With Maine a possible Senate pickup seat in the midterms next week, (VOTE FOR TROY), their idea was for me to come back to NY and offer some fake expertise on the subject.

My idea was to say yes, but also to insist that I perform it all in my equally fake and terrible Maine accent—the one I’ve been using to read MOBY-DICK to you up in the secret room.

And to my (and perhaps also their own) surprise, they let me do it.

It was strange to be back in NYC for the first time in four months, and double strange to visit the TDS studio in midtown. It was sort of like going back to the house you grew up in after a new family has remodeled it.

The offices had been updated long ago, but it was all new to me. The open-plan work space upstairs is now filled in with genuine offices for the hard working smart people who work there and deserve a little privacy.

And there’s a shiny new communal kitchen/break room with glass walls and tiny black and white tiles. The kind they put on the floors of all the fake brasseries at the new Laguardia Airport. Bright and clean and Edison-bulbed.

But like Laguardia, which I also visited, because I traveled by air—the bones of the building are the same. I mostly remembered my way around the warren of stair cases and corridors that lead down to the studio itself.

But every now and then I’d run into a wall that wasn’t there before, or an odd left turn my brain had purged from my muscle memory to free up space. It was also all decorated for Halloween, which you think might add to the disorientation, but in fact seemed perfect, because I sure felt like a ghost.

But I’m not a ghost, because the people of The Daily Show could see me. I didn’t realize how many of my old friends and colleagues still work there, and it was great to see them and to be seen by them as I stalked the halls, rattling my chains.

It was really lovely, and very fun. Jordan Klepper is really good at his job (they all are), as you will see if you play from the beginning. The Cheesecake Factory run really made me laugh.

And then I went home to Brooklyn, and then this morning I flew back to Maine, and now I am writing to you from the library.

I’m wondering when my neighbors might end up seeing my bit, and I’m wondering how they will choose to murder me.

Re: the accent, I’ve told you before that it’s inspired by the BERT AND I recordings of (arguable) Maine humor made by Marshall Dodge and Robert Bryan from the late 50s through the late 70s.

I say arguable humor, only because the stories are more about salty mood and strange cadence than clear punch lines.

To be clear, I love these records. But as I mentioned in VACATIONLAND (now available in paperback), the live album from 1977 is a particular mystery, as I can barely understand what Marshall Dodge is saying most of the time. And I think the audience can’t either.

It’s just Dodge’s masterful presence, skill, and pacing at work. And he was a handsome fuck to boot.

The other big inspiration/permission structure I drew from Bert and I is that they were both big Yale phonies from away, like me.

Though they loved Maine and lived big chunks of life it, neither Dodge nor Bryan were from Maine, but NYC and Long Island respectively. Bryan collected the tall tales and shaggy dog stories that he’d heard told around kitchen tables and barbershops up here, and shared them with Dodge, and Dodge told them.

The obsession over who is and isn’t a real Mainer is real up here. That’s what my Daily Show chat is all about. But strangely, Dodge and Bryan were not murdered in Maine for pretending to be Mainers. Strangely, they became beloved. I think/hope because their affection for the state and its storytellers was real, and they weren’t assholes.

I hope to prove the same thing to my neighbors in time. I hope I don’t get murdered.

If you think you can tolerate more of this, you may ascend to the secret room, where I read Chapter 92 of MOBY-DICK to you, and reveal some further mysteries as well.

Thank you for your kind attention. The rest of this message is secret.

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I have been working on a secret project here in Maine the past few weeks, so thank you for your patience.

I resume reading Moby Dick to you in a terrible Maine accent up in the SECRET ROOM AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS today. And I also tell some genuine secrets up there, and share some other surprises to boot.

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As for public information, I blew my chance to INSIST that you go see Ruby Laks at BRIC last night. But you can make up for my mistake by going to see her on Nov 5 at the Tiles Center.

Ruby sings jazz standards while playing drums, and she led our incredible house band back when Gondleman, Jean, and Alison Leiby and I had our little residency at Union Hall in June.

She’s the best, so if you can’t see her this time, or don’t live secretly in the rafters of the the Tiles Center, dressed up in your phantom outfit and planning your revenge, at least please put Ruby on your active radar.

THEN on Nov 7, if you live near NYC or can get there from your secret lair at the Tiles Center, you can go see GABE GIBBS perform his new show “Waste of Talent” at the New York Comedy Festival.

How do I know Gabe Gibbs? THAT IS A SECRET FROM THE SECRET PROJECT IN MAINE. But maybe if you go up to the secret room you will learn more about it.

AND THEN, keep it going for the utter genius of DEMI ADEJUYIGBE, performing at Littlefield just two nights later on Nov 9.

Missing Demi is something you will regret forever. So don’t live a life of regret, and maybe I will see you there, because indeed I am coming back from Maine finally, at least for a while.

And pertaining to that, perhaps, I will mysteriously leave but one more link for you to follow, before I invite you to ascend the stairs to the SECRET ROOM.

ONE MORE LINK

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They tell me it’s the best time of the year, and it feels half-intimate, like I’ve been taken into their confidence, deserving of this secret world. But the other half feels like I’m not taking the hint. I still have New York plates. When am I leaving too? I don’t know yet.

