As Schwarzenegger said in Terminator 2...

..."I need a vacation"--something often said by parents of small children when they return from what others would call a vacation. Actually, in my case at least I'm just kidding: we had a great time in Florida with our young'uns, and though there were occasional moments of near-havoc, I wouldn't have traded a moment of it.

I wanted to draw attention to content on two other blogs, both of which are linked from mine. First, there's our own Knight Agency blog, where we're offering a special promotion that will be of interest to authors who are attending the Romance Writers of America (RWA) annual convention in Reno later this month. Also, my old friend Harry Joiner , an executive recruiter specializing in Multi-Channel Marketing, has moved his blog to www.MarketingHeadhunter.com. Harry is always witty and insightful, and I greatly enjoy reading his dispatches.

Speaking of business gurus, I think James Surowiecki (I had to check that spelling three times) ought to have a blog. Surowiecki, who writes "The Financial Page" for the New Yorker, is brilliant: until seeing his picture, I would have figured he was a silver-haired old seer, sharing wisdom that dates back to the days of Univacs and switchboards. Other New Yorker talents whose work I never miss are Anthony Lane and Louis Menand.

I sound like somebody who must have spent a lot of time sitting around the pool reading magazines, but in fact the reading material that took the greatest part of my attention was Love: Behind the Scenes on the Pegasus Carousel with the Legendary Rock Group Love by Michael Stuart-Ware. Most people have never heard of Love, but their 1967 album Forever Changes is routinely listed among the all-time greats. Stuart's book is an inside view of L.A.'s Sunset Strip at the height of the 1960s, by the drummer for a band whose members' drug addictions, internal conflicts, and other flaws outweighed their considerable talents. At one time much bigger than the Doors, Love is now known primarily to music enthusiasts; yet a listen to Forever Changes provides a startling reminder of just how good they were. And the revelations in Stuart's book only make their achievement all the more impressive in light of the odds against which it took place.

Our recent televiewing has been all over the map: from the two-DVD set The Elegant Universe, which explores unified field theory, curvature of space-time, string theory, the eleven possible dimensions, and similarly challenging ideas, to the season premiere of The Surreal Life. As conoisseurs of that show for several years now, I'll have to say that their present lineup might be the best yet. And check this out: though Omarosa is part of the show, she's not playing the role of bitch. That job has been assigned to former supermodel Janice Dickinson, who does a suspiciously convincing job with it.