Jeremy gave the following preamble on Facebook, and I liked it: "I dutifully ignore most of these Facebook lists, in which you get tagged in someone else's and are therefore obligated to make your own, but this one sounded kinda fun. So the challenge is to list 15 albums that changed your life, most impacted you or whatever …  I'm limiting mine to officially released material only because otherwise this would be a list of 15 Bruce Springsteen recordings unavailable in stores." My list:

1. Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen
2. Darkness of the Edge of Town, Bruce Springsteen
3. Kids in Philly, Marah
4. A Legendary Performer Vol. 2, Elvis Presley
5. Gold, CCR
6. Tunnel of Love, Bruce Springsteen
7. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco
8. Summerteeth, Wilco
9. Pneumonia, Whiskeytown
10. Get Lifted, John Legend
11. Greatest Hits, John Denver
12. Joshua Tree, U2
13. My Aim Is True, Elvis Costello
14. Pet Sounds, Beach Boys
15. West Side Story soundtrack

If you want to fight, each one is easily explainable, and I know karate.

Most difficult cuts: Demolition, The River (but you know The River is fine without you), James Brown 20 All-Time Greatest Hits, Chronicle, The '59 Sound (I'm guessing it'll stick), Songs for Swingin' Lovers, Bill Withers Live at Carnegie Hall, Let's Cut the Crap and Hook Up Later on Tonight.

Jess pointed me to the trailer of his coming movie. The plot: His son's school opens a 50-year time capsule and gives a letter to each person in attendance. Cage, of course, gets the letter with the date and body count of the deadliest tragedies of our time. And, of course, there are still more dates to come. And, of course, the movie looks awesome.

But every Nicolas Cage movie looks awesome in the trailer, a trend that may explain how Cage envisions his movies before signing on. I bet someone tells him the plot and he thinks hard for two and a half minutes before going, "Aw yeah, that'd be pretty good." I'd probably do the same. Imagines map on back of Declaration of Independence.

Jess figured that was maybe how Cage lived all of life. I had to agree.

"Nic, you ever thought about marrying Lisa Marie?" And he drifts off…

Pictures Lisa Marie in a pretty white dress, himself in a black suit with a crazy belt buckle, wedding bells, crowds of admirers, a limo with red Coke cans hanging off the back, fruity drinks on golden beaches, a den with a bar, Viva Las Vegas on the stereo, funny questions from other couples having drinks about Leaving Las Vegas, a thrown glass shatters, a door closes, the house burns as he stands alone on the lawn, he's drunk in a dive, a silent sneering man with mysterious sunglasses grabs him and beats him up, that man turns out to be Elvis, they chase each other with big rigs in the desert, the Vegas strip looms, where the big show opens tonight, a huge casino explodes as seen from the sky, cut to Cage in a red leather elevator with muzak playing a lounge cover of It's Now or Never, as he says to the elevator operator without turning, "You have no idea."

"Hey, I should marry her…"

Wait for Budgie's friend. Anyway You Want Me (That's How I Will Be).

And happy birthday to Elvis. Find Graceland birthday events here.

A cool story this month was the Trib finding the girl on the Million Dollar Quartet's piano. "That is Marilyn Evans in the photo. She is alive and well, and still looking good. She has a son and two granddaughters, and she is my wife." A sidebar explains how she turned up, and a photo gallery shows the scrawled napkin that first asked her out.

And now a moment for a ridiculous Elvis clip with equal editing.

It's amazing how well the "Biggest Little City in the World" line fits. Met all kinds of cool people on this month's work trip to Reno and nearly every one of them felt, expressed or participated in the title.

But how best to see? The always fantastic Megg took me on a drive around the city and outskirts, the farmland the city has pushed into and somewhat lost itself it in. Downtown is still there, left to figure itself out, but seems to be beginning to grapple. While the casinos have their deal, neighbors are reasserting themselves. If there are business improvement zones to come (versus traditional casino power or with them?), people seem to know the right directions.

