About Banterist
Banterist is a weblog of original material written by me — Brian Sack. It was first launched as a Movable Type weblog in September 2003, before this “write stuff on the Internet” thing got all trendy.
It appeared on Gawker a lot in the earlier days — when they were less mean-spirited and didn’t owe Hulk Hogan $140 million.
Since Banterist’s inception, my writing has appeared in numerous publications and websites including The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, NPR, The New York Post, New Zealand Herald, CBS, Slate.com, Gawker, Gothamist, This Is London, Boing Boing, Mashable, Canada’s National Post, London’s Independent and Guardian newspapers MSNBC and many more.
I’ve written humor for publications including Radar, The Independent, Glamour, Fusion, Cracked and McSweeney’s.
I’m in the McSweeney’s Best Of compilation Created In Darkness By Troubled Americans. They put my work in their book and didn’t tell me or pay me. It’s that good!
My 2005 eBay listing for unwanted leather pants attracted over 3.4 million hits and was featured in newspapers and broadcast media worldwide. It was nuts.
I have written three books:
In the Event of My Untimely Demise is advice for my son in case I died before I could tell him.
The B.S. of A.: A Primer in Politics for the Incredibly Disenchanted is a gripe about partisan politics in the US.
The United States v.s Santa Claus is a very silly book I wrote with Jack Helmuth (Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore) where the government destroys Santa Claus.
My fourth book is sitting on a lot of publisher’s desks, so my agent tells me.
As an actor I have appeared in numerous TV and radio commercials and as the voice of talk show host Mike Riley in the hit video game Grand Theft Auto IV.
I’m in The Paul Reddy Show with John Mayer, who fucked up my first book launch. Even so, I never published or sold the picture I have of that bastard in my kitchen with his pants around his ankles, wearing a UN helmet and measuring my cat.
From 2011–2013 I wrote and hosted a very funny TV show called The B.S. of A. until the weird network it was on ran out of money. It’s too bad, because it paid really well — but that’s why they ran out of money I guess.
In May 2016 I migrated my favorite Banterist blog posts to this Medium publication because I’m impulsive and it seemed like a good idea.
