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An Evening of Awesome at Carnegie Hall

2013-01-16 · John, Hank, Ashley Clements, Daniel Gordh, John Darnielle, Neil Gaiman, Hannah Hart, Kimya Dawson, Grace Helbig · watch on YouTube · Pop culture · comedy performance

In a live Carnegie Hall show marking TFIOS's first and Nerdfighteria's sixth anniversaries, John argues that novels and Nerdfighteria 'jump into the abyss' with people and that meaning is built through collaboration. Hank, the Mountain Goats and Kimya Dawson perform, with readings and a live Question Tuesday with Hannah Hart and Neil Gaiman.

What is said

00:35:21 — Welcome to An Evening of Awesome at Carnegie Hall: Hank's sung 'Carnegie Hall' bit; celebrating TFIOS's first and Nerdfighteria's sixth anniversary

  • ★★★ John says the show celebrates the one-year anniversary of the publication of The Fault in Our Stars and the six-year anniversary of the Nerdfighter community. — 00:36:35 · The Fault in Our Stars, Nerdfighteria

00:38:22 — Reading of the Anne Frank House chapter of The Fault in Our Stars by Lizzie Bennet Diaries actors Ashley Clements and Daniel Gordh

  • ★★ John introduces a reading from The Fault in Our Stars, now past the first pages, by actors from The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a YouTube web-series adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. — 00:38:22 · The Fault in Our Stars, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries
  • ★★ Ashley Clements and Daniel Gordh read the Anne Frank House chapter of The Fault in Our Stars, ending with Hazel and Augustus's kiss, the applause and the walk back to the hotel. (fiction) — 00:39:10 · The Fault in Our Stars

00:46:05 — John's talk: novels jump into the abyss with you; meaning of life, chaplaincy, his novels, a private person and a child of the brothers, collaboration and Nerdfighteria

  • ★★★ John says what he loves about novels, reading and writing them, is that like a stranger jumping into your hole, they jump into the abyss to be with you. — 00:47:39 > «They jump into the abyss to be with you where you are.»
  • ★★ John says he has always been obsessed with the meaning of his life: happy when he felt part of a plan (Hogwarts letter, Jedi), sad when not. — 00:47:39
  • ★★ John says a third-grade girlfriend made him feel the universe had a plan for him; when she broke up with him three weeks later its 'cold, infinite apathy' was laid bare. (playful) — 00:48:44
  • ★★ John says his faith in a purpose waxed and waned with his happiness; with high-school friend Sean Titone he asked deeper questions, and books were companions, not ladders out. — 00:49:26
  • ★★★ John says at 22, accepted to the University of Chicago divinity school, he first spent six months as a children's hospital chaplain, where many sick kids died. — 00:50:10
  • ★★ John says faced with children's needless suffering he felt only anger and hopelessness, so he was a bad chaplain except to kids with game consoles, whom he could play at Mario Kart. — 00:50:53
  • ★★★ John says he concluded the universe isn't interested in us as individuals, or acts as if it isn't, so his question became whether meaning in human life is inherent or constructed. — 00:51:38
  • ★★ John says after years of bad stories about a chaplain like himself, he wrote Looking for Alaska, about grief, and An Abundance of Katherines, about not being special. — 00:51:58 · Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines
  • ★★ John says Paper Towns is about empathy and trying to imagine other people complexly, and hopes his books can jump into the abyss to be with readers. — 00:53:07 · Paper Towns, perspective-taking
  • ★★★ John says none of those books addressed what he saw at the hospital, which left him feeling only nihilism; then he became friends with a private person and became a father. — 00:53:28
  • ★★★ John says a child of the brothers's birth showed him he'll be a child of the brothers's dad as long as either lives; that love is in this sense stronger than death was very important to TFIOS. — 00:53:48 · The Fault in Our Stars
  • ★★★ John says a private person, a Nerdfighter reader very sick with cancer when they met in 2009, taught him what Augustus learns: the real hero's journey goes from strength to weakness. — 00:54:11 · The Fault in Our Stars, Nerdfighteria > «the real hero's journey is the journey from strength to weakness.»
  • ★★★ John says it looks as if he jumped into the abyss with a private person, but she jumped in with him: he was hopeless, and she liked being alive. — 00:54:53
  • ★★★ John says the realization that a private person's short life was still a good, rich and full life was central to The Fault in Our Stars. — 00:55:41 · The Fault in Our Stars
  • ★★★ John says he may have concluded he doesn't care whether meaning is constructed or inherent, only what we find, and most meaning in his life came through collaboration. (hedged) — 00:56:04
  • ★★ John says he and Hank missed the easy collaborations of their teens, which is why they started Brotherhood 2.0 in 2007, wanting collaborators again; they never imagined this many. — 00:56:49 · Brotherhood 2.0, Hank Green
  • ★★ John retells the Evil Baby Orphanage: Hank asked about killing baby Hitler, a commenter proposed an orphanage for evil babies, inspiring fan fiction, web comics and now a professionally produced card game. — 00:57:30 · Evil Baby Orphanage, Adolf Hitler, Hank Green
  • ★★ John says the Pizza John shirt comes from his liking pizza and once having a mustache for five minutes; Nerdfighter Valerie2776 merged the two into the design. (playful) — 00:58:19 · Pizza John
  • ★★ John says the Project for Awesome has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity and has literally saved lives around the world. — 00:59:05 · Project for Awesome
  • ★★★ John argues that daily collaborations, silly or serious, are what Nerdfighteria is: people working together to build meaning, which like a good book helps them feel unalone. — 00:59:26 · Nerdfighteria > «that's what Nerdfighteria is. We work together to build meaning.»
  • ★★★ John says books seem one person's work, but TFIOS was partly written by a private person, his wife, Julie Strauss-Gabel, Jodi Reamer, John Darnielle, Hank and T. S. Eliot. — 00:59:48 · The Fault in Our Stars, Sarah Urist Green, Hank Green
  • ★★★ John says every reading of a book is a collaboration in which reader and writer make the story up together, and readers' art, music and films inspired by the book extend it. — 01:00:11 · The Fault in Our Stars
  • ★★ John thanks the audience: this collaboration has been the great joy of his professional life and helped him, in Maurice Sendak's phrase, to fall in love with the world. — 01:00:55 · Nerdfighteria

