I've finally decided what I want to be when I grow up. I want to be a member of what I shall call, in honor of the founder, the Glass Mafia. This is a group of very funny writers, many of whom got their big breaks on Ira Glass's This American Life, or its local predecessor on WBEZ, The Wild Room.

To start with, you have my two favorite humorists, David Sedaris (happy 50th birthday, David!) and Sarah Vowell (happy 38th birthday today, Sarah (and Amy)!). Sedaris is funnier, given a choice, I'd rather write like Vowell stuff, because she's more topical. She's also eight months younger than me, which is not a good omen.

From Sedaris and Vowell, you can get to just about any talented, amusing writer out there. David Sedaris writes with his sister, Amy, who is a regular writing partner of Stephen Colbert, which gets you to Jon Stewart and Steve Carell.

(By the way, the reference in the title, as many of you have guessed, is comparing TAL to Second City. Amy Sedaris, Colbert and Carell are all SCers, as well.)

Sarah Vowell gets you everywhere. She and David Rakoff (a TAL contributor himself) often appear in each other's essays. She's performed numerous times with another TAL contributor, Jonathan Hodgman, and is thanked in his book. As is Ira Glass. And David Rakoff.

Hodgman, of course, gets you to the brilliant "I'm A Mac/I'm a PC" commercials, and to the newer Jon Stewart group, including his Scrabble partner, John Oliver.

In Assassination Vacation, Vowell complains at great length about the fact that, although she lives a few blocks away, she isn't allowed into Gramercy Park to see the statue of Edwin Booth. She finally gets in when a friend stays in the Gramercy Park Hotel. The friend? The man who wrote what might be the best book of my lifetime, Nick Hornby.

This goes beyond authors. You Might Be Giants did the music for all of Sarah Vowell's audiobooks, and John Hodgman is the "Deranged Millionaire" on their Venue Songs CD/DVD. They are also doing the music for the upcoming movie version of Coraline, written by another British guy whose name I forget. Annoying bloke. Talked on my cell phone once.

Speaking of Neil, I was driving home from Ford Field on Christmas Eve, and I was listening to a BBC World Service discussion about the upcoming 200th anniversary of the measure banning the slave trade in England. It was a long, serious interview with a man who spoke very movingly about his visits to African slave markets, and about how slavery is portrayed as a "black" issue, which neglects all of the other peoples of the world that have suffered enslavement.

I had missed the first couple minutes of the interview, so I had no idea who was talking until the end, which they thanked him. It was Lenny Henry. I didn't know Lenny Henry had done anything other than Chef! in his entire life.

(Gaiman, Henry and Henry's wife, Dawn French, are close friends. In case you were wondering how this tied to Neil.)

TMBG isn't the only music act that ties into the Glass Mafia, either. The house band on the first This American Life live tour? OK Go.

The one brilliant humorist that I can't quite tie in is the one whose wandering writing style is most like my own - Roy Blount Jr. The easy way to do it is that he's a regular on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, which is also produced by WBEZ, but that seems like cheating. He quoted Nick Hornby in an essay, and they have each written one of the five best sports books ever - Fever Pitch and About Three Bricks Shy of a Load. But that's not enough, either. He lives in New York, so I'll find something.