The Areas of My Expertise
The Areas of My Expertise is a 2005 American satirical almanac by John Hodgman. It is written in the form of absurd historical stories, complex charts and graphs, and fake newspaper columns. Among its sections are a list of 700 different hobo names and complete descriptions of "all 51" US states. The full title of the book is:
Author
English
October 20, 2005
United States
240
818.607
PN6165 .H64 2005
The book was later released in audiobook form, narrated by John Hodgman himself with some musical accompaniment by frequent collaborator Jonathan Coulton and a guest appearance by Paul Rudd.
The interior and exterior of the book are designed by graphic artist Sam Potts who is known for the interior and exterior design of the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co. and The Writer's Block.
A sequel, More Information Than You Require, was released on October 21, 2008.
The 700 Hoboes Project and e-Hobo.com[edit]
The 700 Hoboes Project refers to an internet meme that originated with a recording of Hodgman's recitation of the 700 hobo names from The Areas of My Expertise. An audio file of the reading, accompanied by frequent collaborator Jonathan Coulton playing "Big Rock Candy Mountain" "live for an hour, one take", was posted to a page on the promotional website for the book.
In October 2005, on hearing the audio file, Mark Frauenfelder proposed on the BoingBoing website to have "700 cartoonists volunteer to draw one of the 700 hoboes" that Hodgman listed in the book.
A few days later, the first of the 700 hoboes ("Stewbuilder Dennis") was posted to Flickr by Daniel Cardenas and a Flickr group (700 Hoboes) was subsequently formed.
In March 2006, several contributors to the 700 Hoboes Project decided to build a portal to house the drawings posted to the Flickr group. Len Peralta of Jawbone Radio came up with a design for the site and passed it on to Dan Coulter, who built a back end system using phpFlickr, his open source wrapper for Flickr's API. Hobo illustrators Adam Koford, Mike Peterson, Ben Rollman and Eric Vespoor contributed to the creation of the website, www.e-hobo.com. The URL refers to hobo #450 in the list, "my-e-hobo.com".
The 700 names were completed on September 5, 2006, coinciding with the release date of Areas of My Expertise to paperback, which contains an additional 100 hobo names. As of September 2006, there have been over 200 contributors to the project, spanning the globe. In March 2007, Adam Koford completed illustrating each of the 800 hoboes.
The 51 United States[edit]
An additional section in Areas of My Expertise, Part Six, "Our 51 United States," contains Hodgman's own descriptions of the states of the United States, including nicknames and mottos. The 51st state, Hodgman says, is called "Hohoq (also known as Ar)" and "frequently moves across the continent by unknown means and seems to disappear altogether."[2] He also says that Hohoq is home to the "Thunderbirds," giant eagles who shoot lightning from their eyes and transform into men. The state is described as having a complicated political history with the federal government, at one point being represented in the Senate by an enormous shape-shifting raven.
Kingdom of Loathing[edit]
The internet browser game The Kingdom of Loathing features a playable game area named Hobopolis, which was directly inspired by Hodgman's work. The hobos that appear in Hobopolis (with the exception of the six bosses) are randomly named, although the possibilities borrow heavily from Hodgman's list of hobo names.[3] The final boss, Hodgman the Hoboverlord, is named for John Hodgman himself. The developers of The Kingdom of Loathing were granted personal permission by Hodgman to use his material, as well as his name, for the game. He was reportedly "flattered".[4] Furthermore, a tattoo that can be obtained in-game from Hobopolis is the same as the hobo marking that means "It is time for hoboes to take over the United States government" in Hodgman's book.[5]
More Information Than You Require[edit]
More Information Than You Require is part two of The Areas of My Expertise and covers similar subjects. The book continues from the page where The Areas of My Expertise leaves off.