01:01:29 — John introduces Hank; Hank's early songs and his song 'Helen Hunt'

  • ★★ John introduces Hank as co-founder of VidCon, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and DFTBA Records and founding editor of EcoGeek.org. — 01:01:29 · Hank Green, VidCon, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, DFTBA Records, EcoGeek
  • ★★ Hank opens with 'Helen Hunt', the first song he ever put on YouTube, a song about a girl who isn't his wife. — 01:02:32 · Helen Hunt, Helen Hunt
  • ★★ Hank says in high school he wrote raps about Pentium computers and 'Baby, I Sold Your Dog on eBay', hoping to sell it to Blink-182; instead he's at Carnegie Hall. (playful) — 01:02:32

01:05:48 — Hank's Harry Potter songs: the YouTube front-page story, 'Accio Deathly Hallows' and 'Book 8'

  • ★★ Hank says he didn't know a whole community wrote Harry Potter songs; getting hooked up with them was one of the best things creating for the internet brought him. — 01:05:48 · Harry Potter
  • ★★★ Hank says before the last Harry Potter book he emailed YouTube suggesting a front-page feature and a video; they did, the brothers' first real traction on YouTube. — 01:06:09 · YouTube, Accio Deathly Hallows, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
  • ★★ After 'Accio Deathly Hallows', Hank says its success made him decide to write a Harry Potter song every year on its anniversary, and sings 'Book 8', about a book that doesn't exist. (playful) — 01:10:25 · Accio Deathly Hallows, Harry Potter

01:13:50 — Hank on science and SciShow; 'The Universe is Weird'

  • ★★ Hank says audience support let him launch SciShow and talk and sing about science, then sings 'The Universe is Weird', which he says he has never got through without a mistake. — 01:13:50 · SciShow

01:17:23 — John introduces The Mountain Goats; their set (In Memory of Satan, Thank You Mario..., Pale Green Things, Love Love Love, an unreleased song, Game Shows Touch Our Lives)

  • ★★ John introduces The Mountain Goats as his favorite band, and also his second favorite; his brother is in his top three. (playful) — 01:17:23 · The Mountain Goats
  • ★★ John Darnielle says many people would never have heard The Mountain Goats if John weren't relentlessly telling them to listen, and plays 'Love Love Love', a song John digs. — 01:32:38 · John Green, The Mountain Goats
  • ★★ Darnielle says he was sent a hardback book and found a Mountain Goats song in it ('Paper Towns'), then plays 'Game Shows Touch Our Lives'. — 01:39:10 · Paper Towns

