Attention, John Mayer fans: There’s no need to send your favorite musician your extra Paxil.

In only his third official blog post since July, Mayer hits back at claims that he’s taken on a depressive demeanor.

“I am not darker, angrier or moodier these days. In fact, it’s just the opposite,” he writes on his Web site.

“All that’s happened is that I’ve given up on trying to find a way to use unwanted media as a form of entertainment. (It still was worth a try.) A walk to the car isn’t the best time to try and analyze my mood or disposition, so you’ll probably always get a bad read from it,” he writes.

“Things have changed a bit, and the decision to slide on and off your radar isn’t so much my own anymore. But I’m too young to stomp my feet about it,” Mayer continues. “All I can do is concentrate on keeping my heart and soul correct and then redecorate around it.”

Rekindled Romance

Mayer entered a media maelstrom when he split from Jennifer Aniston in August, then rekindled their romance last month, with the couple celebrating his 31st birthday together.

The musician also reveals he will be staying put in Los Angeles for a top-secret “side project that is extremely cool,” and promised more updates from now on, “so that you don’t feel as if I’ve disappeared and been replaced with a robotic clone.”

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How do you end a two-month world tour in West Palm Beach? If you’re John Mayer, with a beautiful blonde cocktail waitress waiting in the wings.

While stealing glances backstage at the striking blonde during his mic breaks, Mayer was definitely in party mode at the packed final show of the tour at the Cruzan Amphitheater Sunday night.

“We’re all drunk,” said Mayer of himself and his bandmates. “Only onstage can you openly drink on your last night. I’d like to see George Bush light up a giant joint.”

One topic the singer didn’t touch? Ex-girlfriend Jennifer Aniston - whom he recently called “the smartest and most sophisticated woman” he’s ever met - by name.

But Mayer did give offer one cryptic comment.

“I had a conversation recently,” he told the crowd, “and a lot of tears were exchanged.”

The Grammy winner also warned the audience about the price of fame.

“People say I’m the hottest thing, part of a corporate machine,” he said. “Well, I’ve been out here for 10 years. I don’t want to have the number-one song. I want to be number eight. It’s a much better place to be. Because as soon as you become fashion, as soon as you become the flavor of the day, you get crushed.”

He added: “Here’s my advice for you. Never fully arrive. Be a work in progress.”

After the show, Mayer and the blonde waitress headed for SET, an Old Hollywood-style club on South Beach.

The pair hit a private, upstairs area called the Trophy Room where they ordered drinks and kept to themselves.

“She kept asking him what he wanted to drink and if he liked the music,” says a source of the mix of house and techno that was playing. “They partied till about 3 a.m.”

• Reporting by JULIE KAY

Before he had game, John Mayer was a big gamer.

For three years in elementary and junior high school in Fairfield, Conn., the Grammy winner spent almost every afternoon playing Nintendo with his childhood pal, tennis star and Olympian James Blake.

“Just about every day he was at my house, and we’d play Nintendo games, like Joe Montana football, all the time,” says Blake, who was in fifth grade when the two became best buds.

“John was pretty good, but I played a bit more than he did,” Blake told PEOPLE at Heineken’s Share the Good event in New York City on Friday, where he accepted a $10,000 check for the Thomas Blake Sr. Memorial Cancer Research Fund, his charity honoring his late father.

“Absolutely not!” says Blake, with a laugh. “I don’t know what he likes to tell about his high school experience, but mine was very different from the way life is now.

“I was about five feet tall wearing a back brace %26#91;due to scoliosis%26#93;,” continues Blake, who’s in town for the U.S. Open. “I definitely didn’t have girls flocking around me.”

During a podcast in July, Blake also told ESPN’s Bill Simmons, “To be honest, I don’t think either one of us was doing that great %26#91;with the ladies%26#93; in high school - John was still kind of fitting into a niche … He’s more than made up for himself with how he’s done since then.”

These days, Mayer, 30, and Blake, 28, are both single, after the singer’s recent split from Jennifer Aniston.

So, will they be each other’s wingman? Don’t bet on it, says the tennis star.

“I don’t think John needs one, he does just fine on his own,” says Blake. “He doesn’t even need to be my wingman - he can just stand there, and people are impressed that I know him!”

While his recent ex Jennifer Aniston did the town on Madison Avenue and the Met, John Mayer toasted tennis pro James Blake, his Connecticut classmate from Fairfield High at a Manhattan benefit for his charity, the Thomas Blake Cancer Research fund.

Honoring Blake’s father, who died of cancer, the event was hosted by Men’s Vogue and featured luxury watches.

“John is a watch guru. He tried on this skeleton watch, which is worth about $10,000, and even asked for our president’s card,” said Maurice Lacroix watch spokeswoman Fran Pennella.

“They’re really supportive of each other,” adds Blake’s older brother, also named Thomas Blake. “Whenever they’re in the same town, John is sure to go to James’s tournaments and James is always at his concerts.”

