So sorry to have completely missed last week. I blame the Germans.

Remember arcades? Boy, I sure do, having spent what I’ll conservatively estimate to be a buttload of time in them from 1980 to ’85. This article in last Thursday’s Chicago Tribune exacerbates my sadness about the demise of the classic-style video-game arcade (which I also wrote about in the epilogue to Arcade Fever). I’d pretty much kill for a good game of Tutankham right now.

June is a busy month — for other writers, I mean. I have three friends with books coming out. They are:

1) David Browne, whose informative Sonic Youth biography Goodbye 20th Century is out now. The book’s back cover features my very first PFNO-related blurb. See how I can turn everything into something about me?

2) Rob Walker, whose long-awaited book Buying In (a by-product of his excellent NY Times Magazine column Consumed) is also out now. I’m buying in — to the surely scintillating text found within the pages of his book. Rob is also doing a big reading this Friday in Manhattan, and you’d find me there, possibly drunk off my tree, if you could even get in. The event is sold out, suckers!

3) Darin Strauss, whose third novel, More Than It Hurts You, will be published on June 19. Preorder that bad boy!

Anyway, it’s hot as Haiti here today, so I’m going to go cool by the AC for a while. Shut up all you people in LA with pools. I hate your pool.

WHY I’M ANGRY TODAY
I hate your pool.