Eclipse Records is the most star-crossed vinyl retailer on Earth. Over the years, they have been in at least four locations and have been on hiatus several times.

After a recent shutdown while a building sale was negotiated, I put together some social posts for Instagram Stories to let their followers know they were back in the game.

Rather than bug my art director pals, I decided to embrace the DIY ethos and do these layouts myself. So if you see something you don’t like visually, understand it was a punk rock stylistic choice coupled with some garden variety incompetence.

What’s that? You want to see that I’ve worked on websites? For familiar brands? Well, here you go.

What makes me most proud of this work is that I managed to avoid using the word “vibe” throughout. No small feat in this cultural moment.

Get a load of that conversational tone though. Not bad, eh?

Every week for the past couple years I have written an article for the Drink Wisconsinbly Week in Review, their email newsletter. I’m charged with finding a news item from around the state and offering an offbeat take on it. It’s not only a chance to test my creativity, but it’s also a chance to actually write.

Yeah, that means there’s reading ahead. That sucks, I know. But c’mon, just read a couple. They aren’t long. It would mean a lot to me.

Part of my weekly content output for Drink Wisconsinbly is a mailbag in the guise of an old crank named Bucky. The character existed before I signed on, but I quickly made him my own and turned him into the resident weirdo.

I’m legally obligated to show website work.

Beep! Boop! Boop! Bop!

Yes, I know computers.

This is a star-crossed project that I managed to bring to life thanks to sheer force of will and a new Apple Pencil.

It started as a quick social campaign featuring bad Wisconsin-related corporate mascots that I sketched out in a notebook. The idea was to have an illustrator draw them for real.

Long story short, after six months of trying to find the budget, I drew them myself after scraping together the dough to upgrade my own iPad setup.

Every progressive company worth its salt has an innovation arm. Even the ones whose mission is centered around regular ol’ boozin’.

These DW Labs social posts tout projects Drink Wisconsinbly has in the works to optimize life in Dairyland.

This is another low-budget project where I was thrust in the role of illustrator. I didn’t mind as I typically draw in my bed.

Prank Packs are gag gift boxes designed to add a even more fun to the gift-giving process.

You put your real gift inside the box and wrap it up. The recipient sees what appears to be a strange useless item.

Prank-O has asked me to write the copy for a few of their nonsense product. The trick is to make it goofy but not too goofy. It’s probably the closest I’ll ever come to defusing a bomb.

Legendary Cubs broadcaster Harry Carey was known as a beer pitchman — and an in-game beer connoisseur.

When his statue was unveiled outside Wrigley Field in 1999, it was hard not to notice his left hand was positioned just right for holding a beer.

In advance of a Cubs-Brewers series last summer, I went up to Wrigley Field to get this shot of Harry Carey turning his back on Budweiser and Chicago with a can of DW Wisconsin Lager for their social channels.

Even though it was a harmless gag, I experienced a fair amount of anxiety getting this shot. If just one dopey fan somehow took offense, I might have gotten the crap kicked out of me.

I explained that to my client, yet did not receive any hazard pay.

The gang at Drink Wisconsinbly send me some art and said they wanted to turn it into greeting cards. I wrote some lines and promptly forgot about the whole thing. A few weeks later I was in their gift shop and saw these cards on display. It still troubles me how long it took to realize that I’d written them.

These were strange days.

Cottonelle wanted to start a discussion of, ahem, wiping techniques, cleanliness, and the Cottonelle Care Routine -- a two-step, wet-dry process involving their toilet paper and Flushable Cleansing Cloths.

The solution came in the form of beat poetry, a format which allowed us to navigate bathroom humor on the semi-high road.

No joke: my next project was for a cat litter disposal system. It was a banner month of my career.

Zynga was looking to generate some buzz in the run up to the launch of Draw Something 2. This April Fool's Day video got people talking about North Korea's hottest new app -- Draw Kim Jong Un.

The Adobe Marketing Cloud provides powerful analytical tools for cutting-edge businesses. The assignment was to contrast that with the way things used to get done in the past. 

I'm a contributor for The Onion's sister site, Clickhole. Every week I submit lines and topics, and sometimes they're published. Here are a few that have made the cut.

Cottonelle wanted to create some sponsored content to run on The Onion. A group of writers we assigned write lines for these infographics. The ones marked with the yellow star are mine.

