Martin Olson is a comedy writer, television producer, stage director and composer. He is also a playwright and poet known for comedic and unusual subject matter. Olson is best known as a "founding father" of the Boston comedy scene, as a collaborator with comedians, composers and artists, and as a writer-producer of off-beat television series and stage plays. While selling comedy screenplays to Dreamworks, United Artists, Touchstone Pictures, and Warner Bros., Olson also wrote and directed live stage performances in Hollywood at the HBO Theater, The Steve Allen Theater and Comedy Central Stage featuring well-known comedians and actors. Over the past 15 years, Olson wrote and produced nine comedy specials, inflicted on the populace via CBS, HBO, Showtime, Cinemax and A & E. Olson has written for Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg, Jonathan Winters, Denis Leary, Rodney Dangerfield, Rob Schneider, Penn and Teller, Richard Belzer, Bobcat Goldthwait, Kevin Pollak, Kevin Nealon, Kevin Meaney and many other Kevins. Olson received an Emmy nomination and an Ace Award for television writing. As a composer, he was honored with a 2010 Emmy Nomination for Songwriting, a 2009 Emmy Nomination for Primetime Songwriting, and a 1997 Annie Award Nomination for Songwriting in an Animated Series. Tony Millionaire was born in Boston and grew up in Gloucester, Massachusetts. He writes and draws the ongoing adventures of Sock Monkey, published by Dark Horse Comics since 1998. He is the creator of the syndicated comic strip, MAAKIES, which has been collected by Fantagraphics, who also published his graphic novel, Billy Hazelnuts. His comic strip Maakies has been adapted to the small screen as THE DRINKY CROW SHOW for Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. Born in Libya (despite his better judgment) to German and Indian parents, Mahendra Singh labored for many years as an art director and illustrator in the humid ambience of Washington, DC, the inspiration for many of the personalities depicted in this book. After inviting and escaping mob justice several times, he fled for the humid and frozen ambience of Montreal where he has gained some notoriety as an expert illustrator of all things Lewis Carroll and Surrealist. He devotes his spare time to designing tin-foil turbans for Hindus who no longer wish to hear the voices in other people's heads, taking Buddhist shut-ins to Nirvana concerts and helping Quebecois atheists distribute blank pamphlets on the subway. His illustrations for this book were inspired by an inordinate lust for money and a solipsistic arrogance further encouraged by the honeyed tongue of Martin Olson.
