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By Root 1259 0

please take her. No, no, I am only fooling I love my wife but she don’t know how to cook…. Her cooking ees so bad ees terrible….” He began his eemetations—Nixon again and Ed Sullivan (“Tonight we have de r-r-r-r-r-r-really beeg show!”) and then he segued into that which was by this time the signature opposite wall of the Foreign Man repertoire except only now a larger population would begin to know it and once it was known it would become expected and once it was expected it would become a burden that defeated the elements of surprise and incongruity that he cherished. But that would come later because now he was brand new, a bright oddity possessed of rehearsed naïveté and true charm making a small but significant step forward from the swirl of obscurity, and so he said, “And now last but not to be de least I would like to eemetate de Elveece Presley!”

For Elvis, he wore hidden layers, like he used to wear to school not to be funny. He turned his back to the audience, as dictated by professional impressionist law (must-make-metamorphosis-mysterious!), and bent over the chaise to switch on the tape that played the momentous recorded opening strains of “Also Sprach Zarathustra” which would swell into the raucous chords of “See See Rider” (all lifted directly from an actual Elvis Las Vegas concert album), during which he shed his checked coat and his oxford shirt to reveal a yellow silk blouse which he then covered with a teal tuxedo jacket and, still facing aft, he combed back his hair in pompadourian fashion, strapped on his guitar, swiveled to the music, then peeked out over his shoulder to display the perfectly cocky sneersmile that belonged only to Elvis Presley. He spun forward and was Elvis, prowling the pool patio with mock lascivious intent, slack babyface cheeks jiggling, sinewy legs jangling, and then the recorded intro music stopped as he stood fully transformed at the microphone and the audience applauded—and just before he would now speak in the voice of Elvis Presley, no longer Foreign Man at all, and say “Thank you thankyouverrrmuch!” and continue his Elvisian patter and launch into sublime replication of some familiar Elvis hit and radiate crackling ions throughout, after which he would throw articles of his costume into the audience and heave winded breaths while trying to regain composure and then finally speak in the voice of Foreign Man, no longer Elvis Presley at all, and say “Tenk you veddy much!” and meekly ask for his clothes back, one of Greg Garrison’s videotape editors abruptly cut elsewhere because of broadcast time constraints. He would not know this until he watched the program in June, thus realizing that he had been left at the microphone hanging—stranded mid-feat in the silence that preceded the true tricks that were his unique currency. And he was heartily disappointed, which was fine no really, because at least it happened on network television, on his second appearance on network television in two weeks no less, and he would have another chance soon enough because things were really only starting now and it had taken him so long to get this far.

And so, back in 1971, Maharishi had regarded the boy in Spain as a puzzlement what with all of the crazyman talk and thereby discouraged bliss hierarchy from indoctrinating him just yet as a teacher. “People there thought Andy was very unstable, found his behavior kind of peculiar, asking the Maharishi about humor,” said Don Snow, a training cohort who had been made a teacher on the Majorca trip. “It’s considered very disruptive to have somebody who’s emotionally unstable on these advanced-training courses.” Andy, however, disagreed with this assessment and sought out His Holiness two months later in Massachusetts and pleaded his case and was then given status as a teacher. He had not returned to Great Neck after Majorca and would only make periodic visits home until autumn of 1972, when he would reclaim the den as headquarters and borrow family cars to hawk his act in the city and elsewhere. Until that time, he hired on at the Student International