Elvis Presley

NICK MADIGAN LIGHTS! CAMERA! ELVIS! COLLECTION / / Paramount Home Entertainment / $76.99 ....................... Elvis Presley didn't so much inhabit a character as amble through it. No matter the part, he resolutely portrayed the country kid who made good, his hair a slicked, unyielding coif, his gyrations and self-satisfied sneer irresistible to every woman who crossed his path. The formula is solidly evident in eight Presley movies set for release Tuesday on DVD to commemorate the 30th anniversary of his death: King Creole (1958)

AT ONE POINT in Time magazine's Person of the Century poll, Adolf Hitler led the pack with 21 percent of the vote. Pope John Paul II was third, Mohandas Gandhi fourth and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. fifth.Who was in second place, with 19 percent? Elvis Presley. Only in the United States of Daffydom could Presley even be on the list at all. Not that he didn't achieve anything. He was a Mississippi white boy who got in touch with his Negro side and, in so doing, helped millions of his white countrymen get in touch with theirs.

Police Blotter is a sampling of crimes in Baltimore city and county.Baltimore CityEastern DistrictShootings: Two gunmen approached a man sitting on the steps of a rowhouse in the 1800 block of Guilford Ave. about 3 p.m. Saturday and fired several shots, hitting him in both legs and arms. A woman standing on the steps of her house in the 1700 block of Guilford Ave. was struck in the right leg by a stray bullet. Both victims were taken to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where the man was in serious condition yesterday and the woman was treated and released.

LAS VEGAS -- The impulse that carried Andrea Bauer to the MGM Grand Hotel this weekend started in her family's living room when she was a girl in the 1950s. Sometimes when her father, a Perry Como fan, left the house, her mother would quickly switch to a record by that new singer, the twitchy kid from Tupelo."Elvis Presley would sing, and my mother and I would dance and dance and dance," Bauer said.So, four decades later, she came to Las Vegas to get a little piece of Graceland.Elvis Presley Enterprises, the group that manages Graceland -- Presley's former home -- and other Elvis-related properties, including the trove of archives from a man who seems to have thrown away nothing (he had kept his 1960 Texaco credit card?

As party drugs go, codeine is not exactly a festive buzz. It hits like a sledgehammer, plunging the user into a dizzy state of numb exhaustion. And it has the unfriendly tendency to induce nausea and constipation.Elvis Presley loved the stuff.When he keeled over on the toilet 21 years ago, he had enough codeine in his system to knock 10 men unconscious -- along with potentially lethal doses of four heavy-duty sedatives and traces of nine other drugs. Among these was Dilaudid, a painkiller normally prescribed to chemotherapy patients.

Thomas Durden,79, who wrote the lyrics to one of Elvis Presley's early big hits, "Heartbreak Hotel," died Sunday at home in Houghton Lake, Mich. Mr. Durden met Presley as a result of the song. Presley called him "sir" and sent him Christmas cards to show his appreciation, said his stepson, John White.He co-wrote "Heartbreak Hotel" with Mae Boren Axton of Nashville, Tenn., who died in 1997. For reasons never explained, Presley also was given writing credit even though it was the work of the others.

Popular music has celebrated some unusual footwear over the years, from high-heeled sneakers to boogie shoes. But few were as unusual or enduring as the pair songwriter and guitarist Carl Perkins immortalized in "Blue Suede Shoes."One of the biggest early hits of the rock-and-roll era, the 1956 smash sold more than 4 million copies and inspired such giants as Elvis Presley (who cut his own hit version of the song) and the Beatles (who later recorded the single's B-side, "Honey Don't"). "Blue Suede Shoes" brought Perkins such fame that for years afterward he would never think of performing without a pair on his feet.

WASHINGTON -- Elvis Presley died 20 years ago at the age of 42. By rock 'n' roll standards, it has not been a good death.Almost without exception, rock idols who lived fast and died young -- Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, John Lennon -- were sanctified in pious mythologies that grew around them after their deaths. In these legends, the overindulgence in drugs that marked their lives and (Lennon excepted) hastened their deaths was an experience essential to their creative achievements, even if personally debilitating.

There has been a whole lot of shakin' going on at the Honeymoon Hideaway, where rock and roll king Elvis Presley once stayed -- and neighbors want it stopped.The city of Palm Springs has gone to court in a bid to bar commercial parties and functions in the spaceship-like home where Presley and his bride Priscilla spent their first married days in May 1967.Second only to Graceland as a mecca for Elvis fans, Honeymoon Hideaway is at the center of a legal storm over commercial use of former celebrity homes located in residentially zoned areas, including estates once owned by Elizabeth Taylor, Liberace and Cary Grant.

