popplers

Hodgmania!

Our adventure this evening begins in Brookline, a non-fictional town in Massachusetts where John Hodgman grew up. Brookline Booksmith hosts a nifty writers & readers series, featuring authors such as David Rakoff, Annie Liebovitz, Erik Larson, Andy Summers, and, today, the wonderful Mr. Hodgman. It is a beautiful autumn day in New England, and we arrive early. Our punctuality is rewarded with exceedingly good seats. We are in the second row; the first row is reserved for guests of John Hodgman, including his wife, children, and father.

As the multitalented Jonathan Coulton performs what passes for a sound check in these parts, I reach for my camera. The battery is fully charged; I took care of that last night. I check the settings and am about to disable the flash, when I notice (to my horror) that the camera screen is displaying this blinking message: Insert CF card. Nooooo! So, I have no pictures of the event, due to my own stupidity. But rest assured, if I had taken photographs, they would have been fantastic. Through the magic of teh intarw3b, I offer you someone else's photos of the same event. (And also that person's blog posting.)

It was a thoroughly enlightening evening. I learned many things that I never knew before, including the following:

• Before John Hodgman found him and tamed him (and taught him to play the guitar and speak English), Jonathan Coulton was a feral mountain man prowling the wilderness of southern Connecticut.
  
• John Hodgman and Jonathan Coulton were going to produce a Ken Burns-style documentary on Hobo Matters. JoCo would provide the music; the video portion would consist of an extremely slow pan back and forth over a single photograph of a hobo, with Hodgman narrating.
  
• The song Big Rock Candy Mountain was used by hoboes to recruit children into the hobo life for their own nefarious purposes. Also, hobo signs don't always mean what you think they might.
  
• A damp towel can be used as a prism for the purposes of burning holes in paper; or, how silhouettes were created.
  
• Jonathan Coulton has written a song entitled Skullcrusher Mountain, which tells the story of an evil mastermind and his lady love, and genetic experiments gone horribly wrong. I couldn't stop thinking of The Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend.
  
• There are so many people in Brookline who want to own a signed copy of The Areas of My Expertise that you will have sufficient time to go out to dinner and return to the bookstore afterward, and John Hodgman will still be signing books.
  
• All joking aside, John Hodgman was patient and personable, and extremely kind. He stayed for a very long time and signed everyone's books, and took the time to pose for photos (for those who were smart enough to bring all of the necessary parts for their cameras). He shook hands and smiled genuinely, and was an all-around nice guy.
  
• The Finale in Brookline is just as decadent and wonderful (and expensive!) as the Finale near the Boston Park Plaza Hotel. (I forgot to name-drop network: fellow alum Paul Conforti ('92) is co-founder. The Rensselaer alumni rag had a nice article in the summer 2006 issue, entitled More Than Just Desserts.)

That is all.

Posted by rv at September 28, 2006 01:01 AM to book