by Dave Eggers
Sean Carman is an environmental lawyer in Seattle and, less frequently, a freelance writer and photographer.
Tim Carvell lives in New York, and has written for the New York Times, Business 2.0, Fortune, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated for Women, for whom he edited their swimtrunk issue. This is not a lie.
Sean Condon was born in Australia in 1965 and moved to Amsterdam in 1998, then reluctantly, moved back to Australia in 2003. He is the author of four novels, none of which is very popular. He is currently working on a fifth.
Mike Daulton works as an environmental lobbyist in Washington, D.C. This is his first published work. He has a wonderful girlfriend named Christina.
Justin Dobbs worked as a bartender for nine years before finding sport in the highly respected field of ad writing. Since then, his work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Playboy, and the classified section of Peanut Farmer. He lives in midtown Memphis with the wife.
More of Elizabeth Ellen’s writing can be found in Monkeybicycle, Eyeshot, Pindeldyboz, and Surgery of Modern Warfare. At the moment she resides in Michigan.
Peter Ferland is a screenwriter living in Los Angeles with his wife and two sons. He has only served jury duty once and wasn’t selected for a trial.
T. G. Gibbon was born in Philadelphia and hopes to die there a century from now.
Ben Greenman is an editor at The New Yorker and the author of Superbad and Superworse. His fiction and humor pieces have appeared in The Paris Review, The Mississippi Review, Mother Jones, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn.
Kevin Guilfoile is the co-author (with John Warner) of My First Presidentiary: A Scrapbook by George W. Bush. His work has appeared in The New Republic, Business 2.0, Yahoo! Internet Life, and Maxim, and he is a regular contributor to themorningnews.org.
Ethan Hein is a musician living in New York City. He can currently be heard playing guitar, mandolin, harmonica, and other instruments in various bands.
Danielle Hess draws and paints, and works in a computer lab. This is the only thing she has written.
Mickey Hess is the author of the books Big Wheel at the Cracker Factory, El Cumpleaños de Paco, and Nobody Likes a Smartass. Read more about them at www.mickeyhess.net.
John Hodgman is a Former Professional Literary Agent and host of the Little Gray Book Lectures of Brooklyn. He is available to speak to your group, corporate retreat, family reunion, or other gathering on the subjects of publishing, writing, monster hunting, crime solving, the life cycle of oysters, the history of medicinal bitters and potions, The Lord of the Rings, and any other subject.
Earl L. Humphreys lives in Houston, Texas. This is his first published work.
Jeff Hurlock is a native of Hockessin, Delaware. Delaware is the First State.
Jeff Johnson has fought crime—with a smile—on the Eastern Seaboard since 1979.
Brian Kennedy lives in Washington, D.C., where he attends graduate school and works part-time at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Dan Kennedy is the author of Loser Goes First and an editor at ReallySmallTalk.com. He lives and works in New York City.
Greg Knauss has written for Suck.com, Worth magazine, and Playboy.com, among others. He lives in Los Angeles.
As a humor writer, Rick Larsen uses math every day. In 1973, he began spelling his last name with an “e.”
Jules Lipoff recently graduated from Yale with a degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry. His last two years, he was chairman of the Yale Record, the nation’s oldest college humor magazine.
Kurt Luchs ([email protected]) manages a radio comedy syndicator called the American Comedy Network (www.americancomedynetwork.com). He also contributes to The Onion, The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, and The Late Late Show, edits The Big Jewel (www.thebigjewel.com), and writes screenplays and books. His hobbies include volunteering at soup kitchens, rescuing injured condors, climbing Mount Everest, and being a pathological liar.
Ross McCammon lives in Chicago, where he works as a freelance writer and as an editor for an in-flight magazine in which he still includes the occasional regrettable pun.
Peter McGrath is an office worker in Washington, D.C. His hobbies include finding fault and eating food that he has prepared for himself.
Brian McMullen collects paperback copies of Wayne W. Dyer’s Your Erroneous Zones. If you have a copy (or a lead on how to get a copy), please e-mail [email protected].
Stephanie McNutt, 21, is surprisingly convinced of her own worldliness despite having never resided outside a tri-county area in southeastern Wisconsin. She hopes you are happy now.
Elizabeth Miller lives in Portland, Oregon. She is married to a man named David, with whom she used to play in a Patsy Cline cover band. Her favorite skate trick combination is the blunt-slide to 5–0 shove-it.
John Moe is a writer, playwright, and radio producer in Seattle, Washington. His writing has appeared on Amazon.com, National Public Radio, and a few other media outlets. He clumsily operates the blog Monkey Disaster (monkeydisaster.blogspot.com). He is a father of two and a husband of one.
Christopher Monks lives in Massachusetts with his wife and two sons. His stories have appeared in several online literary journals, including Eyeshot, Haypenny, and Pindeldyboz. For more info please visit his website www.utterwonder.com.
Felix Muhl lives alone in the country.
Tom O’Connor is a writer, comedian, and fan of a baseball team. He lives in Los Angeles.
