I got caught up on this as well. Apparently the string "@@!!@@" is like search engine dark matter because even google ignores it. I also got __!!__ at some point which i'm assuming is related.
When you get an issue like this, how do people recommend debugging it?
The console was kind of useless because <% console.log(obj.attr("stuff")) %> always works, while the closure <%= obj.attr("stuff") %> bombs out with no errors.