I’ve been working in the library a lot. The other day a 60 something guy walked in here with no shoes on. Or socks. His feet were dirty, but his boomer jeans and performance fleece top were clean. Barefoot as a lifestyle choice.

He flopped into an arm chair and started checking his phone and making smacking mouth sounds while doing so. He crossed his lets and wagged his gray smeared toes. I didn’t know whether his top or bottom action was more disgusting. But I wasn’t going to say anything. It’s his town.

The librarian walked by. But she didn’t take him up on his attention getting dare either.

“You’ve been mad at me for years,” he said to her, about some history they had.

“I’m not mad at you, [name]” she said. She said his name, but I couldn’t quite hear it, because her voice was library low, and because she clearly didn’t want to give him any more time, life, or energy than she had already wasted on him over those aforementioned years.

After a while he walked out, slapping his bare feet on the carpet to spread his weird around somewhere else. I saw that the table I like in the Quiet Room had opened up. So I moved in there, which is where I’m writing to you from now.

Speaking of weird, I’ve been reading Moby-Dick to you in a bad Maine accent for a long time now. I was just re-reading it in this very seat last week (Not out loud, though. And I was wearing shoes. I’m not a monster.)

Then, just now, just before sending you today’s chapters, I finally noticed the diorama on the table. It’s in a glass case, right in front of me. I’ve seen it many time, but I never saw it til a few moments ago, when a mysterious child walked into the Quiet Room, stared at it, and said one word in a long low tone: Weeeirrd. And then he walked out.

So finally I took a look, and guess what? It’s a whaling scene. Complete with a whale ship and whale boats and whales, and tiny whalers trying to murder them.

How did I miss this? I need to get better at noticing things. It’s supposed to be my job. And/or Maine needs to get a lot less fucking serendipitous.

Anyway, today’s chapters are up in the secret room, and the title of today’s letter comes from Chapter 88, SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL MASTERS, and describing the frat-boy behavior of young and rowdy “forty-barrel” sperm whales when they swim about in a pack.

You can listen up in the SECRET ROOM, but before you go, I want to share with you a couple of things.

FIRST, if you don’t know, please DO know that the great Bruce Campbell is out on the road introducing his new movie, ERNIE AND EMMA. It’s a comedy-drama that Bruce and his wife Ida produced completely independently. Bruce wrote, directed, and starred in it. I’m sad to have missed the Brooklyn screenings, and for some reason Bruce isn’t coming to Maine to show it to me personally, so I hope you will make up for my poor life choices by getting out and seeing him and his movie.

SECOND, I am also sad to miss my friend and yours DAVID REES in LA next month. He’s presenting a bunch of his essential, funny, poigniant, and furious “Get Your War On” comics from 25 years ago, and I urge you to go. Or at least watch the live stream.

By the way, Jon and David’s excellent podcast ELECTION PROFIT MAKERS is back. A new episode out today, and I urge you to please listen to it and please tell me if they read my letter about re-naming the Bangor airport.

OK, time to go up the stairs.

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Whether you join us or not up there, thank you for your kind attention. Oh, and the Jack Handy Deep Thought I mention in the reading but failed to follow up on was this one:

"If you ever fall off the Sears Tower, just go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will try to catch you because, hey, free dummy.”

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Today’s chapter of Moby-Dick, which I read to you in a bad Maine accent (and talk about it my regular voice) up in the SECRET ROOM is called THE GRAND ARMADA.

This may be my favorite chapter in the book. When I read it first with Chris Frizelle and company some month ago, I remember it stopping me cold. Particularly this line…

The whole chapter is a busy throb. Especially for a narrator who tends to put pause on the plot for long stretches of pages in order to compare and contrast the blowholes of the Sperm whale vs the Right whale (and there is some of that in here too, TBF).

But now shit picks up. The Pequod leaves the Indian Ocean via the Strait of Malacca, at once pursued by pirates while they themselves are pursuing a vast herd of Sperms.

When they all spew out into the South China sea, the Sperm whales start circling madly in a huge, galloping whale storm. There’s a lot of hot harpoon action as the Pequod launches its whale boats in pursuit of what looks to be a major payday in the spermaceti department.

But these whales play rough! Queequeg harpoons a line into one whale, which drags them deeper and deeper, as noted, into the frantic whalestrom, dodging massive whale bodies like the Millennium Falcon navigating an asteroid field, til they are pulled into the center, a still lake of ocean, the eye of the storm.

There they find an utter stillness. As they pass through circles of mania into a spot of deep and surreal serenity. And it gets deep. This is this maybe the only part of the book in which Ishmael actually looks below the surface of the ocean (I’ll let him tell you what he sees there). It’s also the end of a turbulent, fast, nantucket sleigh ride of narrative reversal. Ishmael and Queequeg and crew go from blood-hungry hunters at the periphery of the whale herd, to tiny frightened prey animals as they pass through it, and finally become mute, even loving witnesses to the leviathan lives they are pledged by contract and commerce to brutally end.

It’s written so much verve and tenderness and sadness and irony sheer descriptive force that it’s affect on me was almost psychedelic. THE GRAND ARMADA (name of chapter) captures vastness of the ocean and the whales—and the microscopic smallness of humanity—a way that I don’t think is filmable. (I don’t think it ever has been).

