Good morning Hank!

It’s Wednesday, the day that students at Vera Beach High School gave me a shirt with all the things I love on it! (2008 intro) Well Hank, while you’ve been sitting in your fancy new house in Missoula, Montana, I’ve been traveling the country collecting awesome t-shirts! And also failing to acquire a camcorder, but I’m working on that. Hank, I’m here at the Biltmore Hotel in Miami, Florida.

You know what they give you when you check into this hotel? Booze. Here’s to you, my friend.

I guess we aren’t really friends, we’re brothers. But will we be brothers after I punish you? As you no doubt noticed, your video yesterday was four minutes and sixteen seconds long.

Now, I bet you have some weird semantic argument for why you shouldn’t be punished, and I’m going to get that weird semantic argument from you, but first I want to show you my shopping bag. I mean, Hank, I’m so excited about what I’m about to show you that I have to do my happy dance while holding my Macbook with the Eyesight camera. (Happy dances. Camera freezes.

John laughs.) The camera froze on a funny face. Let’s see that face again, please. Thank you, Macbook Eyesight camera!

You are why I’m buying a camcorder tomorrow! Ok but anyway before we talk about punishment I got to show you what’s in the bag! By the way this does have to do with the plot of Paper Towns, but does not represent any kind of spoiler, I promise.

Do you know what that is, Hank? That is every item that Lacey and Ben and Q and Radar pick up at their first stop at the BP. Including the Nerds!

I mean, Hank, something that existed only in my imagination now exists on my hotel bed in Miami, Florida. And all thanks to Nerdfighters at Vera Beach High School. I mean, that’s it, Hank, that’s the whole thematic structure of Paper Towns on my hotel bed in the form of beef jerky, snack crackers and fictional Go Fast bars!

By the way, Hank, they didn’t just get any kind of Nerds, they got rainbow Nerds. God, I love rainbows! And god, I love Nerdfighters, they’re just so awesome!

So Hank, that’s the good news: Nerdfighters are awesome. The bad news: your video was four minutes and sixteen seconds long, it did not contain a montage, that is clearly against the rules. Now I’m going to call you and find out what your ridiculous justification for making a video over four minutes is.

Hank: Hi. John: Oh, hello, Hank, it’s your brother John. Hank: Oh good.

John: This is being recorded for an internet video show I do called Nerdfighters or Vlogbrothers or Brotherhood 2.1. Hank: Oh. I’ve heard of that.

John: I happened to notice that your video yesterday was four minutes and sixteen seconds long. Hank: Well, that technically isn’t true. My video yesterday was three minutes and fifty seconds long; there was a significant amount of black space because the song, which was not part of the video portion of the Youtube track, was slightly longer than the video portion of the the Youtube track.

John: Your justification for making a four minute and sixteen second video, as I understand it, is that the video portion of the video did not last four minutes and sixteen seconds, and ergo the video as a video, as a visual phenomenon, was shorter than four minutes. Hank: That is correct. John: Mhm.

Ok, well, I’m just gonna let the Nerdfighters vote on whether or not they agree with you. Oh, did I tell you by the way that, um, that one of the, uh, one of the publicists at Penguin said that you were my Sarah Palin? Because they said that you bring out the base.

Like you get people motivated and excited and that I’m the, like, I’m the like serious, old one. (Hank laughs) I’m the one, I’m the one who’s like “my friends, I think that we should read books.” Ok, I got to turn off the Eyesight camera here, but uh, Hank, I’ll see you tomorrow and I’ll continue talking to you right now. Ok Nerdfighters, vote for whether you think Hank should be punished, hope to see you tonight in Miami, tomorrow in Orlando, or on Friday in Naperville, Illinois!