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My Signature Move

2018-06-19 · letter vlog · John · 3:18 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Books & writing (also: Personal life) · mode: Comedy & performance · tags: self promotion, community lore

A longer version is linked in the description: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/hank-green/an-absolutely-remarkable-thing/.

John, who has never had a signature move, tries to find one to doodle on 2,000 signed sheets of Hank's first novel, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, celebrates its starred Kirkus review breaking mid-video, and settles on spirals and DFTBA in the Carl's shadow.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — John's lifelong lack of a signature move: the middle-school up-nod and the snap greeting

  • ★★ In middle school, craving status, John followed a cool-guide's advice to nod upward rather than downward and tried to make the up-nod his signature move; it went as well as you would expect. (playful) — 00:00:02
  • ★ A later, much worse signature move, a snapping 'Hello there' greeting, also failed, so John went through life without a signature move. (playful) — 00:00:31

00:00:51 — Hank's 40,000 signed sheets and the 2,000 sent to John; the starred Kirkus review breaks in

  • ★★★ Hank is signing 40,000 sheets to be bound into his first novel, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, which comes out September 25 and is available for pre-order now. — 00:00:51 · Hank Green, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing · also in: Other John Greens
  • ★★ Hank sent John 2,000 of the signed sheets to add something to, the way Hank has added his signature move, the Hanklerfish, to many copies of John's books. — 00:01:02 · Hank Green, Hanklerfish
  • ★★★ Breaking news mid-video: the first review of Hank's book, a starred review from Kirkus, has just come out. — 00:01:14 · An Absolutely Remarkable Thing
  • ★★ John reads Kirkus calling the book a fun contemporary adventure that cares about who we are as humans, and saying Green is clearly interested in how social media moves the needle on our culture and uses April's fame, choices and moral quandaries to reflect on the rending of social fabric. — 00:01:23 · An Absolutely Remarkable Thing
  • ★★ John says Hank's book is so brilliant and he cannot wait for people to read it. — 00:01:38 · An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

00:01:44 — John's attempts at a signature doodle; spirals and DFTBA in the Carl's shadow; the odds for pre-orderers

  • ★ Even John's eight-year-old son has a signature move, the Pokéball, which he has drawn on several of the sheets. (playful) — 00:01:48 · Henry Green
  • ★★ John's failed attempts: a microscopic organism that looks like a sun or a bacterium, five stars he can't draw, and a stick figure with a speech bubble that looks made by a five-year-old. (playful) — 00:01:53
  • ★★ On about half the sheets John draws spirals, as close as he can get to the Raymond Pettibon painting he wrote about in Turtles All the Way Down; spirals sort of are his signature move even if he doesn't want them to be. (hedged) — 00:02:18 · Turtles All the Way Down
  • ★★ On the other half John writes DFTBA in the infinite shadow created by the Carl, which strikes him as an extremely metaphorically resonant infinite shadow. — 00:02:35 · DFTBA
  • ★★ Pre-ordering a signed copy gives a 5% chance of one of John's doodles and a 1 in 40,000 chance of the one sheet Hank forgot to sign, where John wrote a note and imitated Hank's signature. (playful) — 00:02:47 · An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

00:03:01 — Congratulations and praise for the book, links to signed copies, sign-off

  • ★★★ Months after first reading it, John still thinks about Hank's book all the time and really thinks it might change the world for the better. (hedged) — 00:03:04 · An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

In the description and comments

Humor (significant)

  • John tries to make the upward nod his signature move to show his peers he is confident and powerful. — 00:00:28

    “Which, you know, went about as well as you would expect.”

  • John demonstrates his worse signature move, a snap with 'Hello there!'. — 00:00:40

    “And that one also, surprisingly, did not become for me what the moonwalk was for Michael Jackson or heel-clicking is for the Lucky Charms leprechaun.”

  • John loves Hank's book so much he decides to give it five stars on the sheets. — 00:02:06

    “Only to learn that I can't draw stars.”

  • A 1 in 40,000 chance of getting the one sheet Hank forgot to sign. — 00:02:54

    “so I wrote a note and tried to recreate Hank's signature on it”

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

Also: People: Henry Green · Michael Jackson · Raymond Pettibon

Works: Hanklerfish · Turtles All the Way Down

Organizations: Kirkus Reviews

Terms: DFTBA · doobly-doo

Events: FIFA World Cup

Characters: April May · Carl · Poké Ball

Products: Lucky Charms

Only in the description or credits: Amazon · Barnes & Noble · Twitter

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