I have been avoiding social media for the past week. Partly because our (adult) human children have been visiting, and partly because I have other less poisonous light to pour into my eyes as fall arrives in Maine (August 1st), where I am these days.

Here are some things I might have posted to instagram, for example, but didn’t.

What is there to say? They’re not funny or anything. They barely say one word, never mind a thousand, specifically: pretty. And pretty is pretty common. It’s everywhere, if you’re looking. I suppose my point is: you should look. Especially when there’s so much ugly out there to see, constantly. Social media mostly wants you to see only that.

So yes, it’s OK to take a break and let your eyes look at the pretty stuff for a while. This is a completely unoriginal observation at this point, after ten fucking years of all this, no matter how true it is. But that’s the other part of my social media aversion: what thought/joke/opinion can I offer on all this ugliness that has not already been offered, better, by others?

I don’t want to suggest I’ve been completely off the meeds. I only said “avoiding.” But mostly I’ve been trying to say less, listen more, and amplify the good stuff and work that others are doing.

That said, I promised to send you these letters, and to read MOBY-DICK to you in a terrible Maine accent. And so here I am talking.

As usual, these three chapters are essentially self-contained essays, full of luminous, fun, and funny writing that has nothing to do with the plot—which honestly, even at Chapter 85 has still barely gotten started. So if you want to join us in the secret room, it’s always a good time to click a button.

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And as usual, these three chapters of M-B drop many microphones, this time especially on the subject of profundity of shutting up for once. A message as timely now as it was in good ole sperm killing days.

Sure it is, nevertheless, that the Sperm Whale has no proper olfactories. But what does he want of them? No roses, no violets, no Cologne-water in the sea. Furthermore, as his windpipe solely opens into the tube of his spouting canal…. therefore the whale has no voice; unless you insult him by saying, that when he so strangely rumbles, he talks through his nose. But then again, what has the whale to say? Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living. Oh! happy that the world is such an excellent listener!

Melville’s observation about the nobility of the whale’s silence is funny, because Melville never shuts up. And guess what? Neither does the whale. In fact, Sperm whales vocalize all the time. They communicate through intense, 200db+ clicks that can be heard across hundreds of miles. In fact they are the loudest mammal on earth.

Again, not my original research, but a direct quote from this guy, James Nestor, while talking about how a sperm click can literally vibrate a person to death.

What the fuck was Ahab complaining about honestly? He was lucky just lose a leg and not be vibrated to death.

In any case, I have no powerful big sounds to make at the moment that will blow out your ears and turn your minds to goo. I’ll let you know if/when I do. But meanwhile, you make my getting a living possible, and I’m proud to stammer out to you as often as I can. And I thank you for being an excellent listener.

Before ascending to the secret room to listen to today’s reading, I’ll remind you that I’ll be on the Grace Bailey for one night only sometime between Sept 13 and 19. Which night? Well that depends on the tides and winds and whenever the GB pulls into the Wooden Boat School Harbor for the annual Windjammer Gam.

That’s when all the historic wooden schooners in the Penobscot Bay tie up together and have a party. And that’s when I’m going to come aboard. This is what it looks like.

And this is what it sounds like, courtesy Bennett and Molly and a banjoist whose name I still can’t remember. I’m sorry…

But that was last year. Substitute this year the sound of me, yes, talking. Both in convo and a reading or two. It should be fun, so please click a button.

JOIN ME FOR A BOAT PARTY

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Today’s chapter is called THE HONOR AND GLORY OF WHALING. Which feels like a joke following the last chapter, in which they mercilessly hunt down a blind, elderly deformed whale, and murder it by stabbing it in the putrid ulcer that has grown up around an old wound, which ulcer then explodes, spattering them all with blood and gore.

They find a stone lance head embedded in its body as they butcher it, suggesting the Old Sperm may have survived almost a hundred years of hunting before the Pequod finally got killed it dead to light lamps somewhere in Europe.

But then the whale’s body start to sink the ship, so they cut it overboard and let it’s corpse fall down to the bottom depths, its life cut short for nothing. The honor and glory of whaling.

It feels like a joke because it is a joke. Melville knows what he’s doing when he steers the novel 180 into this chapter, in which he has narrator Ishmael try VERY HARD to connect whaling to the gods and heroes of myth, to Perseus and Hercules and Davy Crockett, to Dagon, the fish, flesh, and fowl god of ancient Syria…

….to Vishnu diving below the ocean to collect the Vedas and reboot Creation, and to St George slaying the Dragon—which dragon, per the title of today, Ishmael maintains might actually have been a whale.

That’s obviously not true. Look at it: it’s a fucking dragon. But Ishmael isn’t dumb either. He knows he’s making an absurd reach, I think. Just as absurd as all the ways we try to label violence as heroic and brutishness as virtue whenever brutality and violence need to be justified for some reason or another.

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As whales dive deep and then surface, Moby-Dick also swims back and forth between the low and the high, from the comic to the profound, from high seas adventure to punishing, industrial butchery. And this chapter’s blunt stone point is always: the highs and lows are the same.

Speaking of reaches, here is a whale diving deep and surfacing last Sunday. It’s a humpback that wandered into the Reach up here where I am in Maine.

(Don’t worry: this video is super zoomed in. We kept our distance.)

It was miraculous to see, and I didn’t for one moment want to kill it, even though arguably, thanks to M Dick, I now know more or less how to do it.

We weren’t the only ones to ride out to see the whale. Because shouldn’t be here. Humpbacks are supposed to be in open water, not the sheltered, shore-close shallows of the Reach.

Here it is again. I kept the camera running because I hoped it would come back up for air, but it didn’t.

As I say, it felt like a miracle, and it’s tempting to take that humpback as a sign: a gesture of nature’s support for my own mythic quest to read Moby-Dick to you in a bad Maine accent, chapter by chapter.