Thumbs up especially to the points between points that satisfied the taste buds: J J's Pie Co, the Little Waldorf Saloon, and the Imperial Bar and Lounge. For a city of neighborhoods guy in a driving town, I felt at home in all of them. Casino food didn't look as satisfying. But between some minor El Dorado slots losses and Circus Circus ticket collecting, a few other casino moments did.

Like … an Elvis coin-pusher smack in the middle of the Circus Circus kiddie section, completely unplayed by the children running around it. Our little group conferred on the point of the game – not even getting to the usual usability talk, or even how the machine was in poor form to back rival Vegas – and spent $1 total before moving on. Didn't look good for EPE's decision or all the coin-pushing games to come before and apparently fail in their storytelling, engagement and enjoyment.

Whack-a-Mole, a ball-shooting game and air hockey all got more love.

And I have to include the cost of booking casino lodging late, getting the standard room instead of the deluxe. The price was the view….

Would I go back? Totally. Might book early enough for the deluxe room.

The margaritas after the movie helped. There was no lost order resulting in half-price food, like there was the last time we were at the Ballston Chevy's. There was no crime scene next to our table like there was the time before that. But both would've also been helpful.

Who would've thought making another Indiana Jones movie was a bad idea? Holding aside a Sum of All Fears-style mistake, who would've thought Steve Spielberg making another Indiana Jones movie starring Harrison Ford was a bad idea? Reviews from friends had already lowered my expectations going in. How did the bottom drop out?

(Note: This post is spoiler-free. I can't begin to describe the ending.)

As much as I love Elvis, the first sound was a bad sign. Then came the dialogue, the accents and the much heralded fridge in short order. Far later, the monkeys were worse, and they were a long time coming. It was in the college restaurant where I placed Harrison Ford's voice. He hadn't sounded like Indy to that point, didn't even sound like himself, but whose voice did he have? Ah. Tragedy today, as former President Gerald Ford was eaten by wolves. He was delicious.

There was a lot of talking. The reviewers weren't kidding about "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Exposition." All of you who put Crystal Skull on the same level as Temple of Doom, your grasping at straws was admirable. The desert neighborhood and the motorcycle minutes this time were terrific, but we came up short: one nightclub poisoned shootout, one rickshaw chase, one plane crash, one Himalayan tubing adventure, a couple beating heart removals, one Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang-meets-Fraggle-infrastructure underground adventure, and one rope bridge. Forget Shia. Give me Short Round.

The Wall Street Journal may have put it best this spring:

None of the complex CGI sequences in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" can hold a candle, in fact, to the moment when a conspicuously youthful Indy, confronted by a black-robed warrior chuckling ominously, watched and waited while the guy twirled his scimitar, then pulled out his revolver and simply popped him with no further ado. But that was a long time ago, in a film that feels far, far away.

Also feeling distant? Air Force One, 11 years old.

I had a good time on Saturday night, I gave the movie that. Any true fan of the trilogy had to be somewhat forgiving of Crystal Skull. The movie was better than Love Guru. The movie was better on the big screen than the inevitable small one. The movie was better in the mall than at home. Metaphorically speaking, we named the dog Indiana.

–The psychic on Lee Highway appeared to have closed down. The signage ripped from the hanging frames on the porch made you wonder if the psychic had gone under — never saw too much action as you drove by — had sold the place or, more likely, lost the lease. Unable to forget the Mr. Belvedere commercial that aired for years on WTTG, where Mr. Belvedere pushes Wesley's face into the chocolate cake, you wondered — you're prone to wondering — if the psychic had seen it coming.

But then I turned to my left, and the psychic had apparently moved to new digs across the street, complete with new neon signs.

–The always ridiculous ElvisNews.com newsletter highlighted "British rock star Shakin' Stevens" who was totally unfamiliar to me. If I'm interpreting his Wikipedia entry correctly, he was the Robbie Williams of the '80s. Or something. Anyway, the newsletter reported Shakin's new album had a performance of a song called Fire Down Below, "which Jerry Scheff wrote for Elvis." And I thought, could this be the Silver Bullet Bob song? The prostitution-based potato chip crunch between the Night Moves wheat bread, the Sun-drenched cheese, and the Come to Poppa feeling of biting through the plate? (Mainstreet is air and you know it.) How good would an Elvis version have been?

