My hometown weekly did a Q&A with me that ran last week. I'm a little lax in posting it.

Thanks to writer Nicole Laskowski.

The Globe's Sam Allis trotted out a perennial for his column yesterday, which leaves little doubt of its direction from the opening gun: "Red alert: the gardeners are back. Run to the attic and barricade the door. " You gotta respect the declarative sentence.

I am a great admirer of Alex Beam. I used to edit his columns some times, and I would invariably need to look up a word, which in his case I always admired: he used the words appropriately, and I never sensed he was showing off by using the higher-priced word.

More substantively, I've always been able to rely on Alex for entertainment and unique perspective. Though unlike with his word choices, I haven't always been convinced his contrarianism was organic, is he not a columnist? He's supposed to be provocative.