Why No Elvis Library?

Hard to believe that 30 years have passed since Elvis died in the crapper with enough drugs in his blood to fuel a Grateful Dead tour and more fat clogging his arteries than could grease a train. Fast forward three decades later and universities are falling all over themselves to host a $500 million presidential library for a guy that even the diehards who voted for him don’t think too much of, so it begs the question of why isn’t there an Elvis Library and Museum? Presidential libraries to a large extent are tourist attractions, and who would be a bigger draw than Elvis? It’s enough to curl your sideburns, mama!

The Liverpool longhairs may be the Fab Four, but Elvis is The King! He continually ranks at the top of Forbes’s annual list of highest-earning dead celebs and his image is reincarnated everywhere from TV’s Johnny Bravo to the big screen’s Bubba Ho-Tep (and a prequel coming in ’08 titled—I kid you not—Bubba Nosferatu and the Curse of the She-Vampires) on down to the Elvis Trooper at sf cons—the Big E still is big business.

So how about some library love for Elvis, a poor Southern boy with god-given talent who took a budding form of music dismissed by critics as a passing fad and turned it into a world religion, made a bundle of loot off good records and bad movies, shot TVs when he didn’t like the programs (Elvis invented the remote) and cars when they wouldn’t start, got fat as a pink Cadillac, and flew off to hillbilly heaven at age 42 leaving ‘em weeping by the millions.

 Hail to The King, baby!