Ben Deeb
A plain-text version of Ben Deeb’s table – who he is, plus every project: stories, games, websites, objects, and elaborate bits.
About Ben
I’m Ben Deeb. I design interactive campaigns and location-based stories. I’m also a writer and maker of puzzle games, websites, stained glass windows, furniture, and overly-complicated bits. To that end, I made this overly-complicated site that has turned into a mix of portfolio and autobiography. Exploring it should give you a better idea of who I am and what I do – like the site says, “Everything is on the table.”
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How to use this site
- Click any object on the table to learn more about that project. Click and hold to move objects around.
- Lenses sort the chaos. Pick one or more lenses to highlight the projects that fit them.
- Throughlines are guided tours. Pick one and I’ll walk you through a few of my projects, with commentary.
- Search a list of my projects if you’d rather read and type than explore visually.
- Hire Me is the short professional version of my work: what I make, what I’ve shipped, and how to book me.
Contact
I’d love to hear what you think of this site or my work. If you’d like to get in touch, you can email me at Benjamin.Deeb@gmail.com. No email is too short or stupid, and I promise to reply (eventually).
If you’d like to build something together, start at the hire page – or use Ben@OverlayDynamics.com.
For movie and TV work, you can contact my manager James Engle at Navigation Media.
If you’d like to sue me, please contact my unprincipled attorney, Pablo Arbuckle.
Hate fun design? Click here for a boring text-only version of this site.
Full Bio
Ben Deeb enjoys making stained glass windows, creating bizarre puzzle games, and digging large holes in the desert. He runs the immersive game company Overlay Dynamics, creating innovative, interactive stories that unfold as participants travel from place to place solving puzzles and uncovering clues.
With his writing partner, Graham Towers, Ben has written over a dozen pilots and features, as well as four episodes of ABC’s Black-ish. After moving from Nebraska to California, Ben worked in a geochemistry laboratory, interned in the US Senate, and taught science in over a hundred Los Angeles schools. Ben also serves as the District E Representative for the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council and is a member of the Greek Theatre Advisory Committee.
AI Disclosure
I built this site with AI coding tools (though all text – including this – was written by me, Ben Deeb, a human). My personal AI ethics policy is complex and nuanced, but in general, I only use generative AI to create things I wouldn’t have been able to create otherwise.
For example, I had the idea for a “museum of projects” site years ago, but until now, I never had the ability to make it. The underlying code was too complex, and it would have taken me years of full time study to learn it. Since I like to know how things work, I had my AI agents teach me how the code they wrote worked in each step of building this site. I was extremely deliberate in my prompts, and spent hundreds of hours developing what you see here, which I hope separates my work from low-effort AI slop.
Additionally, I won’t use AI to do anything I would have otherwise hired a human to do. I will use it to enhance my creative work and automate rote tasks, especially if I’m not trying to profit from that work. Some of the images on this site are AI generated, but only because I don’t currently have the money to pay an artist or graphic designer. If you’re a human artist or graphic designer who wants to collaborate to replace some of it, I’d love to talk.
To me, the original sin of AI is that every large language model was trained on art without the artists’ permission. I am fully against this. But since the genie isn’t going back in the bottle, I think the best thing I can do with this technology is to make and showcase free, creative, thought-provoking work.
One of my favorite writers, Cory Doctorow, sums this up in an essay about purity culture where he argues that sometimes we need to love the sin and hate the sinner. We all use technology created through terrible acts by horrible people every day. It makes sense to me that we should use that technology to build stuff those fascist dickheads would hate.
The growing environmental impacts of the massive data centers powering AI also worry me, so I try not to use AI tools frivolously. Upon request, I’ll stop showering for a week to offset the water used in coding this site.
If you still hate that I used AI tools to build this, feel free to visit my old site, which I wrote the code for myself in 2011.
Hire Ben2026
Narrative Experience Designer, currently booking
Ben Deeb is available for interactive campaigns, location-based stories, puzzle design, and rapid prototypes.
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I’m Ben Deeb. I design interactive campaigns and location-based stories – I write the narrative, create the mechanics, and build the tech to take immersive experiences from concept to launch.
Currently booking from September 2026.
What I Make
- Interactive campaigns & ARGs – End-to-end design and execution: story, puzzles, live ops, and systems that keep players moving forward.
- Narrative for real places – Immersive, location-based stories mapped onto real-world landmarks, architecture, and public art.
- Rapid prototypes – Working web apps and social-native puzzles, not just decks. As little as three days from concept to playable demo.
Proof
- Drove 30,000 online players in a week for a cryptic street puzzle, zero marketing spend – Join Cult
- Built a permanent location-based game for Park City in under a week, from 700 miles away – Perceptual Technology Division
- Coded an ARG web app with logins, saved progress, and NFC clue drops – Los Feliz Everywhen Association
- Published an absurdist book anonymously; strangers found it and pushed it to #11 in Amazon’s bestselling fiction – Infinite Jeffs
- Wrote and produced four episodes of network TV for ABC – Black-ish
- Earned two Emmy nominations for stage managing Riot Games’ Valorant Champions broadcasts – VCT Champions
How I Work
Collaborated with agencies including MKG, Denizen, Concept Arts, Ignite, and Aspect Ratio. Available for pitch support, narrative direction, or full technical builds.
Day rate, weekly rate for bookings of two weeks or more, or a fixed project fee. I work inside your process – remote from Los Angeles, on site when it matters.
Have a project in mind? Let’s talk.
Infinite Jeffs2026
Jeff Jeff Jeff Jeff. Jeff Jeff Jeff? Jeff!
I replaced every word of Infinite Jest with “Jeff,” put it on Amazon, and sold over a thousand copies.
Lenses: Words, Touchable Stuff, Legit Business, Useless Nonsense, Public Weirdness, Dumb Bits
Roles: Concept, Design, Development, Production
Buy on Amazon · InfiniteJeffs.com
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I¹ wrote² a bestselling³ book⁴ and you can buy⁵ it on Amazon⁶!
¹ With the assistance of a Python script that replaced every one of the ~550,000 words in Infinite Jest with “Jeff,” while preserving punctuation, line breaks, etc.
² I did not technically write every word, but I did teach myself Adobe InDesign to recreate the Infinite Jest cover and interior layout after my friend Patrick Baker said the words, “there should be infinite Jeffs” in reference to my cat, Jeff.
³ In May 2026, a month after creating Infinite Jeffs as a one-off gift for my writing partner Graham’s 40th birthday, a guy in Texas found the Amazon listing and posted it on X. The post got 1.1 million views, and I was contacted by the AV Club who ran an article about my incredibly dumb bit. Since then, I’ve sold over a thousand copies in eleven countries. The book was briefly the #11 Amazon bestseller in “Contemporary Literature & Fiction,” beating Sylvia Plath and Gabriel García Márquez, which is pure insanity.
⁴ Though it is evident to me that this is, in fact, a book, Kindle Direct Publishing initially rejected it as “low-content.” After hours of back and forth with Amazon representatives about the semantic substance of Infinite Jeffs, they agreed it qualified as Literary Fiction. I spent many more hours emailing with different representatives arguing that the title needed to bleed off the cover to mirror the original work, but this battle was lost.
⁵ While you can buy it, you probably don’t need to. I’ve mailed dozens to internet strangers and left more in little libraries around LA. I have too many copies and will almost certainly give you one for free if you ask.
⁶ I don’t feel good about publishing on Amazon, but it was by far the cheapest way to print even one custom book, and I’d already spent a ton of time and money on this incredibly dumb bit.
The Los Feliz Everywhen Association2026
Creating a better neighborhood now, then, and always
An Overlay in the form of a community council that communicates between the past, present, and future to guide the neighborhood through time.
