Other Stuff

BBQ ZOO

I was sitting in my mother-in-laws backyard one evening and was startled to spot the shadow of a cow hiding in her bushes. Once I'd recovered from the shock, I realized it was not a cow, but a regular barbecue with a black vinyl cover on it. A trick of light and imagination had scared the bejesus out of me AND I had discovered a very funny but fiscally irresponsible product idea. Check them out at bbqzoo.com.

EXTREME PANCAKES

When my children were young and I was foolish enough to think they'd starve to death if they didn't have breakfast I started trying to trick them into eating by making pancakes into letters.  Letters didn't work very well so I upped my game. I made pancakes that looked like trains and flowers. Like all art this passion led to madness. You can see my pancake version of Edvard Munch's The Scream. I started a blog and that was purchased and published as a book by Barnes and Noble. The book has since sold out. You can usually still find used copies on Amazon.com. I'm currently working on an ebook version that'll be better. If you're interested in it, send me an email and I'll send a link once it's available. It'll be better than the published version because it'll use my original photographs. They're better than the ones in the book. 

COMEDY WRITING

When I started doing comedy juggling shows I was lucky enough to be among a group of street performers who were very excited about comedy. We would meet and talk about what made things funny and we would help each other improve our acts. 

A few years later when I was doing my act in Las Vegas, Penn & Teller created a new version of a variety TV show. "The Sin City Spectacular" was on the FX network. Penn & Teller invited all of their Las Vegas variety act friends to work on the show for a week to help them create new magic tricks they could perform on the show. I was included in that bunch. At the end of the week all of the other folks went home. Not me. I LOVED working on the show and decided I would just keep showing up. A week later they hired me full time. We did 24 episodes of the show and I got to work with a whole bunch of comedy legends and heroes. I wrote gags for The Smothers Brothers, Terri Garr, and Lyle Lovett among others. 

A year later Penn & Teller started a new TV show called, "Penn & Teller: Bullshit."  They hired me as head writer and I later became an executive producer for the show. I worked on the show for all 8 seasons and I received 12 Emmy nominations for my work. 

Today I work consulting for variety acts helping to add comedy and direction to their shows. I also occasionally teach a comedy writing class and demonstrate a very basic and easy way to create comedy.