Commedia della Morte

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

This week, Commedia de la Morte.

Jesse brings the case, not me, against his dad, Joseph.

Sorry.

Joseph insists that his children hire a mime for his funeral when the time comes.

Jesse insists that a funeral is a time for grieving, not miming.

Who will win, who will lose, only one man can decide.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman enters the courtroom and offers the obscure cultural reference.

Family hurts us.

It is like a trap.

It shortens our life.

It bothers us psychically and socioculturally.

It forces us into a limited level of consciousness.

It robs us of our essential self.

It inculcates ideas in us that are not our own.

And at the moment, when we find ourselves in the world, all of this collapses and we have to build a life from scratch.

Generation after generation, each one is victim to the one before.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, swear father and son, in.

Please rise and raise your right hands.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, God, or whatever?

Yes, I do.

I do.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact that he will have no funeral as he will never die?

I do.

Yes, I do.

Very well, Judge Hodgman.

That's right, because mime has made me immortal.

Just like Marcel Marceau, who is not dead, just in a state of very quiet, suspended animation.

Jesse and Joseph, you may be seated for an immediate summary judgment in one of yours favors.

Can you name the person that I quoted as I entered the courtroom?

I'll give you a hint.

It's a mime.

One of the most quotable mimes

of all times.

What mime isn't quotable?

Joseph.

Just the other day, I was preparing a commencement speech, and I said to myself, how can I open this?

And I thought, ah, Marcel Marceau once indicated that he couldn't get out of a box.

To start a commencement speech with a mime quote is a little bit...

You can't hear this, but I'm touching my nose right now.

I'm a little bit on the nose.

Yeah.

Fair enough.

Joseph,

you are the father of Jesse.

You are dragged into this courtroom by your son against your will

to

make funeral arrangements for you because you are nearing death.

And as such, you get the first chance to guess at the personage and

mime that I was quoting as I entered the courtroom.

You can guess first or you can make your son guess first, which is your choice.

I'll guess first.

All right then.

Joseph, guess away.

Stanley, the Polish talking mime.

Jesse, what guess do you give as to the mime or meme, if you will, that I quoted as I entered this courtroom?

The only name that I thought might be close was Ronald.

All guesses are wrong.

Okay.

You were going to guess Marcel Marceau, right?

The only famous mime.

That was my second guess.

Oh.

What was your premiere guess?

Ram Das.

But he's not a mime, so that can't be right.

Why would you guess Ram Das?

Once he said mime, I realized I was wrong.

Yeah, that's fair.

Well,

so I was going to guess St.

Thomas Aquinas.

But when he said mime, I thought, it could still be right, but that's where I went wrong.

It's not a bad guess because Ram Das, of course, is an American spiritual teacher and sort of

countercultural self-help guru.

And in addition to being a mime,

this person

also practices a kind of a spiritual healing course of what he calls psycho-shamanism.

But he is best known, even though he trained as and acted professionally as a mime for a number of years.

He's best known as a filmmaker and comic book writer.

And his name is Alejandro Hodorowski, the Chilean-born filmmaker and director of El Topos Santa Sangre, and of course the most famous film version of Dune that was never made.

Alejandro Hodorowski, and he studied as a mime with Etienne Ducre,

who also taught Marcel Marceau.

Marcel Marceau being,

as I say, perhaps the most and maybe the only truly world-famous meme,

famous for hating wind.

He was walking against it all the time.

So all guesses are wrong, and we actually have to hear the case.

Jesse,

you

bring this case against your father.

You would like me to prohibit him from having a mime at his own funeral.

Is that correct?

That's correct.

And

I recognize what

a strong request that is in bringing the case against him.

That it's traditional in our culture for a person to

set their own last wishes for their funeral, their wake.

You're asking me to allow you to disregard your father's own dying wishes.

Well, what I'm hoping, that's pretty harsh, and I think to

well, although accurate, I guess.

How old are you, Jesse?

I'm

32.

You are 32 years old.

And Joseph,

your son is 32.

How close to death are you?

What is your age?

I am a very young

73.

73?

Yes.

How did that happen?

You had to think about it because probably yesterday you were 62.

Yesterday I was 58.

And when you say you're a very young 73, you obviously sound very spry.

And so far you've been able to use the impossible technology of Skype correctly, correctly, so good for you.

Most 32-year-olds aren't able to do it, so well done.

But you say you are young.

You are young, so young at heart that you would like to have a clown at your funeral.

Not a clown, Judge.

I want a mime.

There's a difference.

Explain the difference to me and the listeners in this fake courtroom.

Well,

everyone is afraid of clowns and everyone hates a mime.

The thing is that I have a vision of clowns on unicycles.

You don't want to terrify your mourners, you want to unite them against a common enemy.

Yes, I want to distract them.

