Sunday, January 23, 2011

The Judge John Hodgman podcast

I loved the "Today in the Past" podcast, in which Hodgman read from the year's worth of historical pseudofactual entries from the 365 pages of his second book.

Now, that podcast has been replaced by the Judge John Hodgman podcast, available through iTunes or this feed. It's part of the Maximum Fun family of podcasts.


Here is a frequently updated list of the episodes (and evidence) to date:
  1. Is Chili a Soup? (note that this episode is just a part of a "Jordan, Jesse, Go!" podcast installment and is NOT available as part of the Judge John Hodgman podcast) - Download mp3
  2. Dish Soap or Hand Soap? - mp3
  3. Are Machine Guns Robots? - mp3
  4. Tear Down That Wall - Breaking The Fourth Wall, Yea or Nay? - mp3 (This is one of my favorites.)
  5. The Long-Necked Custody Battle - mp3 - video evidence
  6. The Lovely Couple - mp3
  7. The Lion's Den - mp3 - photographic evidence
  8. To Tree Or Not To Tree - mp3
  9. The Parenthetical Petition - mp3
  10. The Cone-tractual Dispute - mp3 - accompanying photographic evidence
  11. The Case of the Youthful Indiscretions - mp3 - accompanying photographic evidence
  12. You Say Martucci, I Say Martucci - mp3
  13. The Tahitian Take-Out - mp3 - photographic evidence
  14. Snob V. Slob - mp3 - photographic evidence
  15. Sesame Street Justice - mp3
  16. The Potluck Problem - mp3
  17. Parents Just Don't Understand - mp3
  18. The Colbert Rapport - mp3 - photos of the complainants
  19. The Ironman Trial-Athlon - mp3
  20. An Appeel-ate Case Decision - mp3 - The one about banana peeling
  21. You Say Tomato, I Say Justice - mp3 - The other one about pronunciation
  22. Tips, Tricks, and Justice - mp3 - Hodgman's Twitter summary: "Two gamers debate cheating with @morganwebb while I play colecovision." This is the episode where Hodgman talked about the George Plimpton's Video Falconry ColecoVision game. You can now watch the resurrected TV ad on YouTube.
  23. Arby's-tration - mp3 (Do cab rides and drive-throughs mix? Judge John Hodgman decides.)
  24. The Bedroom Three-way - mp3 - floorplans and relevant photographic evidence
  25. The Girlfriend and the Grasshopper - mp3 - photographic evidence and written testimony
  26. The Toot Dispute - mp3
  27. The Friendship Inquest - mp3 - The one about social networking
  28. The Battle of the Baton - mp3 - The one about the couple where the wife gets annoyed by the husband's faux classical musical conducting
  29. Justice is Out There - mp3 - The one about keeping action figures in their original packaging - [The guy in this one convinced me of his position with just four words.]
  30. Ob-Law-Di, Ob-Law-Da - mp3 - The one about the Beatles - [Repeat Offender Alert: These guys have appeared before in a "clearing the dockets" segment.]
  31. Garbage Man and Wife - mp3 - The one about taking out garbage - Starring Metafilter's mathowie in a special Minor Celebrity edition of the Judge John Hodgman podcast.
  32. The Cow Beef - mp3 - The one about the cow-obsessed dad - photographic evidence
  33. Hors d'oeuvres in the Court - mp3 - The one about bribing children to eat food
  34. De Plane - mp3 - The one about the correct protocol for filing out of an airplane [Correct answer: Maximize flow rate by fast people slipping into small openings and slow people waiting for longer ones. "Row-by-row" is inefficient.]
  35. Unbanded Brothers - mp3 - The one with the boisterous, buzz-marketing, bickering brother band.
  36. Beard Science - mp3 - The one with the college friends who played "beard chicken".
  37. Panta-Lunacy - mp3 - The one where Broadway show performers debate ownership of a pair of pants.
  38. Pepperoni Pauper - mp3 - The one where the girlfriend is embarrassed that her boyfriend sifts through discarded pizza boxes.
  39. Slash-Friction - mp3 - The debate over what constitutes a horror movie.
  40. The Abuse of Flower Power - mp3 - Domestic dispute between lesbians living in a storage facility.
  41. Out of REC-order - mp3 - The one where the guy asks his friend to DVR things for him, but then never watches them.
  42. Driving Miss Drowsy - mp3 - The one with the guys who drove from Santa Cruz to Brooklyn, where one claims to have experienced "car lag" symptoms due to shifting time zones.
  43. Triple Word Scorn - mp3 - The one about playing Scrabble online. This one also contains a highly recommended docket-clearing segment in which Hodgman addresses the question of what makes something "ironic".
  44. The Bedding Crasher - mp3
  45. Apocalypse Row - mp3 - The one where people sort of argue over what to do when civilization collapses and whether taking over the closest Wal-Mart is the soundest strategy.
  46. The Clap Trap - mp3 - The one about whether a band should encourage its audience to clap along with its songs.
  47. The Carry On Carryings On - mp3 - The one in which sisters debate whether about whether short people should be allowed to carry on bags bound for the over-the-seat luggage compartment.
  48. The Wonderful, Terrible, Terrible Towel Trouble - mp3
  49. The Master's Disaster - mp3
  50. Double Dog Dare - mp3
Video Evidence: Video of the robot giraffe from Episode 5:

