* To update, this weekend's Rozelle warehouse rave is still on. Check out the nifty flier ...

* Next Saturday, join Memphis music writer/comedian/man-about-town Andrew Earles as he celebrates the release of "Just Farr a Laugh," an album of prank phone calls placed by Earles and his partner Jeffrey Jensen. It's coming out Tuesday on Matador Records. For the release party, Saturday at Goner Records, Earles will perform a little monologue and play a few selections from the album. Heck, he'll even answer some questions. Learn more about the project here on the Matador site, and here on Earles' very own blog. (5:30 p.m., no cover.)

Here is the link to the pitbull story that we ran about a year ago. Please look at this and read the articles. Let me know what you think.

http://pitbull.commercialappeal-web.com/

This is the post wherein I declare my triumphant return from finals and my less triumphant, but no less hard-earned, exit from undergraduate studies–If I passed German.But I’ll save it for later, because I must urgently report a crime taking place among the poetry section of your local bookstore, however meager an existence it claims.

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When the Beale Street Music Festival opens its gate Friday evening, Dale and Carlene Dockus will be among the first arrivals. They’ve made the annual pilgrimage from distant Cordova for about 15 years. They stay Downtown the entire weekend. They get around by trolley. (”After all the beer, don’t want to be driving,” Dale says.)

To say they plan for every kind of weather is an understatement. See, Dale works in the FedEx Meteorology Department. In the words of Bob Dylan, one of his favorite MIM headliners of the past, “he don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

Troubling news: he’ll be wearing rain gear Friday night. “Some of the (weather prediction) models are saying it’s going to be a little stormy Friday night,” he said, “as in a severe thunderstorm watch. We’re hoping it hits early.”

For foul weather occasions, he and his wife just wear their lawn-mowing and gardening sneakers. It doesn’t matter if they get wet — they keep several pairs back in the hotel room.

We’re on it.

And no matter what happens this weekend, we’ll be there, too. The Commercial Appeal has raided the newsroom for its mavens of music and masochists of mud. Check out pop music critic Bob Mehr’s overview of the festival in Friday’s Playbook, with a park map and complete schedule of acts.

Party line columnist Michael Donahue will feature in a quirky online photo game, updated regularly: “Where’s Donahue?” See if you can spot Memphis’ most hirsute party-goer as he makes his way through the crowds. TRY IT OUT. You might even spot yourself. Better wear something funky.

Video correspondent Jon W. Sparks and Appeal TV creators Dennis Copeland and Lacey Winters will be scouring Tom Lee Park for moments of breathless cinema and general insanity. Free your inner celebrity.

Moonlighters Christopher Blank (our theater critic), John Beifuss (our movie critic) and Mark Jordan (our intrepid correspondent) will be hugging the speakers for up-to-the-minute updates and commentary from various stages around Tom Lee Park.

Our bloggers Bret Weaver, Lindsey Turner and Mark Richens will be posting numerous photos and descriptions of all the crazy stuff people do.

And there are even a few special guests. (We’re really pulling teeth to get people out of the office for three exciting days of music and partying!)

Shout out!

Be sure to visit often, share experiences, and steal our thunder if you can. It’s Memphis in May. And that means, it’s time to rock.

I was finally giving this year’s list of artists a cursory look.

“Hey Bryan did you put the 2008 line up on the site yet or am I looking at last year’s?”

“That’s this year.”

“Oh…”

Not a great prologue. Honestly I don’t understand why anyone would want to hear my opinion on most of these bands. But lucky me, lucky you, guess we’re all going to.

There’s a couple of acts I might not mind sitting through, but I also feel a powerfully less-than-thrilled rant forming at the base of my spine.

But not today, grasshopper.

I was just checking in to make sure I remembered my password anyway.

I know nothing about this subculture of our society, but apparently videogamers are all atwitter about this week’s release of Grand Theft Auto IV, which allows players to electronically live out fantasies about stealing cars, running drugs, street racing and other unsavory acts.

Analysts have predicted the new game, priced at $59.99, is expected to surpass $300 million in first-week sales.

Here’s my question: With all the crime we’ve got in the Memphis area, why would anyone shell out $59.99 for a videogame version of something they could see on the streets for free every day?

Bartlett Recycles and the Bartlett solid waste division plan to celebrate Earth Day from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at the Solid Waste Complex, 5250 Shelter Run Lane.

The festivities will include giveaways of mulch and two yard waste carts. And Bartlett residents will be able to drop off items like old batteries, paint, motor oil and tires.

In other words, it’ll be quite a rip-roaring party.

But didn’t most people celebrate Earth Day last week?

Oh well. Maybe Bartlett residents have decided to follow the environmentalists’ credo to "make every day Earth Day."