Pawnotes?  Never mind.

1)First, we have to talk about the hat.

I will preface this by saying a) I lived in Michigan for a while.   So while I am not personally a big fan of hats, and am bemused by the cultural prostration in front of Aretha Franklin’s, I accept their utility in the winter months. And b) I get that there were probably not too many opportunities for washing hair while jaunting around from base to base.  The most important thing, clearly, is the fact that he went to entertain the soldiers, so I was not expecting GQ ensembles.

None of this explains why we can no longer see Cook’s eyebrows.

To sum up:  Tuque.  Ur wearin it wrong.

2) Many of us were pleasantly surprised by the massive amounts of promotion that occurred during the first week of American Idol, and even more pleasantly surprised by the surge in sales for both the album and the single.  But even the video for Light On got a nice boost in iTunes sales, and has passed 2.3 million views on Youtube.  One could certainly attribute that to the rest of the promotion, and his continued VH1 spins.

But I not-so-secretly think that the big push came from many students returning to school, who really responded to the hidden message of the video: Mah brainz, let me show you them. You don’t have to put out for assholes.*

3) In a remarkably clever move, Cook’s management has decided to distract us from his inability to alter the space-time continuum by answering another question.^

We can haz platinum certification?

Yes, we can haz.

* Or nice guys, either. But still. Resonance!
^ I am aware that there were other factors involved than just physics. And my hope is that there will be some shifting later in the year so everyone has their brief history, and time.

Cook managed a relatively quiet period of rest, but after hustling to Vegas, where he may have played a song (it was hard to tell among all the diagrams of Robbie Kinevel’s Patented Ways to Die[tm]), he’s clearly back to the grindstone, providing new radio interviews.  And of course, said interviews provided a few crumbs of information (official confirmation of a new! puppy!, nostalgic references to queuing! ducklings!), but included some information we’d either already heard or really didn’t need to.

With that in mind, I humbly suggest, Mr. Cook, that you get your manager to seed more questions.  Some of your fans have already come up with some thoughtful, insightful ones about your songwriting process, your stage performances, and your past educational/career decisions and their influence on you now.  You could certainly answer those.

Or, you could answer mine, which will be of no value to anyone, except me, since I will likely laugh.

1. Do you get some sort of Ambassador discount for your QuikTrip boosterism?  Have you asked for one?
2. If you were feeling ambivalent about cursing during your Orlando performance of Man in the Box, why didn’t you sing “pit?”  (For the record, I want to hear you sing “shit” every.single.time.  [Maybe even in songs for which that isn't an original lyric.]  But you do have options.)
3. If David Fincher finally lost his mind and mounted Fight Club as a Broadway musical, would you audition?
4. How often, in high school and college, did friends/acquaintances/fraternity brothers suggest that you “cowboy up, Cook?”  How often did you punch them in the arm for doing so?
5. Would you ever consider getting this for Dublin for use while on tour?

Welcome back to the grind, kid.   Getting tour dates at some point would be swell.