I'll be 56 this year, I've got two kids, and I think it's probably time to go back to writing one-glove jokes.

I had really not been out of the United States much, except for Mexico. I thought, "Jesus Christ, this [Russia] is like a whole new world." Instead of writing Michael Jackson one-glove jokes, all I had to do was go to these weird places and keep my eyes and ears open.

What about snipers?" I once asked someone. He said, "Oh, most of the snipers have automatic weapon. They arent very accurate.

I'd known the people at Rolling Stone for a while. I'd gone to them with a piece I'd done on Beirut for Vanity Fair that Vanity Fair didn't want to publish, because they said I was making fun of death... This was Tina Brown.But they paid me for it. So I've got this big chunk of a piece, and Rolling Stone liked it, but they thought it was a little dated. But then they called me back and asked me to do a similar piece about the Turks and Caicos Islands, where the whole government had been arrested for dope smuggling. That was fun.

There are twenty-seven specific complaints against the British Crown set forth in the Declaration of Independence. To modern ears they still sound reasonable. They still sound reasonable, in large part, because so many of them can be leveled against the federal government of the United States.

Detroits industrial ruins are picturesque, like crumbling Rome in an 18th-century etching.

There aren't many political humorists. Dave Barry is excellent, but he doesn't do it much.