I am now 4 for 13. Curse you, Mobil station at the corner of Sepulveda and Santa Monica Boulevard! (Jason bought a Pepsi there, too, and his wasn't a winner either.)

My coworker Joe was just looking up someone he knows on eBay, for some reason, and it turns out this person had just bought a mini fridge. But in the same eBay category with mini fridges is another product, which prompted Joe to ask me, "Have you ever heard of a kedger-ator?"

"That's pronounced 'keg-erator,'" I said, "and yes, I have." So I got to explain what one was, and under what circumstances they might be found in the living room of an apartment. (Most of the ones currently for sale on eBay are the smaller ones that can only fit around a pony keg.)

Reference on Page A2 of today's Los Angeles Times: "Burbank May Get JetBlue; Sources said the discount airline with amenities such as leather seats and a TV for every passenger would soon announce the start of nonstop service to New York from the Burbank airport. C1"

Full-page advertisement for JetBlue on Page A8 of today's Los Angeles Times: "Looking for an easy flight out of LA? Now there's Hope. Nonstop service from Bob Hope Airport (Burbank) to NYC starts May 24."

Were those sources in the advertising department? (The actual article on C1 is a little more definite than just attributing it to "sources," but by that point, two sections later, it's a little anticlimactic.)

I'm 4 for 12, which is exactly where the odds say I should be. The new song addition is "It Only Takes a Minute, Girl," a #10 hit for Tavares in 1975. Incidentally, Joel Whitburn informs me that from 1964 to 1969, Tavares was known as "Chubby and the Turnpikes," which I think is a much better name, although it doesn't really mesh with the smooth R&B sounds of Tavares.

I swear, I'm not intentionally buying nothing but 1970s Top 10 hits, that's just how it's working out so far (when I get the song credit, I look at my list of "potential single downloads" and decide what I'm in the mood for -- and also what won't embarrass me too much to post here, now that I guess I'm committed to do that for this entire promotion).

Original comments...

Jason: Well, I'm 1 for 1 so far. I chose The Pixies' "Bam Thwok", which seems to be only available at iTunes, and no where else.

It would be nice if Pepsi would extend the offer on it's over flavors, like Wild Cherry Pepsi or my favorite, Pepsi Vanilla.

I am now 3 for 11. Continuing the theme of Top 10 hits from the 1970s, the latest song download is "I Go Crazy" by Paul Davis, a #7 hit in 1977. But does this continue the theme of Songs Levi Likes?

Now, let's see if this actually posts (my DSL connection is being a little flaky, probably because of the five straight days of rain Los Angeles has had).

Original comments...

Levi: I don't think I know this one or the Tavares song you're going to get in a couple of days.

I am now 2 for 8. The song I just downloaded is "Reminscing," a #3 hit for the Little River Band in 1978. It's a song I had completely forgotten about until it showed up on one of the "iTunes Essentials" lists.

Original comments...

Levi: I love that song. I also love "Jackie Blue." I guess I'm a sucker for generic non-Skynyrd 70s southern rock.

"ATTENTION UPS: PACKAGES FOR 310 SHOULD GO TO 310 AND NOT 310A!"

I only knew to put this up because I happened to glance at a UPS InfoNotice left on the door of 310A last week and see my name. The note worked today, because the UPS guy actually did call up to apartment 310, and I got my package. (I have caller ID, so I know he didn't call apartment 310 last week before leaving the notice at 310A.) I'm not sure how you can see "310" and think "310A"; usually, I have the problem of people seeing "310A" and thinking "310."

On a Pepsi/iTunes note, I went to a Vons supermarket in Santa Clarita today, but they didn't have any Pepsi bottles with iTunes caps, only Diet Pepsi. What a disappointment. I was up there to check if, as rumored, the Comcast Costa Mesa-Santa Claritia-Tujunga-Tustin edition of TV Guide has been discontinued, which it has. (Actually, it's been combined with the Comcast Corona-Pomona-Riverside edition and the Comcast Greater Los Angeles edition to form the Comcast Southern California Digital edition. You've learned it, you can't unlearn it.)

