The Best Celebrity Recipe

Did you ever hear that Paul Simon song "Graceland?" I love it. It' s a driving song. It' s a song about driving and it also has the right feel for a driving song: drumbeat that propels the song forward, languid. You listen to it and you can just feel the road slipping by underneath you, the sun setting off to your right, shadows of trees and light posts flicking across your face as you cruise down the highway in your convertible car.

It's also a very sad song. Listen to the words:




Everybody sees you're blown apart. Everybody sees the wind blow. I'm going to Graceland... poor boys and pilgrims and families and we are going to Graceland.

I bring this up because I went to Graceland once, and I went to Graceland because I was a poor boy and a pilgrim and I was feeling down and stressed out and decided that I wanted to get away for a few days so I went to Graceland. I ended up taking my mom, because I called her to tell her I was going so she wouldn't worry, and she wanted to go. So we drove down to Graceland for the weekend, and toured it, and drove back. And it left me feeling better. Maybe it was because I toured Graceland with my mom, who had the temerity, at the outset of the tour, to raise her hand and ask:

"Will we see the bathroom where Elvis died on the toilet?"

Paul Simon's song is just the latest manifestation of something that's hard to put my finger on but which is there, all the time, in the background of our lives: The Permeation of Elvis. If you ever stop to think about how far into our collective subconscious, and conscious, minds Elvis has sunk, it might startle you. Elvis is a part of our American DNA; he's ingrained in us, slightly different in each person, but always there and always shaping our lives in subtle ways that we can't understand.

You don't believe me? Think about this: Natalie Cole sung about "Pink Cadillacs." Why do you think she did that? I say it's because Elvis made "Pink Cadillacs" synonymous with a kind of luxury and lifestyle that's beyond anything we can imagine, and he did it in 1955, when he bought his mom a Cadillac and had it painted pink -- the exact pink color is called "Elvis Rose."

Here's another example of Elvis-as-DNA: Hillary Clinton met with "Black Elvis" to pump up her campaign:


Finally, I'll just let you chew on this: There have been not one, not two, but three "Flying Elvis" teams: wrestlers, skydivers, and basketballers:

(I'll let the advanced TBOE class mull over what it might mean that we continue to deal with rumors that Elvis is still alive, in light of the fact that the pink color is called "Elvis Rose" and the multitude of flying Elvises. Keep your essays to 500 words or less.)

(I also don't think that "Flying Elvi" is correct. I speak English, darn it! I'm sticking with "Elvises.")

And speaking of sticking with Elvis, let's get to The Best Celebrity Recipe. (World Champion Segue-er, that's me!) You know what it is; even if you don't know what it is, you know what it is because it's ingrained in your DNA.

It's Fried Peanut Butter & Banana Sandwiches.

I'm not sure where I first heard about these; like I said, you just know about them, like the way you know that gravity holds you down. You grow up just being aware that you won't float off into space, and being aware that if you fry a PB&B sandwich, it'll taste awesome.

The legend is that Elvis loved Fried Peanut Butter & Banana sandwiches (and that he would sometimes add bacon, which I thought at first sounded gross but as I think about it I'm thinking maybe it wouldn't be so bad...). I couldn't get confirmation of this on the official Elvis site, but I have no reason to doubt it, either. And since "believing something to be true" + "an absence of proof that it's false"= truth, then I'm on solid ground saying that there is no doubt that Elvis Presley ate Fried Peanut Butter & Banana Sandwiches every single day of his life.

Here's how I make them: Make a peanut butter & banana sandwich. Spread butter on the outside. Fry it. Make sure that you smush it down while frying it so that the peanut butter melts and the bananas get gooey.

Then: enjoy. When you bite into it, you get a melty, drippy wash of liquid peanut butter pouring into your mouth while you chew on the bananas and bread. It's all warm enough to make you feel happy inside, messy enough to make you feel like a kid, and not too sweet.

Have a lot of milk handy. Trust me on that one. And, if you made it right, a lot of napkins, too.

The Fried Peanut Butter & Banana Sandwich earns its spot as The Best Celebrity Recipe because it combines delicious taste with the unusual textures it creates, and because it takes a childhood favorite from a time when we were innocent and makes it more decadent, more grown-up, while somehow also being more childlike at the same time. Which is a lot like what Elvis himself accomplished: we were a young, happy, innocent people before he swiveled his hips and asked us to love him tender. Suddenly, we were adults: things were hotter and messier and more interesting. But we still want to reach back, bring a little innocence with us. Maybe that's why we have such a hard time of letting go of him. Maybe that's why everything we do has a little Elvis in it: Like the peanut butter, he stuck with us.

Plus, it comes straight from the greatest celebrity in the history of modern times. There's nobody more us than Elvis, and therefore nothing more us than the food he loved.


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