Why on earth did you put a playground on top of a cemetery?

You know, we hear that a lot. And the answer will surprise you. When you're thinking about building a playground for kids, your first inclination might be "let's not build this on a 200-year old cemetery." But in our case, we thought differently.

What the hell were you thinking when you decided to build a playground on top of a cemetery?

Good question. When we designed our playground we knew it would have all the normal accoutrements of any children's play space: slides, play houses, a sandbox and toys. But we wanted to offer something most playgrounds don't offer: a chance for kids to come face-to-face with the prospect of mortality while they're playing with sand.

What thought process goes into building a children's playground on top of a cemetery?

It's not as easy as you would think. When you're building a playground on a normal piece of land that doesn't have dead bodies in it you don't have any obstacles in your way. In our case though, we were building a playground on top of a very old cemetery. We didn't want to remove the grave stones because we felt it was important to respect the graves we were putting a playground on top of. So we built around them.

Do you realize you built a children's playground on top of a cemetery?

Oh lord yes! We have lots of people remind us of that. And there are numerous instances when people visiting Rhinebeck see the playground and decide to let the kids out of the car for a stretch. We like to watch the faces of the parents because you can see the very moment they realize that we built a playground on top of a cemetery. You can almost read their minds.

A new ebay auction.

Free Estimates - downloadable poster for the office or telephone pole.

In anticipation of increased traffic from the book jacket's mention of Banterist as well as the link from the book's official website, I thought it'd be smart to re-introduce this place.

What is this place?

Banterist is a weblog of original humor founded in Fall 2003 on a whim. The goal of the site was to create an outlet for original humor that aimed to be of a higher caliber than the farts n' pee stuff that dominates the internet and, sadly, everything.

In general the site was designed to not appeal to anyone who watches Two and a Half Men religiously.

During a chat in 2004 with Gawker Media president Nick Denton I asked him why he didn't have any humor blogs in his empire. He said there was no money in it. He was right. It's much more a labor of love, limited by time constraints and my tremendously awful graphical abilities.

How do I acquaint myself with this site?

You can always try the Greatest Hits category, which contains the most-linked-to entries on the site. These are the posts that have been the most popular in the site's history. Sadly, despite my efforts to be high-brow, two of them are literally toilet humor: the German Poo-Shelf Toilet story and the incredibly popular Chinese Squat Toilet story.

Notable Posts

My eBay auction for unwanted leather pants had remarkable career ramifications.

This summary of a trip to Vilnius, Lithuania was translated out of context into Lithuanian and posted on a popular site there - resulting in a huge backlash by angry Lithuanians who thought I was making fun of them.

The Grammar Cop archives are very popular and document our descent into apostrophic anarchy.

If you want to feel intellectually superior to a large number of people, read A Public Message From Sean P. Diddy Combs then peruse the comments and see how many people lack fundamental reading comprehension skills.

Unclaimed Finances of the Rich & Famous garnered a NY Post Page Six mention and even better, an email from actress Martha Plimpton who I had a crush on for most of my adolescence.

Magician Penn Jillete liked Your New Monkey.

Author Neil Gaiman liked Saddam's Interrogation Logs.

And Tom Cruise for the Xbox seems prescient in retrospect.

Nazis!

Facebook in the Fuhrerbunker.

US Weekly Visits the Fuhrerbunker.

Tag Index

The tag index lets you browse the site for posts based on tags. This can help you locate posts on topics you might be interested in, like the Crappiest Airport in the World or Horrendous Cat-Face Lady.

Enjoy the site.

Wherein I get schooled in the art of book interviews in the world's longest, oddest book interview.

Features: Role playing, cats, professional instruction and the stupidity of selling other peoples' books in your own interview.

boomp3.com

Stay through to the end. It should be worth it.

Yesterday was exciting. It began with the longest book interview in the history of radio and ended with me kicking two pedestrians to death.

In the Event of My Untimely Demise began the day with an Amazon ranking of 130,000-something. It went up to 343 by the time I called it a night. It was also #3 in Parenting>Humor and #10 in Entertainment>Humor.

Fortunately it had not occurred to me to check my Amazon ranking until someone mentioned it later in the afternoon. I'd completely forgotten you could monitor such things. I'm trying not to think about it now.

The radio and TV interviews and Glamour blogging was really fun. My wife surprised me with a lovely dinner at my favorite overpriced restaurant, Strip House.

By coincidence, the highly-anticipated video game Grand Theft Auto IV was launching on the same day. In the game I play host "Mike Riley" on the Public Liberty Radio channel's Intelligent Agenda show. I was dying to see how that turned out so I picked up the game, raced home, popped it in, stole a car, listened to the radio and finally heard the show. I was so excited that I exited the car and began murdering pedestrians before stealing a garbage truck for a joyride.

It was a good day.