fivecats journal

John Hodgman @ UNC
October 2006 Chapel Thrill, NC
And, yes, this was taken with my crappy cellphone camera. The 990 is still in the shop.
____________________________________

Zjheeeeem came to my office today around mid-afternoon and said, “Bye. I’m going to disappear for a while.”

If I were an uptight kind of manager I would could have gone through the standard (Nobody Expects the) Spanish Inquisition-style questioning. Instead, I simply said, “Okay. ‘Bye!”

Zjheeeeem paused and said, “Actually, you might be interested in this. Do you know who John Hodgman is? He’s the PC in those Mac and PC commercials.”

My eyes lit up.

“Sure! He’s also on The Daily Show. What’s he doing here?”

“Well, I heard an interview on the radio with him today and he’s going to be doing a reading in the Student Center of his new book.”

As I got up to leave with him another co-worker came to my door.

“Do either of you want to go to the presentation by one of the founders of Google on the philosophy and future directions of Google? It starts in half an hour!”

Let’s see here: Minor Cultural Icon John Hodgman or some guy from The Borggle spinning their plan for world domination into something that’s supposed to sound like it’s for the good of all mankind.

No contest.

Hodgman was fantastic. He read from his book “The Areas of My Expertise,” an absolutely brilliant idea of a book -- a compendium of lists, information and assorted facts, every last bit of it unabashedly made up. He read with the standard dry demeanour that he’s become known for and paused but did not react in any way when the crowd laughed at his many outrageous bits of history and insight.

During the lengthy Q&A session someone asked him which medium he preferred working in -- radio, television, film or print.

Print, he responded. Each medium had it’s advantages and it’s draws, but writing this book was “a pure joy.” It was the most fun he’d had in a long time.

It was then that I realized I’m trying to write the wrong book.

The other day I left a longwinded comment (who, me?) in drood’s posting about false starts in writing. (If you aren’t reading drood’s lj, you should) The comment was really more of the start to a piece of hardboiled fiction that I had intended to end fairly quickly but (surprise) just kept writing.

drood’s response was “And your book isn’t finished why, exactly?”

I won’t bother quoting the whole exchange (that’s what his comments section for that entry are for, after all) but I realized this afternoon that I’m not writing it because it’s not fun. Writing something stupid -- like “A Clear Tract in Sin” about Nectarina St. Clair and Bryce Vancelan -- sounds like fun.

Or at least a lot less pressure to write The Perfect Social Awakening Story.

...