But that’s not true. Anymore than it’s true that the great white sharks are in Scarborough in honor of the fact that David Rees watched JAWS for the VERY FIRST time when he visited me here some weeks ago.

They are all just following the food. The Reach is brimming with pogies this year. If you don’t know what pogies are, they are also called menhaden, and that’s about all I can tell you about that. Except the whales are swimming in to eat them in great numbers. And the seals also swarm in to eat them, and the sharks swarm in to eat the seals.

There’s no story to it, no omens or signs: just the honor and glory of uncaring nature. And probably a bunch of whales and seals and sharks and humans will end up bloodied and mained by inevitable dumb, confused, collision.

Anyway, it’s a great chapter, another banger from the M dash D. I won’t tell you what number chapter it is, tho, because then you might not listen to me read it. Worried that you’re too far behind to join the journey. But that’s not true. If you’re just joining us, it’s easy to catch up, and truly every chapter is its own thing.

But before ascending the stairs to listen in the Secret Room, I will remind you of one more dishonorable and unglorious: ICE is still hunting humans for sport here in Maine, and throughout the country.

I hope you will consider supporting organizations like Project Relief Maine or similar in your state. I thank you in advance.

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It’s been a while since I’ve read Moby Dick out loud to you in a bad Maine accent, and this is one of my favorite chapters, so I thought I would share it with everyone.

Whether you want it or not.

When I started this project, I was reading it for the first time cold, with many stops and starts and various asides as I figured out in real time what was going on.

Since then I skipped ahead and have finished whole book, goaded along by the sporty, Nantucket sleigh ride of a schedule imposed by Chris Frizzelle and his wonderful FRIZZLIT good book reading club.

(If you don’t know what a Nantucket sleigh ride is, listen to this chapter).

But even though I have read this chapter before—THE PEQUOD MEETS THE VIRGIN—and it includes one of my absolutely favorite sentences of all time, it’s still deep and shaggy and wonderful enough in language and detail that I forgot a bunch and made some errors in reading it to you.

(For example: The Jungfrau—aka the Virgin—is a German whale ship, not Dutch. And so is its dumb, naive failure of a captain who is hilariously named Derick. I also am pretty sure I am saying “Bulwarks” wrong, even in a Maine accent).

SORRY ALREADY. But in spite of all my mistakes and asides and other intrusions, it’s still a great chapter, and a good jumping on point if you aren’t already on board.

Even after 80 chapters, the plot is now just getting going, the hunt for Moby Dick beginning in cruel earnest. You get some real whaling action, plus the whiplash pivot from laughing adventure to meditation on the waste and meanness of the whole endeavor—which is, after all, WHALE MURDER.

And it’s all capped with a withering final line of wisdom:

“Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend.”

What does it mean? It will only make sense once you press play and listen, and then it will make sense forever,

Future readings (and all the past ones) are available to subscribers, if that is of interest to you. I love reading this book to you, so thank you for your kind attention.

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The above two quotes both emerge from the great, 20 pound, sperm-whalish brain of Herman Melville, specifically Chapters 79-80 of Moby-Dick (or THE WHALE), which I read to you today in the SECRET ROOM below.

These chapters deal with the sperm whale’s head, its noseless, battering ram brow, and the mystery of its brain, hidden so thoroughly amidst the oily junk that so thoroughly packs the whale’s dome that—Melville reports—many sailors refused to believe it had a brain at all.

But it’s more than a mere handful: the sperm’s is the largest brain on the planet. I repeat: TWENTY POUNDS! That’s quite a handful.

But as we learn again and again, the biggest brains do not always make us the smartest. This is no shade thrown at Moby-Dick—he’s doing everything right, as far as I can tell.

But humans often get it WRONG, and over-confident, unexamined smarty-pantsness often makes for the worst and saddest wrongness. Still we must try all things, and achieve what we can.

Anyway, I read all about it in a bad Maine accent, and now the Pequod is entering the final third of the book, the thirds with actual Moby-Dick in it.

And as I have said before and will again: each chapter—each paragraph—is often a satisfying, funny, provocative, weird little novel unto itself. So now is a nice time to join the doomed voyage of the Pequod (spoiler) if you wish.

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Meanwhile, if you are in New York City, and if you joined us for any of our Union Hall shows in June, you know how amazing RUBY LAKS is.

She and Andre Perlman and even more of her talented friends are going to perform a mess of Sondheim and other show/jazz standards TOMORROW NIGHT at 54 below, and if you don’t want to be wrong for once in your life, you will buy a bunch of tickets to see her.

LAKS TIX HERE

If you need a reminder of how great she is, here you go. Send this to a friend who wants to feel good listening to music on July 10th.

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I wish I could join you there, but I am hiding in Maine right now, enjoying as always both the profound beauty and painful existential trials Vacationland is always offering.

I’m recording Judge John Hodgman and E Pluribus Motto from the solar powered studios of WERU (please listen and support), and by now I may have mentioned on both podcasts that I will be back aboard the Grace Bailey in Maine for ONE NIGHT ONLY in September.

If you want to hang out with me, I hope you will. Just simply click here:

AHOY THE BOAT!

Meanwhile…

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Our most recent episode is about NEBRASKA, and I am very happy to report that my cynical prediction on this recording--that SCOTUS would ignore the 14th Amendment and eliminate birthright citizenship--surprisngly did NOT come true.

I do not regret the error! For I agree with Heather Cox Richardson that the 14th is a true BANGER OF AN AMENDMENT. And its adoption is deeply entwined with Nebraska's statehood (37th) and its motto, EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW (a good idea!).

You can listen to me simply GO OFF on the beauty of the 14th (and its inevitable blind spots) in this episode, plus we cover such topics as SAND HILL CRANES, RUNZAS, and THE KOOL AID MAN, all by clicking HERE.

In the meantime, THANK YOU to everyone who came to see us at Union Hall, aboard the Grace Bailey, and then at Solid Sound.

