one great leap for manny klein

Barnett Hoffman on Old Jews Telling Jokes

Mr. Hoo and I have a running Monday date with Simon Schama and his show the Power of Art where Schama conjures up the stories of the lives of great artists and never leaves me without believing that making art is as hard as it is worthwhile. (And also is very likely to get you laid.)

Come to find out that Schama also applies his quintessential head bob to the telling of Jewish Jokes: he'll be appearing at the Spertus Center during the Chicago Humanities Festival in November doing precisely that.

Simon Schama Tells Jewish Jokes
Sunday, November 8 from 12 noon to 1 pm

Simon Schama Tells Jewish JokesWorld-renowned historian and cultural critic Simon Schama is best known as the droll, erudite host of the BBC’s A History of Britain and Simon Schama’s Power of Art. But he also indulges in a secret passion: collecting and recounting Jewish jokes. Schama joins Chicago Humanities Festival artistic director Lawrence Weschler to share some of his jokes and unpack their complex cultural resonances in a sort of klezmer slapdown.

Simon Schama is professor of history and art history at Columbia University and the author of over a dozen books. His articles have appeared in The New Yorker and the New York Review of Books.

Tickets are $10 in advance, on sale September 21. $15 cash at the door. Students and teachers eligible for free tickets. For tickets, call the Chicago Humanities Festival at 312.494.9509 or visit www.chfestival.org.

John Hodgman will be there too. Different venue.

I love Fall in Chicago.
See you there.

live long & prosper

It is an exciting time to be a nerd.

John Hodgman at the Radio & TV Correspondents' Dinner.

In which John Hodgman quizzes President Barack Obama on his nerd credentials.

(This happened a little while back, but I've been busy and am just now catching up. It's worth sharing.)

verisimilitude

We finally used the cheapest store brand we could get because it popped more realistically. We didn't want all these big, fluffy kernels.

Art Director Tom Proost in the January 2009 issue of Metropolis referring to the popcorn that he and his team used to create apple blossoms for the stop-motion animated movie Coraline.

The filmmakers used old school stop motion animation techniques to produce Coraline, going against the grain of today's much more economically produced computer generated graphics.

The movie is based on the book which I've never read, but just well may, given all the enthusiastic titter about it on Twitter.

Plus, it's been a while since we had a John Hodgman fangirl moment on this blog, and Hodgman plays Coraline's dad.

I'm in.

in the immortal words of the fernet-branca advertisement: "wave your hands together, you'll be feeling better"

speaking of john hodgman
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo

They never punish themselves. Except in sexy ways.

John Hodgman, speaking of Italians.

Worth knowing: John Hodgman, in addition to being an accomplished author, a minor television celebrity, and a remarkably funny man, manages to come across to an assembled crowd, as he did this evening to a mid-size gathering at Borders Books in Oak Brook, Illinois, as an exceptionally humane individual as well.

Although it could be that I was fooled by the warm smile that capped off many of his punch lines, just about a beat behind, so as not to disrupt his trademark straight man routine.

That smile, which brings everyone around it into his fold, the one that occasionally threatens to break into his Daily Show routines but never quite works its way through, was largely unexpected and by itself worth the price admission (although in truth no admission was charged at the Borders event).

It may have been the generosity with which Hodgman handled the most vocal of his fans that deceived me. His fans all want to be him, of course, and one gentlemen took to the mic to articulate his desire to write books of fake facts -- as in fact Mr. Hodgman has himself done. Twice.

Hodgman handled the gentleman's request for advice to all who might aspire to write books of fake facts (the fake fact genre being the highly competitive literary niche that it is) with firm kindness and comedy, articulating his own expansionist plans in the niche, ushering a stern warning to all who might attempt to infringe on his territory, and then offering some true and simple advice for all writers: Be brave. Don't hold back.

There was also Alex, a 13 year old boy who wanted to be Hodgman, whom Hodgman handled a little like Foghorn Leghorn might handle Henry Hawk -- all to the benefit of the assembled crowd, and also to the benefit of Alex, who will probably never forget the night that he shared the stage with John Hodgman.

