ELVIS LIVES!

Now for those of you who think they don’t make myths like they used to
I offer you one compelling counterexample.
This counterexample is named
ELVIS PRESLEY.
This guy is equal parts Orpheus, Dionysis and Hercules.
(Don’t worry, it’ll all make sense by the end).
I mean, granted, he didn’t start out too great.
Like, his family is super poor
and if I had a nickel for every person who told young Elvis he couldn’t sing
Well, I’d still be nowhere near as wealthy as Elvis
but I’d at least have a little beer money, if you know what I mean.
But when he’s still a wee lad, his parents get him a guitar for his birthday
which he is actually pretty disappointed about
but only because what he really wanted was a GUN
and how American is that?
Anyway, he gets the guitar
and I cannot for the life of me figure out why
but he keeps practicing
even when everyone he runs up on seems intent on finding more and more creative ways
to tell him how bad he sucks.
He just keeps on losing singing contests
and styling his hair with a combination of vaseline and antigravity
until one day he struts into this record studio to record some songs
and he gets DISCOVERED.

Now, there is a reason why this happens
and that reason
is that at this time in ancient American history
white people and black people are not on the best of terms
especially in the south, where Elvis lives.
Like, black people can’t even go to a white people CONCERT, and vice versa.
But there are a bunch of white dudes who REALLY DIG the music black people are making
except they just wish it was a white guy who was singing it, is all
and along comes Elvis, who grew up listening to all this music black people are making
and has, like, the PERFECT VOICE for it
and so the white dudes who own the record label are like “Alright
we can make this work.”

AND MAKE IT WORK THEY DO.
They make it work to the tune of HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS
in a time where a hundred thousand dollars is pretty much an imaginary number
and not only that
but when Elvis starts doing concerts
it turns out that he is also SUPER SEXY
like, he starts waggling his hips because he is actually pretty nervous
but it turns out that with every waggle of his hips
he is also waggling the heartstrings of EVERY LADY IN THE ROOM.
He waggles their heartstrings so hard that they start throwing their underwears at him
and then making him sign his name on their sexyparts
which, in the 1950s, basically means anything above the ankle.
So of course he keeps doing these hip-waggles.
In fact, he starts waggling his hips MORE AND MORE
and it kinda freaks out the people who maybe don’t WANT ladies’ heartstrings getting waggled
like devout Christians and stuff
which is funny, because Elvis is ALSO pretty Christian.
He just happens to be a Christian who likes to waggle his hips is all.

Anyway, all the anti-wagglers in the world are not enough to stop Elvis’s rise to fame.
He gets super rich and well-known, and starts being in movies and stuff
but then DISASTER STRIKES:
Elvis Presley gets drafted into the US ARMY.
But he’s fine with that, because he is a GODDAMN AMERICAN HERO.
So he gets shipped over to Germany for a while
and every time he goes on leave, he pretty much records like a million top-selling records
and meanwhile he uses all of his crazy riches to buy all kinds of sweet gear for his army buddies
like new fatigues, and color TVs, and amphetamines.
He also manages to not get killed, which is good.

Then he comes back home and spends about seven years making TERRIBLE music/movies
until finally he’s like “Wait a second… Didn’t I used to be a total badass or something?”
At which point he puts on a white sequined jumpsuit
fit to outshine the combined glory of Zeus and King Ramses
and he does him some CONCERTS.
I’m sorry, did I say some concerts?
I meant all the concerts.
This guy is pulling off like a hundred and seventy concerts a year!
That is too many concerts!

And as if that wasn’t enough
he is also making constant improvements to his crazy huge mansion on Graceland Ranch
which is located at 3764 Elvis Presley Drive in Memphis Tennessee.
Wait, how is ELVIS FUCKING PRESLEY number 3764 on the street that BEARS HIS NAME??
Well, whatever.
The point is that this house is a modern-day pleasure palace
complete with plush purple drapes
an indoor waterfall
and limitless hamburgers.
Also, Elvis likes to sit in the basement and watch three TVs at once
and then change the channel by shooting the TVs WITH GUNS.
CHANNEL SURFING WITH GUNS IS PERHAPS THE MOST AMERICAN ACTIVITY THERE IS.

