John: Good morning, Hank, it’s Wednesday.

When did my house get so nice? Oh right, this isn’t my house. This is a hotel room in the great city of Chicago, Illinois, where I am with David Levithan because we are on tour for Will Grayson, Will Grayson.

Schmancy hotel is schmancy. So Hank, there’s this amazing Tumblr that Nerdfighters run called Eff Yeah Nerdfighters (link in the doobly doo). And in the last day a lot of Tumblrs--Tumblrs?

Tumblines? Tumbloons? Tumblies?

Tumblypoos? Tumblypoos. A lot of Tumblypoos have been uploading pictures of themselves holding Will Grayson, Will Grayson, but because of the mirroring of digital images that used to make it so hard for me to figure out how to point to the doobly doo, it appears that many of these people are not uploading pictures of themselves with a book called Will Grayson, Will Grayson, but instead with a book called Nosyarg Lliw, Nosyarg Lliw.

Which it belatedly occurs to me would have been a great title. If we write a sequel, it’s gonna be called Nosyarg Lliw, Nosyarg Lliw. So last night was the first event of the tour, Hank.

It was great. Two things I have to tell you: first, there was a Stormtrooper (not a Nazi stormtrooper, a Star Wars Stormtrooper). Also there were a lot of people wearing this, which is odd because it’s hard to focus on what you’re saying when there’s a pedophilic, pizza-loving version of yourself staring back at you.

Oh oh, and check this out. Dun dun dun… Guy with Nerdfighter tattoo: Yeah, it’s pretty awesome. John: French the llama!

Oh and a apropos of nothing, here’s David and me outside of Frenchy’s. Here we are! David: Here we are!

John: At Frenchy’s! David: Viva la Frenchy’s. John: Only funny if you’ve read the book.

So but speaking of books, your video on Monday, which by the way I loved, made me think about the Googlization of information in the contemporary world. I’ve long thought that Google is technically making us stupider as individuals because the internal hard drive inside of our heads is not as needed anymore because we have these massive external hard drives that Google can index. Like for instance when I was a kid, I knew the phone numbers of all my friends.

Don’t be mean, that’s not fair. I had friends. Imaginary friends can have imaginary phone numbers, okay?

Jeez but anyway, I knew dozens of imaginary phone numbers. Now I know like four phone numbers because I have this amazing external hard drive that stores all the phone numbers I want. And I’ve been thinking lately, Hank, that one of the things long-form narratives like novels do is they help us to arrange lots of information into a story.

Right? Because it’s easier to remember things in a narrative than it is to remember random, dislocated facts. But now that we have these external hard drives that are so good at remembering random facts, we no longer need to organize information narratively in order to trick our crappy hard drives into remembering it.

And Hank, I worry that as we spend more time on the internet—by the way Internet, I’m not trying to hurt your feelings here. You know I love you. Don’t get mad at me, I know you’re listening.

You’re always listening. I worry that we will lose our interest in and think we’re losing our need for those long-form narratives that have for so long been a huge part of what it means to be a person. Now Hank, that worries me partly because my job is writing those long-form narratives but it also worries me for other reasons.

But Nerdfighters, I’m interested to know if your find it harder to read books these days. I know that sometimes I do. Obviously I love books, but sometimes even when I’m enjoying a book, I find myself putting it down to look at the flashy flashy lights of the internet.

So Nerdfighters again I hope you like Will Grayson, Will Grayson. I hope to see a lot of you on tour. And Hank, I will see you on Friday.