John Hodgman is the common denominator in many of our favorite things: The Daily Show, Bored To Death, hobos, and iconic computer commercials. The former literary agent released his third book, That Is All, last fall, and it neatly bookends his three-part series of Complete World Knowledge in addition to providing a blueprint for the end of the world (hint: Stephen King is somehow still publishing books). We will grant him what "any writer really wants" and say that it is very funny, because it is.
We recently spoke with Hodgman (at length!) about the nexus of nerd/jock culture, what it's like to be more than a "thousandaire," and what's actually hiding behind his mustache. If you missed Hodgman's reading at the Brooklyn Public Library in February, you can hear his voice in his weekly podcast, Judge John Hodgman.
Your list of 700 Ancient and Unspeakable Ones, how many were edited off of that list? Which ones didn't make the cut? Well, as you may know, this is the third list of 700 esoteric names that I have tortured myself and America with since the first book was 700 Hobo nicknames from the Great Depression, the second was 700 Mole-man names, not nicknames, but formal names and titles, and occupations and this one was of course the 700 Ancient and Unspeakable Gods. It is not easy to make one of these lists, in fact, it is slightly easier to make one than it is to read one.
The pain of them is distributed across both parties. But I have gotten better at it so whereas I would say that probably, one hobo nickname was included for every five that I came up with, or abandoned in half nickname. The ancient and unspeakable ones was probably a three to one ratio of bad names to one, not horrible name. The real trick is when you can get into a run of six or seven that all reference each other. Or one suggests another. And it would be really spectacular if I had a great example of that but I'm afraid I'm going to have to force you to. To actually look at the terrible list yourself, or encourage your readers to do that.
What is the process when you're coming up with those lists? Do you have an I Ching open? Do you just knock it out all at once? Well you couldn't physically knock it out all at once. Because it takes mathematically, I could probably sit down and do ten in about a half an hour, and then the next ten in about 45 minutes, and then the next ten in an additional hour, because obviously there is a lot of Ancient and Unspeakable One name-generating fatigue. Which you probably read about in Psychology Today. And your imagination and your tolerance for these horrible creatures tends to dry up. And so by that metric, what did I say, 30? 30 and 2 hours and 15 minutes. So let's say even, we'll give it, you know, being really generous to me, 30 names in 2 hours. 30 names in 120 minutes. So that's 4 minutes a name. Am I doing the math correctly?
I haven't done math since 2004 but I think you're correct. Right. So 4 minutes a name. Now divide 24 hours by 4 minutes. Multiply 4 minutes by 700, what's that? 28 hundred minutes.
That's a lot of minutes. Alright, now divide that by 6 people. And I'll think you'll see it's very much like looking into the teeth of Shug-Nubbuth The Tooth Cloud. The moment you start doing this cyclopian math, your brain starts to shut down. But I mean to say, it is impossible considering doing it in one setting. I imagine that the first one, where I did the hobo names, the idea seemed so simple and silly and dumb, that I imagine it might take maybe one long crazy afternoon or perhaps two or three days at the most. And it ended up taking a total of three weeks. And you know, one week of sort of working on it off and on, sort of one non-sequential week, and then maybe two solid weeks where that was my job 6 hours a day or something.
Nick Nolte is listed as the second ancient and unspeakable one, which I think is fair. But his name is all over this thing. Is there any particular reason that you pick on Nolte so much? Well that's an example of a kind of cheat, whether you're making a list of hobo nicknames, or mole-man names, or elder god names, and those I think are the three kinds that you could make. Whichever ones you do, it's good to have a few internal references, popular culture references, and call-back jokes within them.
Nick Nolte is actually one of the very few hobo nicknames that I did not make up myself. At one point of desperation in the first book, I did put out a call to a couple funny friends of mine and said I'm stuck at about name 360, any ideas? And my friend Christine Connor wrote back immediately with two suggestions: Fat Man and the Beast, which were the college nicknames of two friends of her dad's, and then Nick Nolte. And I think it was because it was not that long before when Nick Nolte had taken that incredibly unfortunate mug shot. And he just sort of incarnated the completely unpredictable, chaotic and impenetrable logic that I wanted to give to the hobos in the book.
Because the hobos in the first book were not merely vagrants—there was specifically a sub-culture during the Great Depression, which was a real sub-culture of people who had chosen a life outside of society basically, and then in my book that they followed certain strict adherence to chaos and hated normalcy even to the point of hating memory. And I felt that looking into the mug shot eyes of Nick Nolte, I felt that he probably felt the same thing.