Lenses: Words, Websites, Games, Narrative, Fake Business, Useful Nonsense, Public Weirdness, Spatial Stories, Dumb Bits, Collaboration, Community Work
Roles: Concept, Writing, Copywriting, Design, Web Design, Development, Game Design, Puzzle Design, Worldbuilding, Production, Collaboration
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The Los Feliz Everywhen Association is a community council with a simple twist – each of its board members represents an eight-decade period between the years 1700 and 2200, and they communicate outside the confines of time to preserve the character of Los Angeles’ Los Feliz neighborhood through the ages. All this (and much more) is explained on the organization’s website.
The board is currently seeking candidates for the 1952-2035 seat, and you’re invited to apply. But first, you have to prove your dedication to the five other council members. Using a web app built into LosFelizEverywhen.org, players log in and earn endorsement badges by completing location-specific puzzles that reveal more about each representative.
Each puzzle leads to an NFC sticker hidden near a storefront along Hillhurst Avenue. When you’ve scanned all five, you’re invited to submit a candidate statement that’s hosted on the LFEA site. Down the road, you’ll be invited to an in-person forum so you can make your case for representing your time period on the board.
This was my first foray into building a web app with Google auth and persistent progress tracking. I wouldn’t have done it without the encouragement of my friend (and fellow ARG enthusiast) Laura. Now I just need to make a bunch of weird flyers and paste them around the neighborhood, getting people to try it.
Related: Join Cult · The Foxglove Papers · Overlay Dynamics · Perceptual Technology Division · Los Feliz Neighborhood Council
Los Feliz Murals2026
An interactive map of Los Feliz’s murals
A catalog of all the murals in Los Feliz, starting with five new murals made for the 2026 Los Feliz Mural Festival.
Lenses: Websites, Narrative, Legit Business, Spatial Stories, Collaboration, Community Work, Actual Sincerity
Roles: Design, Web Design, Development, Production, Teaching, Collaboration, Community Organizing, Civic Service
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My good friend Céline runs a nonprofit called The Local Collective that works to strengthen neighborhood business communities. In August 2026, they organized a festival to have a number of new murals painted in Los Feliz.
I volunteered to make a website for her, which turned into me trying to catalog all the neighborhood’s existing murals as well. It’s an ongoing process, and one I wish I had undertaken when I ran Los Feliz, so I could have gotten pictures of all the murals then.
Related: Los Feliz Neighborhood Council · Overlay Dynamics · Disney Brothers Walking Tour · Running Los Feliz
Perceptual Technology Division2026
An innovative process that redefines the cognitive foundations of phenomenology
An Overlay puzzle game in Park City, UT, themed around simulation theory.
Lenses: Words, Websites, Games, Narrative, Legit Business, Work for Hire, Useful Nonsense, Public Weirdness, Spatial Stories
Roles: Concept, Writing, Copywriting, Design, Web Design, Development, Game Design, Puzzle Design, Worldbuilding, Art Direction, Production
Play the Game (in Park City, UT)
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In early 2026, while pitching an Overlay project to the Sundance Institute, I built this short immersive puzzle game as a proof of concept.
The game is framed as a research study conducted by a mysterious organization called the Perceptual Technology Division of Overlay Dynamics. Players begin by confirming that they’re in Park City, where the experience takes place, and answering a few questions about the nature of reality.
Between questions, a strange visual sequence flashes across the screen. Players then complete a series of puzzles leading to three locations along Park City’s Main Street, with solutions hidden in plaques, signs, and architectural details.
After the final puzzle, the site reveals that the earlier visual sequence transferred the player’s mind into a simulation. To return to reality, they must initiate “The Egress Protocol” – but the outcome depends on how they answered an onboarding question about their confidence that the world they perceive is fundamentally real. Players who expressed high confidence learn that they began in reality but the protocol placed them into a simulation; those with low confidence are told that they began in a simulation and successfully escaped.
This was my first foray into building a game remotely – I made it all from LA using street view the week before Sundance. I had a lot of fun building it (and handing out cryptic business cards around Park City), and it got a lot more engagement than I expected! I’m thinking about adapting the same game for other cities, so maybe you’ll be able to try it without going to Utah one day.
Related: Overlay Dynamics · Join Cult · The Los Feliz Everywhen Association · The Foxglove Papers
Typonyms2026
Fix the typos. Find the type.
A daily puzzle game where you change one letter in each word to turn it into a new word that fits the hidden category.
Lenses: Words, Websites, Games, Legit Business
Roles: Concept, Writing, Copywriting, Design, Web Design, Development, Game Design, Puzzle Design
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A client once asked if I could build them a Wordle-style puzzle game that would “go viral.” They needed it the next day. I wanted to say, “If I could create a new insanely popular word game in a single day, I would have already done that and I wouldn’t be working for you.” Instead I said, “I’ll give it a shot.” Then, as often happens, before I started working on the game, my client got a new request from their client and subsequently asked me for something else entirely.
The idea of making a puzzle game stuck with me, though, and this is the result. I’m a big fan of NYT’s Connections and classic Word Ladder puzzles (which, fun fact, were created by Lewis Carroll in 1877). I see this as a kind of fusion of the two. New puzzles come out every day, and I’ll keep making them until I run out of four-letter words or get too busy. Check it out!
Related: Overlay Dynamics · Cheating – A Board Game
Zero Notes2026
A place to read finished work by writers you trust – no notes required (or allowed)
An invite-only script library for sharing polished drafts with your community
Lenses: Words, Websites, Television, Narrative, Legit Business, Collaboration, Community Work, Actual Sincerity
Roles: Concept, Writing, Copywriting, Screenwriting, Design, Web Design, Development, Collaboration, Community Organizing
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Zero Notes is a script library designed specifically for sharing polished drafts of your work with communities you trust, privately and securely. You can only access scripts people give you direct access to, and any scripts you download will be watermarked with your email address. It probably could have been a Google Drive, but I made an entire app platform for it because I’m a maniac.
The reason for all this is that I often only get to read friends’ scripts in early drafts, when they’re looking for notes. They primarily read messy, early drafts of my work, too. This means we rarely get to see the difference our notes made, because it can feel presumptuous to ask a writer to read again once something’s done. After a script is polished, it may get read (or more likely skimmed) by managers, agents, producers, and execs, but rarely by other writers. I think that’s a problem.
I also wanted to create a space to read work by writers I’ve met, but haven’t read. Sure, I could email them asking for a script they’re proud of, but if they send something and I don’t love it, there’s still pressure to respond (and vice versa). On Zero Notes, a writer never knows if you’ve accessed their script, so if you don’t have anything nice to say, you don’t have to say anything at all.
If you want to use it for your own community, go ahead! It’s free for anybody who’s interested.
Related: Scripts
Disney Brothers Walking Tour2025
A self guided walking tour of the Disney Brothers’ history in Los Feliz
A three mile walk through the neighborhood of Los Feliz, exploring businesses and homes where Walt & Roy Disney built their first cartoon studio
Lenses: Websites, Narrative, Legit Business, Spatial Stories, Collaboration, Community Work, Actual Sincerity
Roles: Design, Web Design, Development, Production, Teaching, Collaboration, Community Organizing, Civic Service
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The Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio Square Block Party is one of the many excellent events put on each year by the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council’s Cultural Affairs Committee. In 2025, I was really looking forward to helping throw the party. Then, right before the event, I got hired to stage manage a video game competition in Paris for a month. Still wanting to contribute, I volunteered to pull together research from the committee’s co-chairs to create an audio walking tour of Disney history in our neighborhood.
So, from a windowless concrete room in the back of a French arena, I built a web app that ties together six locations through Los Feliz, including the Disney Bros.’ first studio, the places they lived, and the site of the original Walt Disney Studios (which now houses a Gelson’s supermarket). At each location, you can listen to narration by Camille Dixon and Bill Rogers, the official voices of Disneyland, and then get walking directions via Google Maps to the next stop.