01:43:42 — Live Question Tuesday with Hannah Hart and Neil Gaiman as teammates, with an electric-shock punishment for whoever is talking at the end

  • ★★ John announces a live Question Tuesday: two teams, questions sent on Twitter read by teammates, and whoever is talking at the end is punished with mild electrocution. (playful) — 01:43:42 · Question Tuesday, Punishment
  • ★★ Hank's teammate is Hannah Hart, host of My Drunk Kitchen; John's is Neil Gaiman, best-selling author who has written Doctor Who scripts. — 01:44:05 · Neil Gaiman, Doctor Who
  • ★★ John's advice to aspiring novelists: read a lot and broadly, tell stories to friends and notice when they get bored (also good for vlogging), and write a lot. — 01:46:39
  • ★★ Neil Gaiman's advice: read everything, don't wait for elves to write your novel, and finish things, because a glorious failure teaches more than something never finished. — 01:47:25 · Neil Gaiman
  • ★★ Asked when you start feeling like a real adult, Hank says he's the wrong person to ask; he thinks adulthood is things being the same every day for years, so hopefully never. (playful) (hedged) — 01:48:09
  • ★★ Asked what he learned about John since Vlogbrothers began, Hank jokes about John's 'serious psychological issues', then offers answers John 'might have given': how smart and how funny he is. (playful) — 01:49:18 · John Green
  • ★ Asked how playing Carnegie Hall feels, John says writers mostly sit alone, so this is more fun: 'quite nice', a Dutch understatement he picked up living in Amsterdam. (playful) — 01:51:36 · Amsterdam
  • ★★ Hank says he had a crush on his junior-year high-school English teacher, who is now a Nerdfighter taking part in the Project for Awesome and the comments. — 01:53:19 · Nerdfighteria, Project for Awesome
  • ★★ John says self-doubt about writing never goes away: with each new novel he feels as if he has never written one before. — 01:54:04
  • ★★ Neil Gaiman recalls Gene Wolfe telling him, after he finished American Gods and thought he had figured out novels, that you only figure out how to write the novel you're on. — 01:54:46 > «you never figure out how to write a novel. You just figure out how to write the novel you're on.»
  • ★★★ Asked what most decreased world suck, Hank names P4A but recalls their first-year visit to a microfinance organization in the Dominican Republic; microfinance seems to really work. (hedged) — 01:55:09 · Project for Awesome, microfinance, world suck, Brotherhood 2.0, Vlogbrothers
  • ★★★ John says the Nerdfighter Kiva group is at about $1.76 million, and that every day he makes two loans from the Foundation to Decrease World Suck's rotating $8,000 of Kiva credit. (hedged) — 01:56:15 · Bank of Nerdfighteria, Kiva, Foundation to Decrease World Suck
  • ★★ John says novels don't make him feel overly exposed, since fictionality protects him, but very personal writing such as blog posts does. — 01:56:38
  • ★★ Neil Gaiman says writing at your rawest also protects you, because readers say they thought they were alone in feeling that, which returns as a blanket of love. — 01:56:59
  • ★ Asked his favorite pony, Hank says he has none, 'that's the whole point', but likes Spike because he's a tiny, cute dragon. (playful) — 01:57:49
  • ★ In a lightning round the brothers answer quick questions; one says white chocolate is not chocolate, 'it's just candy', and Hank's pearly-gates answer is 'DFTBA!'. (playful) — 01:59:42 · DFTBA
  • ★★ Hank realises he did not electrocute himself and, having 'policed' himself, gives himself the shock in his pocket. (playful) — 02:02:38 · Punishment

02:03:09 — Hank's love song for 'the adult female I love', written after a Mountain Goats show

  • ★★ Hank says his favorite thing is his wife; after seeing the Mountain Goats alone in Missoula while Katherine was away, he wrote one of his two love songs. (hedged) — 02:03:09 · Katherine Green, The Mountain Goats, Missoula, Montana
  • ★★ Hank finds it creepy how often romantic pet names refer to little children, so his song is 'for the adult female I love'. (playful) — 02:03:57

02:06:44 — Hank on the '50s progression ('ice cream changes'), with a medley from Earth Angel to Friday

