Friends, you know me in many ways. Perhaps, among those ways over the years, you know me as co-founding leader of the No Mayer Club:

(Official logo, 2002)

It is in that capacity that I would like to speak with you today.

No human is perfect. We all have our faults and our failings. I certainly have mine. And in recent months, I have failed greatly. I have let down my loved ones and cherished friends, who put their trust in me and my Mayer-Hating. When they turned to me, they expected good behavior in keeping with my past, dreams in keeping with my public statements and the musical John Mayer abstinence I have espoused both to them privately and in the media. I have failed them in all of these measures.

In the fall of 2010, I downloaded a John Mayer album. I paid money for it. At the time, I felt a connection to Mr. Mayer's lyric, "Half of my heart's got a right mind to tell you — that half of my heart won't do." For this and other transgressions, I am deeply ashamed. Yet I have continued to feel that way as months have passed, and I speak to you today as a struggling man. I am in treatment but have not yet healed. Nor have I healed those around me hurt by my Mayer downloading. Doctors tell me full rehabilitation is possible, but I know the road will not be easy.

[Break off speaking in moment of emotion. Pause. Regain composure.]

As I fight my troubles, I owe the No Mayer Club a debt that can never be repaid. My cofounder, Lauren, has been wonderful to me amid my personal fear and turmoil. When I at last admitted to her the nature and extent of my issues, she was disappointed but still supportive. I owe her so much. Her support — not any Mayer — is my wonderland.

I know there are others out there, especially so many American youth, who battle temptations similar to mine. For all of them, I want to offer a letter from Lauren. It was one that put me on the right track. I have a long way to go toward recovery. But words like these give me hope.

Hopefully, since it was on sale it was an older album, which may mean it's effect won't be as strong. How are you feeling now? Are you speaking in cliches? Are you posting bouts of store-bought sarcasm all over Twitter and Facebook?

If for some reason you wake up in the next few weeks with a douchey tattoo, apply Ryan Adams immediately to the affected area and stay off your feet. Also — and this is important — don't talk to anyone until the effect wears off. You don't want to risk what may come out of your mouth. It's too dangerous.

I'm pulling for you, buddy. I'd be lying if I said this had never happened to me before. I had a similar Maroon 5 incident years ago. I'm just now able to talk about it.

Please keep me updated on your condition. No one should go through this alone.

Thank you. I'll now take your questions.

Oh wait, it appears this just happened. How did the world not end?

Ferrari has named CMMB (Catholic Medical Mission Board) and the William J. Clinton Foundation as beneficiaries of an auction of the first Ferrari 458 Italia to arrive in the United States. …

Grammy-Award winner John Mayer will donate his time to perform during the evening and director and Ferrari-collector Michael Bay will be acknowledged for his long-lasting friendship with the company.

The auction of the first Ferrari 458 Italia in the North America will be conducted by the Wall Street Journal's Pulitzer Prize-winning automotive journalist Dan Neil.

More in this short "story" from "Elite Traveler, the Private Jet Lifestyle Magazine." (About page: "Articles provide detailed information readers can't find anywhere else, such as the names of the best therapists at top spas, and direct phone numbers for resort general managers.")

Longtime Patrickcooper.com hero Neil and longtime Patrickcooper.com goat Mayer land mere photos apart in a gallery. And between them in the gallery is car enthusiast and Grey's Anatomy star Patrick Dempsey, whom this blog likes as an actor but guesses is odd personally. I don't know what to feel. Except that Ferrari is messing with strange forces.

As Neil wrote in February of the Ferrari he auctioned, "The 458 Italia is spooky fast without the haunting of mortality." Strange, scary forces.

Jeff Fb-messaged last month to see if I was going to blog about John Mayer's ridiculous interview with Rolling Stone (""Blowing me off is the new sucking me off"). This blog has a long and proud history of Mayer Hatin', but I said, no, there was nothing else to be said. John Mayer continued to be a person desperately in need of ego check. No news.

Then the ridiculous Playboy interview broke. There was so much to be said, and the world said it. Everybody published something, and Mayer needed to apologize on stage for being awful and nearly cried. So, not much for me to say. I had just begun to wonder if Heartbreak Warfare was the second Mayer song ever I liked a little. (Here was the first.)

But now I have something worth posting! The Los Angeles Times' Ann Powers has a terrific interview with Mayer's Playboy interviewer, Rob Tannenbaum. Both the questions and answers are good reads.

From Powers, on Kanye West's award-show interruptions:

That was another case of a thirtysomething male artist at the top of his game committing "career suicide" by overstepping a boundary. It was another example of a mediated event that somehow spun out of the control of both the subject (West and Mayer) and those organizing it (MTV, you and Playboy). Both brought up touchy matters of race and gender. In both cases, the artists involved expressed great remorse almost immediately. West still remains in a kind of exile for his "terrible" deed. Will the same thing happen to Mayer? Or will this pass? And if it passes, is it partly because he's white?