I built this to be a simple, yet customizable platform for walking tours, so it’s super easy to edit text in a markdown file and swap out new images and audio. We’re planning to make a few more for Los Feliz soon, and I’d love if more people used the platform. Want to use my code to make your own walking tour? It’s all on GitHub under a GNU General Public License.
Related: Los Feliz Neighborhood Council · Overlay Dynamics
Griffith Observatory Window2025
A view of the Observatory from anywhere
Multiple stained glass windows of my favorite LA landmark.
Lenses: Touchable Stuff, Glass
Roles: Concept, Design, Stained Glass
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I live in Los Feliz, about a mile from Griffith Park, but my apartment doesn’t have a view of the iconic Observatory. I decided to fix that. With over two hundred pieces, this was by far the most intricate and complex window I’ve ever made. Also, in the middle of building it, I found out I was losing my workshop space, so I had to rush to finish it before I had to move everything out. I’m really proud of it, though, and it’s currently hanging in my living room, creating colorful shadows every afternoon.
After making this window, I drastically simplified the design and made a second, tiny Observatory window. Then I un-simplified that one and made a mid-size Observatory window that was my first ever stained glass sale. If you want one like it, I’m happy to make another.
Related: R2-D2 Window · Outsider Stained Glass · Bulbasaur Window
A Science Lesson2024
A short play for four actors, two of whom are aliens
A one-act play about science, aliens, and the limits of human knowledge.
Lenses: Words, Narrative
Roles: Concept, Writing
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When I was a kid, my dad would tell me bedtime stories about two aliens named Geek Geek and Woob Woob who’d land in our backyard and take me on adventures. A few decades later, after getting a degree in philosophy and working as a science teacher, I wrote him this play for his 75th birthday.
It follows Atomic Andy, a traveling science presenter who accidentally opens a portal to a higher dimension while getting ready for an assembly full of elementary schoolers. Two aliens, Giik-gēk and Woob-wūb, appear, surprised that Andy can see them. Their conversation about curiosity, consciousness, and the limits of human understanding leaves him questioning if humanity will ever have access to objective truth.
It’s funnier than I made it sound, I promise.
Related: For Your Misinformation · Stump the Scientist
Murphy Bed2024
For years, I have hidden my bed from the world
I turned my guest room into an office with a custom Murphy bed.
Lenses: Touchable Stuff, Useful Nonsense, Wood
Roles: Design, Fabrication, Woodworking
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When I moved in with my partner Kayla, we wanted a second bedroom so friends and family could stay with us. But we also wanted an office so we wouldn’t drive each other nuts working from home. So, I bought a queen-size Murphy Bed hardware kit from Rockler and got to work building a custom wall-length cabinet to house it.
It wasn’t an easy project, especially because my workshop was 14 miles away, and I had to build everything there and then cart it over. And because my apartment’s corners turned out to be nothing near ninety degrees. And because the first hinge Rockler sent me was slightly defective (they gave me a replacement for free). But I’m really proud of how it turned out, and combined with the motorized standing desk that I’m writing this at right now, it’s made the room a really nice office.
Related: Franklin Chair · Portable Tiki Bar · Woodworking Projects · Lumber Stack Drawer
Pablo Arbuckle2024
A real lawyer who will bend the law for YOU
Pablo Arbuckle is a fake attorney who is willing to commit crimes for you.
Lenses: Websites, Fake Business, Useless Nonsense, Dumb Bits
Roles: Concept, Writing, Web Design, Development
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You ever notice that when referring to lawyers, most people say “lawyer,” except for lawyers, who instead like to call themselves “attorneys?” I looked up the difference in the terms, and it turns out there is none. They’re interchangeable. Lawyers just generally like calling themselves attorneys because it sounds more French (and thus, fancier).
Anyway, Pablo Arbuckle is neither an attorney nor a lawyer. He is a fake man I created as a goof, despite what the headline above says. Also, I made an account for him on LinkedIn so I can play their daily puzzle games. If you see that Pablo Arbuckle (Harvard Law School attendee 1987-Present) checked out your profile, that was me.
Related: Clownr · centauAR · Child Island · Packajoy
Portable Tiki Bar2024
Have tiki bar, will travel
A custom, collapsible tiki bar.
Lenses: Touchable Stuff, Work for Hire, Wood
Roles: Design, Fabrication, Woodworking
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My friend Brandon had a tiki-themed party for his 40th birthday. Naturally, I built him a tiki bar that he didn’t ask for out of leftover plywood, disassembled bamboo fencing, PVC, burlap, and straw thatching I found online. It also has programmable lights and nautical baubles.
Since I didn’t think Brandon would enjoy me installing a permanent tiki bar on his patio without his consent, I built it to be collapsible. It comes apart, folds flat, and fits in my car.
It was a real hit at the party! Now I think it lives folded up on the side of Brandon’s house, lying in wait for future tiki parties.
Related: Bar Cabinet · Franklin Chair · Dome · Woodworking Projects
Bulbasaur Window2023
A stained-glass tribute to my original main dude
A stained glass window of the Pokémon Bulbasaur
Lenses: Touchable Stuff, Glass
Roles: Concept, Design, Stained Glass
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I made this window for my Pokémon-loving friend Grayson and his wife Aya as a wedding gift.
Pokémon Blue was the first video game I was ever allowed to play. Bulbasaur was my main dude, so the little fella holds a special place in my heart.
That being said, for years I said that Charizard was my favorite Pokémon. But besides being a cliché pick, I had to sell the first-edition base set Charizard card I’d held onto for decades to pay my rent in 2025, and now thinking about that big fiery bastard makes me sad.
Bulbasaur, though? Zero negative emotional resonance!
Related: Griffith Observatory Window · Outsider Stained Glass · R2-D2 Window
Cheating – A Board Game2023
Cheating isn’t against the rules. It is the rules.
A board game that both rewards and requires cheating.
Lenses: Games, Touchable Stuff, Legit Business
Roles: Concept, Writing, Design, Game Design, Puzzle Design, Fabrication
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Cheating is a board game where each player is given cards with specific ways to cheat at an existing game. They can earn and spend coins (actual pennies that also function as an instant $1 rebate) to buy more Cheating cards which offer new ways to cheat like moving extra spaces on the board, false shuffling the deck, taking extra cards, etc. If you can win at the base game by cheating better than your opponent, you win!
My prototype, which I’m still play-testing, works with Sorry – which I call “Apologies” in an attempt to not get sued. My eventual plan is to make multiple versions of Cheating that each work with a different game you may already have. Cheating at Capitalism (Monopoly), Cheating at Colonizers (Catan), Cheating at World Domination (Risk), etc.
If you want to play it, let me know. It works pretty well as is, but I’m still making refinements.
Related: Typonyms · Fanatic – A Game For Ceiling Fans · Unhinged Board Games
Dome2023
Land – now featuring Dome!
Built a dome in the desert. It might still be there.
Lenses: Touchable Stuff, Useless Nonsense, Public Weirdness, Dumb Bits, Wood, Collaboration, Actual Sincerity
Roles: Concept, Design, Fabrication, Woodworking
Go Visit Dome · Construction Time Lapse
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In 2017, I purchased five acres of land in Antelope Valley (about an hour north of LA). I called it Land. It lay relatively fallow until 2023 when my partner Kayla and I built a twenty-foot geodesic dome on it.
After buying plans from Johnny at Trillium Domes, I spent about a month in my old garage ripping 2x6 boards into struts, tapering the edges, turning them into two different kinds of triangles, and securing them into pentagon and hexagon panels. Halfway through I got a new, better miter saw, which helped a ton.
I covered the panels with UV resistant greenhouse film, loaded them all into my friend Alex’s truck, and dropped them off at Land, where I’d pre-built the dome’s wooden base. A few days later, Kayla drove out with me and we assembled Dome.
It was fun for the first four hours. While Johnny had been very helpful, he didn’t mention that when heavy wooden panels covered in greenhouse film get caught in high winds, they become heavy wooden sails that want to blow you off the top of your ten-foot ladder. Which is scary, even when you’re not forty minutes from the nearest hospital.
