Author: Dan Gilchrist

Recently, the American College of Emergency Physicians issued a national report card on the state of emergency medicine, and the whole country received a grade of C-minus. Minnesota, which is generally the slightly smug and self-satisfied Lisa Simpson character amongst its peer states in these ratings, was issued a slightly improved C-plus, a devastating blow to our “quality of life”-based ego. (Granted, one of the college’s five criteria was Minnesota’s medical-liability climate, where we were rated a D-minus, a grade which one presumes would be improved by a medical-liability damages cap or by exporting HMO hawk Mike Hatch to Wisconsin.)

Recently, I had a firsthand opportunity to test our state’s emergency

preparedness at an early morning bio-terrorism drill at one of the metro area’s major hospitals. I was forwarded an invitation that went out to hundreds of public-health students at the University of Minnesota, soliciting volunteers. It may have been the fact that the drill started at 6:00 a.m. on what turned out to be the coldest day of winter thus far, or that we were advised to wear a swimsuit under our clothes in order to retain modesty during a decontamination shower, but in the conference room where the drilling team assembled, I was one of only three volunteers who weren’t actually employed by the hospital. Our small but brave cadre of outsiders received many thanks, complimentary coffee, and a single powdered doughnut that we were asked to smear on our clothes and faces in order to simulate an anthrax exposure.

While I yearned for more fully developed backstory (“OK, you’re a renegade genetics researcher, and your attempts to create the world’s first pig-soybean hybrid have drawn the ire of animal-rights extremists. One day you receive a suspicious envelope … ”), we volunteers were merely asked to run into the emergency room and tell the attendant we believed we were exposed to anthrax at a building across the street. Emergency-room workers were not supposed to be tipped off to the drill, but some may have grown suspicious at the post-midnight assembly of two shower tents, one in a heated garage and one outside the main entrance, in below-zero windchills.

The organizers staggered our arrival at the emergency room. I was volunteer number seven, so by the time I walked in, the novelty had worn off for the nurses on duty. They barely raised an eyebrow, and, from behind protective glass at the desk, they directed me back outside to the ambulance garage in order to be decontaminated. In the garage, the mood was not so blasé, and there was a lot of muffled consultation going back and forth between hospital staff members clad in hazmat suits who, with their bright-orange boots, looked like a cross between Oompa Loompas and astronauts. In a barely intelligible voice, one of them told me to come with him to the outside shower, but before I could even protest, news arrived that the waterlines to the outside shower had frozen. My relief was short-lived as I stripped down to my swimsuit and was herded into the garage’s shower tent, blasted with water that was only slightly warmer than ice, swaddled in towels, and then rolled in a wheelchair into the ER, where I and my fellow victims were “monitored” for signs of infection by the nursing staff.

At a debriefing that followed, the problems were enumerated: the hazmat suits took too long to don, there was a shortage of bags for contaminated clothing, and the “victims” did not receive quick or understandable instructions. But these problems paled when compared with the adventures of one of the hospital staff’s more entrepreneurial victim-volunteers: When he found himself undirected and unsupervised in the garage, he wandered into the ER and beyond, presumably “infecting” entire wings of the hospital. What’s more, a hospital security guard who had been in an infected area returned to the situation-control room, thereby “infecting” the response-management team. The drill organizers assessed these events soberly. Clearly, this exercise was a starting point, but there would seem to be many more early mornings—and powdered doughnuts—in all of their futures. —Dan Gilchrist

Fall is the transition time for outdoor sports, and, for semi-serious cross-country skiers, it’s time to strap on the old roller skis. Even the most accomplished skiers, however, who roller ski through all the dry seasons, can’t escape the fact that it’s a little bit ridiculous using ski poles with no snow on the ground. There’s something about it that makes people want to shout at you, “Hang on, lycra boy, winter will be here soon enough without you getting all enthusiastic about it.”

