It was the look you get when facing a sudden and insurmountable danger: the errant truck, the shaky ladder, the crazy person who pins you to the linoleum and insists, with increasing urgency, that everything you know and love can be undone by a grape.

Lovers of audio books learn to live with compromise.

In Japanese and Italian, the response to ["How are you?"] is "I'm fine, and you?" In German it's answered with a sigh and a slight pause, followed by "Not so good.

The humor section is the last place an author wants to be. They put your stuff next to collections of Cathy cartoons.

The only bright spot in the entire evening was the presence of Kevin "Tubby" Matchwell, the eleven-year-old porker who tackled the role of Santa with a beguiling authenticity. The false beard tended to muffle his speech, but they could hear his chafing thighs all the way to the North Pole.

When I look at a lot of older stuff that I've written, I think one sign of amateur humor writing is when you see people trying too hard.

Given enough time, I guess anything can look good. All it has to do is survive.