These were all magical experiences, but not much compares to the chance to back announce BOB JAMES and MIKAEL JORGENSEN duetting on ANGELA (the theme from Taxi).

Back soon with more whaling content. Thank you for your kind attention.

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It’s morning here in this hotel room. Yesterday Jesse and I debarked the good ship GRACE BAILEY in Rockland, Maine after spending four nights sailing the Penobscot Bay with 19 lovely and adventurous Judge John Hodgman listeners.

I first started this newsletter right after my first trip on the Grace Bailey, and not long before I started reading MOBY DICK to you up in the SECRET ROOM.

And since she has carried across her long history cargo including not only pineapples and lumber and granite and oyster seed, but also WHALE OIL, it seemed only fitting to take advantage of its new cargo of captive nerds and read to them in a Maine accent.

It’s the first ever LIVE READING I’ve done of MOBY DICK, and it gets a little feisty, as you will hear when you ascend the stairs.

But first please consider taking a boat trip with Capt Sam, Fiji the cat, First Mate Mya, Mates Bridget and Jules, Mess Mate Hailey, and Chef Ean. It’s a really great experience, and if you’re aboard when all the Maine windjammer fleet rafts up at the Wooden Boat School this September, I will be there to read some more MOBY DICK to you again.

All SAILINGS are HERE.

Otherwise, my last known public appearances forthcoming are at SOLID SOUND (sold out) and my FINAL show at Union Hall with Jean Grae, Josh Gondelman, and Ruby Laks: TICKETS ARE GOING SWIFTLY BUT FOR NOW REMAIN: HERE.

Thank you as always for your kind attention…

Please go down backwards to receive the mysteries…

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https://bit.ly/joshjeanjohn925

Or if you cannot attend, please consider sharing this information with a friend?

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I thank you.

These have been very fun, intimate, goofy each one one-of-a-kind basement parties. I hope you’ll consider joining us at 7:30PM by clicking a link just like THIS ONE:

https://bit.ly/joshjeanjohn69.

(Or send it to a friend).

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Then on THURSDAY (6/11) I shall be performing with JESSE THORN and special guest EUGENE MIRMAN! at the Coolidge Corner Theater in the town I grew up in: BROOKLINE, MA.

Yes, my dad will be there.

Also yes, we have been in touch with the recently unionized Coolidge staff, and while they are still negotiating a new contract with the theater, they have informed us they will not be on strike on the 11th, and that they fine with us performing that night.

I’m very grateful, because I will not cross a picket line.

So I hope you will have no reservations either in joining us for a fun homecoming show by clicking a link just like THIS ONE:

https://bit.ly/JJHONIGHTMA

Then I will not be performing for a while, so please come get cheek to cheek with me in a basement or wherever, and that is all.

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Josh and Jean and I have been having a wonderful time in the basement of Union Hall these past couple of weeks. And we’re doing it again NEXT WEEK.

Doing some comedy and hanging in an informal way and enjoying the musical styling of the amazing RUBY LAKS to and ANDRE PERLMAN to boot.

(See below for stylings)

I hope you will consider joining us next TUESDAY at 7:30PM by clicking the link below, and/or sharing it with people you know who like drums and jokes and basements.

https://bit.ly/joshjeanjohn69

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Now here are the STYLINGS I mentioned…

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First, the biz, in three parts.

PART THE ONE:

JOSH GONDELMAN, JEAN GRAE, and RUBY LAKS and I return to Union Hall THIS THURSDAY and the final tickets are HERE.

PART THE TWO:

There are TWO and only TWO more of these Union Hall shows ever, and tickets for those are now available in the SECRET ROOM and will be made universally available SOON.

PART THE THREE:

JESSE THORN and I are appearing at the Coolidge Corner Theater on June 11. And tickets are HERE.

And if you don’t know who RUBY LAKS is, correct that now:

Now the title of this message of course comes from MOBY DICK, specifically Ishmael’s description of the mouth cavity of the Right Whale.

Ishmael has lots to say about the difference between the head of the Right Whale and that of the Sperm Whale (hint: one looks like a whale, while the other looks like a deformed, barnacle encrusted monster made of inner tubes by an insane god).

But is his name Ishmael, or not? Who is this guy? We discuss that in the SECRET ROOM, and I also read to you two chapters of MOBY DICK in a bad Maine accent as well.

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But before you ascend the stairs, you may listen to me talk more about Jonahs and boat shit HERE ON BLANK CHECK.

It was a deep and deeply anxiety producing honor to be asked to guest on their episode covering MASTER AND COMMANDER.

(And it has been deeply mortifying to realize that I referred to the HMS Surprise as a “Ship of the line” when in fact it was a frigate. Please whales: eat me to death now).

On that episode I also mention our friend Lola in Maine, the teenager who made my WHY KNOT? hat in the picture above (for which I receive DAILY COMPLIMENTS)

Lola hand makes her line of nautical-disaster-themed hats and tees called SHIP HAPPENS, and she would like to sell you stuff. So please find her catalogue below, and write to her via: Shiphappensbrooklin@gmail.com

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I’m just back from Tijuana where I was visiting the Al Otro Lado headquarters with Jesse Thorn.

Jesse introduced me to this amazing org that provides material, humanitarian, and legal support to refuges, deportees, and other migrants on both sides of the US/Mexico Border.

The trip was incredibly moving and inspiring. I’ll be sharing more as I process it, but I hope you’ll check out their internet website.

Al Otro Lado

Meanwhile, here is a picture of the border wall as it ends at the Pacific Ocean. The wall is an oppressively sad and ominous thing to witness in person, especially when you also see where it disappears into the borderless ocean, waves crashing against it, divided stupidly into US and Mexico halves. It reminds you that it’s all imaginary.

And we can imagine better.

Double meanwhile, I’m sharing a private link up in the SECRET ROOM to this show that I’m doing with your friends JEAN and JOSH.

