Hello again, long time no see

Crap 'o mighty, another whole entire friggin' year has gone by. I can't believe how fast time has passed. I guess when you work for the same company, same crappy job (although I AM glad to still be employed) have the same wonderful wife, live in the same house...you get what I mean....time just goes.

You know what scares me lately?

I read all these people who are becoming frightened of science. They say vaccines are no good for our children. We spend too much money on space exploration. We need to go back to 'all natural foods,' even though we're already having trouble feeding the millions of people on this planet as it is, and some people are saying the equivalent of we should be going back to an ox pulling a plow?

How about we need more religion in our life? That one really scares me.

Sure, let's all believe that a book put together some 2000 years ago, from fragments of writings found here and there, that says the earth is 6000 years old is the absolute truth. No, let's believe that all the observations and experiments and actual real tests that prove six ways from Sunday that the earth is a 4 billion years old are wrong. Let's take the word of this one old book over all that.

Maybe humanity should go extinct.

Four Days and Counting...Five to Josh's B-Day!

I put up the graveyard, watched a bunch of scary movies, got out the fog machine, pressed my cape, bought bags of candy and am now ready for Halloween!

Hello down there!

Once again, way too long.
Did my civic duty and voted yesterday. Stood in line for nearly three hours, waiting. At least it was cool outside. It was overcast and even rained a little. Had an umbrella. Listened to Ricky Gervais podcast from '06. Very funny stuff. I'm still not used to standing in the middle of people but with wearing those earbuds being in my own little universe. I looked around me and wondered how all these people had the time to stand in line for three hours. I guess they could have looked at me and thought the same thing.
So now I'm switching jobs at work. I start it on Monday. My old position was moved to India so I had to find something else. I looked all summer, both within and outside the company. What a lousy time for this to happen, there's just not much out there. I'm taking a job I don't particularly want but at least it's a job, so I'm not complaining too much. Could be worse.
Halloween is coming up. Years ago it used to almost be like my own private holiday; nobody I knew did anything for it. I used to be the only adult to wear goofy makeup or colored contacts to work. Now it's a big holiday where millions of dollars are spent on it, stores sell blow-up Frankenstein dolls and entire rows are reserved at stores for crappy costumes. And then the day after it's over they'll bring out the Christmas stuff.
The year is going by way too fast.

What time is it?

Man, did the time change mess me up today.

It was 7:05AM when my son walked into my bedroom and said, "Dad, you gonna take us?" I looked at my watch and saw the time. I hadn't even opened my eyes when the alarm went off, and I know it did go off; it kicked on soon after as I must have hit the snooze button even if I don't remember it, so I know it went off when it was supposed to. That trusty little alarm clock has been with us since before I got married.

I crawled out of bed, threw on a pair of shorts and took them to school. Then I went right back home afterwards, jumped in the shower, dressed....then layed right back down. I couldn't keep my eyes open.

Once I finally got to work, I still had trouble getting moving. I don't drink coffee (tastes like burnt up walnut shells to me) so I was kinda stuck until my brain threw off the cobwebs itself.

It's about 4:43PM and I'm still waiting.....

Hillary is Still in it

So Hillary won big last night. Texas, Ohio; the race is still pretty even. Good.

And while I really do like Obama, the more I listen to him the more I find myself asking ok, so what are you going to DO about it? I love the way the man speaks, he makes you want to get up and do something, kind of like the first Rocky movie. When I saw that movie for the first time, I left the theatre bobbing and weaving, up and down, shuffling my feet, full of energy.

That's what Obama does to people; he get them full of energy and gets them up, bobbing and weaving, shuffling their feet and full of energy. (but hopefully NOT wanting to punch anyone)

I'm waiting to her what Sen. Obama will DO if he becomes President. I know he will bring CHANGE. I just want to know HOW. At least with Hillary, I've heard a few specifics.

And as for Sen. McCain? Please. Be real. He may be smarter than Bush, but he's from the same party for gosh sake, has a lot of the same viewpoints. And the guy is 72? How much in touch could he be with the real world, the world of you and me, the world of people who have to worry about putting gas in the tank or food on the table, or if even they're going to still have a house by next week?

I don't mean to say he has no clue. (jeez, everything is either black or white with you people!) I just don't see how he could have a lot in common with most of the rest of the actual people who live in this country.

And man, he's a REPUBLICAN! Like Bush!

'nuff said.

