Anyway, Gr@celend is exactly like I remembered it: a gaudy, shaggy, hideous-in-the-best-possible-way time capsule from my childhood. I was disappointed in the tour guide, which is now a pair of headphones strapped to a small, multilingual box of electronically recorded blah. I guess it's practical if say, you only speak Mandarin, but I would much rather have an interesting, flesh-and-blood guide. Preferably one who knows some good (read: raucous and potentially bawdy) stories that you wouldn't hear anywhere else. My friend Christina had one like that once. He told their group that Elv!s like to fuck his way from one end of this white couch to the other:
Come to think of it, that particular guide is probably part of the reason for the headphones. *cough*
Anyway, it was a little dry. But the place itself is really cool. I took a ton of pictures, so those of you who don't want to make the trip and drop thirty bucks (including cars and planes - tweny-five if you just do the house. But parking was SIX BUCKS!!!) I will post a bunch of them below.
One of the things that really struck me this time around was how many gold and platinum records there are.
In short, there are a shitload. It is truly staggering. I couldn't even get them all into the frame. I think for me the Elv!s legend overshadows the music, so I don't often think about how many records he actually had.
In addition to these, there are about nine million outfits that he wore onstage. And yes, they are just as hideous in person (if not moreso).
I was taking pictures of everything, since our digital camera does just fine without flash (there is no flash photography alowwed anywhere inside the house). The best part was when I took this picture, I was holding my camera over the glass case. i had reached past the guard rail in front of it, and there was an alarm going off over the loudspeakers "Please move away from blah blah blah" over and over, and since I was listening to the tour on my headphones, I couldn't hear it. the b.h. grabbed my arm and pulled it back before I was able to get a better shot.
This room held a bucnh of stuff that had been pulled out of the "private areas" upstairs. Here's a somewhat fuzzy pic of the King's extremely fuzzy bed:
All I can say about this is eeeew. It made me sweat (in the bad way) just looking at it.
Also, this particularly terrifying statue came from up there. I wonder if it was in the bedroom?
This one made us all snicker a little:
I guess it's hard to see, but the sweat jacket has "D.E.A. Staff" embroidered into it. In the (sarcastic) words of Penn Gillettte: "Elvis didn't do no drugs!!"
His history with the DEA has always amused me.
One thing that had changed since my last visit was the fact that you have to exit many of the exhibits (car, plane, "Elvis After Dark," and the other non-house spots) through gift shops. I mean, there was a gift shop for each exhibit. Wow. And everything was made in China, and it was all very pricey. I heard that the estate has been purchased by some corporation, so I imagine this stuff is only going to get worse. Which is fine by me, because I don't really need to go back. It was fun while it lasted, but I think I'm gonna have to go Dollywood next time.
Finally, I don't know how well you'll be able to see it, but one of the King's horses was rolling around on his back in the field. And how.