I want to distract them.

I went to a

memorial service for a teacher, a friend of mine.

And at his service, there was a woman who was signing for his deaf son.

And I was so distracted watching her because I didn't understand her, that I wasn't able to even listen to what the rabbi was saying.

And I thought, what a great, great idea, what a great distraction.

If I could have a mime at my wake,

I could just imagine what it would be like when that mom shows up with my family, 25 Italians all talking and screaming at the same time.

It would be a great distraction.

It's a terrible stereotype, but it's true.

Italians talk screen with their hands.

Yes, that's true.

It's more than just their hands, Judge.

Yeah.

So

let me back up here for a second.

So you mentioned that your friend who passed away was a teacher.

You're a teacher as well, or do you?

I was.

No, I retired.

I taught junior.

One of the reasons I'm young is I taught junior high school English for 23 years and high school English for another 10.

So there's a little bit of that immaturity.

That's what some people say.

This is what teaching middle school kept you young?

Yes, it does keep you young.

I still enjoy bathroom humor,

you know, farny noises and stuff like that.

You don't have to explain bathroom humor to me.

I just assumed it was jokes about faucets.

Faucets and drains.

Right.

Yeah, tile work,

a little grout joke here and there.

Okay, and

where did you teach junior high school?

I taught in Hicksville Junior High School on Long Island.

And then

I ended my 33-year career at the high school in Hicksville.

And so, Jesse,

do you live in New York State somewhere as well?

No, I live in Boston.

In Boston.

I live in Jamaica Plain, and I teach in Brookline, actually, Judge.

You do?

At a public school in Brookline, my hometown?

Or in a private school?

Teach at Michael Driscoll Elementary School.

Driscoll School.

Okay, so now I've established where you all are in the world.

Joseph,

let's go back to Hicksville for a moment.

I'm very sorry that your friend passed away.

You were distracted by the sight of a sign language interpreter who was at the funeral, and you thought, I would like a distraction.

Now, you could have had any kind of distraction.

Another sign language interpreter for your funeral.

Perhaps there would be some reason for that.

Maybe someone just doing semaphore

or

making sound effects a la prairie home companion, but you chose a mime.

Why a mime?

Well,

if you're a good parent and your children love you,

The last thing you do to them is make them cry.

So I thought,

I certainly want my children to cry, but after they cry, I want them to laugh.

So

what a surprise it would be to have in the midst of all of this crying, because I assume there are going to be a lot of people there who are going to miss me and who are going to cry, to have a mime appear, unexplained, unintroduced, just

appearing in his white mime makeup with a little tear painted under his eye and a striped shirt and just come in and do mimey things, eavesdrop on conversations, be trapped in a box, as I will be trapped in a box.

It's a metaphor for you,

your inability to escape death.

Okay, all right.

I was an English teacher, I'll grant that.

Unlike the one time I took a Shakespeare course

with

the great Shakespeare scholar and literary critic, Harold Bloom, at Yale University,

and I only took one semester of it, and I only said one comment.

It was some totally banal interpretation of

Macbeth or something.

And Harold, where every other teacher in the world would say, All right, that's an interesting idea.

Let's explore this a little further.

Harold Bloom said, Oh, no, my dear, you're wrong.

That interpretation is incorrect,

and moved on to a smarter student.

But thank you for

thank you for

yesing me along, unlike the cruel Harold Bloom,

with my use of meme as a metaphor for death.

Because the thing about mime is that unlike a clown or a stand-up comedian or frankly semaphore, they're not designed to be hilarious.

They're designed to be provocative of contemplation and

weirdness and silence.

You know what I mean?

Yes.

Does that play into your thinking or you just wanted something weird to happen?

I just wanted something weird to happen.

I don't think you thought it through.

Is that right?

I don't know whether you thought this all the way through then, because a good meme has never made anyone laugh.

And arguably, neither has a bad meme.

And meme, by the way, for you listening along at home, I'm not obviously talking about M-E-M-E from the internet.

I'm talking about the French pronunciation of mime, which is meme.

It's one of my many dumb affectations.

Jesse, you've heard why your father wants to,

I guess, his intention is to make you laugh in your sorrow and also

surprise and confuse and disorient the relatives who weren't privy to this mime plan from the beginning, as you would be.

Why do you oppose this scheme?

Well, I think, you know, my father said that he wanted there to be a distraction at

the service.

And

I certainly understand

why a distraction is welcome when a loved one has died.

But I think to have a mime at the service that entire time would

make it very difficult for people in the room to take the

to take his death seriously and to

use that space and that time,

which is what we set aside in our society when someone dies, that is the appropriate time to

be sad, to allow oneself to fully feel the death of a loved one and

the awfulness of mortality and to be with family and loved ones and to have support and to go through that

awful feeling.

