Read on to win a new Meeting Boy wall calendar!

We have a nice interview/contest today with someone you need to know about if you don’t already. PC World named him one of the 10 Funniest People On Twitter. Like Racer X, no one really knows who MeetingBoy is, but whoever is behind this madness is one hilarious, talented fella. Tweeting out quips and one-liners, he’s amassed close to 80,000 followers on Twitter as @MeetingBoy. I first got to know him (well, as much as you can know a masked-man) after he re-tweeted a Twaggie (illustrated tweet) we did off one of his tweets over on my start-up, www.twaggies.com.

Then one day, MeetingBoy asked me if I’d like to give away one of his new MeetingBoy wall calendars in a contest. I said sure, under one condition: he do the following interview. So read the interview and follow the contest rules at the bottom of this post. We’ll pick one tweet/comment at random and send you the calendar in time for Christmas! Good luck!

DI: First of all, where do you take your meetings? Tell us about your day job.

MB: I work in a glass & steel high rise in New York with lots of lazy idiots. The managers spout buzzwords to impress each other, and my boss is a clueless, bullying hypocrite more concerned with covering his own ass than getting things done. Does that narrow it down?

I am stuck in 3-5 meetings a day, so if there’s a way to waste someone’s time, I’ve seen it. And I’m sick of it. I must have really bad karma to deserve this. I must have been something truly awful in a former life, like maybe a manager or CEO.

@MeetingBoy: 125 PowerPoint slides? Well, I hope you’re not presenting a case for how efficient our department is.

@MeetingBoy: Definition of insanity: holding the same meeting with the same people every week and expecting different results.

@MeetingBoy: Four meetings today. And then later, no doubt, a meeting with my boss about how I’m not getting anything done.

@MeetingBoy: I’m confused by this article about Bernie Madoff. I thought “white collar prison” was just a euphemism for my office.

@MeetingBoy: 7 hour conference call, though my lawyer says I’ll be paroled in 6 with good behavior.

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Jeff Garlin co-stars and executive produces the HBO series Curb Your Enthusiasm. The unique comedy, which is one of the rare television shows to become part of the national zeitgeist, stars Seinfeld creator Larry David, with Garlin portraying his loyal manager. Born and raised in Chicago and then South Florida, Garlin studied filmmaking and began performing stand-up comedy while at the University of Miami. He has toured the country as a stand-up comedian, is an alumnus of Chicago’s Second City Theatre, and has written and starred in three critically acclaimed solo shows. I was fortunate enough to get this interview with him when he spoke at an event a charity I work with produced.

DI: Which do you prefer: writing, directing, or producing?

JG: I prefer to direct what I write.

DI: If you were to retire, what would you do with your time?

JG: Nap and eat puddin’.

DI: What’s your favorite food?

JG: Puddin’.

DI: Of all the comedians and actors you’ve worked with over the years, who has been the most enjoyable.

JG: Larry David.

DI: Is Larry David as obnoxious in real life as he is on the show?

JG: See my answer above.

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Jason Alexander is known to TV audiences around the world, of course, as George Costanza on Seinfeld, a role which garnered him six Emmy and four Golden Globe nominations, an American Television Award and two American Comedy Awards. He’s also appeared in numerous films like Pretty Woman, in TV commercials, and in Broadway musicals where he won a Tony for his role in Jerome Robbins’ Broadway. He also starred alongside Martin Short in the acclaimed L.A. production of The Producers. More recently, he’s been directing things like Sam Shepard’s God of Hell as well as his own newly-adapted rendition of Damn Yankees for the Los Angeles Reprise Theater Company, where he serves as Artistic Director. Jason is also a spokesman for OneVoice, an organization committed to promoting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Through his interest in giving back to the community, I had the good fortune of interviewing him after he spoke at a gala fund raising event for a charity I’m involved with. (You may recall our recent effort to eradicate hunger here in Los Angeles.) He was, as he always is, blunt and hilarious. Please feel free to drop a comment at the end of the interview telling us your all-time favorite Jason Alexander moment.

DI: You’re a man of many talents: actor, stand-up comedian, musical theater star, magician, poker player. Which do you enjoy the most?

JA: You left out: writer, director, martial artist and sex symbol. Now here’s my favorite – father.

DI: You’ve worked with some of the greats of stage and screen (big and small). From Jerry Robbins to Jerry Seinfeld, from Julia Louis-Dreyfus to Julia Roberts. Who’s been the most influential?

JA: Best director I’ve ever had – Joe Mantello (Love, Valor, Compassion); Best teacher –Larry Moss. The word genius gets thrown around a lot. I’ve only met two in my line of work –Stephen Sondheim and Jerome Robbins. They think like no other people I know. I understand more from knowing them. I am a better person because of what they have given the world.