Anyway, Kayla and I avoided injury and got Dome done right before sunset. We sat in it for a minute, set up a cardboard standee of the MyPillow guy with some animal bones at his feet to guard it, and drove home.
We’ve been back to visit it a few times with friends and family. I considered spending the night in it, but because the one time I did camp on Land, I heard a bunch of gunshots in the night, Kayla was not interested in this. Also, the second time we went back, we found Mike Lindell cut in half, the remains of a small fire, and a weird pentagram etched into the dirt (which ended up being from rainwater dripping in from the seams of the pentagonal panels, which we were too tired to properly tape during construction). That kind of sealed the deal on Kayla’s unwillingness to spend the night in the desert.
Why did we do all this? Because it’s fun to make things. Also, geodesic domes are cool. It’s been a while since we checked on Dome, but if you want to visit it, there’s a link to the GPS coordinates below. Let me know if it’s still there!
Related: Land · Woodworking Projects
About the Human Bones I Buried in the Desert2023
A goof gone wrong
A short story about Ben burying human bones in the desert as a goof.
Lenses: Words, Narrative, Public Weirdness, Useless Nonsense
Roles: Writing
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I wrote a monologue/short story about burying human bones in the desert and the ramifications of a goof-gone-wrong. It’s part of a collection of mixed memoir and autofiction called Things I Might Have Done that I’ve slowly been working on for years and may never release.
R2-D2 Window2023
Everyone’s favorite robot as a stained glass window
A stained glass window of R2-D2
Lenses: Touchable Stuff, Glass
Roles: Concept, Design, Stained Glass
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I designed and built this window for my good friend Adam, an incredibly creative guy who’s always making things for his friends. He lives in Portland, and I was afraid the window would break if I shipped it, so I decided to take it up in person. Since it was slightly too big for an airplane carry-on, I took it on the train from Los Angeles. About thirty hours into the trip, I went outside during a quick stop in Eugene, walked down the block, and the train took off – my bag, my laptop, and R2-D2 chugged along without me.
The nice people at the Amtrak station booked me a bus and called ahead to get all my stuff off the train in Portland, and the window was waiting for me when I arrived a couple hours later. Very nearly a disaster, though!
Related: Griffith Observatory Window · Outsider Stained Glass · Bulbasaur Window
Bar Cabinet2022
A Broyhill Brasilia-style bar
I built this bar cabinet for a friend.
Lenses: Touchable Stuff, Work for Hire, Wood
Roles: Design, Fabrication, Woodworking
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My friend Kelli Jo has a bunch of cool mid-century furniture in the Broyhill Brasilia style, and wanted a bar cabinet to match. After pricing out what it would cost to make it out of solid walnut ($1200 just in lumber), we settled on stained Baltic Birch plywood, and I got to work.
It might be the piece I’m most proud of, at least until I finish the new expandable bench that Kelli Jo commissioned.
Related: Portable Tiki Bar · Franklin Chair · Dome · Woodworking Projects
Enough – A Poem2022
On giving up greatness without giving up on goodness
A poem about ambition, potential, and what makes life worth living
Lenses: Words, Actual Sincerity
Roles: Writing
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Sometimes I write poetry to try and express ideas that would feel too dry in prose. This is one of those poems – an attempt to capture the tension between ambition and contentment, and between the desire to change the world and the futility of individual action. It’s about reconciling the life I imagined when I was young with the life I have now – and with the life I think I actually want.
See, not everything I write is dumb, funny, or ironic. I have a harder time sharing sincerity, though, which is probably why I placed this piece so far down the page.
Related: The Castle’s Attic
Lumber Stack Drawer2021
Just a regular stack of wood
Looks like a pile of lumber, functions as a secret drawer.
Lenses: Touchable Stuff, Useful Nonsense, Wood
Roles: Design, Fabrication, Woodworking
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I saw something kind of like this on Reddit or something and decided to try to make one myself. I’ve made a few things with hidden compartments despite not really owning anything worth hiding. Sure, that’s what I’d say if I did have a bunch of contraband, but I promise right now there are just some old towels in there.
Related: Franklin Chair · Portable Tiki Bar · Woodworking Projects · Squirrel Table
Child Island2020
The island with no adults!
Child Island is the world’s only isolated landmass occupied 100% by children.
Lenses: Websites, Fake Business, Useless Nonsense, Dumb Bits
Roles: Concept, Writing, Web Design, Development
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In the early days of the COVID lockdown, parents were really struggling with being at home all day with their children. Despite not having kids of my own, I wanted to help. That’s why I created Child Island. It’s a little more unhinged than my other websites – mainly because I was a little more unhinged myself during the pandemic. Also, I believe this was the first business to introduce CEO Lance Gack (I later retconned him into my other sites).
Related: Clownr · centauAR · Pablo Arbuckle · Packajoy
Franklin Chair2020
As seen in Nic Cage’s National Treasure
A chair that becomes a stepladder!
Lenses: Touchable Stuff, Useful Nonsense, Wood
Roles: Design, Fabrication, Woodworking
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I designed and built this transforming Franklin Chair out of scrap wood after seeing a similar one in the scene of National Treasure where it flashes back to 1974 and young Benjamin Franklin Gates first hears the clue “the secret lies with Charlotte” from his grandfather, Christopher Plummer, who tells him the clue has been passed down through the Gates family for generations starting with Thomas Gates, who Plummer refers to as his “grandfather’s grandfather,” but then in NT2:BoS, Thomas is referred to as “Ben’s great-great grandfather,” which is weird because Ben’s grandfather’s grandfather’s grandfather would be Ben’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, not his great-great grandfather, and while Thomas Gates was born in 1821 and there could technically be that many generations in between (provided the 19th century Gates boys were causing teen pregnancies), it is still kind of an inconsistency, albeit the only one in the entire National Treasure franchise (not counting the short-lived Disney+ series, which I do not consider canon). Anyway, the chair turns into a stepladder.
Related: Lumber Stack Drawer · Portable Tiki Bar · Squirrel Table · Dome
Squirrel Table2020
A picnic table for a furry pal
This didn’t need to exist.
Lenses: Touchable Stuff, Dumb Bits, Wood, Useless Nonsense
Roles: Design, Fabrication, Woodworking
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I built this picnic table for some neighborhood squirrels during the pandemic. It didn’t need to exist, but it does.
Related: Portable Tiki Bar · Franklin Chair · Bar Cabinet · Dome · Woodworking Projects
The First2020
She crossed the stars in pursuit of greatness. The future got there first.
A short story about space travel and the pitfalls of needing to be exceptional.
Lenses: Words, Narrative, Public Weirdness, Actual Sincerity
Roles: Writing
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Every year, my parents ask me to write them short stories instead of buying them birthday or Christmas gifts. It’s very sweet (but also sometimes feels like a lot more work than online shopping for them).
This is a short story I wrote for them in 2020. It combines the Wait Equation of interstellar travel with some reflections on the human drive to be exceptional. If that doesn’t make sense right now, read the story and hopefully it will.
The Foxglove Papers2019
A pen and paper puzzle hunt through downtown LA
Using a map, a codex, and a stack of letters addressed to her abusive boss, Emma Foxglove leads players on a journey across downtown Los Angeles, right to her door.
Lenses: Words, Websites, Games, Narrative, Public Weirdness, Spatial Stories
Roles: Concept, Writing, Copywriting, Design, Web Design, Development, Game Design, Puzzle Design, Worldbuilding, Production
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Emma Foxglove is a former intelligence analyst who was betrayed by the CIA. Fed up with life on the run, she wrote a series of papers that tell her story. Hidden within them are codes that will lead pursuers to landmarks around downtown LA, and eventually to Emma’s current location. The Foxglove Papers is currently playable in downtown Los Angeles as an entirely offline experience.