And

I think to have a mime there would make a joke of life.

Is it typical of mortality?

Before you go, it's very thoughtful.

Is it typical of your father to make a joke of life?

Everything that comes out of my father's mouth is a joke.

And

would you like that to not be the case?

It's been

a point of some conflict between him and

his children, and I think between him and Jesse.

Excuse me, Your Honor.

Excuse me.

Is this an objection?

Yes, it is.

That's hearsay.

Jesse can speak for Jesse, but he can't speak for the other three.

When I've heard from the other three that

they also have said that you sometimes don't take things seriously when they wish you would.

Well, wait a minute.

Wait a minute, Jesse, they said this?

They've expressed this as well.

You heard it?

Yes.

Yeah, that's your

say.

Sustained, sustained.

Objection is sustained, Jesse.

You can only speak for yourself.

Thank you, thank you, Judge.

But, Dad,

you can't pretend that this isn't a part of your personality, a sort of a constant for you.

What would you, wait, before you accuse your father of anything, I want you to be very clear what you're accusing him of, which is to say,

what aspect of his his personality are you trying to identify here?

Aaron Ross Powell, I think he has a tendency to

jump to a joke,

either when being defensive, or if a situation is awkward, or if

whatever it may be,

when a joke is easy and maybe diffuses the situation or shifts attention away or something.

But where

a more thoughtful, more constructive approach

would not be to make light of something.

I think that there are just some things that are more appropriate to take seriously.

My father,

I don't think he's quite thought this through.

Like you said, Judge, that he's making a joke.

There wasn't a deeper metaphor here, despite him being an English teacher.

It was, it's a joke.

Well,

wait a minute.

Are you saying that he's not sincere in wanting to have a mime there?

I think he's excited about the unexpected nature of it.

And I completely appreciate the humor.

Don't get me wrong.

I'm being myself.

I find that hard to believe.

Yeah, you sound like you're really yucking it up.

You're out of control.

By the way,

what do you teach up there in Boston?

Good old Yankee humorlessness?

By the way, Jesse, I'm sure you do have a sense of humor.

I'm sure you do appreciate the humor, but let me get some more details here from Joseph.

Now,

where in the course of the ceremony, first of all,

what kind of funeral service do you anticipate having?

A religious service, a graveside service, non-religious?

What do you anticipate?

Well,

I will be cremated.

However, it's traditional to have a wake.

It used to be a three-day wake.

I'd settle for a one-day

Jesse.

I love you dearly, Jesse.

Jesse is very serious, but he also has my sense of humor, which is very interesting.

He said that I'm making a joke about life.

I'm really making a joke about death.

Being dead sucks.

I'm not looking forward to it.

Overruled.

Thank you, Judge.

I'm already allowing a million objections in my own mind because I asked Joseph a specific question and he's starting to go off on how death sucks.

And I'll let him,

out of deference for fatherly wisdom, age, and courtesy to those who are closer to death than I, please go on, sir.

You were saying, being on dead sucks.

Well, Jesse envisions this as being an ongoing thing with a mime

appearing for two days, three days, hanging out with the family and stuff.

I'm thinking more along the lines of everyone is there, they all talk, and in out of nowhere comes this mime and just passes through the crowd,

you know, and sheds tears and is trapped in a box and walks against the wind and pulls the rope and then

breezes through the crowd again and disappears.

How long do you anticipate the mime act

In the course of the day,

a day-long observation of mourning, there will be,

you're going to be cremated, but will your urn be in the room?

Oh, no,

this will be before I'm cremated.

I want to be there to see this.

Oh, God.

I don't think that's an option.

Can I just clarify

a couple of things,

aside from your obvious insanity?

when when you're talking about a three a three-day wake is oh no no no no that was traditional i'm talking about a wake in what tradition are we talking here uh in my old italian family background tradition it was you know usually it was a two-day

sometimes three-day it's been scaled down give me a give me a timeline first of all you pass away painlessly in your sleep dreaming of an intimate encounter with a loved one

uh Right.

Okay.

I had that scenario, but I'll take that.

Oh,

what's your ideal scenario?

With

a young

loved one,

is what I was thinking.

Let's settle for the dream.

Let's settle for the dream.

And then, you know, usually the viewing is from two o'clock, from two to

four, and then from seven until nine.

And let's say not

in the

matinee performance, but in the evening performance, the seven to nine, the mime would appear.

I would say the whole thing would probably take 15 minutes, 20 minutes, and be gone.

And then 10 years later, people would say, remember that wake we went to?

I don't remember who it was.

But it was a mime.

There was a mime at that wake.

And this is what I want to leave people with.

They probably wouldn't remember whose.

Ray, it wouldn't matter.

It wouldn't matter, but they would remember the mime.

They would remember the court case afterwards when whoever the mime sued for punching him.