From Tannenbaum, on modern content anecdotalization:

Take away his use of the "N-word," and you have a white musician commenting on the privilege of race, and warning other whites that they can't ever presume to know racial disadvantage. Harry Allen, an accomplished black writer, described this on Twitter as a "powerful, pointed statement." How many white rock stars understand that, never mind declare it? He found a stupid way to make valuable points. If he'd just left out one forbidden word and an ill-advised reference to a white supremacist (who I don't want to promote by naming), Mayer might be up for an NAACP Image Award.

The LAT reader comments after the exchange are thoughtful. You may agree with some and not others, but they hit on a number of the half-reactions you may feel while reading the interview about the interview.

Like… Do Powers and Tannenbaum overestimate Mayer's intelligence? "The playboy article reads like the rants of a manic narcissist, not some troubled, misunderstood genius." Does Tannenbaum do right by race? "The first playboy interview was conducted by Alex Haley and was an interview with Miles Davis Tannenbaum has degraded Haley's Playboy legacy." How much does interviewing method matter? "I doubt that Tannenbaum would sound as articulate, or as fatuous, if he had to answer these questions in person or over the phone." All your call.

Selective aggregation? Yes. But listening earlier… gloriously confirmed.

Financial Times, the entire review from the respected salmon periodical: "Who Says opens with the bold line "Who says I can't get stoned?" but there's nothing intoxicating about John Mayer's unassuming soft-rock, with its plodding tempo, smooth vocals and polished bluesy solos. The soporific blandness recalls Eric Clapton at his 1980s worst."

Hartford Courant: "Call it his wallpaper album."

Daily News: "… Battle Studies puts the star in considerable peril: If he's not careful, he might turn into the Phil Collins of his generation."

The Washington Post, best of all: "Sting at least had a good run as a post-punk icon before settling down to a life of castles and fustiness and earnest adult contemporary songs about nuclear war. But since his debut, the 32-year-old Mayer has aimed for the middle of the road like a lukewarm-seeking missile." And closing the fine review: "But for Mayer, whose whip-smart interviews and richly documented dating life suggest that an actual interesting person resides underneath all that hair, teeth and fondness for metaphors, such musical innocuousness is unforgivable. Merely by existing, Battle Studies violates Internet Rule 17: Never let your Twitter account be more interesting than you are."

Got all kinds of traffic today to this blog's August post on the death of the Globe format. The always-solid DCRTV brings news today that 94.7 come Monday is going "fresh" adult contemporary. A new promotional site features clips from Jason Mraz, Corrine Bailey Rae, Coldplay, Gwen Stefani, John Mayer, Leona Lewis, Third Eye Blind, Jordin Sparks, Sara Bareilles,and  Daughtry, with John Mayer proving yet again that, after the first group of decent artists in the list, he remains the tipping point of suck. As disappointing as it was to lose the Globe format, losing the classic rock entirely is worse. The cheese of Big 100.3 is no substitute.

Hard to say yet if the new format is Top 40 for people who hate rap, or 107.3 for people who hate aging, but I think one of the two is right.

John Mayer, it's been a while since you've done anything this ridiculous. Sure, the news reports continue, but run-of-the-mill Mayer-bashing has never been my thing. I'm a Cooper, you see. And a "cooper" in ye olden days was a barrel maker. So, while others may take to John Mayer news like shooting ducks in a barrel, I'm concerned with making the best duck-shooting barrel possible.

A beautiful new barrel thus arrives today. Whitney is linking to the "Mayercraft Carrier" announcement. The Mayercraft Carrier is set to cruise with John, his musical friends and his biggest fans who don't want their money anymore. Hundreds of dollars they pay, for Mayer to be their Gilligan. I expect the first "Man overboard!" calls to begin in national waters.

I was driving in my car through Rock Creek Park the other day when Psycho Killer came on 94.7. Then some other awesome song followed, and I thought, man, this is a double shot of awesome, I should mention this in the blog, but then I totally forgot the second song because it ended and next came Your Body Is a Wonderland and it was awful. As it always is.

So, listening tonight to the new Faces Definitive Rock Collection, which is part of a compilation series, but good like Sony's Essentials, good all the way through, satisfying all us Wink Is as Good as Nod fans, so people more rock-educated than I call it the best Faces compilation short of the Five Guys Walk Into a Bar… box. And I don't doubt it.

So, I'm listening and reading Nerve's "29 Thoughts on the New White Stripes" album, and I'm no huge White Stripes fan, maybe I should be, I'm just not yet, but I clapped my hands for number 19. "I'd pay cash money to hear what Jack White thinks about John Mayer."

Bazooka Joe is the new Poochie.

