JarJar Nixon's Blues Kitchen

With Elvis’s bir4thday having just passed (January 8), I thought you would like this story from the Houston Chronicle…

 
 Many people who know John Newinn, the sales coordinator at a local TV
 station, call him Elvis John.

 *By Carol Rust*
 
 Updated: 01.05.10
 
 In December 2008, 36-year-old John Newinn was taking his girlfriend to a
 holiday party at his parents’ home to meet them for the first time. Just
 before they arrived, he said off-handedly, “By the way, my parents are big
 Elvis fans. That OK??”
 
 Mandy Barber, a nurse who’d known Newinn for a month, said she liked Elvis,
 too.
 
 But she wasn’t ready--no one could be--for the absolute onslaught of Elvis
 posters, busts, statues and household items emblazoned with his famous face,
 set among a population of statuary depicting various figures of Buddhist
 spiritual leaders and historical characters that were common in their home
 in Vietnam.
 
 “I was blown away,” Barber said of her first meeting with Henry and Tania
 Newinn in their spacious home in northwest Houston.
 
 A statue of a Chinese warrior said to guard against evil spirits holds up a
 cardboard fan in their foyer that proclaims, “I’m an Elvis fan.” The
 jailhouse rocker’s face is everywhere -- the door of an old wooden armoire in
 the dining room, portraits that are staggered up the staircase, a shower
 curtain, an Elvis clock with pendulum hips that swing back and forth, a
 skillet hanging on the kitchen wall. Elvis music starts playing in the
 laundry room when the overhead light is switched on, and their garage --
 where there is no room for cars -- is an oversized Elvis shrine where a
 robotic Elvis bust turns his head and says, “Thankyouverymuch,” before
 launching into a song.
 
 Barber learned during that visit, too, that her new boyfriend performed
 heart-swelling renditions of the big E, occasionally swiveling his hips for
 the Presley effect. And he is no stranger to the spotlight. He frequently
 performs at fundraisers in the area and has swept Elvis-impersonation
 contests, taking second place in 1995 in a national contest sponsored by the
 company that operates the tourist complex at Graceland, Elvis’ home in
 Memphis where he moved in 1957 after he’d become famous. Many people who
 know the sales coordinator at a local TV station call him Elvis John.
 
 During his junior year in high school, he performed “Everybody Loves
 Somebody? by Dean Martin at the school’s talent show. “Someone said, ‘Hey,
 you sound like Elvis,’ and I thought, ‘OK, well, maybe I can do that,’” John
 said. Listening over and over to his songs and watching videos of his
 movies, John perfected the Elvis style. His mother found a tailor to make
 his rhinestone-studded jumpsuits, and his act was complete.
 
 His rich baritone melts into the chorus of ‘Fools Rush In’ during an
 impromptu family concert on a cramped stage that is crammed into the
 Newinn’s dining room and faces a row of wooden folding chairs reminiscent of
 a country church. Mother Tania’s eyes glow with pride as she watches him,
 probably for the thousandth time. His father, Henry, can’t quit smiling.
 
 The Newinns are absolute in their devotion to Elvis as the embodiment of the
 American dream and to the United States as their adopted home “where
 everyone has a chance, whether they’re black, white or Asian,” Tania said.
 (In their back yard, a small version of the Statue of Liberty holds an
 outdoor light among statues of Elvis.)
 
 Henry was a teenager in Saigon in 1956 when he first heard the Elvis music
 that American GIs brought with them when they were stationed there. He went
 wild over “Jailhouse Rock” when he saw the movie and began performing The
 King’s songs at his sister’s nightclub in Saigon, heating ivory chopsticks
 to curl his hair into the Elvis pompadour in the absence of hairdryers in
 his country.
 
 Many Vietnamese in their 60s and older associate Elvis music with a blissful
 time in their youth before communists took over South Vietnam. Henry was
 working for the U.S. State Department in a small province outside Saigon and
 learned that communist soldiers were about 15 miles away from their home.
 They grabbed their infant son John and escaped to a U.S. military ship with
 the 7th Fleet a few miles off the coast, starting their journey to the United
 States.
 
 They landed in Houston, and Henry worked as a busboy at a restaurant while
 attending college classes. Money was scarce, and they were lonely in their
 new home. One day, Newinn spotted a man along Telephone Road selling black
 velvet portraits of Elvis from the back of his pickup. He saved $5 from tips
 at his job and returned to buy one.
 
 It now hangs prominently in their garage to remind them, just as Elvis
 started with nothing and worked his way to fame, how far they have come.
 
 http://www.hcnonline.com/articles/2010/01/07/greater_houston_weekly/top_of_the_week/0106_elvis_john.txt