"Many years ago I was boarding a plane to Las Vegas, planning on doing two things I really enjoyed: gambling and reviewing All-You–Can-Eat buffets (I was young. Thankfully, I got both habits out of my system.). Also boarding was a large passenger sneezing and wheezing. Here was someone who desperately needed a bowl of chicken soup and a flight refund. While he squeezed his way down the aisle looking for his seat, everyone on the plane was thinking the same thing I was—I hope he doesn’t sit next to me. As he settled in next to me, I imagined the worst. Needless to say, by the end of the flight, we not only became friends who still keep in touch twenty years later, but he recommended a book which changed my life. During the flight, he sold me on In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick. I asked my mom for this book for Christmas and as my Vegas friend promised, the book was extraordinary. So much so, it convinced me to write my own. Up until that point, I wrote comedy pieces and columns in publications but never anything long form. Speed up to today—20 years later—In the Heart of the Sea has been adapted into a movie and now that I’ve finished my current project (Footnotes from the World’s Greatest Bookstores), I plan to publish that illustrated novel inspired by my favorite book. Called The Sea Below Us, it’s a black comedy about the missing Sir John Franklin. I sent a manuscript to Nathaniel Philbrick—whom I have also met and kept in touch with over the years—and thanked him for the inspiration his book provided. He loved the manuscript."

"All right. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’ll pick something completely weird and ridiculous for the very reason that I just said, and that would be Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, specifically for the scene in which Jim Carrey births himself from the anus of a fake rhino, because it is one of the single most genius pieces of comedic writing that will never be given its due because it’s part of a ridiculous, vaguely racist, silly comedy. The setup for that whole sequence is incredible from the point you see him. He’s inside this rhino, which he’s using as a sort of eavesdropping device, and it’s so meticulously done. There’s a fan inside because it’s hot. The fan breaks, so he has to undress. All to get to this point where he literally squeezes his way out of the behind of this rhino in front of a family of tourists who just effectively see a rhino giving birth to a screaming, naked human being. The industry involved in setting that joke up, the way that it just creeps up on you, like you’ll think, “Oh, it’s funny because he’s inside a rhino. It’s funny because it’s hot. It’s funny because he’s taking off his underwear.” And then suddenly, you realize, “Oh, wait a minute, this was a long game they were playing here. This is a buildup.” And it snuck up on you. And suddenly he starts to, as only he can, emerge from the back of this rhino, and then this family pulls up, and it’s just brilliant. I think that sequence should be celebrated in no uncertain terms because it is just a genius piece of comedy executed with the extraordinary aplomb that that man is capable of displaying."