Happy Birthday, Elvis!

Can't believe I almost let the day pass by without a salute to the King. I love some of his music, like a lot of it, and a lot of it is just crap, but as an icon, he's hard to beat. If it weren't for Col. Tom wringing every possible egg out of his golden goose, Elvis might still be with us today. Who knows, maybe the best thing for his legacy would have been to retire right after the '68 Comeback.

Even though I was never a rabid fan, for a while, people would always get me tacky Elvis souvenirs for birthday and Christmas gifts, I think because I once bought a tacky Elvis head lamp at a garage sale. One January 8th, I arrived at my desk and a couple co-workers had put up a big black velvet tapestry of "Vegas Elvis" -- the kind sold from mini-vans parked at abandoned gas stations -- and they had made a tape loop of the trumpet fanfare that would open his shows, and there was even a paper plate with a couple fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches wrapped in cellophane. Part of me wanted to protest -- "hey, you got the wrong guy! I'm not THAT into Elvis." But really, I was thankful that they thought enough of me to go to all the effort. Maybe that's why I like to remember his birthday every year. That, and the line from the wildly underrated movie D.C. Cab in which Gary Busey's character Dell declares "I don't work on January the eighth... cause that's Elvis' birthday."

Well, thank you, thank you very much...