Back to the JJH episode list

Posts about all the individual Judge John Hodgman podcasts are available at Maximum Fun: http://www.maximumfun.org/tags/shows/judge-john-hodgman. And here is the feed where you can get more JJH.

Other Judge John Hodgman appearances:

Hodgman is currently seeking disputes in need of judging from people attending the Solid Sound Festival in western Massachusetts this June. See his blog entry for more details and for how to contact him.

The SPECIAL, MARITIME LAW EDITION OF JUDGE JOHN HODGMAN from the JoCo Cruise [January 2011] includes the following segments: Seasonal Music vs. Christmas Music:

Brown Gravy vs. Cream Gravy:

And then there is this weird uncategorized encounter between Judge John Hodgman and Famous Tracy (still on the JoCo cruise), included for JJH completeness:

For now, that is all.

[This post has been updated a zillion times.]

Sunday, January 9, 2011

The Little Gray Book Lectures

As a John Hodgman fan, one of the most wonderful but obscure Hodgmanful things I have discovered is the former existence of the Little Gray Book Lectures, a series of entertaining presentations and performances. These could be seen as early inspiration for the "Nerd Nite" phenomenon of having a monthly series of lectures on diverse topics, interspersed with live music, as a nightlife-style activity for the highbrow hipster class. But the Little Gray Book Lectures were different and special. They were organized and hosted by Hodgman, who define the Lectures as:
a series of readings, songs, demonstrations, discussions, and occasional overhead projections that have been held near-monthly in Williamsburg, Brooklyn since 2001... Like "The Little Blue Book" instructional pamphlets of the 20th century that inspired them, the Lectures are amusing, brief, accessible, enlightening, disposable to some, collectible to others, and always theme-specific.

Factoid:
Hodgman's mom gave him a Little Blue Book (specifically, #1143, "How to Prepare a Manuscript") when he started working as a literary agent.

In 2005, several Lectures were packaged as a podcast. You can download mp3 files containing recordings of seven of the Little Gray Book Lectures. The segments recorded live are bracketed by exchanges between Hodgman and Coulton.

Here are direct links to the episodes for your downloading pleasure:
Title
Duration
How to Generate a Winning Character16.5 minutes
Secrets of the Secret Agents34.2 minutes
How to Negotiate All Kinds of Deals and Contracts24.7 minutes
Hints on Public Singing25.8 minutes
Brookline: the Town that Has Everything Yet at the Same Time Has Nothing24.1 minutes
The Countries of Europe Described34.2 minutes
How to Observe Presidents Day (Observed)41.9 minutes


The Little Gray Podcast promoted the idea of converting these lectures into radio programs (much like The Moth). Two episodes are available on PRX including one not released as a podcast (No. 29, How to Communicate Without the Use of Wires). You can stream it (or license it, if you are a radio station) here, but if you want to hear it in its entirety, you have to sign up for a PRX account. The last segment in this Lecture is the Starlee Kine piece on her investigation on a haunted hotel (also aired in Episode 283 of This American Life).

