Banjo for Beginners

I have acquired the use of an excellent banjo, borrowed from a coworker. So far with the help of Youtube I've managed to tune it, and establish that it is definitely harder than it looks to play- I think I'll be able to get the fingerpicking eventually, and it will be time well spent because it will improve my guitar fingerpicking skills too, which are nascent at best. Every time I try to learn a new sequence (or pattern, or roll, I'm not sure what it's called on the guitar) I can feel the brain cells shifting and straining, kind of like learning to speak a new language.

The banjo's got a great sound- it's kind of rowdy and the definition of twang, and it somehow sounds more aggressive (in a country kind of way) than the guitar when it really gets going. I'm short one or two picks (it seems that people generally wear a whole knuckle sandwich full of finger picks when playing the banjo.) Maybe I'll find one on the floor of the Little Dragon show next week, although I doubt Little Dragon has a banjo in their lineup...