Early November 2002
- Elvis is top cat
(Finger Lakes Times, November 8, 2002)
Elvis, the 9-year old cat owned by Nicole and Jeff Trickler of Geneva, won the $10,000 and the Coolest Cat Trick Contest yesterday in New York City.
- Elvis comes to the Lake
By Susan Wood
(Tahoe Daily Tribune, November 8, 2002)
Blue suede shoes are stepping into Tahoe blue. Harrah's Lake Tahoe is hosting this weekend a complete Elvis experience with a Mobile Graceland on display, topped off with the show, "Elvis Lives" in the South Shore Room. A 53-foot semi truck will deliver a museum of Elvis memorabilia -- including jewelry, clothing and instruments -- to the casino's east entrance. The "Elvis Lives" presentation by Northern Californian Johnny Baron and his band of musicians is set to recapture the evolution of the fresh-faced performer in early Memphis to the King's glamorous Vegas years.
- Elvis fans happy? Fat chance
By Neal Rubin
(Detroit News, November 8, 2002)
I once pointed out that Yoko Ono can't sing, and a woman in Cheboygan responded with a 26-page fax explaining just how wrong I was. ... Now we have the Internet, which means people can take umbrage from farther away. And when you point out a few minor imperfections in the late Elvis Presley, the world becomes a very small place. (Quotes comments from Elvis fan clubs and fans worldwide in reaction to his article below dated November 6, "Elvisfest loses the 'Elvis'" over various denigrating phrases.)
- Music resonates in sultry 'Dark End' [Book review]
By Carol Memmott
(Yahoo! News / USA TODAY, November 7, 2002)
Dark End, a sultry Southern story that riffs back and forth between New Orleans and Memphis, is a music-drenched noir tale but not your typical song of the South. (If books were classified by musical styles, Dark End would be filed under B for blues. B.B. King says one of Atkins' earlier books hit ''the right note, at the right time.'') Atkins strips away Southern cultural cliches, offering a good story seasoned with the essence of Southern heritage: good food, hospitality and an incomparable musical scene. ... Atkins' other characters fare just as well. They are finely wrought and painfully human: the strong and loving Loretta; her easygoing husband, JoJo; Jon Burrows, a psycho assassin with an Elvis fixation; and Perfect Leigh, a former child beauty queen who wants what she deserves and gets it in the end.
- Soundscan: Eminem Is Bigger Than Elvis?
(Chartattack, November 7, 2002)
Eminem: He's hated by thousands, but loved by thousands, even millions, more. In fact, so many people like him and his music that the soundtrack to his bio flick, 8 Mile, outsold every other album this week - even though the man himself only has three songs on it. Other contributors include Rakim, Macy Gray and Jay-Z. ... All this means that after five weeks at the top, Elvis's 30 #1 Hits falls to #4, selling a few more copies than Shaggy's Lucky Day this week. Maybe if Elvis were still alive he'd cover "It Wasn't Me." Just imagine it. No, really.
- Elvis scratchoff cards could be in state's future
By Bobby Ross Jr.
([Maryville] Daily Times / Associated Press, November 7, 2002)
Powerball. Lotto South. Elvis scratchoff cards. All could be in Tennessee's near future, now that voters have approved removing a state constitutional ban on a lottery. ... Until Tuesday, Tennessee was one of three states, along with Hawaii and Utah, that did not permit any form of gambling. It now joins 38 other states with lotteries, plus North Dakota, which also approved a lottery proposal Tuesday. Cohen said Tennesseans already gamble, evidenced by the estimated $243 million they spent last year crossing the border to play lotteries in Georgia, Kentucky, Virginia and Missouri.
- Duck, Elvis and Turner receive write-in votes for governor
By Jim Newsom
(Siftings Herald, November 7, 2002)
What do Donald Duck, Elvis and Clark County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Todd Turner have incommon? According to Clark County Clerk Rhonda Williams, all three received at least one write-in vote for governor during Tuesday's general election. Incumbent Gov. Mike Huckabee bested Mr. Duck, Elvis and Turner in the governor's race in Clark County. Duck and Elvis could not be reached for comment on their respective vote counts.
