Waaaaaay back in the mists of time (i.e., 1999), I was surfing on the internet instead of writing trivia questions. (Although, to be honest, trivia question writing calls for a decent amount of internet surfing just in terms of pure idea generation.) Given my job writing trivia questions, I was understandably very taken with one particular corner of the World Wide Web, namely the daily News Quiz feature on Slate.
Basically, it was a do-it-yourself variation of Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update. Editor Randy Cohen (yes, this Randy Cohen) would harvest some obscure-yet-hilarious phrase or quote from the previous day's news, craft a tidy set up and then let readers submit their own punchlines.
Okay, so here's where I'm going with this. It happened that, one day in early February, 1999, that I read a reader-submitted joke on Slate that was so witty, so funny, so original, that I instantly fell in love with its author. In a lucky break for me, the author had a strangely familiar name--a name I thought I recognized from my time served at Oak Park River Forest High School.
So I wrote Randy Cohen--which I did a lot those days, as I also liked to kill time between trivia questions by writing pointless-yet-irascible emails to near/total strangers--and asked him if he knew this "Michael Gerber" and if, by any chance, he went to high school in the western suburbs of Chicago. Mr. Cohen's exact reply, if I recall, was "Hell if I know. Ask him yourself." And then he pasted in an email address for said Michael Gerber.
Fast forward to 2006, and true story, I'm actually *married* to that same Michael Gerber. And yes, he's a fellow Fightin' Husky*, although we never so much as made eye contact in the linoleum hallways of that institution.
Now, I can't reprint that News Quiz joke because if any women were to lay eyes on that short quip, I'd be fighting them off at the front door for the rest of the decade. It's that goddamn funny. But Michael, and his writing partner Jon Schwarz, are nothing if not humanitarians. So for the good of all mankind, they've put together a collection of all their *other* humor writings and published it in an easy-to-carry volume entitled "Our Kampf," which is available for purchase here. (After the holidays, it will also be available from Amazon.com and the like.)
As a favor to me, Michael held back any piece that was likely to draw attractive female admirers to our door, but of course, we applied no such test w/r/t Jon. So be advised, if you buy and read "Our Kampf," you may very well find yourself married to a humorist/policy maven by December 2008. I'm just saying, it's a risk.
*Note: Officially, the OPRF Huskies have no such modifying adjective, unfortunately, but I see no reason to let reality ruin my fun.
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