This the second of a short series of small shows we are doing together to just have fun in a basement, and for me to develop some new things to say on stage at the Solid Sound festival later in June.

Tickets will be made un-secret by Union Hall next Tuesday, but it’s a very small, very intimate, very subterranean space, so I hope you will join us.

But it is absolutely NO SECRET that I will be judging you LIVE at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, MA on June 11. This will be my last theater appearance before Solid Sound and then disappearing into Maine for work on a secret project, so if you know anyone who would like to be there, please send them this link: bit.ly/JJHONIGHTMA…

OR CLICK HERE FOR BROOKLINE

Now you may ascend the stairs if you wish for those Union Hall Tickets and a close up of the Clamato stand…

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But before you ascend the stairs, let me please quickly remind you that I’m performing at Dynasty Typewriter in LA tomorrow night...

Tickets are HERE: https://bit.ly/JJHONIGHTLLA

And then again at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline on June 11, for which the tickets are HERE: https://bit.ly/JJHONIGHTMA.

And then I genuinely do not know when I will be on stage again! So please join if you can, or let someone else know who lives in one of those places.

The title comes from chapter 71, when Ishmael is watching Queequeg scrambling on and cutting up the slick body of the sperm whale they have killed and tied to the ship.

Ishmael is also tied, in this case to Queequeg, by a length of rope—to keep Queequeg from slipping into the ocean of sharks that are swarming the whale corpse. If he DOES slip, of course, they both die.

As Ishmael watches from deck, and as other crew members fight the sharks off with sharp, cutting spades, he muses at how we are all connected to each other, because he’s a real smarty pants.

(We call him Ishmael, but we don’t even know if that’s his real name, and his past is mysterious. He drops some references to Locke and Kant in the next chapter, suggesting he’s pretty highly educated. But then he also dismisses them and all philosophers as dopes, comparing them to the twin dead whale heads hoisted on either side of the boat to keep the Pequod steady:)

As before, the Pequod steeply leaned over towards the sperm whale’s head, now, by the counterpoise of both heads, she regained her even keel; though sorely strained…. So, when on one side you hoist in Locke’s head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant’s and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float light and right.

But that doesn’t stop him from scratching out his own scrimshaw-ish philosophy of life, as he watches Queequeg dodge both the sharks and the deadly spades deployed to scatter them…

Well, well, my dear comrade and twin-brother, thought I, as I drew in and then slacked off the rope to every swell of the sea—what matters it, after all? Are you not the precious image of each and all of us men in this whaling world? That unsounded ocean you gasp in, is Life; those sharks, your foes; those spades, your friends; and what between sharks and spades you are in a sad pickle and peril, poor lad.

Facts, Ishmael, facts.

Anyway, I read it all below, and you also get to hear my vocal exercises to boot.

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This is just to let you know that I am performing live with Jesse Thorn in TWO MAJOR WORLD CITIES.

The first being LOS ANGELES, where will be bringing our new NIGHT COURT show to Dynasty Typewriter on May 15.

THAT IS NEXT FRIDAY, and it’s a small venue so please get your tickets HERE:

John Hodgman in LA

Then on June 11, we will be returning to my beloved old employer THE COOLIDGE CORNER THEATER in that major world city known as BROOKLINE, MASSACHUSETTS.

So please get your tickets HERE:

John Hodgman in BROOKLINE

It would be nice to see you there in my hometown before Jesse and I sail away on the schooner GRACE BAILEY, plying the coast of Maine, NEVER TO RETURN!

(That’s half true. I will return from the sea to do the SOLID SOUND festival at the end of June. But like the Grace Bailey adventure, that is also sold out.)

And I will be doing a couple of very small warm up shows for Solid Sound at UNION HALL before that.

The first one on May 27 is already sold out, and tickets for future shows will be released FIRST in the SECRET ROOM for paid subscribers.

But after June, I will be going BACK to Maine, to work on secret projects and stare at deadly seas, and I genuinely DO NOT KNOW when I will be near a stage again.

So I hope you will join me at one of these shows.

As always, it’s better when you are there.

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But how much more context do you need? Because I feel like all of us whales are pretty aware of the cruel and unrelenting vultureism of this earth right now. As always, it was ever thus. As always, it’s never been worse. And I hope you’re doing as OK as possible.

BUT NO BUMMERS, for this week’s reading also includes the appearance of The Jeroboam! A completely different whaling ship!

Unlike the Pequod, which has been taken hostage by the obsession of the monomaniac Ahab (who is NOT bent on revenge, no matter what your English teacher told you; more later on that), the minds of the Jeroboam’s crew have been captured by a former Shaker pacifist turned doomsday fanatic named Gabriel.

Gabriel has turned the Jeroboam into essentially a Moby Dick worshipping religious cult! And before you all steal my idea and write a novel about THAT boat, I have already signed, sealed, and mailed this electronic mail to myself. So that is my copyright forever!

Or at least til it expires, 70 years after this vulture earth feasts on my corpse.

This reading also includes a monologue that Ahab delivers to the head of a deceased whale that is so startling and beautiful (and NOT vengeful) that I had to stop and read it a second time—IN MY NORMAL VOICE even.

So you can listen to all that, plus my musings on ROOMS THAT MAKE ME FEEL CALM in the secret room if you wish.

Meanwhile, in the past: yesterday I found this photo of me from my trailer on Season 1 of BORED TO DEATH when we were talking about that wonderful show yesterday on the JUDGE JOHN HODGMAN YOUTUBE LIVESTREAM.

If you loved BORED TO DEATH, please know it will never come back. And there is nothing you can do about it.

Even if Jonathan Ames wanted to make more episodes (he does), he doesn’t own the rights anymore.

And just like everything else you might like (and pay money for) these days, it could disappear at any time, shredded for a tax write off or to clear up hard drive space at corporation that controls it.

BUT NO BUMMERS, because by contrast, the podcasts of Maximum Fun are owned by their creators.

