In which Birdmonster, barely awake, tries to explain why it's in New York before failing spectacularly and falling asleep on a pleather sofa

Greetings from a windowless basement in Brooklyn sometime near two in the morning, though in fact I'm far too jetlagged and blotto and unemployed to really care where we are, what time it is, or if I have pants on, which, by the way, I do not.

We arrived in New York Monday night, deplaning anxiously after enduring the dual tortures of a talkative pilot and an inflight "The Bucket List" matinee which Dave and Peter were courageoustarded enough to watch. Their verdict: better than "Wild Hogs," which is sort of like saying a mayonaisse sandwich is better than getting stabbed in the face.

New York is the only city where I feel as if I've done something even if I haven't, like the bustle of the town makes you productive through osmosis. Thus far though, we have been mighty productive: We've powwowed with the label about business-flavored whatnots; we played a free show; we saw our producer Tom and reminscened about the Tenderloin strip club Amateur Night we went to, which was simultaneously too skeezy and not nearly skeezy enough; we watched the ends of both of the recent NBA semifinal games, alternately upset and ambivalent; we saw Jeffrey Ross, sitting alone outside some Chelsea coffee house, waiting for an impromptu celebrity roast to break out that never did.

After a solid month of sloth, it's nice to be here. I mean, sure, I love watching four hours of fake court every day, eating leftovers in my robe, and generally wondering why I went to college, but traveling has a way of realigning the brainpan for the better. I tend to come home feeling lucid, a feeling that fades quickly during the eighth consecutive episode of Judge Hatchett. What I'm saying is any trip, unless it involves LSD and a John Phillips Sousa-scored clown snuff film, is a good trip.

But it's odd going to meetings about the band after doing everything ourselves for so long. Don't get me wrong, it's completely fantastic, but ceding control is a hard thing. The idea is to move past the disorganized sojourns across the Canadian border that find us detained as smugglers, past the horrors of shopping for a van in triple digit heat, past the tours that find us playing to a solitary nine-fingered racist hobo on Easter. In the end, I feel as if we're entrusting Birdmonster to a really competent au pair with luscious knockers: on one level, I wish I could stay home with the kid and help him with his science project. On the other: luscious knockers.