Just as he will never forget the Fernet-Branca.

p.s. My only regret? That I only learned of Hodgman's appearance a few short hours before it happened. Had I known, I would have bought my Hobo Halloween pic, circa 1970-something, hoping for an autograph.

p.p.s. The point of Mr. Hodgman's visit was to pimp his new book, of course, which I heartily endorse (and did so as recently as this last Monday from LaGuardia International).

and now for a story

John Hodgman: A brief digression on matters of lost time. A TED talk.

more information than you require

I don't want to give anything away, but there is Moon writing in my new book. If you read it the right way, you will find a map to a hidden door in a mountain, behind which is a room filled with wonders!

Also, there's a disclaimer: There is no hidden room.

John Hodgman in the October 2008 issue of Wired speaking of his new book, More Information Than You Require.

caped crusader

Obama with cloak
Originally uploaded by Trophiogrande.

John Hodgman spoke.

Triophiogrande listened.

(ApeLad, it seems, was busy.)

what writing does not involve

Writing a book, at least the kind of book that I write, on complete world knowledge, does not involve going outside.

John Hodgman on writing his book (this one on Molemen), as interviewed on Boing Boing TV by Xeni, and featuring the brilliant illustrations of Ape Lad.

like Mark Spitz

Clearly Dr. Bronner was crazy in that wonderful way that only America makes possible. An endearing elder uncle, shilling product and philosophy with the best billboard available to him -- the label of his soap bottle -- squeezing every little ounce out of that sacred marketing real estate with statements like these:

1st: If I'm not for me, who am I? Nobody! 2nd: yes, if I'm only for me, what am I? Nothing! 3rd: If not now, when? Once more: Unless constructive-selfish I work hard, like Mark Spitz, perfecting first me, absolute nothing can help perfect me!! 4th...

Yes, there's more. Getcher self a bottle to read it all. Or just check out the label blow up here »

You may notice a not altogether faint resemblance to the cover of John Hodgman's book, Areas of My Expertise »



We used Dr. Bronner's soap when I was growing up as a hippie kid, and I got turned on to it again when we stayed at the uber-hip Hotel San Jose in Austin this last spring, and the bath was stocked with it. I've been back on the bottle ever since and, truthfully, it does the job right.

But if you take up the cause you'll want to be sure not to tote it with you when you're driving your girlfriend to an AA meeting in Orange County wearing a furry Russian hat -- as Dan Bolles of the Germs found out the hard way »



Video: Trailer for the recently released documentary, Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox »

showing up, part 2

You’re an American. It’s not always easy.

What Walter Schretzman says to those who try shirk jury duty through any one of a collection of excuses like dying relatives or lost income. As reported in The Villager.

Walter Schretzman is the silver-haired leader whom John Hodgman captured so beautifully in his recent jury duty postings on his blog, good evening »


showing up, part 1 »

arketype

Many of the world’s leading scientific institutions today announced the launch of the Encyclopedia of Life, an unprecedented global effort to document all 1.8 million named species of animals, plants, and other forms of life on Earth. For the first time in the history of the planet, scientists, students, and citizens will have multi-media access to all known living species, even those that have just been discovered.
(...)
When completed, http://www.eol.org will serve as a global biodiversity tool, providing scientists, policymakers, students, and citizens information they need to discover and protect the planet and encourage learning and conservation.

From: A Leap for All Life: World’s Leading Scientists Announce Creation of “Encyclopedia of Life”: Biodiversity, Science Communities Unite Behind Epic Effort To Promote Biodiversity, Document All 1.8 Million Named Species on Planet, a press release issued today by the Encyclopedia of Life project.

So freakin' cool.

And also notable for the fact that the f.y.i. video demonstrating the site concept incorporates the same furry lobster made famous on the paperback cover of John Hodgman's The Areas of My Expertise. (For more info see the Guardian article from last March »)

reading light

reading light
Originally uploaded by MGL.

This is one of the defining sorrows of books: that we cannot see one another.

