John Hodgman made the third stop of his "Midwest Cities That Begin With the Letter M" tour Saturday night at Turner Hall Ballroom.

Milwaukee was preceded by Minneapolis and Madison on the tour and will be followed by a performance in the city Hodgman dubbed "M-Chicago." This was the first show he'd done in Milwaukee since making an appearance at the now-gone Bay View Harry W. Schwartz Bookshop back in 2006.

Hodgman, who is best known for his work as the "Resident Expert" on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and as the PC in Apple's series of Mac and PC commercials, recently released the final book in his series of completely false facts and trivia.

On Saturday night, he transferred the same tone he uses in his books – "The Areas of My Expertise," "More Information Than You Require" and the last volume, "That Is All" – to the stage in the form of a lecture. In both his writing and his performances, Hodgman is straight-faced and authoritative while coming up with totally absurd thoughts and ideas.

The show began with Hodgman coming out to the They Might Be Giants song "Deranged Millionaire," a persona that Hodgman has adopted for himself. With the song still playing, he went into the audience and removed the chair from a woman who was sitting in the first row. Bringing the chair on-stage, he then knocked it over, indicating it was of little use to him. Later, he asked the same woman to pick up a drink from the bar for him and then tried to hide the replacement chair she'd been given.

Throughout the night, Hodgman would occasionally receive a pocket of applause for some of his obscure references. While beginning to talk about magic tricks, Hodgman mentioned a great magician named Duncan Binks. One audience member clapped in recognition, prompting Hodgman to break character and laugh aloud. "I like the guy who applauds the thing that I made up."

The overall theme of the set was about the impending end of the world as indicated by the ancient Mayan calendar. Hodgman told the audience that he had seen this calendar and that it featured sexy Mayan firefighters.

After congratulating the audience for choosing to see his show over two of his arch nemeses, those being Garrison Keillor and sports, Hodgman then broke down the fake origins of most popular sports. Disappointed by how prevalent sports are in culture, Hodgman indicated his desire to turn the tables and force a group of jocks to name all eleven actors who have played Dr. Who.

During this stretch about sports, Hodgman apparently struck a nerve with a vocal curling fan who felt it was necessary to talk about the sport. Initially Hodgman played along, hoping to reach a point where the disturbance would fizzle out. However, this only invited more undisciplined reaction from select audience members talking to Hodgman. What finally brought this to an end was Hodgman paraphrasing comedian Paul F. Tompkins and emphasizing that his performance is supposed to be a MONOlogue.

After the unsolicited interactions had simmered down, Hodgman invited actual audience participation over the course of the final third of the show. He brought up three members of the audience to read confessionals from a fake reality show about competitive hoarding, a bit that was funny in concept but lacked in execution.

Transitioning back into talk about the end of the world, Hodgman threw packets of mayonnaise and small bottles of 5-hour Energy into the crowd, both of which he deemed as essential for survival. Finally, utilizing the ukulele he brought on-stage with him, Hodgman closed out the night by leading a sing-along of a Cynthia Hopkins song called "Resist the Tide."

While Hodgman was very funny, there was a bit of a scattershot feel to the show since he occasionally didn't utilize a strong segue to transition to a new topic. A number of the references seemed to go over the majority of the audience's heads as well. Also, as he began to close out the show, there was a persistent distracting noise that came from the bar by the restrooms. Almost everyone turned their head at least once to try and see what was going on. It might have been buried had a band been playing, but it really stood out going against just the voice of John Hodgman.

The opening act for the show was Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, both former writers and performers for the cult television series "Mystery Science Theater 3000." On the show, Murphy was the voice of gumball machine-headed robot Tom Servo while Corbett played the other sidekick, Crow, during the final years of the series.

The two began their show with a song about the Twilight series called "Sparkly Vampires" as well as their rendition of the "Game of Thrones" theme song with original lyrics added to it. What worked best was when they utilized what Murphy called their "core competencies" and riffed during two bad short PSAs. The first was called "What is Patriotism?" and featured the narration of "Hogan's Heroes"' Bob Crane, who ended up being the butt of many jokes.

For the second short film, Murphy and Corbett introduced a special guest in George R.R. Martin, the author of the "A Song of Fire and Ice" series of books. Instead of the actual Martin, it was Hodgman playing the author by wearing a fake beard and a sailor's coat. Hodgman made a minimal effort to actually portray the real Martin, instead pretending that the author was a huge sports fan and loved the New York Jets. It was very silly but managed to let everyone know the type of night they were in for.