Since August of '02 I have been living somewhere else. The sign I pass twice a day lies to me and tells me that the town is called Dekalb, IL. I don't believe it. My wife informs me that we are surrounded in all directions with some of the richest farm land in the world. I believe it is a conspiracy. My family, the bushy eye-browed girl at the Amoco and Janey the soccer mom next door have all been pumped full of a government grade psychotropic drug.

Only I can see the truth.

In my town I am served gourmet coffee by a young lady in a refurbished ice cream truck. I then mosey down the street past the herbal cigarette bar where an elf bangs away on an acoustic guitar and his siren girlfriend sings about heartbreak and pain. A group of goblin and human kids play the street game Square T's. I pick up a paper and read about a werewolf attack and a lake monster and it's all good.

This is my home now. I live in Big City.

To say that I have been familiar with Big City for only a few months is misleading. BC has slowly (very slowly) evolved over the past 16 years. While the original seed is nearly unrecognizable from the webseries you know, every stage of its evolution has taken it one step closer to the world that came to life online in August of '02.

This was my journey. From a goofy 14 year-old comedy sketch to an ongoing fantasy crime drama. This was all my stops on the way. This was the road to Big City.

SMILES JOHNSON, PRIVATE EYE

At the tender age of 14 I was in the midst of creating the first of a multitude of sketch comedy groups. I had taken a Saturday morning improv class at the local community college and thought that I had the experience to create the next Monty Python. Eeeeek is all I can say. My partner in this was a fellow thespian named Jason Hawks. We created a group called Understudy's Revenge.

During those first exciting months of writing original-ish comedy sketches, I conceived of a private eye sketch. Never been done before, right? Anyway, it all began in Kokomo Indiana. I was staying with my grandparents there for several weeks. I stumbled across a PBS show, a comedy duo (a wife and husband team, I think.). Their show included the standard "dumb ass gumshoe" sketch. The line that started it all was brilliant:

   "It was one of those nights. You know the kind I mean. The kind where it's dark outside."

I knew I had to steal that line. And I did.

The following morning, notepad in hand, I wrote four words a comma: Smiles Johnson, Private Eye. 

I thought Smiles was a hilarious name for a hardnosed detective. Right off the bat I created his arch nemesis, Doodles Pasketti (an obvious play on what every kid calls Spaghetti.) I was convinced that the sketch was brilliant and immediately took the sketch to Jason.

Having no real place to perform we spent most of our energy doing home recordings of the sketches. I wrote several variations on the sketch. Here are the recordings. I would like to apologize for the quality of both the recording and the performance. We were kids trying desperately to be something. For me it was Monty Python.