A journalist (who has also done comedy for over a decade) emailed us, trying to get himself some publicity and offering to let us have some of the many splendid interviews he’d done over the years with this comic or that comic. (Of course, we politely declined, as we only run original stuff… and we don’t pay… and we aren’t really running that kind of thing much these days anyway. And we were very polite… we used the word “Thanks” a record number of times.)

In a followup email, we (and when we say we, we mean, in this instance, The Male Half Of The Staff) made an eroor– we mistakenly speculated that his was one of the many publications that regularly says snarky things about standup comics. He went mental.

The following is just a teeny slice of an email tirade we received about 40 minutes after hitting “send” button:

Seriously, get your head out of your ass and actually take the time to read the stories in my papers before you dare to criticize them. …but when you dare to imply that I’m writing negative things about comedy and then am going to “kick it up a notch or three” on the negativity, you’d better hope I don’t come across you when I come play NYC’s Laugh Factory and Standup New York later this year or I’ll be likely to kick your head further up your ass a notch or three.

Oh woops, I guess i just went negative. Just following your lead. Am surprised you have such a negative streak, I’ve seen you in action at the Chicago Fest and you were quite the world-class ass kisser.

HOpe the site goes broke.

Unbeknownst to him, as he was typing up the above scorcher, I had realized my error and sent along the following:

I don’t know for a fact that you’ve said nasty things about comedians in the past.

I know that the Orange County freebie entertainment rag has…as has LA Weekly (They’re the worst offenders of all of them)…A red flag goes up when I see (the name of your publication…which shall remain nameless), though…Have we ever trashed (Unnamed publication) in our pages? I am too tired to do a google search of our archives…it is highly likely…though not necessarily under your byline…

You being a reporter and a comedian, can you give us any insight into the hostility the MSM and the alterna-rags have when it comes to standup comics? (mind you, I don’t want an essay…just a word, one word…maybe three at max, that might explain why journalists hate comics so much)…I usta be a journalist…so I have some theories of my own, but I don’t identify as a reporter and haven’t for some time. You, on the other hand, identify as both. What gives? Do your editors hate you when they find out you do comedy?

…I am exhausted after a horrible weekend of warring with my two remaining siblings (the other two died)…the dispute involves power of attorney over my mother who is currently in a retirement home in CT.