But if you shell out anywhere between $275 to $400—as I did— for a pair of roller skis with bindings (you generally use the same boots as you do when the snow flies), and if you’re willing to accept that there is just no way for you to look cool on roller skis, you can’t beat the sport as a way to train for your time on the snow—if it comes.

On their poles, roller skiers use carbide steel tips with no baskets. These tips need to be kept sharp enough to hold a pole plant on asphalt, and occasionally to defend against territorial dogs or cyclists. As the pavement gets colder, a proper pole plant gets even more difficult. Some newer models of roller skis have inflatable tires and larger wheels that allow skiers to handle looser and softer surfaces, such as crushed limestone. Those sorts of surfaces make poling easier as well as gentler on the elbows. Skiers with any sense at all also wear a helmet, and the more thin skinned or accident prone will take the extra precaution of sporting elbow and knee pads as well.

But why not just use in-line skates, which can be considerably less expensive? It’s not just a plot to sell more specialized equipment to gear geeks. Andy Turnbull is a nordic racing specialist at Hoigaards and has been roller skiing since the late 1970s. Turnbull explains that in-line skate wheels are generally too fast to allow a skier to work on proper snow technique—you end up turning over your stroke too quickly. (Nine out of ten roller skiers appear to be skate-skiers, but there are also ratchet-wheeled skies for those who ski in the classic, kick-and-glide speed-walking shuffle.) Also, you don’t get much of an upper-body workout.

If it seems like most roller skiers are operating without brakes, that’s because they are. Upper Midwest ski guru Lee Borowski recently wrote that he thinks all roller skiers should have brakes on their skis, but because brakes are mostly sold as extras, the majority of skiers hit the road or trail without them, relying on techniques like snowplowing or running off into the grass (if there is any) to stop their momentum.

Almost any experienced roller skier can offer personal stories of spectacular wipeouts, although most don’t result in serious injuries. Recent history, however, does offer a cautionary tale: In 1999, one of the greatest skiers of all time, Bjorn Daehlie of Norway, crashed on the road during a training run. The resulting injuries and back problems led the most decorated winter Olympian of all time to withdraw from full-time racing. I like to tell myself that story when I recount how once, on a construction detour off a bike path, I managed to dig a ski pole into a sewer grate, promptly snapping the pole, ripping my arm back, and nearly flipping me over backward. (I knew I was going to be okay when, despite badly skinned knees, thighs, and elbows, my first impulse was to look around to see if anyone had seen me take such a monumental and embarrassing dig.)

Is it worth the snickers of other trail users and the dangers of road rash to get a jump on the ski season, which can be madly inconsistent and El Niño-dependent? Andy Turnbull pointed out that the Twin Cities had roughly nine days of natural, skiable snow last winter. He said, “Sometimes I think I ski on snow in order to train for roller skiing rather than the other way around.”

—Dan Gilchrist

In anticipation of Lance’s final ride in the Tour de France this month, let’s cast a look back to one year ago. High above the 494 strip in Bloomington, on the twenty-fourth floor of a glass office tower, at the stroke of noon on a “summer hours” Friday, twenty amateur bicyclists sweated, sprinted, and occasionally fell over to the cheers of adoring co-workers. It was the first annual Tour de Colle & McVoy, a tribute to Armstrong’s cruise to a record sixth victory at the Tour de France, and proof that the crap economy has not completely undone the Nerfy, anything-goes creative workplace of the late 1990s.

The circular hallway that rings the ad agency’s offices provided a natural course for the indoor race, which went for twenty laps and “somewhere between ten and fifteen minutes, I think,” according to race organizer and official timekeeper Brian Ritchie, who also rode the tour. According to Ritchie, the race had its genesis in cable coverage of the Tour de France. “Every morning we’d get in and be glued to the Tour on TV,” he said. “People started getting a little competitive—there are some of us who ride on a cycling team. I decided there was only one way to determine the best rider, and that was to have an all-out race right here in the building. Also, the boss was on vacation. That had a lot to do with the scheduling of the event.”

