A friend of mine e-mailed me this morning from Boston -- he's now a proud father of a boy. It's his first child. As he said, it was rather ironic that a pop culture maven such as himself should become a father around the same time that Rachel on "Friends" was giving birth as well.

I'm hearing and seeing way too much of Eminem around. I didn't like him to begin with, but it was just not pleasant to wake up to his song on my clockradio and then see his video when I flipped on MTV2 this morning. I have no idea why the boy's so angry and why he has to go around insulting all these other artists in his songs (and for that matter, I'm getting rather tired of rap artists putting out all these battle songs insulting the other person they're fighting with), and I have no idea how he got so popular.

I'm trying to decide when I'm going to go see Episode 2. It's been panned by almost all the reviews I've read, though I should probably see it on the big screen. I'll probably go Wednesday or Thursday next week to give all the fanatics a chance to see it their requisite four or five times over the weekend so maybe the theatres won't be completely crowded.