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I'm a Saint. I became one this summer, and I've decided it's time to share the story.
We were traveling around the Pacific Northwest; we'd started off in Seattle, and had made our way down to Oregon. In Portland, we found a small leaflet listing the city's "alternative" art galleries -- one of which is The 24 Hour Church of Elvis. Now, I'm not a big one for visiting churches, whether they have art or not. But I had made an exception for the Pope's little chapel in Rome, and I decided to make an exception for the Church of Elvis. The church proved elusive, however; it seemed that they had been forced to move out of their old address; following the directions given on the door, we traced them to 720 SW Ankeny Street, near the Burnside Bridge. There a painted sign pointed us at the new location.
![[The Church of Elvis's Sign]](coe.jpg)
Unfortunately, the Church of
Elvis is 24 hour in name only, so it took a couple of return visits
on other days before we managed to find our way inside. I'm not
sure what the place looks like normally, but we found a series
of small rooms crammed with unlikely religious artifacts, with
no particular organization apparent. Much of the church was still
in boxes from the move, and the famous coin-operated machines
were packed away somewhere, so we didn't see the place at its
best.
Still, we did get serenaded by Elvis. He was tall and thin, and had a battered 70s-style cassette deck in lieu of a backing band. I'm assuming it was some form of channeling or astral connection at work, the spirit of Elvis working through another. I opted for a luminous T-shirt and instant sainthood, and also received a genuine Elvis driver's license. (Not my only connection to The King, as it happens -- my research this month turned up the fact that he and I share the same favorite movie.) The Church also offered us a "cheap, not legal" marriage ceremony. According to their web site, they can also now handle genuine legal weddings.
But Elvis worship doesn't just happen in Oregon. The web search engines turn up plenty of pages like the story of The Miracle Elvis Painting, which "has been credited with curing everything from rectal itch to brain cancer". Its miraculous properties were discovered when it allegedly cured the after-effects of a major drinking binge. And let's not forget the extensive list of Similarities between Elvis and Jesus...
Could it be more than just a joke? To find out, perhaps I should attend the next Elvis Conference. The agenda for the 1998 conference is online at the BlueSpeak site- but don't get too excited, you've already missed it. It featured sessions such as "The Life of Elvis: A Cautionary Tale for the Modern South" and "Elvis as Santa? Philanthropy, Bipolarity and Christmas at Graceland". Another article reveals that the conference focused on dysfunction, though it doesn't reveal whether that was on the part of Elvis or the attendees. Still, admission was a mere $30 for three days, and you could even pick up some hints on how to decorate your trailer from the session "Limited Means, Resourceful Ways: Elvis and the Art of Mobile Home". For more information, check out a report from one of the attendees.
There's no doubt that The King was influential during his lifetime: A visit to the US government's National Archives and Records Administration turns up the records of that historic occasion when Elvis met Richard Nixon. It turns out that the Elvis and Nixon photo is the most requested document in the entire US government archive -- more popular than the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. (Philip K. Dick wouldn't have been happy about that -- he was convinced that Nixon was a major force for evil, and even portrayed him as Antichrist president Ferris F. Fremont in the novel "Radio Free Albemuth".)
The East Ashman Church of God seems to think Elvis could be a force for good. They have a lengthy (and apparently serious) sermon online which says that, just as there are many Elvis impersonators who try to precisely mimic The King, so Christians should be Jesus impersonators who try to mimic the King of Kings. Unpack your sandals and take up carpentry, folks!
Elvis veneration resembles religion in still another important respect: there are already major schisms in the world of the King. BlueSpeak reveals that the Elvis conference was split in 1996 over the thorny issue of whether to allow the attendance of Elvis Herselvis -- a lesbian Elvis impersonator from San Francisco. Conference director Vernon Chadwick commented that "Elvis was also challenging our gender stereotypes of the time. He wore leather jackets and blue eye shadow in the Fifties." That may be true, but still, is the world ready for a religious icon who died on the toilet while eating a cheeseburger?
Let's suppose it is. That brings me to one of the most challenging SF books I've read: Elvissey by Jack Womack. (It won the 1994 Philip K Dick award, so I get another excuse to mention PKD.) It's challenging because, like "A Clockwork Orange" and "The Futurological Congress", much of it is written in some mutated future English rather than today's language. It hypothesizes a world in which the only barrier to corporate control of citizens is the Church of Elvis, now a mainstream religion. The corporation decides to send agents back in time to find the real Elvis, and bring him to the future, in the hope that the church will be destroyed if its followers discover that the great E was a fallible human being.
