Yes this is Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. He is one of the many Bush cabinet members who will be making the leap to the big screen next summer. Mr. Chertoff will be replacing Christian Bale in the sequel to “the Machinist”.

Other cabinet members to star in movies will be Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman in next summer’s remake of “the Last Tango in Paris”, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Education Secretary Margret Spellings in Baz Lurhmann’s musical prequel to “Harold and Maude”.

The NY Times has a great guest column by Mr. Incredible and Elastic Girl’s daughter, Violet, otherwise known as Sarah Vowel. It is entitled, “The Speech the President Should Give”.

Sorry but this article has been archived.

Earlier in the year I had given my friend Joe all of my Fiery Furnace CDs. Joe had heard them once and hated them. I thought possibly he might be mistaken.

Last Friday he finally returned the CDs and I have been playing them ever since. There is nothing I dislike about them, their music is perfect.

I read many reviews comparing them to “prog rock’ but I have never been into that. They remind me so much of what I like about Fellini films and my cousins on my Mom’s side of the family. Then again I really don’t know what I like about them either, but I do.

By the way, Joe is now sold on them also.

I just finished the epic light read of the summer, “The Historian” by Elizabeth Kostova. Yes it is a huge summer blockbuster, right up there with “War of the Worlds” and “Batman Begins”. I’ve also seen it billed as the next Da Vinci Code.

All of this being said it has a major difference to the behemoth novel from Dan Brown. The length of the book, 642 pages, allowed for enough background and plot development.

The basis of the story is that of an 18 year old girl who discovers her father is secretly doing research on Vlad the Impaler, Dracula. The story not only follows her story, but that of her father and long dead mother’s search for Vlad and her father’s missing mentor.

The books strong point is that it doesn’t focus so much on sensationalism as it does historical research and discovery. The book travels to all of the great capitals of the Byzantine and Ottoman empires in its search for the burial place of dracula.

As I’ve said this is not a difficult read. There is nothing here that is going to make you rethink your life, religion or upbringing, but if you got time to get sand in your shorts or bug bites while lying around drinking margaritas then you could do much worse.

On Sunday I went to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts to see the St. John’s Bible. The exhibit was all sold out and so we wandered around our excellent free museum (free with the exception of special shows).

We stumbled into the exhibit of May Stevens. From the MIA’s website I was expecting small and colorful water color and acrylic paintings. What I found was huge moody pieces full of light and water. Within these paintings contained writing as in script.

The script is not always legible and it is often used to highlight part of the paining. In water the script might be used to show the glimmer of the water.

The exhibit is showing through July 31st.

While I was there I was able to peek around the curtain to view the installation of another exhibit, “In The Balance”. It looked very cool as in Alice in Wonderland meets Flemish Masters. The paintings are the work of Margo Selski.

I didn’t see the puppets that are part of this show but they look very creepy on the website. I will be back to the MIA very soon.

The exhibit starts today and goes through Labor Day.

The July issue of Bookslut is online and is a monster. They are currently the reigning champions of online book reports.

Unlike myself these folks really know their literature. I am but a reader who can’t write a complete sentence. I have the emails from GearGab readers to prove this. It seems my problem has something to do with how my viewpoint is made invalid by my butchery of the English language.

After much searching I finally found a streaming audio device that works!

That’s right I a device that actually works.

I don’t want to name companies (Linksys, Creative and NetGear) but all the other devices I tried failed in key areas.

I stopped reading positive reviews because usually they were worded like the following; “I just received my box-X and it is awesome” or “installation of box-X is a breeze, I was up and running in no time.”

Once you start digging into negative reviews you find real technical flaws and equipment that failed after real usage. I had both of these issues with the above list.

I had given up on streaming my mp3 collection through my house. Then Maximum PC had a single sentence that pointed towards a product by a company that I had never heard of.

I dug into the reviews of Slim Devices – Squeezbox2. I found detailed positive reviews that went beyond to point of how nice it looked and how quickly it shipped. It had reviews in areas that I was most looking for.

• Handles large libraries
• Navigates easily
• Advanced network configuration
• Sounds good

This device met all of my list. Although I would love to have an awesome color screen and a fancy graphic remote, this device cost under $300.

I have a library of about 60,000 songs and I am having no trouble navigating or searching for songs, artist or albums. The navigation works a bit like an Ipod bit but with 4 arrows instead of a wheel.

I have been using the Squeezbox2 for about 2 weeks now and the only problem I have had with it is that the remote has froze up 2 or 3 times. Both times I chose a song and then quickly picked a different song.

I have tried to recreate the problem and have not been able to. If this becomes a real issue I will write more.

Over all am quite pleased with the Squeezebox2 and would recommend it to anyone.

One of my favorite authors and marxists, China Miéville, is interviewed in the online magazine Long Sunday. He is the author of King Rat, Perdido Street Station, The Scar and Iron Council.

Do you have a favorite marxist?

Let me know. geargab at gmail period com.