And unlike so many streamers you may subscribe to, the money you pay in to Maximum Fun doesn’t go to executive pay packages. Or to boost our numbers so we can merge with Oracle or something and then cancel half the shows to improve our bottom line.

Your membership money goes DIRECTLY to those creators, their producers, editors, and support staff, to enhance all their lives and happiness. And to make the shows possible. And to give you more and more value for your membership year over year.

I only mention this because it’s the two weeks of the year when we mention it: The #MaxFunDrive. And it’s over on Friday.

So while I get that we’re all being pecked to death, emotionally and financially, by various vultures right now, still I ask you:

Would you please think of a subscription service you don’t like anymore, cancel it, and support JUDGE JOHN HODGMAN and E PLURIBUS MOTTO instead?

After this week I won’t mention it again. Thank you. See you at 4PM Today LIVE

OK, let’s go meet a religious fanatic up in the SECRET ROOM at the top of the stairs.

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Because it’s the #MAXFUNDRIVE.. the two (and only) two weeks a year I ask you to consider supporting JUDGE JOHN HODGMAN and E PLURIBUS MOTTO and all the podcasts of the Maximum Fun network by becoming a member.

PRESS HERE TO JOIN US PLEASE

We are ALMOST at our first week goal of 350 new members, and if we reach that goal by end of today, I have promised to eat this disgusting sandwich suggested by our listener Clint: PEANUT BUTTER AND SPICY TUNA.

I really do not want to eat this. But if we hit our goal today, I will do so LIVE ON CAMERA for your sick delight.

If that doesn’t get you to press the button and join, consider this: like all the podcasts on Maximum Fun, JJHO and E PLURIBUS MOTTO are creator-owned and listener-supported. And Maximum Fun itself is an employee owned cooperative.

It’s been my honor to be in this unique community of hosts, producers, editors, staff, and listeners. YOU have allowed me a creative life free from the panicky vicissitudes of a collapsing entertainment industry (including the corporate podcast biz).

But more, YOU have allowed me the pleasure of speaking to, learning from (and judging) so many amazing people from all over the world.

I couldn’t do it (and so much else) without your support during #MaxFunDrives past, and if I have to eat a gross sandwich to keep it all going, I will happily (-ish) do so!

Please click to make me eat it.

If you’re already a member, THANK YOU. Upgrading your membership by clicking that button will ALSO count toward getting me to defile my mouth with this thing.

And if you’re able to join for the very first time this year, I also say THANK YOU and I will add a SO MUCH.

OH AND BY THE WAY! Starting this year, joining or upgrading at the $10 level unlocks the new AD FREE FEED of all Judge John Hodgman episodes going forward.

I’m confident we’ll get that sandwich in my mouth, so if you want to see it happen, click the button below to watch the LIVESTREAM on Monday at 4PM.

We’re also streaming EVERY weekday during the #MaxFunDrive, including TODAY…

OK, that is all for now. See you on the internet with my mouth full.

…Jh

Re: comedy in a small Brooklyn basement.

I’ve booked a couple of shows for the spring at Union Hall. The first is on May 27.

I will be joined by JOSH GONDELMAN and JEAN GRAE, because that sounds fun, and it will be.

As long ago promised, I’m offering first crack at the tickets up in the SECRET ROOM.

The rest will be released on Monday at UNIONHALLNY.COM

Re: the livelihood of podcast judges and motto afficionados.

Meanwhile, if you listen to Judge John Hodgman or E Pluribus Motto, you probably know that the MaxFunDrive begins next week.

This is the two (and only two) weeks out of every year when we ask you to support the shows directly by becoming a member at Maximum Fun, our employee-owned, LISTENER SUPPORTED network.

It’s what makes my shows go. I literally could not do Judge John Hodgman without you. So if you’re not already a member, I hope you will press some buttons and become one.

Press to support Judge John Hodgman

Press to support E Pluribus Motto

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Re: crossing the streams.

As part of the FUN in the FUNDRIVE, I will live-streaming every weekday of the drive at 4PM eastern, starting next Monday, April 20th.

It will be a wild little mid-afternoon friendly eff-around where I and others will judge your beefs and answer your questions and generally get feisty with the chat.

Please subscribe (for zero dollars) to the JJHO YouTube channel to join in, and hit that bell to be reminded when we are going live.

Press here to do exactly that

I hope to see you there. And as always, you can send in your petty disputes over best/worst animals, least favorite cereals, most favorite sandwiches, or whatever you’re arguing about with your partner, spouse, roommates, sibling, step mom, or dog by going to maximumfun.org/jjho or pressing this button…

...right here.

As always, I thank you for your kind attention. You may now ascend the stairs to receive the mysteries and get those tickets.

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If you’ve been daunted to join because we’re in the middle of the DICK, please UN-DAUNT YOURSELF!

Because MOBY-DICK is very modular. There is a plot, yes, but you already know it from culture (Ahab, whale, obsession, etc.) And in truth, Ishmael often forgets all about this plot for hundreds of pages at a time.

Especially in this open sea that is the middle of the book, it’s more like a series of loosely connected meditations— usually on whales and whaling as metaphors for human existence, in all its wretchedness and luminosity.

Or else it’s just literal essays about literal whales and how to strip and process their blubber.

That’s the grim mission of Chapter 67 (“Cutting In”), and—content advisory—it’s a pretty bloody and blubbery mission.

But hang in there, because then comes Chapter 68! In which Ishamel describes how the blubber is useful not just for murderous humans but also for the whale— specifically wrapping it like a cozy, thermal regulating blanket. Which is why this chapter is called “The Blanket.”

And so, as often happens, the book sea-lurches from the wretched to the luminous to conclude with this NUMBER ONE HIT PARAGRAPH ON HOW TO BE COOL.

Oh, man! admire and model thyself after the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too, live in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep thy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter’s, and like the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of thine own.

