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The Only Time I've Ever Been Mistaken For Someone Else Is - And This Arguable Still - When A Person Came Up To Me On The Boardwalk Of Ocean City, New Jersey And Said, "you Look A Lot Like That Guy From Computer Ads" And I Said, "there Is A Reason Because I Am That Guy," And The Guy Looked At Me For A Minute, Laughed And Said, "that's A Funny Joke, But You Really Do Look Like Him." He Thought I Was Not Me.

-John Hodgman

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The Only Time I've

John Hodgman

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The Only Time I've Ever Been Mistaken For Someone Else Is - And This Arguable Still - When A Person Came Up To Me On The Boardwalk Of Ocean City, New Jersey And Said, "you Look A Lot Like That Guy From Computer Ads" And I Said, "there Is A Reason Because I Am That Guy," And The Guy Looked At Me For A Minute, Laughed And Said, "that's A Funny Joke, But You Really Do Look Like Him." He Thought I Was Not Me.

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I Would Be Good For Maybe Not The Center Square But An Upper Square On 'hollywood Squares.'

I Am Someone Who Values Knowledge, Actual Knowledge. I Also Value Stories And Fiction A Whole Lot, And That's Where The Fake Knowledge Comes In.

I Navigated The World As A Hedge Maze Of Constant Fear And Worry In Which I Might Take The Wrong Turn And Jeopardize The Love Of Everyone Around Me And Everyone On Earth. That's What I Needed In Order To Survive.

Unfortunately For Humanity, I've Gotten Into The Habit Of Providing My Own Closing Music For Shows By Singing A Song And Playing The Ukulele.

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I Have A Lot Of Cultural References That Have Amassed In My Brain Like Shrapnel Over The Years That Are Meaningful To Me.

I'm Not A Particularly Religious Person, But That Feeling Of Getting Transmissions From Someplace Else, Even If It's From Your Own Consciousness, Is Very, Very Real. To Me, At Least.

When You're Sitting Down And You're Blocked And You Just Start Writing And Something In Your Mind Just Clicks, You Start Seeing Connections And So On, You Really Do Feel Like You're Channeling Something Else.

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I Don't Really Collect Anything. I Mean, If I See A Piece Of Moxie Soda Memorabilia, I'll Probably Buy It. I'm A Sucker For Regional Soda Brands And Forgotten Histories And That Sort Of Thing.

First Of All, I Wish I Could Grow A Beard.

This Is Something That The Nimblest Standup Comedians Learn, Over Time, To Handle Gracefully. They'll Go Between Prepared Material, Then They'll Respond To What's Happening In The Room And Weave It Back Into The Prepared Material And So On.

Reality, While Generally Probable, Is Not Always Interesting.

So I Am A Product Of The Internet, And To Some Degree A Product Of This Sensibility Of Constant Cultural Reference.

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For Many Years, People Would Say, "only Child? Must Have Been Terrible," And I Wanted To Say, "you Are Mentally Ill, Because It Was The Greatest." You Got All The Attention. You Never Had To Share Anything. No One Ever Ate Your Food. No One Ever Took Your Toys. But The Unintended Consequence Was That I Didn't Appreciate That Being Universally Loved Was Not Only Not Required For Happiness, But Also Not Possible.

By The Time I Was Writing The Second Book, My Life Had Changed Rather Dramatically, Thanks To The Intervention Of Television, And I Needed To Find A Way To Discuss That. Otherwise The Big, Fake Book Would Not Be True On Some Level.

I'm A Personality - Like A George Plimpton Who Effectively Plays Himself In A Bunch Of Different Roles, Or A Paul Lynde-type Character.

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Once You're Out In A Place Where There's One Sheriff For The County, People Have To Learn How To Get Along With Each Other And That Means Going To The Dump Illegally And Dumping Your Garbage And Hoping The Guys Don't Call You On It And Being Terrified Of This To Your Core Until You Realize After Many Years That The Guys At The Dump Don't Really Care Where Your Garbage Is Coming From.

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Literary Theory

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Even The Worst Job Has Its Benefits And So Does Being A Professional Literary Agent, And - I Know I Said This At The Time But I Still Believe It - The Worst Job Is The One That You Know Is Wrong For You, But You Still Do It. You're Afraid To Quit.

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All I Can Ask From Society Is That It Please Stop Telling Me Why I Should Like Sports.

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My Hope When I Wrote The First Book Was That I Would Get To Do It Again. But It Was Not Entirely Clear That That Would Happen.

For A Long Time, I Would Write Without Music, Because I Thought It Was Distracting Until I Appreciated That It Actually Unlocks A Certain Unconscious Productivity Vault In My Mind.

Everyone Wants To Write A Book. Very Few People Are Able To Do It.

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There Is No Ritual That Enhances Creativity Other Than Just Starting.

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So Much Of Creativity Is The Feeling That You're Either Getting A Gift From Some Other Dimension Or Some Other Part Of Yourself.

