happy "Elvis is Still Dead Day" to all those who celebrate it.
remember when Elvis sightings were a thing, and fat, weirdly-pompadoured, be-jumpsuited Elvis became sort of a shorthand talisman for the kind of uneasy but vaguely optimistic, post-hippie, pre-millennium/pre-internet fascination with fortean events, UFO's and the supernatural? adjacent from actual cult lore, only mildly overlapping with Fake Real Cults like the Subgenii, often appearing in pop culture imagery before fully metastatizing in its most well-known host, The X Files.
Rotund, Spangled, Perpetually-Young-and-frequently-abducted-by-aliens Elvis was a symbol unto itself that meant a lot of things, and people just stopped using it after the turn of the century. last time i heard anyone mention Elvis in this capacity was in the first "Men In Black" movie ("Elvis is *not* dead, he just went home"). the culture has moved on from this now quaint period of low weirdness that lasted from the mid-80's to the mid-to-late 90's.
if you ever want to read a book that perfectly encapsulates this time period, seek out the book "Buddy Holly is Alive And Well On Ganymede" by Bradley Denton; which was going to be made into a movie starring Jon Heder but never came together.
