in the interest of full disclosure . . .

for those of you who have come from universal hub in the hopes of using me as an in with the hodg-man, i'm fairly certain that all any of this proves is that john has read his own blog, as the "1,000 copies" bit actually began with a comment i left there. but even still, it was good to know that he can remember things that he's written for at least a full 48 hours; i can not always do this, and it made him even dreamier in my eyes. don't let anything that happens sway you about that, he is fantastically dreamy, especially in that orange tie.

the brookline booksmith is my enemy

and i'll tell you why.

some of you may remember my last run-in with the b. b.* and what a ghastly wreck of a literary experience it was. it very nearly put me off the whole reading/signing/bookstore/standing-in-line experience—but i'm no quitter, kids; i persevere, especially when it comes to the pursuit of personal gratification hinging on other people's artistic genius.

so today i went back to the scene of my most recent writer-based disappointment to give john hodgman an opportunity to redeem it. i went with no fear in my heart, as hodgman is the kind of writer i would gladly face down floods and college students and other perils for, and i was certain there was no way he could ever disappoint me. i'm still certain of that. the booksmith, on the other hand, seems incapable of doing anything but.

when i arrived at 6:40 for the 7:00 reading, the place was packed, which didn't make me unhappy, because of course hodgman deserves crowds that spill out into and across the street. for those of you unfamiliar with the booksmith (and i assume this is, well, all of you), the readings are held in a room below the store itself, which you get to by means of a two-lane staircase to the left of the main doors. i couldn't get into the room or even past the stairwell, but i didn't care all that much about that, because all i really needed was to be able to hear hodgman talking and jonathan coulton playing guitar. they could do it from behind a screen or inside of a large piñata for all i cared, as long as i could hear them. it was just very, very important to me that i could hear them.

and they came out, and everyone clapped, and then everyone got quiet because hodgman started talking. and then everyone laughed because hodgman said something funny. i know this because i'm adept at reading social cues and interpreting the moods and intentions of the people around me. i do not know it because i heard hodgman's voice. there was niet hodgman in the stairwell. none. nada. zero. and then more laughter came up from the people in the room who could hear hodgman (who, apparently, was knocking them dead) quite well, and then there was all kinds of noise in the stairwell.

there was the sound of about eight people behind me saying, "i can't hear anything. can you hear anything? why can't i hear anything? hey, excuse me, can you hear him? wow, no one can hear him." there was the sound of an older woman standing in the doorway to the store saying, "john went to high school with my son; he had long hair then. i didn't even know he was a writer, but my son called and told me he'd be in town today, so i came over to say hello. i didn't expect anyone to be here. how did you hear about him? the daily show? what's that? is it on in the morning? comedy central? what channel is that? yes, i know, comedy central, you said that, but what channel is it on?" there was the sound of the girl talking to the older woman, explaining that jon stewart was really popular with college kids and that was why the place was so crowded.** there was the sound of wave after wave of elated giggles emanating up from the floor, which only exacerbated the disgruntled muttering of the people on the stairs, and there was the sound of two junipers inside my head: one crying softly and despairingly at the brutal punishment i was being dealt for having chosen to work a full day instead of running off early and staking out a plot in the front row, and one yelling at the first one to shut the hell up because she couldn't hear hodgman over my stupid whining. once jp2 started yelling, jp1 only went to pieces more rapidly. it didn't help any that all three of us were crunched under the stair railing in such a way that the lower half of our body was being torqued at a right angle to the upper half and 65 percent of the muscles between our sternum and kneecaps were beginning to cramp and/or spasm. one girl in the far, far back (of the stairwell, not my head) finally hollered out, "mr. hodgman, we can't hear you back here! can you speak up?" but mr. hodgman, it would seem, couldn't hear us any better down there, and no up was spoken. here is everything i heard over the course of the first half an hour or so:

