Fort Chafee Nominated For National Register of Historic Places

The building at Chaffee Crossing where Elvis Presley, then an Army inductee, received his first military haircut is being considered for nomination to the National Register of Historic Places.
Designated Building 803 on old Fort Chaffee grounds, the building is among 12 sites that will be considered when the State Review Board of the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program meets Dec. 1 in Little Rock.
The building is home to the Chaffee Barbershop Museum, an attraction that commemorates not only the 1958 Presley haircut, but other historical events at the Army facility. The museum is restored to its appearance at the time of the haircut.
Carolyn Joyce with the Fort Smith Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the museum, opened in 2008, features photographs and memorabilia highlighting Chaffee's military mission as a World War II training facility, its use as an internment camp for German prisoners of war, its mission as a settlement camp for Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s and Cuban refugees in the 1980s. The camp's more recent service in the evacuation and relocation of families fleeing Gulf coast hurricanes is also celebrated.
But Joyce, who recruits and organizes the volunteers who serve as museum tour guides, said it is the Elvis connection that resonates most with visitors. She said in 2009, more than 23,000 people signed the register at the museum, an even more impressive total considering the facility was then open only three days a week.
The CVB has had some success in publicizing the museum as a must-see venue for national and international visitors traveling to and from Memphis to visit Presley's home, Graceland. Joyce said the museum is open daily for annual Elvis activities coinciding with Presley's birthday in January and "Elvis Week," an annual memorial celebration for the singer held each August.
The museum also hosts an annual celebration to coincide with the March 25, 1958, haircut.
Joyce said the museum at 7313 Terry St. at Chaffee Crossing is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. There is no admission cost, but donations are accepted.

New Hard Rock Cafe In Waikiki

Jack Lord’s badge from the old Hawaii Five-O is moving to Waikiki, but most of the rock and pop culture memorabilia from Honolulu’s Hard Rock Cafe won’t make the transition to the new 13,000-square-foot restaurant and retail store that’s opening at the end of this month.
Workers are putting the finishing touches on the new Hard Rock Cafe on Beach Walk Street, just off the main drag Kalakaua Avenue, as it aims to open by the end of next week.
The actual grand opening will take place early next year, possibly February, and will feature a major recording act, and perhaps some local ones, too, according to General Manager Barry Cales, who recently moved over from the Maui Hard Rock Cafe in anticipation of the Waikiki store opening.
The old Hard Rock Cafe restaurant, at the corner of Kapiolani Boulevard and Kalakaua, will serve its last burger today, although the retail side, the Rock Shop, will stay open until the new place opens.
The new 250-seat restaurant has been the works for at least three years. It’s the anchor of a new retail center called 280 Beach Walk, which was built on the site of the old Hula Hut night club. Only one other tenant, a Japanese surf shop called 24 Karat, is open.
Cales has hired about 80 new people, tripling the Hard Rock staff from 40 to 121 jobs, in anticipation of the traffic the new restaurant will generate.
But while all of the employees will make the one-mile trek down Kalakaua Avenue to the new place, most of the memorabilia will head instead to a warehouse near Hard Rock’s worldwide headquarters in Orlando, Fla.
Giovanni Taliaferro, Hard Rock’s corporate memorabilia designer, has tied a lot of the new memorabilia to Hawaii. For example, in addition to Lord’s Five-O badge, there’s a guitar he used to play at his Honolulu home with Elvis Presley when the King was in town. Taliaferro also included a pair of Emimem’s shoes, with a note that part of the rapper’s album “Relapse 2” was recorded at Avex Honolulu Studios in Hawaii Kai.
Taliaferro, who just finished designing a new Hard Rock in Dubai before coming to Hawaii, says that the Hard Rock restaurants used to be designed so that customers could expect to have the same experience whether they were in Honolulu or Orlando.
“Now everything is totally relating to the local market,” he said Thursday morning as a handful of people from local media were shown around.
One of the more striking designs in the new place is a “wave” of guitars that starts on a stone wall at the base of the ground floor stairs — the retail store is at street level with the restaurant on the second floor — and curves up to hang from the vaulted ceiling and stretch outside to the large open lanai. Another “wave” element is built behind the bar on the second floor.
Hard Rock is aiming for LEED certification, which would make it the first restaurant in Hawaii to be certified under the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED ratings system. The building at 280 Beach Walk is also aiming for LEED certification.
Most of the materials used in the Hard Rock’s interior are either recycled or renewable, and the kitchen has been designed to be more energy efficient. There’s even a shower behind the scenes to encourage staff members to walk or ride their bicycles to work.
The new restaurant will be open for lunch and dinner, but will be available for private breakfasts, according to Jill Gilboy, Hard Rock’s sales and marketing manager. Companies can also rent out the entire restaurant for private parties, she said.
Meanwhile, the old Hard Rock building on Kapiolani Boulevard is for lease, and the new tenant can even keep the old woody station wagon that’s hanging over the bar.

