Let me tell you ABOUT MYSELF...
In 2018 I took First Place in the competition at Rutgers’ Writers’ Conference, making me a Writing God for almost ninety minutes. Check out my 600-word shtick at the Conference website and don’t worry, my wife didn’t understand the piece either.
My first published works were humorous Op-Eds in the New York Times in the nineteen seventies and early eighties. In the nineties, I had a regular satire column, “Industry Pundit” in that action-packed trade journal, Sanitary Maintenance, a magazine that still exists in print, and with the same enthralling masthead yet.
As the present century began, I focused on writing not for publication, but for performance; ten years of funny religious plays called spiels, performed live by consenting adults on the holiday of Purim at a synagogue near you. I created the websites purimspiel.net and .org which made it to page four thousand in any reasonable Google search until I got tired of paying for the web hosting.
Writing that Jewish-oriented, irreverent satire led me to compose and self-publish a pair of books about Passover, which is another Jewish holiday that could stand a bit of humor. The Eleventh Plague and The Firstborn Son (of the Eleventh Plague), are now available from Amazon, Kindle, and a box under my desk.
It happens that my writing idol, Dave Barry, came out with a Passover book at the same time. My mazel (luck). Even my mother would rather read a Dave Barry book. But mine are funny, too, and more original.
My recent inspiration for a larger work is the 2014 merger of my New York area Jewish family with two Chinese families via two marriages, my daughter's, which you know about, plus a nephew's marriage involving a Hassidic groom and his pregnant Chinese fiancé. Hence the memoir What’s Cantonese for ‘Mazel Tov’?, which you should buy.
I’ve resided in central Jersey more than half my life and call myself a Jersey guy over my wife’s objections, because we both were born and educated in New York City. I went to city public schools through Stuyvesant High, after which I attended Expensive Tulane University in New Orleans, earning an Associate’s Degree in Hangover Management.
My parents then encouraged me(at knifepoint) to transfer those credits to Tuition-Free City College of NY for a B.A. Eight years later, while a manager for a detergent company, I earned an M.B.A. from Long Island University, the premier B-school of Flatbush, Brooklyn.
Along the way I married my college sweetheart, Phyllis, whom I met in the Catskills. We're still married to after fifty years. By now you should know I have a daughter named Sara, and there's her older sister, Rachel, too. Plus three grandchildren, two of whom will be learning Chinese and Hebrew by the time you read this.
I’ve wound down my business career to focus on family, writing, and driving slowly in the left lane. Not to mention learning how to make web content.
ALSO BY HENRY:
The Eleventh Plague
Satire and schtick on the subject of Passover. Read this under the table while pretending to pay attention at your seder. Learn what really happened on Mt. Sinai. Take a flight with The Angel of Death. Sing a couple of songs, read a few haiku.
The Firstborn Son
More Passover related schtick. Read an exclusive interview with Rameses, the Pharaoh. How The Almighty recruited the frogs to be a plague. Passover poems to make Walt Whitman cry. And a new reality show: The Real Midwives of the Nile.