And as if THAT wasn’t enough
Elvis also gets wayyy into KARATE.
Yeah, he starts learning all these deadly moves
and jumping around and doing karate chops on stage
and at one point, some dudes try to bum-rush him during a performance
and he BEATS THE SHIT OUT OF THEM BY HIMSELF.
(Also one of his wives ends up cheating on him with her Karate instructor, so there’s that).

But yeah, mostly he’s doing WAY TOO MANY concerts/drugs.
He’s only about 40
but he is on so many drugs that his age is effectively doubled.
It’s like his circulatory system is the party house that everyone went to when you were in college
where they never had time to clean the poop off the walls because of too many parties.
You know what I’m talking about.
Well, even if you don’t, I’m sure Elvis would have.
He’s just stumbling up to the microphone at these concerts
holding on for dear life
and slurring his words like he’s giving a drunken blowjob to a horse.
It’s not pretty
nobody likes it
and his audiences are getting less and less sexy too.

So after selling over seventy-five million records
and topping even more charts with his albums than with his blood-toxicity levels
Elvis finally goes down.
He dies on the floor of his bathroom in Graceland
with about fifteen different drugs in his system
which is pretty legendary on its own.
But what happens afterwards is even more legendary.

So you remember Hercules, right?
You remember how he died, after a long and storied career
because his wife gave him POISON?
But then he didn’t really die
because the gods took pity on him
and put him in SPACE??
Yeah, I think you know where this is going.
Because Elvis may have died of a drug overdose
but he was such a radical musician
that ALIENS took pity on him
and put him
in space.

And to this day, his worshippers perform his rites
dressing in his traditional garb and re-enacting his greatest achievements
holding massive conventions in his name every year
saying prayers and bringing offerings to his final resting place in the meditation garden at Graceland.
And on top of all that
there’s his name
which is
say it with me now:
THE KING.

The end.

So it’s been a while since I’ve talked about America
let’s fix this
starting with a kid named Billy

So Billy gets born in New York City, way back in the day, to an Irish mom and an invisible dad.
He’s a mischievous little bastard
and by the time he’s like 12, he gets a little too mischievous and gets thrown in jail.
But it’s okay, because in addition to being a mischievous bastard
he is also a little bastard, like I said
so he escapes from prison by crawling out of the chimney
and then he goes WEST.

Now the West is a whole mythical realm all on its own
but let it just suffice to say
that at the time this story takes place
the west was pretty much just a glistening repository of guns, guff, and gumption.
So naturally, a mischievous little bastard like Billy is gonna fit right in.
And FIT RIGHT IN HE DOES.
First he shoots a blacksmith who’s trying to push him around
then he runs off and becomes a cattle rustler/cheesemaker
and then after doing that for a while
he gets hired by this lawyer named McSween to GUARD some cattle
because apparently they didn’t do background checks in those days.

But maybe they did do background checks
because as a cattle guard
Billy’s job description is to basically murder all the dudes who work for the OTHER cattle guys
who, granted, are classic mustache-twirling villains
who do things like shoot people
and then shoot their horses
and then cut off the heads of the horses and put them on the heads of the dudes.
Messed up, I know.

So yeah, bullets fly back and forth between these two posses of bad dudes for a while
and both sides do things that are pretty messed up
but the guys Billy is fighting against are way richer and know way more important government dudes
and also Billy makes the mistake of shooting at some US Cavalry
so in the end, he gets indicted
and has to make a plea bargain to get a pardon
where he totally sells out some of the other dudes in his gang.
But when he comes in to testify
THEY TOTALLY JUST ARREST HIM
so he’s just like “Psh, you guys clearly have not heard about me and chimneys.”
Then he climbs out the chimney and rides away on a horse someone brought for him.

