This Week for Happy Hour: Going out in Style

It’s Elvis Week!  Time to party like a pro, before it’s too late.

I make that face when I puke.

Everyone knows how Elvis died: fat, old, considerably past his prime, and apparently extremely constipated, because he suffered a simultaneous heart attack and a brain-popping aneurysm while on the toilet at his home in Graceland.  (Actually, the coroner’s report is sealed until 2027, but I’m still going to go with simultaneous ticker-noggin bust while trying to poop.)  Damn, how hard was he straining?  Yeah, he was on a bunch of different prescription painkillers, yada yada, but a little fiber couldn’t have hurt the situation.  No?

Anyway, many observers consider the circumstances of Elvis’s death to be less than ideal.  But why?  I think the complainants basically constitute his most loyal fan base, and thusly they want to experience more of the hips-and-glam sound-and-lights spectacular that was Elvis Presley.  And who could blame them?  The King.  And I get that. 

But what I’m saying, nothing good could have really come from protracting his sorry decline.  He would have become more and more pathetic until his title, “The King,” began to seem sadly sarcastic.  And that would have been a shame.  Just a shame.

???!

Modernize the idea…  Think of Brett Favre.  Did he go out in style while he was on top?  No.  He had to protract the thing until he was hobbled and pictures of his flaccid winky were floating around on the interweb tubes and nobody in Green Bay or Minnesota wanted to see him try to get a football helmet over his enlarged old-man ears.  Now go back to Elvis.  If there were cell phones in his time, there’s no question he’d have texted a pic of Elvis Junior to some floozy, who’d have then made it into some degrading issue of the day. 

Too late.

(Incidentally, I just can’t wait for some celebrity to make a mockery of this type of thing, and send their junk to everyone in their cell phone and every major news outlet: Here’s my General and two Colonels, so what?  How is the most porn-addicted country on the planet also the most offended by penis texts?  Sheesh.  Consider this an official call for public figures to mass text images of their pubic figures.)

Back to aging Elvis: So what’d he do instead?  The rock star went out in style.  He lived fast and hard and squeezed the juice out of life, then condensed it, froze it, and put it in a delicious cocktail and slugged it down and shook his hips and said, “Uh huh!” and then bought a pink Cadillac and drove it off into the proverbial sunset.  He’s Elvis!  He wasn’t gonna grow old and wear adult diapers and be pushed around in a wheelchair like some helpless wrinkled invalid. No way, no how.  He was going out in style.  (Cut his losses, at least.)

Maybe the better modern equivalent is Keith Richards, who has been giving commendable efforts towards going out in style for some time now.   

He could beat up Hancock.

I am beginning to think this guy is really a bored Immortal.  He’s drank enough booze to get Rhode Island drunk, and swallowed and/or smacked enough contraband to kill any normal living thing except the honey badger.  Most recently, on his 62nd birthday, he fell (threw himself?) from a coconut tree and walked away.  No harm done.  Seriously, the only thing that got hurt was the coconut.  Imagine any senior US Senator falling from a coconut tree.  Coin flip that he's dead on impact.  Most people can’t even make it through their mundane routine without getting hurt.  [May want to skip this video if you're squeamish...]

In conclusion, party like pro this week, because you never know when you’ll die on the toilet.  I know I will.  I don’t want to end up bored and brain dead for no reason, anyhow.  It’s like Tom Waits said, “I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.”

Half price Happy Hour, 5-9pm on Friday!  Then bring in your favorite Elvis/Rolling Stones/Green Bay Packers gear on Saturday for one of the few remaining Saturday Movie Days of the summer.  College Football approacheth!  Movie recommendations welcome.

P.S.  I’m going to be offering a new service along with this Happy Hour “blog” for NFL football season.  I will be providing you with the Official TWFHH NFL Pick of the Week, so that you may prosper from my prophetic (albeit non-information based) tendency in the field of professional football matchups.  This service is free of charge.  Unless you lose money on it.

This week’s pick: Seattle +3

2 QBs vying for a position in Seattle's starting lineup vs. Rivers, who will probably only play 2-3 quarters.  Plus, without a first-rate offense, SD's special teams will try to find a way to lose the game.

Cheers!

Finn