Glee Now Second To Elvis

Another week, another musical milestone for the cast of Glee. The Fox program's rendition of "Teenage Dream," debuted atop the digital track sales chart, selling 214,000 copies in its first week, Fox and Columbia Records announced Thursday. 
It's the first time a Glee song has reached No. 1. ("Don't Stop Believing" peaked at No. 2 in May 2009.)
Gwyneth Paltrow takes on Cee-Lo's "Forget You" in Glee. The success of "Teenage Dream" boosted the Glee cast past James Brown for second most entries on the Billboard Hot 100. The news comes just a month after the cast passed the Beatles to take the No. 3 all-time spot. Glee is now second only to Elvis Presley.
So far, Glee has sold 17 million digital downloads and 6.5 million albums worldwide. Glee: The Music, Volume 1 has been certified platinum with more than 1 million units sold and volumes 2 and 3 have each moved more than 500,000 units.
Glee has two more albums hitting the shelves this month. Glee: The Music, The Christmas Album was released earlier this year and Glee: The Music, Volume 4 will hit stores Nov. 30.

Wayne Newton To Open Home As Graceland West?

Attention Fellow Wayniacs!
Wayne Newton's Las Vegas estate is a lavish wonderland complete with South African penguins, sweeping crystal staircases and a memorabilia collection to make a celebrity junkie salivate: a Frank Sinatra champagne glass, Nat King Cole's watch, Steve McQueen's Rolls-Royce and a Johnny Cash guitar.
The estate is so resplendent, Newton said, that he plans to open his gated home to the public and turn it into a tourist attraction. The project some have dubbed "Graceland West" won initial approval from a local government board Wednesday, paving the way for Newton to open his tours in late 2011 as planned.
The attraction has caused friction between the entertainer and neighbors opposed to noisy tour buses, unyielding traffic and inane gift shops flooding their affluent neighborhood of ranches and mansions just six miles from the Las Vegas Strip.
At the Clark County Commission meeting Wednesday, critics went on for more than three hours, begging the board to postpone approving the still-evolving project, to no avail.
"This has been incredibly heavy-handed," said neighbor Terry Manley. "It's arrogance. What's the hurry?"
In Newton's vision, visitors to Casa de Shenandoah will tour select parts of his 10,000-square-foot home adorned with plush white carpets, gold-trimmed doors, impressionist paintings by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and 17th-century antiques collected from European castles.
They might glance at the singer's favorite space, a cramped office just to the right of his lavish living room, where the red paint splashed on the walls is barely visible behind the shelves and stacks of mementoes collected during his 50-plus years in show business.
The keepsakes are a reflection of some of the mentors and friends who helped make Newton famous, including Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Bobby Darin and Jack Benny.
"This is 'The Dove,'" Newton, 68, informed visitors on a recent morning, plucking a beat-up guitar case from a row of instruments near his desk. "Elvis gave it to me at Graceland four months before he died."
An adjacent theater would show a documentary about Newton's public life, and, on some nights, Newton himself would take the stage to belt out the songs that made his high-pitched voice famous - "Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast," which peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard charts in 1972; his 1965 version of "Red Roses for a Blue Lady," and his signature hit, "Danke Schoen."
Newton said he and his wife decided to share their home because they love the 40-acre estate so much. The attraction will be both a tribute to Las Vegas performers and a peaceful haven in a city of neon lights and 24-hour casinos, he said.
"The last thing I have ever done is infringe on my neighbors," he said. "I've heard people say that we are building a monument to myself. Get serious. I'm not that important."
The attraction could employ more than 400 people while creating a new cash cow after years of financial troubles.
Newton filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1992 to reorganize an estimated $20 million in debts, including a $341,000 Internal Revenue Service lien for back taxes.
In 2005, Newton disputed IRS claims that he and his wife owed $1.8 million in back taxes and penalties from 1997 through 2000.
More recently, sheriff's deputies were turned away from the ranch home in February while trying to collect a $500,000 court judgment stemming from back pay owed to a former pilot.
That same month, Newton's billionaire buddy Bruton Smith, chairman of NASCAR race track owner Speedway Motorsports Inc., tried to seize Casa de Shenandoah for repayment of a $3.35 million loan.

Riley Cuts Her Beautiful Locks!

Elvis' granddaughter Riley is not only a super model but now also an actress. Her first role was in the film The Runaways. She now has cut her beautiful locks and has sexy short hair for her role as Jack in the upcoming werewolf flick Jack & Diane,  which she shot in the big apple back in June/July. She plays a teenage girl who falls in love with another girl named Diane. Riley has Priscilla's grace and she is going to be a Hollywood icon. Maybe Riley will achieve the goal of being a great actress which her grandfather wished for as an actor. Best of luck to Riley.......we are all rooting for you! You go girl! You are an amazing young lady with the world ahead of you!

Source: Megan Murphy -backinmemphis.com