After solving a clue in Gloria Molina Grand Park, you find yourself at the Redwood Bar & Grill, where you notice that the ceiling tiles are maritime signal flags. Using clues found in the page you’re on, you discover the flags spell out the word “BOAR.” Looking at the map, you’ll find a boar’s head icon over Disney Concert Hall, your next location a couple blocks away. Once there, you’ll have a new puzzle to solve on the next page.
This is the second Overlay I made, after Join Cult. I wanted to make something low-tech, that players could complete without using their phones. I playtested it extensively and iterated for months before I declared it finished. Then I neglected to market it or make it publicly available. I blame the pandemic.
But you can play it now if you want!
Related: Join Cult · The Los Feliz Everywhen Association · Overlay Dynamics · Perceptual Technology Division
Packajoy2019
A box subscription service
The joyful experience of getting a box delivered to your door without the hassle of receiving objects inside that box!
Lenses: Websites, Fake Business, Useless Nonsense, Dumb Bits
Roles: Concept, Writing, Web Design, Development
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Packajoy is a monthly box subscription service that sends you empty boxes in the mail. For the first few months it existed, I let people actually sign up. They paid me via PayPal, and I sent them empty boxes in the mail.
It turned out that buying a cardboard box and sending it via USPS costs more than $5, so I lost a couple hundred bucks mailing empty boxes around the country before shutting the service down. If I’d gotten some VC money, I truly believe I could have scaled enough to achieve profitability by 2036.
The site is still up, though! There’s even a fun animated explainer video on there.
A couple years later, someone stumbled across Packajoy, which led them to an earlier incarnation of BenDeeb.com. From there, they found my ARG Join Cult, and with the help of an ARG Discord group, they solved the Culver City scavenger hunt hidden in the Cult site while continuously referring to the whole thing as “the Packajoy ARG” even though Packajoy had nothing to do with the game.
Related: Child Island · Clownr · Pablo Arbuckle · centauAR · Join Cult
The Castle’s Attic2019
Emotional vulnerability meets psychedelic orgy
A piece about spending time in a 17th-century French castle with a group of cryptocurrency millionaires, high-end sex workers, and Burning Man enthusiasts.
Lenses: Words, Narrative, Public Weirdness, Actual Sincerity
Roles: Writing
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I just reread this story and was shocked by how many of the insane details of my week at Château de Vallery I left out. I’m mildly allergic to memoir, so I probably won’t write it down, but if you ask me about it, I’m happy to tell you the whole ridiculous story. Also, if you’re wondering if this is fiction, that entirely depends on what you want to hire me for.
Unlimited Hair2019
A repurposed headline from The Atlantic
A short story in the form of a fake Atlantic article about hair.
Lenses: Words, Websites, Narrative, Fake Business
Roles: Concept, Writing, Web Design
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In 2019, I saw the headline “Soon There Will Be Unlimited Hair” in the Atlantic, and thought that string of words was so ridiculous I had to write a short story about it. So I saved the source code of the Atlantic article about hair-loss cures and replaced their text and images with mine.
I emailed it to the original author, James Hamblin, and he responded right away, worried about how easily I spoofed the Atlantic’s page. And that was before generative AI made it way, way easier.
centauAR2018
See a centaur wherever you are
An augmented reality headset that turns everyone you see into a centaur.
Lenses: Websites, Fake Business, Useless Nonsense, Dumb Bits
Roles: Concept, Writing, Web Design, Development
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CentauAR was my second foray into building a website for a product that does not (and should not) exist. I used it to teach myself more advanced HTML and CSS by manipulating a one page website template to serve my own idiotic needs. And while I just said this product should not exist, writing these project notes is making me want to try my hand at building an actual augmented reality app that can turn people into centaurs. Maybe a Snapchat filter would be doable? Let me get back to you.
Related: Child Island · Clownr · Pablo Arbuckle · Packajoy
Clownr2018
It’s Uber for clowns
Join the clown revolution with clownr, the ONLY clown sharing app you’ll ever need.
Lenses: Websites, Fake Business, Useless Nonsense, Dumb Bits
Roles: Concept, Writing, Web Design, Development
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Back in 2018, everything was the “Uber for” something, so I made the “Uber for clowns.” Clownr was the first fake business I created, as well as my first foray into responsive web design. I had a whole plan to eventually make it clear that clownr was a devious ploy to harvest clowns’ location data, which I would then sell through a second app that warns users with coulrophobia if clowns were getting too close to them. I approached Palantir with the concept in 2018, and they weren’t interested. With the LA clown scene on the rise, it may be worth circling back.
Related: Child Island · centauAR · Pablo Arbuckle · Packajoy
Join Cult2018
The Question That Calls Itself an Answer
An Overlay puzzle game in downtown Culver City that periodically goes viral.
Lenses: Words, Websites, Games, Narrative, Useful Nonsense, Public Weirdness, Spatial Stories, Dumb Bits
Roles: Concept, Writing, Design, Web Design, Development, Game Design, Puzzle Design, Worldbuilding, Art Direction, Production
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The progenitors of Cult have released the Document, “the recursion that withdraws the soul from her bounded instability,” and invite you to partake in “The Prime Distraction.” Does this cryptic mumbo jumbo make any sense? Not exactly, but the puzzles hidden in the text at JoinCult.com will if you’re in downtown Culver City. Using hidden links and rhyming verse, Join Cult takes players on a tour of the local business district, revealing more about a fictional secret society along the way.
One clue reads “The beast in cage of water revels, it’s Baum who was his tamer / On bench in brass with news of past we find this city’s namer.” This leads players from a fountain featuring the lion from the Wizard of Oz to a nearby brass statue of Harry Culver reading a newspaper on a bench. Each subsequent stanza takes players to another permanent landmark in view of the location they’re currently at, until they’ve explored eight city blocks and unlocked the esoteric secrets of a cult simply called “Cult.”
Someone organically discovered Join Cult a few years ago by following links from Packajoy to my old portfolio site. They attempted to solve it using Google Maps and satellite imagery, then chronicled the attempt on Tumblr. The post went viral and led to JoinCult.com receiving over 30,000 visitors in a single week without me promoting it at all.
A Discord channel with thousands of alternate reality game enthusiasts from around the world then worked together to complete the game, eventually sending Los Angeles locals to clue locations in person. I found out about this a couple months later, because I don’t check my site analytics very often and try not to Google my name too regularly.
I still get emails to join@joincult.com periodically, as people discover the site and post about it on social media. I reply to them individually with arcane nonsense, and sign them “All will be revealed in time, except for that which will not be revealed. Cryptically, Cult: the question that calls itself an answer.”
Related: Overlay Dynamics · The Los Feliz Everywhen Association · The Foxglove Papers · Perceptual Technology Division · Packajoy
For Your Misinformation2017
A one act play about writing fake news
A play Ben & Graham put up in the 2017 Hollywood Fringe Festival.
Lenses: Words, Narrative, Collaboration, Actual Sincerity
Roles: Concept, Writing, Production, Performance, Collaboration
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For Your Misinformation is a one act play that I wrote and produced with Graham for the 2017 Hollywood Fringe Festival. It’s about two American comedy writers who get kidnapped in Russia and forced to write fake news. At the time, we were concerned that the subject matter wouldn’t be relevant long after the 2016 election. Turns out we didn’t need to worry!
Our play, which was featured with two other one acts, was directed by Stacy Traub and starred Erich Lane & Jeff Rosick in a production we called Six Figures (because it was three one acts with two actors each and three times two is six). We won the Fringe’s Encore Award and sold out two weeks of shows.
Related: A Science Lesson · Scripts
Ben & Nolan2016
A joint Tinder from two fantastic boys/adult men looking to raise your kids!
In 2016, me and my friend Nolan shared a Tinder and sent some very strange messages to women. I put some of the conversations on this site.
