On their blog over the weekend, our fellow plucky altweekly The Memphis Flyer put up a sixth-anniversary plug for a rather outstanding piece of writing that slipped under our radar when it was first published in August 2007: a cover-length obituary from an alternative timeline in which Elvis Presley survived his overdose in 1977, got clean, opened a chicken restaurant chain named after his mother, sang “Islands in the Stream” with Dolly Parton and “(I’ve Had)The Time of My Life” for the “Dirty Dancing” soundtrack, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from superfan Bill Clinton in 1995, had another kid, and lived thirty more sober and healthy years. See the video above for a little creepy age-progression of The King.

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Ah, what might have been. (le sigh)

BONUS: In The Flyer’s version of events, one of the ways The King made a living in his golden years was by buying the Mountain Valley Spring Water Company in Hot Springs.

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