ArtisticallyChill

Yesterday, Jason IM’d me earlier in the day that John Hodgman was gonna be at the Oakbrook Borders to promote his new book, More Information Than You Require, and do a little Q/A with the audience followed by a signing. For those of you who are not familiar with John Hodgman, he’s the ‘PC’ in all those Apple (attack) ads on TV, with ‘Mac’ being played by Justin Long.

Initially I thought it would be cool to drive out there, but Serena was working later than usual and wasn’t sure she would be home before the event started at 7pm this evening. When Serena got home at seven o’clock on the dot, I figured it would not hurt to take the drive out there. Maybe we’d be lucky enough to get in line for the signing portion of the event.

I didn’t make any effort to get to Oakbrook as quickly as possible. Worse case scenario feelings made me relax and think of this situation as a night out on a drive with my girl. When we finally arrived at Borders, it was 30 minutes past the hour. Parking wasn’t bad at all. In fact, I thought that the event had finished already from the lack of cars in the parking lot and no lines of eager fans spewing out from the store.

We entered and it was pretty quiet up front. Then we heard the sound of an audience’s laughter and saw John Hodgman at a podium towards the back half of the store. Serena went ahead of me, as I approached a sales associate to let them know that I had brought my hardcover copy of John’s first book, The Areas of My Expertise, with me to get signed. I then picked up a copy of More Information Than You Require and made my way to the register to checkout.

After waiting another 12 minutes to get rung up, I made my way back to Serena to the last half of John promoting his new book. He spoke as he normally does, with a tone of a wise man, a court jester, and common everyday person rolled into one, never sounding condescending or smug like most celebs do. Serena and I listened intently as John read a passage from his new book that talks about how his life has changed since becoming a TV personality.

Following the reading was a small Q/A which ended with a well-scripted session of questions and answers with a 13 year old member of the audience about Mole-Men. The young boy proved to have such an interesting set of questions about Mole-Men and surprisingly knew a bit more about the subject than John had anticipated. Afterwards, when the applause died down, the boy asked if he could keep the script John had handed him beforehand. John let him keep it.

To speed up the signing portion of the event, two Borders employees were walking around with pens and post-its, asking everyone if they wanted the book personalized. Serena and I thought it would be fun if we got both books personalized to us and our rabbits, Chippie, Nano, and Tera Flop.

As it was nearing our turn to step up to the table, a woman already at the table asked John why he was numbering the books. John went on to explain how he was keeping track of how many books he was signing. He then went to explain that he had initially wanted to do it for his first book but thought it was too much of hassle at the time.

After hearing this, Serena asked, “Then why are you doing it now? It’s not like you can compare both numbers. For all you know, you could be doing worse (now).”

We all kinda chuckled in line as John remained speechless, staring blankly ahead and sighing. I looked at Serena and jokingly said, “Serena! Don’t discourage him!”

Then it was our turn at the table. We both approached and Serena handed John More Information. As we did introductions he looked at the post it and put a check by Serena’s name and then by mine and then looked at the other three names.

**Please note that this dialogue isn’t verbatim but comes damn near close to it.

John: “Who are these three?”, referring to the rabbits’ names on the post-it.

Serena: “Those are our rabbits.”

John: “I don’t sign to animals.”

Serena: “Pleeeeaaasssee.”

John: “Have you read ‘Watership Down‘?

Serena: “I’ve seen some of the cartoon.”

John: “I like to say animated film. So you own three rabbits but have not read Watership Down? Are your rabbits litter-trained?”

Serena: “Oh yeah. We even taught them a few tricks like holding Jeff’s Xbox controller, posing with Jeff’s Halo action figures, and taking treats off our laps.”

Jeff: “The only thing we can’t do is train them to get along together.”

Serena: “Yeah, Chippie tends to beat up on the other rabbits.”

John: “Well that’s because rabbits are not nice animals, if you had read ‘Watership Down’ you know this.”