Lenses: Words, Websites, Useless Nonsense, Public Weirdness, Dumb Bits, Collaboration
Roles: Concept, Writing, Copywriting, Screenwriting, Design, Web Design, Development, Game Design, Puzzle Design, Worldbuilding, Fabrication, Woodworking, Stained Glass, Art Direction, Production, Performance, Teaching, Consulting, Collaboration, Community Organizing, Civic Service
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In 2016, my pal Nolan and I were both single. Tinder already sucked, so we figured we’d get weird with it, and we made a joint profile. Anytime women would match with us, we’d send them strange messages, and sometimes write fun choose your own adventure stories for ’em. We went on a couple actual dates, but they didn’t stick.
Some of these conversations were pretty funny, so I made a WordPress site for the screenshots. You can read them if you want.
Stump the Scientist2012
Answering the questions only eight-year-olds can ask
An essay about encouraging curiosity in kids.
Lenses: Words, Narrative, Public Weirdness, Actual Sincerity
Roles: Writing
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After college, I spent seven years as an elementary school science teacher. I taught enrichment programs at over a hundred LA-area schools, and at the end of each of my classes, I’d do an activity I called “stump the scientist” where kids would ask me questions, trying to find one I didn’t know the answer to. I’d write down the best questions, research the answers and answer them the following week.
I wrote a piece about this attempt to foster curiosity, and it was featured in a now-defunct literary journal called Morkan’s Horse. You can click below to read it.
Fanatic – A Game For Ceiling Fans2010
A thinking gentleman’s super game
A game that’s really an excuse to throw aluminum cans at ceiling fans.
Lenses: Games, Touchable Stuff, Useless Nonsense, Public Weirdness
Roles: Concept, Writing, Game Design, Fabrication
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Fanatic is basically a set of rules that justifies the practice of throwing beer cans at a ceiling fan. You get points for everything the can hits before it hits the ground. As you may have guessed, I created this game when I was much younger and didn’t own any nice things. In retrospect, I was still too old to be throwing cans at my ceiling fan. Read the rules below.
Related: Typonyms · Cheating – A Board Game · Unhinged Board Games
I Could Do That2010
A reality show pilot
A proof of concept episode for an unscripted show where I try to do things I’m in no way qualified for.
Lenses: Television, Narrative, Useful Nonsense, Public Weirdness, Dumb Bits, Collaboration
Roles: Concept, Development, Production, Performance, Collaboration
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In 2010, I created and starred in a pilot for a reality show called I Could Do That. The premise was basically that I, a 23 year old idiot, would attempt to do things I saw on TV – I’d live in the wilderness like Bear Grylls, track a criminal like Dog the Bounty Hunter, and pimp a ride like Xzibit. What I ended up doing was getting my ass beat by an amateur ninja while a few dozen friends watched.
In the pilot we shot, “I Could Punch a Black Belt in the Face,” I sparred with a guy named Alex who had a black belt in Ninpo Taijutsu. His sensei, an 80-year-old man named Ron Blackwood, ran a dojo in the back of a commercial warehouse. I’d never been in a fight before, and it didn’t go great for me. But the pilot we shot did get into the 2011 New York Television Festival, where I was approached by a couple talent agents from N.S. Bienstock.
After telling me I was “good looking, but not Hollywood handsome” which is “perfect because it’s relatable for middle America,” they said they had no interest in my show, but wanted to represent me as a TV personality.
So for a couple years after that, I had a reality TV agent who got me auditions to host Discovery Channel shows. I never booked any of them, and eventually they stopped calling me. My agent also represented Bill O’Reilly, so I think they still made plenty of money without me.
US Senate Internship2008
They let me work in the Capitol
I interned for Senator Chuck Hagel in 2008.
Lenses: Legit Business, Useful Nonsense, Actual Sincerity, Community Work
Roles: Collaboration, Community Organizing, Civic Service
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In the summer of 2008, I was an intern for U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel, who later became Secretary of Defense. At the time, Obama was a Senator too, and I rode in an elevator with him. He remains the only President I’ve smelled (he smelled nice).
Though I really loved giving tours of the Capitol Building to visiting Nebraskans, working in politics in D.C. made me realize how much I did not want to work in politics in D.C. So I came back to L.A. and started writing TV scripts, disappointing all my relatives who expected me to do something important with my life.
Related: Los Feliz Neighborhood Council
Black-ish2020-2022
Four episodes of network TV
I wrote four episodes of ABC’s Black-ish with my writing partner, Graham Towers.
Lenses: Words, Television, Narrative, Collaboration
Roles: Writing
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Between 2019 and 2022, I co-wrote four episodes of ABC’s Black-ish with my writing partner, Graham Towers:
- Season 6, Episode 15: The Gauntlet
- Season 7, Episode 2: Election Special Pt 2
- Season 7, Episode 21: Urban Legend
- Season 8, Episode 9: And the Winner Is...
We were on set to help produce The Gauntlet and And the Winner Is..., but had to watch the shoot of Urban Legend remotely due to Covid restrictions. Which meant we didn’t get to meet Boyz II Men in person, which was a real bummer. The pandemic took something different from all of us.
The Election Special we wrote was the series’ only fully animated episode (also due to Covid restrictions). After we turned in our writers’ draft, we got a frantic email from the prop master, Randy. He had just read the part of the script that featured an eagle snorting a line of cocaine and said if we wanted him to rig up a taxidermy eagle or hire someone to train an endangered bird to do blow, we needed to let him know ASAP. This is how we learned that nobody told Randy that the episode was animated.
The whole cocaine eagle thing ended up getting cut from the shooting draft anyway, but I’ll never forget Randy’s dedication to bringing a script to life. What a pro.
Related: Scripts · Zero Notes
Unhinged Board Games2014-Present
A variety of party games, each stupider than the last
A series of board games made for my birthday parties, all of which were incredibly dumb (but fun).
Lenses: Games, Touchable Stuff, Useless Nonsense
Roles: Concept, Writing, Design, Game Design, Puzzle Design, Fabrication
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I used to invent a new board game every year and make my friends play it at my birthday party. Each of these was stupider than the last.
The first game I made, Cards required players to build a die out of a giant cardboard box and throw it from the top of a human pyramid to move forward. The game pieces were random plastic things I found around my house and the game board was a piece of old cardboard I found by a dumpster. I made my parents play once and they were deeply confused.
Dice, conversely, was played with handwritten cards that tell you to do things like “write a letter to your bed to advance your game piece.” Old business cards given to me by friends and acquaintances were involved. I think you also needed an oboe for part of it.
In Board Game, you ran around a room trying to earn more wooden boards than the other players. One card involved secretly starting a fire in a trashcan, which didn’t end as badly as it should have. The game board for this was drawn on the disgusting carpet of my old apartment with Sharpie the week before the landlord replaced it with laminate, so it was probably a one-time thing.
The point of Video Game was to earn the most old VHS tapes and DVDs by competing in trivia and feats of strength. In my experience, this game is a great way to get rid of old physical media you don’t want anymore.
Team Game involved everybody swapping clothes. It was a mess. We don’t need to talk about Team Game.
The last game I was developing was called System: The Game, the objective of which is to game the system. As players progress, they’re given chances to change the rules in their favor. They write these rules in the instruction manual, changing the game permanently (until someone else creates a rule canceling their rule). It gets more complex each time it’s played, but that’s kind of the point. It got too complicated and I didn’t finish it in time for my birthday. But if you’d like to play it, shoot me an email and I’ll finish it (and also invite you to my next birthday party).
Related: Typonyms · Fanatic – A Game For Ceiling Fans · Cheating – A Board Game
Greek Theatre Advisory Committee2026-Present
I serve on a citizen advisory committee for LA’s Greek Theatre
I attend monthly public meetings and help plan free community events at the Greek Theatre.
Lenses: Legit Business, Useful Nonsense, Collaboration, Community Work, Actual Sincerity
Roles: Collaboration, Community Organizing, Civic Service
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Through my work on the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council, I learned about the Greek Theatre Advisory Committee. In 2026, I applied for an open seat and was appointed to a three-year term.
