MOTLEY NEWS IS A WEBSITE that features current news, stories of interest, humor, and photography—“a motley of what’s in the news today!” On May 24, 2012, they ran a feature titled “Wikipedia’s Lamest Edit Wars.” While the article was uncredited, all the answers given to the various comments were credited to Michelle at Motley News. So I am giving Michelle the byline credit here as I discuss the lovely, talented, funny, and outspoken Cybill Shepherd.
The article opens with a statement: “I found this Wikipedia page to be very humorous, and many items debated really had some valid points. Basically, these are issues which been debated over and over again on what would be correct for that Wiki page.”
Michelle then lists several other questions that occupy at least some wiki-editors’ thoughts:
• Is it appropriate to include pictures of a tarantula on a page about arachnophobia?
• Is J. K. Rowling’s last name pronounced “rolling” or does it rhyme with “howling”?
• Is it relevant that Bono plays the harmonica?
• Is it okay to mention the lack of Asian diversity on the House, M.D. television show?
Other burning topics include cow-tipping, some silly Star Wars stuff—and isn’t all of it silly anymore?—and at what age do pre-teens become pre-teens.
Elvis answering questions at the press conference he gave at the New York Hilton prior to his appearing at Madison Square Garden in June 1972.
Cybill gives Elvis a little heads up
I have had more than a few jaw-dropping experiences when consulting Wikipedia. So I contributed a comment to Michele’s article:
“A few years ago I looked up the Wiki bio page for Elvis Presley and found an unbelievable entry: Actress Cybill Shepherd claimed that she introduced Elvis to the joys of oral sex in 1972. What? Read that again: Elvis Presley got his first blowjob sixteen years after his first million-seller!
I thought, ‘All of those women all of those years and not a taste?’
Are you kidding me?
Did this gorgeous young woman divulge the wisdom of the ages to Elvis?
Does that mean that Ann-Margret was not, a gasp, a . . . you know? What’s a good euphemism? A flautist? And what about Priscilla? Or Grommett only knows how many others along the way?
Then I stopped ruminating on all of the beautiful women who literally threw themselves at the ol’ Pelvis, each ready willing able to do anything—anything!!!!—for the king and each and everyone withholding her head-giving skills from him.
I stopped thinking that each and everyone blew it by not blowing it and thought, Why is this piece of drivel on this page?
Why is someone making me read this?
Was this gorgeous young woman clueless the whole time she was with Elvis?
Why is a too forthright Ms. Shepherd (for whom I would crawl over a beach full of broken clam shells to be introduced to the joys of oral sex with) being made to look like a fool?
Who at Wikipedia made the decision to include this? Was this allowed in to make a point? Did someone there have a dry or sophomoric or mordant sense of humor? Or was the point being that the Wiki team is incapable of exercising editorial control?
And where was this gorgeous young woman during all of this brouhaha?
Ho hum. All that aside, Wikipedia is an interesting site, valuable, and a good source to launch any research on the net by providing a general—and generally accurate—background on thousands of subjects.
But, every now and then, when I least expect, a wee thought pops into me wee head: ‘Did anyone ever get around to introducing Ann-Margret to the joys of oral sex?’”
Yes, I know that Ms. Shepherd was probably referring to Elvis being on the giving side instead of the receiving, but that wouldn’t have been as much fun to write about. And I would have had to call into question the women in question for not wanting—Helle’s Belles, for not demanding!—some good lovin’ from E and that was not something that I was about to do.
Besides, it was so easy to mistake her words for a good ol’ bee-jay in the original Wikipedia article.
In 1972, Elvis and Cybill Shepherd dated, and she insists she taught him to give head. Click To Tweet
FEATURED IMAGE: The photo at the top of this page of Cybill Shepherd was taken in the early 1970s. Human beings don’t get much more beautiful than this. In an interview with Larry King in 2000, Cybill offered this unsolicited observation: “I had somebody ask me a question just the other day, ‘Was Elvis somewhat childlike?’ I said, ‘Well, in the best sense—he was brilliant, he was funny, he was warm-hearted.’ I really think that the drugs were the problem with Elvis Presley. Once I went back to Graceland and could allow myself to mourn the death of Elvis Presley, I also went back and found out that he was a very spiritual man in ways I couldn’t appreciate twenty-five years before.”
POSTSCRIPTUALLY: This article was originally published in December 2014 with a long, SEO-unfriendly URL and keyword. So I am reposting it with more appropriate SEO data. Finally, I tidied up my choice of words from the comment I left on the Motley News site, replacing a few crude terms with more palatable words.
Mystically liberal Virgo enjoys long walks alone in the city at night in the rain with an umbrella and a flask of 10-year-old Laphroaig who strives to live by the maxim, “It ain’t what you know that gets you into trouble; it’s what you know that just ain’t so.
I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn, and a college dropout (twice!). Occupationally, I have been a bartender, jewelry engraver, bouncer, landscape artist, and FEMA crew chief following the Great Flood of ’72 (and that was a job that I should never, ever have left).
I am also the final author of the original O’Sullivan Woodside price guides for record collectors and the original author of the Goldmine price guides for record collectors. As such, I was often referred to as the Price Guide Guru, and—as everyone should know—it behooves one to heed the words of a guru. (Unless, of course, you’re the Beatles.)
Of all the things I have been jealous of concerning Elvis ie fame.talent,good looks and lots of money being taught about oral sex from Cybill Shepherd has just gone to the top of the list.
DAVID
I like your way of thinking ...
NEAL
Somewhere (I’m thinking one of Stanley Booth’s essays but I could be wrong) there’s a conversation between Sam Phillips and Elvis about how much Elvis was going to like going down on a woman (it was put more crudely). Elvis came back a few weeks later and told Mr. Phillips it had been everything he said it would be. Mr. Phillips asked who the lucky girl had been. “Natalie Wood.”
Best guess is that Elvis probably enjoyed telling sweet young things they were the first he’d done this or that to...All very spiritual of course.
Nice pix btw!
J
Yeah, I kinda got the sense that Mr Presley might have been toying with Ms Shepherd. If you look up “cybill shepherd elvis presely” on your browser, there’s quite a few sites with statements from her, or interviews with her. Whenever Elvis comes up, she is very complimentary and very kind.
I was, ahem, coming of age and earning my spurs in the early ’70s, and I asked lots of questions of older, more experienced guys. One of the maneuvers that men used was to tell women that they were afraid they might be gay. Supposedly, this worked. It seems to fit in with telling each woman you’d never gone down “there” before. We younger guys tended to be a bit more forward in our flirting . . .
PS: Glad you liked the pictures—it actually took a while to find goo color photos from the needed time period of each of those gorgeous women!
Testing...if this works I’ll leave a comment later....
jwr
Works.
I am going to use that line that “I have never been down there before” and see how it goes.I would hazard a guess that it will not work for me like it supposedly did for Elvis.Still worth a try.
DAVID
You gotta be sincere when you lie.
NEAL
Thank you.And I mean that most sincerely.
D
I would NEVER doubt you.
N