Elvis @ 77

Yes, The King turns 77 today. It's become a tradition here to celebrate his birthday every year because, well, he's Elvis, and it's either celebrate his birthday or weigh in on the Republican primaries. When I was thinking about Elvis this morning, I thought of my two wonderful trips to Graceland. Coming up with one or two memorable moments from those excursions is difficult (there are so many), but what came to my mind was the gold sink in the bathroom of the Lisa Marie, Elvis's late-career TCB jet (I think you need to purchase the premium ticket at Graceland to gain access to the Lisa Marie [parked across the street], but why anyone would go to Graceland and not shoot the works on the premium ticket is beyond my ken). A gold sink! And then I remembered a video that was playing, probably in some gift shop, or maybe it was at the racquet ball court (the mind gets dizzy with Graceland memories)--an early 70s Elvis singing Neil Diamond's warhorse "Sweet Caroline." I've always remembered the cheesy (but in a good Elvis way) little dance move Elvis does after singing "Caroline" and "inclined." Well, I found a video (maybe not the actual one, but a good one) of the performance (alas, I can't get it to embed here, just click the link, it's worth it). Elvis is still pretty lean and good looking here (even in white boots, of which we get a close-up), but there are hints of what's to come: the performance at times gets a little lazy, the chain things on the jump suit seem to anticipate an expanding girth, and if you look closely, there seems to be a rip in the jumpsuit (Elvis's right pelvis, appropriately) that Elvis not so discreetly tucks away during the performance. Anyway, have a 
look and raise a toast to the The King!

Dee-Li-Vah De Let-Tah

I mailed something other than a bill yesterday. I sent a small birthday present to a friend of mine. Chances are, with her living just across town, that she received it today. I hope she does, today being her birthday. When I stopped to think about the process yesterday, once again I was amazed by the U.S.
Postal Service. Despite all the technology, and despite the fact that the package is only traveling a few miles, it still wows me that you can put something in a slot one place and within a day or two it arrives exactly where it's supposed to, with nary a problem. I mean, how many times have you had serious problems with the mail? Once, maybe twice in your lifetime? For all the mail you've sent and received? Say what you will about the federal government, but can you imagine the hassles that would ensue if something like the banking industry took over the mails?

Sadly, I can't remember the last time I actually mailed something other than a bill. Multiply me a few million times and I guess it's no wonder we keep hearing about the financial problems of the Postal Service and how it's in danger of going under. What a pity. Is there a greater inexpensive thrill than seeing a letter or package in your mailbox? Is there better nervous excitement than waiting that day or two for something you sent someone to arrive and hear back from that person? I've never been a consistently prolific letter writer in my time, but I've had periods when I sent and received a lot of personal mail. It's a singular sensation that is vastly different from a telephone call (which has pleasures all its own) and one that emails and texts and tweets and such can't even touch.

Now I'm not here to rant about the disappearance of letter writing; times change blah blah blah. But, but. Maybe if we had a national day of letter writing/mailing, people might be reminded of the pleasures once again, and then maybe make the effort a bit more frequently to do so, and then maybe the Postal Service will survive better. And maybe pigs will fly and the Cleveland Browns will make the Super Bowl too. But I'm going to do it, dammit. I promise to mail a letter this Friday, November 18th. I don't know to whom I'll write or what I'll write about, but I'm going to do it because I love the USPS. Join me, won't you?

And while we're on the subject, I'm wondering what are the five most famous letters in rock music. Actually I have wondered for some time because I'm admitting a kind of defeat. I've long wanted to actually write those famous rock letters. It would be a great exercise in imagination and voice. How would the body of Paul's (it is Paul, isn't it, Beatles fanatics?) letter that ends so famously "P.S. I Love You" read? Or what kind of heartfelt sweet things did poor Elvis write in that letter that kept getting returned to sender/him? When you think about it, the words in the Box Tops' "The Letter" must have been pretty hot. I mean to send adolescent Alex Chilton scurrying to an airport because he "ain't got time to take a fast train," and not caring about the cost of it all, phew! All we get of the letter is that "she couldn't live without me." There must be more than that in the missive, no? What? I want to know.

So those three are among the top five most famous letters in rock history, we all can agree, right? The next one on my list is perhaps the most intriguing--the letter that appears at the end of  Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row." After verses and verses and verses and nine minutes, thirty-four seconds of Bob describing the weird goings on in/on Desolation Row, he pulls back a bit and begins the last verse talking about a letter:

Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the doorknob broke)
When you asked me how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name ...

God almighty how much for years I've wanted to write that letter! But how to do it justice? And how to solve its various conundrums (conundra?)? That parenthesis is used in the official Lyrics 1962-2001 book (which is hardly definitive, I know), but even then it still poses the question I've long had--was the letter concerning the time the doorknob broke, or did it arrive around the time Bob's doorknob broke? (Trust me, in the glorious world of Bobarcana, no small point to ponder). And "all these people that you mention"--specific to the letter, or are they the people (rearranged/renamed) Bob has just told us all about? How can one even attempt to write this letter with these questions unanswered? God I love it.

