Welcome to The Libel
An Introduction
Truthfully, I wanted to call this newsletter “Hog Slop,” so that each time I finished a new post, I could announce to no one in particular, “more slop for the hogs!” But my family and friends told me that this title was “revolting” and “extremely repellent.” So, The Libel.1 Welcome.
When I was in elementary school, I would occasionally recite lines verbatim from the works of Dave Barry to try and make my siblings laugh. My parents had 10 or 20 of Barry’s books, which I would devour after school, on car trips, whenever I had the chance. Mostly collections of his columns for the Miami Herald, the books generally looked something like this:
I loved these books, and thought that having a newspaper column where you got to make people laugh and talk about weird things was probably as good as it could get. I wrote my own silly columns in high school and college, moved to New York City to do standup comedy, and won the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. [Editor’s Note: Mike is mistaken re: the Mark Twain prize; he is thinking of Lily Tomlin.]
I’ve gotten to publish a few pieces over the past few years, but have missed having an outlet for more regular writing. Here, I’ll post a mix of humor columns, satirical pieces, and commentary about life in Brooklyn, NY.2
To give you a sense of the sorts of things I might share, here is some of my published writing:
I Will Defend Free Speech To The Death. Or Until An Autocrat Asks Me To Stop (McSweeney’s): a tribute to modern free speech warrior Elon Musk.
The NYPD’s Right-Of-Way Regulations For Bike Lanes (McSweeney’s): an ode to the pleasures of riding a bicycle through New York City.
Pop From "Hop On Pop" Visits The Emergency Room (Points in Case): an investigation into the not-so-whimsical side effects of hopping on your pop, co-written with Keith Love.
If Elected, I Promise To Murder You (McSweeney’s): a piece that dares to ask the question: what if some of our politicians were not such great people?
The Pleasure Is All Mine (Points in Case): a statement of ownership re: the pleasure.
Asking Me To Stop Beating You With This Sock Full Of Quarters Will Only Further Divide Our Nation (McSweeney’s): a call for bipartisanship.
If that sounds interesting, I invite you to subscribe!
And if you like what you read, feel free to forward these emails to anyone else, recommend the newsletter, or heck, send me ten thousand dollars in unmarked, non-sequential bills.
Feel free to reply to this post with any questions or comments, and thank you for reading.
Astute readers would point out that this doesn’t actually explain why I chose The Libel. Well, this was the name of the satirical newspaper I started in college, and I have it on good authority that we tend to beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
A writer? In Brooklyn? Now we’ve seen everything.
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