And then I got lazy and I just added him into the Mole-men as well, because, you know, when you're doing 700 you gotta give yourself a couple of cheats. So then I made it out that he was not only a hobo, but he was mole-man—a subterranean creature who had come to live on the surface and became a hobo. And then I figured it was only fair to put him into the final grouping as well. And say that not only is Nick Nolte an Ancient and Unspeakable God but he is actually the human form of Quetzalcoatl, because all of it sounds plausible to some degree. And not only does it feel right, I also feel that that worst thing that could happen is that Nick Nolte could attempt to murder me personally. I don't think that he would try to sue me. But I could be wrong.
You haven't seen him in that, to borrow your phrase, unfortunate HBO show about the horses, have you? No, I have not seen the completely paradoxically named, "Luck."
His voice in that is amazing. He sounds like he's been living off bourbon and rocks—like actual stones. It's pretty incredible. [ED: Seriously, listen to this and tremble.] [Laughs] Patton Oswalt, one of my comedy heroes, once described on his album Feelin' Kind of Patton, the announcer for Carvel Ice Cream in the 80s as sounding like Tom Waits gargling glass. Which makes it clear that Patton Oswalt is one of the best writers of our generation.
I'm glad you mentioned him because he wrote a column for Wired in December in which he called for a destruction of nerd culture because it had been so co-opted by the mainstream. You write about this in your idea of the geek-jock convergence. Do you have the same take on it as Patton? Does geek culture need to be destroyed to be saved? I won't go so far as to say if it's good or bad. But there is a clear mainstreaming of traditional nerd and geek cultural touchstones. Comic books, computer science, science fiction, and even down to the internet itself. Which was one of the precious resources hoarded by a self-selected populace of nerdy, relatively affluent, typically caucasian, computer nerds. Well into the mid-2000s. And now of course with the general spread of internet and especially with it going to non-desk top devices, to phones, right? Now it has become pervasive.
Patton, I think, made a point that it was maybe not so good. I will agree with him in the sense that it is profoundly unsettling. Because it does suggest that a culture that we both took some comfort in and took some refuge in, when it became clear that we were not able or willing to join the culture of game-players and rope-climbers and sex-havers that surrounded us in high school might be becoming a little less distinct and a little less meaningful and a little no longer ours. And I can see how that would be a little disturbing but the reality is that that is what growing up is. I think that there definitely is, as they say, a blurring of the lines between what traditionally constitutes, or constituted, jock culture and geek culture and I hope that that's a factor for good. But it definitely is a factor of change. Or a vector of change.
This seems most apparent to me in the success of Game Of Thrones Of course, absolutely.
The books are for the "nerdier" set but the show itself seems geared towards people who like watching graphic sex and violence. Which is, for the most part, all television watching humans. The thing about nerd culture becoming popular, if someone was talking about why is nerd culture becoming mainstream, the answer is "Duh! We like the same things you do." These books, these stories, these movies that we love, we love them because they're really good. And sometimes when they're bad, they're really bad in the same tittilating ways that all humans enjoy.
I think the difference with Game of Thrones isn't that people are open to a different kind of story, because, basically, Game of Thrones is The Wire, plus Dallas, plus Lord of the Rings. That's a story that everyone would like. What's different is that people are willing to not be embarrassed to be watching a fantasy show. That there is a stigma that has been erased around some of these genre things. And while that, I think, may make a couple of people feel sad that their favorite things are now reaching dumb jocks, I think that that's just generally, you know, erasing stigmas means that culture is progressing.
You don't think there's any sort of dilution there? No, I don't think so. I think that there is a difference between what the culture is and the feeling of proprietorship that the people feel they have over it. And a big part of nerd culture, as part of any sub-culture is the feeling of tremendous release, that I have found something that really speaks to me and doesn't speak to a whole lot of other people, and I like the other people it speaks to. That seems to draw a bright, beautiful line around a moment in time, or around an aesthetic, or around a community that makes you feel good and happy and empowered. And that has nothing to do with how many dragons you have in a piece of culture or how many laser beams you have in a piece of culture or how many weird guitarists that this incredibly obscure indie band is using in a piece of culture.
It has everything to do with the sense of community that you feel with the other enjoyers, the makers of that culture, that then you feel is violated when the wrong people start to like like it. What I'm saying is that if something is good, and really good, the wrong people will always start to like it. It simply will reach out and find that audience, if its lucky, it will be larger than the little He-man Woman Haters Club that you've built up largely in your own mind around it. And you can't stop that, nor if you really like that piece of culture and especially the creator who made it, should you want to.
Culture is not your support group. It's not your therapy group. Culture is something that one or a few people make in order to reach other people. And whether its nerdom, indie rock, or all the sub-sets of nerdom, nerdom is generally defined as enthusiasm for a somewhat obscure thing. Whether it's comic books, whether it's fantasy, whether it's science fiction, whether it's manga, whether it's anime, whether it's indie rock, whether it's rap, or certain underground forms of rap, whatever it is, you should be supporting that culture reaching as many people as possible.
