elvis.is.rockin'.the.heavens.

elvis has left the building, and now rocks the heavens.

last week, i learned of a sad news. it came thru an email sent to me by a colleague. it goes like this: i don't know if you've heard already... jen's dad passed away late afternoon yesterday.

elvis is dead.

i have seen several elvis impersonators in the philippines (thanks to television) but i have not met one before, not until i met jen's dad. at first, i only heard stories about him through jen's neverending storytelling. i think she enjoys telling stories. you could spend the whole day and night listening to her and she will never run out of stories to tell. and these are not just mouth-to-ear storytelling. jen has the ability to capture her experiences and tell them as stories in a very interesting way.

jen told me stories of elvis. his elvis. his dad.

these stories were a bit blurry now, but what struck me the most out of these stories was that his dad was once one of the elvis impersonators of his time. if i remember it correctly, he even brought this parodying with him when he was in the US. when i finally met jen's dad, i really could not find any traces of elvis in him or even though i tried hard to reconcile and recreate how he could have looked like 20 years ago, it was a little bit of an attempt to futility. jen's dad never was an inch like elvis.

but as our talks went on, jen's elvis went on to tell me his elvis story, his elvis days and his elvis looks. it even came to a point when he almost sang us one elvis piece. every bit of elvis then showed in the man in front of me and and i slowly learned to associate him with the king. there was an elvis in him indeed.

soon, the mcdonalds where we were, flooded with people and children raring to get their hands on a mcchicken. and oblivious to all this people was this elvis savoring his story and reliving his days. but more than his elvis story, i was drawn to the man as a father. he, being a father was not a great story to tell, but a great experience to learn from. he has endured so much to have made that far.

he still endured. until last week. when he last sported his sideburns and energized the world, jen and her brother, with his hillbilly songs.

he is now at peace, and rockin' the heavens. he will surely be missed.

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i am not a huge fan of elvis but, if you are a little bit into music, surely (eventually), you will come across him. then you will start to sing...'you ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog'.

elvis is almost as trivial to me as a ufo. not until my parents started playing their cassette tapes on sunday afternoons while i was ordered to take a nap. which brings me to a theory that could it be that as children, we were always sent off to take a sunday afternoon nap not to grow "big and tall" but, so that they can listen to their favorite oldies songs? is that our parents' sunday afternoon conspiracy?