Andy Borowitz

DOB, website: 4 January 1958, www.borowitzreport.com.

Occupational title(s), both real and desired-in-another-lifetime: 1) Writer-performer, 2) Glam-rock icon

Three easy ways for a humor story to fail: 1) If it’s too long, 2) If it’s written in a little-understood ancient language, like Norse, 3) If it tries to wring cheap, easy laughs from the terminal illness of cute pets

Heroes: Ray Davies of the Kinks and Jim Thome of the Cleveland Indians

Funniest scene in a movie or book: From Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim: The scene in which Jim Dixon wakes up after spending the night as a guest in his department head’s home and realizes that he has irreparably burned his bed sheets.

Current topic you feel unable to poke fun at: The ecological ticking time-bomb of the Bottle City of Kandor.

Favorite book(s): Besides the aforementioned Lucky Jim—Bill Bryson’s Notes From a Small Island, William Maxwell’s So Long, See You Tomorrow, Lillian Ross’s Picture, and anything by Beverly Cleary

What makes you laugh: When the President tries to pronounce the name of any al Qaeda detainee

Charity worth giving to: The Academy of American Poets

Recurring dream/nightmare from childhood: I’m naked in a room of fully-clothed people. Oddly enough, I still have this dream even though, as an adult, I often show up to social gatherings completely unclothed and it doesn’t bother me one bit.

Five words that sound great: spiv, claptrap, famish, peregrine, skein