Well, that's...

I think Jesse raises a good point.

How important is it to you?

I mean, obviously.

If I grant your motion and allow the mime,

Jesse will know,

but you would like to keep it a secret from as many of the other people there as possible.

How important is that to you?

Well, I've already kind of spread the word around to several of the people.

One of my nephews who might just haul off and hit a mime hike, but I already pre-prepared him for the possibility of a mime showing up to defuse any

possible

violence.

And what was your violent nephew's reaction to that?

Did he punch you?

No, he laughed.

Anyone who knows me

says

we wouldn't think you would have it any other way than to have a mime at your wake.

Objection hearsay.

I don't know if these people said that.

Okay.

Do you have any affidavits to present?

No, I have no affidavits.

Jesse, 15 minutes of mime in a two-hour viewing period is not acceptable.

That is less than I thought it was going to be.

To be honest with you, Judge, until a few months ago, I was really hoping and thought that this was just

a long time joke that my father was telling.

Because he's been saying this to the family for years.

And it wasn't until I called my older sister and said, so how about this mime?

Is this for real?

And she said, yes.

And she has documents from my father, you know, requesting, you know, with the directions to hire a mime after his death.

And he has provided

a CD with a soundtrack and everything.

And so this is this.

What soundtrack?

I put together a last list, which was music that I wanted played.

And

on it is

Warren Zbon's Lawyer's Guns and Money,

Desperado,

Who Knows Where the Time Goes.

We Didn't Start the Fire by Billy Joel.

By the way, Billy Joel is a graduate of Hicksville High School.

Yes.

Why do you think I made that joke?

I don't know.

Okay.

I just made that.

I just, I just, I didn't know that.

That's good to know.

Good to know.

Yeah, so I've carefully gone through this.

Again, it's a mixture of

sad and

funny songs, and I thought it would

it would be in keeping with my personality.

As I said, I still have a junior high school mentality.

Okay, Joseph the Ham, what else have you got going on at your funerary hoedown?

Fake snakes in mixed nuts cans?

No, no.

No, it's a mime.

It's a mime.

I'm not.

Are all the drinks going to be served with fake ice creams with plastic flies in them?

How many Italian funerals have you been to?

Two, but not, I don't think, as involved as yours.

Oh, well, see, it's awake, actually.

The funeral is a whole other thing.

But it would be, you know, just a gathering of...

Well, I'm sorry.

Are you accusing me of not taking your funeral seriously?

That's exactly the point.

I don't want the funeral taken seriously.

I would like to be taken seriously.

But, Dad, first of all, nobody takes you seriously.

So

that's just not an option.

That's not going to happen, mime or no mime.

Well, I take that as a compliment.

That's my intention.

My intention, you said I always go for the joke.

I like, I want to leave you laughing.

You know, if

you cry, and I know you, Jess, I know you're so much like me.

You're very sensitive.

And despite this whole thing, there is a deep sensitivity to me.

We are very much alike.

But after that passing, and I'm not looking forward to this, you know, I'm really not looking forward to this.

But after that passing, at some point, you know, when you're 50 years old, 60 years old, and you think back and you say, you know, my father was really crazy, but I loved him.

He made me laugh.

What more could I hope for?

I think,

I guess, I feel like if there was not a mind there, there would still be opportunities to find humor in.

to acknowledge the absurdity of mortality

and to find humor in life and in death.

And I think

what would those opportunities be?

Pitch them to

your dad.

In

speeches that people make at the wake.

I can't imagine delivering a straight speech at his wake.

That wouldn't make sense.

I've already written what I want you to say.

Hold on.

Let me finish my thought before I forget it.

But I think having a mime there changes the tone of the entire event.

And

in a way that,

whether or not it's your intention, I think

may make people feel as though it's not okay to be sad, that the expectation

is to be

laughing and jovial.

when I think it should be a safe space where people can be sad, where people shouldn't feel social pressure to have to laugh and smile.

I take your meaning that you want people to feel comfortable in whatever feeling they're having and that the mime would be

an

unpleasant distraction, a confusing distraction rather than a pleasant distraction.

Joseph, let me ask you a question here.

You keep saying that you want to leave people laughing, you want to leave people laughing, you want to leave people laughing.

And I think that there's a lot of merit to that.

But is the joke here, like, look at this goof.

He got a mime, the worst thing,

right?

Or, or is it that you actually have a love for the art of mime?

Do you have a relationship with the art of mime that is meaningful to you?

Well, I wouldn't say it's a love with the relationship with the art of mime.

I just think it's a mime is so

contrary to the event,

the funeral, the wake, that you have to see the absurdity, the humor, the

my God,

what is it with it?

He had a mime at the wake.

When people talk about it, and I hope they will, they'll say, wow, that was really unique.