So I hear there was this six-legged octopus found. In England. I even saw a picture of it. Yep, two were missing; it had only six legs. Or are they arms? And they even named it. 'Hexapus.' Get it?
In fact, it was right next to an ad for The Museum of Beauty, which also had a picture on it. Of the famous statue, the Venus de Milo. Who is also missing two arms.
What are the chances of that?
The ad even took you to a neat little website (http://museumofbeauty.biz/) where you could look at a 3-D rendition of it.
The statue, not the octopus.
While I do appreciate the beauty of the statue, she isn't (wasn't?) the happiest looking person I ever saw.
I guess missing two arms would do that to you.
I wonder if the octopus is upset about missing two arms?

I'm Back......Again

Well, that was quite a break. Too long. Things have changed, some good, some not so. Guess that's life. And they say the hardest part about life....is living it.

Watched the Superbowl. Was pleasantly surprised at the outcome. While not a Giants fan, rooting for them to win, I'm not a Pats fan either. I rooted against the Pats. There just shouldn't be too many 'perfect' seasons. One should be enough. See, there is only one team in NFL history that went an entire season perfectly. One. And if the Pats were to do it again, that one loses some of that perfectness.

Well, it didn't happen, so I quit thinking about it real quick. And while I'm happy for all my NY family members, my tenure as a Giants fan was over just as quickly too.

Where Have You Been?!

It is now the end of january of 2007. A lot of things have happened in the last few months, some good, some not so good.
Will write more later. Need to get back to this.
Thank you for your time.

MIAMI HEAT WIN NBA FINALS!

THE MIAMI HEAT ARE WORLD CHAMPIONS!

They came back from being 2 gameS down and WON 4 GAMES IN A ROW TO WIN!

I am so happy and my face hurts from smiling and I'm so tired and relived and exited and happy....

I can hardly believe it. When they came back to Miami after losing the first two games in Dallas I have to admit I was worried. I certainly did not give up but boy, I was worried.

But they did it! They won! The Miami Heat are WORLD CHAMPIONS!

Miami Heat ONE GAME AWAY From Championship!

I don't know how much more of this we can take; late nights with exciting games lasting until well after midnight, games not being decided until the last second of the clock ticks away. All I can say is:

I LOVE IT!

The Miami Heat, after falling down badly in the first two games of the NBA Finals, have just won the middle three games of the series. Apparently only one other team has done that.

In game 3, they looked good during the first half, then started melting down in the 3rd quarter. It was close the rest of the way until the last seconds when Dirk missed one of two free throws, and D-Wade made his two. In game 4 the Heat won by 24 points and looked as good as they ever have.

Last night, game 5, well, it was another late-night nail-biter. With the heat up by 1 point and 1.9 seconds left, Wade is at the line and hits the first free throw. Then one of the Mavericks calls for a time-out, right in the middle of Dwyane shooting. If they had waited until after the second shot they would have taken the ball out at half-court. but because one of their players called for the time out before the second shot, once Wade makes it, they have to take it out right under the basket, 45 feet away from half-court. If you know basketball, you know what a huge boo-boo on their part that was. You could have lit a cigar off the foreheads Coach Johnson and that owner guy Mark Cuban they were so hot.

Anyway, this means they go back to Dallas for game 6.

And the championship is so close Wade said "they can smell it."

So can we!

Whoa. What a lousy birthday present. What's happening? I know it can't be that Dallas is that much better than the Heat. I know they aren't. But Miami isn't looking too good right now.

We went out and had dinner at The original Steakhouse (we call it Schnellenberger's, for Coach Howard Schnellenberger, a famous Florida football coach who owns it) It's a great place to eat and in the bar area there are 12 big screen TVs all around the walls. It's fun to watch the Marlins games, or in this case, the Heat. The server was real good about it, we sat there for nearly 4 hours and he never gave us a problem. We left at the half and watched the rest of the game at home.

But jeez.

I know Dallas did what they're supposed to do, take care of business at home. So I'm hoping the Heat do the same when they get back here. The Heat just aren't looking like they have been.

But they have three games in Miami. If they had won just one game in Dallas, who knows, they might have been celebrating a championship on Biscayne Blvd.

But that's still a long way off and I don't really care where they celebrate.

I still believe.

"déjà view"

I read about a phenomenon "déjà view" which silly as it is (the feeling you keep seeing the same episode of a TV show over and over) it struck a chord with me.

I have often thought about situations that have caused me to believe that there must be some great cosmic conspiracy out there built just to annoy me. This is one of those situations, with a slight difference.

