Seeing an Elvis: Why???

14 Nov, 2025

What Led Me to Drive 200 Miles to See an Elvis Impersonator (It Was to Spite AI Stan Lee)

VERY out of pocket heading, but I assure you there's a lore reason for me wanting to do this. It's just going to take a long time to get there.

It was around the time of AI voice cloning that I began to smell the blood in the water. I suspected such technology would soon be used to "bring back" dead famous people as these empty, lifeless zombies to monetize and control forever.

It was only a matter of time, and eventually, the first I've heard to take that first step created an exhibition of an AI Stan Lee at Comic Con this year, and it's not stopping with him. A bunch of other estates are gonna say yes to giving the rights to these tech "people" if they're offered a high enough number.

This wasn't the first time companies tried this garbage. For the last 10+ years these ghouls have been trying to get holograms to take off because they probably saw a Hatsune Miku concert in 2009 and were like "bro, let's do that but with real people! Just play these holograms like clockwork and make SO much money!" ¹

...The difference is that Miku was always fiction. Real people, DEAD real people cannot be fictionalized in the same way, and it will never not be weird to see a soulless corporation wearing the skin of someone once living.

Lately, I've been doing something that I haven't done much of before: touching grass, visiting venues and seeing performances from real live people. And what better way to fight these holograms than to support impersonators, the people who (for the most part) make it their life's mission to embody somebody else's.

Impersonation is morally gray, but it always starts from a place of passion, it has to--opposite to corporate greed. As an impersonator (or any live performer), you need to be battle-tested, forged from the fires of performing at weddings and dive bars with only two people in the audience. What's a hologram got? Focus groups I guess?

It's funny because I didn't really care about seeing impersonators much last year, but with this Pandora's Box of puppeteering dead people being opened, now I REALLY care. I needed to go someplace to live that dumb dream. With my recent trips to Vegas, why not start with the most obvious choice? Elvis impersonators.

The Elvis Connection

I've recently became kinda obsessed with the idea of Elvis impersonators because these are THOUSANDS of people who, spanning multiple decades, all decided to impersonate the same guy.

There's a multitude of reasons why I think that's the case: obviously he left a big impact on music. Saying the quiet part out loud: he was charming white face to make "race music" more approachable and easily digestible to the masses, and it worked. A lot of people blame him personally, but it's just so clear to me that he's a symptom rather than the cause.

Also I will say it's not ALL bad, because an understated part of his existence was that he helped make the working class feel seen and represented, proud even. He was "one of them," and that sentiment never truly went away even as he got rich and famous. I think that aspect is important, because even to this day, there aren't many people quite like him. Being poor is something you're meant to move past from rather than keep as a prominent part of your persona. That's rare.

Then there's the fact that Elvis later in life wasn't necessarily the untouchable god he used to be, so virtually anybody can throw on a wig and become Elvis. Your alcoholic uncle can do him for Halloween and it works... Which is why he does it every Halloween.

But the third and most intriguing reason (to me), is the idea that Elvis' whole persona is almost a socially-sanctioned pass for men to exaggerate and play with masculinity in a very drag king-esque fashion. I know describing it as drag is contentious, but I mean come on: rhinestones, capes, karate kicks? What's more drag than that? Performers have been doing stuff like that long before him, but he was just perfectly positioned to bring that to the stratosphere.

Saying all that, it's funny to add that I don't consider myself an Elvis fan, though I understand it's a position that's hard to defend.

So the big question: where did this all start for me? It runs deeper than simply picking the most impersonated guy. Well, like many of my Gen Z peers: The Elvis biopic. The thing about biopics isn't that they have to be good, they just need to exist to bring the featured celebrity back into the cultural conversation.

In 2023, I was on a long flight to Japan looking for movies to watch. 2 movies in and I felt the airplane lethargy overtake me, but the flight wasn't even close to being over. The only other movie that seemed half interesting was the 2022 Austin Butler Elvis biopic (great actor, by the way).

Bad idea. If you were 100% paying attention, it was a film that jumped all over the place. If you were 50%?? You're in for a real trip. I was dipping in and out of consciousness, and I remember being so thrown off and completely unable to follow the movie.

My general experience was as such: Yo, is that Tom Hanks?? Okay, there's Elvis, and he's dancing... Then he's mad for some reason. Wait, why is rap playing in the background? ² Big Mama Thornton would NOT have congratulated Elvis for covering her song. And now he's dancing again, now he's sad. That was basically the movie for me.

It's an aggressively average film serving as a glorified highlight reel, but I remember watching it to be so hilarious that it makes me fond of it even now... Did I also say Austin Butler was good? Okay.

After I saw the Elvis movie, I was hyper-aware of every mention of him since. While I knew that it was just the frequency illusion in action, it still felt like that guy was following me around. I distinctly remember being jumpscared in Taiwan hearing his music blasted by a street painter. In Taiwan!! For context, that Japan flight was for a year-long stint in the country as a student, and that was also how I got the chance to visit Taiwan.

Being in Asia offers you a very interesting perspective of America as an American, as mid-century American cultural exports still have a strong hold of Japanese pop culture, more than you'd realize. I went from watching yakuza movies stateside to watching mob movies in Japan, and overall it has softened my relationship with the Americana I used to find obnoxious and dumb growing up. Distance makes the heart grow fonder and all that.

Oh, and what came out while I was in Japan? The Sofia Coppola Priscilla movie! I couldn't watch it due to being an ocean over, which made the wait to watch it filled with far more anticipation than it should've. (Ultimately it was an okay movie.)

So, I eventually go home and get baptized in the oasis of American excess and greed known as Las Vegas, then I get heavily inspired to create and seek out performances like what I saw there, and the rest is history. ³

It just SUCKS though because the vintage showmanship you'd find in Vegas is niche as hell. With a huge chunk of that market being impersonation and tribute shows, it was inevitable that them and I would collide.

As a younger person, I'll never get the chance to see a lot of impersonated people because it's too much money, they're old/dead, or both, so tributes and impersonations are the remnants of a form of iconic showmanship that I'll never be able to see firsthand.

I consider impersonators (the good ones anyway) to be closer to the original's legend and stage presence than their own relatives. They're disciples, scholars who have diligently studied their stage personas and learned how to channel that presence through their own unique lens.

So that leads me to the show. It wasn't necessarily the AI Stan Lee thing that set me off, though it was certainly part of it, it was just one of many that had me seeking out the things that tech companies are dying to replace.

It was 5 months before the actual show when I had found this one, and while it had hardly any description of what to expect, I wanted, I needed to go there. If anything, the vagueness of the description made it all the more intriguing. All it said was that it was a solo show done by an Elvis impersonator covering various songs from famous Las Vegas legends. I don't know any of them extensively, but what's a better way to learn than to get an EDUCATION?

It was over 200 miles away from where I lived. It's a fun, clickbait thing to say "I drove 400 miles round trip to see an Elvis because I was mad at AI Stan Lee," but I had family in that city, so it gave me a chance to hang out with my relatives anyway. It's a dual-purpose thing that didn't make going feel like a complete waste.

As for the show itself? Stay tuned for Part 2, since it feels appropriate to keep it as its own post and not be full of... All this haha.

Edit: Catch Part 2!!

#personal