Skeletal

 They're everywhere in New York City.  Happy Halloween!

Back To Broadway

With a winner!  A jukebox musical of Bob Dylan's Nobel-Prize winning songs, with both brain, heart and a strong sense of both the past and present.  The terrific, diverse cast replaces the joker's indelible whine with baritones, tenors and all voices in-between, amplifying the more melodic tunes as never before.

 

Last Leg

Our road trip concluded with three days spent mostly in the car.  We drove west through Kentucky, stopping for the night in Louisville where David, twice as high as the original statue in Florence,  greeted us just as it began to rain.

He belongs to a museum cum gallery.

Art like this attracts a young, woke crowd.  At least for cocktails.

Manuel Antonio Dominguez 

The gallery also includes plenty of selfie spaces.

Apparently, big is a thing in Louisville.  That's the Slugger Museum and Factory.  Even I must have swung one of those once upon a time.

The Kentucky Science Center also lures visitors with a selfie opportunity in front of the nondescript building.  That's me, twirling my Frank Lloyd Wright souvenir umbrella.

The Kentucky Performing Arts Center is a little farther down Main Street.  Very walkable, Louisville.

Losing an hour to Eastern time meant we couldn't tour the Muhammad Ali Center as planned.  Bummer!

Florian recommended The Cafe, which recently began serving dinner.  I ordered a "hot brown," a delicious local specialty with turkey breast, bacon and tomato smothered in a Mornay sauce. 

Thom's juicy chicken was freshly fried.  He had it for lunch the next day, too.

The next morning we took the scenic route through bluegrass country, with a brief stop in Frankfort.

Despite the machinations of Kentucky's senior senator, scales of justice can still be found in places like Georgetown.  

Before heading to Charleston, we also detoured north along the Ohio River.  That bridge connects Ohio to West Virginia.

Are all capitol buildings domed?

Thom and I had been arguing about Joe Manchin earlier in the afternoon. "What do you expect him to do?" I yelled. "Vote against his political interest?"  He felt vindicated by this protest in Charleston; I insisted the sparse attendance proved my point, although the Reverend William Barber II could not have been more rousing.

Monday, our final and longest day on the road (12+ hours!)  included the Skyline Parkway, the northern extension of the Blue Ridge.  Who needs Vermont with foliage like this?  The Senior Pass he bought me last Christmas saved us $30.  

Next Time

Kitsch trumped conscience in terms of my Memphis priorities.   After overdosing on the former at Graceland, we headed to the Lorraine Motel just as the sun was starting to set.

 

In April 1968, a White supremacist assassin murdered Martin Luther King, Jr. on the balcony marked by a wreath.  The 1959 Dodge Royal and 1968 Cadillac are replicas of the cars parked in front that shameful day. The Lorraine was in the Green Book at the time, often attracting the musicians who played on Beale Street.  The owner never again rented room 306. 

The motel, now part of the National Civil Rights Museum, was closed by the time we arrived.

Local social justice warriors are honored on the Upstanders mural across the street.

Graceland

I was a little too young to be an Elvis fan, but I do love a man in uniform.  

The King also served his country by rolling up his sleeve for a polio vaccine in 1956, just before swiveling those infamous hips on the "Ed Sullivan Show."  That famous photo was nowhere to be seen at Graceland, although we were required to wear masks.   The money-shot light wasn't great. 

 

The house actually looks more impressive in kitschy reproductions.   It's all about the antebellum echoes of the grand portico.

That's the thing:  by today's standards, or at least those of the one-percent, Graceland would be within reach of the upper middle class.

The interior is a lot more fun than than the Biltmore's, possibly because I lived through the 70s, the last time it was redecorated.

The kitchen looks almost suburban.

Nearly every room has multiple televisions.  Six hung in the home entertainment center.  It put today's addiction to screens in perspective.

Here's where Elvis played DJ.

 Aside from a kaleidoscope, have you ever seen more color?

The "Jungle Room," which faces the backyard, is tame by comparison.

Horses still graze at Graceland. 

Elvis jammed  and played racquetball in a separate building on the property.

An additional wing of the house--originally built for his slot-car race track--now displays personal memorabilia like this tinted family portrait

. . . a bike that he may (or may not) have kept from his childhood in Tupelo, Mississippi

and his licensed gun.

I gave Della the same engraved silver cup that  Elvis's parents bought for Lisa Marie, their only grandchild!

Elvis, his stillborn older brother and his parents are buried on-site.

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The tour continues with several more exhibits, including his airplanes, the one manifestation of his wealth that seems contemporary.

Thom exulted in the passenger space.

The bathroom may have been fancier than in coach, but it wasn't much larger.

It's been said that celebrities stop maturing at the age when they first become famous. That certainly rings true with Elvis, whose obsessions are those of a horny teenager:  girls and cars. If you believe David Bowman (and I do) Elvis was in love with Ann-Margret, perhaps because they both were in the same boat.  I mean car.

C'mon, who among us wouldn't want to tool around Hollywood in this baby?

If I had been Elvis, I would have had my gold records integrated into my hub caps.

He certainly had enough of them.

Cars, I mean.  Thom said hello to one of Delia's ancestors.

Judging by his color choices, Elvis certainly didn't harbor any doubts about his masculinity.

Elvis said he never had more fun than driving a dune buggy.  I had mine at least a year before he did!  And it was tangerine metal flake!

As much as I loved Ann-Margret, I hated Elvis movies even more.

An exhibit called "Icons" makes the case that Elvis's costumes continue to influence entertainers of both genders.

Rock 'n roll stars are born, not made  

. . . although Thom didn't look as deformed in his virtual outfit as I did.

Let the shopping begin.  Pre-pandemic, Graceland was earning close to $10 million annually (we paid $75 for the basic tour!).  Too bad pink Cadillac masks had sold out

. . . but just about anything else you can imagine is available.

This coffee cup was too tacky even for me.

Who gets all the loot?  Lisa Marie--a Scientologist who includes Michael Jackson among her three exes and supposedly still sleeps over on the second floor at Graceland when she's in Memphis--owns 100% of Elvis's estate.  That means her four children--including Riley Keough, with the pink hair, now an accomplished actress who's fearless in Zola--are sitting pretty.  If Baz Luhrman's 2022 biopic makes Elvis hot again, their inheritance will only grow.