It started many years ago. It was late at night, I was watching TV alone and I had just finished watching a video tape of some movie. When I shut the VCR off the TV channel behind it was playing an X-Files episode. It was something about a woman who said she was a genie. As I watched for a few minutes I realized it was one I didn't recognize. I mean I didn't recognize it at all, and I would have sworn I had seen every single episode.

As the realization hit me that here was an episode I had never ever seen, I got excited, then upset. Excited because, well, here was a "fresh" episode of The X-Files! But upset because I had missed most of it. I threw a blank tape into the VCR and taped it, but later on I couldn't get myself to watch it, since it was incomplete.

I looked it up and learned the episode name was "JE SOUHAITE" from season 7. I tried to find it in any of the local station's schedules, the Sci-Fi channel, everywhere I could to see if I could find when it might be rerun again. I got nowhere.

I forgot about it. Some time much later, it must have been two or three years, it happened again. It was late at night, I had just finished watching a movie, I turned off the VCR and was flipping around the dial for a few moments, and there it was. That same X-Files episode, and at practically the same point in the story I had seen before, which meant that it was already almost over.

And I had missed it again.

I turned it off. I didn't want to ruin it for myself when I someday actually got to watch it in full.

It happened one more time some time later but not in quite the same way. Again it was late at night, and picked out a tape from a pile on the shelf. When I threw it into the VCR and hit play I expected to see one thing, but damn if it wasn't that tape that had the episode from years earlier that I had taped but never watched. And of course because it was a tape, it was queued to the beginning of the tape at that exact same scene, that same teasing bit about a girl who says she's a genie. Damn her.

I have since acquired the first 8 seasons of The X-Files on DVD. (if season 9 ever is priced at $5 I might splurge) Even thought I now have a complete and pristine copy of this episode, in Dolby, widescreen, etc. etc., I now find that I cannot get myself to watch that one final episode. I have this feeling that once I do, The X-Files will really and truly finally be 'over.'

Of course, if I watch it and it is a sub-par episode I will have felt cheated somehow.

So what is worse? Watching the episode, risking the possibility that it wasn't worth all the bother, and also having The X-files all really be 'over', once and for all? Or staying in my own little reality where The X-files hasn't really 'ended' and just imagining the episodes' greatness?

Or have I already put way too much thought into this?

That is all for today. Our lines are open for your comments.

Sports Update

Okay sports fans, the Marlins have lost 3 of their last 4 games, and the Heat didn't win the first game of the Finals, but that's okay, I'm not worried. It was a heartbreaking game, it wasn't a blow out. In fact, the Heat were ahead for most of it, right up to the half. Then the rest of the game was back-and-forth, right up to the last minute when one of those Dallas player hit two lucky 3s in a row.

Tomorrow is game 2 and I think they will make the right adjustments and come out on top.

In other news a tropical depression formed down by Cuba, the first of the season. It should stay to our west but we may get some rain for the next three or four days. Which means we won't be doing any swimming this weekend, dammit. At least the pool is still good. I ain't letting that sucker get away from me again.

Hmmm

So there's this couple in PIERRE, S.D. They beat the 1-in-146 million odds by buying the one winning ticket in the South Dakota Powerball Lottery. They came forward to claim it on Tuesday (the winning numbers were picked on May 18) That one ticket was worth $117 million.

Or $117,000,000.00 if you like to read all the zeros.

That is a hell of a lot of money.

I read further that if they choose to take 29 monthly payments, they actually get $116.8 million, or about $493,000.00 each month for 29 months.

But who wants to wait? I sure wouldn't. A lot could happen in 29 months. The country could go bankrupt. After all, Bush is still the president, he's still got lots of time to run the country further into the ground.

You could get hit by a bus, especially if you don't look both ways.

Or aliens could land and kill all the postal delivery people (an ironic switcheroo) and then who would deliver that monthly check?

They agreed. They took it in a lump sum.

But that doesn't mean they get all $117 million. If they take the lump sum they get less than half, they get $51.6 million. Maybe there is some fine print on the back of each ticket that says for being greedy you only get a portion of what you win?

And after the Internal Revenue Service gets their piece, this couple who "won" $117,000,000.00 will walk away with $38,688,566.00

But isn't that sort of false advertising? Don't get me wrong, $38,688,566.00 is still a HUGE chunk of money and I would (maybe) sleep with George Bush (either one) if given that much money (well, probably not)

But isn't that like buying 10 gallons of gas but only getting 4 gallons in your tank?