Even that night sky in Maine can’t be taken in fully by the human eye. The cosmos is big, and we matter little. And just when we think we’re on the brink of capturing it, it slaps us mute with awareness of how little we matter.

There’s a peace there. An eternal mildness of joy. That’s what I tuned into on this reading. And that’s what I tuned into lying alone on the wet, dark beach. I’m surprised I wasn’t arrested.

ANYWAY, I don’t want to say more, because I’d love it if you’d join me at the top of the stairs in the SECRET ROOM. In addition to the reading, there are some more photos, a comments section there if you’d like to chat, and soon enough I’ll be releasing details and pre-sale tickets to our show at SF Sketchfest there as well.

But mostly it’s the whale these days. MOBY-DICK feels intimidating, but don’t be too reverent. Melville is an eccentric and a philosopher and a word nerd, but he’s also a goof and a peerless tangent-taker. Each chapter is like a self contained letter from a friend, and it doesn’t matter if you skip around.

I read the first third of this book alone, skipped the middle third to finish the last third with Chris and Co., and then went back and filled in the blanks and it’s fine. It’s all just getting started now, and I’m looking forward to enjoying the rest of the throb.

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Up in the secret room today I read yet another chapter of Moby-Dick to you in a bad Maine accent. This one is called THE TAIL, and in classic Ishmael fashion, he goes on and on about the shape, function, and mysterious majesty of the Sperm’s great flukes, only to then complain he cannot describe it at all:

“The more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I deplore my inability to express it. At times there are gestures in it, which, though they would well grace the hand of man, remain wholly inexplicable. In an extensive herd, so remarkable, occasionally, are these mystic gestures, that I have heard hunters who have declared them akin to Free-Mason signs and symbols…”

Speaking of Freemasons, you may recall when these letters, called SECRET SOCIETY, were often ABOUT secret societies, before my brain got kidnapped by Melville and all I can think about is the Dick (comma Moby).

It was SAM POTTS who hand drew these little spot illustrations for me, all based on actual Masonic symbology (and other old handbooks to old dude cults of the 20th c):

And you further may recall that Sam designed the wonderfully, densely deranged covers for my first three books.

I don’t know why the only good image of this book on the internet is on its side. It was 20 years ago. I guess and the internet was just figuring it out.

But you get the idea of just what a genius Sam is. He also designed all the signs and products for the Super Hero Suppply Company of Brooklyn, and came up with Twitter-by-Mail, back when things were fun.

I’ve known Sam and stood in awe of his genius, humor, craft, and decency since meeting him in Mr. K’s photography class in high school. A best friend, endless inspiration and constant collaborator ever since. He got me my first job in New York tearing up copies of the play Oleanna by David Mamet for St Martin’s press (different story).

But he soon left publishing to spend all night every night in his Times Square apartment making ingenious things. He went through a phase making his own MATCHBOOKS FROM SCRATCH, I remember.

(But then I wasn’t sure if I remembered correctly. Maybe it was match BOXES he made from scratch? I just asked him, and he reminded me it was both.)

Well, now he has made a new thing from scratch, and in this case it’s a store called BUSMAN’S HOLIDAY. It’s a stationery store in Nyack, NY, but mostly it’s a Pottsian curation of beautiful, well made little things that speak to him and will speak to you too.

It opens tomorrow (Sat, Sept 5), and I just wanted you to know about it. So you can go there and say hi for me, if you live near Nyack. Or just keep an eye on his eye pleasing work from afar…

As far as my own social media, I’m still staying away until a secret date, still to be determined. But up in the secret room I’ll share some photos I’ve taken lately…

And obviously I will read to you as well. The chapter this time is number 86, but again: it’s OK to start listening here if you want to. You haven’t missed much plot in the first 85 chapters, just glorious language and insight and hilarity you can revisit in the archives as well if you want.

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Moby Dick hasn’t even appeared yet, not even his tail. Which again, today Ishmael talks about, and describes alternately as the claw of satan or the prayerful hands of the divine. As Ishmael explains…

But in gazing at such scenes, it is all in all what mood you are in; if in the Dantean, the devils will occur to you; if in that of Isaiah, the archangels.

Which is to say, if you are in a hellish mood, all you see is hell around you, and vice versa. But as I type this now, I also realize he may be saying that if you ARE a devil, you presume the world is full of devils just like you. Either way, both of these interpretations have absolutely NOTHING to do with the Dantean national mood of today, do they? DO THEY?

Let me know what you think in the comments, and now, if you wish, ASCEND THE STAIRS.

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I have been avoiding social media for the past week. Partly because our (adult) human children have been visiting, and partly because I have other less poisonous light to pour into my eyes as fall arrives in Maine (August 1st), where I am these days.

Here are some things I might have posted to instagram, for example, but didn’t.

What is there to say? They’re not funny or anything. They barely say one word, never mind a thousand, specifically: pretty. And pretty is pretty common. It’s everywhere, if you’re looking. I suppose my point is: you should look. Especially when there’s so much ugly out there to see, constantly. Social media mostly wants you to see only that.