Among the riders on bikes of every type and price point, one competitor stood out. Kicking a foot scooter in white flip-flops and a denim skirt, Project Manager Teresa Demma estimated that she completed three laps on her unorthodox vehicle, although she admitted to some Rosie Ruiz-style tactics—namely, cutting through an internal hallway that bisected the race hallway. “I did finish with the pack, so I feel like I accomplished something,” she said.

Training appeared to have its advantages in this race, as members of the Birchwood Cafe’s cycling team took the top three places, winning the yellow jersey, a case of Diet Dr. Pepper, and gift certificates to Krispy Kreme and White Castle.

There was not a lot of jockeying for position in the peloton, because the narrow hallways made passing difficult. Aerodynamics played no role, and there were no major ascents. Asked what the biggest challenge was, top finisher Ryan Carlson said, “The water, definitely the water,” which had spilled from competitors’ cups onto a slick concrete floor out in the atrium, causing the skinny tires on his fancy-looking road bike to hydroplane out of control. Indeed, several riders careened into an office wall after encountering the water hazard, leaving distinctive black rubber skid marks. Asked how he would explain the damage once the boss returned, race chief Ritchie said, “Hopefully, we’re going to be moving soon.”—Dan Gilchrist

Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather have retired, Ted Koppel’s on his way out at Nightline, and Peter Jennings’s future is uncertain due to his health. As many have opined over the past couple of months, the era of the mighty network anchor appears to be coming to an end. Viewers suffering withdrawal from their favorite friend-in-the-box might find a meaningful substitute in CNN’s Aaron Brown, who combines serious reportage with an ego that’s still modest enough to fit within the camera frame. The Hopkins native began his journalism career at WLOL 1330 AM in Minneapolis three decades ago. Since then he has risen through the reportorial ranks to host CNN’s flagship evening news broadcast and serves as lead anchor for breaking news. Last month, Brown—who attended the University of Minnesota for a year, and never acquired a bachelor’s degree—appeared at the U Alumni Association’s Annual Celebration.

With a few weeks of perspective on it, do you have any second thoughts about the wall-to-wall coverage of the Terri Schiavo story?

I thought it was a great cable story. The nature of twenty-four-hour news is that it is available when people have time to watch it. If you wanted to know what was going on in the Terri Schiavo case at eight at night, we did it, and we did it at ten o’clock for people who wanted to know then. People get all exercised about this, but it’s a perfectly appropriate way for us to do journalism—[especially with] this story, because it mattered on a lot of levels. We all confront these questions of life and death and living wills, and whether modern medicine will keep us alive past the point where we want. Or is that even an appropriate question—should we simply die at a time of God’s choosing? The story, on some level, touched everyone.

It also had a political dimension. To me what’s interesting about it is that it’s the best evidence we have that one of the few things Americans agree about as a people is that they don’t want government involved with this. That’s true of an overwhelming majority, whether they’re Republicans or Democrats, evangelicals, atheists, Jews, or Catholics. People were saying, “This is best handled at the lowest level, this should be handled with families, in communities, or in a local court. It should not be handled in Congress.”

What does your audience get from having an anchor on location?

I’m a reporter at heart, and whatever ground I touch, I hope I bring something to that story. It’s what I’ve done since I was fourteen years old. You can’t “get it” sitting here in New York all the time. Some things you can do by phone and satellite, but you can’t appreciate the damage the tsunami did in Aceh until you smell, literally, that place, and meet those people. And in some respects, you can’t appreciate what we went through with the pope without being in St. Peter’s Square. I think it brings texture to a story. It changes the way I write it. It changes the way I talk about it.

What’s it like to have, say, five thousand bloggers checking your facts on the Internet?

