I have a difficult time writing bios, just like I have a hard time making resumes. It is tough to strike the precarious balance between giving an honest list of your achievements and coming across as an insufferable cock. I will do my best.

The summer after college, I moved from Michigan to New York City. Before that, I didn’t do anything important, and we can therefore pretend that time didn’t exist.

Once in New York, I started working as a sales assistant at a company that produced syndicated television shows. After about a year, I became a salesperson. I flew around the country trying to sell terrible TV shows to small-market TV stations. The nice thing about this job was that I was allowed to spend as much as I wanted to on meals and things, so I ate quite well. The bad thing about this job was that flying around the country trying to sell terrible TV shows to small-market TV stations was terrifying. I don’t like trying to sell people things they don’t want. I don’t even like trying to sell people things they do want. I was not a good salesperson.

Luckily for me, that company shut its doors about a year later. I moved on to another company that had something to do with TV and something to do with the web. It was a tiny company that was hopelessly mismanaged. It, too, soon shut down. From there, I moved on to another company. This third company distributed downloadable music with an ad-supported music player. It was actually not a bad idea, nor was it a bad job . . . but it was managed by the person who had horribly mismanaged my previous company. This company soon shut its doors, as well.

I freelanced for an online advertising company that soon went out of business. I wrote a website for a cell-phone company that never really got beyond the planning stages. I was now destroying companies before they even existed.

Thankfully, things were going much better in my extracurricular activities. I started playing my acoustic guitar songs around New York at comedy and music clubs. I wrote the music for and performed onstage during Megan Hayes’ 2002 off-off Broadway play Opelika. In other bios, I say it was an “off-Broadway” show. That makes it sound slightly more impressive. One night, Viggo Mortensen’s manager came to see the show. He told me afterwards that he simply had to sign me. It didn’t happen. it was my introduction to the idea that things do not always work out the way they should.

The winter after Opelika, I wrote and performed another off-off Broadway show called Christmas with the Flamingos. It was based on a Christmas album I wrote and recorded for my family the year before, when I didn’t have any money. My friends Oliver Butler and Greg Tito from Cofounder produced/directed the show and helped me with the script. I think they spent a lot of money which they definitely did not make back. I thought the turnout would be much higher. They did a great job, though, and the people who saw it, I think, left with smiles on their faces and Christmas joy in their hearts.

The next big project was a Halloween CD, produced by me & my friend Peter McGouran and featuring hottt Brooklyn bands doing scary songs. We had our own little Brooklyn rock scene for awhile and, while it never blew up as big as I wish it would have, there’s still lots of hope. Vic Thrill, one of the artists on the CD, is about to have a movie made about him, written by Tina Fey and starring Sacha Baron Cohen, a/k/a Borat. The Hazzards, a hilarious ukelele duo, have toured the world and made one of the most awesome videos ever (directed by Ryan McFaul, who has talent pouring out of his fingertips.) The Scurvy Pirates are, without a doubt, the most wicked pirate-core group on the planet. It was a blast recording all the bands, but we didn’t sell a lot of CDs. As I’ve said before, I’m not much of a salesman.

The next big thing was, and still is, Contemporary Press. I was playing a show at a bar in Brooklyn, which my friend Jay Brida came to see. Afterwards, he told me about his idea to start a modern pulp fiction publishing company. “Okay,” I said immediately, “as long as I can write a novel called Johnny Astronaut.”

A few months later, Johnny Astronaut had been written, Contemporary Press had been featured in GQ, and we were all on our way to fame and fortune. I have since written one other novel, I, An Actress: The Autobiography of Karen Jamey, and I’ve been featured in our two short story collections, Danger City, and Danger City II.

Then, I moved to Los Angeles. I left behind all of my friends and everything I’d known for the 8 years following college took a plunge into the great unknown. New York was a great place to be for many years, but after awhile, I just needed a change of pace.

And here I am. I’m still writing and working on CP stuff, although it’s difficult when I’m so far away from the rest of the group. I’m trying to get some shows going out here, which will be discussed in the News section of this site. As soon as I have news, you will hear it.

And there you go. That’s what I’ve done in life. I may not be a rich man, but at least I’m no longer bringing start-up corporations down from the inside.