"good evening. i'm john hodgman. . . . the full title is . . . six . . . i will not touch my teeth . . . oils . . . sharp . . . more duties . . . jonathan coulton . . . feral man-child . . . black thursday . . . december . . . secretary of the treasury . . . in chalk . . . polio . . . to their waists . . . [coulton playing guitar] . . . not a children's song . . . [coulton playing song about children working in mines(?)] . . . and now we're going to start the q & a."

now, i've been in the booksmith when readings were going on in the past, and i know that you could have heard those authors if you'd been sitting in the stairwell, because i could hear them inside the store. sometimes i could hear them from the sidewalk outside the store. but the brookline booksmith is my enemy, and tonight, when it was absolutely imperative to me that i not miss one sparkling word, an invisible sound-deadening wall was constructed from floor to ceiling about two and a half feet in front of the place i was able to elbow my way to. this was bad. this was so, so bad.

and then it got worse.

for the q & a, hodgman broke out three walkie-talkies: one for him to speak into, one to be passed around the audience, and one for coulton to hold up to his microphone so that some, but not nearly all, of us could hear the delightful banter being transmitted back and forth between the other two. the gag in itself was lovely and exactly how i would have wanted it to be done. no, you know what, damn it? it is exactly how i did want it done. it was just right, a smart, quirky, adorable way to keep a potentially awkward process from overshadowing hodgman's smart, quirky, adorable tone. it was also almost completely inaudible. i think someone asked hodgman how he came up with one of the 700 hobo names, and someone asked him something about science fiction and water (?), and someone forgot to say "over" at the end of his question and had to ask it again. and then it was time to go.

the brookline booksmith is my enemy. but john hodgman, bless his tweedy little heart, is a peach, and i know now that the promise of even every twenty-fourth word will be enough to bring me back time and time again.

there was no bowing out of the autograph line today, boys and girls. i stood in that line, my left side pinched and twitchy, the eager boy behind me stepping on my heels every time someone five people ahead shifted from one leg to the other, jp1 still sniffling and gasping in a rear corner of my skull, because my love is that strong—and i was rewarded. as i handed him my copy of the areas of my expertise (the paperback edition, noteworthy for its extra dose of hobo monikers and lobster fur), he said, "hi, i'm john." i said, "hi, john, i'm juniper." and he said,

"juniper from the web?"

now, you weren't there, so you couldn't see, but i know that you trust me with your life and your house and all your stuff, and so you'll believe me when i tell you that when he looked up into my eyes, his expression of boredom and detachment and crushing indifference flawlessly masked the passionate yearning he felt within. this, tragically, is the way of the secret romance—doomed to deny itself until even those living through it seem unaware of its very existence. i, too, fought to maintain my cover, and i like to think i didn't let hodgman down. he apologized several times for his failure to project, and while this was sweet and good-host-y of him, i told him it was unnecessary and assured him that i would never hold him responsible for the shoddiness of the booksmith's sound system. his graciousness does prove beyond any reasonable doubt, though, that he absolutely would make a smashing roommate, especially compared to my last one, who didn't give a crap what i could or couldn't hear*** at any hours of the day or night.

and that was that. he gave me back my book and told me it was good to meet me, as though i were just one more fan whose face he would forget before i had even reached the door. in a room full of strangers, unable to reveal ourselves, we simply shook hands and parted. but when i reached my car, i saw what was written below the autograph:

"just 999 more please."

and we all know what that means.****






* this now stands for a number of things in my mind that are not "brookline booksmith" but are strongly associated with the store, such as "bloody bastards," "barnacle-encrusted baboons," "blundering biblio-peddlers," and, most of all, "my enemy."

** i don't believe this for a second, as everyone i could see down there looked way too old and stodgy to be staying up all night watching comedy central. i think they were more likely pie-chart enthusiasts, come to thank hodgman for bringing more attention to their cause.

