[3] He has written six books, including How to Live and Big Kiss, an account of his attempts to become a working actor, which won a Thurber Prize.

These include creating a gourmet meal out of food purchased at a 99-Cent Store,[6] eating at a nude restaurant in Paris with his boyfriend,[7] inviting a restaurant health inspector to rate his apartment's kitchen while he was serving lunch to friends,[8] and trying to pass the National Dog Groomers Association's certification test by applying lipstick to his cocker spaniel's snout and telling the test's judge, "I like a dog with a face.

Auden's poetry to their passengers[10] (which erroneously suggested citizens of the Northern city of York speak in the Cockney dialect) and a playlet composed entirely of Eugene O'Neill's stage directions.

[19] His January 2013 article in the Travel section of The New York Times about Medellin, Colombia was referenced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the Benghazi hearings.

[21] He has painted a fairly rollicking portrait of his childhood; of his and his siblings' singing of Christmas carols in church, he wrote, "We can make 'Angels We Have Heard on High' sound like a scrum of Panzers.

[31] A collection of essays and articles, many of which were previously featured in Spy and other magazines, the book documents Alford's adventurous exploration of modern urban living, including his hiring of two nude housecleaners, his trying to find work as an earlobe model, his volunteering to serve as the driver for the governor of Colorado during the 1992 Democratic Convention, and his untrained attempts to pass a variety of vocational exams.

In it he chronicles his summer training session at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, playing an extra in the remake of Godzilla, his trip to improvisational comedy camp with his 69-year-old mother, his audition to voice Wilbur the Pig in Charlotte's Web, and his work on a phone-sex party line.

[34] On the show, Alford interviewed groups of children and senior citizens as they viewed and analyzed current music videos and memorabilia from rock 'n roll history.

[35] In his review of the show, Joel Stein wrote in Time magazine that Alford "elicits lines from small children that Bill Cosby sweats whirlpools trying to score.

Co-produced and directed by his editor at Random House, Jonathan Karp, the show consisted of Alford and eight other actors performing self-written monologues about their most embarrassing audition experiences.

"[37] Over the course of the book, Alford speaks with and visits a number of people over the age of seventy, some famous (playwright Edward Albee, actress Sylvia Miles,[38] and literary critic Harold Bloom) and some offbeat (a Lutheran Pastor who thinks napping is a form of prayer; writer Sandra Tsing Loh's eccentric retired aerospace engineer father, who eats food out of the garbage), with the hopes that they might reveal some kind of sagacity that they have accrued over their lengthy lifespan.

[49] Alford has contributed often to the public radio show "Studio 360"; his pieces include taking a former gang member to see the Broadway production of "West Side Story",[50] starting his own artists colony,[51] and creating a musical composition from the noises made by the radiator in his and others' apartments.

(Alford's father, inebriated, once got in the backseat of the family car and, prepared to drive but sensing something was amiss, accused his wife of having stolen the steering wheel.)