I have no problem at all with five thousand fact-checkers—the more, the merrier. We go on the air each night believing that we are factually accurate, so checking facts is not a problem to me. The problem with bloggers is, who’s checking the bloggers? One of the traditional and important roles of the press, which some people lovingly refer to as the mainstream media, was to act as gatekeeper. Not every fallacious or untrue accusation made it to air. These days, in the era of the Internet, the role of gatekeeper is pretty much gone.

What happens without a gatekeeper?

In the Schiavo case, there was this memo that Republican senators got [that outlined how the GOP might benefit from the situation], and then a group of conservative bloggers started to write that it was phony, that Democrats had actually written the memo and that they were trying to embarrass Republicans. So that becomes news, but it’s not true. And it turned out to be demonstrably untrue. But people start to talk about it, and then Fox News talks about it, and all of the sudden something that has absolutely no basis in fact becomes part of a story. In another time, someone would actually check that before they reported it. Today we just kind of vomit out information—I mean the Net does—and it seeps its way into broader media coverage dangerously. So if you want to talk about fact-checkers, God bless ’em. I hope they check every word we report every day, and I hope they’re equally careful with every word they report.

What do you think of the rise of popular opinionated news outlets like Fox News Channel?

I’ve talked about this a lot in the last year. We seem to be in a time when too many people just want to hear that which they agree with—whether it’s Iraq or Terri Schiavo or anything, honestly. Fox is part of that, but, believe me, I hear it on the left all the time, too. For democracy—not to get too highfalutin on you, we are Minnesotans, after all—but for democracy, that’s a very dangerous place to be.

Why is that?

Because a successful democracy requires a citizenry that is informed. And to be informed requires that you understand the breadth of an argument or an issue. It’s not enough to just say, “They lied to us about the intelligence,” for example. Rarely are things that clear. Because I’m in the business of presenting complicated stuff in the most objective way I can, my world would be a lot easier if people sat back and listened to the range of argument, and did it in a kind of civil way rather than [saying], “He’s an idiot,” or, “He’s a traitor,” or, “He’s a whore.” These are all things I’ve probably been called today … over nothing. [And] this has been a good day!

“It’s not really about art at all,” said Brian Johnson about his detailed and intricate chain saw carving techniques. “In fact I’m very big on that idea.” Johnson is tall and burly, a sawdust-covered guy who is as animated as his sculptures are static. “At best I’m a craftsman, not an artist. Isn’t that right, Fred?”

“Yes, sir!” said Fred Vangeison, a semi-retired farmer and businessman from central Illinois. Vangeison is one of four students who have just completed a five-day, $1,500 course at the state-accredited Wisconsin School of Chain Saw Carving that Johnson and his wife Doris run. Their “campus” is just outside Hayward.

The “A” word is clearly met with some skepticism by Johnson. “A friend of mine got his art degree at UW Madison. He wanted to carve a duck decoy for a sculpture class. His art professor said, ‘That’s not art.’ So he carved a woman’s head on the duck, and that made it art!”

During this particular week, Johnson’s students include a project manager for General Motors, a heavy-machinery mechanic, and a dentist. They all are enthusiastic about Johnson’s pedagogy, and proudly show off their main projects from the week: an eagle in profile cut from a half log and a bear standing on its hind legs. Each is quite a respectable piece. “This guy here’s got it down to a science,” said Vangeison, admiring the handsome results of the Johnson Method.

In fact, Johnson’s secrets are rooted in the mundane science of proportions. Many of his students, who arrive itching to rev up the chain saws, are disappointed when most of the first day of class is spent talking about math and working out proportions on calculators. Jim Bohanon, who runs Stump Busters, a tree service in the western suburb of Waconia, took Johnson’s course last spring and he remembers calling his wife after the first day of class, wondering what he had gotten himself into. “‘I thought we were in chain saw school!’ I told her, ‘I’m not good at math—that’s why I do what I do!’” he said.