- Tom keeps dreaming about Elvis
(Ananova, November 7, 2002)
Tom Jones says he keeps dreaming about saving Elvis's life. In his recurring dream, he finds himself back in the 50s and sees the singer leaving a studio. He follows him to warn him about the end his life came to. Addressing Elvis and a few friends he is with, he talks about the end of Elvis's career. "I tell him how the drugs will ruin his life. I tell him about his early death. "(I say) I'm from the future, look at my clothes! Then I look down at myself and realise I don't look any different because many of the things I wear today are a revival of 50s fashion." Jones told Zeit weekly his dream always ends the same way: Elvis and his friends refuse to believe him. ... "Sometimes I think, maybe I could have helped him. But even in my dreams, I fail."
- Elvis on the move: Mobile Graceland brings 'The King's' home to West Covina
By Cindy Arora
(SGV Tribune, November 7, 2002)
For those who haven't been able to make the trek to Memphis to see Elvis Presley's Graceland in person, not to worry, Graceland is now mobile and coming to a city near you. Mobile Graceland has been making its way through 31 cities nationwide since August and on Wednesday it arrived at the Westfield Shoppingtown in West Covina.
- Elvis lights up firework show
(thisisoxfordshire.co.uk, November 6, 2002)
Rain and thick clouds could not dampen the spirits of Kidlington residents last night as they gathered to watch a fireworks display. Elvis impersonator Malcolm Baker was joined by Beccy Axtell and Lorna McCall, to start the show. The explosive extravaganza, organised by Kidlington Parish Council at Stratfield Brake recreation ground, was one of the first public displays to be held in the village for several years.
- Elvisfest loses the 'Elvis'
By Neal Rubin
(Detroit News, November 6, 2002)
Elvis Presley Enterprises has crashed its mighty cash-stuffed fist upon the table, and now the Michigan Elvisfest has to either change its name or hold an Elvis festival without Elvises. The third annual nonprofit Elvisfest drew more than 7,000 people to Frog Island Park in Ypsilanti last summer. The Depot Town Association charged $5.00 per ticket and rendered unto Elvis 10 percent of the net in exchange for the use of his name.
- Unclaimed Money is Out There and Web Searchers Want It, Britney Performs Disappearing Act, Movies Make a Comeback This November, Musician Deaths Generate Significant Spikes on Internet (4th item)
(Yahoo! Finance, November 6, 2002)
Source: Terra Lycos
While the deaths of politicians and actors rarely inspire enough searches to make The Lycos 50(TM), the deaths of musicians really generate significant spikes in Internet traffic. There was no exception this week as the death of Jam Master Jay puts the seminal rap group Run-DMC onto The Lycos 50(TM) at #27. Adding to this search category, Nirvana (#33) also makes the list for the first time due to the imminent release of a greatest-hits record as well as a publication of some of the late Kurt Cobain's diaries. Also of note, Elvis Presley fell off the list after five weeks.
- Notable Quotes (2nd quote)
(Yahoo! News / Reuters, November 6, 2002)
That's a good comparison -- I would rather have that than Elvis. I hope I don't ever get killed by a fan like that, though."
-- rapper EMINEM, on possible similarities to JOHN LENNON, in Spin magazine.
- Country is strumming along
By Brian Mansfield
(Yahoo! News / USA Today, November 6, 2002)
Country music enters its biggest night with a sense of guarded optimism. Sales are up, fueled by a spate of high-performing superstar releases from the likes of Faith Hill and the Dixie Chicks. ... Those big debuts are country's story of the year. Before 2002, only 11 country albums had ever entered Billboard's album chart at No. 1. This year alone, six have: Jackson's Drive, Chesney's No Shoes, No Shirt, No Problems, Toby Keith's Unleashed, the Dixie Chicks' Home, Hill's Cry and Elvis Presley's Elvis 30 No. 1 Hits (which qualifies as a country record because many of its tracks had hit the country singles chart). By year's end, Twain's Up! and McGraw's Tim McGraw & the Dancehall Doctors could lengthen that list.