So yes, it’s OK to take a break and let your eyes look at the pretty stuff for a while. This is a completely unoriginal observation at this point, after ten fucking years of all this, no matter how true it is. But that’s the other part of my social media aversion: what thought/joke/opinion can I offer on all this ugliness that has not already been offered, better, by others?

I don’t want to suggest I’ve been completely off the meeds. I only said “avoiding.” But mostly I’ve been trying to say less, listen more, and amplify the good stuff and work that others are doing.

That said, I promised to send you these letters, and to read MOBY-DICK to you in a terrible Maine accent. And so here I am talking.

As usual, these three chapters are essentially self-contained essays, full of luminous, fun, and funny writing that has nothing to do with the plot—which honestly, even at Chapter 85 has still barely gotten started. So if you want to join us in the secret room, it’s always a good time to click a button.

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And as usual, these three chapters of M-B drop many microphones, this time especially on the subject of profundity of shutting up for once. A message as timely now as it was in good ole sperm killing days.

Sure it is, nevertheless, that the Sperm Whale has no proper olfactories. But what does he want of them? No roses, no violets, no Cologne-water in the sea. Furthermore, as his windpipe solely opens into the tube of his spouting canal…. therefore the whale has no voice; unless you insult him by saying, that when he so strangely rumbles, he talks through his nose. But then again, what has the whale to say? Seldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to this world, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a living. Oh! happy that the world is such an excellent listener!

Melville’s observation about the nobility of the whale’s silence is funny, because Melville never shuts up. And guess what? Neither does the whale. In fact, Sperm whales vocalize all the time. They communicate through intense, 200db+ clicks that can be heard across hundreds of miles. In fact they are the loudest mammal on earth.

Again, not my original research, but a direct quote from this guy, James Nestor, while talking about how a sperm click can literally vibrate a person to death.

What the fuck was Ahab complaining about honestly? He was lucky just lose a leg and not be vibrated to death.

In any case, I have no powerful big sounds to make at the moment that will blow out your ears and turn your minds to goo. I’ll let you know if/when I do. But meanwhile, you make my getting a living possible, and I’m proud to stammer out to you as often as I can. And I thank you for being an excellent listener.

Before ascending to the secret room to listen to today’s reading, I’ll remind you that I’ll be on the Grace Bailey for one night only sometime between Sept 13 and 19. Which night? Well that depends on the tides and winds and whenever the GB pulls into the Wooden Boat School Harbor for the annual Windjammer Gam.

That’s when all the historic wooden schooners in the Penobscot Bay tie up together and have a party. And that’s when I’m going to come aboard. This is what it looks like.

And this is what it sounds like, courtesy Bennett and Molly and a banjoist whose name I still can’t remember. I’m sorry…

But that was last year. Substitute this year the sound of me, yes, talking. Both in convo and a reading or two. It should be fun, so please click a button.

JOIN ME FOR A BOAT PARTY

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Today’s chapter is called THE HONOR AND GLORY OF WHALING. Which feels like a joke following the last chapter, in which they mercilessly hunt down a blind, elderly deformed whale, and murder it by stabbing it in the putrid ulcer that has grown up around an old wound, which ulcer then explodes, spattering them all with blood and gore.

They find a stone lance head embedded in its body as they butcher it, suggesting the Old Sperm may have survived almost a hundred years of hunting before the Pequod finally got killed it dead to light lamps somewhere in Europe.

But then the whale’s body start to sink the ship, so they cut it overboard and let it’s corpse fall down to the bottom depths, its life cut short for nothing. The honor and glory of whaling.

It feels like a joke because it is a joke. Melville knows what he’s doing when he steers the novel 180 into this chapter, in which he has narrator Ishmael try VERY HARD to connect whaling to the gods and heroes of myth, to Perseus and Hercules and Davy Crockett, to Dagon, the fish, flesh, and fowl god of ancient Syria…

….to Vishnu diving below the ocean to collect the Vedas and reboot Creation, and to St George slaying the Dragon—which dragon, per the title of today, Ishmael maintains might actually have been a whale.

That’s obviously not true. Look at it: it’s a fucking dragon. But Ishmael isn’t dumb either. He knows he’s making an absurd reach, I think. Just as absurd as all the ways we try to label violence as heroic and brutishness as virtue whenever brutality and violence need to be justified for some reason or another.

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As whales dive deep and then surface, Moby-Dick also swims back and forth between the low and the high, from the comic to the profound, from high seas adventure to punishing, industrial butchery. And this chapter’s blunt stone point is always: the highs and lows are the same.

Speaking of reaches, here is a whale diving deep and surfacing last Sunday. It’s a humpback that wandered into the Reach up here where I am in Maine.

(Don’t worry: this video is super zoomed in. We kept our distance.)

It was miraculous to see, and I didn’t for one moment want to kill it, even though arguably, thanks to M Dick, I now know more or less how to do it.

We weren’t the only ones to ride out to see the whale. Because shouldn’t be here. Humpbacks are supposed to be in open water, not the sheltered, shore-close shallows of the Reach.

Here it is again. I kept the camera running because I hoped it would come back up for air, but it didn’t.

As I say, it felt like a miracle, and it’s tempting to take that humpback as a sign: a gesture of nature’s support for my own mythic quest to read Moby-Dick to you in a bad Maine accent, chapter by chapter.