Unlike most of Johnson’s students, who take the course for personal enjoyment or to develop a hobby for retirement, Bohanon plans to make carving a winter supplement to his stump-removal and firewood business. He’s an enthusiastic convert to Johnson’s detail-oriented method, which also eschews cutesy, cartoonish animals with glued-on eyes in favor of more realistic renderings with carefully hollowed-out pupils. Bohanon laughed when he recounted how he asked Johnson where to buy black marbles, which a chain-saw-carving video had recommended using for bears’ eyes. “He said, “Marbles? You’ve gotta be kidding me!’”

Johnson’s entrée into what is arguably the manliest arena of arts and crafts (some techniques call for two or three different chain saws, a side grinder, a Dremel tool, an air compressor, and a propane torch) came by way of his previous work as a taxidermist and sculptor of taxidermy models, where the proportions and anatomy of animals are also important. Still, when it came to chain saw carving, Johnson says he and Doris, who now teaches sealing and finishing techniques, started from “zero,” developing their methods through thousands of hours of trial and error. “I was so bad that I hired somebody to teach me how to use a chain saw to cut firewood!” he claimed. Today he’s tight-lipped around other professional carvers, saving his insights for tuition-paying students, who leave the school with detailed plans and plastic models of eagles and bears. (The Cold War lives on, apparently, as these two figures far outsell any other kind of carvings.)

Johnson’s own gallery is filled with expensive, elaborately detailed carvings of bears climbing trees, rampant cougars, herons in flight, and more. It’s clear that he enjoys the process as much as the result. “It was something that appealed to me,” he said. “I can go outdoors and be physical, because I’m hyper, and a chain saw wears me out in about four or five hours.”—Dan Gilchrist

Unlike previous generations, who must have been chronically dehydrated by comparison, many young people today feel a need to carry around their own personal water supply clipped to a backpack or a shoulder bag. They often use a brightly colored plastic bottle with a screw-on cap known by its ungraceful brand name: Nalgene.

These bottles had their genesis in the laboratory—literally. They were originally manufactured as containers for chemical reagents. In the 1970s, enterprising lab technicians pilfered them for camping trips, because they were durable, leak-proof, and less likely than other bottles to add a plasticky taste to water. Nalgene, now probably the world’s best-known bottle manufacturer, got wise to the trend and began marketing them through camping supply stores. For many years, only outdoor types used them, inexplicably wrapping them in duct tape.

Today these bottles and their knock-off competitors are everywhere. Midwest Mountaineering, the West Bank’s venerable adventure store, saw its Nalgene bottle sales more than double between 1999 and 2002. The company’s product line has grown from the standard milky-white bottle with a blue cap to a rainbow of sizes and colors in transparent polycarbonate Lexan plastic.

Glacier blue is Nalgene’s most recent top-selling color, they say; others include sage green, honey yellow, and ruby red. (The latter have the unfortunate effect of making people look as if they are carrying around a copious urine sample or some spare plasma.)

Eric, a grad student in conservation biology, fits the old guard to a tee, from his mud-spattered mountaineering boots to his purple fleece jacket and scruffy beard. During a break from an academic conference the other day, he said he started carrying a Nalgene bottle fifteen years ago, at a time when he was backpacking a lot. Today he gulps from a beat-up, small-mouthed, smoke-colored bottle. “The only things that matter to me are performance and function,” he said with a sniff. “I find the recent trend of sorority girls carrying these newer bottles around as fashion accessories totally annoying.” His own reasons for carrying water around are twofold: to reduce waste from disposable containers and to ensure he’s drinking water he has personally filtered.

Yalda, a skinny, affable pre-med student at the U, may be part of the madding crowd Eric disdains. Even at a Dinkytown coffeeshop, she was drinking from her own water stash. She admitted that she bought her bottle because she was taken with way it looked. “Orange is my favorite color,” she said. She drinks a lot of water each day in pursuit of her two favorite sports, karate and figure skating.