*** this was generally her beastly bird making a horrible, screeching, crashing racket and silence, respectively.

**** don't we? i do. if you don't, please reference this post. also, please see my disclosure statement.

john hodgman and i are, like, so totally going steady

john hodgman, author of the tinkle-inducing the areas of my expertise, whom i have professed my boundless love for previously, has finally reciprocated, albeit in an infinitely subtle code. hopefully my coworkers will forgive me for revealing the following trade secret to all four of you devoted readers: as those of us in the publishing business (dina, back me up) know, "1,000 copies" is an encrypted form of "yes, we ARE soulmates!" like malcolm gladwell, john would prefer to keep our love a secret so as to preserve the peace of my noncelebrity home life, and perhaps also to keep his wife from packing up his children and cats and heading for europe. no need to worry, darling, your secret is safe with us. i mean, i've been babbling about malcolm for, gosh, years now, and no one's paying any attention to that. especially not malcolm. *sigh*

anyway. if you are interested in seeing what all my fuss is about and you don't live too too far away, i recommend coming to see john and his guitar-strumming platonic companion at the brookline booksmith tomorrow night. yes, this is the scene of my now-infamous palahniuk debacle, so along with the chance to let john hodgman make you laugh until you pee a little, you'll be able to tell your friends that you were in an actual historic juniper pearl landmark, and they'll be like, whatever, and you'll be like, no, seriously, dude, i was right there, and they'll be all jealous and shit, and you'll be like, damn straight.

oh, and the science of sleep is playing at the coolidge corner theatre, right across the street, so it's win-win-win. hooray! we win! happy-making all around.

1,000 copies to each and every one of you, and a million tiny cupcakes besides.

thursday senseless-murder blogging

a lot of people are very, very good. i'm sure of this because i've known some of these good people personally, and the fact of them is sometimes all that gets me through my day, because a lot of other people are thoughtless and selfish, and more than a handful are cruel, stupid brutes. a number of this latter population appear to have gone on a killing spree in australia, where a dozen or so stingrays have turned up not only dead but mutilated on the shores of australia's eastern coast. local authorities and wildlife officials fear the fish were killed in retaliation for the recent death of steve irwin, a.k.a. the crocodile hunter. if so, it's brainstem-driven idiocy at its finest, as irwin would be outraged and heartbroken over this sort of behavior. he was a sincere and dedicated advocate for some of the world's most feared and misunderstood animals, and the nonlogic being employed by the thugs slaughtering stingrays, one of the ocean's most docile life forms, renders all the good he strove to do thunderously moot. another theory is that people who never gave the rays much thought in the past are now terrified of them, as they can suddenly be classified as "killers," and are doing away with them in a knee-jerk, "get them before they get you" fashion. again, all irwin's positive efforts down the drain, and may his ghost rain vipers and scorpions upon the whole dastardly, ignorant, murderous lot.

of course, some brutes are a little less cruel and a crapload more stupid. yesterday in texarkana, texas, dozens of pigeons poisoned by an exterminator hired by a local bank fell dead into the city's streets during its annual quadrangle festival. the bank's president insists that "it was not the intention of the bank to harm any of these birds." according to her, the exterminator was only supposed to poison the birds enough to make them not want to live near the bank anymore. i don't know what kind of magic poison the exterminator's music man was supposedly peddling, but whatever it was, the president of anti-pest co., inc., admits that "death is sometimes an unfortunate side effect." of poison? really? i'd best stop storing mine in the sugar bowl. at least the folks behind this are now subject to a smidgen of public humiliation, and maybe the parent of some small, sensitive child will sue them for emotional damage. i'm not a fan of trigger-happy plaintiffs on the whole, but i'd like to see some lasting effects in this instance.

