Mojo Dojo Casa House
An Austin update + màs Graceland
Yesterday afternoon I walked a little over two miles from my hotel on South Congress to the Bullock Texas State History Museum to see Dune 2 in IMAX. Unlike the IMAX at Universal CityWalk, the museum doesn’t let moviegoers choose seats ahead of time, and so I threw a book into my backpack and left for the theater a few hours before showtime. I still missed Memphis, but the walk was great and paired very nicely with the sound of Mississippi John Hurt in my headphones.
I got to the theater an hour and a half early and sat outside and read Eve Babitz. Soon, a ton of people were sitting on the same little wall, and when we were let into the auditorium thirty minutes later, I snagged a fantastic seat in the center. Wow. It sure was fun watching Austy Butler and Teemo Tay act like big, strong men.
You are a geek and an animal.
Speaking of acting like big, strong men, there’s a room inside Graceland that my tour guide, Sean, referred to as “Elvis’ man cave.” Keep in mind, the mansion already has a pool room, a racquetball court, a home office, and a “Jungle Room.” Televisions are ubiquitous. The chandelier that hangs in the foyer is missing a crystal chain as a result of one of Elvis’ poorly aimed karate kicks, and there’s a bullet hole in the playground slide Elvis bought for Lisa Marie. (I can only assume she wasn’t visiting at the time.) Strategically placed telephones enabled Elvis to call the cooks in the kitchen and request whatever his heart desired at whatever time of night he desired it. Graceland is a Mojo Dojo Casa House…but a man needs his own space, y’know? (I hope you can hear me rolling my eyes.)
Without further ado…the man cave Elvis deserved.
I’d like to move on from the man cave now.
Earlier I mentioned Elvis had a racquetball court at Graceland, and when Sean announced he was taking us there, I felt a twinge of “Oh no.” Elvis played racquetball a few hours before he died on August 16, 1977, and when I read about the events of that morning in Peter Guralnick’s Careless Love (the second weighty tome in his two-part series on Elvis that I recommend to anyone who’s interested in American popular music), I sobbed like a kid reading Charlotte’s Web. It was all so…simple.
Elvis slept all day and stayed up all night and didn’t care that the rest of the world didn’t work that way, and so on the morning of August 16 — IE: the middle of the damn night — he asked some friends and family members to join him for racquetball. It was raining in Memphis, and during the walk from the mansion to the racquetball court, Elvis raised his hands to the sky. When the rain immediately stopped, he turned to his posse and said, “If you’ve got a little faith, you can stop the rain.” At one point — either before or after the game — he sat at the piano next door to the court and played “Unchained Melody,” a song by the Righteous Brothers that Elvis sang the hell out of. He was supposed to leave on another tour later that night, and when he tried on his new jumpsuit, he complained that he was too fat. He also complained about touring and vowed that once he got home he’d start running his career the way he wanted to.
Honestly, who hasn’t insulted themselves and then vowed to change everything someday?
After seeing the mansion and the surrounding buildings, we walked through a narrow room containing more archival items in glass cases, including a leather bound Bible, a pistol with a turquoise handle, and a portrait of young Lisa Marie. One item that caught my eye was the hand-written physician’s record from the morning Elvis was born in Tupelo, Mississippi.
As I bent over to get a closer look at the categories like “Color” and “Child Legitimate,” I felt something tickle my right ribcage. I ignored it. I snapped a photo of the physician’s record and felt the tickle again; however, this time it was a firm, deliberate tickle targeting the side of my right tit. When I looked up to see what the hell was going on, a man in my tour group who belonged to the Christian Motorcyclists Association calmly looked back at me and said, “Oh, I thought you were someone else.” His female companion — who looked nothing like me and was 60 if she was a day — told me, “I’m so sorry” and walked off. Call me old fashioned, but if I accidentally groped the wrong person I would at least die of humiliation.
Oh well. I guess it’s kinda great I got groped at Graceland.
I think it’s BBQ o’clock over here in Austin, so I’ll get a move on for now and write more later. Plus, tomorrow’s another travel day, so I wanna make sure I get my steps in now.
Santa Fe, New Mexico is next. Wonder what that’ll be like.
Groped at Graceland: a memoir 🤦♀️