A candid conversation with John Hodgman

Trivia expert, deranged millionaire, and owner of a weird dad moustache, John Hodgman brings his unique brand of comedy to the Plaza on Tues., September 22.
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? Before becoming a TV performer, Hodgman was a writer who wrote for such pubs as the New York Times and McSweenys as well as being a frequent contributor for “This American Life.” After writing a book of invented trivia and completely fake facts entitled, The Areas of My Expertise, Hodgman was asked to appear on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” where he continues to provide commentary as the show’s resident expert.
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? Since then, Hodgman has gone on to write two more books, star in a number of shows and films, and released his own stand-up special, Ragnorak, on Netflix.
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? CL talked to Hodgman about his new Vacationland tour, Ayn Rand, and the culture shock of leaving the entertainment-saturated city of New York for the quiet suburbs of New England.
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? You performed in Atlanta last year, and you’re coming back to perform at the Plaza this month. Is your Vacationland show similar to the last time you were in town or completely different?
? It’s a completely different show with completely new material but it is similar to my last show in the sense that it is sort of more traditional stand-up with true story jokes and observations from my real life as simply me, John Hodgman, television person. Same as my television personality and live performance John Hodgman impersonator than say, the weird, surreal material that I would have done when I was bringing my books around to Atlanta as the resident expert from “The Daily Show.”
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? People who were at that show and enjoyed it will get to see more and new stories from my highly implausible life and enjoy more ruminations on how rather than the world ending in 2012, as I predicted it would, the world is instead ending for me the same way it is ending for everybody, slowly day by day. The last time I performed, regarding some of the material in the show... My friend John Roderick from The Long Winters said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you enjoy the white privilege mortality comedy of John Hodgman.” It really stings but, truth in advertising.
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? That’s quite a description.
? I mean, the truth is that he was the one I was telling a bunch of weird lies about … hobos and the great depression and the war zeppelins that sunk submarines like I did in my books. Even so, that was still an honest expression of the stuff that I was preoccupied with at that time, that is to say, hobos and zeppelins. That was my gig at the time but, as I’ve grown older and discovered myself with a weird dad mustache — an appropriate weird dad mustache because I am a weird dad, I began to feel like I might as well stop hiding certain aspects of my life behind costumes and characters like deranged millionaire and instead just say, “For better or worse, here I am,” which I think is really what all of the comedians that I really enjoy have always done anyway. I can’t not acknowledge that I am a guy with a mustache to signify to the world that I have done my biological work and procreated and, therefore, no longer deserve physical affection.
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? It’s like how a ring on your finger tells the world, “Hey, I’m taken.” A mustache tells everyone, “No, I’m really taken. I have kids.”
? Yeah. I mean, it’s not worth taking. Precisely.
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? Yeah, I think there’s a lot of comics who do a bit of both where their act is a mix of personal stuff plus a little of the abstract. But as you’ve dipped into more personal material, do you find yourself losing the desire to do the more absurd aspects of your act? Do you prefer doing the personal material?
My last show was quite personal but, you know, I still enjoy the absurd and it ended with me dressing up as Ayn Rand and singing “We’re In the Money” in a Russian accent, accompanying myself on the ukulele. I still enjoy that stuff very much and I would love to be visited by Ayn Rand again in my life because that character was such a joy to play. It was so liberating, first of all, to undress on stage and then wear a dress and then embody my version of Ayn Rand, which is not far from the real Ayn Rand which was a person who could be incredibly mean and also weirdly funny. I mean, we only do what we can and, truthfully, lots of times I think most creative people agree we don’t have ideas. Ideas possess us and my feelings for this show have been, “let’s see if I can go even more to sort of straightforward and personal.” Even fewer bells and whistles. Let’s see if Ayn Rand doesn’t show up whether it will still be fun and, so far, it really has been. That doesn’t mean — I might bring the Ayn Rand dress just in case.
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? Just in case. You recently did The Meltdown on Comedy Central this summer as Rand.
Yeah, that was right in the first phase of my Ayn Randium moment. You know, “The Daily Show” gave me so much. It transformed my career into something really remarkable and plausible that I never take for granted and I’m grateful for every day. I’m so happy for Jon Stewart and sad that the show has come to the close of this particular chapter. The only regret I have is that I never forced Ayn Rand in to take a stab at Jon. It just didn’t come to be but, maybe with Trevor Noah? We’ll see.
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? Well speaking of which, what are your thoughts on “The Daily Show” switching hands?