But that’s not true. Anymore than it’s true that the great white sharks are in Scarborough in honor of the fact that David Rees watched JAWS for the VERY FIRST time when he visited me here some weeks ago.

They are all just following the food. The Reach is brimming with pogies this year. If you don’t know what pogies are, they are also called menhaden, and that’s about all I can tell you about that. Except the whales are swimming in to eat them in great numbers. And the seals also swarm in to eat them, and the sharks swarm in to eat the seals.

There’s no story to it, no omens or signs: just the honor and glory of uncaring nature. And probably a bunch of whales and seals and sharks and humans will end up bloodied and mained by inevitable dumb, confused, collision.

Anyway, it’s a great chapter, another banger from the M dash D. I won’t tell you what number chapter it is, tho, because then you might not listen to me read it. Worried that you’re too far behind to join the journey. But that’s not true. If you’re just joining us, it’s easy to catch up, and truly every chapter is its own thing.

But before ascending the stairs to listen in the Secret Room, I will remind you of one more dishonorable and unglorious: ICE is still hunting humans for sport here in Maine, and throughout the country.

I hope you will consider supporting organizations like Project Relief Maine or similar in your state. I thank you in advance.

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It’s been a while since I’ve read Moby Dick out loud to you in a bad Maine accent, and this is one of my favorite chapters, so I thought I would share it with everyone.

Whether you want it or not.

When I started this project, I was reading it for the first time cold, with many stops and starts and various asides as I figured out in real time what was going on.

Since then I skipped ahead and have finished whole book, goaded along by the sporty, Nantucket sleigh ride of a schedule imposed by Chris Frizzelle and his wonderful FRIZZLIT good book reading club.

(If you don’t know what a Nantucket sleigh ride is, listen to this chapter).

But even though I have read this chapter before—THE PEQUOD MEETS THE VIRGIN—and it includes one of my absolutely favorite sentences of all time, it’s still deep and shaggy and wonderful enough in language and detail that I forgot a bunch and made some errors in reading it to you.

(For example: The Jungfrau—aka the Virgin—is a German whale ship, not Dutch. And so is its dumb, naive failure of a captain who is hilariously named Derick. I also am pretty sure I am saying “Bulwarks” wrong, even in a Maine accent).

SORRY ALREADY. But in spite of all my mistakes and asides and other intrusions, it’s still a great chapter, and a good jumping on point if you aren’t already on board.

Even after 80 chapters, the plot is now just getting going, the hunt for Moby Dick beginning in cruel earnest. You get some real whaling action, plus the whiplash pivot from laughing adventure to meditation on the waste and meanness of the whole endeavor—which is, after all, WHALE MURDER.

And it’s all capped with a withering final line of wisdom:

“Oh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend.”

What does it mean? It will only make sense once you press play and listen, and then it will make sense forever,

Future readings (and all the past ones) are available to subscribers, if that is of interest to you. I love reading this book to you, so thank you for your kind attention.

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The above two quotes both emerge from the great, 20 pound, sperm-whalish brain of Herman Melville, specifically Chapters 79-80 of Moby-Dick (or THE WHALE), which I read to you today in the SECRET ROOM below.

These chapters deal with the sperm whale’s head, its noseless, battering ram brow, and the mystery of its brain, hidden so thoroughly amidst the oily junk that so thoroughly packs the whale’s dome that—Melville reports—many sailors refused to believe it had a brain at all.

But it’s more than a mere handful: the sperm’s is the largest brain on the planet. I repeat: TWENTY POUNDS! That’s quite a handful.

But as we learn again and again, the biggest brains do not always make us the smartest. This is no shade thrown at Moby-Dick—he’s doing everything right, as far as I can tell.

But humans often get it WRONG, and over-confident, unexamined smarty-pantsness often makes for the worst and saddest wrongness. Still we must try all things, and achieve what we can.

Anyway, I read all about it in a bad Maine accent, and now the Pequod is entering the final third of the book, the thirds with actual Moby-Dick in it.

And as I have said before and will again: each chapter—each paragraph—is often a satisfying, funny, provocative, weird little novel unto itself. So now is a nice time to join the doomed voyage of the Pequod (spoiler) if you wish.

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Meanwhile, if you are in New York City, and if you joined us for any of our Union Hall shows in June, you know how amazing RUBY LAKS is.

She and Andre Perlman and even more of her talented friends are going to perform a mess of Sondheim and other show/jazz standards TOMORROW NIGHT at 54 below, and if you don’t want to be wrong for once in your life, you will buy a bunch of tickets to see her.

LAKS TIX HERE

If you need a reminder of how great she is, here you go. Send this to a friend who wants to feel good listening to music on July 10th.

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I wish I could join you there, but I am hiding in Maine right now, enjoying as always both the profound beauty and painful existential trials Vacationland is always offering.

I’m recording Judge John Hodgman and E Pluribus Motto from the solar powered studios of WERU (please listen and support), and by now I may have mentioned on both podcasts that I will be back aboard the Grace Bailey in Maine for ONE NIGHT ONLY in September.

If you want to hang out with me, I hope you will. Just simply click here:

AHOY THE BOAT!