DI: The name on your birth certificate is Jay Scott Greenspan. Okay: we get Jason from Jay S but what about Alexander? Where’d that come from?

JA: Alexander the Great, clearly. Okay, I lied. I thought I would be Jason Scott, but when I went to register in the union with that name, it was taken with every possible spelling – including Jaisin Skot. Feeling badly about not using my family name, I made a snap decision to take my dad’s first name as my last one for the stage. Hence – Jason Alexander.

DI: If you could have lunch with anyone deceased, who would it be?

JA: Mahatma Gandhi. First, he was always fasting so I doubt it would be a big bill if I had to pick up the check. Second, I want to know how so much wisdom, courage and strength could reside in a single soul. If the Mahatma couldn’t make it, I’d take Ben Kingsley for an hour – but he’s not dead.

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On the heels of last week’s iPad announcement, I had the good fortune yesterday of asking Chris Anderson via telephone what he thinks will happen to print magazines (and publishing in general) as we move further and further into a digital space. If you don’t know Chris, check out the current issue of Wired magazine on newsstands now; he wrote the cover story “The New Industrial Revolution.” Or check out any issue of Wired post 2001—Chris is Editor In Chief. He’s also the author of one of my favorite books to come out in 2006: The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More.

I recorded the phone conversation and Chris has kindly agreed to let mental_floss publish the audio that you’re about to hear.

If you’re interested in the future of magazines, newspapers and books, you’re not going to want to miss a word of this 2 ½ minute answer to my question: What does the future of Wired look like: Print or online? His answer is not the usual cable-news talking head rat-a-tat, that’s for sure. After you listen to his answer, tell us what you think, _flossers! Are books and magazines here for good? Sound off in the comments below.

And while we’re in the realm of the iPad, here’s a funny you might like.

If you dug this post, stay up-to-date with all my mental_floss posts by following me on Twitter: @resila. And be sure to follow @mental_floss too!

more interviews from the archives

xkcd: the exclusive interview
Dr. Katz’s Tom Snyder
SNL’s Laraine Newman

A fan of Randall Munroe’s brilliant webcomic xkcd? Well, today we’ve got an exclusive interview with the stickmeister himself, just in time for the release of his first book: Volume 0 recently published by our friends over @Breadpig.com. Plus, we’re going to give you a chance to win a free copy of the book! (stick around and see details at the end of the post) But first, the interview…

DI: For the ignorant among us, or those too lazy to check out your Web site: what’s the deal with xkcd? What’s it stand for and why do you insist on making me feel like a moron who can’t figure out how to pronounce it?

RM: I can’t pronounce it either, although I once saw someone argue that linguistically, each letter is silent. As for where it came from, sometime back in 1999 I picked a set of random letters to which to stake my claim, so that it would always mean what I wanted and nothing else. So I wanted something with no pronunciation, something that didn’t make an acronym, and which didn’t look like any other word. And something which was short, so I could type it fast!

DI: I heard before you became Digg and Reddit’s most famous cartoonist, you were working on robots at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia. Um, honestly?

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Chances are, you’ve heard of Mitch Albom, or at least one of his hugely best-selling books, Tuesdays with Morrie or The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Or maybe you saw one of the movie versions of those books that he helped write. Or maybe you’ve read one of his sports books, like the biography of football coach Bo Schembechler. Or, if you live in Mitch’s hometown of Detroit, you might know him as that famous ESPN guy walking around town, covering sports. Even if you don’t think you know Mitch Albom, you probably do. He does a lot of philanthropy, a lot of writing, and seems to be everywhere, all the time.

Well, guess what? Today, Mitch is on mentalfloss.com! He’s got an amazing new book that just came out last week called Have a Little Faith, and we were lucky to get on the phone with Mitch to talk about it for 20 minutes. But wait, there’s more! We scored a couple free copies of Have a Little Faith, which we’re going to give away at the end of the interview below. So be sure to read carefully, because, as you know from past Creatively Speaking contests, the answers to the questions always come from the body of the interview.

I read Have a Little Faith a couple months ago when I got my hands on a galley copy and let me tell you, it’s one of his best yet. A true story, the book centers around two men: One, a pastor named Henry Covington; the other, a rabbi named Albert Lewis. One black, the other white. One poor, the other comfortable. One in Detroit, the other in New Jersey. One nearly died while doing and selling drugs, the other in the process of dying as Mitch comes to know him while writing the book. In fact, that’s how the whole idea for the book came to be: Rabbi Lewis approached Mitch one day back in the late ‘90s and asked him to write the Rabbi’s eulogy. “Are you dying?” Mitch asked. “Not yet…” said the rabbi, with a smile.