John then snaps his fingers at one of the Borders employees and says, “Grab me a copy of ‘Watership Down’ please.” The guy hustles off, mission in hand.

So as he’s signing More Information, I ask him, “So did Apple make you sign a non-disclosure agreement in case someone came up to you and asked, ‘So which do you really use? PC or Mac?’”

John: “No. They did not, so ask away.”

Me: “So which do you really use? PC or Mac?”

John: “Mac. You?”

Me: “I grew with the PC so that’s what I use.”

John: “Well there’s nothing wrong with that.”

*slight pause*

“But it’s wrong.”

He then hands Serena More Information and I hand him my copy of Expertise to sign. He opens up the book and sees the post-it containing the same set of names. The look on his face was rather priceless.

John: “I’m not gonna write all these names again.”

As he begins signing, the Borders guy comes back and hands John ‘Watership Down’. At this point I thought he was gonna read us a passage or explain to us why we should read this book. Instead he flips the book over and scans for the price. He then reaches into his man-bag for his wallet and pulls out some money and puts it in the book.

Me: “No way!”

John: “Be sure to pay for this on the way out, keep the change too. Don’t just take the cash.”

Serena and I are just blown away by what’s happening right now. John then changes his mind and hands the book with the money still in it to the Borders guy.

John: “Better yet, why don’t you go ring this up and they can wait for it up here.”

So the guy goes off to pay for the book. After a moment of utter disbelief, I asked John if it would be alright if I got a picture with him.

Serena and I took a seat in the front row waiting for the Borders guy to return. We kept exchanging more expressions of awe about what just happened at the table. As John signed the book of the next couple, the Borders guy came up and handed us the book and handing the change to John, explaining that he used a coupon to save him a few extra bucks and some change. John took the bills but instructed the guy to give us the change. John then finished up signing the book of the people after us and asked Serena if she was ready to take a picture with him. As Serena got up, she started to take off her coat. John smartly said, “Oh, you’re not ready? Next!” He waved another person over to the table to do one more signing. We chuckled, I did a facepalm too.

After signing another book, I finally took the picture of John, Serena, and the copy of ‘Watership Down’ he had purchased for us.

We thanked John again and left with a feeling of surrealism about the night’s events. We got in the car, ready to make the drive home.

“I feel like I gotta call someone about this! This was all too awesome!”, Serena says with excitement.

I said, “Call Jason, if it wasn’t for him IM’ing me, tonight would have been another mundane Wednesday evening.” So I dialed my cousin.

Me: “Dude, guess where we just got out of?”

Jason: “No way! You went?!”

Me: “Yeah we did and it was awesome! Here’s Serena!”

I then handed Serena the phone at which point she recalled the awesomeness of the evening to Jason.

The drive home didn’t even feel like one. We were both feeling rather helium-ee, lighter than air. “Wow that was awesome!” was what kept coming out of our mouths.

John Hodgman, a celebrity like no other, has gotten more respect out of us. Beyond being ‘PC’, or an author of very important knowledge I will pass onto my kids, John showed us last night that not all celebrities are a bunch of greedy smug SOBs as the tabloids and media outlets portray them to be. Maybe John is a new breed of celebrity. One that more average people can relate to and can be inspired by.

Or John could be a complete fake, a Mole-Man in disguise.

Either way, he’s still pretty cool.

~ LoneWolf

p.s. In More Information Than You Require, John drew a line leading from our names to the bottom of page. At the end of that line it reads, “aka ‘THE OWSLA’”. A quick google search and we find that this is a reference to ‘Watership Down’.

Owsla – a sort of police force of high-status buck rabbits surrounding the Chief Rabbit. Often they are fighters, but sometimes a storyteller or seer might win a place. They serve the Chief Rabbit by doing important tasks such as stealing lettuce, etc. They are very good fighters in the warren. ~ via Wikipedia

p.p.s Thanks again to my cousin, Jason, for letting me know about the event. I owe you one bro!