I HAD NOT QUITE REALIZED just how carefully arranged was our final sing-along at the WITS show on Friday in St. Paul for to tempt the roving eye of the good people of bOING bOING,

BUT bOING bOING SAW RIGHT THROUGH OUR SCHEME this morning.

QUOTH MAGGIE KOERTH-BAKER, “All we need is for a unicorn to walk out on stage wearing some steampunk headgear and I’m pretty sure this video would have the BoingBoing demographic in the bag, man.”

WITNESS, and perhaps even SING ALONG

ALTOGETHER, the WITS show was a true joy, and I am terribly grateful to JOHNS MOE and MUNSON, plus my favorite backup feral mountain man JOHN RODERICK, plus the ever delightful and spooky NEIL “JOHN” GAIMAN, the surprising DAMIAN KULASH, and those singing ASCOTS for including me in the show. You can listen to the whole show HERE, or listen to it on the radio on AUGUST 1.*

AND I AGREE WITH MS. KOERTH-BAKER: Roderick has a truly soaring voice, and you should enjoy this video for NOT MOVING TO PORTLAND that she pointed out, which dates back to January, a time when Roderick was still missing a tooth, and I apparently was not using the internet.

FINALLY, A NOTE TO TRAVELERS: while St. Paul is truly a remarkable simulation of an American city, and a lovely place to visit, as I noted on Twitter, if you are playing ukulele and/or professional singers are singing quiet country songs in beautiful two part harmony after midnight in your hotel room, the hotel WILL call security on you. REPEATEDLY.

*THE REASON IT TAKES LONGER FOR RADIO is that it takes the radio engineers a long time to scrub away the DISGUSTING VIDEO from the BEAUTIFUL, UNSULLIED SOUND.

EVERY DAMN LINK IN THIS IMITATION BLOG POST COMES COURTESY: bOING bOING, as usual.

That is all.

YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I LOATHE ADVERTISING, but there are a few disclosures I must make regarding products I USE and ENJOY.

FULL DISCLOSURE NUMBER ONE:

SOME OF YOU WERE DISTURBED the other week by COULTON’S TWITTER IMAGE of me wearing BLUE JEANS, which are pants made of a fabric from Nimes, France.

I WAS EQUALLY DISTURBED. Truly, I have not worn blue jeans since roughly 1988, when I wised up and realized I was a brown-pants man. And then for years I would wear Carhartt work pants, which were also fashioned of De-Nimes material, but only because they had that little pocket on the side which is perfect for an inhaler, and NEVER, EVER, in blue.

BUT THEN I DID MY SMALL PART AT LAST YEAR’S EMMY AWARDS, and because of this, I was invited to a magical subterranean bunker beneath the Nokia theater called “THE GIFTING LOUNGE.” Someday I will tell you all about this remarkable experience. Suffice to say that, along with an various hair care products, espresso machines, and jewels, I also received for my review TWO pairs of artfully distressed, blued jeans.

AND DO YOU KNOW WHAT? I did review them, and found them to be QUITE COMFORTABLE AND HANDSOME. And now that I’m on the Advair, I don’t really need an inhaler pocket anymore. So, in the spirit of full disclosure:

I GOT MY BLUE JEANS FOR FREE, from a West Coast jeans-smith called “Cult of Individuality.” I USE AND ENJOY THEM, and I am grateful.

***

FULL DISCLOSURE NUMBER TWO

FAITHFUL READERS OF THIS IMITATION BLOG know that, having crashed my own website repeatedly while linking to it Twitterphonically, I experimented with NEW INTERNET TECHNOLOGY to try to fix this problem.

SPECIFICALLY, my host, LiquidWeb, called and offered their cloud computing solution STORM ON DEMAND. I think this means that instead of being stored on a single regular computer, my whole website is instead stored on dozens of semi-mechanical, murderous black clouds on various uncharted islands.

THIS EXPERIMENT WAS SUCCESSFUL. So, in the spirit of full disclosure,

I AM USING STORM ON DEMAND FOR A REDUCED PRICE, and unless it grabs me and pulls me in to the woods to murder me, I will continue to USE AND ENJOY IT.

***

FULL DISCLOSURE NUMBER THREE

LAST NIGHT, I APPEARED ON THE KEITH OLBERMANN PROGRAM in order to teach him how to use Twitter, because it is the year 2008.

YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED THAT I WAS CLOTHED, specifically in a gray suit that I acquired from the wonderful Oregonian women of DUCHESS CLOTHIER.

