Smoking is very bad for you and should only be done because it looks so good. People who don't smoke have a terrible time finding something polite to do with their lips.

Bill Maher can be pretty good, except when he gets "important." Maher's all over the place politically.

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

Idealism is based on big ideas. And, as anybody who has ever been asked "What's the big idea?" knows, most big ideas are bad ones.

Jesse Jackson was spending time with his family, or families.

A dugout is much superior to a conventional manufactured canoe because you can get soaking wet without bothering to capsize it.

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.