3 Questions with John Cheese

So John Cheese, comedy mastermind behind the now-defunct laughtastrophy supersite "John Cheese's Magic Pimp Bus" and Cracked writer extraordinaire sent out an open invitation for interviews, and being that he is one of my very favorite internet writers, I beat a path to his door before realizing that e-mailing him might be less creepy.

No but seriously you guys I can't state how huge a thing this is for me. Read some of his articles, you'll understand.

1) A lot of your writing is incredibly, painfully personal. How has this impacted your relationship with friends and family? Have you ever chosen not to write about certain events or subjects out of respect for people in your life?

I don't associate with one side of my family, and I barely associate with the other, so my family has never really been a concern. They had their demons, and they deal with those in their own way. Many of them through sheer denial that there was ever a problem in the first place. I write about my life, and if I could do it without mentioning them, I would. However, in order to make the point stick, I have to bring them up because they were such a huge part of what made me what I was and what I am today.

I do keep certain things out of the public eye. I'll never go into minute details of my kids' life because they're not old enough to have a say in something like that, and I don't want to invade their privacy by displaying their lives the way I display mine. I also won't mention my ex wife's name or personal details about her because I don't think that's something she would want.

And I'll never get into the really, REALLY dark shit that my dad did us. Some of that stuff is so far off the charts of insanity that there would be no way I could bring the article back into comedy territory after going that direction.

2) As someone who spends a lot of time on the internet, what's the worst thing you've ever come across?

Comments sections. That sounds like a joke, but it's really not. If you ever get bored, start scouring the net and read just the comments, and you'll be horrified. You'll find some of the most hateful, racist, sexist, bullshit statements coming out of people. It really is the worst of humanity. Comments sections are the sewer of the internet.

3) With the understanding that it's still on going, what can you tell us about running the JDatE ARG? Where did you go for inspiration? What planning and prepwork was needed to pull it off? Did the players ever surprise you? Any lessons learned for the next go around? Did. . . Did we miss anything major?

We're planning on starting another ARG sometime soon, but it's going to be a lot of work this time around because it's going to be much bigger. There are going to be more real world events if we have our way, which is something we didn't do the first time around (budget and time restraints held us back on that).

The planning is basically Wong and I on the phone, spitballing ideas until we come up with something that makes us both laugh, while at the same time thinking, "Oh, wow, that sounds really cool." What we discovered in the last ARG was that people are much smarter than you'd expect. We'd come up with a puzzle and a set of clues, and then say, "Man, there's no way anyone is going to find this." We'd post it, and three hours later, someone has found the hidden file -- or whatever it was that we were doing that week.

I think the one that surprised me the most was when some people figured out that I (in a video) was playing a nonsensical phrase on my guitar, using the letter names of the chords to spell out the words. Then if you put that phrase at the end of the JDatE URL, it would lead to something or other. I was really impressed by that.

As far as missing anything major, I really can't think of anything. I think you guys pretty much found everything. If there was anything left over, it wasn't much. And I'm sure I would have remembered it because we spent so much time coming up with that stuff that if anything would have been missed, I would have definitely pointed it out after the ARG was finished.