The Onion was putting on an event in for advertisers and, with my background in the business, I was chosen to write the invitation. But I wasn't actually invited to attend.

A stint at space150 provided me with a chance to work with a legendary brand, assemble an elite team of miniature dentist-commandos, and form a cartoon punk band. Not to shabby, eh?

The initial task was to create an educational campaign for 3M Dental. One thing led to another, and we ended up producing two.

The first is series of white label videos that were created for dentists to share with their patients via their social channels. Each promotes a service that the dentist provides. This isn’t pure altruism, of course. 3M supplies the restorative materials for said procedures. Now you know how the sausage is made.

Those were such a hit that we were asked to deliver a second series. This time the videos targeted dental professionals and serve as a quick refresher course. Unfortunately I wasn’t simply brushing up on basics like the pros. I had to plow through a mountain of dense academic text and then turn it into fun, succinct stories — without the ability to cheat off the nerd sitting next to me. Lame.

An extended stint at Havas game the the opportunity to work on one of the world's most recognizable brands. With the wide range of product offerings at Sears, I was able to develop ideas for a variety of different categories, which was nice fit for my flashbulb attention span.

The Baroness

When you freelance, not every project fits into a nice little box. Case in point, this one for Red Baron Pizza.

My friends at space150 brought me in for a week to work on campaign concepts while the regular writer was on his honeymoon. The marching orders were to develop ideas targeting busy, pragmatic mothers.

A WWI flying ace is about as far from that target as you're gonna get. So we decided to flip the script, shave the mustache, and turn the Red Baron into a modern no-nonsense, take-charge mom. 

The client bought the idea, the regular writer returned to develop the campaign, and I hitchhiked on to the next town like Bill Bixby at the end of an episode of the The Incredible Hulk. 

That's the life of a freelancer in a nutshell – perform a quick gender reassignment on an iconic corporate mascot and then be on your way. 

The Art Institute of Chicago approached Onion Labs with a unique project. They wanted an alternate audio tour for the Unthink Magritte exhibit as part of a social program that encouraged people to share their own interpretations of the works on display.

Surrealist Rene Magritte did not assign meaning to his paintings. Instead, he left it to the viewer to decide their significance. So, in the grand, pompous tradition of The Onion, it was decided he was wrong. Listeners who chose this tour would be given the "real" backstory and interpretation of each piece.

You can see the paintings and listen to the tour here.

For the past few years I've worked as a comedy writer for 30 Watt. Their motto is, We bring the fun to the party. As a contributor, I submit jokes they print on various party supplies. Here are a few of the items I've had produced that I was actually able to get my mitts on.

Orbitz came was looking to promote their special long weekend fares, so I created an extra day of the week made especially for quick getaways.

If you've been to a Buffalo Wild Wings, you've seen their in-house network B-DUBS TV. One of the features on the channel is sponsored content from Miller Lite called Daily Sips, which are basically beer-related Deep Thoughts.

Here, you'll find one animated version to see how they look in the restaurant, and screen grabs of some others since nobody should have to sit thought five minutes of video to read a few jokes.

The late, great Matt Brennock gave me my first chance to work on TV spots and the first one I produced ended up on the Super Bowl. 

It aired immediately following Terry Tate: Office Linebacker, which is frequently listed as one of the best Super Bowl ads off all time, so nobody was paying attention. Hell, even I wasn't.

This ad was BANNNED in Canada! 

Apparently it's okay to watch two men on ice skates beat the living shit out of each other with their bare hands up there, but you can't show a cartoonish prank without showing that everyone walked away unharmed. What a country.

Pocket Avatars is a messaging app that uses motion-capture technology to produce brief animated videos. To show its functionality leading up the the launch, I was asked to write and oversee production of several documentary-style character introductions. Since it was targeted to kids, the humor is a little more wholesome.

In addition, they had dozens of characters that needed names and bios. I was given the opportunity to create a quirky backstory for all of them. You can find some of them here.

Eclipse Records is my own client. They allow me to let my freak flag fly without interference from CDs, planners, account people and, frankly, clients, as they're a little too buzzed to be overly critical.

The first campaign is from Record Store Day and features art I was forced to draw myself after the guy I hired in Sri Lanka for $25 turned out to be a crappy illustrator. Can you believe that? The second is from when they opened their store for a third time after a lease-induced hiatus.