I am now 1 for 3 with Pepsi bottles purchased at Sav-On, which I guess makes sense. What I didn't realize until I actually read the fine print is that this year, there's also a 1 in 6 chance to get a "buy one, get one free" bottlecap. I know that makes the songs cheaper, but I've lost all of my math skills from high school, so I can't figure out exactly how much cheaper.

Song number 1: "Jackie Blue" by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, which not only had I forgotten existed, but I don't think I ever knew the title and artist. It was a number 3 hit in 1975. It's a good thing I have the Joel Whitburn "Top Pop Singles" and "Top Pop Albums" books so I can easily correct the iTunes Music Store's tagging, which lists the song as 2002 based on the release date of the compilation album on which it appears.

Also this year, each song redeemed counts as an entry to win an iPod Mini. They claim they're giving away one per hour; if that's literally true, perhaps I should wait to redeem my songs until late at night (say, after midnight Pacific time) so I theoretically have a better chance. Not that I have a use for an iPod Mini, considering my music collection is too large for even my 30-gigabyte iPod Regular. I'd probably just sell it on eBay or something.

Original comments...

Levi: Well, my off-the-top-of-my-head math says you'll end up saving abuot 16% per song. Here's how I figured it:

Say a Pepsi is $1. You buy six of them, you've spent $6. But you get one cap that entitles you to a free soday for the next one you buy. So next time you want 6 sodas, you only pay for 5, which costs you $5. But you get another bottle cap, to redeem which, you're going to have to buy another soda. One-third of the time, from that final transaction, with which you're attempting to settle accounts with Pepsico, you'll get another bottle cap. But from the figures I've already gotten, I calculate that you end up with 14 sodas, with each soda costing you about $.86. Over time, the initial $6 investment (for the first batch of sodas) is amortized and you settle into a real price of just above $.84. There's always the lingering problem of how the remaining cap affects the total cost. It's simple if the two sodas you buy with that cap for $1 aren't winners: your price per soda drops to just below $.84. But if, as will happen 1/3 of the time, that one's a winner, your next pair of sodas (which, probabilistically speaking, will be non-winners, since you've already had your winner in this batch of six) will bring your cost per soda down to $.83.

I know a real math person could figure this much more cleanly, and they probably could take proper account of the lingering cap effect. But this is my best effort for now.

Aquarius: You save 100% per song. If you buy a Pepsi with no promotion, you get a Pepsi. If you buy a Pepsi with the promotion, you get a Pepsi and maybe a song. If you do a get a song, it's a 100% savings versus buying it on iTunes.

Last year, when Pepsi was giving away iTunes songs, I used my winnings for baseball-related music. I'm not doing that this year, so stories of my free music are going on this blog, not on baseballrelated.com.

At this point, I've got a list of 46 songs I want to get, mainly discovered through the new "iTunes Essentials" lists on the iTunes Music Store. A lot of these were songs I had forgotten I liked 20 years ago, or songs where I never knew the title and/or artist.

20-ounce Pepsis seem to range in price from 99 cents to $1.29, plus there's a 4-cent California "cash refund value," for a 1 in 3 chance of winning a free song. True, I could just buy the songs from the iTunes Music Store for 99 cents each, and not have to drink the Pepsi, but where's the fun in that?

Last year, the Los Angeles Pepsi bottler had a local promotion overlapping with the iTunes promotion, so the iTunes bottles showed up late here. That's not a problem this year; the coolers are full of the bottles with yellow caps. Now, I am currently 0 for 2 on Pepsis purchased from the Ralphs supermarket at Magnolia and Vineland in North Hollywood, and am also 0 for 2 on Pepsis purchased from the Sav-On Drugs at Lankershim and Oxnard in North Hollywood. I think I need to pay a visit to the 7-Eleven at Burbank and Colfax, a very short walk from my apartment, which is where I found the most winning bottles last year. (Last year, I also won several songs from Big Gulp cups, but I don't think they're included in the promotion this year.)

The good news for upstanding citizens like me is that they've slightly redesigned the bottles, at least the ones the local Pepsi bottler is using, that prevents ne'er-do-wells from seeing if there's a winning code under the cap before opening the bottle. There's a raised pattern on the top third.