Medallion Status: True Stories from Secret Rooms

by John Hodgman

They make me an FBI Series Regular, which is not technically a real FBI term, but certainly is better than “FBI Guest Star” when it comes to TV residuals.

For once my character was not a creep. He was sexless, somewhat clueless to context, and only hoping to help. It was the role of my life.

Being famous is, in part, about getting things for free. (Actually: it’s mostly this.) But acting, I had begun to learn, is about giving. It’s about surrendering the habits and poses that protect you and becoming vulnerable: to the moment, your own emotions, and unpleasant truths.

I’m not really on television anymore. That’s OK. Neither is television, really. I could tell you that in contrast to Vacationland, these stories are about my life and jobs in Hollywood “Workland,” while I was briefly welcome in that country. But there’s no hiding that these really are stories about fame, and especially its dwindling.

If you are an only child who craves opportunities to follow arbitrary rules to prove that you deserve affection, then airports are already exciting places to be.

Like everyone else in the world, I always thought I was Gold. Or I should say, I hoped I was Gold. I worried a lot that I had tricked myself into thinking I was Gold, but secretly wasn’t. I feared that the world was going to notice this someday and say, WAIT A MINUTE. HE’S NOT GOLD AT ALL! But you see me, don’t you? You see my Gold! It didn’t matter that she had mispronounced my last name the way everyone does (“HAH-duh-guh-man”). She still said “Gold” perfectly, and suddenly, unexpectedly, it was the best thing to ever happen to me.

Let’s settle this once and for all: if you have a stopover at an airport in, say, Phoenix or Berlin, you cannot say you have visited Arizona or Germany. You have only visited AIRPORT, a dimension outside the jurisdiction of not only literal local law, but also most unspoken social contracts

For a while the Sky Lounge offered a Thai-style chicken-and-rice soup. They called it “Wicked” Thai Chicken and Rice Soup, which is offensive in the context of the history of demonization of Asia by the West, but accurate in the context of how the bullies I knew in Boston talked, because it was goddamned delicious.

I booked my flight on United. Sorry, Beloved. I was younger then, and also United played “Rhapsody in Blue” on their television ads, and I had that Gershwin cassette on heavy rotation in my bathroom boom box. I listened to that big clarinet glissando that opens “Rhapsody in Blue” every morning before school.

You know, it’s a good thing she did find that extra meal for me. It would have been bullshit if she hadn’t. She’s lucky I don’t complain.

And for that reason, once you leave a firstclass cabin, you feel robbed, wronged, and unnatural, and so you spend your life anxiously, always trying to get back in.

Philadelphia, like Boston, is the sort of city where if you get into a cab or a hired town car and the driver is a white person, he will presume that you are also racist.

I did some advance pandering research. I learned that the sports teams at Temple are called the Owls. Their rivals, I also learned, are the Penn State Nittany Lions. I said that I hoped the Owls would devour the Nittany Lions, and then regurgitate them in a compact little bolus of pelt and bones, and they enjoyed that, proving once again that owl biology jokes cross all class and race divides.

the people of Birmingham were kind. They laughed hard and filled up all two thousand seats in the auditorium. I was amazed at the size of the crowd. Later, I met and talked to them. They told me how far they had driven. I saw the grateful shine in their eyes. And I realized, Oh! These are the liberals! These are all the two thousand liberals who live in Alabama, and they all came here to breathe.

The afternoon before the show, he showed us around town. He pointed out the fifty-six-foot cast-iron statue of the Roman god Vulcan standing at his forge. He looms above the skyline holding a spear he has just made to the sky, reminding Birmingham of its history as a steel and iron town. When Jason was growing up, the spear used to be a torch with an electric light in it. If the torch glowed green, it meant there had been no traffic fatalities in Birmingham that day. If it glowed red, there had been at least one. We mused as to what a Birminghamian was supposed to do with that information.

