Okay, here’s the “about me” section.

I’ve done just about everything imaginable in publishing, from reporting and editing the news to cartooning and graphics. In 2000, I basically stopped drawing and writing (with a few brief stints here and there) and put down my quest for “stupid bliss.” In the mean time, I raised my family and began working on two masters degrees—one is finished and the other is just about completed. One degree is in dishwashing and the other is in putting ketchup into those packets you get from fastfood chains.

During my high school years and early college years, I played in a band called the Bleeding Bladders. We had a lot of fun playing in dives, pubs, and clubs and recording. We scored some minor triumphs, like getting on college radio, gathering a small following, and meeting with a major record label. Our bass player, a smart academic, went on to become a lawyer (good for him) and like most of these things, the band went separate ways.

After that, I founded Neck Magazine, the Magazine for People with Necks, which was also a lot of fun. We had a much larger following than the Bleeding Bladders and, despite the negative impact it had on my college GPA, we had somehow become the independent humor publication for an odd cross-section of people: we received letters from punks, frustrated accountants, doctors, and lawyers, Dead heads, New Wavers, college students, and just about every type of person you could imagine. We even received a letter from pornographer Al Goldstein’s editor, who apparently didn’t seem too amused by the mock interview we ran.

Yet Neck was called "The National Lampoon of the punk scene." This sort of bewildered us, especially since none of us really considered ourselves to be "punkers" or part of the 1980s "underground scene." We just wanted to have our own humor magazine.

I suppose because we did not know what we were doing, the drawing and writing was really raw and amateurish, we somehow ended up being an "underground" publication. We had limited resources and, as I said, we had no clue how to put a publication together. But we did it anyway and eventually, we published 10,000 copies on newsprint and even managed to break even as far as revenues went. In all, there were 15 editions of Neck. Not bad for a bunch of college morons.

But like the Bleeding Bladders, and after three years, we stopped publishing Neck because eventually, people take their own direction. From there, I went on to draw a comic strip for my campus newspaper and good things started happening, like a call from Howard Stern’s office requesting a cartoon and so on.

I won three prestigious awards for my cartooning, though I'm still not quite sure what winning awards means other than peer recognition, which is fine.

For any former Neck readers, I'm sorry to say, I don't really know what has become of my erstwhile colleagues. Like people going in different directions, you also lose touch as you get older.

Since Neck, my cartoons and writings have appeared in a number of places, including the Long Island Voice (the now defunct sister publication of the Village Voice), Newsday, Cracked Magazine, and a bunch of other publications, big and small. It was at the urging of my two oldest daughters that I pick up the pen and start drawing again. So here I am.

I also rediscovered my “quest for stupid bliss” in the cartoon character Stuart Pitt. He’s a 30-something guy, unmarried, who still has big dreams about becoming a famous rock star. This comic strip really can only be done on the Internet because it involves “multimedia” stuff: music, strips, and short Web animations. In the process of creating Stuart, I also rediscovered how much I love playing my Fender and writing stupid songs. Stuart is the perfect outlet for my “quest for stupid bliss.” I hope it at least entertains you: If you say, “Wow, this is stupid,” then I’ve done my job.

As of now, I’m getting back into “cartooning shape.” I don’t expect Stuart Pitt to be excellent until a few months from now (say by August, 2007). So you get to see a struggling cartoonist work out the kinks and try to regain the old form.

Please be patient-- it takes a while to get back into the groove, so I apologize here for jokes that don't quite make it. This is kind of like a "reality TV show," call it, "Who Wants to be a Cartoonist?" Maybe what will happen is, I'll shake off the rust and something good will come. Or maybe I'll stink up the joint and people will be entertained by my pathetic attempts at comic stripping. Either way, it's a win-win situation for viewers.

In the past ten years, I also managed to master the Mac and all those graphics programs. But these graphics programs pale in comparison to human talent. A friend of mine’s father used to do this stuff by hand. He was old school: he had a stat machine, a drawing table, and all the tools. He wanted to sell me his stat machine, which I would have bought had I had the money and room for it.

A humble World War II vet, he was a brilliant artist, genuine wit, and an inspiration to my gang as we were growing up. The point about him is, unfortunately, the computer now does what highly skilled human hands once did. There’s something to be said about seeing the work of a master and then seeing a machine emulate that gift. Even with the help of a computer, I could never come close to approaching what my friend’s father accomplished. I doubt most other computer artists could touch his work.

So I feel my own sense of betrayal towards the art of cartooning. No longer do I cut Bristol Paper, measure out the dimensions, and do the lettering and roughing by hand. Instead, I draw, scan, and type now. I’m using the free software Comic Life to layout the strips. This cuts production time by more than one-half. I have a family and time-constraints now, so this was really the only way I could produce a daily strip, work two jobs, and be a dad. I feel a little cheap doing it this way, but them’s the breaks.

I’m currently freelancing as a graphic artist and teaching. Hopefully, you’ll stop in and see how Stuart is doing and maybe get a few laughs.

But enough about me.