It seems like we spent more time at the performance tent this year than in the past. Early on, we were treated to what seemed to be an endless stream of wailing Elvi. It is unfortunate that Elvis ever recorded the song “My Way”. Remember at the end of his recording where he goes up and hits those high notes to end the song. Remember how good it sounds. He could do that on a variety of songs and it was always good. The modern day tribute artist likes to try and do this and always seems to fail miserably. The biggest problem seems to be that they cease to have the ability to form words. It is literally wailing. Most of the time it is out of tune. When Nick hears these awkward performances, he gets uncomfortable and tends to want to escape. He has been to enough Elvis Weeks that he is able to handle bad Elvis impersonators ok. We came out of a gift shop at one point and there was a lady on stage just getting started. She was wearing a red, white and blue outfit and a studded collar. It sounded like she might be doing a Marilyn Monroe impersonation although she in no way looked like Marilyn. She said she was going to sing-a-long with the king. Then they started playing “Can’t Help Falling In Love with You”. She said along quietly as she danced around on the stage. Her outfit did not flatter her shape at all. Her dancing was only comparable to that of a little girl who is in her third week of dance classes and hasn’t really gotten serious with them yet. Her dance wasn’t planned at all. It was complicated by her attempts to stay in her flip-flops. And they weren’t those flat flip-flops. I was waiting for her to fall out of them and possibly off the stage. Her singing was at best horrible. At times it was thankfully quiet and close to being in tune. Other times it was growling and out of tune so bad that it ceased to have any melody at all. More than once, Nick said “I’ve got to get out of here”. I completely expected to see him run into the nearest gift shop, cower in a corner with his hands over his ears and make enough noise to insolate him from ever hearing her again. I’m happy that he did stick it out. As soon as she was done, I told Nick that I needed to get a picture with her. We went and found her. She agreed to a picture.
Later we saw a lady that I called Divine because she looked like she was a Divine impersonator. She had stacks of hair and a red, sleeveless dress. She danced around just outside of the tent like she was trying to get attention. I was trying to figure out how to get a picture of her without attracting too much attention. I started following her around. At one point, I knew that she would be walking toward me so I decided to start taking video and just hold my phone against my chest. I also had an “Aloha from Hawaii” fan in my hand. She asked me where I got that. At first I thought she was talking about my phone but I soon realized that she was talking about the fan. I told her and I got a reasonably good video of her and the guy she was with. She had bizarre make-up and botox lips. I saw her again later in the line at the candlelight vigil. She had changed out of the red dress and was crying uncontrollably.
We did get some seats in the performance tent for a little while. The first performer was a short guy who looked nothing like Elvis. He looked more like the bass player for Spinal Tap. He started with a lot of energy and I took some video of him. Later he was sweating profusely like most of the performers end up doing. They gave him a towel and he unzipped his shirt, turned his back to the audience and toweled off. He had glittery stripes up the sides of his pants. They were coming off. Another performer talked about his first trip to an Elvis Week 25 years ago. He looked more like Skeletor than Elvis. He was talking about going to his first candlelight vigil with his wife and said, “we didn’t stop bawling for two days”. My eyebrows raised. The audience applauded.
There was an old lady wearing purple crocs sitting just down from us. She really got into the music. She would twitch to the music in her chair. Later, she got up and danced. I really thought she was going to fall over at one point. I got video of both twitching and dancing. Later, I saw her at the vigil. She had a multi-color, light-up tiara. She was sitting in a lawn chair in the middle of Elvis Presley Boulevard.