In a forum kind of way, by Serge. First, record, introduction.

After cigarette number 23 yesterday, my lungs and stuff just stopped clockin the smoke. My veins stopped trying to dilate and keep up with the action. My nose stopped trying to smell stuff. Except smoke. And the room was filled with it. Smoke, smoke, smoke,….the killer, the devil's mist, the whisping sky-snake of death. Smoke that many cigarettes before 3pm and they oughta send ya' a skull ring in the mail. You're tough. Nervous. Jittery and raw. If the smokes ran out, at times like this, people like us would knaw through the softer underside of our arms, gash at a main vein with our teeth, and slurp the nicotine right out of our own blood, as if it were the candy'd syrup in a wax straw….old school penny candy never dies.

Following day 2, ("I notice a record called the Ballad of Johnny Bench on the wall and that makes me smile even though it has to be bizzare"), days 3 and 4 ("Every little magic world needs a guy called Willie from Kentucky in it"), day 5 ("When Dylan dies, so will a thing…an indescribable thing, something even he had no idea was happening"), day 6 ("I wonder if I have a kid and name him Bronco Bielanko, if other kids will make fun of him?"), day 7 ("A distinct lack of vegetables over the past two plus weeks has led me to feel a bit scurvy-ish, which is probably not much of turn-on to you the reader, yet must be presented in the narrative in the spirit of Naturalism"), day 8 ("There was thunder roaring as I went to sleep last night though so I guess that means that despite the dreary weather, spring and then summer are indeed just a few storms away"), and hopefully more to come.

The 'fork reviews Jeannie Ortega's Crowded this week and focuses on rapper Papoose's featured turn:

That clock's ticking, though, and it's helping nobody's cause when time's wasted on wit like: "They say you can't have your cake and eat it, too/ Tell me what's the meaning/ What's the sense of me having any cake if I can't eat it?"

I can't stand the song and its constant airplay (see radio notes in Elvis post), but I listen sometimes just to hear that line. It makes me laugh. Someone, somewhere put a lot of thought into that one. But it has gotten me thinking about the phrase. Confirmed by a few other sources, Wikipedia explains the phrase.

More notes from the Top 40
–Hips Don't Lie. God bless you, Wyclef Jean, but why doesn't this song just let Shakira sing? I — in the third person — could baila en la calle de noche y de dia all week long if only she would keep the lyrics for herself. More belly, less deli! No fightin' indeed but who cares.

–Ridin' awful. Bad Day has a good video. Fort Minor is sneaky and wrong. The Fray song is great except for the sports referencing, unfortunately in the chorus. Enough with Sean Paul. Who knew the Kelly Clarkson album was this deep? Who knew the Mary J. Blige album was this shallow? How can that Nickelback song sound exactly the same as the two already proven to sound exactly the same? Jamie Foxx is too catchy for my own good. And that TI lyric fools me everytime and it's great.

–Nowhere near the top 40, Marah side-band the Shimmers are reuniting some this year. Music available on MySpace, CD supposedly this fall. CMJ has more album details. (In other side-band news, the Shlatias say they're still recording.)

–In related news, Marah received a mention in the USA TODAY blogosphere this week and amazingly the blogger wasn't me. "Philadelphia's Marah showed a largely unsuspecting crowd why they're quite possibly the best rock band in America that isn't playing arenas…."

… USA Today. A staple of the road, last mentioned in March 2004. The band has started a blog from the road, and various members are writing on occasion. The most recent posting, from Serge:

"Rivers are passed over in seconds … but somehow intuition kicks in and all heads in the van rise from their books and magazines, check out the view, reach the end of the bridge, and fall back into the page. Buffet fried catfish in one state is meatloaf in another. Chicken Caeser salads are everywhere and each is worse than the last. Hangover sunlight is just afternoon coffee if you wait it out."

Also among recent entries, the band hangs out in Oxford, Miss., with novelist and OA star William Gay. I think that magazine may be the next one for me. The New Yorker's still coming, you know, but a man's gotta balance his geography. If a Southern New Yorker sounds intriguing, it's worth a visit to your local libary to check out Best of the Oxford American, a book that happily turned up in CNN's giveaway box one day. Gay's short story "My Hand Is Just Fine Where It Is" is included.

Serge writes: "… Bowling Green is a college town just south of Toledo. There is a main street that seems as if it were stolen from a very well-done theatre presentation of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD or NORMAN ROCKWELL: THE PLAY. All tiny shops and warm sluggish sunset, it is the perfect little town to hide in after your 17 year career as a mafia hitman has ended and you've testified in 3 RICO trials and are now game to be plopped by the FBI into a place where…..well, they just ain't ever gonna find you, man. Seriously. They ain't. Anyhow, I digress…."

Details on the 20,000 Streets Under the Sky pre-order are now available on the message board. Scroll down to Muskie Moon's lower comments.

Soda streaming on the Yep Roc site. I like.

They call me Soda cuz when I was a baby,

Like I'm scared of something, but Hannah, I ain't

I'm singing along, tapping my toes, snapping my fingers, and playing air drums above my head. Shimmy shimmy coco pop! You better catch up, I'm on my fourth time through. Click on the Freedom Park Media Player on Marah's Yep Roc page; register, sign up for the Yep Roc general mailing list and enjoy that sno-cone.

Wilco's A Ghost is Born hits stores on June 22. As you know, I'm excited.

Marah's 20,000 Streets Under the Sky arrives one week later. As you know, I'm excited, even moreso than with Wilco. Marah's gonna have a horn section. They've gonna have a doo-wop girl chorus called the Shalitas.

I told a friend a while back about Marah album: It's gonna be like those red, white and blue sno-cones you can get in the little paper cups in the summertime. Maybe the 4th of July parade is rolling by; but you're just working on that sno-cone and checking out crowd, and every once in a while you see someone out in the heat and you're like damn I'd like to take me a bite out of that.

So that's two bands who've got my lunch money.

But now here comes Elvis. The King. He comes strutting up the street in a black leather suit. "Patrick," says Elvis, "what I need is a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich."

Now I'm no fan of peanut butter. No sir. But I figure we all got needs. And I figure 250 million peanut butter fans — much like 50 million Elvis fans — can't be wrong. So I offer Elvis a deal. "Elvis," I say, "how about we make a trade. I give you a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich. And you give me your gold lamé suit."

Elvis curls his lip at this. "Son," he says, "I tell you for sure, that suit was the only thing that got me through the pearly gates. St. Peter says to me, 'You an angel?' I say to him, 'I got the suit, don't I?' By the time he figured out what I'd pulled, enough people'd heard me singing up there that there was no way they'd let him throw me out."

That much I can oblige. "But, Elvis," I say, "if you can't give me the suit … then how about something from the '68 comeback special? I don't want the black suit. Whatever happened between you and that leather can stay between you all. But how something more of the take-home variety? How about a DVD with all the boxing ring jam sessions and stage shows. Every little thing. Maybe remastered too, just to make sure we get all the feathers from the overloaded poultry truck. You know, Guitar Man."

Elvis sizes me up and then sticks out a hand.

"Son," he says, "you got yourself a deal."

And so, as you now must know, I'm excited. The Deluxe Edition DVD becomes available on June 22. But you don't have to thank me. You don't have to thank me very much.

Yep Roc releases cover art for 20,000 Streets Under the Sky.

Urrrrr?

Sony via Backstreets: Bruce has something in the works.