Results tagged “johnhodgman”

It was all going so well. The John Hodgman Variety Hour had made a stop at Town Hall, chockful of songs, tales of hobos and molemen, and anecdotes on being a famous minor television personality. Jonathan Coulton and John Roderick guitar-dueled to the death in a feral mountain man-off, while John Hodgman and Sean Nelson cerebrally engaged in a tweedy intellectual-off. Their internal disputes resolved, the foursome were ready to don their matching white bedazzled jumpsuits and perform a well-choreographed ukulele version of "Love Will Keep Us Together."

We've read enough pub trivia answer sheets to be familiar with this phenomenon: A team doesn't know the answer to a question, so they write something witty instead. ("Your mom" being one of the least witty examples.) While some of those answers are genuinely clever, however, we never would've thought to transform fake, funny trivia into a literary form.

MY GOD CAN BEAT UP YOUR GOD: The Coexist Comedy Tour hits Comedy Underground today, seeking to unite us all through the power of laughing at our religious prejudices. According to a description of the show, "Can an atheist, a Hindu, a Christian, a Muslim and a Buddhist go on the road together, share a stage and be an example of how to get along? Probably not, but our failures should be good for some laughs."

Bumbershoot 2005 hosted the inaugural People Talking and Singing show, where 2,800 festival attendees packed McCaw Hall to see Dave Eggers, Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket), Mike Doughty, Sarah Vowell, and Death Cab for Cutie, all the while raising $18K for 826 Seattle, the youth writing center in Greenwood. Last year's event, also at Bumbershoot, was hosted by Daily Show Resident Expert™ John Hodgman and singer Jonathan Coulton. Eggers, Handler, Gibbard, and Vowell were back for more, along with Decemberist Colin Meloy, Smoosh, and Stephin Merritt. All together, the benefit raised another $10K.

Here at Seattlest HQ, also known as "Library Dorks R Us," we've laid bare our woes of overburdened library hold queues (and overdue quotas) in the past. When 5 books, many over 300 pages, come due at the same time, what is an SPL whore to do? Well, it looks like we're in for another beating; here's what is in our queue, in order of likelihood to arrive:

Kaspar Hauser, the San Francisco sketch group that performs Thursday at Rebar, is smarter, faster, more creative, and miles ahead of any intentionally funny sketch comedy group performing today.

--Shaun Alexander won't play next week in a key divisional game against the Rams.

Let's take a look back at a week that raised this Zen koan: if Kevin Federline got into a wrestling ring with a wrestler, who would you root for?

We called Elliot Bay Books last week in advance of John Hodgman's reading, and asked whether they thought it would be crowded. Should we show up early, now that he's all famous and whatnot? Not a bad idea, they said, maybe 7pm. The reading was to start at 7:30. We strolled into EBB as the clock struck 7, and our heart sank into our feet as we spied the line at the bottom of the spiral staircase, making its own spiral all the way through the cafe next to the reading room in the basement. Luckily, Seattlest Jack and Audrey were wiser than we are, and had arrived even earlier, securing our seats three rows back, just left of center.

Seattlest just found out that John Hodgman's troubador-in-waiting and coonskin-cap-wearing songwriter extraordinaire, Jonathan Coulton, will be performing at the Jewelbox Theater (chez Rendezvous) after the reading at Elliot Bay. Those who've only read Hodgman's book and not attended any readings may not be so familiar with Coulton--who plays musical and straight-man counterpart to Hodgman on a variety of fronts--but his acoustic remix of "Baby Got Back" brings down the house every time.

When he last graced our fine city, Mr. Jonathan Hodgman was touring for his new book The Areas of My Expertise. He has since then become straightman-comic hawker of Apple computers and Resident Expert on the Daily Show. Seattlest could possibly be more jealous, but we're not certain.

To have been at McCaw Hall Friday night, is to have been truly blessed. It was a night filled with smiles, laughter and bottomless admiration – not only for the performers, but also for the people behind the scenes for whom this night was meant to benefit. It was a night which, at one point, brought a couple tears to our eyes. But we’re sensitive like that.

So, there's that big, crowded festival-thingy going on this weekend and we could recommend a bunch of stuff to hit there, but ah, we're far too lazy to do that. Here's the schedule - make yourself happy. No one's looking.

Seattlest saw John Hodgman give one of his unusual, deadpan readings from his first book, The Areas of My Expertise. Given our solely platonic love of ferrets and hobos, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to speak briefly with Mr. Hodgman.

We started poking around Amazon yesterday to read the customer reviews of John Hodgman's book The Areas of My Expertise. Sniff sniff, hmmm...things seem different. Our Beacon Hill bohemoth is up to something, testing out some new designs, and apparently some new functionality for their product pages.

John Hodgman, Writer, has offered up fascinating insights into himself for our sister publication, Gothamist. He's created smarty-pants user-generated content for McSweeney's and This American Life. And Mr. Hodgman, Writer, has published a book, The Areas of My Expertise, in which he makes up a bunch of facts. (Like that's not a contradiction in terms. Did you think no one would notice, Mr. Hodgman? Must you lie to us to be funny?)