December 19th, 2011
Things done today: Finished Christmas Cards, Watched How I Met Your Mother, Sat around the house doing nothing, Nam/Annie brought home pizza, Sat around the house staring at computer screen, Main Place Mall/Wetzel Pretzals/Rise of Planet of the Apes with Thiep and Earle to get away from everything, and Stater Brothers to buy Stamps. That is the story of my non-existent life.
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| On this day in 1957, while spending the Christmas holidays at Graceland, his newly purchased Tennessee mansion, rock-and-roll star Elvis Presley receives his draft notice for the United States Army. With a suggestive style–one writer called him “Elvis the Pelvis”–a hit movie, Love Me Tender, and a string of gold records including “Heartbreak Hotel,” “Blue Suede Shoes,” “Hound Dog” and “Don’t Be Cruel,” Presley had become a national icon, and the world’s first bona fide rock-and-roll star, by the end of 1956. As the Beatles’ John Lennon once famously remarked: “Before Elvis, there was nothing.” The following year, at the peak of his career, Presley received his draft notice for a two-year stint in the army. Fans sent tens of thousands of letters to the army asking for him to be spared, but Elvis would have none of it. He received one deferment–during which he finished working on his movie King Creole–before being sworn in as an army private in Memphis on March 24, 1958. |
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| AT&T on Monday ended its effort to buy T-Mobile USA, acknowledging that it could not overcome stiff opposition by the Obama administration to form the nation’s biggest cellphone service provider. The decision to scrap the $39 billion takeover — which would have been the biggest deal of the year — is a major setback for AT&T, which had pinned its hopes for growth on the acquisition. The company wanted T-Mobile’s cellular airwaves, or spectrum, to relieve its congested network and offer faster service for data-hungry devices like the iPhone. UGH LITERALLY EFF THE GOVERNMENT. |
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