Land o’ Rando

Projects from over the years. Some Internet-famous at the time, some (probably deservedly) obscure.

Division Fish & Chips Sign Restoration: I bought the old Division Fish & Chips sign — a legendary generational restaurant. Fixing it up was a big project, but it turned out pretty great.

Short, Secret Album Reviews: I listen to a lot of music, and in 2021 I resolved to try to take more notes about it. I’m not a music critic. This is pretty shallow and bad. Sorry.

The Big Red Button and the Wacky Robot: I was stalked for about a decade back in my twenties/thirties, and the hardest thing for me to deal with was the ultimate irrationality of my stalker and the ultimate wisdom of the “have no contact, whatsoever, forever” advice. This is something I wrote then to help me parse this, and it’s since been shared a lot across the Internet with people in similar situations. I’m glad it’s of use.

In Which I Ruin Rashomon For Everyone, Forever: a viewing of Akira Kurosawa’s greatest (?) film led me to spend a weekend trying to flowchart it. It gets real weird near the end.

The Night We Shot Bingo Elvis: a MetaFilter Music collaboration that I’d plumb forgotten about until the other day. MP3

Comics-Related Projects:

Captain Blood: The Odyssey Scripts: A five-issue adaptation of Rafael Sabatini’s Captain Blood (1922) that I was contracted to write for SLG; the series only ran two issues (the public’s appetite for incredibly elaborate 100-year-old naval adventure novels was markedly less than what SLG was hoping for). Dan Vado paid me for the whole run because he’s a mensch.

Robin Vs. Zen: a super silly take in which Robin III (Tim Drake) ruins several thousand years of Eastern mysticism.

Bronson Tracy Has: The License: One of my favourite ideas ever — a good-hearted, two-fisted American thug is given a license to kick ass. It doesn’t go well. Elvis, dogs, serial killer theories, and a long-term message of pacifism and socialism that never got time to develop. Man, I loved this idea! I wish it’d found a home.

Man-Man: I wrote a daily strip comic with Montrealer and mad genius James Duncan for six years in the early ’90s. It’s probably the best long-term lesson in writing I ever could have had. It ran for 50 chapters (my God). Link goes to an index page… I’ll be slowly adding more over time.

Audio:

JAZZ!

A jazz show I did for CFRC for one summer in 2023; I play jazz and say only the word “jazz” during the show.

WAFFLES!

A radio show I did with my wife, Marisa, for a long time at CFRC in Kingston, Ontario.