A Sequin of Elvii

I'm on the social committee at work. (Yes, I know you're all shocked and surprised.) I just seem to gravitate toward that kind of job. (I don't know what's wrong with me.)

For the third year in a row our Christmas party was booked at 'Chat Louie'. It wasn't too bad, but it seems though that every year the entertainment takes another sharp drop. The first year was apparently fantastic with several impersonators including a fabulous Billy Joel. Last year was the "Eva Divas" who did a long medley of upbeat hits from the 1950's, 60's and 70's. They were not too bad. This year was an Elvis impersonator. He wasn't terrible, but after a long day of work and knowing that we had to work the next morning, his mellow 50's Elvis croonings put us all to sleep. Our entire group went home before his second set. It's not that he was bad, but he certainly wasn't fabulous; he was hard to see from our seats with the fairly terrible MC standing in the way, and his tech was kind of awful. At one point Elvis danced over to our side of the stage and signalled fairly obviously for the tech to turn up his vocals. The tech instead turned the speaker toward the Elvis. What an idiot. At least I assumed that guy was a tech; he could have just been the MC's fat friend who chose to hand out on the stage. Gah!

The best part of the evening though (well, really a close second to the fabulous perrogies) was the conversation around Elvis. I'm sure this is not a typical example of conversation when watching an Elvis impersonator. Last week two of my coworkers ran a marathon; actually, one of them did a half-marathon instead because she's 16 weeks pregnant. (If she wasn't so sweet I'd hate her.) Her husband was injured and so couldn't run seriously but apparently there are a group of people who dress up as Elvis and run for fun, so he joined them and had an absolute blast. At our table this led, naturally, to a discussion of the plural of Elvis which we decided was Elvii, and to an extended discussion of what you would call a herd of Elvii. Our best suggestions included "a sequin of Elvii", "a jumpsuit of Elvii", "a hounddog of Elvii" and "a King of Elvii".

The conversation progressed naturally to Elvis themed team sports, focussing on which sports would naturally feature the Elvis outfit to the greatest effect. In no particular order:

- Baseball: running the bases with cape flying behind would make a particuarly stunning image, sliding would not be allowed due to risk of sequin damage, and when in the field a sequined ball glove with attached mini-cape would be featured
- Snowboarding: the required hip action would put "Elvis the Pelvis" to good use
- Hockey: could feature an "Elvis hair helmet", although a cape would be cumbersome
- Ski Jumping: particularly good use of the cape
- Basketball: a poor choice, the cape would lead to too many fouls, a new call would need to be invented for this
- Curling: Elvii were made to curl, although the tightness of the jumpsuit might be an issue
- Rugby: rugby players are a natural choice for jumpsuit wearing since they are used to running around in tight white shorts
- Bobsledding - excellent cape feature
- Nascar Racing - they already wear jumpsuits, they're halfway there!

We made a natural progression at this point to the idea of the Elvis Presley Olympics but decided that new Olympic sports would need to be added: Elvis Imitation, High Speed Hair Combing and Pelvis Thrusting, which would inevitably lead to great new pickup lines, "Hi, I'm Elvis. I'm an Olympic Pelvis Thruster."