An ElvisNews.com brief in November told us of a coming book about Elvis' stillborn twin brother: Elvis Presley's Twin, Jesse Garon: The Records Show He Died. But Did He?

Fans didn't react well. (See the news page's comments.)

The site posted a follow-up brief in December. The book turned out to be a novel. Fans didn't appreciate that either. But bookstore sections aside, the publisher's description of the book was practically rhinestone-studded.

JESSE GARON PRESLEY is stillborn at 4:05 a.m., January 8, 1935, or maybe not…. In the '30s South, only poverty is abundant. Laws are broken by the man on the street, up to and including the men of the cloth. Looking the other way is common; survival is the key. The DELONGPRE family is rich and powerful, but they desperately want the one thing they've been denied-a baby. The PRESLEYS are impoverished without the financial burden of a child. Jesse is gone, but, unexpectedly, a twin, ELVIS AARON PRESLEY, is born moments later. Records disappear by those in position to dispose of them. The DeLongpres get the child they want, THURSTON DAVIS DELONGPRE, III. The Presleys end up with Elvis. Five people share this secret for 42 years; three pass away. A lustful, greedy doctor pursues Davis' mother, LILLIAN. What he knows can ruin the lives of Davis and Elvis.

And, yes, there was a Web site. ElvisTwin.com.

After arriving home from his wedding and before leaving for his honeymoon, Nate shot me an e-mail to inform me of Tuesdays with Mantu: My Adventures with a Nigerian Con Artist.

Meet "Interpretation' Series: Michael Harrison's 'Revelation.'"

Harrison, an old-guard pioneer of experimental piano writing, won't let anyone play his ninety-minute just-intonation epic without training him himself. Joshua Pierce, after years of study, will offer the première performance of the complete score at Merkin Concert Hall. (129 W. 67th St. 212-501-3330. Feb. 10 at 8.)

The listing is from the front of the Feb. 14 and 21 issue of the New Yorker, the magazine's Anniversary Issue, as odd an issue as they come. Deep inside, there's a terrific story about a man who studies shoes. it's sadly not online. But one cartoon is, one that's not related but that also makes me smile.

The issue's profile (not online either) is of the man behind the Deadwood show. He tells writer Mark Singer:

"There's a story by Hawthorne, 'Ethan Brand,' about a man who goes out looking for the unpardonable sin," he continued. "He discovers that it's the violation of the sanctity of another person's heart."

That's what I like about Hawthorne. Always has something big to say.

Clearing them out. But love this stuff.

Back in September, Salon.com's Cary Tennis fielded an Elvis-related question in the site's "Since You Asked" advice column. The reader was worried about a sister.

For some reason, we were talking about Elvis today, and the boyfriend said: "Do you know what the Colonel said after Elvis died?" And my sister said: "Who is the Colonel?" The boyfriend rolled his eyes and looked at her — incredulous; angry; snarly. "You don't know who the Colonel is?! I can't believe you. What is with you?" This man is all worked up and really quite disgusted that she doesn't know who the Colonel is. Of course, I don't know who the hell the Colonel is either. The boyfriend explains. All is well with her, and I'm mortified that the man who supposedly loves her belittles her over a piece of trivia.

Tennis responded with an Elvis-based answer.

Halfway related Web links:
-Lyrics to Elvis' Little Sister
-Emily is unimpressed by the song

"My memory is proglottidean, like the tapeworm, but unlike the tapeworm it has no head, it wanders in a maze, and any point may be the beginning or the end of its journey." So begins "The Gorge," by Umberto Eco, in the Mar. 7 New Yorker issue. Throwing a ridiculously word into the first sentence like that … I don't like it, but I look it up anyway. Here. The rest of the story is great.

Pages earlier, there's a cartoon more my speed. A bored-looking boss tells a too-smiley interviewee, "What the hell? We could use an idiot."

