Thoughts while waiting in line for coffee 

I walked into a coffee shop Monday morning and stood in line for a cup of coffee, black, while people ahead of me ordered skinny lattes and half-caf cappuccinos and double-doubles and I didn’t mind the long wait — I was brought up to wait — we were a large family, service was slow. Waiting is an opportunity to think. I once stood in a long twisty line at airport security and in the course of shuffling along remembered how violent Pom-Pom-Pullaway was on the Benson School playground in 1950 and how I went in the library to escape being pummeled and fell in love with books and became a writer, all thanks to the lack of adult supervision. Had teachers kept the bullies under control, I might’ve become an anthropologist.

Three big TVs hung on the coffee shop wall and each one showed two talking heads, male and female anchors, talking about the news, I assume, though the sound was so low you couldn’t be sure. They were attractive people in a generic way and everyone ignored them. These faces are seen in cafes and airports and waiting rooms all over America, and I suppose they imagine they are playing a large role in the life of the nation, whereas their function is more like that of houseplants. They’re décor.

I talked to the woman who took my order. She is from Somalia and her husband drives cab and their oldest daughter is in college, majoring in math, and the second daughter wants to be a writer. And right there was the real news, not the silent noise on the screens. The real stories are all around us. I had dinner last week with two old friends and on Sunday morning, one of them woke up and the other was unconscious from a massive stroke and died that afternoon in the ICU. He’d been quite himself, jovial and witty, and two days later he was gone. So I had supper Sunday night with his widow and her daughter at an Italian restaurant Ira liked to eat at with his retired pals. He was a good man, a judge in the New York state system, a faithful public servant and also a humorist, as many people in public service are. It’s hard to accept his absence.

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Paula Poundstone interview

Paula Poundstone is a humorist of the stage and the written word. Her writings has been published in a variety of sources such as the Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, Glamour, Buzz Magazine, and The Rolling Stone Book of Comedy. In her new podcast, Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone, fans get an all-access look at her life––its successes, failures, and quirks.

Poundstone began performing at open-mic nights back in 1979. Her mastery of live comedy is demonstrated in her first comedy recording I Heart Jokes, capturing a funny and relevant concert in Maine in 2009. She has been honored with two Cable ACE Awards, an Emmy, and an American Comedy Award. National Public Radio fans are familiar with her work as a panelist on the radio program Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, and A Prairie Home Companion fans in particular are very familiar with her contributions to the almost-annual joke show.

To celebrate her new podcast, we revisit a funny guest interview from 2009, ahead of her performance on A Prairie Home Companion.

Here is an excerpted quote:

"Many, many years ago, Garrison invited me, along with the rest of the cast, to an after show party at his New York apartment. Garrison is a brilliant man of words, so it was no surprise to see shelves and shelves of beautiful books. He must, as I do, revere the printed word, I thought. He rolled out a spectacular ping pong table and invited us to play. When there weren't enough paddles to go around, he grabbed some thin hardcover books from his shelf, and used them instead. It was a first for me, but I'm fairly certain it wasn't the first time Garrison walloped a ball with a copy of Silas Marner."

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Paula Poundstone on "Living with Limericks"

Paula was kind enough to write a review blurb that appears on the back cover of Garrison's new book Living with Limericks. Here's what she had to say about the hybrid memoir/poetry collection, available for preorder via Prairie Home Productions:

"In Living with Limericks, Garrison Keillor unfurls his whole life in limericks. Since I first discovered Garrison Keillor, I joined millions who have thought him to be a national treasure. Now, it turns out, all the while he was earning that distinction, he was keeping contemporaneous memos in the form of limericks. It's like finding out there was another floor to Versailles, or that Julia Child left a full freezer, or that there's a film of Jesse Owens, shot from the other side of the Olympic track, where you can see him flipping Hitler off as he nears the finish line."

Garrison is singing all pre-orders placed before November 15th, so reserve your copy now!

Get the book >>>

As we continue to mark the 45th anniversary of the first A Prairie Home Companion broadcast, we are introducing new items in our newsletter, starting with the "A Year in Lake Wobegon" monologue collection and culminating with Garrison’s new book Living with Limericks, all as a way of saying: Thanks for listening to the show since 1974!

Just when you thought it couldn't get any funnier... This edition of the Pretty Good Joke Book includes all the puns, one-liners, knock-knocks, and knee-slappers of its predecessors, plus dozens more. Includes every joke (yes, even the groaners) from all of the almost-annual fan favorite show, plus many not in the broadcasts. With an introduction by Garrison Keillor on the importance of humor and how to tell a joke.

Here are a few one-liners from the 'Professionally Speaking' section:

How does a guitar player make a million dollars?
     He starts out with seven million.

Why do bagpipers always walk when they play?
     To get away from the noise.

How do you know you have a singer at your front door?
     Can't find the key; doesn't know when to come in.

What's an accountant's idea of trashing his hotel room?
     Refusing to fill out the guest comment card.