Mark O’Donnell’s novels include Getting Over Homer and Let Nothing You Dismay, both of which make lovely gifts. He recently won a Tony award for writing the book of Hairspray, the Broadway musical.
Amy M. O’Leary is the co-author of WAP Development with WML and WMLScript, published by Macmillan. She is a radio documentarian.
Alysia Gray Painter lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in Bark magazine, ModernHumorist.com, 101 Damnations, Dog is My Co-Pilot, and volumes two and three of Mirth of a Nation.
John Parsley’s writing has appeared in Salon, on Northeast Public Radio, and on countless, yet-to-be-combined scraps of paper product. He is an editor living in New York.
Keith Pille really, really liked Led Zeppelin in high school. After leaving for college, he decided that they sucked. As he approaches thirty, he suddenly finds himself liking them again. Living in south Minneapolis with his wife and two cats (none of whom have any use at all for the Zep), he is distressed to see the same thing happening with Pink Floyd.
Neal Pollack is the author of three books: the rock novel Never Mind the Pollacks, Beneath the Axis Of Evil, and The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, which was originally published by McSweeney’s Books and won the 2001 Firecracker Award for fiction. He writes for many publications, including Vanity Fair, the New York Times, and Slate, and updates his website, www.nealpollack.com, daily with political and literary satire. His band, the Neal Pollack Invasion, recently released its first album on The Telegraph Company Records. He lives in Austin, Texas.
Greg Purcell’s poetry has appeared in Fence, The Exquisite Corpse, and New American Writing. With Joel Craig, he coordinates the Danny’s Reading Series in Chicago. He believes that the further one’s chemistry is off, the more painfully one believes in love. He is on at about half-beaker right now.
Todd Pruzan is an editor at Print. His book The Clumsiest People in Europe, a collaboration with a dead children’s writer, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury USA.
Andy Rathbun goes to sleep around 11 p.m.
Jason Roberts writes in a former Dog and Cat Hospital in downtown San Francisco. His nonfiction book, tentatively entitled The Gentleman in the Distance, is forthcoming from Fourth Estate/HarperCollins (in North America), and Simon & Schuster (in the U.K.). Slightly more inchoate are Interminable Shrieks, his opera for children, and Beelzebubba, a country-and-western reworking of Faust.
Jason Roeder lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Jim Ruland works at an L.A. ad agency and is a veteran of t
he U.S. Navy.
Tom Ruprecht is a writer for The Late Show with David Letterman. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and GQ. If it’s okay with the other contributors, he’d like to dedicate this book to his family.
Brian Sack is interested in human emotions.
Jessica Sedgewick graduated from Princeton University in 1998 and currently lives in Pittsburgh. She is finishing her first novel.
Kevin Shay writes fiction, plays, humor, and Perl code. He lives in Brooklyn, where he is working on a novel and developing a web site at staggernation.com.
Jim Stallard grew up in Missouri and now lives in Brooklyn. He writes about science in his day job. He worked in the Supreme Court from 1985–1987 and played many times on the building’s basketball court, which does indeed exist.
Amy L. Stender received her amazing sea-monkey kit as a birthday present from one of her co-workers. Her sea-monkeys grew large enough to be called “gross,” then died of starvation. She is a Vermonter.
Aaron Stoker-Ring lives in Brooklyn with his wife Clare. He writes humor for all media.
Jake Swearingen is a college student at the University of Arkansas who makes meals out of condiments, novels out of TV Guides, and a life out of the accumulation of seconds.
Jenny Traig is the author of Judaikitsch and Crafty Girl (both from Chronicle Books). She has a Ph.D. from Brandeis University, but no formal dance experience.
Paul Tullis, currently residing in Hollywood, California, is occasionally employed in the culture industry. This is the fifth book to publish his writing, but not the first.
J. M. Tyree has worked as a gas-station attendant, house painter, filing clerk, and sub-sub-librarian. He was an occasional correspondent for the late Three Weeks.
Stuart Wade is a writer and publicist who lives in Austin, Texas.
Joshua Watson lives and works in New York City.
Adam C. Weitz produces music under the name “Phofo.” He is a trial attorney.
R. J. White lives and works in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he co-wrote this piece back in 1999 while he was supposed to be working. If he doesn’t screw things up, he should be married to Laura by the time you are holding this very book in your hands. He enjoys Neil Diamond without irony.
Blake Wirht hails from the Great Central Valley of California but now lives in Los Angeles. His current project is a screenplay that has less to do with cats than it really should.
ALSO FROM MCSWEENEY’S
McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales
McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern
The Believer
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2004 by McSweeney’s
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States
by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Distributed
by Random House, Inc., New York.
www.aaknopf.com
www.mcsweeneys.net
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Created in darkness by troubled Americans:
the best of McSweeney’s humor category / edited by
Dave Eggers . . . [et al.]; with introductions by Harry Magnan and Dave Eggers.
p. cm.
1. American wit and humor. I. Eggers, Dave.
II. McSweeney’s
PN6165.C74 2004
817’.5408—dc22
2004004272
eISBN: 978-1-4000-4331-6
v3.0_r1