Just as some things are too strange for fiction, others are too true for journalism.

...let's talk about soccer scores. There are a few things that people all around the world need to admit to themselves. Trade restraints slow economic growth, the euro is not a reserve currency and scoreless sports ties are boring.

I was never in the office [of Rolling Stone]. It was very different from Lampoon, where we spent a lot of time together socially, which is to say "drunk."

The Harvard Lampoon itself, which had a pretty stellar run in the '60s.

When [George W.] Bush was elected, I think they thought I would have some sort of special "in" with that administration, to provide some sort of inside poop. Which is not something I'd be interested in doing, and anyway, I didn't. I actually knew more people in his dad's administration. So it was obviously winding down at Rolling Stone, and they were having financial troubles, too. They weren't getting the advertising, and the issues were getting thin. They fired Bob Love, who'd been my editor there for a long time.

I'm a rather decisive type.

I went back to bumming around New York, writing freelance stuff for Car & Driver and such.