[for Sunday, July 15]
I made my first trip to Graceland today, tagging along with Rebecca and her mom and mom’s boyfriend, who were visiting from Texas. Ho. Lee. Crap. That place is furnished in suede and carpeted from floor to ceiling in the tackiest colors you can possibly imagine. And there are mirrors everywhere. It is kitsch defined. Kitsch squared. A bizarre little bubble of weirdness trapped in the amber of rock ‘n’ roll history. Such an interesting place: Small, compared to the cavernous mansions built by celebrities these days, and completely eccentric. It’s macabre enough to be traipsing around in a dead person’s house, around the eclectic accoutrements that comprise someone’s intimate dwellings, but it’s even more macabre to go stomping around a gravesite, taking pictures. But, that’s what people do, I suppose. I certainly didn’t think twice about snapping photos of every mundane swatch of fabric or ashtray in the place.
I just kept wondering what it must be like for Lisa Marie to know that her childhood home is a tourist trap. Talk about never being able to go back.
More pictures are here, if you’ve got the stomach for the fabulous midcentury color schemes.
Word. I went a few years ago and was kinda disturbed. I think because it was kitschy before kitschy got cool; this was how the man genuinely enjoyed his house and it’s so weird to be filing through the building and taking pictures and saying things like, “Ohmigah! That horrible, horrible kitchen!”. Didn’t stop me from saying it or taking pics, though.
Just a weird, sad place. I’m cool with not ever going back.
Elvis really was The King.