Well, crap.

I'm writing this from the armpit of international airports, the L.C. Smith Terminal at Detroit Metro. I was lucky enough to be hauled out of my hotel three hours before my flight -- and just before room service opens (the hotel restaurant is under construction, wouldn't you just know it) -- so I got here hungry and entirely decaffeinated . . .

Now, there IS a Starbucks. Of course. So that part is handled. The only restaurant in the ENTIRE TERMINAL is one pathetic cafeteria-line Quiznos that doesn't even have tables. The rest of the terminal strongly evokes a 70s-era Greyhound bus station, but without the charm.

So . . .

Minneapolis.

Wow.

The less said about the actual event, the better. Doing my Phil Donohue-on-crack impression from a stage in the four-story atrium of the Mall of America is an experience that will linger in my heart like the memory of my first colonoscopy. I won't deny a certain entertainment value: in that particular episode of the Movie of My Life, I think I was being played by Ben Stiller.

The fans, however, were not only tolerant in indulging my Thundering Four-Story Chrome-and-Glass Meltdown, but were enthusiastically egging me on . . .

Then dinner afterward, in which the astonishingly courageous Rebekah of the Minnesota FanForce braved my gang of Dead Cities hooligans and actually held her own, too. Even my smilingly wicked niece couldn't make her cry . . .

I won't go into details of the Dead Cities gang (plus friends and such) either, except to thank them for coming out -- Scott and Jenn and gabe and Joe and Claudia and Tom and Sarah (Did I get everybody's Real Name right?) -- largely because at least two of them are shortly to become considerably more famous than I am, and frankly, they just don't need the press.

Then off to Detroit, where my main memory is this friggin' airport, because my flight was delayed and there was a High-Speed Chase on the expressway (for real, and really serious, too: bank robbers and a shootout and injuries, and no jokes about it) which tangled up the roads, so we went straight from the airport to the event -- where Tom and Donna, Eldest Brother and Most Fabulous Sister-in-Law, were waiting -- and then from the event to the Original Borders store in Ann Arbor (which sleepy little college town ain't sleepy at all but in fact is HOPPIN' after eleven, would you believe it?) and then into bed after midnight, with the 5:30 wake-up so that I could catch the friggin' car and sit in this friggin' Greyhound terminal of an airport and whine about the hard life of the World Famous Star Wars Author.

Have I mentioned that I'm having a great time?

So I'm about to jump on a flight to Denver, where I actually get to stay TWO DAYS (thanks be to the gods, and to Colleen and Brandi) so that I can spend Saturday afternoon asleep in the mountain air . . .