it was inevitable that i'd end up doing something jesusy before i left town. my three options were 1) the al green church 2) the first church of the elvis impersonator or 3) the crystal shrine grotto. (i could also visit the baptist compound but those people scare the, uh, bejesus out of me.)
al green's church is, well, actual church and i'm not having that. (besides, he's not there very often) and, upon further investigation, i found that the first church of the elvis impersonator had closed. (although the shrine is in goner records, a place i would actually recommend visting.)
so i was left with the crystal shrine grotto.
i'd been to this...er, thing, once before with ma famille but i had the flu and a really high fever at the time. (all i could think was "take me HOOME!! STOP!! IT'S ABUSE!!").
this last time, however, was quite enjoyable. leff and i arrived quite early and all was quiet at the cemetary except for the sounds of cicadas and the large machinery digging fresh graves.
no, i'm not kidding.
anyway, here's the outside of the shrine.
doesn't it look remarkably like a termite hill? most of the area called cave hill is landscaped with weird crap like the grotto. even the garbage cans are made to look like cement tree stumps. it's absolutely fascinating.
inside the weirdness continues. the cemetary commissioned several artists to make site specific pieces chronicling the story arc of the jesus fable. here's a photo of one of the last pieces.
and leff has a hysterical movie of the entire interior.
outside of the grotto is a lake (a lot of the koi had died since the last time i'd been there.)and "god's garden". (but, er, you can't climb there.)
the crystal shrine grotto is truly a bizarre place and it's gratis. so if you don't mind cemetaries and can tolerate a bit of campy god stuff, it's a great place to waste a half hour!
did i mention that they have a guest book?
2 comments:
Wow, Memphis sounds like a great place to VISIT, hence you're gettin' the hell outta there asap. Btw, was the "you can't climb there" a reference from the old King's Quest games? If so, I have all of those on cdrom...in their original form. I haven't played them recently, but man, did I ever waste years of my life playing it when I was younger. I loved that game.
The grotto looks very cool. If my jobby job wasn't so lame and let us have quicktime, I'd get to see the movie by leff. Maybe one of these days, I'll drag hubby along for a ride and we'll cruise on by Memphis. Although, I don't know how excited he'd be to go because it's the headquarters for FedEx. Yes, he's a manager with that place here in NYC and has informed me that it is pretty much the only major company to work for in Memphis. What would you say? Do you see lots of purple and orange people running around? (no, not oompa loompas) ;-)
it's an okay place to visit for, like, one day.
you can do everything in ONE DAY.
that being said, friends that have visited have told me they're not visiting me again until i move out of this city. that's right, they hated it so much after two days that they're not coming back.
oh, it sucks.
heeheee!! king's quest is t eh rock!
the grotto isn't bad. it's very 1930's roadside americana. excepr for the fact that it's in a cemetary and not on the side of the road....
your husband's right. fedex is the largest employer in town. there's really nothing else except autozone stores. (memphis is their headquarter for some reason.)
unemployment is really high. but there's a low standard of living! HAHAHAH!!! (there has to be. you can't make any money in this place.)
i do see a lot of fedex trucks! but more planes. the whole city is under the fedex flight path.
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