Meanwhile…

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Our most recent episode is about NEBRASKA, and I am very happy to report that my cynical prediction on this recording--that SCOTUS would ignore the 14th Amendment and eliminate birthright citizenship--surprisngly did NOT come true.

I do not regret the error! For I agree with Heather Cox Richardson that the 14th is a true BANGER OF AN AMENDMENT. And its adoption is deeply entwined with Nebraska's statehood (37th) and its motto, EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW (a good idea!).

You can listen to me simply GO OFF on the beauty of the 14th (and its inevitable blind spots) in this episode, plus we cover such topics as SAND HILL CRANES, RUNZAS, and THE KOOL AID MAN, all by clicking HERE.

In the meantime, THANK YOU to everyone who came to see us at Union Hall, aboard the Grace Bailey, and then at Solid Sound.

These were all magical experiences, but not much compares to the chance to back announce BOB JAMES and MIKAEL JORGENSEN duetting on ANGELA (the theme from Taxi).

Back soon with more whaling content. Thank you for your kind attention.

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It’s morning here in this hotel room. Yesterday Jesse and I debarked the good ship GRACE BAILEY in Rockland, Maine after spending four nights sailing the Penobscot Bay with 19 lovely and adventurous Judge John Hodgman listeners.

I first started this newsletter right after my first trip on the Grace Bailey, and not long before I started reading MOBY DICK to you up in the SECRET ROOM.

And since she has carried across her long history cargo including not only pineapples and lumber and granite and oyster seed, but also WHALE OIL, it seemed only fitting to take advantage of its new cargo of captive nerds and read to them in a Maine accent.

It’s the first ever LIVE READING I’ve done of MOBY DICK, and it gets a little feisty, as you will hear when you ascend the stairs.

But first please consider taking a boat trip with Capt Sam, Fiji the cat, First Mate Mya, Mates Bridget and Jules, Mess Mate Hailey, and Chef Ean. It’s a really great experience, and if you’re aboard when all the Maine windjammer fleet rafts up at the Wooden Boat School this September, I will be there to read some more MOBY DICK to you again.

All SAILINGS are HERE.

Otherwise, my last known public appearances forthcoming are at SOLID SOUND (sold out) and my FINAL show at Union Hall with Jean Grae, Josh Gondelman, and Ruby Laks: TICKETS ARE GOING SWIFTLY BUT FOR NOW REMAIN: HERE.

Thank you as always for your kind attention…

Please go down backwards to receive the mysteries…

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https://bit.ly/joshjeanjohn925

Or if you cannot attend, please consider sharing this information with a friend?

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I thank you.

These have been very fun, intimate, goofy each one one-of-a-kind basement parties. I hope you’ll consider joining us at 7:30PM by clicking a link just like THIS ONE:

https://bit.ly/joshjeanjohn69.

(Or send it to a friend).

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Then on THURSDAY (6/11) I shall be performing with JESSE THORN and special guest EUGENE MIRMAN! at the Coolidge Corner Theater in the town I grew up in: BROOKLINE, MA.

Yes, my dad will be there.

Also yes, we have been in touch with the recently unionized Coolidge staff, and while they are still negotiating a new contract with the theater, they have informed us they will not be on strike on the 11th, and that they fine with us performing that night.

I’m very grateful, because I will not cross a picket line.

So I hope you will have no reservations either in joining us for a fun homecoming show by clicking a link just like THIS ONE:

https://bit.ly/JJHONIGHTMA

Then I will not be performing for a while, so please come get cheek to cheek with me in a basement or wherever, and that is all.

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Josh and Jean and I have been having a wonderful time in the basement of Union Hall these past couple of weeks. And we’re doing it again NEXT WEEK.

Doing some comedy and hanging in an informal way and enjoying the musical styling of the amazing RUBY LAKS to and ANDRE PERLMAN to boot.

(See below for stylings)

I hope you will consider joining us next TUESDAY at 7:30PM by clicking the link below, and/or sharing it with people you know who like drums and jokes and basements.

https://bit.ly/joshjeanjohn69

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Now here are the STYLINGS I mentioned…

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First, the biz, in three parts.

PART THE ONE:

JOSH GONDELMAN, JEAN GRAE, and RUBY LAKS and I return to Union Hall THIS THURSDAY and the final tickets are HERE.

PART THE TWO:

There are TWO and only TWO more of these Union Hall shows ever, and tickets for those are now available in the SECRET ROOM and will be made universally available SOON.

PART THE THREE:

JESSE THORN and I are appearing at the Coolidge Corner Theater on June 11. And tickets are HERE.

And if you don’t know who RUBY LAKS is, correct that now:

Now the title of this message of course comes from MOBY DICK, specifically Ishmael’s description of the mouth cavity of the Right Whale.

Ishmael has lots to say about the difference between the head of the Right Whale and that of the Sperm Whale (hint: one looks like a whale, while the other looks like a deformed, barnacle encrusted monster made of inner tubes by an insane god).

But is his name Ishmael, or not? Who is this guy? We discuss that in the SECRET ROOM, and I also read to you two chapters of MOBY DICK in a bad Maine accent as well.

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But before you ascend the stairs, you may listen to me talk more about Jonahs and boat shit HERE ON BLANK CHECK.