I don’t have a lot of thoughts about it, I only have feelings. You know, that last show with Jon, not just the show itself but the entire day, was a really overstimulating day full of feels of all kinds. A lot of sadness, a lot of exhilaration, a lot of, “I can’t believe this is happening,” both positive and negative and pride in being in the show that we all made together and gratitude to Jon for making it happen. You know, it was also sort of like the last day of high school. You don’t know when you’re going to see your friends again and that’s sad. Trevor I think is terrific and is really funny and we’ve met a couple of times and I’ve enjoyed those meetings a lot. Maybe he’ll want to be Ayn Rand. We’ll see. It’ll take some time for him to figure out what his show is going to look and feel like and we’ll all be figuring it out with him. It’s kind of impossible to say.
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? It’s truly like an end of an era over there but I think it the show has been so great for so long, I’m sure it will keep going in a very good direction.
Absolutely and, you know, the show was so good for so long because Jon was so deciduous in making sure that he was engaged with the show but, you know, from the movie that he made, that he’s capable of doing a lot of other stuff and he also has a human family of his own. He does not have and never did have the luxury that I have of being unemployed basically all the time so that I could escape say to New England, to my home region and just not be part of culture for a couple of weeks or months. That’s the other thing that made it equally weird is that I’ve been hiding out in Maine, which is in the United States, and working on a writing project and then I flew down the day before and, all of a sudden, not only am I in New York City but I’m listening to Bruce Springsteen sound check from “The Daily Show” studio for the last show. I felt really turned upside down.
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? Wow, yeah.

? John:?Yeah, I mean that’s a crazy story, right? I’m glad I have it and I’m glad for Jon and he’s going to do great and Trevor is going to do great and I’m just sad that Ayn Rand wasn’t there.
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? I want to talk to this. You split time. You live in Maine though most stuff is shot in LA or New York.
You know, I started out — the idea that I would be an on-camera person was, frankly, ridiculous. Even before I had this terrible mustache, I was a hideous, thirty-five year old man baby with a big, round head and a wandering eye. Maybe it still is implausible but it is the case that my career now is on camera but, before that, I was a writer and I wrote for magazines and I wrote weird books of fake trivia so, it was an existence in which I and my wife, who is a high school teacher, and my children who are embarrassingly unemployed and frankly unemployable due to their lack of fine motor skills at the time. We could go away and leave the city to go to a little house that my mom left us in western Massachusetts when she passed away and, once you live between two worlds, essentially it’s hard to go back even though it is really crippling to one’s career as a television performer.
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? The fact that “The Daily Show” in 2006 put me on this different career path and I still wanted to be able to spend time with my family, which is basically the greatest cliche in the world because, I guess, I love my children. Sure. But also, I just felt it was a big, important part of my life to go from one style of living to another. To be in a city, which is where I grew up, and then go into a very rural part of western Massachusetts and a not particularly very pretty part of western Massachusetts. Not a vacation area but just another community and feel and deal with life where you have to bring your own garbage to the dump and kill the mice that are in the garage and, for someone from Brookpine, Massachusetts who had asthma and dressed as Doctor Who as a kid, those are two big challenges for me.
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? That’s, in some degree, what this whole show, Vacationland, is about. The transitions in my life as I stopped being a child and start being a grown up at the age of forty four and then, also, as a person of the city confronting a very different way of life. Particularly in Maine, where all of the waters and the beaches and the plants and the animals and a lot of people want to kill you.
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? Do you think that living in someplace that’s far from all the entertainment industry, taking a step away from all that stuff to where life is not as hectic, would you say that helped you as a comedian? Does spending time somewhere less saturated with comedy help your writing?
Yeah. I mean, that’s in part the purpose of all travel. You know, the best reason to travel, of course, is to destabilize the way you see the world so, if you conquer seeing the world or you remember to see the world with fresh eyes. You remove context. You take yourself out of context. You place yourself into places where you normally wouldn’t go. You see and you learn more about people. It’s why I like to go on tour. It’s why I like to do the Judge John Hodgman podcast because I can talk to people from all over the country and the world and learn a little bit about their lives and tell them when they’re right and wrong and that sort of thing.
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? Certainly, taking yourself out of the entertainment world, whether it’s in New York or LA or now Atlanta, the hub of production that it is. You take yourself out of that road and place and you remember that, “Oh yeah, I don’t need constant attention and approval to live.” I don’t need to be constantly looking for jobs and getting jobs. That, if it all came down to it, I could make a life for myself in another part of the world doing honest work and I don’t need constant approval from all the people in entertainment who work to make sure that you’re happy. It’s good enough to go to the country where all the people don’t give a shit whether you’re happy and maybe wish you ill. It’s hard to say because every time I go up to the country, I’m convinced it’s going to end with me being stoned or drowned to appease some pagan god.
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? Oh my.
Yeah. One of these years, I think it’s going to happen.
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? Well, I believe you’ll be safe in Atlanta.
Thank you.
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? John Hodgman: Vacationland. $30. September 22 at 9:30pm, Plaza Theatre, 1049 Ponce De Leon Ave. 404-873-1939. plazaatlanta.com
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