- Amphibiville has Elected a New Mayor at the Detroit Zoo!
Source: Detroit Zoological Institute
(Yahoo! Finance / PRNewswire, November 6, 2002)
The mayor of Amphibiville has been elected at the Detroit Zoo today! Third grader, Kristina Gulock of Farmington Hills, has been chosen to fill the honorable position for a two year term. Gulock, taking over for former Mayor Nicholas Wrobel, promises to build all new condominiums called lily "pads," get universal health insurance for all amphibians (dental not included), organize sock "hops" for the citizens to socialize, and even hire the famous lounge lizard, Elvis the Toad, to come and croak all his hit songs. In addition, she promises to ban frog legs as a meal in local restaurants.
Amphibiville was recently given the National Exhibit Award of the year by the American Zoo
- Elvis impersonator Borders falls short on Statehouse bid
(Herald Times, November 6, 2002)
By Bethany Swaby
The onetime Mayor of Rock 'n' Roll was hoping for a new title. He missed it by a few hundred votes Tuesday. Republican Bruce Borders - well-known locally for his Elvis impersonations - challenged Democrat Alan Chowning for the District 45 seat in the Indiana House of Representatives. Out of 65 precincts, Chowning received 9,627 votes to Borders' 9,337 votes. ... His hobby kept him performing locally, and nationally as well, with his City Council Band. He's appeared on such television shows as "Late Night with David Letterman," the "Oprah Winfrey Show" and "Entertainment Tonight." Borders' act has taken him all over the world, including an international tour with the late Wolfman Jack. It all started in 1975, when a 15-year-old Borders got a summer job detassling corn. One of Borders' friends was tired of performing all the Elvis tunes with the local show choir. So that summer, he taught Borders the words to "Jailhouse Rock." The two discovered Borders sounded like Elvis, and he became the regular entertainment for his fellow detasslers - who plied him sweets to bribe him into singing. "And the rest, as they say, is history," Borders said, even though he admits he still thinks he looks more like Neil Young. ... As for Chowning, he said he didn't really feel like he was campaigning against The King.
- Gemstar-TV Guide Announces Departure of Steven Reddicliffe as Editor-In-Chief of TV Guide Magazine
(Yahoo! Finance / Businesswire, November 5, 2002)
Source: Gemstar-TV Guide International, Inc.
Gemstar-TV Guide International, Inc., announced that Steven Reddicliffe has resigned as Editor-In-Chief of TV Guide® magazine to pursue other media and entertainment projects. ... Under Mr. Reddicliffe, TV Guide launched a large-format weekly magazine designed for cable subscribers, as well as a newsstand program with special magazines devoted to NASCAR, Star Trek, Elvis Presley, and The Sopranos.
- Move Over Elvis, Here Comes Elton: Unusual TV Marketing of New Greatest Hits Collection Expected to Boost Album's Sales
(Yahoo! Finance / Businesswire, November 5, 2002)
In 1992, Elton John Broke Elvis' Record for the Most Consecutive Years With a Top 40 Pop Single - Elvis is king but Elton is everywhere. From television movies and series to promo spots and commercials, Elton John's greatest hits are being heard by hundreds of millions of listeners -- and it's no accident. In an effort to gain consumer awareness for the November 12th release of the two-CD "Elton John: Greatest Hits 1970-2002", the only complete, career-spanning hits collection from one of the most successful musical artists in history, Universal Music Enterprises has launched an unusual campaign focusing on song placement on TV, especially promo spots during November's sweeps rating period.
- King's platter double platinum
(Yahoo! News / Hollywood Reporter, November 5, 2002)
Having sold more than 102 million albums in the United States alone, Elvis Presley is accustomed to collecting sales awards from the RIAA. Regardless, it's notable that RCA's remastered hits package "Elvis 30 #1 Hits" swept through the certifications of gold and platinum to earn double-platinum honors in October. The Boss joined the King in that rarefied air. Columbia Records' "The Rising" -- Bruce Springsteen's first album with the E Street Band since 1984's diamond-certified "Born in the U.S.A." -- also was certified gold, platinum and double platinum. Springsteen's cumulative album sales now total more than 58 million -- and rising.
