I realized that we're now at a point of self-reference with the Internet culture that there's almost no there left, you know? It's important to make new things. It's important to make culture, rather than simply reference it. I love a good cultural reference, and it's one of the great joys in my life, but it has to all be in balance with the core job, which is to make something new. And that sort of brings me around to why I started talking about my fondness for marijuana.
My whole creative career is a product of the Internet. ...I'll take that back. To some degree. My fascination with cultural esoterica and trivia and so on was well-formed long before I got my first AOL account.
That catharsis is really the core of the incredibly personal comedy of Louis C.K. or Marc Maron or whatever. And look - I find it fascinating that I'm sitting here talking about some of these things, and not to low tones, and my kids are in the other room. I have to trust that if they hear what I'm saying and they have questions about it, I'll be able to answer it, and that's fine. But that's part of the scariness of it - the reality of opening up my own life and my own feelings.
When you're a young person, you are biologically driven to believe you are immortal, and that's why you engage in all kinds of risky behavior you stop once you feel death's cruel breath on your neck. I think that as a straight white man in particular, I was tempted to believe that I was immortal and eternal because, after all, in this culture, straight white dudes are the heroes of every story that you see or read about with very rare exception. So how could the story go on without the hero, you know?
I navigated the world as a hedge maze of constant fear and worry in which I might take the wrong turn and jeopardize the love of everyone around me and everyone on Earth. That's what I needed in order to survive.
I think that I'm reaching a point in my life and in my career where soon it will be important for me to get out of the way and let younger, hungrier, more interesting people do what it is that I do. Maine is a wonderful place to hide, because no one ever looks for you there. And the goal of every person in Maine, whether native or from away, seems to be to mitigate as possible all human interaction. So it's a good place to disappear in.
So much of creativity is the feeling that you're either getting a gift from some other dimension or some other part of yourself.
So I am a product of the Internet, and to some degree a product of this sensibility of constant cultural reference.
Only the nerds will save the earth.
There is a need for expertise, for real expertise. I'm not doing much to help that cause, but I think we can find the healthy balance between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. Jocks and nerds may come together, I believe it.
Just because you see an iceberg does not mean that there isn't global warming.
I would say aside from Moxie soda bottles and Masonic artifacts, there's nothing I really collect.
Everyone feels like they would love to be a really cool bartender in a really cool bar, but you're still surrounded by people who want to destroy themselves with alcohol. When you look at it that way, it's not that much fun.
I would definitely make eggs for the rest of my life if I could.
I have no skills. I mean, I can make jokes, I'm pretty good at talking to people on the Judge John Hodgman podcast. I can figure out what makes a pretty good story, and I can make eggs really well.
I am not beautiful, so I don't know why I'm making myself ugly. But the mustache stays.
The only time I've ever been mistaken for someone else is - and this arguable still - when a person came up to me on the boardwalk of Ocean City, New Jersey and said, "You look a lot like that guy from computer ads" and I said, "There is a reason because I am that guy," and the guy looked at me for a minute, laughed and said, "That's a funny joke, but you really do look like him." He thought I was not me.
I've only ever been mistaken for myself. People draw a lot of comparisons to all of the round-faced, mustached men of entertainment that make me cringe and sick to my stomach about how the world really sees me and they're right.
I am a marginally employed person who can escape with my school teacher wife to the waters of Maine for much of the summer.
Unfortunately for humanity, I've gotten into the habit of providing my own closing music for shows by singing a song and playing the ukulele.
As a live stand-up comedy performer, I have the benefit of choosing real entrance music.
Terry Gross has never had me on her show and you know, it's her show; she sets the agenda and that's not Hodgman. But I'll still listen to it.
Terry Gross. I would rush home from high school to listen to Terry Gross.
It's not a secret family like I have a beautiful, gorgeous wife in Tokyo; I have another mom and dad. I'm the kid and I have another mom and dad in Atwater Village, Los Angeles.
What I collect? Interesting jobs. Always to my thrill and excitement, but ultimately to my exhaustion, I collect interesting jobs. If an interesting job comes along, I take it; that's why I do so many things. I'm lucky to be able to.