So now Billy the Kid is widely known as a seriously bad dude
and the governor of New Mexico starts offering a really sweet reward for his arrest:
FIVE HUNDRED BUCKS.
DUDE.
Five hundred bucks?!
That’s barely enough to buy five hours with a very classy prostitute…
Wait, okay, I see how this could work.

ENTER PAT GARETT
he’s a buffalo hunter
but that does not mean he cannot also hunt DUDES.
Dudes are basically the same as buffalo
except with less legs and more bullets.
Some people say that Pat and Billy used to be best friends
but normally you do not form a posse to go arrest/kill your best friend for a measly 500 bucks.
Usually it takes like 600 at LEAST
So I don’t know.

Anyway, Pat chases Billy around for a while
while Billy is rustling cattle HARDCORE
and also pranking dudes with his guns
like this one time
when he’s hanging out in a bar
and this drunk jerk is like “I AM TOTALLY GOING TO KILL BILLY THE KID.”
Totally unaware of the fact that Billy is RIGHT THERE IN THE BAR.
So Billy walks up to him
and he’s like “Nice gun. Mind if I take a look?”
So the guy gives him the gun
LIKE AN IDIOT
and then instead of just shooting the dude with it, like a normal badass
Billy goes ahead and rotates the barrel so that the next chamber to fire will be empty
and then gives it back to him
and then he’s like “Oh, by the way, I’m Billy the Kid.”
And the guy is like “WHAAAAAAT” and starts shooting at him
but no bullets come out of his gun, obviously
so then Billy kills him
and everyone is like “Well, that was unnecessary
and therefore TOTALLY AWESOME.”

But all awesome things must come to an end.
One morning, Pat Garett tracks Billy and his gang to a little house on the Prairie
and he barricades the door with a dead horse
and then he starts cooking BACON.
And he’s like “Hey Billy, how would you like to come out and eat some tasty bacon?”
And Billy is like “Hey Pat, how would you like to GO TO HELL.”
And Pat is like “Well I’m sorry you feel that way, buddy.
I guess you can just starve to death inside that house of yours.”
But no one can withstand the smell of bacon for long
so eventually Billy and his gang surrender so they can get some breakfast.

Then Billy gets convicted, of course
for a whole bunch of murders
some of which he probably didn’t even commit
but that’s okay, because the number of murders he’s accused of
makes him a TOTAL CELEBRITY
he gets to go to Las Vegas and do interviews!
Granted, he spends a good portion of the interview denying a lot of those very same murders
but whatever, he’s famous!
Unfortunately, it also means that he gets sentenced to death for his crimes
and the prison where he’s being kept until he gets executed
DOESN’T EVEN HAVE A CHIMNEY.
So I guess he’s just boned, huh?

WRONG.
Because this is when Billy the Kid pulls some straight up action hero shit
like, his guards are walking him over to get executed
and he KNOCKS ONE OUT WITH HIS MANACLES
then he steals that dude’s gun, and shoots the other one in the face
after addressing him with a catchy one-liner BY NAME.
He then has to put off his escape for an hour
while he somehow manages to chew through his leg-irons.

But there is a natural law in the old West.
It is called the Conservation of Gumption.
It states that one man cannot hog all of the gumption for too long
before he has to die and let other people have a turn
and that’s why
three months later
Pat Garett finally catches up with Billy in some random house one night
and Billy goes down like a clown to a bullet in the stomach while yelling “Who’s there?” in Spanish.
At the time of his death, Billy is just shy of twenty-one years old
and according to some (wildly inaccurate) estimates
he has killed TWENTY-ONE MEN.
Dude
even if he only killed like five guys
dude has some serious work ethic.
I mean, I’ve already lived longer than he did
and I have yet to kill anything more intimidating than a spider.
Oh well
to each his own.

But I guess maybe that’s the moral of the story
that if you make a career out of killing dudes
eventually you are probably going to be one of the dudes who gets killed
but also
you will be REALLY AWESOME.

The end.