To paraphrase Conan O’Brien, I dropped my sandwich when I read this. Leave it to Melville to render out of whale blubber a wildly contemporary parable of emotional regulation, Zen detachment, and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.

None of this has anything to do with that “plot” I mentioned, nor that fairly minor character Ahab, nor the brief, last minute cameo of M. Dick himself.

Which is to say: you don’t have to have read Chapters 1-66 to join the SECRET ROOM at the top of the stairs. Every sentence, every paragraph is often its own little novel.

And plus I announce some early ticket sales up there (MORE ON THAT SOON) and other secret stuff.

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I’m writing meanwhile from an airport lounge early in the morning. I’ve been traveling and I just finished the novel STONER as my last plane landed and I can’t stop thinking about it.

STONER is a novel that David Rees has been after me to read forever, and then it popped up as the next book offered by Christopher Frizzelle in his FRIZZLIT book club. So I read it.

STONER is not a book about a stoner but the stone dull life of a smooth, cool, unchanging (stone-like, get it?) Missourian Professor of English named William Stoner.

It’s a plainly told, obituary-like, recounting of a life of a guy who really only likes reading, teaching, and thinking about Medieval and Renaissance poetry.

But then he falls in love with a human too! And I won’t tell you the fate of that love, but in describing that affair, the author, John Williams (not the composer) kills it:

“It was a world of half-light in which they lived and to which they brought the better parts of themselves—so that, after a while, the outer world where people walked and spoke, where there was change and continual movement, seemed to them false and unreal.”

Williams is a terrific writer, and the book is always readable. But often boring. On purpose, I realize, because Stoner himself is pretty boring. That’s the point of him. And compared to Moby-Dick, which is a treasure box of mysterious objects, references, and themes, I thought there was no mystery to him.

But as I kept up with it, I realized I was WRONG.

There is a profound mystery, for Stoner is a mystery even to himself. Because as much as we are told he loves literature, every time he talks about it, the particulars of Stoner’s field of study are almost comically opaque.

He’s first moved to become an academic as a young man when he hears a professor recite a Shakespeare sonnet (NUMBER 73, but who’s counting?). But WHY he loves that poem, and WHAT he loves about it is never explained, by the author, or Stoner.

It’s as if Stoner has to keep that deep love a secret, lest it be lost.

Again, how that first love (for words) entwines and competes with his second love (with the human) is something I won’t reveal. But it involves a somber and likely intentional answer to Melville’s call to be cool and whale-like…

“So we are of the world after all; we should have known it.”

Damn.

Anyway, after a truly sepulchral beginning it’s got a closing third that’s emotionally astonishing and beautiful and kept me page-turning as I landed this morning (well, I didn’t land. The pilot did).

And I was just thinking about it and how much I enjoy what they call reading for pleasure these days, a habit I had lost for reasons. And I have you all partially to thank for inspiring me to develope that habit. So thank you.

We’re gonna discuss STONER this Saturday in FrizzLit, and then immediately start up on Williams’s next novel which is called AUGUSTUS.

This one is about the youth of the Emperor Augustus. If you haven’t thought about the Roman Empire today, HERE IS THE REMEDY.

And if you know about my obsession with I, CLAUDIUS, I’m eager to get into this book as quick as boiled asparagus.

OK, let’s please climb the stairs and enter the secret room.

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The title above is, as always, from MOBY-DICK, a novel of high seas despair and whale assassination. It’s our second sharkish title: a reference to the toothy swarm of sharks who surround the Pequod and its prize, a non-Moby Dick sperm whale they have killed and hoisted alongside the ship for, well, sperm processing.

It may also, as I speculate in today’s secret message below, be a reference to casu martzu, the famous/disgusting “walking cheese” of Sardinia. Which is round, and yes, stuffed with live cheese-fly maggots. This may sound gross to you, but it is all part of the traditional Sardinian fun. Don’t look it up.

I learned about that cheese years ago when I went to Sardinia on assignment for Men’s Journal (that famous national magazine dedicated to men keeping journals). MJ put that article on line, but again: don’t look it up. It’s not my best work, and like the cheese, it’s riddled thru with writing “health journalism” hacks and caveats that my editor gently insisted upon.

If you know my gin practices and romantic practices, then you’ll agree that me writing about health is the equivalent of me writing an advice column for swingers.

I didn’t eat the maggot cheese of Sardinia, as it was out of season and also illegal. I did eat tordo, the whole-roasted, also probably illegal little thrushes they served in one seaside Sardinian cafe. The cafe specialized in sea urchin, which is frankly disgusting enough.

I won’t forget the thick, callused palm of the urchin shucker, pockmarked to resemble a lunar surface by the spiny, Lovecrafty pods of the urchin as he held it, cracked it open, and scooped out its luminous orange insides for your delight.

But sea urchin is delicious, and doesn’t have eyes, like the dead doll/shark eyes of the dozens of tiny plucked, naked songbirds they offered us, nestled in a bed of myrtle leaves.

I didn’t eat the bird head, nor did I look in the eyes, nor did I cover my own head with a handkerchief in shame, the way French 1%-ers reportedly do when eating the equally tiny and endangered gourmet bird snack called ortolan. But I didn’t feel great about it either, as I just crunched a little tiny thrush breast down my gullet.

Shame and survival and predation and the gross hypocrisies of carnivorism are the topic of these chapters of Moby-Dick, and in case I haven’t made you feel queasy enough, let this serve as your content warning before you ascend the stairs to the SECRET ROOM.

Speaking of shame, I got into a fight on the internet over the weekend. Two, actually.

It’s been a long time since I have done this, because it leads to nothing except lost sleep, self-debasement, and a permanent record of stupidity and trap-walking-into.

I won’t link to these internet fights. You can look them up if you want. One involves that one guy on Threads who complained about the mask size in the new Spider-Man Trailer. The other involves a guy mad at the movie Sinners (imagine!), in this case because Miles Caton plays slide guitar and Buddy Guy doesn’t.

