“I fucken love writing bios,” said everyone who ever had to write a bio for their website. No I can’t start with that, people will think I’m a burned out comedy asshole. They’ll probably be offended too. Everyone’s always offended, over literally nothing, it’s so exhausting. Like over the flu, for two damn years! OK I’m off track. I’ll just start from the beginning, and pretend that I’m actually an open-minded creative guy.

I grew up in the beautiful frozen wastelands of Edmonton Alberta, where the only culture I had to survive on was Hockey Night in Canada and Much Music’s Pepsi Power Hour where I discovered the glories of 80s hair metal. To supplement this, my dad got us season tickets for the Edmonton Oilers and the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. Riding BMX bikes, blasting riffs on my bass guitar, and reading Choose Your Own Adventure game books kept me grounded into my teenage years.

At CCNY in Harlem, I was unable to focus on practicing piano scales or the rigorous discipline of classical music and I incessantly brought my latest pop-rock songs into my professor’s office for critique, each time hoping I had finally cracked the code of how to write a Billboard number one hit. My professor grew frustrated and eventually awarded me a scholarship for “Most Promising Jazz or Pop Composer,” just to get me off his back.

I then bounced around the CUNY system like an aimless vagrant scholar from department to department… Hunter Film, City Journalism, Baruch Literature, I was a true academic junkie with no PhD, heck not even a Masters on my horizons. Then suddenly I woke up one day hungover on top of my covers wearing only my cowboy boots, with a paper beside me that read “Bachelor’s of Science in Integrative Media Practice, Magna Cum Laude, Thomas W. Smith Fellowship, CUNY BA.” Wondering what the hell all that mumbo jumbo meant, I shrugged my shoulders, crumpled it up and threw it in the trash.

Several years later I was a grad school dropout from Queens College department of History and Philosophy. This was an unhealthy habit of university recklessness that had to stop. I finally acknowledged I had a problem. It was time to get help. I turned back to the more level-headed worlds of acting and comedy.

After being pulled aside in acting class and told by teacher William Esper that I “couldn’t act until receiving extensive therapy,” I quit the Esper program and apprenticed under actor Eric Loeb, a close friend of William H. Macy (see what I did there, name dropping). Eric goaded me to take all of my stories and characters and bring them on stage in stand-up comedy, a trauma I’ve never recovered from. Eric’s other notable student at that time was then up-and-coming comedian Jim Gaffigan (more name dropping).

I’ve performed with people who know Brad Pitt. I’ve performed at shows with only one audience member, including myself. I’ve hosted open mics for years in the Village. I’ve been accidentally kicked in the can by a cast member in the middle of a play and gone on with the show until the end. I have hundreds of podcast episodes, videos, and blogs that I have not yet uploaded.

My first rock album, “I’m Not A Hipster” charted on college radio in New York and was awarded Vice Magazine’s Worst Album of The Month, and since everything they write is ironic, this actually translates to Best Album of The Month. I have at least half a dozen more music albums on the way.

I’ve been to Costa Rica. I’ve had dinner with Slash. I’ve been mistaken for Jim Carrey by numerous kids around America. I have a 1929 Fischer Grand Piano which I will continue learning to play until the next big bang. 

I can easily pretend I’m a slimy lawyer, a paranoid gambler, or a Wall Street ponzi scammer. And though I am mostly obsessed with 1980s pop culture and 1480s medieval fantasy, I keep an open mind on all things, especially sides I just received at 1AM the night before the audition. I enjoy working with people, especially if they’re famous (so I can brag) and or they can pay me tons and tons of money, hundreds of thousands on the low end, but millions is more acceptable.