Said a partygoer: “He even offered music advice for our 4-year-old daughter. I asked him what would be the best instrument for her to learn, and he … said, ‘If she can learn piano, she can learn to play guitar, horns and the basic chords in music.”

John Mayer was all about his music Tuesday night.

Three days after talking to reporters about his recent split from Jennifer Aniston, the singer focused on his songs at his concert in Charlotte, N.C.

Between performing fan favorites like “Waiting on the World to Change,” Mayer, 30, dedicated a song to the audience, thanking them for allowing him to express himself artistically. “That’s the most freeing thing as an artist,” he told the crowd.

Of Mayer’s split from Aniston, a source close to Mayer says, “It’s sad things didn’t work out. John thinks the world of Jen.”

John Mayer urged the Los Angeles City Council on Thursday to place restrictions on the paparazzi for the safety of everybody.

“I don’t sit before you today to ask that you ban the paparazzi,” Mayer, 30, testified at a City Hall hearing considering new restrictions on the photographers. “I’m asking you to regulate it, officialize it, tax it, legitimize it.”

After recounting his own dangerous encounters on the road with photographers running red lights “just to stay behind you,” Mayer proposed a law requiring “an acceptable distance” between photographers and an “unwilling subject.”

Mayer, a paparazzi magnet since dating Jennifer Aniston, also suggested a “big white P on a yellow license plate %26#91;that%26#93; says the driver works for an accredited photo agency” or press credentials “worn in plain sight.”

Outside the hearing, the paparazzi found an unlikely ally in L.A.’s police chief, who calls new restrictions unnecessary now that Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan are better behaved.

“If you notice, since Britney started wearing clothes and behaving; Paris is out of town not bothering anybody anymore, thank God; and evidently, Lindsay Lohan has gone gay, we don’t seem to have much of an issue,” Chief William Bratton told KNBC-TV.

He added: “If the ones that attract the paparazzi behave in the first place, like we expect of anybody, that solves about 90 percent of the problem. The rest we can deal with.”

Pete Wentz has a lotta love for his boy John Mayer.

“John Mayer is one of my favorite dudes,” the Fall Out Boy, 29, writes on his blog, “A Homeboy’s Life.”

“Not even in some fantasy way,” writes Wentz. “Just in the way that he is in on the joke, while you are simply laughing at it.”

This isn’t the first time Wentz has given Mayer, 30, kudos. The two artists expressed their mutual admiration for one another on their respective blogs back in May.
- Kristen Mascia

John Mayer might be keeping mum about his current steamy relationship with Jennifer Aniston, but the soulful singer opened up Tuesday night about a past relationship - with a nameless fan.

During an intimate performance at the Z100 Lounge at New York City’s Spotlight Live nightclub for radio station Z100, Mayer was asked by a concert-goer if he had ever “hooked up” with a fan from a performance. Mayer responded, “Do you respect my honesty? Yes, I have.”

After a resounding response of approval from the crowd, Mayer laughed and said, “But that was before camera phones were around!”

But Mayer said that he’s grateful for his career success and loves keeping himself busy. When asked about what it was like to write his hit “Say” for the film The Bucket List, Mayer said, “I loved the process so much that I began writing songs for movies that I wasn’t even asked to write songs for. I wrote a song for Wall-E called “Will Someone In This Piece Say Something!”

Mayer then serenaded the crowd at Spotlight Live with his hit “Say,” a cover of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’,” and “Waiting On The World To Change.”

For the full interview of the Z100 Lounge with John Mayer, visit Z100.com.

John Mayer was eco-friendly onstage - wrapping up Live Earth by jamming with The Police at Giants Stadium on Saturday - but backstage he had some global warnings.

For one, don’t ask him about Jessica Simpson.

“I’m going to practice some conversation conservation right now and minimize my bull—- footprint,” he told a reporter who asked if Mayer still spoke to Simpson.

Also, don’t ask him if he has any “eco-sins” (as many of Live Earth’s electricity-using, private-jet-flying rockers readily confessed to).

“What is my eco-sin?” Mayer answered. “I don’t know if that is that provocative a question for me. I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure out what my motivation is - what is the positive side to the things that I could do?” He later added: “If you want to peg me as not being entirely eco-friendly, you’ll win,” though he said, “We have a tour, which is inherently carpooling.”

Less confrontational was Kelly Clarkson, who says that while she recycles and carpools, she’s still learning the best ways to conserve resources.

“We need just as much information as the audience,” she said after her Giants Stadium set. “We’re not brilliant. I’m not the most educated on the process, but I’m learning.”

Rosario Dawson said backstage that not only is she “that person who turns off the light every time I walk out of a room,” but that she’d seriously question dating anybody who isn’t green.

“I’d probably have a really huge problem with that,” she said.

• Reporting by BETHANY LYE, KC BAKER and RENNIE DYBALL