my last tale is maybe the saddest for me, as it's a profound personal treachery. in my very own home town, the park commission chairman, who is the father of a classmate and husband of my first- and second-grade bluebirds troop leader, has authorized five people to shoot all the geese they can hit at the town's pond, which is in the dead center of town and more or less right across the street from the high school. the shooting opens in the early morning and is allowed to continue right through the school day. now, nobody's swum at the pond in about six years, and it's september and 60 degrees now anyway, so who cares if there are geese on the beach? not the majority of the townspeople, apparently, who are pretty darn angry, especially since they weren't informed about the decision to allow open hunting next to the library before the gunfire started. worst, the hunting violates a town bylaw establishing the land as a wildlife refuge. i wonder how many of these people knew, as i did after having grown up with his daughter, that espanet was a lifelong hunting enthusiast when they elected him to oversee the town's fauna. i'm happy that they're angry, but the situation is deeply disappointing nonetheless.

here's the thing: people who do things like this are not better than the animals they're killing. they will get all red and bulgy-veined in the face when you tell them so, but that doesn't make it any less true. not better. not. in fact, far, far worse.

this afternoon a co-worker and i were discussing the beautiful wave of subcompact, boffo-mileage cars that is sweeping the country, and another employee stuck her head around her cubicle wall and said she'd be damned if she was going to let anyone tell her not to drive a big, comfortable car. if you can afford the gas, she said, you have every right to use as much of it as you want. "well, i think you have an obligation to the planet, too," i said.

"and i don't," she replied.

not better. far, far worse.

tragedy strikes!*

ilsa, my trusty steed and beloved--nay, best--friend of seven years, in her heyday, looked something like this:

alas, death comes to us all. my beautiful kiwi bullet was dealt a fatal blow a few weeks back, and while she and i both fought valiantly for her life, i was ultimately forced to put her down. the tow hearse hauled her off last thursday, and now i imagine she looks more like this:

oh, cruel world that brought my darling and i together only to break both our hearts! ilsa, while being the best little dodge neon any girl could ever dream of driving, was still a dodge neon, and thus susceptible to the standard array of neon circuitry ailments. as she got on in years, her internal electronics failed one by one--first the lights, and then the stereo, and finally the locks, so that for the final year or so she was about as high-tech as your standard go-cart. i never loved her less, though, and in the last week of her life she remembered what we're all supposed to be doing with our time on this crazy rock: singing at the top of our lungs, just for the sake of the sound. in the last week she rallied, and music poured out of one heroic rear speaker like angelic trumpets calling the blessed home to rest. in my heart, i know she's at peace.

but in my dreams she still races through the winding, wooded back roads of her youth like a wild mare, running faster, faster, the fire in her heart blazing with all the mad heat of an exploding sun. they may take your wheels, little girl, and your engine and your struts and your brand new oil pan, but they'll never take your freedom.





* looking over the titles of my recent posts, one notes an unfortunate preponderance of exclamation points. have i resorted to melodrama? am i simply overcaffeinated? it matters not to me, my friends, but i apologize if the trend has at any point tired and/or startled you, as i adore you all.

i love you, england

mcdonald's succumbs to hedgehogs' needs (associated press, september 1, 2006, 12:37 PM edt)

LONDON - fast food just became hedgehog friendly. mcdonald's corp. said friday it had redesigned the cups for its mcflurry dessert so that they no longer posed a danger to the spiky woodland creatures.

the British Hedgehog Preservation Society has campaigned for years against the containers, saying hedgehogs had died while trying to eat leftover ice cream from discarded cups. campaigners said the opening in the lid was large enough for hedgehogs to stick their heads in, but not to get them out again, and that animals not rescued by passers-by had died of starvation.

mcdonald's u.k. said that after "significant research and testing," it designed a mcflurry cup with a smaller opening. mcdonald's began deliveries of the new lids to restaurants in britain last week.

"the smaller aperture of the lid has been designed to prevent hedgehogs from entering the mcflurry container in the unfortunate incidence that a lid is littered and is then accessible to wildlife," the company said in a statement.

fay vass, chief executive of the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, said the change was "excellent, if long overdue news." she said the new cups meant "many hedgehog lives will be saved."

British Hedgehog Preservation Society
The Hedgehog Welfare Society