It was a deep and deeply anxiety producing honor to be asked to guest on their episode covering MASTER AND COMMANDER.

(And it has been deeply mortifying to realize that I referred to the HMS Surprise as a “Ship of the line” when in fact it was a frigate. Please whales: eat me to death now).

On that episode I also mention our friend Lola in Maine, the teenager who made my WHY KNOT? hat in the picture above (for which I receive DAILY COMPLIMENTS)

Lola hand makes her line of nautical-disaster-themed hats and tees called SHIP HAPPENS, and she would like to sell you stuff. So please find her catalogue below, and write to her via: Shiphappensbrooklin@gmail.com

The rest of this message is secret.

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I’m just back from Tijuana where I was visiting the Al Otro Lado headquarters with Jesse Thorn.

Jesse introduced me to this amazing org that provides material, humanitarian, and legal support to refuges, deportees, and other migrants on both sides of the US/Mexico Border.

The trip was incredibly moving and inspiring. I’ll be sharing more as I process it, but I hope you’ll check out their internet website.

Al Otro Lado

Meanwhile, here is a picture of the border wall as it ends at the Pacific Ocean. The wall is an oppressively sad and ominous thing to witness in person, especially when you also see where it disappears into the borderless ocean, waves crashing against it, divided stupidly into US and Mexico halves. It reminds you that it’s all imaginary.

And we can imagine better.

Double meanwhile, I’m sharing a private link up in the SECRET ROOM to this show that I’m doing with your friends JEAN and JOSH.

This the second of a short series of small shows we are doing together to just have fun in a basement, and for me to develop some new things to say on stage at the Solid Sound festival later in June.

Tickets will be made un-secret by Union Hall next Tuesday, but it’s a very small, very intimate, very subterranean space, so I hope you will join us.

But it is absolutely NO SECRET that I will be judging you LIVE at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, MA on June 11. This will be my last theater appearance before Solid Sound and then disappearing into Maine for work on a secret project, so if you know anyone who would like to be there, please send them this link: bit.ly/JJHONIGHTMA…

OR CLICK HERE FOR BROOKLINE

Now you may ascend the stairs if you wish for those Union Hall Tickets and a close up of the Clamato stand…

The rest of this message is secret.

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But before you ascend the stairs, let me please quickly remind you that I’m performing at Dynasty Typewriter in LA tomorrow night...

Tickets are HERE: https://bit.ly/JJHONIGHTLLA

And then again at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline on June 11, for which the tickets are HERE: https://bit.ly/JJHONIGHTMA.

And then I genuinely do not know when I will be on stage again! So please join if you can, or let someone else know who lives in one of those places.

The title comes from chapter 71, when Ishmael is watching Queequeg scrambling on and cutting up the slick body of the sperm whale they have killed and tied to the ship.

Ishmael is also tied, in this case to Queequeg, by a length of rope—to keep Queequeg from slipping into the ocean of sharks that are swarming the whale corpse. If he DOES slip, of course, they both die.

As Ishmael watches from deck, and as other crew members fight the sharks off with sharp, cutting spades, he muses at how we are all connected to each other, because he’s a real smarty pants.

(We call him Ishmael, but we don’t even know if that’s his real name, and his past is mysterious. He drops some references to Locke and Kant in the next chapter, suggesting he’s pretty highly educated. But then he also dismisses them and all philosophers as dopes, comparing them to the twin dead whale heads hoisted on either side of the boat to keep the Pequod steady:)

As before, the Pequod steeply leaned over towards the sperm whale’s head, now, by the counterpoise of both heads, she regained her even keel; though sorely strained…. So, when on one side you hoist in Locke’s head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant’s and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float light and right.

But that doesn’t stop him from scratching out his own scrimshaw-ish philosophy of life, as he watches Queequeg dodge both the sharks and the deadly spades deployed to scatter them…

Well, well, my dear comrade and twin-brother, thought I, as I drew in and then slacked off the rope to every swell of the sea—what matters it, after all? Are you not the precious image of each and all of us men in this whaling world? That unsounded ocean you gasp in, is Life; those sharks, your foes; those spades, your friends; and what between sharks and spades you are in a sad pickle and peril, poor lad.

Facts, Ishmael, facts.

Anyway, I read it all below, and you also get to hear my vocal exercises to boot.

The rest of this message is secret.

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This is just to let you know that I am performing live with Jesse Thorn in TWO MAJOR WORLD CITIES.

The first being LOS ANGELES, where will be bringing our new NIGHT COURT show to Dynasty Typewriter on May 15.

THAT IS NEXT FRIDAY, and it’s a small venue so please get your tickets HERE:

John Hodgman in LA

Then on June 11, we will be returning to my beloved old employer THE COOLIDGE CORNER THEATER in that major world city known as BROOKLINE, MASSACHUSETTS.

So please get your tickets HERE:

John Hodgman in BROOKLINE

It would be nice to see you there in my hometown before Jesse and I sail away on the schooner GRACE BAILEY, plying the coast of Maine, NEVER TO RETURN!

(That’s half true. I will return from the sea to do the SOLID SOUND festival at the end of June. But like the Grace Bailey adventure, that is also sold out.)

And I will be doing a couple of very small warm up shows for Solid Sound at UNION HALL before that.

