Four Things About Me

Joe thought I would like the copy of Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre when he lent it to me. He probably didn’t think I would base a musical career on H.P. Lovecraft’s writings. The first story in the book, and the first I read, was “Rats in the Walls.” Though not steeped in the Cthulhu Mythos it is a great tale. My Lovecraft band was what got my foot in the door at Pagan Publishing, the wellspring of my illustration career in game books since 1996.

I have a vast cartoon collection. The Herculoids got me started collecting at about the time I got the internet and realized that other people might have this on tape. I only had vague memories of it being super awesome from watching it when I was a kid. Of course it is not super awesome…in that way. One of my other early cartoon memories was thinking that the robot spy from Jonny Quest was from an episode of the Fantastic Four cartoon. I love cartoons. Before I had a VCR, I would put a tape recorder up to the TV and record the audio from Superfriends. Often I also wrote down the plot on a note pad for story ideas for my comics or, later, roleplaying games.

The first three compact discs I bought were Butthole Surfers, Nomeansno and possibly Big Black or Dinosaur Jr. Nomeansno was my favourite band for a long time, and my favourite album of all time was “Wrong” by same. Much later I was introduced to Kyuss. They broke up, but everyone but the singer went on to form Queens of the Stone Age. When the first full length, self-titled album came out, it eclipsed Wrong for a long time. Now I don’t know what my favourite album is, but Nomeansno and QOTSA are safely in my top 5 musical performers of all time.

I don’t know if it’s my best D&D game ever, but playing D&D with Chris Woods, Warren and Bob are probably the most memorable, especially when Bob was DMing. I had a lawful evil halforc who used a modified oar for a weapon, ever at odds with Chris’ lawful good paladin. Tradition dictated we go for a snack break to the 7-11 in mid-game, and the results were pretty predictable – Big Gulps, ding dongs, and mesquite barbecue ships, amongst many others. Shortly after the sugar high Bob would start nodding off. We knew that was the time to start bending the rules a bit. When I started playing D&D in high school, I don’t remember who was DMing – Ken I think – but I would follow up with a crude grade 9 comic strip of what happened.