC. Guess what we've been doing SINCE Thanksgiving? You got it, GUITAR HERO!

Speaking of guitar heroes, CC's company got a whole bunch of VIP tickets to Graceland (that's where Elvis lived in case you forgot). There was a party for one of the companies they do business with and we got to tour Graceland at night (without having to deal with all the crowds and stuff) plus we got to tour the automobile museum (Elvis' cars) and there were drinks and finger foods and so forth. We had a good time and unlike during the usual tour, we were allowed to take pictures (I used my cell phone so they're not the BEST pictures but still pretty good).

When you first go in through the front door, off to the side you have this REALLY white living room. And I mean WHITE. Everything in there pretty much is white. Must have been hell to clean that's for sure. I mean, Memphis is a pretty dusty city so just walking through the room would have been enough to get the place dirty. Then again, if you're Elvis, you can afford good cleaning staff.

Of course the whole place was decorated for Christmas. There were trees in just about every room and outside there were plenty of lights. Mostly they followed a musical theme. Plenty of large music notes and guitars and that sort of thing, and even a piano out in front of the main building across the street from the mansion where they arrange tours and such. Very holiday, very festive, very gaudy too for that matter. But I guess that's part of the Elvis experience.

Anyway, back to the tour. In the living room area, right by the ropes is a really nice portrait of Elvis. I grabbed a shot of that.

This was actually our second trip to Graceland. Yeah, seriously, twice for us and we're not even big Elvis fans. Just goes to show you how little there is to do here in Memphis :-) Actually the first time we went was back in 1999 during CC's first trip here. She'd come to see me in San Antonio, but '99 was her first trip to Memphis. She figured we should go see Graceland since that's what everyone talks about. And after that first visit we both agreed it was a lot more interesting than we were expecting. The whole thing still sometimes feels like a very creepy shrine though, especially when you get out to the gravesite.

Across from the white living room there's a billiard room. You should see this place, the walls are covered in pleated fabric. It's a rather small room actually, kinda crowded if you're going to be playing pool but I guess it was big enough. They don't really let you rack things up and play a game there while on the tour. They do point out that there's a rip in the fabric covering the pool table where someone once tried to do a trick shot and stuck the cue through the felt. Gees, all that money, you'd think he'd have someone come in and redo the felt right? But then again, that would make the tour kinda boring and hey, maybe he WAS going to get it fixed and just never got around to it.

One thing that strikes you as a bit odd while you're on this tour is how normal sized everything seems. Given how stars flaunt their wealth these days you go into the thing expecting a MUCH larger house. This is Elvis for crying out loud right? You're thinking the guy MUST have had a HUGE mansion with lots and lots of land and the whole thing but actually, no, it's really just a big house. You don't have the high ceilings and stuff that the modern mansions have and the rooms are often small and cozy. Take this kitchen for example. Now, as far as kitchens go, this is a pretty good sized one right? Sure, if you're talking about any suburban house, this is great but for a star as big as Elvis? You'd think he'd have something more impressive. And just look at that fridge! Could have come right off the showroom floor at Sears. That's probably part of why he was so popular. Even when he was rich he was still pretty normal.

And then there's the jungle room. Ok now this is one of those places where you can see money. Granted, it's a pretty tacky use of money, but money all the same. Hell you even have a fountain over there in one corner of the room. The whole place looks like the lounge area of some sort of tiki restaurant or something like that. Yes, I know it was the 70's and this is the sort of thing people thought looked really cool back then but still, I'm pretty sure I would have gone in an entirely different direction if I were doing the decorations. I thought the monkeys were a nice touch though :-)

Now, at this point of the tour, you start to move away from the house as it used to be and more into little Elvis shrines set up in the remaining rooms. Yes, you do go down into the basement area where he's got another lounge area and one room where there are three or four TVs all set up so Elvis could watch them at the same time. He'd heard that LBJ used to do it that way so he decided to copy that. It all has that no-funny sort of 60's futuristic look.

In fact, quite a few of the things along the tour have that look. You get to see what folks back then thought was going to be the way of the future as well as a slice of what things were like in the past. Take this bed for example. He had this in his dressing room so I guess they took it with them when they were on tour. Notice how the bed is covered in this sort of shag fur stuff. Yeah that was living large back then. You knew you were somebody if you could afford all that faux fur :-) But to show off even MORE, it's ROUND. There was this sort of odd fascination back then with round beds. Y0u see it pop up over and over again in old movies and movies that pick on old movies. But what really sets this bed apart is what's in the canopy. He's got a STEREO hooked up in there. Yeah, I know, by today's standards that's really no big deal but back in the day, MAN that was AWESOME! And it's all chunky too with big knobs and push buttons and stuff. Must have felt like something out of NASA :-)

And check out this TV! Yeah this was down in the basement with a lot of other Elvis stuff like his old Army uniforms. This here was what you'd call a large screen TV in the way-back. This thing is quite a piece of furniture. It's about 4 feet wide and you've got maybe a 24 inch screen in the middle. Speakers on each side but you know that wasn't playing anything in stereo. TV wasn't broadcast in stereo so what you have there is more of a double-mono output. They didn't have it turned on though so I have no idea if this one was color or black and white. It's really hard to tell because TV tech went pretty fast back then and folks were still using black and white TV's for a long time. Keep in mind also that a lot of TV stations didn't broadcast in color either so having a color TV wasn't necessarily a big deal if your city didn't have a TV station that sent out a color signal.

Now this, this was cool, this was what had to be one of the first cell phones. Didn't work like a cell phone I'm sure. It was probably a radio phone. But DAMN that must have been pretty cool back in the 50's. You're Elvis right? So if you need to make a phone call, who has time to go track down a land line. You wanna make that call from the back yard or from the golf course or whatever. That's when you reach for this baby. Over on the right side, you've got your handset and, well I guess the whole rest of the box is taken up with whatever sends out the signal. I didn't see any antenna on it so I'm guessing that it collapsed. And in case you were wondering, yes, it's exactly as big as you think it is. That handset would fit just about any standard phone these days though it must have been considered small back then. Still, pretty cool that you could get stuff like that if you REALLY wanted them.

Now, now Elvis museum would be complete without showing off some of these. In the later years of his career, he went with the jumpsuit as his main performing wardrobe and he had a LOT of jumpsuits. These ones here are the more famous ones you've seen on TV and in pictures. Yes, that's the cape with the eagle on it. And that's the jumpsuit he wore it with. They even have video in the background showing him performing while in these costumes. Sort of makes you wonder how we survived the 70's doesn't it? I mean, people thought this stuff was COOL! Look at those belt buckles!

This particular room also houses a whole mess of his gold and platinum records. It's a racquetball court behind the house that they've turned into a little mini-museum. Two hole walls, floor to ceiling are covered in records. One wall has all of his North American gold and platinum singles, the other has all of the international ones. It's pretty impressive when you think about it, especially considering, as the tour points out, he never did a concert outside North America. Today that would be unheard of. Hell having that many gold records is unheard of today, but not touring international?

So there you go, Graceland. It's not a bad tour. Better if you're an Elvis fan of course. I mean, if you're not an Elvis fan the place is pretty pointless. It'd be like touring the Football Hall of Fame if you weren't a football fan. But if you're in the Memphis area and you were a fan of his music or movies or both, you should probably head over there and check it out. Probably hold a lot of memories for you.

One especially good thing about the tour, Elvis died on the toilet and thankfully, that's NOT on display :-)