John and Hank Green Sell Out Carnegie Hall

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. But how do you sell it out? By writing touching novels, hosting educational internet shows, singing geeky songs, and constantly building a fanbase for half a decade. (In other words: yeah, practice.) On Tuesday, Mental Floss contributors John and Hank Green performed at Carnegie Hall -- and they sold every seat.

The event was called An Evening of Awesome, a reference to the brothers' amazingly successful charity, Project for Awesome. (It also could be argued that these guys are inherently made of awesome, so an evening featuring their talents would of course be an evening of awesome.)

The evening was timed to celebrate the one-year anniversary of The Fault in Our Stars, John's bestselling novel. To make this Flossy affair even Flossier, John's book spent some time sharing the top two spots on the bestsellers list with Floss contributor Ransom Riggs's first novel in 2012.

The event featured songs and discussion from both brothers, along with appearances by The Mountain Goats; Kimya Dawson; Hanna Hart; a surprise guest appearance by Neil Gaiman, who hosted the Q&A portion of the evening; and many more. You can watch the whole thing below (running time is about two and a half hours, starting roughly 35 minutes into this YouTube video).

My favorite moment? At 1:32:30, The Mountain Goats perform "Love, Love, Love" on a distressingly out-of-tune guitar. And how does Darnielle know John likes the song? Probably because of John's classic vlog from June 18, 2007.

Nerdfighter trivia note: The New York Times reported on the event, stating: "The followers of the VlogBrothers call themselves Nerdfighters — not because they fight nerds but because they 'un-ironically' and 'passionately' embrace being smart and having eccentric interests." Of course, if the NYT writer had actually seen that first year of vlogs, they'd know that "Nerdfighters" was John's misreading of the name of an arcade game he came across in an airport, and only later came to mean all that other stuff.

Guess What

If you've read this far, you're probably a fan. So you'll be interested to know that John, Hank, and Mental Floss are cooking up a secret project. Get excited, people!