As I am sure many of the readers are aware, City Paper ran an interview with me this week, focusing on Overheard in Pittsburgh, as well as my work with Friday Nite Improvs, Pittsburgh’s longest-running theater/comedy show, and the world’s only all-audience participation improv jam.

     The situation was a strange (but good) one for me; I have interviewed many people but have never been interviewed like that before. I learned a lot from the experience: don’t talk too much, or you won’t have much control over what ends up in the article*; take notes with you so you remember what you actually would like to talk about; and try not to drink too much caffeine during an interview.

     My mother, an elementary school principal, wrote me with the following note: “But let’s be politically correct — you’re a sensitive guy — it’s “mentally challenged”, not “retarded”. She has a point; I did say “retarded” four times in one sentence in a published interview. For the record, though, there ought to have been quotes around the word in the interview. “Retarded” wasn’t my word or sentiment.

     I really liked the photos we took, and the one they used looks much better in color:

     In color, you can see better that the photographer used a fish-eye lens, and that I’m not incredibly round with a tiny hand.

     I applaud those of you who were able to crack the Internet code and figure out that “overheardinpgh” and “blogspot” were reversed in the article. Your tech savvy is astounding, and I salute you.

     Now, while you may know about the City Paper interview, you most likely did not catch the mention in today’s QT column in the Chicago Sun-Times. A brief mention, but a mention nonetheless. Thanks to KGB for the heads-up.

     You can also look for me discussing Overheard in Pittsburgh in an article in the January/February issue of Pittsburgh Metropolitan Magazine. For those of you who don’t know, this is a magazine that is distributed mostly to Squirrel Hill and Shadyside, which is one of the recent cottage industry of publications for local residents with lots of disposable income. Apparently, I am now somehow relevant to that.

* I’d like to point out that I don’t just work at the restaurant mentioned in the article. In addition, I do a lot of PR work for large companies such as Glamour Magazine, Coors Light and Comcast, and I’m applying for grad schools. And I’ve been invited to pitch comicbook stories for a certain mutant superhero team. And I’m an experienced improv teacher. I do a lot more than serve food; I just wanted to set the record straight on that one.