Adam Gopnik toes the intellectual line in the back of the book. Voltaire, Gopnik writes, was "thrown into the Bastille twice for being generally annoying."

When the topic gets to religion, we go pop: "Voltaire was in favor of a benign, supervisory God in the way that British leftists used to be in favor of the Queen, or in the way that Yankee free agents are in favor of Joe Torre; it's nice to think that someone genial is overseeing things."

More? The watches of the watch company Voltaire began "became the Ben & Jerry's ice cream of the later Enlightenment, a luxury good that was also a sign of progressive values."

Measure for measure, Nancy Franklin writes about a new TV series and describes one character as "SpongeJoe KhakiPants."

The referencing is thankfully absent from the key lines in Talk of the Town: "Hunter S. Thompson, who killed himself last week in his house in Woody Creek, near Aspen, Colorado, was a high-strung, thin-skinned, programmatically dissipated workaholic, inveterately suspicious of authority, perpetually worried that his best days were behind him, and unable to deal with the attention and success that he scrambled and sweated for many years to achieve. In other words, he was a magazine writer."

TM sends me a weekly Chicago e-mail, to which I can't become unsubscribe. The usual weeks are "Don't miss Maroon 5," "Don't miss Ryan Cabrera," or "Don't miss" … "John Mayer."

But this week, amazingly, is "Don't miss Jeff Tweedy."

We'll have five days of Elvis in the blog this week. I've bookmarks and I want to delete them. We'll start with some bonus content today.

At ElvisNews.com, the "Today in Elvis History" item is appropriate for the season. Cheer up, my IRS-paying friends.

Elvis filed his first federal income tax return. His job classification was checked off as "semi-skilled" and his return showed income of $129.74 from M. B. Parker and $786.59 from Precision Tool, with no deductions or exemptions.

Year round, the site uses Day By Day – The Definitive Record Of His Life And Music for their daily trivia item. Such a book is … something.

Lovers and friends,

I'm Roommate Mark. You may remember me from such weddings as Tidwell-Cullen and the time I married a pool noodle (see left).

It is the existence of such ceremonies that again brings me to you today. After serving as best man at Nate and Liz's Miami wedding last weekend, I'm honored to return to Patrick's blog and write this brief introduction to his wedding photos.

Sure, Patrick didn't have enough film to capture the best moments. He didn't even have film at all. He had one disposable camera. And he completely overestimated its abilities.

But while he didn't snap the wedding's best moments, he certainly got great photos of me, the wedding's best man. Hoo-ah!

Hope you enjoy,
Roommate Mark

See my photos here. I also posed with a peacock.

For more shots of the wedding, check out Ellen's album and Jon's. Ellen gets the pool football on film, and Jon has a great sequence of Mark, Cleo and the garter. From post-wedding activies, Unfocus Group shows Mark and Adam meeting the tiger ladies.

I've added two sites to the left-hand rail. The first is Tim's Cancer Info Board, where CRC alum Tim Brayton discusses his ongoing treatment for cancer. (It's going well.) The second is a blog from another CRC alum, Saudi Jack. I've been reading it for a while but have forgotten to update the links. Speaking of forgetting to update things, I've also finally updated Deanna's link.

It turns out pro wrestling in Mexico is just like it is in the United States. Almost.

The sport has even inspired a subculture of political activists who advocate their causes dressed in Lucha Libre garb: Super Barrio, champion of the rights of Mexico's poor; Super Ecologist, fighter for environmental causes; and Super Gay and Super Animal, masked crusaders for gay and animal rights.

Thanks to Jess for the link.

She also sent along an interesting USA Today story about Jesuit college basketball programs. The schools had been playing low-rent ball since the mid-1980s, but now something of a revival has been begun.

Wrote reporter Malcolm Moran, "Today, however, despite concerns over potential conflict between elite-level competition and institutional values and finances, many schools run by the Society of Jesus are concluding that a high-priced involvement in men's basketball can be consistent with their identities."