WHERE'S CHARLIE HODGE?: WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH CHARLIE HODGE?

You've waited long enough without explanation of why this column is named "Where's Charlie Hodge?"

Here is why. That is the title of a movie I was writing in college and still from time to time mess with today.

It all began when my wife (who was my girlfriend at the time) and our friend Jason, who has changed his last name for acting purposes, were going to "Memphis in May" in 1994.

We also visited Graceland on this trip.

Anyway, we were playing Elvis songs pretty much the entire way down to Memphis.

We were listening to an Elvis tape in concert at Madison Square Garden, when the entire Charlie Hodge thing came into play. Maybe, it came into play a little earlier than this particular trip, but let's just say it happened on the way to Memphis (it sounds better).

If you have ever heard Elvis introduce his band, you know that no one in the world could introduce a band any cooler than Elvis.

During this concert Elvis goes through introducing the band with this cool baseline under his voice. He introduces the Stamps Quartet, some girls named Myrna, Sylvia, and the little girl that does our high voice singing is Kathy Westmoreland.

Then he introduces some more band members, towards the end of the introduction Elvis says, "and the guy that brings me my water and my scarfs, his name is Charlie Hodge."

We have all heard this a million times before, but for some reason it struck me as a great idea for a movie. Instead of searching for Elvis, let's do a movie where the stars search for Charlie Hodge.

The main characters have changed shape. At first, they were to be patterned after myself, Jason, my wife, and another friend knicknamed "Truck." I then decided to make them advertising people that lose their job and in a period of desperate thoughts go on this search.

I have also thought they should be government agents that need to find Charlie Hodge to launch a new campaign to continue the Elvis propaganda campaign because Elvis is getting tired of being in the witness protection program and has broken free and is threatening to go public, in effect destroying the credibility of the government.

Along the way they run into Elvis at various points, but they don't care. They are looking for Charlie Hodge.

And for a very long time, if we did something that was funny or thought of something that was funny we would say "that's got to be in Charlie Hodge."

My favorite idea for Charlie Hodge involves Elvis getting a record deal where he covers the hits from the eighties like "Purple Rain," "Billie Jean," and "Karma Chameleon." Later, Elvis and Charlie sing grunge songs like "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "Jeremy," and the king would have to do his rendition of "Hunger Strike."

I just see the king saying, "I don't mind stealing peanut butter and 'nanna sandwiches from the mouths of decadence." Elvis would do it in such a way the song would automatically become his. Charlie Hodge would dive into the audience because Elvis couldn't because of an unfortunate accident where he squashed 20 people in Seattle.

Well it sounded like a good idea. The trouble was, first off we had no clue where to find Charlie Hodge.

I later employed the services of a very good friend named Eric "Truck" Rousey. He is a history grad student and is an internet guru.

Within one week of asking him to search for Charlie Hodge we had some leads.

Our big break, came much later near the end of 1995. "Truck" was playing around on the internet and decided to search for Charlie Hodge.

He found him! Charlie Hodge was on the Internet. I will not disclose his location to you at this point and time, but I'll give you a clue. He is still bringing a guy that looks like Elvis his water and scarves.

Unfortunately, every time I get a few scenes into the movie script I have created serious plot blunders that I am incapable of writing the characters out of.

I don't want to go to Charlie Hodge with a bad script because I really want him to play in the movie.

What is funny is, I have had much better ideas than this (like "Columbus Day" a movie idea I have for Leslie Nielson as a spoof of Independence Day where aliens discover earth because they wanted to prove the universe wasn't flat), but this Charlie Hodge idea keeps coming up in conversations with my wife, Jason, and "Truck" time and time again.

Since I know where Charlie Hodge is now, the title of this column should be "Where's the script, idea boy?" I'll have to consider that during the next few weeks.

There you have it, the story behind the name of this column. Pretty stupid, huh?

Anyway, when I got this job I was asked a million and one times if I was going to write a column.

"Are you going to write a column?...I wrote a column are you going to write a column?...You ever wrote a column, Kentucky Boy?...People like to read columns, you going to do one?" And on and on it went until I said, "I guess I'll write a column."

I will mainly be light hearted, but on occasion I might discuss serious topics, but mostly I will try to bring you up to date on my life and if I have learned something that could be of help to you I'll write about those things as well.

I'll also declare my candidacy for president in this column. I'll be old enough to run for president during the 2008 election. See you at the polls.

Michael Wells is the editor of the Jackson USA Signal.