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Real interviews with real people. Unlike the rest of
BBspot there's nothing made up here. I know it's a difficult transition
but I'm not fooling. We did e-mail these questions and these were
the responses.
Andrew Marlatt is the man behind the humor site SatireWire which
started just a short time before BBspot got off the ground during
the Golden Age of Satire Start Ups. For the past two years we've
exchanged ideas, stories, advice, and a lot of laughs on ICQ. He's
one of the good friends I've gained from doing this site.
In addition to his site he has also authored what could
be considered the greatest book of satire ever called Economy
of Errors. Of course, I'm a bit biased since I'm listed as a
contributor of additional material (translation: I wrote a story
for it). BBspot also garners a mention in the acknowledgments section,
so it might be worth a read just for those facts alone. But don't
take my word for it, last I checked it had cracked the Top 50 on
Amazon's bestsellers list.
Until you get the book enjoy the 11 Questions that
we threw at him for this interview.
BBspot (1): Since BBspot is a geek site we'd
like to know what kind of computer system you have? Processor? OS?
Browser? Details please.
Andy: Running SatireWire requires very little in terms of
technical expertise, which shows, I think, by the obvious lack of
technical expertise exhibited there. I have an old Dell XPS300 (they
don't seem to be making new ones), which I believe is closing in
on its fifth year, and runs Windows 98, so-named because it takes
up 98 percent of the space on your drive. I use Cute FTP and Cute
HTML, and Photoshop 6.0, primarily.
BBspot (2): Is SatireWire a hobby for you? Full time gig?
Unhealthy obsession?
Andy: No. Yes. Yes.
SatireWire is a full-time, obsessive job, and also a solo gig, and hence unhealthy.
BBspot (3): Are you the same Andrew Marlatt who played for
the Cleveland
Thunderbolts in the Arena Football League? Because if you
are you sucked!
Andy: No, but my wife Susan is the same Susan Marlatt who
played pulling guard for the old Oakland Raiders. She's the one standing
behind Eugene Upshaw.
BBspot (4): I understand you were an Internet business reporter
before you started
SatireWire. Why did you to switch from interviewing CEOs to making fun of
them? Do you still do any serious writing?
Andy: After leaving newspapers 10 years ago, I was a freelancer,
doing primarily humor, but then fell into this serious gig with Internet
World covering Internet business models. Actually, that was humor,
but none of us realized it at the time. I did that from 1997 until
the beginning of 2000, and also wrote for other pubs about the Net.
Somewhere in early 1999, after interviewing the CEO from a new site
called JustBalls.com (which sold just balls, and had huge backing),
I realized something was wrong with one of us, and I hoped it wasn't
me. I turned to satirizing the whole New Economy, which I was better
at. If you read my "serious" stuff, you'd understand that
comment.
BBspot (5): Who would you like to face in a Celebrity Death
Match and why?
Andy: Don Imus. I did a profile of him for a magazine a long
while back, and he had me on the air in the studio, and he said I
looked like a thumb. OK, it was a fair point, but I can't tell you
how much, right then, I wish I could have turned myself into a middle
finger.
Check out
Part II of the interview where Andy tells us who didn't take
too kindly to being satirized on his site
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