Are compulsive water-chuggers doing themselves any good? In recent years, most self-help regimens have encouraged relentless hydration, pushing at least eight eight-ounce glasses of water a day (dubbed “8×8”). Even in the up-is-down world of low-carbohydrate dieting, water consumption is considered key. The Atkins diet recommends “8×8” as a minimum water intake (alcoholic or caffeinated beverages don’t count). An experiment with “8×8” by this embarrassingly sedentary writer yielded only an early summer cold and heightened awareness of tile patterns in the restroom.

On the other hand, it is possible to get too much water. In the 2002 Boston Marathon, one runner over-hydrated to the point of creating a fatal sodium deficiency. And one study linked chemicals that can leach from hard plastics to chromosomal damage in mouse eggs, leading one manufacturer to recommend hand-washing bottles with mild detergent to slow their deterioration.

Even if the mice give up the habit, the plastic-bottle trend may just be getting started. One vendor of customized tchotchkes told me that Wal-Mart recently ordered twenty-five million Lexan bottles from a Chinese manufacturer; that’s roughly one bottle for every eleven Americans, so drink up!—Dan Gilchrist

Michael McDermott and his family may have been the only people to move out of Seattle in the early 1990s, when that city’s high-tech grunge cachet was at its peak. The McDermotts moved to an abandoned dairy farm in Kelliher, Minnesota. The place was soon hopping with strange cattle—tall, hairy bovines with big horns, which arrived in a range of colors from specialty breeders all over the world.

There is something about these animals that have a hold on McDermott’s imagination, something that transports him back to his ancestors among the Highland clans of Scotland. “Can you imagine the ancient Scots going to war riding their Highland cattle, with their bodies painted blue … fighting alongside their Highland cattle?” McDermott asked me, by way of an unsolicited e-mail, a few months ago. “I am a bull tamer, and through my understanding of the form and function, I have recreated the ancient aurochs. You are invited to view our site and begin an adventure with the use of Highland genetics and its connections to ancient Highland culture.”

While driving hundreds of miles to his two-hundred-acre spread in northwestern Minnesota, it occurred to me that McDermott might have been inviting me to his website, not his actual farm. But I was practically there, and determined to see for myself what he was talking about.
According to McDermott, the Highland cattle and Highland crosses he breeds are well suited to the forests and bogs of northwestern Minnesota, able to survive outside and even give birth during harsh winters with no shelter. These are the cattle he envisions as the center of his Highland forefathers’ world, the ones clansmen rode into battle against the Romans. More tangibly, he says his bulls’ ability to graze on a wide range of rough forage helps create a natural balance of forests and their fauna, and keeps trees and shrubs in place, minimizing soil erosion. As if that weren’t enough, they provide jumbo-sized rib-eye steaks that are relatively low in cholesterol, which he sells by mail order.

When McDermott wrote to me about recreating the ancient auroch, I didn’t know what an auroch was—a monument à la Stonehenge? A Celtic symbol? A Bronze Age bagpipe? Turns out it’s a now-extinct breed of wild cattle, Bos primigenius, which is thought to be the ancestor of domestic cattle. The prehistoric cave paintings in Lascaux, France, featured aurochs prominently. Julius Caesar wrote about the animal he encountered in the Black Forest in the first century B.C., saying, “They are but a little less than elephants in size… Their strength is very great, and also their speed. They spare neither man nor beast that they see. They cannot endure the sight of men, nor be tamed.”

Aurochs were hunted throughout most of Europe during the Middle Ages until only a small number remained in a royal forest in what is now Poland. The last auroch died in 1627.

Through modern genetic methods and ancient breeding stock, McDermott claims to have recreated the auroch by accident when he bred his Highland cattle with Belgian Blue cattle. To my untrained eye, the hairy, muscular hybrid he has created does bear a striking resemblance to pictures of the wild cattle species of yore. Yet even at eight feet long and five feet high, the bulls are considerably smaller than some of the huge auroch skeletons unearthed in Europe, which have stood nearly six feet at the shoulder. But, hey, a miniature poodle is still a poodle, right?