From John Hodgman's Areas of My Expertise

i've got a crush on you

pork shoulder, h in sunrays
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Mr. John Hodgman was kind enough to post this image, which I originally posted to the h in sunrays Flickr group, to his blog, good evening.

Remember that feeling you'd get when you passed that cute boy you had a crush on, and just maybe he'd say hi in a way that made it clear it was no big deal to him -- but it definitely was to you?

Yeah. Feels something like that.

That is all.

just a little bit starstruck

I'm pleased to announce that the how to be a hobo pic made Mr. Hodgman's[1] blog tonight -- looks like it may be on the Areas of My Expertise home page for a short while, and archived after that.

Given the graciousness with which Mr. Hodgman pointed out that my Photoshopped h-in-sunrays didn't entirely qualify for the pool -- "ALAS it does not quite satisfy the requirements of the h-in-sunrays group (which is to say: found in situ, ideally without computer manipulation)" -- I did the dutiful Flickr-er thing to do, and removed the pic from the pool. (A little sheepishly, but without regret.)

Thank you. THAT IS ALL.

[1] See: sexy geek

hobo matters

hobo matters
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

Hobos did not leave many records. Those who were not illiterate were intensely superstitious and especially distrustful of ink… And in the makeshift railyard camps called ‘jungles,’ it was considered a virtue if you could legitimately and purposefully forget anything that had happened to you a week, a day, an hour before.

From An Almanac of Complete World Knowledge Compiled with Instructive Annotation and Arranged in Useful Order by Me,John Hodgman, Professional Writer, in The Areas of My Expertise, Which Include: Matters Historical, Matters Literary, Matters Cryptozoological, Hobo Matters, Food, Drink, Cheese (a Kind of Food), Squirrels & Lobsters & Eels, Haircuts, Utopia, What Will Happen in the Future, and Most Other Subjects

sexy geek

For the record, I fell for John Hodgman when he did his Superpowers piece on This American Life. (I have linked evidence – see Choka couplet: "which superpower for you / unseen or flying?" from – oh hell, I don’t know when, because there ARE NO DATE STAMPS OR LINE NUMBERS ON THE CHOKA, goddammit) – but have you noticed? The sexy girls have found him now.

Maybe it was the Mac ad, or maybe it was all of his Daily Show contributions. Whatever the reason, Violet Blue went out of her way to attend his recent book reading at Cody Books, and the Suicide Girls just posted a great interview with Hodgman, by Daniel Robert Epstein.

No moral to this story. Just cheering on the English Major.

From the interview with Epstein:

I was trained in literary theory at Yale University, which was a period of high post-modernism that suggested that all texts and no texts were reliable. They were all a function of a point of view. Various accumulated cultural pressures, prejudices. Personally I believe there is such a thing as a true fact and I think that we have to rely on that in order to live right as a society. I don’t think anyone could have said it better than [Stephen] Colbert in identifying what is a pretty devious scourge of truthiness. This idea that something sounds or feels right because it has some ring of plausibility to it or it’s something that we want to believe and therefore it takes on the gravity of truth even though it is not true. I think that’s awful but at the same time I profit from it.

On the other hand there is something about a story that is able to convey truth that bare facts cannot bring to life. Those kinds of stories include tall tales and jokes and lies. One of the first things that came to mind when I was thinking about the book was “Truth is stranger than fiction but never as strange as lies.” I think that anyone who has been lied to knows that is true.

The elaborate and baroque storytelling that goes into telling a lie is just one of the strangest things to witness and it is disturbing, weird and strange. Lies are really just very compelling stories where the teller is really more invested than usual in getting you on their side. If you look around us, we see a lot of lies today that are all stranger than truth and then to a different degree those lies reveal, perhaps inadvertently, a different kind of truth.

what to view, what to view?

So much video, so little time.

Tonight the choice is yours -- what will it be -- precious sweet pandas? (via shiny shiny.)



Or John Hodgman on -- well -- all kinds of crazy stuff » (via Violet Blue)