The fifth letter in my all-time Top Five Rock'n'Roll letters (and these are not in any kind of ranked order--I think you can tell what would be my #1) is one you're all probably saying, well of course, get to it, after all it's chronologically the first one your list. Ah, but there's a catch. Is there an actual letter in the Marvelettes' marvelous "Please Mr. Postman"? No, there isn't. She's waiting on/hoping for/begging for a letter from her "boyfriend so far away," but nothing (for all we know he's run off with the girl who keeps sending Elvis's letter back). Now isn't that sad, the poor girl pleading with the postman to look one more time in his bag to see if maybe there's a letter? Just like all of us in these days of no-more-letter-writing. So, do your part--not only for the USPS but for that someone pining near the mailbox. Someday soon write and actually mail a letter to someone. You'll make their day. And maybe inspire another great song--by my reckoning here, there hasn't been a great song about a letter--real or imagined--in nearly 45 years. Name me one.

Happy 76th, Elvis!

Yes, the King would be/is 76 today. You might be thinking, thank God he died when he did, if for no other reason than to spare us all the sight of him performing at a Super Bowl halftime these last few years. But he couldn't have been worse than The Who last year.

It's hard to believe, but the live Elvis was in the public consciousness for a mere 23 years; the dead Elvis has been around for 33. Compare that to the nearly fifty years Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, and Bob Dylan have been breathing in the public eye. 

I've read a lot about Elvis (there's no greater yin-yang reading experience than Peter Guralnick's two volume bio--vol. one, Last Train to Memphis, is one of the happiest, most joyous reads there is; vol. two, Careless Love, one of the most depressing; and Dead Elvis by Greil Marcus is pretty amazing, though in need of an update), but to me the best Elvis writing is still "Where Were You When Elvis Died?" the obituary by Lester Bangs. Five pages of amazing writing. And thirty-three years later you still can't argue with this line: "We will never agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis."

Here are a couple of interesting Elvis tributes to listen to while you celebrate the day. One from a would-be Memphis crypto-legend and another from God knows who.

I Wish I Could Meet Elvis--Alex Chilton by spitoutyourgumblog

Candy Bars For Elvis--Barry Tiffin by spitoutyourgumblog

Happy Elvis Eve

Yes, tomorrow's the big day--Elvis Presley's 75th birthday! And wasn't he such a cute little boy?

Some of my favorite Elvis arcana from Peter Guralnick's great two volume bio, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love: In 1957, when Elvis was first making movies in Hollywood, he invited legendary Memphis DJ Dewey Phillips to visit him. Phillips had been the first one to play Elvis on the radio. In Hollywood, Elvis took Dewey around the soundstages and introduced him to Yul Brynner. Dewey said to Yul, "You're a short little mother, aren't you?"

In the mid-60s (while "the Jester" was "stealing his thorny crown"), Elvis was fond of saying, "My mouth feels like Bob Dylan's been sleeping in it." Though listen below to how Elvis concludes his impromtu version of Bob's "I Shall Be Released," by saying, "Dylan," with what I hear as respect and maybe even some awe or jealousy.

While Elvis was preparing his famous "comeback" TV special in 1968, the producer, Steve Binder stood with him outside the studio on Sunset strip. Supposedly none of the passersby took any notice of Elvis. Maybe that was when he decided to don the leather suit.

More Elvis tomorrow.

Elvis Presley-I Shall Be Released (informal recording)

Hair Today

Some Danish gloomy Gus named Hamlet once deigned to lament: "How all occasions do inform against me." Well, I've never seen a ghost, so I guess I'm a wee bit more optimistic than Ham, but for the last hour, I swear, it does seem like all occasions are informing for me. You see, it's Friday, the end of my seventh week of blogging every day, and I thought I was a little tapped out for ideas. So I scanned the paper, looking for inspiration, and certainly the whole balloon boy shenanigans is potential grist for the mill, but somehow I felt I'd reached my limit on hot air for one week. So finally I turned to the horoscopes, and lo and behold, the advice proffered me for tonight was this: "Let your hair down." Now I've still got hair left, but there isn't enough to let down, so that anyone would notice, and besides, I was kind of thinking of actually getting my hair up for tonight. I was going to dig out the old pomade, shape a nice, middle-aged balding guy spiky pseudo Mohawk and go stand on a corner somewhere munching bacon, covered in chocolate! and mocking passersby with what I had and they had not, namely a Mohawk and bacon, covered in chocolate!.

So I started thinking, Hair, yeah, that's today's subject. I thought of a long ("hairy" as the mighty, late great Joe Gaul would have said, meaning something like awesome, humongous, gnarly) poem about hair, inspired by Dr. Seuss no doubt, I had written a couple years ago, posting which might enable me to figure out the "Jump" function on this blogger thing. Sounded like a plan.

