This week I reviewed Ben Mezrich's book Accidental Billionaires for Las Vegas Weekly.  You can read the whole review HERE, and the first few paragraphs here: 

Even Ben Mezrich’s fiercest critics have to admit, the guy knows how to pick a good story. In 2003 Mezrich grew famous after writing about the MIT blackjack team (Bringing Down the House), and this year he’s found an even bigger story to tell: the creation of Facebook.

Maybe “found” isn’t the right word; the story was up for grabs. But Mezrich was the one who grabbed it, and now he’s reaping the benefits. Kevin Spacey snapped up the movie rights before the author had even completed his first draft. And having read the book, I can see why; The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook—A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal has the makings of a summer blockbuster: swank Silicon Valley parties, gorgeous Ivy League coeds and an unlikely hero: Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

In Accidental Billionaires, Mezrich reveals that Facebook began as a website that simply allowed Harvard students to vote on which of their female classmates was hottest. According to Mezrich, the first, second and third hottest girls at Harvard all lived together. The last four digits of their room’s phone number were 3-8-2-5 (F-U-C-K). “The Harvard housing office,” explains Mezrich, “was notorious for bizarre little pranks like that. Putting kids with similar names in the same room … there was a Burger and Fries, and at least two Blacks and Whites … Someone probably needed to get fired.”

Hi Candace,

Just wanted to write and let you know that I can’t make the “Grand Opening of Lexi Drew” party that you’re hosting on Saturday.

I must admit, I was surprised that you thought to invite me me, seeing as though you didn’t invite me to any parties when we went to high school together. But that was probably just because you didn’t ever talk to me in high school, so no hard feelings.

Anyway, the reason I can’t make it to your party/promotional event is that I don’t live in Michigan any more. Actually, I haven’t lived in Michigan for about four years. I moved to Chicago in 2005 and then Las Vegas in 2008. But enough about me; what have you been up to this past decade? You haven’t told me a thing! We’ve got to catch up!

Usually when I can’t make it to a party to which I’ve been invited via facebook, I simply click “Not Attending.” But considering the sheer number of times you graciously invited me to the promotional event that your employer, Six Degrees Magazine, is hosting, I felt obliged to write something more personal—hence this letter.

By the way, I think you accidentally tagged me in a photo I’m not in. You can tell I’m not in the photo because the photo isn’t actually a photo; it’s an advertisement for your employer’s promotional event, “The Grand Opening of Lexi Drew.” (When I clicked on the facebook message telling me I’d been tagged in a photo, I was redirected to the advertisement.) I think I’ve figured out the source of the confusion: the advertisement CONTAINS a photograph of a five-woman music group called “The Paradiso Girls,” and you probably mistook the brunette on the left for me because I too have brown hair.*

Sorry to digress, but I’ve got to say, those Paradiso Girls are pretty cute! (Maybe that’s why the Six Degrees Magazine design department put the exact same photo of the Girls on the advertisement twice?) I so wish I could have flown back to Michigan, dialed 248-840-6059 for a “VIP TABLE RESERVATION,” and listened to the Paradiso Girls sing their “hit single” “Patron Tequila.” What a great song name!

(BTW, Here in Las Vegas my friend Amanda and a couple of other girls started their own girl group called the “Pussycat Dolls”…but between you and me, I secretly refer to them as “the Paradiso Girls of Las Vegas.”)

Well, I’ve got to get going now, but before I do, I wanted to invite you to this event that the magazine for which I write, Las Vegas Weekly (i.e., “the Six Degrees Magazine of Las Vegas.”), is hosting at Moon Nightclub (at Palms, in Las Vegas) on Thursday: The 3rd Annual White Hot Fusion Mixer. You can call 702-211-8393 for VIP table reservations, but please don’t use my name because, well, you know how it is.

Hope to see you there! It’s been too long!

-Ricky

*Okay, I just looked back at the facebook Event page you set up for your employer’s promotional event, “The Grand Opening of Lexi Drew,” and it looks like you accidentally tagged every single person on facebook in 35 separate copies of the same advertisement. Oops!

This week I reviewed the first 62 pages of Glenn Beck's new book Common Sense. You can read the full review in this week's Las Vegas Weekly by clicking HERE...and you can read the intro below:

Glenn Beck is great on TV; he shouts, he scoffs, and he cries. But when he writes, when his words are stripped clean of the paint-by-numbers, manufactured emotion that television facilitates, one thing becomes clear: The man has absolutely nothing of consequence to say.

Beck uses every trick in the book to cover this up. He uses more exclamation points than a teenage girl with unlimited texts (e.g., “Open your eyes!” “They’re not rescuing our country; they’re destroying it!”), and more capital letters than a teenage boy writing his first quasi-communist manifesto (e.g., “HISTORY DEMANDS A CLEAR ANSWER.”) But try as he might, Beck can’t turn a paperback book into a flat-screen TV.

Here’s a good example of the type of sentence that might fly on The Glenn Beck Program, but doesn’t hold water in Glenn Beck’s Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Governmen: “The result of preventing failure in a country rooted in freedom is a country that is no longer rooted in logic.”

That sentence would make my undergrad philosophy professor vomit in his mouth. Does Beck actually believe that preventing failure—in all cases, Glenn?—would somehow disengage America from the laws of Boolean logic? Of course not; to paraphrase a Mr. Show sketch, Glenn Beck doesn’t understand what words mean. Or maybe he just doesn’t care.

Yesterday I got 'recognized' at this diner, by my waitress. (I.e., "Are you Rick? Don't you write for the paper?") Second time that's happened (arguably the first, 'cause the first time around it was a friend of a friend). The point is, it was a much bigger deal for me than it was for her.

And then I ordered coffee, and 30 minutes later I noticed an ant on the table, and another 30 minutes later I noticed one crawling up my saucer. But I was so pleased that she'd recognized me and I didn't want to do anything to damper her day that I didn't say anything.