  • ★★ Hank says many favorite songs, including some of his own, share one chord progression, the '50s progression (C, A minor, F, G), also called the ice cream changes. — 02:07:30
  • ★★ Hank loves that so many kinds of music come from the same progression, 'the infinite nature of creation', and sings examples from Earth Angel and Duke of Earl to Baby and Friday. — 02:07:52

02:11:54 — Hank's quark song (Strange Charm)

  • ★★ Hank says everything we know about is made of leptons, bosons and quarks, and sings his quark song. — 02:11:54 · Strange Charm

02:14:35 — Hank's song about The Fault in Our Stars from Hazel Grace's perspective

02:17:42 — Hank introduces Kimya Dawson; her set

  • ★★ Hank says he met Kimya Dawson at a tiny warehouse show while on tour with Harry and the Potters; she liked his music, found Nerdfighteria and immediately became a Nerdfighter. — 02:18:10 · Nerdfighteria
  • ★★ Kimya Dawson sings that judging and stereotyping people is pointless because everyone is really complicated, and we need more compassion. — 02:27:49

02:30:26 — Reader's theater: a Paper Towns cafeteria scene with Hannah Hart, Grace Helbig and Neil Gaiman (Black Santas)

  • ★★ John introduces a Paper Towns reader's theater, a book about imagining other people and our myths complexly: John as Q, Hannah Hart as Angela, Grace Helbig as Ben, Neil Gaiman as Radar. — 02:30:51 · Paper Towns, perspective-taking, Neil Gaiman

02:37:27 — Hank explains the deep-sea anglerfish and sings his anglerfish song; thanks and DFTBA

  • ★★ Hank explains that the deep sea gets no light and is fed by marine snow, the rotting bodies of dead organisms, so food is scarce and mates are hard to find. — 02:38:08
  • ★★ Hank says the male deep-sea anglerfish, born without a digestive system, smells out a female and bites her; their circulatory systems fuse and he becomes a sperm-producing appendage. (playful) — 02:39:17
  • ★★ Hank, inviting John back on stage, thanks everyone for an evening of awesome, Carnegie Hall, everyone at Penguin, friends and family, and closes with 'don't forget to be awesome'. — 02:41:58 · Penguin Books, DFTBA

02:43:06 — The brothers sing They Might Be Giants' cover of a song about New York City

02:47:21 — Finale: all performers, family and team brought on stage; Mountain Goats song with everyone

  • ★★ John calls the evening one of the coolest things that has ever happened to them, maybe top two, since he had a kid. (playful) — 02:47:21
  • ★★ For the finale John brings out the performers, his parents, Julie Strauss-Gabel, Jodi Reamer, Elyse Marshall who made the evening possible, Sean Titone, Katherine, Sarah (whom he first forgot) and Valerie2776. — 02:50:08 · Katherine Green, Sarah Urist Green

Humor (significant)

  • John explains that Nerdfighters don't fight nerds; Hank keeps turning every line into his sung 'Carnegie Hall' number. — 00:37:01 > «That's the silliest thing that I have ever heard because these nerds are at Carnegie Hall.»
  • John spent years writing bad stories about a 22-year-old hospital chaplain who was very much like him. — 00:52:21 > «only, you know, better looking and wittier and more charismatic and a magnet for beautiful female doctors. I wish I were kidding.»
  • Hank's love song to Helen Hunt strings together her films and roles. — 01:04:01 > «Well, I saw you naked in the water dance. It was as good as it gets in my pants»
  • Asked for three words to describe himself, John hesitates. — 01:50:02 > «the first two words that come to mind are both handsome.»
  • Hank's love song piles up claims that love hurts worse than fire and makes you want to tear down buildings. — 02:05:17 > «But it also happens to be the best thing That's ever happened to me And I'm obviously not a big fan of hyperbole»
  • Tracing the '50s progression through the decades, Hank reaches 2011's biggest hit (a private person's 'Friday'). — 02:11:02 > «depending on your definition of year, also depending on your definition of song.»
  • In the Paper Towns reading Neil Gaiman, as Radar, delivers a line about skipping government class. — 02:34:11 > «That Neil Gaiman said I would actually literally suck donkey balls.»
  • Hank describes the male anglerfish fusing into the female's body after biting her. — 02:40:00 > «And then he just sort of becomes like a pair of nuts hanging off of her side.»

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