I wish I had the energy and nerve to write that fantasy idea of mine about a slumber party at Graceland, early summer 1977, when Lisa Marie is hosting a number of guests including Michael...and a kid with information from the future is forced to tell some truths that may upset everybody.
Since it was the Austin office to which I filed my 2009 return, and since it was long enough ago that I sent it there, I went to the IRS official website just now to check on its status.
The Good News: my refund will go out in about two weeks. And get to me well before my planned vacation.
The Bad News: the IRS "recalculated" my refund, so instead of being enough to fund my whole trip, it'll be enough to get me a new pair of walking shoes and maybe a meal at Fat Boys in Brooksville. So I'm going to have to pare back my itinerary a leetle. But I'm not worried.
PS: I've noticed, via Hernando Today, that Fat Boys was eventually replaced by the new-and-completely-different Woodside Inn. I wonder if the Coney Island Hot Dog Stand is still around.
PPS: Coney Island Drive-In is still there. Elvis ate there. A scene from a zombie movie was filmed there. We must include it in the March Maraud.
Hey. Have you any idea how hard it is to find decent floor plans of Graceland over the Internet? I had to go all the way to a site in Holland for some...
You see, the MJ saga has brought back memories from the summer of 1977 when Elvis Presley died. For a while, I'd had an idea for a story, with the working title Equation, partly based on the time-travel stories of Heinlein, and somewhat akin to The Butterfly Effect, but told from the side of the character whose life is the one initially being meddled with, rather than the meddler. Well, the character in question is an 11-year-old boy in 1977, and his first adventure makes him something of a celebrity. In a following segment, he gets invited to a party at Graceland by Lisa Marie...and one of the other guests there is a teenage friend of hers name of Michael Jackson. Well, the hero knows their destinies, but there's the ethical dilemma of whether to speak or stay silent. Whether to tell the truth, however offensive or dangerous it may be, or enable their fantasies.
I know I'm not the only one to think these things...but what if hindsight ISN'T 20/20 vision?
* Saw my DVD of Ramrod To Emden the other day. It's an okay documentary, but not up to the level of Thunderbolt or the original Memphis Belle.
* Spent a good part of yesterday cutting the clicky bases off my collection of Mechwarrior: Dark Age miniatures, so I could repaint/touch up some of them for other games. I may also go through my small-scale mecha collection and IRAN (Inspect, Rebuild As Necessary) them for gaming.
* My Dad got the VHS collection of a deceased neighbor and it's sitting in our dining room. What can you say about the mind of a man who had both Gospel Music and Blue Velvet? Dad's already taken the initiative to give the Elvis movies to another neighbor. Our own VHS player doesn't work and needs new internal rubber parts.
* Frozen pizza (a gift from my Kentucky buddy Stanley) in the oven. Dinner in ten minutes.
I heard on NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me!" today that Mariah Carey has now broken Elvis Presley's record for lifetime Hit Singles on the American Pop Charts.
Does this mean we'll see Mariah impersonators take the stage in Vegas, Atlantic City, Branson and Pigeon Forge? Does this mean that die-hard Elvis fans will try to re-mix The King's catalog (in the manner that "Little Less Conversation" was re-mixed and made a hit) in an attempt to regain the crown? Or how about Jacko? Maybe he'll try to make a comeback now? Or Garth Brooks? Or somebody else still in the running?
FP (who is afraid to check the Pop Charts these days, as square as is)
Anna Nicole Smith is dead. She died in Florida this afternoon. I'm blogging about her for no other reason than nobody else in my blog-circle has said anything.
She was born within a year of my own birth.
I never saw her Playboy pictures. I never saw her TV show. I never read any of the tabloid stories about her. The world she existed in is still completely foreign to me, even though it's partly my subject for Chillin' Out.
She died like Elvis did. I don't know if she died like Marilyn Monroe did, as that happened before I was born. But she went out of her way to make herself another Marilyn, and I suppose that final act has no other way of being played.
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