... this ranks somewhere between a Jack Bauer witness interrogation and a Michael Westen double-plus-explode-y rescue operation, which, for those of you who don't watch 24 or Burn Notice, means pretty far up the whole bad-assed continuum.
Anyway, I share a publisher with Dave Barry, who is the funniest writer in America. (This is a fact, not an opinion. Look it up.) The folks at Penguin and Amazon thought a clever way for us to cross-promote our new books would be to interview each other.
So this is what happened next.
Jen’s Questions for Dave
The Pulitzer Prize looks a lot like those gold-colored one-dollar Sacajawea coins. Do you still have yours or did you accidentally use it in a parking meter?
I actually lost my Pulitzer Prize for several years. I put it in a safe place, then I forgot where that was. My wife eventually found it and put it an even safer place. But your question disturbs me, because it’s NOT a coin: It looks more like a middle-school diploma. So now I’m wondering: Is it really a Pulitzer Prize? Maybe I was the victim of an elaborate practical joke wherein Columbia University gave me a middle-school diploma and just TOLD me it was a Pulitzer. That would make sense, because (a) nobody ever really believes I won a Pulitzer, and (b) in university circles Columbia is known as a big prankster.
Does it indeed take a village?
I actually grew up in a village, specifically the village of Armonk, New York. Everybody in Armonk knew everybody else back then, which meant that if, as a high-school student, you (and here I am using “you” in the sense of “I”) experimented a tad (and here I am using “a tad” in the sense of “way”) too heavily with adult beverages one night in the fall of 1964 and passed out on a lawn that—of all the lawns you could have picked in Armonk—was the lawn belonging to Chief of Police Hergenhan, you would not be arrested; instead, Chief Hergenhan, upon discovering you drooling facedown into his crabgrass at 1:30 a.m., would call your dad to come get you, because he knew your dad, and he also knew that you would spend approximately the next two weeks retching, which was punishment enough. So I would say yes.
If X = Agent Jack Bauer and Y = shooting someone in the thigh, how many perimeters need to be set up to bring Edgar back to life?
It depends on how long it takes Chloe to get a visual on the satellite and upload the schematics.
Children seem to be more delicate than when we were kids. Do you advocate encasing them in Lucite until their eighteenth birthday?
These kids today don’t know how easy they have it, with their iPhones and their iPads and their atmosphere consisting of 21 percent oxygen and 78 percent nitrogen and 1 percent various other gases. When I was a youngster we didn’t have ANYTHING. We didn’t even have HAIR. We sat around naked in the cold, sucking on rocks for nourishment. But you never heard us complain, and by God we licked the Great Depression and won World War II. No, wait, that was our parents’ generation. But we faced challenges of our own. Junior year abroad, for example. That was no picnic. So you don’t even want to KNOW what I think.
Shirts or skins?
You always want to be on the skins team, because that way you’re guarding a guy on the shirts team, which means if you touch him you’re touching his shirt, which is an okay way to touch another guy (for very a brief period). If you’re on the shirts team, you have to guard a guy on the skins team, which means you might come into contact with his actual skin, which is wrong on several levels, not the least of which is that he will be oozing perspiration slime, like a giant eel with b.o. This is the main reason why guys turn to golf.
Will men use GPS or do they consider this the modern-day equivalent of stopping to ask for directions at the gas station—which is to say, an affront to their masculinity?
It’s acceptable to use a GPS because it is an incomprehensibly complex electronic device and therefore manly. But it is NOT acceptable to use the same GPS for long periods of time. Every six months or so you must buy a newer model with more features that you don’t need and a larger screen. Screen size is the important thing. Your goal is to eventually have a GPS with a screen so large that you can’t see out your windshield; when you drive you’re just looking at this humongous GPS screen. But you are still wondering, deep inside, when they’re going to come out with a bigger one.
Bret Michaels’s fans still throw their panties onstage when he performs. What do Rock Bottom Remainders groupies toss?
We have had panties thrown at us. But they were labeled “MAXIMUM OCCUPANCY 30 PEOPLE.
Dave’s Questions for Jen
Which has a higher IQ: gravel or the cast of Jersey Shore?
On the surface, gravel clearly seems to have the edge. Gravel’s managed to exist for thousands of years without ever once having started a bar fight when someone looked at its Ed Hardy T-shirt funny. However, after the episode where Pauly D. went swimming and emerged from under the water with every hair still firmly in place, I’m forced to declare Jersey Shore the winner. The kind of civil/chemical engineering it takes to hold that ’do in place is nothing short of genius.
What can we, as a nation, do about the Kardashians?
One word: caning.
Do you ever watch Dog the Bounty Hunter? If so, do you agree that he would be a really fun United States senator?
I love Dog and believe he’d be a fantastic senator. He’s clever, he’s efficient, he’s no-nonsense, and he’s not afraid to knock a few heads together if needed. He’s exactly what this country needs. Plus, I’d like Mr. Dog to Go to Washington if for no reason other than to see his wife dressed up like Jackie O while on the campaign trail. (The caveat is I’m from Illinois and most of our living governors are felons, so it’s possible my standards aren’t terribly high.)
How come women are so good at appearing to not be thinking about sex?
Because we’re the ones in charge of doling it out, so there’s no guesswork involved on our part. Ergo, we can think about more important stuff. Like handbags.
Like many men, I have four kinds of shoes: 1) black shoes, 2) brown shoes, 3) sneakers 4) backup sneakers. Do I need more? What should they be?
I reject the premise of this question because whereas most men own four pair of shoes, they own nine different kinds of hammers. Framing? Claw? Tack? Ball-peen? Any woman worth her salt knows that almost all household repairs can be accomplished with one of two tools—a butter knife or the heel of a loafer.
Do you think ketchup has to be kept in the refrigerator? Why?
Yes, but less for food safety concerns and more because we don’t want to damage the self-esteem of the other condiments. (Mayonnaise can be so self-conscious.)
Are cats malicious, or actually the spawn of Satan?
Um, cats are wonderful and loving little creatures who live to make us happy, and they only barf in our shoes and scratch the bejesus out of our new ottomans and trip us at the top of the stairs to demonstrate exactly how special we are to them. They are in no way, shape, or form evil, meaning they would never trap me and both of my dogs in my office, causing me to send out cryptic interview answers hoping desperately the reader will properly interpret them and SEND HELP.
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See? Totally badass.
Anyway, for those of you in Detroit, Dayton, St. Louis, and Chicago... see you later this week!