At monthly meetings, we review the Greek Theatre’s operations and upcoming events. I also joined the Community Events Ad Hoc Committee, where I’ll help plan the theatre’s free holiday party. Additionally, I go to as many shows at The Greek as I can.
The meetings are held on the third Wednesday of each month and are open to the public. If you’d like to swing by one, there are free sandwiches and very nice people.
Related: Los Feliz Trashbusters · Disney Brothers Walking Tour · Los Feliz Neighborhood Council
KEG Lab2008-2010
Digging dirt and shooting it with X-rays
I was a research assistant in a geology lab and ran samples at Stanford’s Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource.
Lenses: Legit Business, Useful Nonsense, Public Weirdness, Actual Sincerity
Roles: Collaboration
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In college (and for a year or so after), I worked as a research assistant at Chapman University’s Kim Environmental Geochemistry (KEG) Lab. When I was there, we mainly studied the arsenic levels of soil near abandoned mining sites.
We’d take occasional trips into the desert to dig up samples, then fly to the San Francisco Bay to analyze them. We worked at Stanford’s Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, which is a facility attached to a particle accelerator that shoots insanely high-powered X-rays at stuff to find out what speciation of stuff that stuff’s made of. I had to get certified as a U.S. Department of Energy radiological worker. I’ve completely forgotten if that entailed any training at all.
Because time at the facility was precious, we’d operate a couple beamlines 24/7 (it was mostly lines 10-2 and 2-3 for you Synchrotron-heads out there). This means sometimes we’d sleep on a cot for the three or four hours it took to run a sample on the Germanium crystal detector. “Under a desk at a particle accelerator” is one of the weirder places I’ve woken up.
Related: Land
Land2017-Present
I own five acres of land in the desert for no good reason
Land is what I call the five acres of land I own near Hi Vista, CA.
Lenses: Touchable Stuff, Useless Nonsense, Public Weirdness, Dumb Bits
Roles: Development, Worldbuilding
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In 2017, I bought five acres of land in Antelope Valley (about an hour north of LA) for $2000. I named it Land.
A lot of people have asked me why I did this, and very few of them have been satisfied with my answer: I bought the land as a bit. I thought it would be funny to call Los Angeles area realtors looking to buy worthless land in the desert, so I did it. Also, since I’ll never be able to afford a home in California, this felt like my best shot at being able to call myself a landowner.
There’s no water or power on Land, the temperatures regularly surpass 110 degrees, the wind blows 60mph, and trying to build something useful there would be incredibly foolish. This is because of the copper bandits. They ride dirt bikes around the desert looking for copper – and anything else of any value – to steal. So far, they’ve stolen my pith helmet, my camping supplies, my pickaxe, my plastic logs, a ceramic penis monster statue, a mannequin torso, and ten doorknobs from some doors I brought out in an attempt to build a door-decagon. They have yet to steal my dome, but that is because it is very large. They may have burned it down, though. I haven’t been there in a while.
Land technically falls within the boundaries of Hi Vista, CA, although it’s not accessible from paved roads. Two of the closest buildings to Land are The Sanctuary Adventist Church (made famous as the wedding chapel in Kill Bill) and the Twin Suns Ranch (a Tatooine-esque outpost for Star Wars cosplay and also WWI trench warfare reenactments). The closest populated area is Lake Los Angeles, where there are no bodies of water to speak of. It’s a weird place.
Technically, I co-own the land with my friend Ava Tramer, but she is a silent partner. I think she regularly forgets we co-own the land except for once a year when I ask her to pay half of the $97 property tax bill.
If you’d like to visit, the link below will take you to the GPS coordinates for Land. Do whatever you want there, lord knows the copper bandits already do.
Related: Dome · About the Human Bones I Buried in the Desert
Los Feliz Neighborhood Council2025-Present
District E Representative
I’m on the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council Governing Board (and a few committees).
Lenses: Legit Business, Useful Nonsense, Collaboration, Community Work, Actual Sincerity
Roles: Collaboration, Community Organizing, Civic Service
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In January 2025, at a Los Feliz Trashbusters neighborhood cleanup, I learned about a vacancy on my local Neighborhood Council and was encouraged to apply. Five minutes after giving a short speech on Zoom, I was appointed as the new District E representative. I currently serve on the Governing Board as well as the Cultural Affairs, Outreach, Rules & Administration, and Community Defense Committees.
In LA, Neighborhood Councils are official government bodies that represent each of the city’s 99 neighborhoods. Representing your neighborhood is a volunteer position that includes virtually no tangible perks, aside from getting two minutes to speak at City Council meetings instead of one, a privilege I have never exercised. Still, I’ve found it incredibly rewarding to get to know my neighbors, learn about local government, and give back to my community.
Through my work on committees, I’ve helped plan neighborhood events like Porchfest (which I built a website for), The Disney Bros. Cartoon Studio Square block party (which I built an audio walking tour for), and the Los Feliz Writers Festival (for which I did not end a parenthetical sentence in a preposition). With the Board, I’ve helped draft community impact statements, written letters to our City Council, and awarded grants to local non-profits.
I’m up for reelection in 2027, and don’t worry – I’m going to get real weird with the campaign.
Related: Los Feliz Trashbusters · Disney Brothers Walking Tour · Greek Theatre Advisory Committee
Outsider Stained Glass2025-Present
Unusual stained glass windows, created outside
Custom windows and stained glass lessons.
Lenses: Touchable Stuff, Legit Business, Work for Hire, Glass
Roles: Design, Fabrication, Stained Glass, Art Direction
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Under the name Outsider Stained Glass, I build custom windows on commission and teach private lessons for people who want to learn the process. The name is both literal and referential: I don’t have a studio space, so I make my windows outside (often in Griffith Park), and I like to think of my work as a kind of outsider art.
My dad made traditional lead came stained glass windows when I was growing up. He taught me the process, and for years I kept doing it sporadically – mainly for practice, or because I decided someone in my life needed a stained glass version of something that no stained glass window had ever depicted.
The actual work is intricate, tactile, and meditative, so it’s a nice counterpoint to writing and puzzle design. Since I’ve never been very interested in following patterns, all my windows are original designs. And to date, I’ve never finished a window without cutting myself at least a little, so there’s blood (if not sweat and tears) in each of my creations.
Want a window, or the ability to make one yourself? Email or DM me on Instagram!
Related: Griffith Observatory Window · R2-D2 Window · Bulbasaur Window
Overlay Dynamics2017-Present
Immersive Narratives Layered Onto Reality
A company that creates innovative, interactive stories that unfold as participants travel from place to place solving puzzles and uncovering clues.
Lenses: Words, Websites, Games, Narrative, Legit Business, Work for Hire, Public Weirdness, Spatial Stories, Collaboration, Actual Sincerity
Roles: Concept, Writing, Copywriting, Design, Web Design, Development, Game Design, Puzzle Design, Worldbuilding, Fabrication, Art Direction, Production, Consulting, Collaboration
OverlayDynamics.com · View the Pitch Deck
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When I’m not writing, making things, or doing dumb bits, I’m combining all of these pursuits to run an immersive experience company called Overlay Dynamics. We build story-based puzzle games called Overlays that bring players into the real world, using existing landmarks and public art as clues. You can think of them as treasure hunts, alternate reality games (ARGs), outdoor escape rooms, or puzzle video games transposed onto physical spaces.
If none of those descriptions work for you, just imagine the movie National Treasure, only instead of Nicolas Cage following clues hidden in the Declaration of Independence across America to find Templar treasure, it’s you following clues hidden in a mobile website across a public park to find something infinitely less valuable than an underground chamber full of plundered relics.
I’ve consulted on puzzle games for marketing agencies and major movie studios, built team-building games for corporate organizations and private parties, and have been developing projects for a variety of tourism boards and public institutions. They’ve taken the form of pen and paper treasure hunts, responsive websites, social media posts, and branching-narrative web apps.