If you find them you will see what a waste of time this all was, and your time will be wasted too. Plus you won’t even see the full frontal nudity of my embarrassment, since a bunch of my luminous, fascinating and clearly persuasive replies got disappeared somehow after I posted them. But my overall point to both parties was this…

Once in Shakespeare class in college I was sitting in a seminar with a very big deal Shakespeare scholar. I offered my interpretation of something or another, and the scholar blinked his eyes slowly at me and said, “Oh, my dear. You’re wrong.”

I don’t remember what my dumb opinion had been. I couldn’t clap back at him as we’ve been trained to do on social media, yelling all art is subjective, etc. We were in the middle of class, and even I knew he was smarter than me about Shakespeare. I just had to sit, uncomfortably in my wrongness.

Only after years of contemplation and growing up did I get it: yes, everyone is entitled to their own reaction to a piece of art. But there are genuine misreadings, anachronistic interpretations, axe-grindy misrepresentations, and points so petty as to be pointless. At the same time, there is genuine study and expertise that some people have command of, and which you, or I, often simply don’t.

Art is subjective, but yeah: some opinions about art are wrong.

One of my internet sparring partners didn’t like this story, and pivoted to suggest that the professor was actually abusive, which is some truly expert goal-post moving, and a reminder of my point: it’s difficult to be wrong, to have your wrongness pointed out, and to reflect on it rather than fight back.

And indeed, this guy had been defending his dumb opinion for days. And I swear, I SWEAR, I only entered the chat to encourage him to contemplate what this endless and obsessive defense might be doing to him, his time, his mental health, and his prized (if calcified) brain.

One thing I said which got deleted was this: I was almost forty before I really learned how to be wrong from the incredibly smart Kathryn Schulz and her liberating book BEING WRONG.

Schulz starts by making a super obvious point that, even after that college class years before, still hadn’t made it thru my brain: we are all wrong sometimes. In fact, we are all wrong a lot of the time, about so many things. But we almost always feel right.

Because being wrong is so shameful-feeling, especially if you fetishize your own smarty-pantsness, that it feels almost fatal to admit it… even when acknowledging wrongness might make you wiser and larger of character, whereas defending your wrongness inevitably makes you pettier, stupider, and yes, more wrong.

This is why so many people hate “cancel culture.” But even when your critic comes in hot and cruel, with the intention of hurting or even “cancelling” you, there is value in wincing, stopping, shaking it off and thinking: maybe they have a point.

Proof of this powerful impulse is, of course, that when my two online wrong boys told me I was wrong, I told them no. In fact I was very very very very right. A shameful mistake on my part.

Anyway, because my Kathryn Schulz bit got accidentally deleted by Threads (or my clumsy thumbs never properly posted it) I wanted to credit her here, and make a vow to NEVER GET INTO IT ONLINE WITH STRANGERS AGAIN.

BUT: Because I was, in fact, not wrong but quite right, and this is MY Secret Society after all, I will leave you with the only two, brief points I should have ever made, which are:

1. It is natural and valid that something in a piece of art “didn’t work for you.” But that doesn’t necessarily mean the ART isn’t working correctly. It could be that YOU are wrong. Or have more work to do.

2. I don’t care how much blues you’ve listened to. When you can do a tenth of what Miles Caton can do, get back to me.

OK, one last thing before we ascend the stairs:

I NEED YOUR MUNCHIES. For an upcoming episode of JUDGE JOHN HODGMAN we want to eat and judge your most ill-advised late night snacks, your weirdest/most indulgent food combos, your secret stoner recipes, your 7-11 2AM guilty pleasures.

Send them all to me at maximumfun.org/jjho or leave them in the comments below.

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The title of today’s message to the membership comes, as always of late, from MOBY-DICK.

As does the subtitle, which I would have chosen as the primary title, if I had the whale balls for it.

Both come from Chapter 64 (“STUBB’S SUPPER”), and I read it for you in my terrible Maine accent up in the SECRET ROOM at the top of the stairs.

But FIRST, speaking of reading books, you’ll remember that I first got into MOBY-DICK due to Christopher Frizzelle’s FRIZZ LIT online book club.

Well good news: he’s starting a new session on Saturday with the novel STONER by John Williams. Everyone in my life has been telling me to read this one, so I’m joining the group and maybe you will too?

GO HERE IF SO. This book group has been very meaningful to me, and you don’t have to read a SINGLE WORD to be ready for the first session on Sat.

Also, may I offer a SPECIAL WELCOME to everyone arriving here via LIVE WIRE? I had a great time speaking to you on the radio. And I’m glad you’re here.

If you’re a new member of the society, I’ve unlocked the SECRET ROOM for you so you can see what’s up there and get some WHALE BALLS CONTEXT.

Meanwhile, if you don’t know:

LIVE WIRE broadcasts weekly from Portland, Oregon, and features all of your favorite and soon-to-be-favorite comedians, writers, and musicians.

When I was out there in December I got to record with HARI KONDABOLU and this incredible HIGH SCHOOL MARIACHI BAND, called Mariachi Tradición.

I posted about them on social media, but here’s the full video of them DESTROYING ALL HEARTS.

If you want to watch another video that distracts you from all the awful, sharkish business of this moment, may I recommend six minutes of near silent donut making as filmed by Frederick Wiseman in the 90s for his documentary BELFAST, MAINE?

I shared some of this movie with you last time (Sardine packing, and a high school english class), but I was talking about this scene with Ira at the Bell House on Saturday because I just can’t stop thinking about it.

(And THANK YOU to Ira and EVERYONE for coming out for our Bell House shows last weekend. Which “everyone” includes KYLE WALTON from the COLONIAL THEATER, where BELFAST, MAINE originally premiered! Both evenings were a complete delight and I’m very, very grateful).