Well, sort of. As close as McDermott appears to have gotten to an auroch look-alike, scientists say there is virtually no chance that he has reverse-engineered the original auroch’s genetic makeup. Still, it’s kind of a kick to see McDermott pet and calm a big animal that looks like the one Caesar declared untamable. I decide I’d be willing to ride one into battle alongside McDermott should the Canadians ever attack his farm from the north.—Dan Gilchrist

To lots of people, John Kerry often looks as if he’s brooding or unhappy. But that’s just his neutral expression—his thinking face. Throughout the early primaries, pundits wondered if Kerry “had enough Elvis” to be prez. For that matter, do any of us have enough Elvis?

If you can’t impersonate Elvis, then you could do worse than impersonate a member of the “Memphis Mafia,” the coterie of good ol’ boys who flanked the King in public and hung out with him in private. I recently got to practice my own John Kerry face doing just that.

The circumstances of my service to Elvis were a little weird. Kemps has created a new ice-cream flavor called Las Vegas Fudge. (Did the King’s favorite flavor, fried-peanut-butter-and-banana-sandwich, fail to make it out of the test kitchen?) This inspired them to host an afternoon of Elvis impersonations at Ridgedale the other day. My job was to “guard” Elvis onstage. There would be two Elvises (which people oddly kept Latin-izing into “Elvi”).

In a makeshift green room at the mall, I observed the pecking order of Elvis impersonators in action. I also learned that some prefer to be called “Elvis tribute artists,” such as Jesse Aron from Janesville, Wisconsin. Aron is a second-generation tribute artist who as a child watched his father play the King. He was prompt and professional; he brought a pallet of high-tech equipment and his own sound engineer for his performance, and he looked pretty credible to me in a homemade white jumpsuit with flame piping.

To the chagrin of Jesse and the folks from Kemps, the second Elvis impersonator arrived late. He also brought a cassette tape, which was not compatible with Aron’s laptop-based sound system. He was even momentarily stingy with the satin baseball jackets he was expected to supply to the Mafia.

Rick Marino is a famous, grizzled veteran. He has been playing Elvis for twenty-eight years, versus Jesse’s six, and he does not have to fake his Southern drawl. Unlike the kid, he doesn’t mind being called an Elvis impersonator—he’s the president of the Elvis Presley Impersonators International Association and the author of Be Elvis!: A Guide to Impersonating the King.

Marino’s costumes looked expensive—especially the wide, white belt decorated with what looked like miniature brass doorknockers. His manager (he has a manager!) confided that since Marino recently lost seventy pounds, he can now squeeze into a black leather get-up like the one Elvis wore in his 1968 comeback TV special.

Marino’s set was mainly later ballads like “Stranger in the Crowd” and Elvis’s version of “My Way.” As his bodyguard, I wore oversized blue-blocker sunglasses and walked him to the stage, where a couple dozen fans and/or shoppers loitered. While he worked this crowd with a wireless microphone, I resupplied him with scarves to drape around the necks of besotted admirers.

Onstage and off, Rick channeled a weary, late-era Elvis warped by the weight of the world and trapped in the trappings of show business. He certainly was the man, right down to the Brut by Fabergé cologne Elvis favored (according to Rick’s book). It was impressive.

Still, I couldn’t help rooting for the upstart; Jesse Aron nailed a lot of high notes, and his enjoyment of the material—heavy on the seventies, like Marino—seemed more genuine, if that’s a good thing. One of his costumes featured a shiny golden Aztec sundial, just like the one Elvis wore on his last tour. This blinded me temporarily when it reflected the afternoon sun.

Even a half-century after Elvis first shocked the nation by shaking his hips on TV, a Saturday tribute to him at a suburban mall is not without controversy. During one of Aron’s numbers, a representative from Ridgedale came over and whispered into the soundman’s ear. Could he turn down the music? It was bothering some shoppers. The soundman ruefully complied. Even the King bows to commerce.—Dan Gilchrist