I Have Left Elvis’s Building

Every pilgrimage needs its Graceland, its Mecca. For Millions of Muslims, their Gracelend is, um, Mecca. For Tanya and me, our Graceland was…well…Graceland.

Memphis, Tennessee.

You got it. More vacation photos! See, Tanya and I realized that our trip from Nags Head, North Carolina to Los Angeles would take us right through Memphis. So how could we possibly turn down an easy trip to Elvis’s house? Well, we couldn’t. We didn’t. We went. And I took pictures.

But before we got to Graceland we passed through Scottsboro, Alabama. If that place sounds familiar to you, then you probably harbor a secret desire to buy other people’s lost airline luggage. You see, Scottsboro is home to the Unclaimed Baggage Center. The place where millions of pieces of unclaimed lost luggage get sold at low, low prices to greedy patrons willing to profit from other people’s misfortune.

I am one of those people! I want to buy people’s lost stuff. I was really just hoping that a lot of musicians had run into recent bad luck at the hands of the airlines. So you can imagine my excitement when I learned that the place I had just heard about on the national news was only a few blocks away!

We got off the freeway and weaved our way through town. There’s really no easy way to get to this place. You have to be alert and follow the directions that you read off the freeway billboard. But I was on a mission. And we found it! My dream was about to come true.

Only, I forgot one key thing. We were in Alabama…and it was Sunday. Nothing is open on Sundays in the Bible belt. Hell, you’re lucky to find a freaking church with its doors unlocked.

So I did what any other red blooded American would do in this situation.

I pouted.


And Tanya made fun of me.


What the South fails to realize is that people who are willing to buy other people’s lost stuff don’t have much need for church. Damnit! Heathens want to buy crap on Sunday!

I hate the Bible belt.

But we finally made it to Graceland.


We took the tour. We saw Elvis’s dining room! Wow. He like ate here and stuff…sometimes.


We saw the infamous “TV room.” This room looks like something out of James Lilek’s “Interior Desecrations.” You can’t really see it in the picture but underneath that creepy porcelain monkey with the pitch black, lifeless eyes there’s a sign that reads “Please Do Not Touch.” I’m pretty sure that’s because that black eyed monkey “will eat you!


Also, there are also only two TVs pictured here. Of course you know there are three. You can pretend like you don’t know anything about Elvis, but secretly you have the knowledge that Elvis had three TVs in his TV room. You’ve known all along, haven’t you? Clandestinely, we’re all hicks.

Here’s the back of Graceland. Nobody ever really wonders what the back of Graceland looks like. Not until you bring it up anyway. Well, this is what it looks like. Awesome.


The tour through Graceland is an audio tour. You have to listen to headphones the entire time. Everyone in the joint looked like obstinate teenagers. If every tourist didn’t look as if they were genuinely interested in everything, I would have felt as if I’d stumbled into my worst vacation nightmare.


And lastly...

Elvis is dead.




Fun Fact: It was Kevin’s birthday the other day! Go to his website and click around. Let him know that you care that he’s one year closer to death.

He’s almost 30!

How did Kevin celebrate his birthday this year? Well, he got 6 stitches under his chin thanks to a sea kayak.

And he stepped on a bee.

Fun!



P.S. This post was supposed to be up yesterday but...Blogger is a piece of stupid, stupid crap!