Thank Ya Very Much

"Last night I saw the ghost of Elvis". Remember that song? ("Walking In Memphis", by Marc Cohn). Well last night I saw Elvis. Or it could've been Andy Kaufman; I'm not really sure. That sometimes happens late night, after a few too many fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches.Anyway, he's doing pretty well, been workin' out, playing some gigs; things are going pretty good he says. He's working over at the 7/11 by my house, so he's not dead, as so many people believe. Neither is Andy, many people think that he's just biding his time until he makes a reappearance; the ultimate Andy Kaufman joke on the world. Wouldn't that be great? (How about "Man On the Moon" by REM, with Andy, "...goofin' on Elvis"?).

Let's see...who else is really not dead. John F. Kennedy, that's one (became a vegetable after the shooting; was shipped down to live out his days somewhere in South America, according to one theory). Tupac Shakur; I've heard he's still making records wherever he's at, and a few have already come out! The 9/11 hijackers; some of the more recent conspiracy theory says many of those guys can be found walking around in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Middle East; just livin' life, as it were. And oh yes!, the Enron guy, CEO Kenneth Lay, who "died" right about when he was set to begin doing some hard jail time for all of the Enron fraud he was involved with. Janeane Garofalo,formerly of Air America Radio (and still very much alive, last I heard), has a theory that Lay faked his death in order to avoid the jail time, and is probably living out his days on some plush island somewhere. Interesting. No, Very Interesting.

Have you ever thought that some famous person you knew about was already dead, but was in fact really still alive? That happened to me recently with country/rock/Tex-Mex singer Freddie Fender ("Wasted Days and Wasted Nights"). I thought he died about a decade ago, and then I read that, although currently very ill, he's still very much alive, and has been all this time. That was a little bit of a shock, in reverse you could say, but good to know that he is indeed, still around. And then Marc Cohn, the singer-writer of "Walking In Memphis", almost died here in Denver in 2005, after being shot in the head during a carjack attempt, shortly after he finished a concert here. So he's in the "almost died, but still alive" category, I guess you could say.

I really do wish though, that Andy Kaufman, the former Inter-Gender World Wrestling Champion, who used to wrestle girls to prove male superiority (until ducking out on a female body-builder/wrestler), and who certainly would not have been beyond faking his own death, would just one night walk on to Jay Leno, and say, "joke's on you!". Or, set up his record player once again, and eventually sing along (Andy fans know what "eventually", means here) to the theme of "Mighty Mouse" ("Here I come to save the day!...). Wouldn't it be great, to see him back once again?

I think we'd all say, "You got us, Andy, once again, you got us".