A lot of things to discuss, so I’m going to do it, lightning-round style. We’ll go politics, sports, personal. Enjoy:

• The McCain campaign’s incoherency problems are astonishing. Watch this video in which he defends his use of robocalls. He claims that he “doesn’t care” about Bill Ayers while pausing to point out that his wife (Bernadette Dohrn) was on the FBI’s top-ten most wanted list. If you’re going to pretend that your campaign isn’t going negative on the Ayers front, then don’t interrupt yourself to go even more negative.

• So now, reportedly, the McCain camp is thinking about bringing back Jeremiah Wright to stir up negative feelings with 14 days left in the campaign. Matthew Yglesias has a smart post about how it isn’t credible that the GOP has avoided bringing up Wright based on some sort of principled stand. But I think he misses the most obvious point: The campaign was always saving it for the end. That way, McCain could pretend to virtue by not touching on an “obvious character issue,” and then let it all go at the end, before a proper backlash could amass.

• My friend Jake Austen has a great article in the current issue of Harper’s about the bootleg Obama T-shirt boom in Chicago’s black neighborhoods. You have to subscribe to read it online. But you should, because Harper’s is the best mag in the country, I think. The article reminded me of a time this summer, when M and I went to a block party on the West Side, around Chicago and Pulaski. The Jesse White Tumblers were in full effect, and nearly everyone was wearing homemade Barack for President shirts. This was, it’s worth noting, before the end of the primaries and just a week or so after Jesse Jackson, U.S. Ambassador of Class, said he wanted to cut Obama’s nuts off “for talking down to black people.” It seemed the party had sided with Obama.

• The Red Sox lost to the Rays in game seven. What can be done? My heart wasn’t really with the Red Sox this year, largely because I felt like they were a team built for last year, which is fine by me, since last year worked out pretty well.

• I just bought Paul Hornschemeier’s amazing WherewereyouWolf T-shirt. Ten bucks!

• I turned 30 on Friday. Everyone seems to think this is a milestone, but to my mind, getting married was 2008’s topper, and turning 30 is a boring epilogue. Still, my wife and I had dinner at Green Zebra, a once-every-couple-of-years occasion, and it was a reminder of just how wonderful vegetarian restaurants are. You can eat anything on the menu! Meat-eaters have no idea what complicated joy this is.

• On Saturday, my friends threw me a surprise Dollar Store, in which the items were taken from my life (embarrassing photos, karate trophies, sports memorabilia, etc.). Of course, it was the best kind of humiliating.

The much-anticipated launch of the online literary magazine Please Don’t is upon us. Run by masterminds Scott Stealey and Pete Coco, the mag’s first issue is looking good. Pat Somerville has a great story on there, and I’m looking forward to reading Kevin Clouther’s essay on why Boston loves Kevin Youkilis.

It also marks the debut of my “I Could Punch a Wolf” essay, which should hereby puts to rest the ongoing debate of whether I could ever punch a wolf in the face. It’s all there in black and white. I could.

Congrats to Pete and Scott. The mag looks great.

Go Sox. That’s two in four years after generations of suffering. It’s strange how both of their World Series wins in the aughts have come against weaker opponents than those they vangquished in the ALCS. More on this later.

Hiding Out received a knock-out review in the Chicago Tribune this weekend. I really couldn’t be happier with it. It hits on pretty much every single thing that we tried to do with the book, including the integration of Nathan Keay’s photography, Rob Funderburk’s illustrations and the stories. Donna Seaman, an editor over at Booklist and host of “Open Books” on WLUW, has an art background, I believe, and it shows. It’s certainly the longest review of the book so far, and therefore the most in-depth. I think this paragraph cuts to the core of one of my favorite stories in the book:

Messinger revels in ludicrous and revealing situations. He invests simple physical comedy with deep psychology in a story about a 7-year-old who, on a dare, has gotten his head stuck in a wrought-iron fence. This is one of several insightful tales in which an extreme gesture serves as a decoy while Messinger smuggles in terse observations about ineffective, self-absorbed parents.

On top of that, I guess it’s as good a time as any to announce that the book is nearly sold out, and is headed back to the printer for a second print run. That’s exciting, because it dovetails with some big Featherproof news, which is that as of November 1, we’ll be distributed by PGW. For our entire existence, we’ve been distributed by Biblio, which really doesn’t do much more than warehouse our books (i.e. they don’t sell to bookstores, etc., which is really what you want from a distributor). So all of Featherproof’s books have really gotten into readers’ hands solely through word-of-mouth and our authors’ elbow grease. Now we have a partner that’s going to do a lot of legwork for us, which is great. In the meantime, if you want to order a book, you might be better off doing it through us, as Biblio is shipping all of our books to PGW, and there might be some downtime in transition.

Which all dovetails nicely with the fact that we sent our next title, This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record by Susannah Felts off to the printer this morning. This is a Young Adult/Adult novel about growing up in the South and struggling to come of age as an artist. We’re really stoked about this one, which features cover art by the amazing Diana Sudyka, and will hopefully open us up to a whole new audience.

And finally, check out the events page for some fun stuff coming up. Friday night is the final Dollar Store before we go on an indefinite hiatus. Emerson Dameron and Joe Meno will read, and of course Abraham Levitan will occupy his piano stool. The next morning I’m doing an “author coffee” at the Writers Workspace, which really is just me talking with a few folks about independent publishing, tour booking, running a reading series, really everything I love to talk on and on about. RSVP to info@writersworkspace.com if you’re interested. Sounds like a fun, different kind of event.

Being on the road for the last couple of weeks made it difficult to plant myself and watch some Red Sox playoff games. The snippets I did catch, though, were often in bars, so I didn’t have to listen to Tim McCarver and Joe Buck.

Tomorrow night, the Sox and Indians take it back to Fenway, and I have to say, this series has suddenly become a classic. There’s all the intrigue surrounding Manny, which I always love. First it was the Manny arm-raise, that he celebrated after hitting a solo shot to put his team down by four. I’m cool with that. I do the exact same thing when Manny hits a solo shot to put his team down by four. Then there’s his quote, about the Sox potentially losing the series: “There’s always next year. It’s not like it’s the end of the world.” As Soxaholix said, it’s a healthy attitude for athletes. Let the fans wallow in do-or-die-ism. But I think more than that, Manny is acknowledging that the Sox are now a dynasty. They’ve only won one championship, sure, but with Beckett the second coming and a healthy mix of young and old guys, the Sox should be the team to beat for the next few years. I like that kind of confidence.

On top of that, Kenny Lofton is now in full-on veteran prick mode, flipping his bat before he even walked, then flipping it when he did walk, and trying to instigate a brawl with Beckett. On top of that, the Indians had some country singer I’d never heard of ruin the anthem, and it turned out she was Josh Beckett’s ex. Coincidence! They swear!

The Sox need a new rival. Sox v. Yankees is played out. The Yanks are crumbling, A-Rod has sucked them of any postseason animus and his villain status has been reduced to a single, flailing glove slap in 2004. I like these Indians, with their young’uns playing above themselves and their ace in Sabathia suddenly turning into a tragic figure next to the untouchable Beckett. I like that they got irked by Manny. I like that Kenny Lofton is 75 and still can’t control himself. That Hafner is the anti-Ortiz. That Paul Byrd and Tim Wakefield are in a salt-and-pepper beard-off. Let’s bring back some Sox v. Indians antipathy. As all of the pundits like to say, it’ll be good for the game.