After some vacillation, Mitch agreed, even though he didn’t know his rabbi very well. But just like in Tuesdays with Morrie, he started spending a lot of time with Rabbi Lewis, and, simultaneously, got involved with I am My Brother’s Keeper Ministries in Detroit, helping the homeless.

What started as a simple question, “Will you write my eulogy?” turned into a journey, as Mitch rediscovered (and perhaps discovered for the first time ever) a real sense of faith in a higher power.

DI: How much did you, personally, change while writing this book?

MA: I think all books like these are cathartic in their own way because they help you put words to your feelings. It forces you to think about the things you’re doing, and also forces you to learn more, once you know that you’re going to write about people, you delve even deeper into their background—their histories, their families, and things like that. My books, David, are a little different; they’re not done when they’re done, if you know what I mean. They sort of begin when they’re done. I finished writing Tuesdays with Morrie in 1997, but the whole experience is still going on, and changes me to this day, when people feel they can come up to me and tell me about someone who is dying in their family, tell me their thoughts. Those are tough conversations and they change you.

I know that since I wrote this book, the relationships I have with people in the Christian community and in the inner-city community have changed as a result. People want to talk to me about this now, and I want to talk to them. So it’s really the beginning of the process, not the end. I’ll probably have a better answer for you in a couple years.

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Adam Chodikoff at Comedy Central offices. - Photo By Talaya Centeno (for WWD)

Investigative Humorist, that’s what The Washington Post has called Adam Chodikoff, one of The Daily Show’s producers, and its most accomplished researcher. Behind the scenes, someone has to pore through all those C-Span clips; someone has to sift through newspapers and transcripts to find the core comedy elements to the story. The senior producer who’s helped do that since day one of the show is Adam. “You ever seen ‘The Godfather’?” said Chodikoff, in a recent interview, “I’m like the guy taping the gun in the bathroom so that Jon can grab it and come out blazing.”

I’ve known Adam for decades (our parents are good friends), but really only got to know this Made Man through the following Q&A. Fan of The Daily Show? Read on, read on…

DI: Who’d you have to brain wrestle to get this amazing job?

AC: Well, it pays to read the Life section of USA Today. Back in ‘96, there was an article in there about two executives who were leaving MTV to take over Comedy Central. They knew Politically Incorrect was leaving, and at the end of the article they mentioned that they wanted to replace PI with a topical show like “SportsCenter”, but not about sports. Something clicked for me, I found out who was running the yet-unnamed show (Madeleine Smithberg and Lizz Winstead), I sent them a letter, and they called me in for an interview. Now, when I had briefly interned at Conan O’Brien, Conan told a joke of mine on the air in his monologue (another long story) – I had kept the cue card with the joke on it, and I brought the cue card into my Madeleine & Lizz interview as an example of my vast comedy experience. For some strange reason, they hired me as a researcher, and I’ve been wit the show since Day One.

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If you enjoy my posts on this blog, you have A.J. Jacobs to thank. Yes, Mr. Know-it-All was the guy who recommended me to Will Pearson and Mangesh about a year before we all started blogging here. In fact, A.J. was planning to do some more regular blogging back in the early days, too, and was on a lot of our early conference calls as we plotted to take over of the blogosphere!!!! [insert maniacal Austin Powers laugh] (Did you read Jason’s post last week? Clearly we’re well on our way now!)

Anyway, A.J. is one of the few people I know who really follows that Randian philosophy: “There is no competition among men;” we should all be so selfless and upstanding. We should all be so talented, too.

Chances are, you already know a lot about A.J. and his amazing quests to read the entire encyclopedia, or live his life according to all the commandments in the Bible. (If you missed the latter, check out one of A.J.’s own posts on this blog about the experience.)

Today, we’re thrilled to help A.J. promote his fantastic, new book, The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment – just out in stores now. And tomorrow, we’ll be giving away 5 brand new copies of the book in a fun contest you’re not going to want to miss. But, as always, you’ll better your chances in the contest if you read the whole Q&A below, and really get to know this unusually talented, hilarious mouth breather [his words! not mine!].

DI: I haven’t read the whole book yet, but I really loved all the experiments I read, especially the one where you posed as your nanny and picked up men online, and the one where you outsourced your entire life to Bangalore. I also dug the one where you had to obey your wife’s every whim and command; that one was especially close to home for me. But certainly there must have been one or two experiments that got cut from the book. Talk a little about them, and why they were left out.

