Name: Gene Doucette Hometown: Cambridge, MA Website: genepoool.com Started with Just Laugh: April 2002

See now this is one of those impossible questions. Favorite all time or favorite this week? Favorite drama or comedy? Or dramedy? Does anyone know what the hell a dramedy is? And do they call it "dramedy" because the other option was "cauma"? You don't want to ask someone what their favorite coma is, after all. Anyway, I don't have a favorite. I just appreciate excellent television, so, this week my favorites would be CSI, Boomtown, 24, West Wing, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, Scrubs, and Firefly, which those jackasses at Fox just cancelled.

I'm going to forget dozens, but... Miller's Crossing, L.A. Confidential, This is Spinal Tap, The Bicycle Thief, The Godfather (Parts One and Two), Silence of the Lambs, Pulp Fiction, Notting Hill, Citizen Kane, Dog Day Afternoon, Jaws, Lord of the Rings.

"I'm not afraid of dying. I just don't want to be there when it happens." -- Woody Allen

OR "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars." -- Oscar Wilde (?)

Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Matchbox 20, More Than You Think You Are
Queens of the Stone Age, Songs for the Deaf

I don't really look at it as something I "started." I've always been a writer, from the moment I started to read to now, except for maybe a couple of times in college when I was too stoned. My parents have a story of the time I was asked by a waitress what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I said "bookmaker." I was four at the time. We're pretty sure I wasn't referencing gambling when I said it.

That depends on the project. My humor columns tend to spring out of the reality of my everyday life, while my Worst-Case Scenario parody columns come from everywhere. I'd started it as a straight parody of a book that called itself a humor book but which wasn't all that funny, in my opinion. I thought it would be fun to write one that actually was funny. After the first twenty columns or so, I stopped trying to directly parody things in the book and started having some more fun with the convention. So most of my later columns came from current news-like How to Identify Anthrax, which is a personal favorite.

Again, that depends on the project. I think my finest accomplishment is a novel called CHARLATAN that I'm still trying to sell. I'm also very proud of The Other Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook, especially now that it's available in book form. Beating Up Daddy will always make me proud, as will most of my play scripts-especially Deus Ex Quanta, which gets produced periodically in oddly distant locales (California, for instance, and Australia.) Looking at what I've penned in the past year or so, I think my favorite short piece was A Mid-East Solution, which still makes me giggle madly when I read it.

I get asked this a lot, especially since so many of my non-parody columns discuss my family in sometimes embarrassing detail. Let me just say that there is a line. I couldn't tell you where it is, how it got there, or how long it will be staying, but I know when I've crossed it.

Having quit my day job, I'll supporting my family solely on the income from my writing, and also owning a mansion, yacht, and a small island where grapes are peeled for me daily by topless native women.

Well how else do you expect me to answer this?

Never throw away anything you've written. Never publish a first draft to your web page, because I guarantee when you look at it again in 24 hours you'll find a way to improve it. Assume you have writer's block for a reason. Never stop.