But then I checked out the album, and Seger's song was Seger's own. I read the newsletter story again and found a link to the Shakin' song. It was … not my taste. It was an undercooked Burning Love, and Springsteen's Fire remained the greatest fire-related song written with Elvis hopes but never recorded. (Related, '86 Bridge School or Darkness tour version? I transpose the two and that's probably a good thing.)

–MySpace spam. You know the name, but you don't. Over too quickly.

And my brain is out. It was nice to hear Majic 102.3 pull out John Legend's Another Again on the drive home after softball tonight. On the album, the wistfulness of the neighboring songs take it to a much sadder place than where it lives on its own. No lyrical findings here, just enjoyed this twist versus the rest.

ElvisNews.com posted a press release last week about plans for "Elvis '68 Comeback Special Toys." I'm not deep into novelty toys — nor light into them either, aside from the Mr. Potato Head who lives next to my television — but I do love the concert. So I checked out the link to see what it been toy-ized.

It turns out the new toy was the sign. E-L-V-I-S lights up sequentially and sells for $50. Also new is a "special edition collector's box" for a previous manufactured "figure" from the show. So I'm thinking, an Elvis action figure? Growing up with action figures, I respect them. I fully support the Fresh Prince argument that action figures are not dolls. If you're not from there, as the Fresh Prince might have said, about action figures or anything else, you don't know how it is.

But Google quickly found this description.

"Elvis is articulated with a neck swivel, shoulder swivels, swivels at the jacket cuffs and a waist swivel. This is NOT AN ACTION FIGURE, nor was it meant to be. No karate kicking action. No three fried bananna sandwich eating action. This is meant to be a piece for your shelf or proudly displayed at work to the oo's and ahh's of coworkers."

The reviewer cared more than I, and he must have had different coworkers. While I was impressed as a child with the Elvis hip-swiveling clock, we clearly trafficked in different meanings of awesome.

Read Peter Guralnick's Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley this weekend and couldn't have read much of anything better. This first book of two is as tightly written as a biography comes and thematically as generous as fiction. I was looking for something to concentrate on, and the first paragraph brought me in. From "Prologue: Memphis, 1940" –

"It is late May or early June, hot, steamy: a fetid breeze comes in off the river and wafts its way through the elegant lobby of the Hotel Peabody, where, it is said, the Mississippi Delta begins. There is a steady hum of conversation in the room — polite, understated, well bred, but never letting up: the room is redolent with the suggestion of business dealings transacted in grandiloquent style, amid curlicues of cigar smoke rising toward the high Florentine ceiling, with the anticipation of a social evening to come. When the novelist William Faulkner is in town, he always stays at the Peabody; perhaps he is observing this very scene."

A different way to start the Elvis story, for sure. The other good jumping point comes in the author's note before the book begins.

"Discovering the reality of that world was something like stepping off the edge of my own. The British historian Richard Holmes describes the biographer as 'a sort of tramp permanently knocking at the kitchen window and secretly hoping he might be invited in for supper.' Holmes is presumably alluding to the researcher's attempt to penetrate the recesses of history, but he might as well be describing the literal truth. If one cannot recongize one's status as an outsider, if I were not able to laugh at the comic contretemps in which I have often found myself over the years, then I would be lacking in the humility necessary for the task. But if one were not vain enough, on the other hand, to think it possible to make sense of the mass of random detail that makes up a life, if one did imagine oneself capable somehow of the most diverse explorations, divagations, and transcendental leaps, then one would never seek to tell the story. 'The moment one begins to investigate the truth of the simplest facts which one has accepted as true,' wrote Leonard Woolf in his autobiography, 'it is as though one had stepped off a firm narrow path into a bog or a quicksand — every step takes one steps deeper into the bog of uncertainty.' And it is that uncertainty which must be taken as both an unavoidable given and the only real starting point."