Rican was found at the Extended Stay America Hotel late Thursday night.

The Extended Stay America Hotel looks like kind of a dump - it’s off the strip in Vegas features newly renovated rooms and valley views (and apparently last night a neighbor mixing ricin).

Three hotel employees and one hotel guest were taken to the hospital due to possible exposure. Ricin as small as a pinhead can be deadly.

Las Vegas Metro Homeland Security Capt. Joe Lombardo said “Ricin is very serious. Something as small as the size of a pin can be deadly. An individual citizen, other than being involved in cancer research or cancer prevention, would not have any legal means or proper means to have it” .

Ricin is a powerful poison made from Castor Beans. According to the CDC it has some “legitimate medical uses” but it’s also considered a potential terrorist weapon. Only a tiny amount is needed to kill a person and many people can be killed with a large amount.

Homeland Security officials and the FBI are investigating along with the Las Vegas police but officials do not believe it is related to terrorism. Lovely.

Rufus Wainwright recently told New York Magazine that he is “probably the one person who can really help Britney Spears.”

Granted, Wainwright did a ton of Meth back in the day (and actually temporally lost his vision during an overdose). Legend also has it that he partied with one of the Bush daughters making him kind of a bad ass but seriously - he also told New York Magazine “Britney Spears is basically an analogy for the world. Whereas Judy Garland was an analogy for the world in the fifties and sixties, Britney is now.” Srsly Wtf dude?

Being born and raised in California, I always had kind of a skewed view of the rural South. I thought everyone in the South not living in Atlanta, Orlando, Nashville or one of the other metropolitan cities out there still flew Confederate flags, talked about Yankees and plucked banjos with thumbpicks made out of their old teeth. But once I started to get into music, I started to notice that most of the raddest, most original bands were coming out of spots like Kentucky, the Florida Panhandle, and South Carolina, the last of which is home to possibly my personal favorite out of this crop of new Southern Rockers: Emery. Besides being one of the best live bands on the planet, Emery are possibly the NICEST band ever. So nice that they took my shitty band on tour this summer and showed me how awesome the South is firsthand, making me feel like a complete douche for ever harboring my Deliverance-esque fears of the old Confederacy. Having interviewed the band a few times myself over the years, I was glad to hand over the reigns to the always agreeable Video Matt in the hopes that him and the Emery boys could have a Nice-Off while chatting about the band’s new record, I’m Only a Man which is in stores now, and their current headlining tour across the US. Watch the video interview above and see if you can see who defeated who for the crown of King of Nice (my vote goes to Devin) then check out the live footage from that same show over at our YouTube channel. Then go buy all their records, become their biggest fan and send me a thank you letter.

The United States is truly a land of plenty; just ask your local warden. The USA has reached a record high ratio of people in prison. Over one in 100 adults are behind bars, which adds up to 2.3 million people, a number greater than even China’s prison population in both size and percentage. (Mind you, China’s general population dwarfs that of the US by over 1 billion people.)

But what does this mean? Do Americans commit more crimes? Are our cops that totally badical that they catch all the bad guys? Maybe it’s just that US criminals are dumb enough to get caught. Over the past two decades, state spending on corrections has increased 127 percent. In the same amount of time, education funding rose only 21 percent.

Watch how cooler heads prevail.

Dude is my new hero.

Amy Winehouse is going to do her own line… of clothing, or something. I guess it took a little warming up to, but people are starting to dig her Cleopatra eyes, bouffant beehive, and well, in terms of clothes, I dunno. You won’t see me rocking some cutoff shorts, short shirts, and ballet slippers. But I guess they’re focusing more on perfume, hairspray, eyeliner, the obvious.  Here some pics of everyone’s favorite mess…

Cigs not included. But I’m sure she’ll crank out some F*** Me Pumps.