I Come Des Moines. Somebody Had To.

This Was 1990, The Year That Communism Died In Europe And It Seemed Strange To Me That In All The Words That Were Written About The Fall Of The Iron Curtain, Nobody Anywhere Lamented That It Was The End Of A Noble Experiment. I Know That Communism Never Worked And I Would Have Disliked Living Under It Myself But None The Less It Seems That There Was A Kind Of Sadness In The Thought That The Only Economic System That Appeared To Work Was One Based On Self Interest And Greed.

Of All The Things I Am Not Very Good At, Living In The Real World Is Perhaps The Most Outstanding.

I Just Use My Life Story As A Kind Of Device On Which To Hang Comic Observations. It's Not My Interest Or Instinct To Tell The World Anything Pertinent About Myself Or My Family.

In France, A Chemist Named Pilatre De Rozier Tested The Flammability Of Hydrogen By Gulping A Mouthful And Blowing Across An Open Flame, Proving At A Stroke That Hydrogen Is Indeed Explosively Combustible And That Eyebrows Are Not Necessarily A Permanent Feature Of One's Face.

Every Twenty Minutes On The Appalachian Trail, Katz And I Walked Farther Than The Average American Walks In A Week. For 93 Percent Of All Trips Outside The Home, For Whatever Distance Or Whatever Purpose, Americans Now Get In A Car. On Average The Total Walking Of An American These Days - That's Walking Of All Types: From Car To Office, From Office To Car, Around The Supermarket And Shopping Malls - Adds Up To 1.4 Miles A Week, Barely 350 Yards A Day.