I have a friend who plans to give out little keepsake keychains with his ashes in them.

I thought, what a great idea that is.

My ex

wants her ashes to be compressed into jewelry that our

daughter and son will wear.

I mean, that's her plan.

I don't think a mime is

that

far out of the ballpark here.

Are you trying to keep up with the Joneses?

Oh, no, no, no.

My friend's putting his ashes

in some snow globes and giving them away.

Why can't I have a mime?

A mime.

My friend is getting his ashes put into an above-ground pool, but I'm getting mine put into an in-ground pool.

Now, I've done some research on this.

I've looked up mimes, and they are listed.

I know, I, yeah, no, all this is

invisible wind against which you are walking at this moment.

This is a smokescreen.

None of that matters.

I know that you guys can probably scrape together enough money to hire a decent mime.

I know that there are mimes out there, and I know that they're listed.

I'm trying to get to the crux of why you want this mime and

whether it is worth the offense to to your own son.

Because the thing is, you want to leave him laughing, but your son is saying to you,

it's not going to make me laugh, it's going to make me upset.

Well, he's going to be upset.

I know he's going to be upset.

Jesse's a very sensitive person, and I know that.

But I think after he's upset, and after he's cried, and after he has

worked through that, I think he will appreciate the

humor

because he does have that sense of humor that's my sense of humor in him

you said that you know what you want jesse to read at your funeral oh no i was joking oh okay but i was i said i said i had already written what i wanted him to say no that was that's not that's not true but you are a writer and and you have been you have been planning this for some time and some evidence was submitted to me first of all of a photoshop of, I guess, you or some person representing you in a casket with a big white beard and a giant beer belly.

And standing next to you

is a traditional mime in a striped shirt, sort of doing jazz hands in front of your face.

And that's your, that's you.

We're going to put this on the website, obviously.

Please go to maximumfunds.org, check it out.

And you can see Joseph's vision.

You made this Photoshop collage yourself, sir.

Is that correct?

Actually,

my face and the beard that was part of a christmas card uh-huh and what i did was i took that top part with my face in there and i put it in the in the coffin and then i took the mime uh from um an ad i don't remember what it was and

i can tell you exactly what it was it was for state farm insurance because there are a couple of because there are a couple of there are a couple of awnings in the background of this photo i just noticed i have the state farm logo and name on there if you're secretly an agent for state farm don't deny it sir do do the jingle like a good neighbor state farm is mime

all right so anyway well you can people can go look at that crypto advertisement on the website but also provided to me was a poem that you wrote joseph about this very subject do you have this poem in front of you uh no i don't okay

i i have it up judge would you read it for me please jesse in the world without me the sun still rises rises and shines.

The moon paces through its phases, shows up sometime, confused in the daytime, but mostly at night.

The stars remain obscured by New York City light.

My adult children wake and sleep and work, and maybe feel me there, and gone, and cry, or laugh, or both.

My friends who haven't left the world before me might remember that wake of mine with a mime.

That wake with a mime.

Unexplained, walking against the wind, trapped in a box, engaged in a tug-of-war, listening to conversations.

If my adult children followed my last wishes and didn't just yes me to death and after decide what's best.

My adult children, embarrassed sometimes, who made excuses for me frequently, indulged me often, accepted me, flawed mostly, and gave my silly life meaning always.

Do you remember writing that, sir?

I do.

That's a very good poem.

This is my father.

I'm in tears.

I'm in tears here.

Wow.

This is Copyright 2013, Joseph E.

Scalia from Poetry in Alphabetical Order, published by State Farm Insurance Press.

Available as an e-book.

But most importantly, as I say, Copyright 2013,

as we record this, it is the very beginning of 2016.

This has been on your mind for some time.

It is established via documents.

And I think I've heard everything that I need to hear.

I'm now going to moonwalk

back into my chambers and silently peruse the evidence.

And I'll be back in a moment with my decision.

Please rise as Judge John Hoshman exits the courtroom.

Jesse, how do you feel about your chances in the case here?

I know I'm making an extraordinary request to

deny a person their last wishes.

I feel like my case is

meaningful to me, and I feel like I have presented my honest feelings.

And I also feel that my father

rather speaks for himself.

Joseph,

how are you feeling?

And

follow-up question.

Is it weird that I was really enjoying that lovely poem until I felt like it took a turn for the spiteful and made me wonder if this entire thing wasn't just an opportunity for you to be preemptively resentful of your own children?

I don't know how you can even feel that.

I was moved by it.

It was a,

and I remember my state of mind when I wrote it.

It was

expressing to my children that

with everything else that I've had in life, it's they are the ones that gave my life

meaning and do give my life meaning.

And

then, of course,

the mime, if the mime was there, I don't even know that the mime will be there.

But

no,

I was not throwing

sand in their faces.

