John Hodgman - Episode 1 (see also Episode 72)

If you listened to Episode 72 , with John Hodgman, or even if you didn't (you should), here's Episode 1, as promised, with same.

As many of you already know, we recently dropped Episode 72, the return of our Episode 1 guest, John Hodgman. Back when that first episode (and a few that followed) came out, we didn’t have a website, thus no episode page, so we’re catching up now - here’s Episode 1 in all its glory.

Below is some of the text from the intro to that episode, from only three years back, which turned out to be quite formative to the show, and which feels like a podcasting lifetime ago:

“As an artist, it feels good to be recognized for your work. As a narcissist it feels GREAT to be recognized for nothing” - J. Hodgman

Author Michael Joseph Gross begins his book Starstruck, When a Fan Gets Close to Fame by recounting a conversation he had with Ray Bradbury, who tells Gross about how, when he was 13, his family moved from Illinois to Hollywood, where Bradbury became an autograph hound. He would hang around outside Paramount Studios with the other older, grown-up autograph hounds and . . . hound celebrities for autographs. 

Bradbury tells Gross, “I was standing outside the walls of Paramount Studios when I was 13 years old, and I had a dream that I would jump over the wall and land inside, and write a picture.” 

Gross goes on to tell us that, 20 years later, the dream had come true. Bradbury had written the script for John Huston’s Moby Dick and found himself on other side of those very same cordons at the premiere, where he spied many of those same collectors he had known as a kid.

Bradbury went over to his old friends and asked them if they remembered him, which they did. They proceed to asked him what he was up to now, and, then, Bradbury tells Gross,  

“I got very embarrassed and didn’t want to tell them. There was this chasm that had opened up between us, between what we had done together, what they were doing now, and what I was doing now, And I said, “I worked on the screenplay.” And they said, “Did you type it, were you in the stenographer’s department?” and I said “No, I wrote the screenplay.” And a strange and magical thing happened, suddenly all their hands shot out and there were half a dozen autograph books in front of me and someone handing me a pen. I had crossed the border. I was not collecting autographs, I was giving my first ones. It made me cry. I had made it over the wall. But none of those other people had made it over the wall.” 

Thank you, Ray Bradbury and Michael Joseph Gross for this perfect anecdote to start off 15 Minutes.

On 15 Minutes we’ll hear from people on all different parts of that journey, people on the far side of the wall, who are famous or semi-famous. People who’ve climbed over, haven’t liked what they’ve seen, and climbed right on back, never to return. People who’ve struggled over and been chucked unceremoniously back. People who have avoided fame like the plague, those who’ve craved it their whole lives, others who’re just now starting to clamber up the wall, and we’ll also hear from some teenagers who’re still deciding whether to even approach it.  

Our first guest is John Hodgman. You may know him as a correspondent on the Daily Show, as the author of several compendia of dubious knowledge, as the personification of  a personal computer from the Mac ads, as the proprietor of the Judge John Hodgman podcast, or maybe from way back in the day from his McSweeney’s online column,“John Kellogg Hodgman, Former Literary Agent.” Or you may not know him at all.  

We recorded this conversation on Labor Day weekend 2014, as John was coming to the end of a New England summer vacation at his family home, when he had scheduled a casual meetup of the Justice Club of his podcast at the Rendezvous, in Turners Falls, Mass. The meetup was, in part, as John put it, to get back in shape for being famous as he headed back to work for fall in New York -  it was a one-day celebrity spring training, if you will.  

The episode includes a bonus impromptu-ish Judge John Hodgman podcast meetup - it was recorded in a crowded bar, so please pardon the ambience.  

Thank you so much, John, for helping get the ball rolling!

Thanks to Ed Patenaude for engineering/editing, keeping me calm and helping me figure out all kinds of zany tech shit.

Thanks to Anja Schutz, photographer, webmaster, logo designer, and patient, supportive, and superinsightful wife! 

Thanks to these musicmakers, the dreamers of the dream: Christian Cundari at Fish Fin Studios, Nick Zampiello, at New Alliance East, and Matt Savage, for bringing them together.

Thanks to Devon for the tag!

Thanks to YOU for listening. 

Find us on Facebook/Twitter/iTunes/Spotify and pretty much everywhere pods are cast and, if you’re feeling patron-like, on Patreon. And please please subscribe/download/ rate us on iTunes! It’s super important and wicked helpful!

Enjoy!