- AUDREY HEPBURN KIN WANT SHRINE SHUT DOWN
By BRAD HUNTE
(Yahoo! Finance / PRNewswire, November 4, 2002)
The family of elegant Audrey Hepburn is blasting a museum dedicated to the late actress and wants it shut down. Hepburn's two sons charge that an exhibition in Tolochenaz, Switzerland, is cheapening and exploiting her good name. Her eldest son, Sean Ferrer, said that instead of celebrating the beloved actress - who died in 1993 - the museum is a tacky shrine comparable to Graceland, the former home of Elvis Presley. "This is not Graceland," Ferrer told the Daily Telegraph. "Tolochenaz was a place where my mother could be like everyone else, go to the market, go shopping and be treated like a normal person."
- Listen.com Secures CD Burning License From BMG for Rhapsody Music Subscription Service
(Yahoo! Finance / PRNewswire, November 4, 2002)
Listen.com today announced a new agreement with BMG, the worldwide music division of Bertelsmann, AG, that will enable Rhapsody subscribers in the United States to purchase and burn tens of thousands of tracks from BMG's extensive digital catalog of titles. This license builds on Listen.com's existing relationship with BMG, which earlier this year announced an agreement to offer its recordings through Rhapsody. The new agreement will greatly expand the amount of music available for burning through Rhapsody. With the addition of the BMG catalog, subscribers now have the convenience to burn more than 90,000 tracks through Rhapsody, as well as unlimited access to the world's largest library of digital music. Music fans that subscribe to Rhapsody's "All Access" plan can quickly burn tracks from their favorite artists for just 99 cents each using Rhapsody's built-in CD burning software. These CDs can be played in any standard CD player. BMG is home to top musical artists including Christina Aguilera, Alabama, Brooks and Dunn, Whitney Houston, Kenny G., Barry Manilow, Monica, Sarah McLachlan, OutKast, Elvis Presley, Santana, The Strokes, TLC, Tyrese, and Usher.
- D/FW's parking gambit sings
By Gordon Dickson
(Yahoo! News / Fort Worth Star Telegram, November 4, 2002)
Don't be surprised to hear about Elvis sightings today at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport.
He won't remove his blue suede shoes for inspection. But the King -- or someone who resembles him -- might serenade you in the parking lot. D/FW is unveiling a new parking system today. To ensure that customers aren't all shook up by the changes, the airport has enlisted the help of 12 Elvis impersonators. The job of the Elvi -- actually, trained actors from the Grapevine Opry -- will be to give directions, ride in the new fleet of parking-lot buses and generally just talk about the good times.
- There was Elvis, and guess who else I saw ...
By Tim Wildmon
(Daily Journal, November 3, 2002)
The other day I was on a flight from Dallas to Memphis and sitting across the aisle from me was pilot Elvis. That's right, this man was a real pilot for a major airline with his uniform on - and he was an Elvis impersonator. Jet black sideburns, sunglasses and all. He wasn't flying the actual plane I was on understand, but he was sitting with us little people in coach presumably to pilot a plane in Memphis once we landed. Taking it to Viva Las Vegas, most likely. I couldn't help but wonder what his co-pilot thinks every time the king of rock and roll sits down in the cockpit next to him.
- Slain Jordan Aid Worker Remembered
By KEN GUGGENHEIM
(Yahoo! News / Associated Press, November 2, 2002)
Laurence M. Foley, the U.S. aid worker killed in a possible terrorist attack in Jordan, was remembered Saturday as a big, boisterous man whose humor and mischievous charm won him and his country countless friends. About 250 people attended a memorial service at a Unitarian Universalist church outside Washington that was marked by more laughter than tears and more talk of his zest for life than his violent death. Foley, 60, was shot at close range Monday in front of his home in Amman. The gunman escaped. No arrests have been made, but Islamic extremists are suspected. Before his Jordan assignment, Foley had postings in the Philippines, Bolivia, Peru and Zimbabwe for the U.S. Agency for International Development and, previously, for the Peace Corps Family and friends took turns describing how Foley loved his travels and his work. Many recalled how he reveled in the quirky moments in the life of an aid worker: spending a night in a chicken coop to find out why hens were mysteriously dying, eating at a Philippine restaurant built out of an old Elvis Presley airplane or having an elegant Indian man pointed to his freckles and ask, "Is that your desire, or is that a disease?"
