Question: How big a pencil-neck trivia geek are you?
Answer a series of forehead-slapping anecdotal factoids. It’s up to you to weigh each fact in each anecdotal factoid. They’re tricky. One might seem like total B.S. until it’s revealed to be strangely and disturbingly “True.” Another anecdotal factoid might seem to contain all solid and verifiable facts until it’s revealed to be yet one more big fat garden variety “Bald-Faced Lie.” And here’s the trickiest part: an anecdotal factoid might even be “Half-True“; in other words, a mishmosh of truths and bald-faced lies, where you don’t know where one ends and the other begins, much like the usual slop served by Madison Avenue, Washington D.C., and the Internet in its entirety.
Category: Elvis has left the building (or maybe not)
Decide for yourself, and mark “T” for “Truth”, “F” for “Bald-Faced Lie” or “TF” for “Half-Truth” in the blank slot next to each factoid.
The answers will be revealed in a follow-up “Answers” article.
1) __ In Elvis’s 1968 comeback TV special, there was a scene with Elvis performing in a brothel, but the network insisted that it be cut out. And since the special was to be aired close to Christmas, they also asked that Elvis only perform Christmas and holiday songs. Also, due to network restrictions, Elvis was once again shot from the waist up.
2) __ Elvis refused to watch his movie, “Jailhouse Rock” because his co-star Judy Tyler was killed in a car wreck three days after shooting completed.
3) __ In 1970, Elvis Presley sent a letter to President Richard Nixon, requesting that he meet with him and that he be made a “Federal Agent At Large” in the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.”
4) __ In 1973, after a midnight show in Las Vegas, Elvis went to a party at his good friend Liberace’s Vegas mansion dressed in full drag as a practical joke. Also, it was his friend Liberace who originally suggested that it would be more appropriate Elvis put his black leather jacket in the closet and wear outlandish costumes, like his gold lame jacket, when performing in Las Vegas.
5) __ Elvis Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, was an illegal immigrant from Holland, born Andreas Cornelius Van Kuijk. Before managing Elvis, his most successful act was “Colonel Parker’s Dancing Chickens” where the chickens “danced” only because they were standing on a hot plate.
6) __ In 1977, three men stole the bodies of Elvis and his mother Gladys out of a family crypt in a Memphis cemetery and demanded a $2 million ransom. After the grave robbers were caught and the bodies recovered, Elvis’s father petitioned Memphis’s zoning board to allow the bodies of Elvis and his mother to be buried behind Graceland.
(see part two for answers)
