I’m a fat balding curmudgeon with a funny face. I had a mediocre childhood, and believe my life actually began when I met my wife, Debbie. This makes me just shy of 20, instead of the few weeks away from 50 my birth certificate implies. I never really liked being me when I was a kid, which is probably why I wanted to be other characters and became an actor.

On stage, I tend to play smug bastards, goofy sidekicks and hard-drinking, butt-pinching British doctors because I look the part. I like playing against type when I can, usually in improv shows, as an assortment of rappers, southern waitresses and Shakespearian porn actors. Improv has also allowed me to play George W Bush, Monica Lewinsky and a phone-pranking Godzilla.

I used to want to be a cartoonist, and even hung out with the regional National Cartoonists Society for a few years. I’ve had a few things published here and there, and have recently done a few paperback covers under another name. I’ve got some stories to tell which may show up in cartoon form eventually, laziness allowing.

I once shook the hand that Shari Lewis shoved up Lamb Chop’s butt, and rode in an elevator with Muhammad Ali while dressed as Doctor Strange. I was Transportation Captain on the first Swamp Thing movie, a job which I quit every weekend and returned to every Monday, until really really quitting two weeks before it ended.

I tend to wear loud shirts and quirky printed t-shirts. After all those school uniforms for years, and the tendency of men’s clothing to be blue, brown or plaid, I wanted something else. I’ve never owned a suit, and only wear them on stage. I was denied the chance to be a pall-bearer for my great-aunt because I wouldn’t wear a jacket in 90-degree weather. Sorry, fashionistas.

I work as a designer/typesetter for a print shop in Charlotte, NC, where I spend the days redesigning jobs higher-paid designers have done wrong. I get to use a big honkin’ Mac G-5 and big non-honkin’ PC with outrageously expensive software that does stuff that almost makes it worth the price.

I ran record stores for Musicland & Camelot Music for 13 years, so I’ve got a huge collection of odd tunes & videos, most of which was only popular with people who worked in record stores. My first big rock and/or roll concert was the Carpenters (before Karen was replaced by Shemp). Current faves include Happy Rhodes, Nik Kershaw, Joe Jackson, Scritti Politti, and almost nobody who’s had a hit in the past 20 years.

I was raised Catholic, and I checked out a handful of other churches for a while, but it became pretty obvious that none of the organized denominations are even close to the truth, and so many of the unorganized ones are even farther from it. For now, I assume there are plenty of beings smarter and more powerful than me out there somewhere, but I don’t actually rely on any of them to row me across the Styx when I kick the bucket. If it doesn’t make sense, I don’t believe in it. . . I like to watch videos and read books on quantum mechanics, though, so I do enjoy things I don’t understand (as long as they follow some form of logic).

My favorite quote is “The soul is more than the hum of its parts.” I’m also pretty partial to Benjamin Franklin’s “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner. Liberty is a well-armed lamb.” And the best I’ve come up with myself is “In the land of the bland, the one-idea man is king.”