A while back, Morgan left a guestbook message asking about my opinion on the new twenty-dollar bill.

Didn't say anything, 'cause I hadn't seen one. Until Monday.

Sometime after Pirates of the Caribbean (first for me, second for the wife), and some miscellaneous activities, I was going through my wallet to check out my financial situation for the city's night life and discovered I had received one of the new $20 bills as change that afternoon.

Tells you how seriously I take concern over counterfeiting, as I never noticed the hot pink flash of the bill as I shoved it in my wallet.

So, our/my impressions.

Don't mind the colour at all. Have no great affinity for our current "greenback" colours, and have secretly envied the rest of the world for their colour-coded currencies. (Think we need to do the same with our hunting licenses. Not a year goes by that I don't encounter someone who tagged their elk with their deer license, or vice versa. Just one this year (so far).)

Have always been attracted to the old USA silver certificates, just for the red ink.

But I will have to admit, the first thought in my mind was "Wish we had a colour copier handy so we could see how well it does on this."

Like the new Jackson portrait better than that on the other "new" twenty-dollar bill. Could barely see the watermark, but hotel lights ain't that great.

Loved the blue eagle imprinted on the left. Looked embroidered, and 3-D.

The "20" in the lower right is supposed to be holographic, changing different colours at different angles, but it all looked the same greenish-gold to me, no matter how we held it. The lower right "20" on the old new twenty-dollar bill, on the other hand, flashes colours quite well. Don't see how they improved anything here.

Wife did point out all the little golden "20"s scattered about the backside, like party glitter. At first glance, I had thought that was just finger grime, and had wondered why the new bills weren't wearing as well as the old. Don't know how well that works against counterfeiting, but it doesn't look good.

There's supposed to be a bunch of other security changes, but we didn't take the time to look them all over. And I no longer have the bill to examine.

You see, about an hour later, sometime after midnight, I was forced to ponder a difficult decision.

New twenty-dollar bill? Orrrr... a lap dance?

New twenty-dollar bill? Or a lap dance?

You know which way I went.

'Course, it didn't take that long to decide. Not anywhere near that long. When that young, 99 percent naked dancer with the long brown hair, the itty-bitty pink G-string, and the dolphin tattoos that disappeared underneath it crawled across the stage to get her face within inches of mine (so's we could hear each other talk) and asked, I bet there wasn't a micro-second of hesitation in my answer.

There will always be other twenty-dollar bills.