AJ: Well, I get a lot of suggestions for experiments from friends, family and readers. One reader suggested I do all the positions in the kama sutra. My wife shot that one down pretty quickly. So not all of them make it out of the planning stage.

Check out this hilarious teaser for the new book!

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In 1988, before the Internet was widely available to college students, Ken Ramberg and his mother Connie, founded a service called JobTRAK. Employers would submit job openings to JobTRAK, who would then fax them to college career offices.

They grew profitable through the ’90s, using the Web, of course, and were bought out in 2000 by Monster. This was ultimately bad news for JobTRAK (which became MonsterTRAK and then eventually died earlier this year), but good news for the non profit world. Why? Because Ken suddenly had a lot of time on his hands, which he used to found GoodSearch with his sister JJ (host of MSNBC’s Your Business).

If you’re not yet using GoodSearch to make money for your favorite charity, it’s high time you started. The concept is easy: every time you do a search online through their search engine (which is Yahoo’s search engine repackaged), or using their toolbar (you don’t even have to be on their site), GoodSearch donates 50% of the add revenue they get from the search to the charity of your choice.

Those pennies really ad up if you get a lot of people naming your organization as the beneficiary. And now they’ve gone and added GoodShop. Whenever you shop online at stores like Target or Amazon (the Apple Store, 1-800-Flowers, the list is endless), a percentage of your total bill goes to said charity. What percentage? That’s up to the store. But some retailers will donate up to 30%!

For some more details, plus an insider’s look at the amazing search company, check out our interview with founder Ken Ramberg below.

DI: After you sold JOBTRAK to Monster, I can picture you sitting around going: okay, now what am I going to do with my time. Were there other, competing ideas? Or did you know it was going to be Goodsearch from the get go?

KR: After founding and then operating an Internet company for 14 years, I wasn’t intending on starting a new business. JOBTRAK was a great success story, but it was a lot of hard work to say the least. However, after reading about the billions of dollars that the major search engines were generating in advertising revenue, I thought, “What if part of that money could be distributed to worthy causes? And more specifically, what if it went to the nonprofits chosen by the users?” It was such an exciting concept that I felt compelled to jump back in.

We launched GoodSearch, our Yahoo-powered search engine, in late 2005 with the promise that 50% of our revenue (which has turned out thus far to be about a penny per search) would be shared with the charities or schools designated by our users. The site has grown quickly and has struck a chord with people who care about making a difference in the world. In fact, 81,000 nonprofits and schools have now signed on and 100 new causes join us each day!

In this economy, especially, when people want to give but may not have the extra funds to do so, we’ve created a way to “give without giving.” As more and more people spread the word, together we have the ability to make a meaningful impact in our communities.

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I first discovered Mike Sacks on McSweeney’s. He’s a hilarious writer, who’s also penned pieces for mags like The New Yorker and Esquire.

Today, Writer’s Digest Books is releasing a new book he’s put together: And Here’s the Kicker, 21 interviews with some of the funniest writers alive, like David Sedaris and Buck Henry. As usual, the _floss has scored a couple copies of the book, which can be yours, IF, you send me an e-mail begging for one. No, IF, you answer the question correctly at the end of my interview with Mike. Now, on with the show…

DI: Humorists and comedians aren’t often funny when they’re not ‘performing.’ Be honest: of all the people you interviewed in this great, new reference book you’ve created, who was the funniest in person?

MS: That’s true. I think most people who work in professional comedy aren’t that funny “away from the office.” It’s too exhausting to be “on,” and, typically, they’ve heard every joke anyway. Their “humor IQ” is higher. That said, most of them have a very dry wit in person, usually quite cutting. The funniest person I interviewed was probably 93-year-old Irv Brecher, who started his career writing for Milton Berle and then wrote for The Marx Brothers. Irv was incredibly funny, and had a fantastic memory. He even remembered his phone number from 70 years ago: Circle 71294. They don’t make phone numbers like that anymore. Sadly, Irv died not long after we spoke at the age of 94.

DI: How’d you pick the 21 writers who wound up in this collection? What was the criteria?

MS: I had carte blanche, which was great. I only asked those writers whose writing I really like and respect. Also, quite frankly, a lot had to do with the willingness of the interviewee to sit down and talk with for a total of five to ten hours (not necessarily consecutively, but over a period of a few days or weeks). There were a few writers I’d love to get for the second volume (if there is another volume).

DI: One of my favorite interviews in the book is the one you did with Dan Mazer, who has worked with Sacha Baron Cohen on all the big hits. As Bruno is opening this week, I thought it would be timely if you’d share a little anecdote from the Mazer interview re: Borat.
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