taking care of business

The year was 1997, and our good friend Dirk was turning 30. And by god we had to commemorate it. So we arranged a trip, bought his ticket, told him to pack his bags without telling him the destination...and flew to Memphis to tour Graceland.

See, Dirk had mad love for Elvis. "He's the King!” he would insist. Often. Dirk watched the movies, had a young Elvis wristwatch. We all knew he was kidding as he is an indie music kinda guy, but he would never give up the ghost.

Until we flew his ass to Tennessee. He actually finally pulled me aside and said, "you know I'm just kidding, right?" So busted.

The trip was fantabulous. I believe there were five of us. We hit the Coors Brewery and got some sort of free beer, did the whole downtown Memphis thing and had the best barbecue of my life (still to this day), went into the hotel hot tub in our underwear (who remembers to pack swim suits?), and drank copious amounts of alcohol named things like "the boll weevil" out of huge fish tanks while being serenaded to "Walking In Memphis"

Seriously, it was awesome.

What was the cherry on top of the whole trip is the fact that Graceland was...really cool! Inevitably you kind have low expectations because of the sheer cheesiness of it all, but when you get down to it Elvis was a big deal and just eccentric enough to leave a fun legacy behind. Honestly in the whole MTV Cribs generation who rivals the Jungle Room? This kind of over the top fanaticism is limited to a handful of crazies. And we love to gawk.

When RFW mentioned a couple of weeks ago that she had to go to Memphis for work and was curious if anyone wanted to join to stay the weekend and do the whole Graceland thang, I could do nothing but say "Hells yeah!” Thus this Thursday Gerf, RFW, and myself are off to the land of blue suede shoes and delta blues to revel in the glory of Elvis' ghost.

That is if he is really dead. I have my doubts.