Writing For Me Always Requires Trickery. Tricking Myself Into Sitting Down, Letting Words Tumble Out Until You Find The Good Ones. It's Sort Of A Trance. And When A Piece Is Done, I Have Little Memory Of How I Wrote It, And Zero Confidence I'd Ever Be Able To Do It Again.

I Am Not An Internet Superstar. I Am, Ironically Perhaps, The Most Old Media Superstar Of All Time. My Fame Is Due To Broadcast Television.

Truth May Be Stranger Than Fiction, Goes The Old Saw, But It Is Never As Strange As Lies.

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That Catharsis Is Really The Core Of The Incredibly Personal Comedy Of Louis C.k. Or Marc Maron Or Whatever. And Look - I Find It Fascinating That I'm Sitting Here Talking About Some Of These Things, And Not To Low Tones, And My Kids Are In The Other Room. I Have To Trust That If They Hear What I'm Saying And They Have Questions About It, I'll Be Able To Answer It, And That's Fine. But That's Part Of The Scariness Of It - The Reality Of Opening Up My Own Life And My Own Feelings.

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Traffic Counting Was Very Boring And Cold To Sit Out On The Streets Of New Haven In Five Pairs Of Pants - Well, That's An Exaggeration; It Was Three Pairs Of Pants - In November For Hours And Hours Clicking Buttons Counting Which Cars Go Left, Right, And Forward.

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My Whole Creative Career Is A Product Of The Internet. ...i'll Take That Back. To Some Degree. My Fascination With Cultural Esoterica And Trivia And So On Was Well-formed Long Before I Got My First Aol Account.

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I Am Not An Internet Superstar.

Any Time You Try To Create An Internet Meme, Automatic Fail. That's Like The Worst Thing You Can Do.

I Think, As We All Learn As A Child, You Have To Learn To Tolerate Ambiguity Better And I'm Still Terrible At It And I Hate It; Even The Word Ambiguity Makes Me Sick To Me Stomach.

All Books Should Be Trilogies; I Mean I Think We All Agree On That.

Tonally, There Was No Discussion; I Just Don’t Know Any Other Way To Do It. I Don’t Want To Make People Feel Bad, And I Don’t Want To Make Their Problems Into A Joke. I Do Love Telling People When They’re Right And Wrong, But For The Most Part, It Was Always Going To Be About Real Fights Where People Have A Real Difference Of Opinion And A Real Dispute. I Want To Make Jokes, But I Also Want To Make A Decision That Is Fair.

When A Good Friend Gives You His Or Her Book, You Don't Want To Read It, Because You're Afraid That It's Not Going Be What You Hope It Can Be.

Lies Are Just Another Kind Of Storytelling, But With The Very Distinct And Enlivening Motive Of Desperation. Since Writers Are By Nature Desperate Creatures, They Usually Do A Pretty Good (or Pretty Awful, But Always Interesting) Job Of Lying.

That Which Is Hard To Do Is Best Done Bitterly.

I Say, If You're Going To Eat A Creature Alive, You Have To Expect Some Screaming. That Is The Carnivore's Burden.

I Never Stopped Feeling Abject Terror Until I Got On Television And Went On A National Ad Campaign And Realized, "i Will Be Able To Feed My Children. I Have Somehow Averted The Destiny That Awaited Me, Which Is Endless, Crippling Debt Forever."

I Believe That By Releasing "passing Interest/low Keepsake-value Literature" From The Burden Of Physicality, You Are Actually Releasing The Words From Their Worst Liability: The Price And Inconvenience Of Actual Bookness.

I Suspect That When The Truth Ceases To Be Heartbreakingly Funny, We Will Be In A Better Place And A Happier Society Over All.

The Reality Is That If You Want To Be In A Reality-based Community, You've Got To Respect Reality And That Means Calling It Bad When You See The Past Ahead And It Doesn't Look Good And Acknowledging When It's Going To Work.

Comics Have A Problem, And That Is Continuity - The Obsession With Placing The Characters In An Existing World, Where Every Event Is Marked In Canon. You're Supposed To Believe That These Weepy Star Boys Of Now Are The Same Gung-ho Super Teens Fighting Space Monsters In The '60s, And They've Only Aged Perhaps Five Years.

A Literary Agent Is Nothing But A Cheap Salesman (or Woman); While A Writer Is A Cheap Salesman (or Woman) Who Also Has To Actually Write The Books.

I Realized That Even In A World Of Proliferating Media Venues, Online And In Print, And On Tv And On Countless Cable Channels, The Idea That I Could Be Considered An Expert On Chronic Knee Pain Was I Think Troubling For Society, But Very Exciting For Me.

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The Very Idea That There Is No Truth, But Only The Filter Of Narrative Through Which Truth Is Invented Is Something I Learned At The Feet Of The Most Leftist Professors At Yale And Am Learning Again From Sarah Palin During The Vice Presidential Debate, And I Find That Very Disorienting.

I Naturally Own A Lot Of Very Old Magazines. And I Enjoy Going To Old Magazines Because The Advertisements In Those Magazines Tended To Have Thousands Of Words Of Copy In Them.

I Know Nothing About Letting Go.

