It's with caution that I admit to have been bitten by the Dan Brown bug. It started obviously enough, with The Da Vinci Code, and has moved forth to Angels* & Demons and then to Deception Point. I can only guess that the madness will end with Digital Fortress. Being the type of kid in high school that spent hours on the internet before it was cool for you to check out espn.com while at work, I'd previously stumbled upon countless websites about the Illuminati, Free Mason imagery on US Dollar Bills, etc. If you're a bit geeky, don't mind being caught on the subway with a paperback best seller, and have a few hours to kill (literally, you can plow through these puppies in hours) I highly recomment seeking out this shit. Your Dad's probably already bought it, so just borrow it from him or whatever.

Read it before Ron Howard casts Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon and ruins the whole damn thing. *

They sell shirts that have "I'm Rick James, Bitch" silkscreened along side an image of Mr. James on the Seaside Heights boardwalk. Last weekend, two days after the death of Signore James I saw a person walking along the beach that crossed out the "I'm" and replaced it with "I was" "I was Rick James, Bitch". Charming.

I might just be the only person in the United States that has not yet seen the David Chappelle skit that spawned that initial phrase. *

I'm employable, it turns out. Not only employable, but employable by multiple companies. When it rains it pours... and now I've been offered two wonderful positions with wonderful companies doing things that I know that I will enjoy. It's a wonderful problem to have... and once I make the final decision (it's 99.9% made), I'll let you hear about it... then the unemployed whining will end. Yay. --

* I'll have you know that the exact second that I began typing the word Angels, Ted Leo yelled the word "Angel" in song #2 off of his new album Shake The Sheets which I have not listened to enough yet to comment on.