I say give them the entire $117 million.

And then ask them if they'd like to adopt me.

SPORTS UPDATE

Well slap me silly, I cannot believe I have not mentioned the Florida Marlins, or even the Miami Heat lately. The Marlins are playing pretty decent ball the last few weeks (except of course they just lost their last two games to the Giants) but they had won 9 out of 13 games and are starting to look...well, better than they did before.

And the Heat! THE FINALS BABY!!

The Heat are making their very first trip to the NBA Finals, the World Series of Basketball! The first game is tomorrow and I have a very good feeling about this series, like the feeling I had about the Marlins when they won the World Series back in 2003. Not that I'm psychic or anything but I just feel good about their chances.

Dwayne Wade will be over the flu (it didn't slow him down too much last Friday night) and Shaq will be....Shaq. The Shaq-Daddy. The Masta' of the Big Slamma' Jamma'

It should be a fun ride.

Ahhhhhh.....

Success!

The pool is back to normal! It took two days and $800 worth of new water but I refilled it, re-chemicalized it and we went in it today! It was SO nice!

Until we heard the thunder.

It's supposed to rain the rest of the weekend. I better get more stuff in there, I do NOT want to have to repeat my battle with alge again. I would seriously have to shoot the pool if that happens ever again.

I Will Not Quit

Instead of running rampant and ripping the pool down with my teeth, clearer heads prevailed. I decided to drain the pool instead.

What a pain THAT was.

I just couldn't get a handle on it, and it had now gotten so full of alge that you couldn't see down 6 inches. The Loc Ness monster could have been hiding in there and I wouldn't have been able to see it. The pool had beaten me. I had no choice but to drain it and start over with new fresh water.

I used a garden hose as a siphon. Of course, as I sucked on the one end of the hose I was hoping I wouldn't get a mouth full of slag water and algee, because I would have just had to puke it all right back into the pool and make it just that much worse. But luckily I didn't and the water started to drain.

Slowly.

24 hours later the pool was only half drained, and the alge had begun to stick to the sides of the pool as the water went down, leaving trails of green scum that I didn't realize until later had hardened in the sun. Another day later and most of the water was gone except for about 4 inches of green pea soup at the bottom. So I climbed in with my little scrubbie sponge that I use to wash the love-bugs off the front of the cars and started scraping away.

May I say what fun that was?

I spent two night scubbing and hosing, scubbing and hosing, then scooping that water out with a bucket, but I finally got almost every bad drop out. I won! No more slimy green alge, and thankfully no Loc Ness monster hiding in the goop. By then my arms were so sore, the back of my legs were stiff and the rest of me ached.

Now I could use a hot tub, not a pool.

Dammit

Damn pool. I just can't get it back to normal. The water is a nasty green, and I can see clumps of alge as big as basketballs floating in there. I almost espect to see dead fish come floating to the top like some kind of toxic waste dump.

I had just got the pool back to crystal clear niceness and was all ready for another summer of floating in the cool waters of laziness....when the pump broke. And because the pool place near my house keeps banker's hours it was a week and a half before I could get there and buy a new one.

By then the water was back to that scummy green color. Not quite what I want to dip my toes into.

So for the last few weeks I've poured all sorts of chemicals into it, I ran the pump constantly, I cleaned the filter, hell I did everything the 16 year old pool expert at the pool store told me to do.

Nothing.

I'm getting pissed about this. I may just tear the damn thing down with my bare hands. And then buy one of those whirly-thing sprinklers for the yard.

That and a lawn chair and I'll be set.

Another one....

I had a dream where I was lying in bed and I looked up into the top corner of the room, where the white walls meets the ceiling, and I see a small plant growing up there. I look away, then look back and the plant is like a bush. I looked away again and back and now it's huge, it looks like the hedges from the front yard only this has those little white flowers, baby's breath all in it. It was kind of pretty, but I'm thinking where's the bookshelf that was there?
I get up and start to pull it off the wall, it's stuck there like those vines that cling to the outside wall with those little sucker things, and as I'm pulling it off the little sucker things are softly popping, and then I see inside the bush there's a small bird's nest with two small eggs in it. So now I'm trying to gently pry the bush off the wall and I'm now worried about breaking the damn eggs.

As I'm carrying this huge bush with a bird's nest in it out of the bedroom, I see another smaller bush starting to grow on another wall. So of course as I'm looking at this new bush thinking what the hell I lose concentration and one of the eggs drops out of the bird's nest and breaks right on the floor.

