It was absolutely a McSweeney’s knockoff. The design, the typeface, the snarky cleverness. No one had heard of Dave Eggers at the college that I attended for one year before transferring away. No one had heard of McSweeney’s or Neal Pollack or any of it. So I rallied the troops.
I was twenty years old but by then I’d already undertaken many group publishing projects. Starting as early as middle school, then the point-counterpoint newsletter, printed, I published in high school. On the school’s dime.
The freshman year college lit mag didn’t get the backing of the school. Not even close. In fact, I got called in by someone official becomes some of the satire I’d written.
I think it was the piece about the Dean of Students and the College President as my roommates and their questionable antics with one another that put me on the college’s radar. And not in a good way.
Here’s the site: East Jordan Market’s Irrepressible Rage.