comfort food like peanut butter & bacon & stuffing

Somethings make me feel TOO comfortable. One of those things is thinking about Elvis in his later years, in the 1970s, with the deep, blood-red-almost-maroon shag carpets, wood paneling, uncomfortable sofas, scratchy sweaters made from materials far less sophisticated than our modern cotton blends, and the sweet, heady, heavy-lidded drunkenness that comes from imbibing expensive liquors, gorging on fondue, owning many guns and leaving a few of them lying around in the parlor, and keeping the furnace at 74 degrees year round. The feeling of having sated your desires, slaked your thirst, your body surfeit with the things other people want.

There's a recording of him, Elvis, I mean, sort of mumbling "The Answer is Blowin' In the Wind" along with I assume friends and family... It's a home recording from 1966. But the way it sounds, I put it in the early 70s. He sounds a little drunk, and a little full, from chivas regal & turkey stuffing, I like to imagine. He gets about 5/6s of the lyrics... it's not an album worthy performance (if it weren't Elvis, at least)... and it's like your drunk uncle fading in and out of a conversation as he gradually passes out in the easy chair with a half-drunk beer still propped in his hand. But there's something deeply moving about the recording. Here's a guy who was probably nearly as crazy as Michael Jackson was... if for no other reason save that peerlessness in the pop world seems to breed some sort of benign, childlike megalomania. Or I don't know. I don't personally know any peerless musical performers, so I guess I'm just bullshitting here. Whatever.

Anyway it's still moving. He's balls crazy, probably, and he has all of the finest things in life, probably, and he's in some mansion (either Graceland or Hollywood) with his closest relations gathered around, probably. And yet, in a few years he's going to die of a heart attack brought on by over-consumption of all those fancy things (and drugs too, yay!), falling face first off the "commode" and into that thick shag carpet, and his staff won't find him until rigor mortis is setting in, and the only thing left to do is to roll him over and pull up his pajama bottoms and cancel the tour.

I know it's morbid sounding. But it makes me think of the Holidays, which is nice. Canned cranberries, buttered brusells sprouts, and melancholy shadow of death creeping into the corners of our mouths and the crow's feet in our eyes when we smile at one another. Creeping in like a penitent dog who got caught eating turkey off the cutting board and is just now being let back inside to sit by the fireplace.

Yeah, like that.