I HAVE MENTIONED BEFORE THAT I AM FOND OF THEIR SUITINGS, so much so that, in the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that

I HAPPILY PAY FULL PRICE FOR THE DUCHESS SUITS I USE AND ENJOY, and I will do so again, I hope soon.

AND NOW YOU TOO CAN GET THAT “HODGMAN NON-BLUE-JEANED LOOK” by visiting Duchess’s brand new INTERNET SHOP.

***

FINALLY, I realize I should point out that I didn’t get any money for mentioning my Advair inhaler above. IT MERELY ALLOWS ME TO LIVE.

That is all.

IT IS FOR ONE REASON ONLY: because Paul F. Tompkins needs 300 of you to fight Persia to make comedy,

AND HE IS USING FACEBOOK to recruit you, city by city, not just to ATTEND one of his FAMOUS COMEDIAN SHOWS…

but also, in effect, by VOLUNTARY ACTION and EARLY COMMITMENT…

TO CAUSE THAT VERY COMEDIAN SHOW TO HAPPEN!

SCIENCE CANNOT EXPLAIN THIS. BUT PFT attempts to HERE. I paraphrase: if you and 299 of your friends commit to seeing Paul F. Tompkins perform in your town, HE WILL GO THERE, without asking any questions, and: HE WILL PERFORM.

RIGHT THIS MOMENT, New York City, is seeking roughly 150 additional Knights in Tompkins’s Service (KITS) in order to conjure his form HERE.

I WILL PERSONALLY BE THERE. And so, I hope, you will be, and we shall congratulate our good taste together, loudly, in the audience, UNTIL PAUL GETS VERY ANGRY AND TELLS US TO BE QUIET.

OR, IF YOU LIVE IN A DIFFERENT CITY, search the Facebook and see if someone has started a campaign to lure Tompkins with the promise of 300 souls. If not, START YOUR OWN FACEBOOK PAGE to begin the ritual. Or search, #tompkins300.

LOOK, I know it is all somewhat confusing and decentralized, but that is the system that Paul has chosen, and though anarchic, I think you will find it EFFECTIVE and DELIGHTFUL once you have made this talented comedy person travel to your town a) BECAUSE HE IS FUNNY and b) BECAUSE YOU MADE IT TO HAPPEN.

IF YOU HAVE ANY LINGERING DOUBTS regarding the wisdom of this scheme, PLEASE REVIEW THIS INTERNET VIDEO of Paul F. Tompkins at the SF Sketchfest of last month:

CASE CLOSED

That is all.

OBVIOUSLY, the title PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES is itself intrinsically delightful.

AND THERE WILL BE PLENTY OF LITERARY HAY MADE in literary/copyright nerd circles regarding the implications of this mash-up of the public domain and the living dead.

AND OBVIOUSLY I AM DELIGHTED TOO that the book, published in Philadelphia by an independent press is, as of this posting, number 89 on Amazon, purely through its viral, zombielike march across the internet.

BUT WHAT DELIGHTS ME MOST is the fact that Jason Rekulak is behind it, and as per Galleycat, he took the book to the NY ComicCon.

REKULAK was John Sellers’s editor once, and so I had call to speak to him on the phone once or twice back when I was a literary agent. He was very smart and inventive and Sellers-fond; and plus, HIS NAME IS REKULAK, so he sounded more like an alien invader than a book editor.

SO I AM EXTREMELY DELIGHTED that he has risen from the grave of traditional book publishing to help foster what would seem to be an unstoppable, brain-devouring success.

CONGRATULATIONS to Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith, and

KNEEL BEFORE REKULAK!

That is all.

PS: Does anyone have any pictures of Ape-Lad from ComicCon?

I HAVE RETURNED FROM THE BOHEMIAN GROVE known as “TED”

MANY OF YOU WANT TO KNOW what sort of strange rituals go on there.

I AM HERE TO TELL YOU: there is no giant wooden owl called Moloch.

THERE IS ONLY GILBERT.

LIZ GILBERT IS, of course, the author of PILGRIMS and STERN MEN and the article that became the movie “Coyote Ugly,” and she is a dear and old friend. So dear and old that I often forget that she also wrote an amazing super bestseller that you may have read.

(SHE IS ALSO A VERY FINE SINGER. Listen to the end of this link for the EVIDENCE)

BUT WHILE SHE IS ADORED in this video, and I adore her as well, the magical thing you may not be able to get through this embedded video is how skeptical the audience initially was of her, and how masterfully she won over this bunch of jaded billionaire/genius TEDTOPIANS through simple, good storytelling.

That is all.