Dammit.

Hello Again

Crap-o-mighty, I know I've been busy lately, but I didn't realize it had been this long since last post. Will have to get back to it.

Things have been mighty hectic around the attic. Summer in nearly here on this end of the planet. That means hot weather. REAL hot. Got to get the pool in shape for some cool lazy floating.

Reading "The Cosmic Landscape : String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design" a cool book on why the universe is as it is. The theory is that the universe seems too perfect for human life to be just chance. This is something that has disturbed atheists and scientists alike for ages. It must mean there was 'someone' who designed it that way, right?

WRONG!

The more astronomers and scientists learn the more they are convinced that this isn't the only universe there is. They call it the megaverse. So out of all the possible combinations of just about everything, of course this universe "looks" like it was made just for us, because if it weren't just right we wouldn't be here.

Pretty friggin' cool.

More later.

Another dream

Last night I had another strange dream about staying in a hotel, a nice looking hotel with lots of wood paneling, a classy looking place. And I'm in bed and I feel something at my feet and I look down and there is this huge grasshopper on my bed, it's like a foot and a half across just sitting there, and I hit it with a shoe and I killed it. And now there's this big yellow stain on on the bed.

I'm still sitting there and I turn to my right and looked down and I see two huge lizards, like those komono dragons, huge things as big as dogs, sitting on the floor and flicking their tongues and looking back up at me. I started yelling, then I looked over and saw black things, maybe frogs or bugs crawling up all over on the mirror, and I'm starting to freak out a bit, but the first thing I thought of was that man am I going to make the hotel pay for this, I'm going to make them pay by giving me a better room. Maybe the Presidential suite.

A guy knocks on the door and he's laughing, thinking I'm just a nut screaming about a little bug, but then he sees all the things and starts hauling them out of the room. It's only now that this guy is here to catch the these things did I think I should take pictures of everything and sue them, but now it's too late.

I'm dreaming.....

Okay, I had this dream about seeing all these frogs climbing up a wall. A guy shows us these are special frogs, if you rub them gently they make this low rumbliy sound. But if you annoy them they roll up and turn into seashells! But if you slowly spread them out they start to look like flat pancakes; if you stop you can watch them as they try pull up back into themselves, trying to form back into the seashell again

Unless some unruly kid abuses them (because he knows no better) and rubs them against the wall and little crumblily bits of the pancake frogs are lying all over the place, sort of pulsating, and the kid kills them, and the guy starts wailing about the special frogs being all dead, and then all you have are pancake looking dead frog things.

Perchance to Dream

I had this dream about being in a mall somewhere. It was crowded, there were lots of noisy people walking around. I went over to the railing and looked down over it, and it was like I was looking through this huge hole. And way down below, in the middle of this big field about 1000 feet down, with all these tiny people walking all around it, was the starship Enterprise from Star Trek! It was right there! I remember thinking that this is so cool, that I had no idea that that thing was actually REAL! But what is it doing down there on display in the mall?

I don't remember much else.

I've read about Lucid Dreaming, where you 'wake up' in your dream, while you're still dreaming, and you realize that you actually are dreaming and can even start to take control of your dream. It's almost happened to me, but not quite yet. I've had several times where I'm dreaming, and I know that something is not right about what's going on. I've come so close so many times, close to realizing that "I am dreaming," that what is happening to me is a dream, but just it hasn't clicked yet.

So you'd think, something like the Enterprise parked in a big shopping mall in a hole, and I don't realize something funny is going on?

I always swore that if I were allowed to get a tattoo, I would get Mr Spock, or maybe a big one of the starship Enterprise flying through the stars. But the idea of how would they tattoo all that blackness of outer space on you...ouch.

Some more Random Crap

Absolute craziness. I (sort of) wish I knew what they were saying.

This is so cool! Liquid water on another planet! (actually one of Saturn's moons, Enceladus) I can't wait until they offer a three-night stay at a Holiday Inn there!

Buy this movie! Or this one! Or this one! (IF you dare!)

Go Heat!

Have you been watching the Miami Heat games? Can you BELIEVE those last two games they STOLE??

Baseball season has started here (for the Little League) Kind of sad; this is probably my son's last year playing organized ball. He goes into high school next year, and unless he changes his mind (or get fantastically better) he won't be playing next year. And I certainly won't be coaching anymore, unless in the next few years I do something stupid like sign up to coach when I have no kid playing.

Only if I win the lottery.

Work had been beating up on me lately. 10-hours days is not the way for management to get good numbers on their surveys... as if they really cared.