One of my favorite parts in the book was the chart of sports mascots, particularly Mentally Ill Crab and Gunhead—I tend to think mascots are one of the more hilariously stupid aspects of professional sports. I know you're sort of friends with Jets center Nick Mangold—do you still have a cynical view towards sports or can you appreciate them more now that this convergence of cultures is happening? I always appreciate the sports and the people who play them and I especially appreciate and understand the pleasure of football having gotten a tutorial and played an incredibly awkward game of it with Nick Mangold. What I only ever took offense to was the culture surrounding sports, rather than the sports themselves. And the culture is utterly as tribal as any nerd who loves an indie rock band and feels a kinship to that band, or any comic book nerd who loves Neil Gaiman.
The difference is that the tribal of sports generally is understood by all of culture as the acceptable tribal of sports. And indeed, to feel kinship with fellow sports fans, is culturally profoundly normal, whereas to feel kinship with people on the internet with who love George R.R. Martin is even to this day, considered to be a little bit culturally suspect and weird, and sexless and abnormal. And the culture around sports is that you have to love that local team, or else you may not belong. That's something that I think is not productive. I can enjoy watching a sports game, I get excited when the local team wins, it all feels good. [Laughs] That all feels good.
But I do not insist that some sports fan be able to name all eleven Doctors Who. I accept that that may not be their thing. And so, I don't enjoy the cultural insistence that I should know, and more importantly, care about sports at all times. That's sort of where I'm coming from. I think the thing that really enervates nerds a lot, is that sports and sports fans especially are exactly as tribal and obsessive as anything and as nerdy as any nerd culture. But sports has a good rap for being normal and nerd culture has a rap for being wholesome, and part of what you need to be in order to be a normal American man, especially.
And the rest is all seen as suspect, and stunted, and masturbatory and weird. Now, there are reasons for every cliche. [Laughs] With that said, sports have another difference which is that it is unlike nerd culture, it is not in any way niche culture. And so the power that a nerd takes from the culture that he consumes is the fact that he or she knows that not a lot of other people speak this language. And maybe they even know most of them on the internet already. The power that a sports fan takes from being a sports fan is that this is really the last ways that audiences of that size go in that stadium and especially on television, gather together for a live event. And they take pleasure I think, in aligning themselves, and they take pleasure and power from becoming literally part of the wave of hundreds of thousands of people all liking the same thing. And that is a different pleasure than the nerd takes from his or her favorite fantasy author, or whatever. It's really much more a sense of proprietorship, like this is my thing and if someone else gets their hands on it it's ruined.
But, as I say, these things are all shifting and changing. But I don't know, I have no problem with mascots, I don't know why you hate mascots so much, those guys gotta make a living.
I spoke with your friend David Rees a few months ago and he was talking about his pencil sharpening book and mentioned that he understood why it was labeled as humor, but he told me that in some ways it was an emotional memoir in the guise of a pencil sharpening book. And there are a few passages in this book at least where you sort of crack the door a little bit to yourself for the reader. Do you view your trilogy of books as sort of an emotional memoir? Well, the books are, as much as possible, both in content and in form, a completely unfettered and unmediated emanation of my own preoccupations. I wouldn't say it constitutes a memoir, because a memoir would suggest that I have actually sat down and done the work of synthesizing my memories into a thematic soul and giving them a clear, straight narrative thread. So even the most absurd things, you know, lists of 700 Ancient and Unspeakable Gods, which do not necessarily tell the heartbreaking story of a young man from Brookline, Massachusetts, who then from the hard scrabble streets of Brookline, Massachusetts then proved himself at Yale University in order to fulfill his class destiny by coming to New York City and working in publishing. [Laughs]
But they still reveal very personal preoccupations. And then there are also portions that are much more straightforward about me, and how I think about things. And I think that there's absolutely nothing unique about that because you're making something good. David Rees is a very special artist, creator, funnyman, performer, clipart cartoonist, whatever. Whatever label you could possibly put on them because across all of those fields, and diverse as the world that he works in, everything is synonymous with him because as funny as he is he is also very sincere and always himself. And he is the opposite of cynical. And while he can be sarcastic, he is largely the opposite of sarcasm too. He believes it.
That's very compelling to me and something that I emulate as much as possible because I feel that the best you can give if you're going to make something for someone else, is to really figure out what you honestly have to say and bother their time with. And not just come up with some way to cynically exploit what they might be interested in.
Or in his case, someone pays him $15 to sharpen a pencil, he does a damn fine job and really believes in his craft. Yeah, and part of the joke is that this may have started out as a ridiculous sort of meta-joke on the sort of twee artisanal movement, but he ended up taking the same care that he puts into every project he does, addressed it with the same curiosity that he has about the world as a whole, and learned a fuckload about pencil sharpening. So what might have began as sort of a bar side joke transformed into an area of actual expertise and lessons that he learned by that expertise. I think that's tremendous.