There Is No Metaphor For Death. All Comparisons Are Odious, But I'll Do One Anyway. We All Have These Moments Of Harsh Clarity Where We Realize That Something Is Gone, Whether That Is Youth, Whether That Is Someone We Care About, Whether That Is Where We Literally Lose Someone We Care About To Death. Or We End A Relationship That We Thought Would Last Forever, Or Have One Ended For Us. We All Have These Moments In Life Where It Seems Impossible To Fill Up The Time That We Have Left For Us, And Yet We Have To Do It Somehow.

Here's The Thing: I Am Not Only A Creature Of Civilization, I'm An Asthmatic Person. I Will Only Live So Long As I Have Stockpiled The Proper Inhalers. I'm Effectively A Cyborg. You Know How In Jurassic Park, They Bred Those Dinosaurs With The Lysine Deficiencies, So If They Ever Got Off The Island, They'd Die? That's Me.

When You're A Young Person, You Are Biologically Driven To Believe You Are Immortal, And That's Why You Engage In All Kinds Of Risky Behavior You Stop Once You Feel Death's Cruel Breath On Your Neck. I Think That As A Straight White Man In Particular, I Was Tempted To Believe That I Was Immortal And Eternal Because, After All, In This Culture, Straight White Dudes Are The Heroes Of Every Story That You See Or Read About With Very Rare Exception. So How Could The Story Go On Without The Hero, You Know?

This Is Not To Say There Are Not Chicagoans. But I Would Suggest That They Are A Nomadic People, Whose Lost Home Exists Only In Their Minds, And In The Glowing Crystal Memory Cells They All Carry In The Palms Of Their Hands: A Great Idea Of A Second City, Lit With Life And Love, Reasonable Drink Prices At Cool Bars, And, Of Course, Blocks And Blocks Of Bright And Devastating Fire.

Just Because You See An Iceberg Does Not Mean That There Isn't Global Warming.

I Know Electric Knives Are Excellent For Carving Turkeys That Have Had Their Bones Removed And Been Forced Into A Mold To Shape Them. Please Note That Those Turkeys Are Called Hams.

I Think That By The Time I Start Writing The Third Book, Of Course, I Will Be President Of The United States, And That Also Will Have Something To Do With It. I'll Probably Have To Acknowledge That Somehow.

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I Have No Skills. I Mean, I Can Make Jokes, I'm Pretty Good At Talking To People On The Judge John Hodgman Podcast. I Can Figure Out What Makes A Pretty Good Story, And I Can Make Eggs Really Well.

It Seems That Every Generation Needs Its Public, Tweedy, Literary Personality To Sell Its Consumer Electronics. To Whatever Degree I Can Live Up To The Plimptonian Legacy, I Am Humble And Proud.

I Think That I'm Reaching A Point In My Life And In My Career Where Soon It Will Be Important For Me To Get Out Of The Way And Let Younger, Hungrier, More Interesting People Do What It Is That I Do. Maine Is A Wonderful Place To Hide, Because No One Ever Looks For You There. And The Goal Of Every Person In Maine, Whether Native Or From Away, Seems To Be To Mitigate As Possible All Human Interaction. So It's A Good Place To Disappear In.

Everyone Feels Like They Would Love To Be A Really Cool Bartender In A Really Cool Bar, But You're Still Surrounded By People Who Want To Destroy Themselves With Alcohol. When You Look At It That Way, It's Not That Much Fun.

I'm An Older, Wall-eyed, Overweight, Tweedy Writer Who Has Been Lucky Enough To Be Asked To Play Various Iterations Of Himself In A Certain Realm Of Popular Cultutre. That Gives Me Great Joy And Excitement, But I Don't Go To The Media Saying, "and I'm Also The World's Greatest Actor."

I've Made My Evolutionary Purpose And Had Children. I Don't Care If Anybody Likes Me, I'm Going To Do What I Want To Do. I'm Going To Do A Whole Comedy Show About Swimming In The Loathsomely Cold Waters Of Maine.

I Used To Enjoy The Anonymity Of Being A Literary Figure And Occasionally A Public Radio Figure.

Even In My Own Life, There Are Memories I Have That Are Difficult To Explain - Happenings That Are So Odd And Unaccountably Weird, That It Is Difficult To Imagine They Were Not The Result Of Prolonged And Frequent Contact With Aliens Throughout My Life.

It's Not A Secret Family Like I Have A Beautiful, Gorgeous Wife In Tokyo; I Have Another Mom And Dad. I'm The Kid And I Have Another Mom And Dad In Atwater Village, Los Angeles.

Creating Fake Facts Does Require A Measure Of Haphazard Research, Insofar As They Need To Not Just Be Possible, But Also Interesting.

Do Not Listen To The Killjoys Who Tell You Never To Eat Oysters In Months That Do Not Contain The Letter R: May, June, July, August, Octoba. You Know.

You Are Only Pretentious If You Are Not Sincere.

People Like What They Like. They're Gonna Do What They're Gonna Do.

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G. Stanley Hall

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