For rock and roll fans, today is an emotional day – it's the 30th anniversary of the day that Elvis Presley sat on the toilet straining to do a poo so big that it ended up killing him.
And, since Elvis Presley fans are among the more fervently deranged in pop music, they're treating the 30th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death as a huge deal. Even though it's literally so hot in Memphis that people have started to die, fans have been taking part in a week-long vigil that yesterday included a solemn procession along Elvis Presley Boulevard and into Graceland with fans carrying candles, flowers and stuffed toys to leave on Elvis's grave as a mark of respect. It's a shame, really, since Elvis is doing OK for flowers and toys at the moment and would have really liked a Nintendo Wii from someone, or at least significant quantities of ten different kinds of drugs and a wheelbarrow full of deep-fried peanut butter sandwiches. You know, just for old time's sake.
It's been 30 years since Elvis Presley died, and yet he's still as popular as he's ever been. Hardly a year goes by without an influx of brand new Elvis Presley documentaries, Greatest Hits albums, books and novelty hip-swinging Elvis clocks for fans to feast on. Elvis Presley memorabilia regularly sends eBay crazy, stories about dogs eating Elvis's teddy bears still make headlines, only giant mega-sales of miserable songs keep Elvis from making more money than any other dead person and generally Elvis Presley is still so beloved that benders jump to buy his houses. With this in mind, it's no wonder that people are treating the 30th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death as a big deal.
Because, you see, Elvis Presley wasn't just the man who popularised rock and roll and changed music forever, or the man who visited president Nixon in a cape and gave him a gun in the hope that he'd be made into an FBI agent, or the man who didn't know what oral sex was until Cybill Shepherd drew him a diagram – or something – Elvis Presley was literally the Anna Nicole Smith that your parents liked. And that's why so many fans have been literally risking death in temperatures of over 105 degrees (40 C) to commemorate the 30 years since his passing.
In Memphis, anything up to 75,000 Elvis fans – with many probably wearing rubber wigs and hand-sewn sequinny jumpsuits – are in the middle of week-long vigil in and around Graceland to remember the joy that Elvis Presley gave them by being good, then joining the army, then getting fat and making a lot of terrible films, then slimming down and being good again, then getting especially fat and dying in the middle of a crap. The Seattle Times reports:
The procession, with fans walking mostly single-file and holding candles, filed up Graceland's long, winding driveway and past Presley's grave in a small garden beside the white-columned house. Many fans carried flowers, stuffed animals and other small gifts to leave at the grave. Tom Vigil, 42, of Denver was determined not to let the heat stop him, even though he was missing part of a lung from recent surgery. Decked out in a black Elvis-type jumpsuit, Vigil pulled an oxygen tank behind him with a breathing tube attached to his nose. "I'm not in the best of health, but I wanted to be out here and be part of this," he said.
A 67-year-old Elvis fan who'd travelled to Memphis from New Jersey wasn't so lucky, though. The crushing heat killed her inside a trailer at a Graceland campsite. In ten years, when Elvis has been dead for 40 years, many of his original fans will be either dead or too old to mark the anniversary, so this makes today's landmark anniversary all the more poignant.
However, in August 2037 these commemorations will be blown out of the water by the 30th anniversary of Mike Reid's death, where people will mope about east London in flat caps and diamond-patterned cardigans telling toe-curlingly racist jokes in voices that sound as if they've suffered burns to their throats.
Read more:
Elvis Fan Dies From Heat During Anniversary Celebration – Seattle Times
john says
Lick my hairy beanbag you scumsuckers. I love Elvis.
Doktor M W Mallone says
Elvis turned a barren desert into a lush jungle, single-handed, for all humanity to enjoy…the merciful Gods preserved his righteous soul and spared years of danger, for if it isn’t dangerous….it isn’t “Rock-n-Roll” !
dorothy says
im not Gona spend hours goin thru al l bad words unda the sun; but il let u know lat elvis presLey will always remain in many hearts & wil continue 2 through out l future! ~ yeah u can continue wiv lis junk website but it aint Gona help in anyway; jus makes u a right fool & lat is al any1 wil notice about lis sight.
Mary says
for the sake of humanity, please learn to spell Dorothy.