And I'm not suggesting that everyone in the world should care about what I do, but if I'm going to do anything, I owe them at least that I'm going to be honest with myself about what my preoccupations are, about what I'm thinking about, what I'm interested in, what I find funny, what I find weird, and put it out there and hope that they respond. Otherwise I'm just writing jokes. Or alternately, I could have gone a different way in my life, I could've just continued to write my perfect replicas of very sincere short fiction that I had learned in creative writing class. Which, unfortunately, a lot of joke writing is just people writing imitations of jokes, and a lot of fiction writing is people just writing imitations of short stories that moved them at one point. And when you actually find someone, in any genre, like David who is connecting, who is giving you something of himself, I personally find it electrifying.
Are you still wearing your mustache at the moment and how connected is your mustache to your character of the deranged millionaire? The mustache is walking just ahead of me as we speak. And it is deeply connected to me, and not just follicularly. The mustache I started to grow when I was thinking a little bit more about telling the third book from the point of view of The Deranged Millionaire. Which was of course a callback to a character that I had dreamed up with John Flansburgh in an early They Might Be Giants video before I ever thought I would have a career in television, I never though that I would be a thousandaire, much less have any financial stability in my life. [Laughs] And yet it was also I think, as ridiculous as it is, the character is kind of a reflection of where I felt I was when I was writing the book and even now. Financially I do have security and I have felt at times that really weird and almost shameful relief to not have to think about money.
They say money can't buy happiness but boy of boy are they wrong. [Laughs] It's really astonishing to have struggled for a long time and to feel "why do I have this anxiety, why do I have this self-loathing, why do I have this depression?" and to have sought medical help for it, to have sought therapeutic help for it and to have worked through it the best you can to resolve personal issues and your own fear of confrontation, and x, y, and z, and then to look at your bank account and realize, well I'm going to be okay, and my family's going to be okay, and just suddenly feel all those problems melt away, and realize so much of it is tied up with that. [Laughs] It's really astonishing and really shameful in a sense.
It's interesting you mentioned shameful because isn't a mustache sort of mask that one wears in a way? That's exactly true. And the idea of the Deranged Millionaire, whether its Howard Hughes, or whether it's Richard Branson, or whether it's anyone else you've ever encountered or just seen on television and has more money than they could possibly spend for the rest of their lives they become a different species of human. And they don't know how to engage in a world anymore that is a world without any material wants whatsoever. And they also tend to grow weird facial hair.
Now if I could've grown a big Howard Hughes-like beard, I would've done it. Unfortunately mine refused to comply with those instructions so I did the best I could because a mustache, particularly these days, really announces to the world that you don't care to be a part of society anymore. Unless you're in Williamsburg, in which case it announces you're ready to work at a boutique or at a bar.
Do you still wear the lower half? I do but that comes and goes. And I'm not saying that my mustache is forever. But at a time when I was taking stock of what had happened in my life and I suddenly had this career, that I suddenly had a measure of financial independence that I also had never expected, when I suddenly had become 40 years old and was feeling time passing in a way that was quicker than I had ever felt it pass, and I felt that dislocation from the person that I was when I had started writing these books and that deranged millionaire type feeling of walking as a ghost through the world, that it was time to put on a mustache and announce to the world that I was insane and no longer sexually available to anyone. [Laughs] I was beyond human need. Beyond the need for your approval, beyond the need for your affection, beyond the need for your attention. None of which is true, of course, but that was kind of the way that I was trying to create this character.
You shot this great promo video—the one where there were a lot of celebrities in the celebrity cameo room and whatnot, but in the beginning of it you pronounce the word "robot," "robit." Do you actually pronounce the word "robot" "robit" or do you know anyone who does? I do know someone who does and I took it from them.
Do they do so ironically? They do.
I actually know someone who says "robit" because that's how they pronounce it. What 110 year old man are you hanging around?
It's my friend's dad and he says "robit." And at this point it's just reflex for him. I think among the dadly and grandadly generation is was a legit alternate pronunciation. My friend, producer, colleague and hero Jesse Thorn, of Bullseye and the Judge John Hodgman podcast, said "robit" one time recently that I thought was funny. Jonathan Coulton, my other friend, colleague, and hero, used to say it as a joke back when we were both in college. At the moment Tom Scharpling suggested that I say "robit" in that video and it just all seems to make sense. But honestly, I think "robit" as "robot" is something that I can probably retire from my arsenal for a little while.
Yeah, you don't want to give people too much A little "robit" goes a long way.