Got "Pulse" from my best friend Netflix, and watched it alone one night, real late. It's one of those Japanese horror movies that somebody I'm sure will soon think it's necessary to remake because they think Americans can't read subtitles while watching a movie.

This film asked, among other things, where do people go when they die. And what if wherever it is they do go gets too full? And somehow the internet come up.

There are unanswered questions let to your imagination and some genuienly creepy moments in this movie, two moments that actually made my skin crawl, and that hasn't happened to me in a long time. Most horror movies made today just try to make you jump, and that isn't scary. "Pulse" scared me.

Also been watching on DVD:

The Flash '90s comic for TV; not bad. Not great.
Cold Feet Billed as 'British FRIENDS' but more soap-opera than funny.
Mirrormask Neil Gaiman live-action dream. Cool effects, nice story, an engaging movie most people will never see
Stat Trek (The original series) Gotta watch Kirk and Spock once in a while.

On TV:
Battlestar Galactica Far, far better than I would have thought at the start, probably the best show on TV today.

Welcome back, me.

?????????

Where the hell did February go???

Stuff Update

Well, you can forget all about most of the links below; they're already gone. (except the one about TIME magazine and Battlestar Galactica) Damn that was fast. This whole internet thing goes by too quickly.

So I guess I got to tell you about them myself.

One link was to a story about a guy up north somewhere, illegally burning leaves in his back yard and apparently he catches a rat in his house. Somehow the rat is still alive, so the guy tosses the rat into the fire.

Ick.

But before going to rat-heaven (where each rat is met by 72 virgin rats, every place is a nice dank sewer and the cheese is American and plentiful) the rat apparently gets his revenge. According to the story this rat catches fire and, in the one brilliant flash of intelligence it has in it's entire tiny little rat-life, it leaps out of the pile of burning leaves with its fur on fire and more than a little upset it races back into the guys house, where it hides somewhere behind a couch and promptly sets the house on fire, completely burning it down. To the ground.

Even the police laughed, saying 'He (the guy) ain't smart enough to make up a story like that.'

Another link was to a story about an undertaker who police had found had kept the corpse of a one of his lady customers he had 'worked' on locked in a upstairs bedroom in his house for over two years.

With the air-conditioner and the TV on.

When the police found the slightly smelly, mummified body, he told them that the lady had asked for him to look out for her, that she 'was coming back.' The police believed him because, well, what other reason could there be, right? And there had been no monetary gain for the undertaker; the dead lady had left him nothing (except for a greasy stain on the recliner and a large electric bill)

I wonder what channel she was watching.

Ain't America a great nation?

Mid January Already?!

It's almost mid-January of 2006 already (can you believe it?) Here's some more random crap.

Here's proof that I'm not the only one watching Battlestar Galactica.

The picture of the one-eyed cat is true.

And this....you gotta be kidding. Talk about too much TV being bad for your health.

Random Stuff

Time for a new 2006 flavor bunch of random crap.

Warp speed, Mr. Scott! Making the jump to hyperspace....SOON!

And along a similar note, the vision of the "Firefly" 'verse of a Chinese-English future is already coming true!! Mandarin Chinese is THE world's most widely-spoken language, and it's just beginning to surface in U.S. classrooms.


And in closing our broadcast today....the "You Gotta Be Kidding Me" Dept: HA!

Happy Birthday Elvis

Elvis Presley, who would later become known as the "King of Rock 'n' Roll," was born on January 8, 1935, in Tupelo, Miss. to Vernon Elvis Presley and Gladys Love Smith. He would have celebrated his 71st birthday today.

You know the story.

A twin brother Jessie was a stillborn. Elvis began singing hymns and gospel tunes in church and at state fairs as a child. At age 18, he walked into a Memphis studio and paid $4 to record 'My Happiness' and 'That's When Your Heartaches Begin' as a present for his mother. The studio owner, Sam Phillips, recognized the teenager's talent and helped him score a record deal.

Presley was an almost immediate success, an international sensation, infusing rock 'n' roll with country music, R&B and gospel. He also became international controversy with his hip-shaking moves; it made teens swoon but their parents cringe.

Elvis also starred in 33 films as he enjoyed steady chart success from the mid '50s through the mid '70s, selling more than a billion records to date.

On August 16, 1977 Elvis died of cardiac arrhythmia -- a form of heart attack -- inside his Graceland mansion.

He has gone down in history as one of the most important figures of popular culture.