Full name: Mary Rosanne Phillips-Sandy.
Total letters in name: 24, plus a hyphen.
What do you do?: I write jokes about politics at Comedy Central’s Indecision. I write other things elsewhere.
Where are you from?: Waterville, Maine.
Where do you live now?: Portland, Maine.
Where else have you lived?: New York City and various towns in Massachusetts.
Who is your favorite president, dead or alive?: Stephen Grover “Grover” Cleveland.
What did you study in school?: Economics, the-ay-ter, Weltschmerz.
What is the funniest thing you’ve ever seen?: One hot summer afternoon I was walking through Chinatown with Nick and Gavin, because Nick wanted to show us a store that sold special (allegedly) tattooed fish for thousands of dollars (allegedly). The only problem was Nick couldn’t remember the address. We trudged after him for hours in search of this store that was always just around another corner, our interest in the alleged tattooed luxury fish dwindling by the minute. Waiting for a traffic light to change I glanced up Mott Street and saw a man carrying a tuba.
Can you list some things you’ve done, in approximate chronological order?
- I co-founded, and was the first assistant director of, the Maine International Film Festival.
- I worked as a research assistant for two prizewinning authors: Stacy Schiff (A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America) and Chris Finan (From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America).
- I tap-danced on stage at the Bowery Poetry Club for reasons that escape me now.
- I started a hilarious, heartwrenching website called Ruined Music. It was featured on public radio, MTV News, Yahoo!, and elsewhere.
What would it look like if you were taking notes before they invented color?
