From the Jill Schwartz Memorial Library here in the wilds of Connecticut, this is obscure, season four in American tragedy.

I'm your host, your friend, your ear lover, and literary, mansplainer-in-chief Michael Ian Black,

supine, as always, on the Jack Jack Memorial Reading Throne,

a cup of tea at the ready.

My mid-afternoon pick me up as I get ready to depart

the Wiles of Connecticut for Willie, Willie Baltimore, where I will be

attending a writer's conference, which I'm looking forward to. A friend of mine named Jesse

invited me to come to this writer's conference. We're doing a couple of...

I think I'm doing one panel, and I think I'm doing one reading at a hotel or some...

I don't know what I'm doing, which has caused a little bit of consternation from Jesse.

Because she's the one that invited me, and she's like, well, you got to do this, and you've you got to do this and you got to do the other thing, all of which I agreed to do and all of which I have neglected to do. Because that's just how I am. But it will all get done. Everything, the event will go off without a hitch.

I will do my job.

She will do her job.

The organizers will be pleased.

Everybody will be pleased, I guess is what I'm saying.

And if it sounds like I'm a little defensive, it's because I am.

Because I know I have been shirking my responsibilities regarding this

writer's panel and I feel badly about it, but I am a shirker. That is who I am. I shirk. I'm not a

jerk, but I do shirk. Sometimes while wearing a shirt. The heat just kicked in. You might be able

to hear it. I came down to the library here and

I turned off the heat because, well, here's the thing. We have in the mid-century masterpiece,

we do not have a central heating and cooling system because of the way the house is constructed.

...