Claire Zulkey interviews Dave Barry. An excerpt:
Who are some of your favorite humor writers?
Steve Martin, Carl Hiaasen, Roy Blount Jr., Gene Weingarten, the late great Robert Benchley, the Onion people, and a bunch more whose names escape me now because EVERYTHING escapes me now except body fat.
What I like about Dave is that he seems to understand that this gig of his could be up at any time. His column isn’t really a must-read like it was 20 years ago, but he’s consistently funny. More than I can say for, well, me.
Insider’s aside: Barry says Ken Layne got him to start blogging. Layne, you may remember, coined the line famous in the blogosphere: “We can fact-check your ass.”
Must be everybody in the journalism world who’s been online for a few years has a Layne connection. I used to link to his Tabloid online zine and his pal Matt Welch used to write stories about stuff I was doing back before “blog” was even a word.
Now Layne has a rock ‘n’ roll band (Welch is his rhythm guitarist) and he’s returned to his musical roots. Anyway, Ken, wherever you are, keep it up.