Justin Hampton at The Bookloft

Arlo Guthrie saw the vision in a deconsecrated church decades ago. In Great Barrington, not far from the Bookloft’s base. Goofy internet trends. Really.

I refer to that observation at the end of “Alice’s Restaurant,” where he notes:

“If one person [sings this song], just one person does it they may think he’s really sick and they won’t take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they’re both faggots and they won’t take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin’ a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. They may think it’s an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice’s Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it’s a movement.”

Well, I ended up seeing my pal Trish (That’s Big Bad Trish to you, son.) post this right after her tweet on Facebook:

“Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence….
* Post that sentence AS YOUR STATUS. AND POST these instructions in a comment to this status.
* Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST book.”

Not too soon after that, I went to email my friend Bianca. Turned out she had done the same. About four or five people did this as well.

So I realized we’ve got ourselves a silly little movement, and it happened so suddenly, I barely even noticed it. And whaddaya know, it involves people opening up books.

Not watching videos on YouTube.

Not playing XBox 360 with some person you’ll never meet in Lisbon and posting said Pwnage on YouTube like anyone would care.

No, just getting them to look at the book. So maybe there is a movement going on after all.

So here’s a sentence from a book I’ll be talking about very soon, in my very first REAL post on Steampunk, Neal Stephenson’s “The Diamond Age.”

“Power supplies were much more potent.”

Just ask Alice.