We'll see if that has any bearing on the case when we come back in just a moment.

You're listening to Judge John Hodgman.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

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But made in isn't just for professional chefs.

It's for home cooks, too.

And even some of your favorite celebratory dishes can be amplified with made-in cookware.

It's the stuff that professional chefs use, but because it is sold directly to you, it's a lot more affordable than some of the other high-end brands.

We're both big fans of the carbon steel.

I have a little

carbon steel skillet that my mother-in-law loves to use because cast iron is too heavy for her, but she wants that non-stick.

And I know that she can, you know, she can heat that thing up hot if she wants to use it hot.

She can use it to braise if she wants to use it to braise.

It's an immensely useful piece of kitchen toolery.

And it will last a long time.

And whether it's

griddles or pots and pans or knives or glassware or tableware, I mean, you know, Jesse, I'm sad to be leaving Maine Maine soon, but I am very, very happy to be coming back to my beloved Made In Entree Bowls.

All of it is incredibly solid, beautiful, functional, and as you point out, a lot more affordable because they sell it directly to you.

If you want to take your cooking to the next level, remember what so many great dishes on menus all around the world have in common.

They're made in, made in.

For full details, visit madeincookwear.com.

That's m-a-d-e-i-n cookware.com.

Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman re-enters the courtroom.

When I first heard the subject of this case,

I think listeners to this podcast and viewers in the galleries of this fake court can easily guess.

And my first instinct was, yeah, of course, there's going to be a mime at this funeral.

It's someone's dying wish.

And also, it's cool

Because

mime is a very unusual form of clowning.

It is the least funny form of clowning.

It is the most contemplative and often saddest form.

And it may not surprise you to learn that

I saw Marcel Marceau perform

in Boston.

I can't remember which theater it was.

I was 13 or 14 years old.

Tim McGonagall and I went on one of our affected, pretentious young dude dates to go see Marcel Marceau.

And it was,

you know, although mime itself, particularly as practiced by Marceau, is something of a stereotype now, there's no question this man had incredible physical precision and control over every aspect of his body and a deep emotional component to what he was doing that was very rarely funny and very often moving.

And Marceau himself said, I have designed my style pantomimes as white ink drawings on black backgrounds so that man's destiny appears as a thread lost in an endless labyrinth.

I have tried to shed some gleams of light on the shadow of man startled by his anguish.

And so there was something very apropos, unexpectedly,

as

your father, Jesse, comes to terms with his own surprise and startled anguish at appreciating that he's not 53 as he thought he was at the beginning of this podcast, but is now 72 and soon older.

And when that happens, you start trying to take,

it's a profound

emotional experience to start trying to take ownership of one's passing.

And so in many ways, having a mime seemed very appropriate.

And this is before I even knew from the internet this morning that in ancient Roman times, mimes were a very common part of

aristocratic and Roman funerals, where

part of the

process of mourning the dead, aside from hiring professional mourners, which I really hope you're going to do.

I hope you're going to hire a bunch of women to wail and throw dust in everybody's eyes.

was to have

a silent, essentially mime.

It's an anachronism to say that it was actually a mime because the term wasn't invented until much later, but to have a silent performer wearing a mask of the deceased

enact

memorable moments of that person's life in mime form, in silent mime form.

There is something very much

of death in the art form of mime.

And so

as I thought about it more,

my conviction deepened that this absolutely should be

part of a funeral ceremony.

But then I heard you, Joseph, and I started to think twice

about it.

I

started to think twice

the moment that and I know you were joking, but jokes, I trust you agree are designed to reveal deeper truths and I said you're gonna you know an ideal death would be to pass painlessly in one's sleep dreaming of an intimate encounter with a loved one and you said no that's not how I want to go I want to go awake while having an intimate encounter with a young person

And I know you were joking, but I think it really crystallized and becruxed something to me, term I just made up, with regard to this whole issue.

Because quite honestly, if you had your wish and you died while having an intimate encounter with a beautiful young person,

that would be fun for you,

but horribly traumatic for the other person.

And

as you prepare for

your memorial service and defining how you want to be remembered, of course, it is absolutely your decision.

So as you consider your own death and prepare for how you are going to be remembered, it is totally appropriate to be selfish.

You know, it's perhaps

the last expression of self that you have to offer the world.

And yet, one does not have a right to traumatize

the folks that are left behind.

You don't have a right to traumatize them.

I know that wasn't your conscious intention and is not your conscious intention.

You dropped some clues, nevertheless, that raised red flags for me.

One of them was the idea that the mime was going to surprise everyone.

And that it was going the mime, presumably a male mime in your imaginings, was going to walk through and take everyone by surprise and really give everybody, throw everyone for a loop.