The first one on May 27 is already sold out, and tickets for future shows will be released FIRST in the SECRET ROOM for paid subscribers.

But after June, I will be going BACK to Maine, to work on secret projects and stare at deadly seas, and I genuinely DO NOT KNOW when I will be near a stage again.

So I hope you will join me at one of these shows.

As always, it’s better when you are there.

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But how much more context do you need? Because I feel like all of us whales are pretty aware of the cruel and unrelenting vultureism of this earth right now. As always, it was ever thus. As always, it’s never been worse. And I hope you’re doing as OK as possible.

BUT NO BUMMERS, for this week’s reading also includes the appearance of The Jeroboam! A completely different whaling ship!

Unlike the Pequod, which has been taken hostage by the obsession of the monomaniac Ahab (who is NOT bent on revenge, no matter what your English teacher told you; more later on that), the minds of the Jeroboam’s crew have been captured by a former Shaker pacifist turned doomsday fanatic named Gabriel.

Gabriel has turned the Jeroboam into essentially a Moby Dick worshipping religious cult! And before you all steal my idea and write a novel about THAT boat, I have already signed, sealed, and mailed this electronic mail to myself. So that is my copyright forever!

Or at least til it expires, 70 years after this vulture earth feasts on my corpse.

This reading also includes a monologue that Ahab delivers to the head of a deceased whale that is so startling and beautiful (and NOT vengeful) that I had to stop and read it a second time—IN MY NORMAL VOICE even.

So you can listen to all that, plus my musings on ROOMS THAT MAKE ME FEEL CALM in the secret room if you wish.

Meanwhile, in the past: yesterday I found this photo of me from my trailer on Season 1 of BORED TO DEATH when we were talking about that wonderful show yesterday on the JUDGE JOHN HODGMAN YOUTUBE LIVESTREAM.

If you loved BORED TO DEATH, please know it will never come back. And there is nothing you can do about it.

Even if Jonathan Ames wanted to make more episodes (he does), he doesn’t own the rights anymore.

And just like everything else you might like (and pay money for) these days, it could disappear at any time, shredded for a tax write off or to clear up hard drive space at corporation that controls it.

BUT NO BUMMERS, because by contrast, the podcasts of Maximum Fun are owned by their creators.

And unlike so many streamers you may subscribe to, the money you pay in to Maximum Fun doesn’t go to executive pay packages. Or to boost our numbers so we can merge with Oracle or something and then cancel half the shows to improve our bottom line.

Your membership money goes DIRECTLY to those creators, their producers, editors, and support staff, to enhance all their lives and happiness. And to make the shows possible. And to give you more and more value for your membership year over year.

I only mention this because it’s the two weeks of the year when we mention it: The #MaxFunDrive. And it’s over on Friday.

So while I get that we’re all being pecked to death, emotionally and financially, by various vultures right now, still I ask you:

Would you please think of a subscription service you don’t like anymore, cancel it, and support JUDGE JOHN HODGMAN and E PLURIBUS MOTTO instead?

After this week I won’t mention it again. Thank you. See you at 4PM Today LIVE

OK, let’s go meet a religious fanatic up in the SECRET ROOM at the top of the stairs.

The rest of this message is secret.

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Because it’s the #MAXFUNDRIVE.. the two (and only) two weeks a year I ask you to consider supporting JUDGE JOHN HODGMAN and E PLURIBUS MOTTO and all the podcasts of the Maximum Fun network by becoming a member.

PRESS HERE TO JOIN US PLEASE

We are ALMOST at our first week goal of 350 new members, and if we reach that goal by end of today, I have promised to eat this disgusting sandwich suggested by our listener Clint: PEANUT BUTTER AND SPICY TUNA.

I really do not want to eat this. But if we hit our goal today, I will do so LIVE ON CAMERA for your sick delight.

If that doesn’t get you to press the button and join, consider this: like all the podcasts on Maximum Fun, JJHO and E PLURIBUS MOTTO are creator-owned and listener-supported. And Maximum Fun itself is an employee owned cooperative.

It’s been my honor to be in this unique community of hosts, producers, editors, staff, and listeners. YOU have allowed me a creative life free from the panicky vicissitudes of a collapsing entertainment industry (including the corporate podcast biz).

But more, YOU have allowed me the pleasure of speaking to, learning from (and judging) so many amazing people from all over the world.

I couldn’t do it (and so much else) without your support during #MaxFunDrives past, and if I have to eat a gross sandwich to keep it all going, I will happily (-ish) do so!

Please click to make me eat it.

If you’re already a member, THANK YOU. Upgrading your membership by clicking that button will ALSO count toward getting me to defile my mouth with this thing.

And if you’re able to join for the very first time this year, I also say THANK YOU and I will add a SO MUCH.

OH AND BY THE WAY! Starting this year, joining or upgrading at the $10 level unlocks the new AD FREE FEED of all Judge John Hodgman episodes going forward.

I’m confident we’ll get that sandwich in my mouth, so if you want to see it happen, click the button below to watch the LIVESTREAM on Monday at 4PM.

We’re also streaming EVERY weekday during the #MaxFunDrive, including TODAY…

OK, that is all for now. See you on the internet with my mouth full.

…Jh