The full FOUR HOUR cut of BELFAST, MAINE is apparently available on KANOPY for free with a library card, because there is still some wholesome and good shit in this world. I’m going to watch the whole thing, finally, but for now, please enjoy spacing out to this:

PS: Secret Society Member “ANDREW” did some digging and found out that the English teacher featured in my last letter, the one dropping heavy truths about the brutality of whaling and America, was most likely WILLIAM MURPHY.

Andrew’s best efforts suggest that he may have passed away. Thank you Mr. M. Though it would seem you retired a year or two after Wiseman filmed your class, it would also seem from THIS 2020 LETTER to the Bangor Daily News that you never stopped teaching (and learning).

Thanks, Andrew, and thank you all for your kind attention.

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As for my own boat trip in Maine, it’s true that Jesse and I will be joining a small group aboard the historic windjammer GRACE BAILEY in June.

(SEE VIDEO AT THE TOP OF THIS MESSAGE FOR A VISUAL)

And it’s also true that our voyage is SOLD OUT.

But you can contact the lovely people of the Bailey HERE to see if there’s a waiting list, or else book another cruise this summer.

If you do, and they are overnighting anywhere in Eggemoggin Reach, ask Capt Sam to text me and I will come hang out with you if I can.

Until then, I will see you here, there, everywhere, and at the top of the stairs, right now.

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First, please come see me and Jesse Thorn at the Bell House next weekend.

NIGHT COURT is our new, intimate, “after hours” version of Judge John Hodgman live. Yes there will be plenty of justice shouted from the stage, plus games, surprise guests, songs, and more.

It’s a ROLLICKING DOCKET episode brought to life. Two shows, two nights, each different and new, and you can please get tickets for either or both by clicking…

RIGHT HERE

The title of today’s dispatch as usual, comes from MOBY DICK, which I read to you up in the SECRET ROOM.

Specifically it’s the very last sentence of chapter 61, called STUBB KILLS A WHALE, and that is truth in advertising for sure.

You may remember from last time that Ishmael has been blowing a lot of hot air out of his spout re: the majesty of the whale and the majestic history of the whalers… charting the history of the Leviathan through the bible and other myths, and connecting the whale hunters to heroes like Perseus.

And then, after some light squid and rope talk, some hundreds of pages in, second mate Stubb finally, well, kills one. And warning: it’s rough. Suddenly, all of the romantic imagery and literary allusioning drifts away like so much blood in the water at Stubb just stabs this huge, terrified, intelligent creature over and over. The smoke from Stubb’s ever-present pipe dwindles as the whale’s own vapor of breath and blood dies from his blowhole, and then it’s over, and the chapter just stops.

THIS DUDE KNOWS HOW TO WRITE ABOUT A BRUTAL BUSINESS, and the stories we tell ourselves to make that business prettier.

Someone else who knew about brutal biz was Frederick Wiseman, who died last Monday. TITICUT FOLLIES was his first documentary in 1967, where he simply lets the camera run on the brutality and dehumanization of life within the walls of a state hospital for the criminally insane in Massachusetts.

Later films were easier to watch, but all used the direct camera technique: no narration, no intervention. He would just let the camera run, letting the stories unspool, indict, and narrate themselves.

Sometimes the camera ran on and on, which I guess is why I never saw BELFAST, MAINE, his 1999 documentary about that coastal town. You’d think since I’m so Maine crazy, and since I know and love Belfast, I would have.

But it’s four hours long, and lot of that is watching men and women in a factory line cutting the heads and tails off sardines. All the while, I presume, developing crippling carpal tunnel syndrome and slowly going insane.

Which, you know, is real life and worth seeing (and hypnotic and amazing when you DO see it), but even the people of Belfast were a little bit “enough already” when it premiered there at the Colonial Theater.

So it wasn’t until I was reading a little about this movie yesterday that I learned there’s a whole section of the movie in which an English teacher at the Belfast Area High School leads a class in a discussion of, what else, MOBY DICK.

I found the clip and was amazed by this bit of novelistic serendipity until I forgot about THAT amazement and instead got extra amazed at what an amazing teacher this guy is.

First he talks about the brutal biz of whaling; how long it takes to find a whale, and then to go out in a rowboat to harpoon it, and then to be dragged along as the whale tries to escape its own murder, and then the murder of the whale, and then, AFTER ALL THAT, the drudgery of towing its body back to the big ship, only then to begin processing it for oil.

As the teacher points out, what starts as a fishing trip suddenly becomes a factory job. And Belfast had both at the time: a lot of fishing, and while the big poultry factory had shut down by 99, surely these kids were familiar with that sardine factory, and the lonely, harsh, hard, and tedious work at sea or on land that their parents might do; that they might do if they didn’t leave town. As so many young Mainers did and do.

And THEN he goes on to point out that Ahab is not only a tragic figure, in a boiling, hubristic King Lear style that Melville certainly was aware of; but maybe also Ahab was the first tragic hero who was not royalty. Just a working fisherman from New England.

“The working man is just as good as the rich, yeah,” he says. And boy does that YEAH land. You know that had to hit hard in the room.

Then he throws some shade on Arthur Miller and concludes by talking about how America is a long confidence game, designed by the rich to swindle the poor.

This guy would probably be fired today for undermining American mythology and revealing the brutal business at its rotten core. Certainly the GOP state reps in New Hampshire today would love to toss him out as a leftist idealogue.

And he does it all in a beautifully quiet, real New England accent. Not like the fake one I read to you up in the SECRET ROOM.

Before we head up there, though, a quick update. The sardine cannery is gone from Belfast, replaced mostly by financial services jobs. But the fishing persists, as does the Colonial Theater, which is truly great and worth a visit.

Oh and also Jonathan Richman lived there for a while.

The high school is still there. Did any of you go to it? What was it like then? And now? Does anyone know the name of this teacher? Please let me know all about it in the comments.

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But now please ascend to receive the mysteries…

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