And

while a funny prank is a funny prank,

I think you can hear in Jesse's voice the anxiety that maybe this isn't the best time to throw people for a loop because they're incredibly emotionally vulnerable.

And I heard

emotional vulnerability in Jesse's voice, and it's not even your funeral yet.

You know,

it's a hard bunch of emotions to process.

And

if you throw a mime in there as a prank,

then you're not necessarily,

whatever your intention is, you're not necessarily sharing a joke with people that will leave everyone laughing.

There, I think, a strong possibility that some people will feel that you're playing a joke on them from the grave.

And similarly,

backing up this fear that I have about your motives, conscious or unconscious,

is the fact that you consider the mime to be a punchline.

In other words, you're thinking of a stereotypical mime

that's just so out of nowhere and such a non-sequitur

that it's just a great, big, grand goof.

When I consider that your intention is to just have a big, grand surprise goof,

you're right, it'll leave people talking, but it may leave some people crying

and going, Why did you do this to us?

Why did you surprise us with this mime?

In this regard, it seems somewhat disrespectful.

In the same way that dying in the bed of another person might leave you happy, but the other person traumatized,

the plan, at least in its current state of proposed execution,

bad choice of words, I suppose, but as it's currently planned out, has a high potential for leaving your guests feel disrespected and not least disrespectful to the art of mime itself, because

I

know more about mime as an art form, having done two hours worth of Wikipedia looking up today than it seems you have engaged with.

You didn't quote Marcel Marceau to me.

If you'd come out talking, Marcel Marceau, going, I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment,

America, the world's most quotable mind, Marcel Marceau, then I would have found in your favorite muse.

Like, you have thought this through.

And

what it comes down to

is

the ambiguity that I think Jesse senses of your intentions.

Is your intention here to create

a provocative, lovely, irreverent play

and upheaval of the reverence of the funeral service?

Or is it just to have a big laugh at everyone's expenses?

Now, I know that consciously you are going to say, no,

I don't want to make fun of my grieving loved ones.

That's not my point.

But I do think that you haven't thought through

your feelings about this or your intentions completely because Jesse's already upset by it.

It hasn't even happened yet.

And so

one thing about

being an artist of any kind is that you have to follow your vision, right?

But you also have to learn to take notes.

Sometimes difficult notes.

Sometimes people saying, yeah, this doesn't have the effect that you want it to have.

And the truth is that you even have to take notes after you're dead.

The note that your son is giving you is, I don't think this is quite right.

And I think you need to take that note.

I'm giving you that note too.

All of that said, you wrote a poem about wanting to have a mime at your funeral several years ago.

You really want this mime.

The fact is that you can do whatever you want.

No matter what I say, no matter what Jesse says, you get an attorney, you write a will, and that mime will be there.

But, and I'm not going to stand in the way of a dying man, and I call you that because we're all dying men and women,

last wishes.

But I am going to say to you this: it is the order of this court,

and I encourage you to take this with all the gravity of a fake court on the internet

has

that you, A,

investigate your mime carefully

B

commission a work of art from a mime that is meaningful and will be meaningful to those in attendance

that is to say

don't just get a clichéd mime for the sake of the mime imagine how that mime would feel you're making a joke of that mime

if you want a mime at your funeral you go out there and you start seeing some mime in action, or at least go on YouTube.

Cultivate a relationship with the mime that seems most attuned to your creative

process

and commission him or her to create a short work to perform at your funeral.

And that work can be funny, and that work can be sad,

if and or both.

And

make your intention

known

to everyone who may attend, so they're not getting surprised with a mime, but in fact, see and understand the mime in the context of a large and final expression of self with which you wish to leave them.

So I am finding in favor of the defendant, Joseph,

but I have given you strict orders

to take this joke seriously

and consider

your audience thoughtfully or don't make the joke at all.

This is the sound of a gavel.

Get it?

It was silent.

There was no sound.

Judge John Hodgman rules, that is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Joseph, how do you feel about the ruling?

Well, it gives me a lot to think about.

I certainly have a lot to talk about to my kids and to Jesse,

especially.

And I will definitely take what the judge said into consideration and maybe

rethink this and maybe retweak it a little bit.

You understand that the judge's ruling is binding, right?

Yes, I do.

Thank you.

Jesse, how are you feeling?

I felt conflicted asking the judge to

prevent my father from doing this.

And I think he was wise not to

force my father to change his last wishes, but to

order him to seriously consider the impact that they will have on the people who will be there.

Are you a fun guy?

Me?

Yeah.

No, I'm a human being.

Oh, damn.

This is your answer.

It was.

I had to come out of chambers for that one.

You know what?

You can't see this, but I am miming a huge slow clap for you, Jesse.

That was intense.

I liked that a lot.

Jesse is very intense.

And in fact, we always talk about when the family gets together being a Jesse or doing a Jesse.

