The things I bought to fix my life forever.

What's the deal here?

Welcome to Order History, a humor newsletter with some old-school blog elements. Every issue will be a story about something I bought and what it said about where I was at the time and, in a larger sense, The Lessons It Taught Me About Who I Am In Our Consumer Age. Or something, I promise it will be funny enough that you won't even notice larger themes. Even when it gets dark!

One thing it is not is aspirational in any way. Quite the opposite!

It's 2025. You're starting a newsletter now?

I know, the timing is perfect. We're already seeing articles focusing on newsletter fatigue, people who are taking out loans to afford their thousands of newsletter subscriptions, advice for how the Democrats can win back young male voters by starting Substacks about how bros are their natural constituency, etc. It seemed like the ideal time for me to start this project I've been putting off for nearly a decade. (Also, I'm an experienced editor in 2025, so I'm broke.)

Isn't there some irony to starting a site about all the things you've bought when you're so broke?

I think when you see the things I'm talking about and how inexpensive most of them were, your question will be more about how I'm not living in a mansion right now and lecturing young people about Taylor Swift tickets, but also, wow.

Why should I pay for this? Who are you? What's your story? And don't hold back, maybe start when Bill Clinton was still president, and then talk about the early years of blogs, a subject no one can get enough of ever.

In 2000, I left my hometown of Tallahassee and drove my Honda Civic hatchback full of books to New York City with no money and knowing nobody. I somehow made friends quickly and soon slept on couches instead of my car.

My intent was to "start a 'zine," but I immediately started a blog instead. Within a few years, I became Gawker's first intern, and my own blog was getting attention from outlets like The New York Times, Page Six, The New York Daily News, The (actual) New Yorker, Glamour Australia, Jane Magazine (I became their official blogger), GQ Magazine, Details, New York Magazine, and the Village Voice, which called me "Blogger Most Likely to Strike it Rich and Deserve It," to name a few. I think my favorite was CBS This Morning using a big picture of my blog across the screen to illustrate the concept of a "blog" to their audience.

I also started a humor reading series called Ritalin Readings (four-minute readings) that ran from 2004-2010. So many comedians and writers participated, like Jenny Slate, Sloane Crosley, Colin Jost, Ellie Kemper, John Mulaney, and lots more.

My beats were stand-up comedy and tales of late nights on the Lower East Side. I was soon hired to start blogs for Comedy Central, then co-founded Videogum, one of the funniest blogs ever (according to a lot of people!), wrote hundreds of blog posts for places like Jezebel, The Awl, The Hairpin, and Vulture, and eventually became an editor and editorial director at media companies. I've run my own editorial consultancy for the past decade.

I'm totally sold! What are my options?

Find ways to support this project here! And thank you for reading this far!