1/28/04 1:30 AM: For the record, I am not Jamaican.

There may be a few people checking out the site today wondering, "what the hell? Where's the comic reviews? It's Wednesday!"

Alas, things are changing here at the Operative Network. Many of you know about my existing job as a web columnist for CBR (well, for now, my boss is probably mad that the things listed below are keeping me from doing original content, which he wants). A few of you know that my main gig is being a newspaper editor. That's two jobs.

In the last month, things have been changing for me professionally. I now have five jobs. This will get back to "where the hell are the reviews?" Soon.

I've started working as the layout monkey for a small startup business newspaper. That's not been as easy as I would have hoped, but I'm fairly sure it won't suck this badly in the future. Job number three. I'm also a regular (and no longer just substitute) karaoke host, working from 11PM-3AM every Thursday at Mel's Drive-In on Highland near Hollywood Boulevard. This one is really my favorite, as I have the most fun. That's four jobs. Keeping up? Good, here's where we get back to the thesis.

Just this week, I made an agreement with Brian Jacks of UGO to move the Buy Pile reviews over to that website, which makes me (according to the first one they posted) a "contributing editor." That's five whopping jobs, all of which still don't equal thirty hours a week.

It is good to be the king!

Well, except for bonking myself in the forehead with a microphone, really hard, at Boardwalk 11 Monday night. That wasn't so cool.

Anyway, working five jobs comes with some problems too -- I have to mentally balance my time very carefullly, which isn't easy to do when you wake up in the mid afternoon virtually every day of the week. It means that my dear pal Jonah Weiland gets less time devoted to original content, as I have to struggle to remember to do the regular work every weekday. It means some heavy schedule juggling in my personal life (which is a bit more exciting than I'd like right now, but I don't comment about that stuff publicly anymore). It's work, but sweet spirit singing, I've never been happier with my professional life (even though that business newspaper gig is getting to be a pain as the client gets her micromanage on).

That said, the Buy Pile reviews will no longer be seen on this site every Wednesday. They will be seen on UGO's Comics Channel every Thursday, because they put a lot more work into the graphics et al than I was willing to do. The compensation there is less than inspiring -- 2 cents for every thousand page views I generate -- but given that I've been doing it for free here, whadda ya gonna do?

One week after reviews have "played" at UGO, they'll go into this site's archives, where they'll remain for all time. It's not that I don't trust UGO's archiving system. It's that links rot and I can be certain the link will work if I make it. Thanks to Allen Hui for that lesson.

So there you have it -- comic reviews at UGO, comic movie news at CBR, news for African American LA in the LA Herald Dispatch group of newspapers, business news in whatever-that-thing-is-called and rockin' karaoke every Thursday night. Sorry for any inconvenience that may have caused, and thanks for coming along this far.