- Marketers tap into the eternal appeal of deceased celebrities
By PAUL NOWELL
(Yahoo! News / Associated Press, November 2, 2002)
The Ernest Hemingway furniture collection was a best seller, and the new Elvis line went toward the top of the charts. Now, Humphrey Bogart is the latest pop culture icon hawking leather chairs, chaise lounges and liquor cabinets from beyond the grave.
- Elvis locks may fetch King's ransom on auction
By JON YATES
(Aberdeen News / Chicago Tribune, November 2, 2002)
Deep in a safe, next to a box containing Wilson ... [as below]
- Elvis locks may fetch King's ransom on auction
By JON YATES
(Macon Telegraph / Chicago Tribune, November 2, 2002)
Deep in a safe, next to a box containing Wilson, the volleyball from the movie "Cast Away," and near Wally Schirra's sky-blue flight-training suit from Apollo 7, sits a hunka-hunka ball of hair that could soon spark a bidding war. The dyed-black glob, sealed in a glass jar, is purported to be clippings from the King himself. Gross? Perhaps. Expensive? For sure. Some predict the clippings, said to have been collected by Elvis Presley's personal barber, could fetch more than $100,000 in an online auction that started Monday and runs through Nov. 15. Oak Brook-based MastroNet Inc. (www.mastronet.com) is conducting the auction. ... By Tuesday, the second day of the auction, only one person had offered a bid, at the opening price of $10,000. By Friday, bidding was up to $12,100. But interest is expected to build, from Elvis memorabilia collectors and those who fancy hair. "It will bring a king's ransom," said Louis Mushro, a celebrity hair collector from Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich.
- Some scientists give Bigfoot a second look
By Marco R. della Cava
(Yahoo! News / USA TODAY, November 1, 2002)
... For decades, a small but loyal legion of Bigfoot hunters has spent countless weekends prowling forests in nearly every state, piling up evidence such as alleged footprints and hair samples that now has a handful of animal experts willing to at least entertain the possibility of his existence. ''I've gone from being a raving skeptic to being curiously receptive,'' says Robert Benson, director of the Center for Bioacoustics at Texas A&M. He appears in a new documentary, Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science, critiquing taped Bigfoot calls. Though many of those recordings ''could be human'' (i.e. hoaxes), others left him puzzled.
In Sasquatch, which airs in January on Discovery, a small cadre of scientists pore over audio, video and the Holy Grail of molds called the Skookum Cast, a plaster impression taken in 2000 from a muddy Mount St. Helens meadow that purports to capture a Bigfoot sitting on his oversized derriere. ... The mere possibility of an elusive ape-like creature has an almost primal allure, as evidenced in the hundreds of reports filed each year with the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization. That he's been spotted in almost every corner of the USA makes Bigfoot rival Elvis in terms of sightings; but that doesn't bother the committed.
- Things that will scare the Elvis out of you
(Kansas City Kansan, November 1, 2002)
Every year at Halloween I thank the Great Pumpkin for the wonderful life I've been given. This year, I want to start a tradition ... a tradition that is not a Top10 list, but a random list of the darkest, scariest public figures and cultural icons in the world. They could be placed in any order and still scare the Elvis out of you. ... - Pete Yorn is currently recording of a cover of Elvis Presley's classic "Suspicious Minds," and is trying to resurrect a piece of the original, famed recording in the process. Yorn's version-in-progress features the Sweet Inspirations, the backing group that also sang with the King during his legendary sessions in Memphis in 1969.
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