So I get on the computer, check my e-mail first, looking for all the notes from people telling me to expect a rushed-package delivery of Malley's bacon, covered in chocolate!. Well, those missives must have gotten lost in the mail because the only e-mail I had newly received was in my Junk file, and the subject, I swear to Samson, was this: "Get Your Hair Back in Just Weeks‏." Right about then the hair on my neck that hasn't gone anywhere, started to rise. Spooky, no? Next stop YouTube, where I naturally go looking for a pertinent clip (!) from that dreadful movie version of Hair. I'm watching some scene with a young Treat Williams (what happened to him? can he get his career back in just weeks?) struggling in the Army when the drill sergeant starts calling out names, and what do I hear, or at least think I hear (it could be Brook, but I don't think so)? The badass sarge call out the name "Rourke!"
Now I'm freaked out, ready to shave my head, give away the bacon, covered in chocolate!, and go recite Hamlet soliloquies until I either win a lifetime achievement award from the Obies, or mad crowds of people rip all the hairs off my neck. So, as usual, when in doubt, I turned to Elvis, or, more precisely, Elvii.

So watch the Hair clip and listen for what sounds like "Rourke!" Watch Elvis get his Army induction haircut. Listen to the other Elvis croon about "the girl who used to have it and the girl who still has." And if you feel like reading my hairy hair poem, click the read more button after the videos, or if the jump thing doesn't work, just read the poem there, I guess.

As for me, I'm buttoning up my hair and staying off the Internet tonight.

Oh gross, there's a hair in my bacon, covered in chocolate!

Elvis Costello-Baby's Got A Brand New Hairdo

See Emily Dismay

All right, who died and made Emily Dickinson warden of my conscience? At first I thought maybe it was the Dylan folks getting me back for yesterday's gaffe of mistaking the title of Bob's new Christmas album Christmas In The Heart. I had written it was Christmas From The Heart (to be honest, I'd rather have my seasonal carols from the heart, rather than in the heart, beloved Bob's or anybody's).

But no, I detect something more cosmic than a rock star's aide-de-camps has its hand in confounding me like I've been confounded ever since I read the following quote from Ms. Dickinson nearly twenty-four hours ago: "To be worthy of what we lose is the supreme Aim--" (yes, even in her letters, one to T. W. Higginson, summer 1882, from which this atomic bomb comes from, Emily had to get her precious dashes in). What does she mean? Should I supremely aim to be worthy of my thick thatch of glowing red hair that I started losing twenty-five years ago (though at least I'm still losing it, or what thin, unglowing wisps do remain)? Worthy of that tooth? That phone number? That bet I had on Bobby Riggs in the Battle of the Sexes?

Okay, piddly stuff. Certainly Emily (who obviously knew a thing or two about saudade even if she didn't know the word), who because she did not stop for death, it kindly stopped for her, and who didn't mean a snake when she wrote about the narrow fellow in the grass, had more important ideas on her mind when writing of "what we lose." But what, loved ones, long-gone opportunities, the physical or emotional courage that we might lose over the years? What? Am I supposed to live my life supremely aiming to be worthy of these lost things? What would that be like, to devote your life so intently on proving yourself worthy of such a lost thing or person?

Of course, with Emily and that "supreme," one does think along religious lines. And maybe that "we" is not so individual but collective: Are we to live so as to be worthy of what "we" lost in the Garden of Eden, that intimate, unconditional, and undemanding love of God?

Now there's a blog project worth something grand, if not a book deal and a major motion picture starring Meryl Streep: publicly inventory your life's losses, and publicly chronicle your attempt to "be worthy" of those losses. Well, publicly, I'll stick to made-up words and UFOs abducting cows, but privately, this one might be hard to shake. Pound for pound, in the psychic quandary category, I'll put my money on the demure Belle of Amherst up against anybody this side of Immanuel Kant (and as far as that side of Immanuel Kant goes, well, as the lavatory attendant in Hell says, "don't go there").

The Roches-Losing True

Percy Mayfield-Lost Love

And because Youtube won't let me "embed" this clip, you have to go directly (t)here to see Elvis singing "The Yellow Rose of Texas."

Touchdown King

Call me Uncle Proud. Third down in the red zone. The slot receiver goes in motion, takes a hand-off from the QB and sweeps left, makes a deft cutback and bulls over the goal line: paydirt. Touchdown. No. 10, my ten-year-old nephew, conveniently named Danny. Thirty-three years after I suffered a crushing loss to the arch-rival Sabres while wearing the Bulldog Blue and Gold, Danny started the payback early with his first quarter TD, and the Bulldogs never looked back. Revenge, even a third of a century later, is oh so sweet, especially when it's a blood thing. Look out Cleveland Heights, bragging rights are mine.

Also saw a great movie, today, Cold Souls. Go see it.

Meat Puppets-Touchdown King

Elvis Presley-Danny