The Morning News

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Currently: TMN wishes you a very good weekend equipped with interesting things to read. Thank you, as always, for reading us. http://tmne.ws/h
1 day ago

People

Andy Borowitz

Writer, funny man, contrarian Andrew Borowitz on three ways to kill a joke, the environment in Kandor, and poor Jim Dixon, hero for all.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rosecrans Baldwin
Rosecrans Baldwin is a founding editor of The Morning News. His first novel, You Lost Me There, is forthcoming from Riverhead Books (August 2010). He most recently wrote the Letters from Paris column for TMN. Someday his ashes will be tossed off Mount Desert Island. You can catch him on Twitter or find more on his web site.
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DOB, Web site: 4 January 1958, www.borowitzreport.com.

Occupational title(s), both real and desired-in-another-lifetime: 1) Writer-performer, 2) Glam-rock icon

Three easy ways for a humor story to fail: 1) If it’s too long, 2) If it’s written in a little-understood ancient language, like Norse, 3) If it tries to wring cheap, easy laughs from the terminal illness of cute pets

Heroes: Ray Davies of the Kinks and Jim Thome of the Cleveland Indians

Funniest scene in a movie or book: From Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim: The scene in which Jim Dixon wakes up after spending the night as a guest in his department head’s home and realizes that he has irreparably burned his bed sheets.

Current topic you feel unable to poke fun at: The ecological ticking time-bomb of the Bottle City of Kandor.

Favorite book(s): Besides the aforementioned Lucky Jim—Bill Bryson’s Notes From a Small Island, William Maxwell’s So Long, See You Tomorrow, Lillian Ross’s Picture, and anything by Beverly Cleary

What makes you laugh: When the President tries to pronounce the name of any al Qaeda detainee

Charity worth giving to: The Academy of American Poets

Recurring dream/nightmare from childhood: I’m naked in a room of fully-clothed people. Oddly enough, I still have this dream even though, as an adult, I often show up to social gatherings completely unclothed and it doesn’t bother me one bit.

Five words that sound great: spiv, claptrap, famish, peregrine, skein

—Published September 27, 2002