andy borowitz. have you heard of him?ave heard of him. >> reporter: david remnick is editor of the new yorker. >> i can wake up the next morning if not sooner and answer borowitz will have hit it on the head. when sarah palin signed a contract with fox, the next morning i can read andy borowitz writing about how sarah palin can at least simul- cast in english. >> reporter: 52-year-old andy borowitz has always loved making people beginning at shaker heights high school in cleveland. >> i was kind of tall and awkward and gawky. i had a big nose. it's hard to imagine that now. but if you can just picture it. it doesn't lend itself to becoming the, you know, the star of the football team. you wind up doing things like drama. >> reporter: were you popular within that crowd some. >> i was popular within the group of unpopular kids. i would say i was in the upper 10% of the unpopular kids in school. >> reporter: he was editor of the school newspaper. >> the only thing that was interesting to me was the idea of making up the news

andy borowitz. chilean minors to appear on cnn.y would they want to go down into another deep hole? to get some time away from the spotlight. let's play "oddball." >>> buenos aires. we wander into the upper house of the parliament. this lawmaker is in the process of giving a speech. the fellow lawmaker decides to give a clever resort, using her hand of the god. she later explained herself by saying, he wore me out. i've been putting up with him all yearlong. he kept shouting without putting out a single proposal. >> decatur, alabama, on the move a runaway cow steering his way through the streets. residents looking at his hoofed it up down the roaded. when the owner was informed that his cow had had escaped, he was in utter disbelief. >>> the internet's the wonderful world of infomercials. the video is in spanish. i'll provide a translation. cool. look at this unbreakable piece of cookware. i'll throw it to the ground. watch this. and boom goes the dynamite. we can't do this all day. quick, go to the next product. >> look at that ho

[applause] >> for those of you who don't know me, i am andy borowitz. i write for "the new yorker." i under -- i write under the pen name noncompliant will. [laughter] >> thank you. one night a year we all gather together, writers, readers and agents to celebrate the book at its bastard cousin, the e-book. [laughter] >> now, when the national book foundation asked me to host last year's show, they said, if this was a big selling point for me, they said that hosting the national book award can lead to bigger things. [laughter] .. as poking fun at the publishing business. for example, i said last year that publishing was a sinking ship. and i meant that in a positive way. [laughter] i did not say that publishing was a sunken ship. i said, and i believe, that publishing is still very much in the process of sinking. you know, publishing is a carnival cruise ship. it's on fire, the toilets don't work, but we are surviving day to day on pop tarts and spam. [laughter] and i think we can all agree that is a pretty darn positive assessment of where publishing is right now. [applause] i'm gla