The theater I was performing at sent a limousine to the airport to pick me up. This time the driver was not a racist. When you get lucky this way, it is good to ask about your driver’s life, because they are real human beings and driving cars tends not to be a lifelong profession, but a turning point. Maybe you will learn, as I did, that your driver, a Latina woman, is actually a social worker. Normally she does not drive a car but instead helps immigrants in Portland’s Latinx community access state health and welfare services. She will tell you that there is no work for her right now, because all her clients are hiding. They are not seeking health care or leaving their homes because there is a new president and they are afraid they will be arrested, and then it will not feel good to ride in a limousine.

Hey, Megan, did you know that even though I wrote a lot of my segments, I wasn’t officially a writer on the show, so I was never eligible for an Emmy award? Isn’t that a funny story? No?

But here is some advice: if you check into the hotel at the end of a long tour and you immediately just want to drop your bag and run over to the $9 mini can of Pringles next to the ice bucket and shove all those Pringles in your mouth, go ahead and do that. That has become a ritual by now. However, if you discover that, this time, the Pringles can is already open and all the Pringles have been eaten except, weirdly, for two, do not get mad. Do not pace in a hot fury and then finally break down and call the front desk. Do not tell them that this is unacceptable. Do not explain to them that they have failed in their primary mission, which is not merely fresh Pringles every day. It is to trick you into believing that this hotel room had never existed before you opened the door, that it was conjured from some sterile dimension out of nothingness, and certainly no one had ever, ever masturbated in it before.

(Oh yes, and obviously leave a tip for your chambermaid. Five dollars every day. If you forget to get change and only have a twenty, leave the twenty. It won’t hurt you. It will feel great.)

They also had the white sweater vest he wore with the words “PITTSBURGH, PA MARBLE KING” on it. I really wanted to steal it. I wanted to steal it as a gift to the hipster with the Whalers tattoo on his arm as a thank-you for sending me on this journey. I mean: what a look that would be!

Hockey players are amazing. I didn’t appreciate it until I saw it in person. Ice skating on its own requires a tremendous amount of dexterity, endurance, and grace. Your body is working hard just to not finish falling to the ground all the time, and then someone hands you a stick and says, “Go backward and hit that round hard rubber thing . . . oh, never mind. It’s gone now. Sorry you just got punched, BTW.”

For my speech, I wrote this line, which I think may be the last actual pure joke I ever wrote: “My favorite kind of science fiction is post-apocalyptic dystopia. But I just heard at the bar that genre is going out of style. Frankly, that’s not a future I want to live in.” This destroyed.

While we were there, the hotel was also hosting a high school prom. At one point we were all on the same floor. One ballroom was full of science fiction and fantasy novelists, ages thirty-five to roughly immortal. At the other end of the hall was a ballroom full of eighteen-year-olds dancing to extremely popular music. It could not have been more science-fiction-and-fantasy-ish: this hotel hallway was a literal portal between two completely different realities.

suggested that we stand up in the boat in Pirates of the Caribbean and start pointing at the animatronic pirates and villagers, screaming, “These violent delights will have violent ends!” My son didn’t get the Westworld reference. Once again, I was reminded that, Game of Thrones notwithstanding, HBO only reaches a very small portion of American audiences.

But now we just stood, snubbed, in the middle of Frontiertown. “That’s how it goes,” I explained to my son. “For a while you’re friends with the mayor, and then you’re not.”

takes a long time for white guys to appreciate that they are breakable. They do not live from birth with the daily fear that they might be attacked or detained or killed. Their bodies are not constant targets of power. Their bodies are power, so they throw those bodies up and down mountains and stairs and out of airplanes and into pointless online yelling matches for fun. They just presume they will survive.

remember pondering at the time what it would be like to never have to work a day in your life. I would tell myself I was disgusted by this concept, but in fact I was jealous, because I am lazy.

There were also a couple of more recent alums, including a man named Doug who, at thirty-one, had just been named the transportation tsar of New Haven. If you are a fan of Alex Jones and were worried that the bus schedules and traffic routing of some southern Connecticut cities are under the control of Ivy League secret societies, I am here to tell you: that is absolutely correct.