And we we say that with love and with respect.

And sometimes with our tongue firmly planted in our cheek.

But this is the thing.

You know, I heard a lot of wheels words from both of you around this.

I am not suggesting that you think about taking the joke more seriously.

I'm ordering you to take the joke as seriously as it deserves.

Do you understand what I'm saying?

Those are my orders.

Not just think about it.

And Jesse, you should get out.

A gentleman who is a real human being like you probably would appreciate some serious heavy-duty mime.

You can see if there's some mime out there.

I'm not ordering you, but I'm suggesting you can help your dad steer him in the direction of some really hot mimes.

I bet there's some good ones out there.

It was very interesting to hear the role they played in Roman funerals.

Yeah, you get someone doing that.

Oh, boy.

I'm going to be heavy.

And it's a great joke.

Jokes you take seriously are much funnier than jokes that you you don't take seriously.

Well,

Jesse Joseph, thank you for joining us on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

This was incubated.

Terrific.

Thank you.

You know, we've been doing my brother, my brother, me for 15 years.

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while.

Maybe you never listen.

And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years.

I know where this has ended up.

But no.

No, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah, you don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on my brother, my brother, and me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back.

It goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show.

Let's learn everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we?

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters?

Episode 64.

So how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news, we still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined!

No, no, no, it's good news as well.

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Long.

I'm Caroline Roper, and on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too.

And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode.

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Judge Hodgman.

Judge Hodgman, you're gonna.

Judge Hodgman, you're gonna have to talk.

This is an audio program.

Now,

just going

is as much of a violation of the mime's code as talking is.

At this point, you've busted, you know, you're out, you're done.

Meow.

No,

there's no such thing as a mime who just makes cat sounds, Judge Hodgman.

I'm trying to pioneer new pathways in meme.

This is a disaster.

Uh, well, look, how about thanks to Axel Kagler for naming this week's case?

I'll allow it.

Thanks, Axel.

You should follow us on social media if you want to name a future case at Hodgman and at Jesse Thorne on Twitter.

Just like Judge John Hodgman on Facebook.

And join us on the Reddit at maximumfund.reddit.com, the world's friendliest Reddit subreddit community.

Maybe the world's only friendly subreddit.

There's probably a few others.

I have to thank our editor, Mark McConville, not only for doing a top-notch job editing this this each and every week, but also for sending me, out of the blue, a holiday book, an old 1991

wives cookbook from the Hartford Whalers hockey team.

I saw that on your Tumblr.

That was amazing.

I just can't stop thanking Mark for that.

This is, you know,

lots of times local sports teams,

their wives, it's a very sexist thing, but this is another age, would get together and contribute their recipes for beans and franks typically, and then they would put the Hartford Whalers or whatever other logo on it, but of course the Hartford Whalers logo is the best logo, and then they would sell it for charity, and Mark found one of these old things, and I just can't, I can't,

the portraits, I mean, they send in pictures of their families, and all the mustaches and hockey haircuts.

I love it so much.

Thank you very much, Mark.

Also, thanks to our producer, Julia Smith.

Thank you, Julia, for everything you do

as we begin this new year.

Thank you for everything you've done in all these past years.

And thank you to everyone who came out to see us at Sketchfest in San Francisco.

What a fun time we had and what a great job we did.

Of course, I'm recording this before it happened, so I hope that that's true.

I mean, it seems like a safe assumption.

We had a great time and we did a great job.

That's right.

I'm sure that that's exactly what happened.

It makes a pile of sense.

Thank you, Julia Smith, for being our producer, as always.

Who else do we have to thank, Jesse?

Anyone?

No one, right?

No, I think we already thanked Mark McConville.

And, you know, we're pretty well set.

Oh, you know who I want to thank, Judge Hodgman?

No, who?

So a few weeks ago on the show, I mentioned that my menswear blog put this on, had started a store,

had putthison shop.com.

And I gave out a code, which was Bat Brothers

for free shipping.

And actually, kind of a lot of people bought things from the shop using that code.

And I got a lot of really nice emails from people about the nice things in the shop.

So thank you to those people.

And that code remains remains active.

You can go to putthisonshop.com and fulfill all of your scarf, vintage accessory and notion,

pocket square, and baseball cap needs.

Well, that's fantastic because all the gifts I got from my dad for Christmas and his birthday, which just happened,

either didn't fit him or he already had them.

So I got to get some more gifts for him.

Well, talk about it.

Good news for you, sir.

What's that code again for free shipping?

Bat Brothers.

And what's the website?

PutTisonshop.com.

And what is the name of this podcast?

The Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

And how do we feel about our listeners?

We love them.

We love them.

Thank you.

Pretty good, was what I was going to say, but we love them as better.

We'll talk to you next time on the Judge John Hodgman Podcast.

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