NO SECRETS during #MaxFunDrive
This is a PUBLIC SOCIETY
Good morning, whenever you are.
No secrets today. Just some THANKS and OFFERS and ONE FREE POEM to offer on this, the first week of the #maxfundrive.
IFKYK: #maxfundrive is what makes JUDGE JOHN HODGMAN possible. It’s the two (and only!) two weeks a year when we ask you to support the show and all the podcasts you love in the Maximum Fun network.
Already a member? THANK YOU. You can upgrade your membership or give one to a friend or stranger RIGHT HERE.
Not yet a member? Or simply member-curious? Please open a tab and go the same place RIGHT HERE.
AND if you become a member for the FIRST TIME before Friday night, email me a screenshot of your receipt and I will thank you personally (and mispronounce your name) on the internet. Contact info at bottom of this page HERE.
OK that is that. I say again, THANK YOU. Now onto THE JOY OF ZONING…
One of my annual #maxfundrive traditions is to I ABSOLUTELY DESTROY my productivity by playing SIMCITY 2013 every morning and inviting you to watch.
It’s called the JOY OF ZONING, and it’s sort of like watching Bob Ross meditatively mumble. But instead of painting happy little trees, I’m zoning residential, commercial, and industrial zones in a brand new SPRING BREAK PLEASURE ISLAND called HODGTONA BEACH!
That’s right: I am now a VIDEO GAME LIVESTREAMER. It’s one of my favorite things to do, and it’s free, and you can join me this and every weekday LIVE at 10AM eastern right at https://bit.ly/ZONEJOY
FREE POEM COMING UP, but one more thing is for me to say THANK YOU to the Secret Societans who came out to JEAN GRAE’s BOOK LAUNCH on Tuesday.
You were the first Societans I’ve met in the wild since I started this newsletter, and it was a delight to share the high sign with you.
To all of you: thank you for keeping me company on line and in person. The other week I put a piece of writing, a poem I guess, in the SECRET ROOM.
It’s the first piece of non-deadlined just-for-me writing I’ve done in a while, and I don’t write poetry and don’t know if it counts, so I kept it quiet at the top of the stairs.
But people liked it up there, and as such, I don’t hate it either, so I’m sharing it with all of you now. I hope you will take this as a gesture of thanks and not punishment.
It’s called JOHN HODGMAN IS IN THE ROT ROOM, and it’s inspired by a visit to a science museum I made with a friend and his little family in LA a few weeks ago.
John Hodgman is in the Rot Room
When you go into the Kids’ Encounter Room
At the Science Center with your mom and dad
John Hodgman goes into the Rot Room
By himself
***
“John Hodgman is in the rot room” you say.
But do you know what the rot room is?
A sign explains it is dedicated “nature’s recyclers”
Full of small windows into rotting worlds
Cockroaches whisper-crawling over matted leaves
Sowbugs and millipedes hiding in musty logs
Dermestids, aka “the skin beetles,” and
Maggots processing hamburger laid out
In the fiberglass corpse sculpture of some unidentifiable mammal
“If maggots didn't eat them, dead animals would pile up so fast you'd see them everywhere” says the Rot Room.
It’s fine that you missed it.
***
When you finished breakfast this morning, and were playing,
John Hodgman was there.
When your mom and dad put you into the car
To go to the Science Center
John Hodgman got in the car too
You’re too little to know
What a houseguest is
Too little to know
Why this man is now following you in your stroller
As your mom and dad push you through
Through the Science Center on a weekday morning
(You don’t even know what a weekday is. But maybe, even at 29 months
You’re not too little to wonder why John Hodgman has no job to go to).
***
In the walk-through aquarium
There is a large fish floating above you
Big as a carp… Maybe it is a carp?
John Hodgman asks, “do you see it?”
You do, but you don’t say so.
At the touch tank
When he touches the sea urchins
John Hodgman remembers a night in Sardinia
***
Long ago, when he left his own small children behind
On assignment for a magazine
He remembers going to a white tent knocked into the the rocky coast
Where squat, strong men
Reached into tanks full of sea urchins
Grabbed and popped them open with knives
Revealing the bright orange uni inside
***
Years of urchin-grabbing had left the palms of these men disfigured
Thick and callused,
Scarred and spine-pocked, like a dead planet
John Hodgman wraps his hand around a sea urchin now and imagines
How long it would take to scar and weather his hands to
Protect him from such hurt
***
You reach in and touch a star fish
And so does John Hodgman
He runs his fingers over the pebble pink arm
And remembers that he learned one day
When his own children were young
That we call them “sea stars” now
***
He touches the sea star’s little tubular feet, the podia
And remembers the constellation of sea stars
That clung to the granite wall and wet wooden pilings
Of the town dock in Castine, Maine
Sunken low at ebb tide
***
Ten years ago, his son was already 8 years older than you
And his son was lying on the dock in Castine, Maine
Tee shirt hiked up and laughing
A clammy sea star on own belly, pale and smooth
The sea star’s podia clinging to the surface of another lost planet
***
There are models of spacecraft arrayed
Announcing the the expansion of the new aeronautics wing at the Science Center
Maybe when it’s open next year, you will come and see it
But no spacecraft will ever bring John Hodgman back to those lost worlds
Or maybe you never will come back
The Science Center just being a thing your mom and dad thought of one time
To later be replaced by zoos or parks or libraries or bowling
Any of one thousand answers to the parental question “What do we do now? After breakfast and play?”
What do we do with this time?
This endless, endless time
Before lunch
OK that is the end of the poem and this letter.
Thank you as always for your kind attention to these matters. I hope you are as OK as possible. Leave a comment if you like and…
That poem got me out of nowhere!
This poem was really lovely