In some alternate universe where John Hodgman did not become a star through his book, Daily Show appearances, and Mac ads, he shepherded the Little Gray Public Radio Show to successful littleness before becoming a star through his book, Colbert Report appearances, and ads in which he plays a non-iPhone "smart" phone.

A nice article about the Little Gray Book Lectures and about Hodgman was published by the New York Observer in December of 2003. Oh, for a time machine to go back and see a Little Gray Book Lecture.

Surprisingly, you can still buy one of the many Cafe Press T-shirts with images describing one of the first 28 Little Gray Book Lectures. Here, for instance, is Little Gray T-shirt No. 28 (note: T-shirt is mostly white and normal-sized).

Also, here is an incomplete list of all the Little Gray Book Lectures:
  1. How to Begin an Important Project
  2. Hints on Public Singing
  3. How to Spell Several Common Words
  4. How Can We Possibly Go On
  5. How to Win a Fight
  6. How to Choose (or Make) the Perfect Gift
  7. Secrets of Self-Improvement
  8. How to Throw a Curveball
  9. Mystery Cults of North America
  10. How and When to Tell A Lie
  11. Europe vs. America
  12. Great Rivalries in American Spelling
  13. How to Seek Your Fortune
  14. How to Speak with Strangers
  15. How to Redistribute Wealth and Joy
  16. How to Pour the Perfect Werthmann
  17. How to Generate a Winning Character
  18. What Will Happen in the Future?
  19. Exiles of Chicago
  20. How to Negotiate All Kinds of Deals and Contracts
  21. How to Measure Misunderstood Genius
  22. How to Gamble and Win
  23. (Missing title: Please send if you know it!)
  24. Strange Gifts From Far-Off Lands
  25. The Animals: Are They Our Enemies?
  26. ???
  27. How to Communicate Without the Use of Wires
  28. How to Observe Presidents' Day (Observed)
  29. How to Commit the Perfect Crime
  30. How to Go Home Again (Or, At Least, to Brookline) - November 4, 2005 - Brookline, Massachusetts
  31. How to Rest Quietly

The description of the last Little Gray Book Lecture (a non-lecture, titled (and entitled) How to Rest Quietly) started: Good evening. If you are here, it is likely because you dialed littlegraybooks.com into your computer. Thank you for spelling 'gray' correctly. One of the questions I am most frequently asked via the internet is this: WHEN WILL THE NEXT LITTLE GRAY BOOK LECTURE OCCUR? AND CAN YOU SCHEDULE IT AROUND MY BIG VACATION PLANS IN WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN?
I am proud to say that I was one of the Internet questioners!


For a long time, this was the last word on Little Gray Book Lectures, with the occasional Hodgman-Coulton book tour show being the closest approximation.

Recently however (September 2010 to be precise), Hodgman filmed the pilot for a potential Showtime series ("GOOD EVENING, MY NAME IS JOHN HODGMAN") and invited his followers to attend. Of it Hodgman said:
BUT ALSO, I HAVE DISCUSSED THIS PROGRAM ON THE INTERNET as the closest thing to the return of the Little Gray Book Lectures that shall ever exist, and those of you who are elderly enough to remember those evenings will already recognize the parallels. The Lectures were a series of themed discussions once held in a former mayonnaise-factory-turned-bar in Williamsburg before “BURGS” were incredibly cool. I have long wanted to return to this venture, but was thwarted by the demands of television, and the feeling that we had accomplished as much as we could in a former mayonnaise factory, and now needed to evolve, and challenge ourselves, and move on to a larger stage.

IDEALLY, this stage would be AT LEAST THE SIZE OF AN ARMORY DRILL HALL, so we have already accomplished that.


Until the next one, we will have to encourage the Little Gray Fanboys inside us to continue to rest quietly.