My “conscience” is telling me to update this mofo. So I’d better do it, or suffer nightmares about flying monkeys. While in theory flying monkeys sound pretty cool, in actuality they’d be gruesome. Now, I can take the banana-eating and the nit-picking and the feces-hurling, but throw flying into the mix and you have the kind of chaos that I imagine only takes place in an insane asylum or at Britney Spears’s house.

Speaking of flying monkeys, I once again found myself landing in Dayton, Ohio, this past Saturday. A surprise party was being thrown for Bob Pollard in celebration of his 50th birthday (he officially hits the big 5-0 today), and along with sixty or so other superfans and dozens of his actual friends and relatives I was granted the privilege of attending. The event took place at a bar called Bimini Bill’s, located right around the corner from a Spaghetti Warehouse, which is only important when you consider that Guided By Voices reunited to play a handful of songs. As often as I’ve thought about and hoped for a GBV reunion in the past three years, I’ve never once imagined that it would take place at a bar right around the corner from a Spaghetti Warehouse. (And wow, the meatball sub at this particular Spaghetti Warehouse is ridiculously tasty.) And this wasn’t just any old GBV reunion, like the hodgepodge assemblage we got at Heedfest last June, but a re-formation of a bona fide historical lineup circa 1998 that was also one of their best: Greg Demos on bass, Jim MacPherson on drums, and Doug Gillard and Nate Farley on guitars. Here’s “Subspace Biographies,” most notable for its excellent couplet “I do my job each day/Empties crushed and fired away”:

It was good times, but I couldn’t help but think that a lot more people should get to see a GBV reunion.

In other news, I have done jack squat since returning from the trip. Oh, I ate my weight in chicken mole last night, and I played Halo 3 and Project Gotham Racing 4 for nearly eight hours yesterday, but mostly I’ve done nothing. And yes, I’m still in my sweatpants at 11:20am today. A big reason for this lack of inertia is that I finished up the proposal for what I hope will be next book early last week, and I’m waiting to see what happens with that. I am playing the waiting game. Which, in a few minutes, will mean finishing up Halo 3 before some asshole spoils the ending for me. More news about the book once it is finalized. And more news about flying monkeys as it becomes available.

WHY I’M ANGRY TODAY
I have to wait by the phone all day for a certain big-name celebrity to call so that I can finally finish up my oral history of the indie comedy “Safe Men,” which will appear in the February issue of GQ. The massive window that I was given to expect his call means that I almost certainly won’t be able to go outside to buy the lunch I am craving: City Sub hoagie #21.