Yes, we'd all like to kill the philosopher who came up with the tiresome tree/forest/does-anyone-hear-it-fall? conundrum, right?

And yet ... there's a tangential application that might apply to the standup comedy business. To wit, if the lights go out at the venue and the crowd leaves, are there still comics who can't turn it off? They're back in their apartment two hours later, feeding the cat and still riffing because they're sorta always ... in character? And if so, does that sort of creepy quality make them funnier or more disturbingly authentic - or both?

After all, most anyone who spent any time listening to and/or chortling at Andy Kauffman or Emo Phillips probably wanted to say, at one point, "Okay, heh heh! Funny stuff. Ha! Okay, you can, ah, stop now. No, really, joke time's over. PLEASE! You're freaking me out."

Such thoughts began to slowly simmer a few weeks back during a phone conversation with John Hodgman, an equal-opportunity humorist whose quick and hilarious work routinely surfaces through books, onstage performance, and via television, film and podcasts. And definitely on the phone.

The interview certainly never reached the "you're freaking me out" point, and the exchange was completely enjoyable and hilarious, but there was still an eerie inference that Hodgman takes, well, nothing very seriously except making people laugh - a noble ideal at which the humorist then succeeded over and over with surrealistic zeal and motorboat speed over the next half-hour.

For example, he's asked if he remembers a period in his life when it occurred to him that people thought he was funny.

"I know exactly the point! It was on a day in 1999 - one of the 365 days that year!" Hodgman says excitedly. Then, by way of explanation, he churns through a multi-tiered story about an aborted career as a literaray agent and the subsequent and fortuitous placement of various humor essays and works of fiction with Dave Eggars at McSweeneys and Mark Adams at Men's Journal, and ultimately video reports for Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show."

Hodgman seems clearly moved and perhaps astonished by his good fortune with those mentors. Eggars, he says, told him, "You know, you're okay as a literary agent. But you're really good at (writing humor). You should be doing this."

Hodgman hesitates and then powers on. "And that was sort of the start. I mean, Jon Stewart profoundly changed my life. And then Mark Adams made me realize something that hadn't occurred to me: 'Don't avoid being funny; it comes more or less naturally to you. That doesn't happen to most people.'"

The purpose of the phone interview is to support Hodgman's presentation, tonight in the Maxwell M. & Ruth R. Belding Theater at Hartford's Bushnell, of his one-man show "I Stole Your Dad," an eccentric array of observations loosely associated with a man's slow descent into middle age. While typically not a particularly original topic for comics, "middle age," through the prismatic mind of Hodgman, explores a variety of themes including state songs of Tennessee, how to dress like a young hipster, fax machines and what do do now that the world did not end in 2012 as originally forecast by the Mayans.

It's an irrisistible litany that seems almost without logic or form, doesn't it?

But, as Hodgman's fans realize, it's all just part of the multiple facets of his comic personality - which is also manifested in his three books of densely hysterical and almost surreal essays, "More Information Than You Require," "The Areas of My Expertise" and "That Is All." In "Expertise," for example, there is an extensive section containing fictional histories and accounts of hobo lore - including a chapter titled "700 Hobo Names." And that's exactly and all the chapter is - a numerical litany of names for hobos. The list is presented, as with everything in all the books, as factual - though of course it's fiction and just hysterically ridiculous fiction, at that. A few of the nomenclatures included are Free-Peanuts Doug, Manatee the Railyard Toreador, Weekend-Circular Deborah, Hell's Own Breath Hinckley, and Lil' Jonny Songbird, the Songbird Eater.

Perhaps the most "normal" Hodgman role was his human-form depiction of a PC in popular and long-running Apple computer series of commercials, playing opposite Justin Long's personification of a Mac. It's arguable that the Hodgman PC character was as recognizable as any human on any commercial out there. In that spirit, it seems fun to wonder about his familiarity with and affection for other contemporary television advertising icons. Would he, for example, rather go on a date with Flo, the Progressive Insurance pitch-woman or the titular red-headed Wendy in ads for the fast-food burger chain?

"Well, let me at once say that I would not go out with Wendy because she's a cartoon and also a child," Hodgman begins - but he's cut off so as to be informed that there are now Wendy's ads featuring Morgan Smith, an actual human. He says, "Oh, they have a person, now? Well, part of being an icon is that I'm not always aware of other icons. I wish only the best for Wendy, but she's not there, yet. Flo? Yes, Flo is there. I'm not sure of her real name but one of us could look it up. I'll do it -" Hodgman goes silent but there's a sound of rapid keyboard clacking and then he's back - "Yes, she's Stephanie Courtney and was born on Feb. 8, 1970. She's really talented and funny."

Since time is running short, Hodgman is asked about his "Judge Hodgman" podcast, a send-up of reality court television wherein he renders opinions on actual but very mundane cases submitted by listeners. What would Hodgman think about revisiting an actual huge, real-world legal drama or yore - something along the lines of the Eugene V. Debs/Pullman Strike case or Brown vs. the Board of Education - and overseeing the case?

"Yes!" he cries excitedly. "I want to relitigate the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial - although with real monkeys. That was such false advertising! Can you imagine an ancient, immortal traveler who decided to attend that? And he walks in and says, 'Where are the monkeys?!' I'm saying it now. My newly formed plans for all of 2015 involve a courtroom and a monkey trial and all different kinds of primates. Including lemurs."