There's a reason Elvis Presley's first recordings for Sun Records sounded so spontaneous. "Nothing was rehearsed," explains guitarist Scotty Moore, who with bassist Bill Black backed Presley on those early sessions.Why didn't they bother rehearsing?"Because even the first record was actually an audition for Elvis," he answers.At the time, Moore meant more than Presley to Sam Phillips, Sun Records' owner. The two had first met when Phillips agreed to cut a record with the Starlite Wranglers, a country group Moore had been playing in. "We became good friends," says Moore.

Sprint this week started making available in stores the first 3G/4G dual-mode device, which operates on both the Sprint 3G and 4G networks. Sprint launched its 4G service in Baltimore in September and plans to launch in other markets across the country next year. With 4G, downloads of a song might take several seconds or a movie less than an hour while outside or moving through the city - three to five times faster than 3G networks. The device is priced at $149.99 with a two-year contract, after a $50 mail-in rebate.

The spirit of Elvis Presley is hovering over Toby's Dinner Theatre this summer as a lively cast performs All Shook Up. Running through Aug. 24, the musical uses 25 of Elvis' songs to tell the story of a stagnant town that is, as the title says, all shook up by the emergence of rock music in the 1950s. A drifter with a motorcycle and a guitar - his name is Chad - has been arrested for violating something called the Mamie Eisenhower Decency Act, which bans such affronts to morality as public necking and tight pants.

With "Touch My Body" topping Billboard's Hot 100 as of Wednesday, Mariah Carey's career total of No. 1 singles has hit 18, one more than Elvis Presley. You'd think Western civilization had collapsed overnight. My advice? Get over it. I grew up loving Presley's music. I was born the same year he first set foot in Sam Phillips' Sun studio in Memphis, Tenn., and my first memory of music is that of a teenage neighbor belting out "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog!" in 1956, when I was 3. But this brouhaha?

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- "The sun never sets on a legend. There will always be a TCB on the Lisa Marie. The United States of America has had 43 presidents, but only one King. May he always sing ... " And with that, his usual sendoff, George Klein has finished another week of The Elvis Hour, the radio show he has done for more than two decades. Klein walks out of the studio wearing basketball warm-ups and sneakers, both featuring the Memphis Tigers' logo. I've sought out Klein because he's the only one who can answer my burning question: If Elvis Presley were alive today, would he be actively rooting for the Tigers as they take aim at a national championship?

Humorist Dave Barry once wrote, "Eventually everybody has to die, except Elvis." Barry was being funny, as always -- but was he right? As America marks the 30th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death today, the singer is still very much with us. Perhaps you've seen the new commemorative DVDs of Jailhouse Rock and Viva Las Vegas, or the custom-made Elvis bikes that Harley-Davidson is offering, or the Elvis banana-and-peanut-butter cups Reese's is selling....

NICK MADIGAN LIGHTS! CAMERA! ELVIS! COLLECTION / / Paramount Home Entertainment / $76.99 ....................... Elvis Presley didn't so much inhabit a character as amble through it. No matter the part, he resolutely portrayed the country kid who made good, his hair a slicked, unyielding coif, his gyrations and self-satisfied sneer irresistible to every woman who crossed his path. The formula is solidly evident in eight Presley movies set for release Tuesday on DVD to commemorate the 30th anniversary of his death: King Creole (1958)

GUIDES 'Encounter' the world Lonely Planet has introduced a new series of pocket guidebooks, called Encounter, designed for short visits to cities around the world. The series just launched books on Barcelona, Spain; Hong Kong; Istanbul, Turkey; Las Vegas; London; New York; Paris and San Francisco. Each book features a full-color pull-out map, plus neighborhood maps, with a list of not-to-be-missed highlights in each destination and sample itineraries, plus attractions, restaurants and shops listed by neighborhood.

MARYLAND Plane crash kills three Three Joppa men were killed yesterday when a single-engine plane crashed in a wooded area near homes in Jacksonville, Baltimore County. No one on the ground was injured and the cause of the crash is under investigation, officials said. pg 1b Bentley closes her store Dwindling sales forced former Rep. Helen Delich Bentley to close her Cockeysville antiques shop today after nearly 40 years in business. pg 1b WORLD New U.N. sanctions on Iran The U.N. Security Council unanimously voted yesterday to impose new sanctions against Iran for its refusal to stop enriching uranium.

Critic's Pick -- Performances by Elvis Presley (above) and others are spotlighted in The Rockabilly Legends (9:30 p.m., MPT, Channels 22/67).

Lisa Marie Presley The King's daughter comes to Baltimore for a performance at Rams Head Live this Sunday. After the success of her debut album in 2003, Lisa Marie Presley established herself as an artist out of the shadow of her legendary father, Elvis Presley. Roseanne Barr will open the show with a comedy routine. Rams Head Live is at 20 Market Place. The all-ages show starts at 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased at 410-244-1131 or ramsheadlive.com.