Payne, J. Julian 1970- (Jason Julian Payne)

PERSONAL:

Born August 18, 1970, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; son of Peter (a psychiatrist) and Annette (an administrator) Payne. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: University of Waterloo, B.A.Sc., 1996. Politics: "Groucho Marxist." Religion: Agnostic. Hobbies and other interests: Mountain biking, skiing, snowboarding, hockey.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Anecdotage Press, 220 Glenrose Ave., Toronto, Ontario M4T 1K9, Canada. E-mail—imastandup@comic.com; jay@anecdotage.com.

CAREER:

Editor. Anecdotage Press, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, founder and editor, 2000—.

WRITINGS:

Celebrity Anecdotes, Anecdotage Press (Toronto, Ontario, Canada), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

J. Julian Payne is a Canadian editor. Payne studied engineering at the University of Waterloo, but he did not pursue this field. He founded a Web site dedicated to listing anecdotes in 2000 and a corresponding publishing company to publish his extensive research into the sayings of celebrities and other notable public figures.

In an interview on Anecdotage.com, Payne answered questions regarding his motivation for publishing his first book. Payne stated: "I had already collected a lot of material for the website—something like 20,000 anecdotes—with an eye to publishing a series of books. The tricky question, really, was what to do first. I almost started with golf and baseball anecdotes but given the widespread fascination with celebrities, Celebrity Anecdotes seemed like a better choice. There's nothing else quite like it out there, so I thought I could fill a void, which is the same reason I started the web site, actually. And I knew that a lot of the best stories involved people like George Clooney and Michael Moore and Ozzy Osbourne so it would be a book that I personally would like to read."

Payne published his first book, Celebrity Anecdotes, in 2005. The account looks into the lives of many Hollywood celebrities, presenting an array of unique and funny quotes they have uttered. A contributor writing in the Midwest Book Review "highly recommended" the account, calling it both "fun and entertaining." Norm Goldman, writing on BookPleasures.com, commented that the book "does not disappoint, providing us with many amusing moments pertaining to approximately forty eight personalities that are arranged alphabetically from Jennifer Aniston to Renee Zellweger." Goldman also remarked that "this is a fun book and at times an utterly engrossing read providing us with a window into the zany lives of some of our favorite actors and actresses."

Payne told CA: "My books are largely adapted from content housed on a Web site of which I am the editor and founder: anecdotage.com (motto: Famous People, Funny Stories), a quirky site devoted to the collection of (mostly humorous) anecdotes about current celebrities, as well as scientists, politicians, athletes, writers, artists, and other people of historical interest.

"What inspired the Web site's creation? As I explained when the site was launched in 2001: ‘One wintry eve near the turn of the Millennium, a certain surf-a-holic scribe (your trivia-mad editor) searched google.com for a classic anecdote about Winston Churchill … —and was astonished by the result. According to Google, the preferred search engine among the blognoscenti, the search in question "did not match any documents." Come again? Google—a tool which might, for example, yield 150+ results for a search on "Fork in the eye" or "musical toilet seat"—returned no results! Never mind that the very word "anecdote" stems from a Greek word (anekdota) meaning "unpublished items." A remarkable cyber-niche remained conspicuously unoccupied and, like Mother Nature, your editor abhors a vacuum.’"