"¢ July 27 Chicago Tribune, possibly from a KidNews reporter: "Printed on the inside of the wrapper, the comics are difficult to read. Bazooka Joe has a new look (backward hat, wild hair and ripped jeans, all designed to give him 'street cred'), but it's really hard to see it."

"¢ June 19 New Yorker: "Talk of the Town" talks to the man who has led the Joe's makeover.

For inspiration, Topps sent researchers all over the country to quiz focus groups of children who were "claimed bubble-gum users," as Cherrie put it. The kids were asked, "If Bazooka Joe was in a TV show, what would he be like?"

"The guy who came up again and again was the guy from That 70's Show," Cherrie said. "What's his name again? Kutchermare? The tall guy, dark hair."

"¢ Recently on Bazooka Joe's site: "Bazooka Joe is the 'everydude' of the bunch. His friends see him as their leader, and he is very up on the latest movies, video games, music and TV shows!"

Always recycle … TO THE EXTREME.

Bonus: John Mayer is friends with Poochie
A year ago, Amy Keyishian wrote what I found to be the literary high point of John Mayer criticism. "Don't croon at me, John Mayer" led Nerve's site briefly. While it was a far cry from Keyishian's teen books (just referencing what Google found, haven't read the books), the piece was damn good. As an amateur John Mayer critic myself, I admired how she was as rhetorically blunt as Mayer was lyrically vague.

I bookmarked the story and meant to mention it here but of course never did. Clearing out bookmarks today, including the Tribune one above, I went back to the text and found a glorious Bazooka Joe reference. Deconstructing Your Body Is a Wonderland with a croquet mallet, Keyishian wrote:

Not to mention that the whole idea of a "bubble-gum tongue" is repulsive. You're going to chew my tongue? My tongue comes with a comic strip starring Mort and Metaldude? More to the point, when my tongue loses its sweetness, you're going to abandon it under your desk and get a new tongue from the dispenser outside the arcade? Huh, asshole?

The redesigned Bazooka Joe has apparently dumped Mort and Metaldude for new characters. I wouldn't have remembered their names if they hadn't been in the article.

But for the little I cared about this history going lost, Keyishian consoled me up as I reread today. "Wherever I turn," she wrote, "people whose opinions I otherwise respect show utter crackheaded judgment when it comes to Mr. Sensitive Guitar Faker."

One more Mayer thing
In leftover notes for 2003's Heavier Things review:

Even the album's cover presents us with a plethora of questions. Consider the dog tag he wears outside his shirt. Is he showing support for America's men and women in Iraq? Or has the war just given him a fashionable new bit of Southern-fried bling? Whatever the reason, the dog tag augments his prep-gangsta wardrobe well.

Harder to figure is the watch he wears on the cover. Does it allude to Alice's White Rabbit — "Your Body Is," after all, "a Wonderland" — or to a private dispute with his personal scheduler? Perhaps its appearance heralds a new and more punctual era of rock. Critics and scholars will have the coming decades to settle these faultlines. The cover photo's only unambiguous aspect is his pants. He has clearly stolen them from Avril Lavigne.

Avril Whonow? Anyway. I was worried this spring that I was getting soft on John Mayer. When I heard that high school song on the radio, I didn't change the station as quickly as I used to. Back in the day, I was pratically Cool Papa Bell when it came to switching off Mayer. Satchel Paige said Bell could flip off the lights and be in bed before the room went dark. And me, at the dropping of the needle or laser on Mayer, I could change the station before the first note played.

One quick note of clarification. The story about how I threw a Mayer-playing radio so far it landed three states away has been exaggerated over time.

But anyway, Mayer then hit the D.C. airwaves in May with Waiting for the World to Change. Perhaps building off his dog-tag credentials, the only specifics in the song were about the war and the media. Sort of.

The lines were only specific on the Mayer scale of specificity. On the war, he wrote: "Now if we had the power / to bring our neighbors home from war / they would have never missed a Christmas / no more ribbons on their door." Was Mayer wishing we had the power against President Bush and the Pentagon or against Saddam Hussein and the insurgency? Couldn't tell.

He continued with the media: "And when you trust your television / what you get is what you got / cause when they own the information, oh / they can bend it all they want." Which way they were bending it, Mayer didn't say. Whether they were bending it about the war or something else entirely, he didn't say either. Full lyrics posted here and full audio posted here.

My radio station-switching speed subsequently returned.

Different Strokes by Different Folks. Sly and the Family Stone covers by John Mayer, Maroon 5, Steven Tyler, will.i.am, and more.

Hope. "I know for me to get onstage and play blues music, a lot of people aren't going to like the look of that. Basically, it's like wearing a target. But you get to a point where you need to try to get where you want to get."

Concern. "I have a pop sensibility and a blues sensibility. It is my obligation to the music to find the dead center."

The San Francisco Chronicle reports on John Mayer forming a blues band and planning to make an album.