I have never really been an autograph collector exactly, but I had a few here and there. I had this one wall in my bedroom that I hung all sorts of stuff on. I had framed photos and a copy of the first record that came out on my old punk label and a three autographs:

1. The first autograph was John Snider from the Dukes Of Hazzard. I was a HUGE Dukes fan growing up and I found out that for a dollar her would send you a personalized autograph. It said “To Nate: God Bless. John R. Schneider.
2. The second was a letter that John McCain sent me thanking me for working/donating to his 2000 primary campaign. It is absolutely scary that a guy I would work so hard for would totally sell out and pander to the right like he has done. It pretty much makes me sick, but in 2000 I really trusted him and thought he would do a lot of good for this country.
3. The third autograph was from John Walsh from America’s Most Wanted. He was filming a scene in Old Town Alexandria, VA where my friends and I used to hang out every day. We kept yelling shit out whenever they started a take because we were punk ass kids. This guy Crazy Willy almost got arrested for it. I had been sitting watching this for about 30 minutes when I got an idea. I ran across the street to a CVS where a friend of mine worked… A girl who later got arrested for robbing a Ben And Jerry’s in full view of cameras where she was friends with half the staff who worked there. They came to her house a few hours after and found all the money, in a deposit bag with all the receipts. Amazing. Anyway, I ran into this CVS and asked her to hand me a WANTED poster that was hanging up. This guy had been hiding pornography in children’s books at the library or something. Anyway, I got this poster and got John Walsh to sign it. Awesome.

So, long story short… One day I realized when looking at this wall that all the autographs were of people named John. I thought this was very weird. I also am a big They Might Be Giants fan and they are both named John and I had their autograph… and when I was 10 I got John Ramita Jr’s autograph on an X-Man comic. These are weird conicidences. After that for about a month I became obsessed with collecting Johns’ autographs. I thought that since a signature is sometimes refered to as a “John Hancock” it was even more significant. I went on ebay and bought John Larroquette, John Lithgow and Neil Patrick Harris… okay, that last one is not a John, but it was only $3 and I am a pretty obsessive Doogie Howser fan.

Okay, long story short. I wanted to do something for a 4th of July update, so I decided to work on this idea of signing your “John”. John Hancock has the most recognizable signature in United States history. I wanted to do a little project to see how well people remembered their history books. Who remembers what his signature looks like? I just wanted to see peoples interpretation of it. I asked everyone to sign his name the way they think it looks on the Declaration of Independence and then I took a picture. I didn’t let them look at anyone else’s signature so everyone had their own view of what it looked like. Some people took it more seriously than others, and some people were just embarrassed that they didn’t know what it looked like. A surprisingly large amount of people had no idea what it looked like and basically mocked me for successfully completing 5th grade history class. I did not include those people in the project. Here are some interesting facts:

• Only 4 of 50 people underlined John Hancock. To me that is the first thing I think about with that signature.
• Almost everyone got the big J an H right.
• At least 5 people spelled his name blatantly wrong.
• It seems like 5% of the people involved in the project are completely illiterate.
• Two people wrote “John Han” and then drew a picture of a penis. Those people happened to be very close friends and did the exact thing as each other coincidentally only minutes apart. I made them redo them.
• Only one of the 50 people were actually named John.
• I shot 27 women and 23 men.

So what do we learn from this? I am not sure. But you should try the experiment on your own. Then look at his actual signature here. How did you do?

Check out all the photos here.

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