The funny thing is, there's another trilogy of books with a similar basic plot; but Robert Rankin's "Armageddon" trilogy is as humorously tongue-in-cheek as "Elvissey" is horrifyingly serious. Rankin has been compared to Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, but he's far less restrained than either of them: who else would write about Jesus Christ's twin sister Christeen assisting Elvis Presley and Barry the Time-Travelling Sprout in their quest to liberate the Earth from the clutches of Buddhavision? If it sounds like your kind of humor, check out Sprout Lore, the official Robert Rankin fan club. An interview with Rankin describes his sacrilegious inspiration and his attitude to religion in general:
"I'm so opposed to religion in any form. The ultimate con-trick on humanity has been religion. The ultimate destruction of any kind of reasoning power has been `We do it for God'. You can't do it for the latest politician, but if he says `we're doing it for God', well, you've gotta do it! He's always on every sodding side!
"So that worries me. My books tend towards the religious, because I was brought up by a religious lunatic mother, who used to do the laying on of hands, and speaking in tongues. Completely out to lunch, my mum. Absolutely bonkers. My father was this kind of quiet, tall-story-teller sitting in the corner of the room going `when I was in Tierra del Fuego we used to...' and `when I sailed alone around Cape Horn without a boat...'."
But I was reminded of Robert Rankin this month not because of the Elvis connection, but because of two rather curious news stories I read. The first story, from The Times newspaper, concerns our old friends the Raelians -- as discussed in a previous web.scan. The Raelians have launched Clonaid, a medical breakthrough for the rich. The idea is simple: they're going to set up shop in an unspecified third world country with no legal restrictions on human cloning. They will then, for a fee, clone a child for you -- so homosexual couples and infertile couples can have children that are genetically theirs. But that's just the first step! For an extra $50,000, the Insuracloner service will then take cell samples from your loved ones -- so in the event of the death of (say) a son or daughter, you can just have another copy cloned. I mean, you love your wife, so why not keep a backup? This is for the future, though -- right now the Raelians will only clone your pets. If human cloning can really be done, though, they'll be back for your children...
I wouldn't mind all this so much if I hadn't recently read the novel "Spares" by Michael Marshall Smith, which extrapolates a few more months into the future. If you can clone a backup copy of a person, why wait until they're dead? It seems more plausible that the ultra-rich would prefer to have a clone made of themselves before their death. In the event of serious injury, they will then be able to harvest replacement organs from the living clone. In the mean time, the clone can be kept locked away in a cell somewhere, barely alive. Unethical? Yes, but when has that ever stopped business? "Spares" is the most horrifying black comedy I've ever read -- horrifying precisely because I've no doubt that if we do manage to clone humans, then illegal "clone farms" will happen. Human nature and capitalism will work together to ensure that. Don't forget that former Chinese government officials have already been caught allegedly trying to sell the organs of executed prisoners for use in transplant operations.
On to the second story, in the Electronic Telegraph. It seems that the University of Texas has discovered that some of the red marks on the Turin Shroud are actually ancient bloodstains -- and now a former professor of microbiology thinks he has managed to extract Jesus's DNA. My immediate thought was that this sounded like a great premise for a novel: Churches panic as a mad scientist creates multiple clones of Jesus! Unfortunately, it seems as if Robert Rankin got their first with the plot of "The Brentford Chainstore Massacre", the latest novel in his entertaining Brentford series.
Still, DNA evidence is everywhere in the news these days. Perhaps before long we'll be able to find a stained fragment of cloth which proves once and for all that Jesus had an "inappropriate relationship" with Mary Magdalene? Boy, would those Christians look dumb for boycotting The Last Temptation Of Christ! Perhaps we should get the Raelians to clone a backup Jesus, just in case he fails to turn up at the end of next year? Maybe we can find out whether his mom was really a virgin?
What about cloning Elvis, for that matter? You can get a hint of how the King might have felt about it from one of the many Elvis Tribute Pages, in a section about Elvis's attitude to death. It seems that the big E was worried that he might be assassinated, and gave instructions that they should get the killer, because he didn't want anyone "bragging that they'd killed Elvis Presley". So Ronald McDonald should be grateful it wasn't a Big Mac the King was eating that fateful day...
But Elvis was allegedly "a damn good black belt" at martial arts. So how did a life of fitness and exercise become a slide towards obesity and death? Robyn Taylor has a theory that it all started when Elvis Aaron Presley was born with the Moon in Pisces, and gives an astrological analysis to prove it. (Yeah, right.) I prefer a rather different article which does for Elvis's death what Oliver Stone did for John F. Kennedy's. (And while we're on the subject of conspiracies, let's not forget celebrated Elvis impersonator and conceptual art comedian Andy Kaufman, whose own death was written off by many as an elaborate stunt.)
I'll leave the last words to Robert Rankin, though. From "Raiders of the Lost Car Park", it's a guide to how to dedicate a meal to Satan. Something to remember next time you are forced to say grace? I'm not surprised his mother has been known to burn his novels...
mathew
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Last updated: Wednesday, 30-Nov-2005 17:06:10 CST