It is better to say yes than no. Unless saying yes will hurt you or someone else, say yes. Don’t say no if the invitation is scary. That’s when you should definitely say yes.

don’t say no, like I did, and then get lucky only because they asked again. They won’t always ask again.

Do your work. Do the things you love. Don’t ask permission. The more work you make in the world, the more likely someone will ask you to do some new thing, some bigger thing, or at least some interesting thing. And when they ask, say yes.

Tipping may seem cold and transactional, but in fact it makes everyone feel more human. So don’t be a cheapskate.

And of course fantasy and science fiction is not reserved only for weird suburban white nerds like me (though they are fighting hard now to keep it for themselves).

People just trying to drive home and get on with their lives shouldn’t have to deal with you lying in the street having a life moment.)

It’s important to know what it’s like to be without actual shelter, first of all. And more metaphorically, it’s good to know how easy it is to forget, when you’re suffering, that the sun is still coming, and it is still warm.

“Oh, this is the album Swordfishtrombones by Tom Waits.” And she will say, “Aha. I wanted to know what it was so that I would never accidentally buy it.” And then she will laugh and leave you alone with your jazzbo carny music for lonely boys.

Easy jobs are great. And as you ease into them, they get even better. They do not challenge you, and you never want to leave. But be careful about getting stuck in the easy jobs. Days turn to years quickly when you are not challenged, frightened, tested. And then maybe someone will invent Netflix.

But it is true that when you choose a job for yourself, your mom and dad may not like it. It may not be what they pictured for you. They have a lot of time and money invested in you, and they also probably love and care for you. They may not understand at first why you might want to be a gay owner of a gay restaurant, or a gay pawnshop jeweler/waiter. They may not understand that, in fact, you have no choice about these things. But your life is your house, and sometimes you have to kick them out of it.

It is not enough to write what you know. You have to know interesting things. You have to get out there and learn them. That’s where having had a bunch of jobs comes in handy.

will only say that the worst jobs are not the hardest jobs. The worst job is the job you know is wrong for you, but you stay in it anyway.

We all feel like impostors sometimes. Because we are. We don’t get anywhere without a little overreach, without faking it a little. This is especially true if your job is to literally pretend to be another person. But even if it’s not, it’s good to be in over your head sometimes, as life is enriched by terror and surviving it.

Then Paul Rudd came in and saw me. He asked me if I was going to the party, and I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And Paul Rudd said, “Oh. Well. Uh.” I didn’t mind. Paul Rudd was adorable about it,

This was a few years ago, before a science fiction movie about a sexy fishman won best picture and it was still presumed that only super-serious dramas and historical movies could win awards, so Hollywood had a secret program to make them. They made movies about creepy wrestling coaches and problematic jazz instructors designed to show the range of interesting actors and the verve of young directors. This would make the actors and directors feel better about later making big movies about superheroes and Minions and teenagers killing each other in mazes, which actually could be shown to humans. These secret good movies, however, were only meant to win awards, so it was not necessary for normal humans to see them. And at this time, mostly they didn’t.

Because it becomes self-evident to any parent that the pain of loving and caring for another thing is better than the ease of not. I will admit even fur parents know this secret. Parenthood begins as an expression of narcissism, of personal genetic redoubling; but that selfishness is quickly burned away in the crucible of tears, vomit, fevers, and close calls; and it is repaid only in the incalculable joy of seeing someone else thrive in happiness and apart from you. You disappear, and it is a fucking relief.

wanted to write just now how I wished the Director from my television show could have seen me. That would have tied this little story into the larger narrative of this book, but it would be false. I didn’t care what she, or anyone, thought. For once.

Because now I had value. Now a major corporation loves me, and would continue to love me forever. Just kidding. Only for one year.

When they yell at me, they do not know that I am not a paid employee. They don’t know it’s just my hobby, so I suck it up and suffer the yelling. It reminds me that most service workers are not doing it as performance art, and often they are humiliated by customers like this every day, not just on Sundays.