I’ve made a number of free-to-play Overlays (listed below) if you want to try one out. Is there a puzzle game hidden in this website? Great question!
Related: Join Cult · The Los Feliz Everywhen Association · The Foxglove Papers · Perceptual Technology Division
Running Los Feliz2024-2026
A needlessly thorough tour of my neighborhood
In 2024, I decided to run every street in Los Feliz and hike every trail in Griffith Park. In 2026, I created a site to map those runs.
Lenses: Words, Websites, Useless Nonsense, Public Weirdness, Spatial Stories, Actual Sincerity
Roles: Concept, Writing, Web Design
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I’ve been running most of my life. I’ve enjoyed running since my mid-twenties.
In high school, I ran cross-country, where I was constantly in trouble for slowing down the good runners, who would hang back to talk with me at practice. Also, I quit halfway through each season to be in the school musical.
I started running more seriously in my early twenties, when I lived at an outdoor camp, went through a breakup, and gained weight from too much cheap beer. In 2016, though I’d never run longer than 9 miles, I completed the LA Marathon in five hours and twelve minutes – without training or officially signing up – which was a wildly stupid thing to do. But I got a medal!
I’m not the fastest runner, but I like to have a goal. A couple years ago, that led me to try to run every street in my neighborhood and hike every trail in Griffith Park. Now, if you live in Los Feliz, I’ve seen your house. And if you have a Ring camera, you probably have footage of me with my shirt off.
A year after this, I thought I’d try my hand at AI-assisted data visualization, and made a website pulling data from my Apple Watch’s GPX files as well as some other data I had to manually add to a spreadsheet because Apple doesn’t let you export it.
If you want way too much information about my exercise habits, you can click below to see the site I built.
Related: Disney Brothers Walking Tour · I Could Do That · Los Feliz Neighborhood Council
Scripts2010-Present
Pilots, Specs, and Feature Scripts by Ben & Graham
A collection of screenplays written by Ben Deeb & Graham Towers.
Lenses: Words, Television, Narrative, Legit Business, Collaboration
Roles: Concept, Writing, Screenwriting, Development, Collaboration
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I’ve been working with my writing partner, Graham Towers, since 2009. We met in college, and started writing together shortly after while working together at an outdoor camp as science teachers/park rangers in the untamed hills of Orange, California.
Together, we’ve written over a dozen pilots, a half-dozen specs, and a third-of-a-dozen features. In the early 2010s, we also wrote twenty-eight-dozen webcomic strips, though they were amateurish and are no longer online.
When we’re not measuring things in base-12, we’re developing for TV and writing features. We’ve pitched shows to most major networks, and won awards from a number of major screenwriting competitions. We’re represented by James Engle at Navigation Media and Gregg Gellman at Yorn Levine Barnes Krintzman Rubenstein Kohner Endlich Goodell & Gellman, who did not consult us on the name of their law firm.
If you want to read our work, the button below will take you to a collection of screenplays on ZeroNotes.net, a script sharing web app I built. You’ll need to log in with a Google account for security – it won’t steal your data or anything, I just use authentication to make sure the people accessing the scripts are actually humans and not robots pretending to be humans.
Related: Black-ish · Zero Notes · For Your Misinformation
The Encourager2024-2025
A Creative Outlet
An online collection of work by friends of Ben Deeb.
Lenses: Words, Websites, Collaboration, Community Work, Actual Sincerity
Roles: Concept, Writing, Design, Web Design, Development, Collaboration, Community Organizing, Civic Service
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In early 2024, I was thinking a lot about how many interesting and talented friends I had and decided to find a way to showcase their work (and some of my own). I built a WordPress site called “The Encourager” and set up a newsletter, inviting anyone who knew me to submit work.
For a couple years, I emailed and posted creative work by my pals tryweekly (that is, I tried to put it out weekly, but usually it was more like every couple weeks). Over that time, 28 friends sent me work ranging from sculpture to sketch comedy to textile work to competitive tablescaping.
Despite it being a very fun and rewarding project, The Encourager has been dormant for a while – mainly because I felt like I was constantly nagging/begging people to send me more work instead of encouraging them. I’d be happy to take it back up if you, the person reading this, want to submit something! In fact, I encourage it!
Related: Zero Notes
Los Feliz Trashbusters2025-Present
Cleaning up this town!
I’m part of a bimonthly trash cleanup organization.
Lenses: Useful Nonsense, Collaboration, Community Work, Actual Sincerity
Roles: Collaboration, Community Organizing, Civic Service
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On the first Saturday and third Sunday of every month at 9am, you can find me with the Los Feliz Trashbusters. We’re a group of volunteers led by the heroic Mike Hain, and we roam the neighborhood with buckets, grabbers, and brooms, busting trash till we can’t anymore – or until it’s 10am, whichever comes first.
I periodically post things on the Trashbusters Instagram with the goal of making it as weird as possible. Sometimes, I solicit “trashy pictures” from people in the group and dub them “Trash of the Week.” Other times, I spend way too long recording my voice saying “trash” over all the women’s names in Lou Bega’s Mambo No. 5 and attach that to a post.
Through the group, I’ve met great people, found fascinating trash, and heard truly ridiculous puns from Mike. Come join us! I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Related: Los Feliz Neighborhood Council · Disney Brothers Walking Tour · Greek Theatre Advisory Committee
Valorant Champions Tour2023-2026
I stage managed an esports tournament and was nominated for two Emmys
I was a stage manager for Riot’s Valorant Champions Tour in Los Angeles and Paris.
Lenses: Television, Legit Business, Work for Hire, Useful Nonsense, Collaboration
Roles: Production, Performance, Collaboration
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During the 2023 WGA strike, I spent the summer picketing studios and looking for non-scab income. My friend Kelli Jo, a broadcast producer at Riot Games, asked me if I’d be interested in stage managing backstage interviews for the Valorant esports tournament happening in LA.
Since I’d done some live event production work before, I said yes, and spent the next month working on the VCT Champs show at the Shrine Auditorium and the Forum. I figured I wouldn’t get another chance to work on the Valorant tour, since they travel all over the world and generally hire locals, but I got another call from Kelli Jo in 2025.
European labor laws prohibit French stage managers from working more than six days in a row, so they wanted me to come to Paris to stage manage the 2025 Valorant Champions show. I’ve never been more grateful for America’s abysmal lack of worker protections.
I spent a month in France, escorting esports pros on and off the stage, setting and resetting host and analyst desks, and producing the occasional segment between matches. The grand final sold out a 10,000-seat arena just off the Seine. Not a bad way to spend a few weeks.
In early 2026, I found out that I’d been nominated for an Emmy as part of the broadcast team. When I went to order a certificate, I learned that I’d also been nominated for the 2023 show, and nobody had told me, despite the fact that I was already a TV Academy member through my writing work. So now I have two Emmy nominations for esports stage managing. Wild stuff.
Ben Deeb’s WikiWill2025-Present
My last will and testament, editable by anyone
I made my will into a wiki site that anyone can edit.
Lenses: Words, Websites, Useless Nonsense, Public Weirdness, Dumb Bits, Collaboration
Roles: Concept, Writing, Web Design, Development, Collaboration
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Ben Deeb’s WikiWill is the legitimate legal will and testament for Ben Deeb. It is publicly editable, and you (the person reading this), are free to update it and claim some of Ben’s property whenever you want. Or you can assign it to someone else, or just sow chaos by adding a bunch of nonsense. Periodically, I’ll print out whatever’s on the site and sign it in front of a witness.
This is probably one of the worst ideas I’ve had, i/r/t negative real world ramifications. But when they come into play, I’ll be dead, and it’ll be someone else’s problem. Which, yes, is rude to the people I love who will survive me – especially my partner Kayla who absolutely hates this.
Still, I think I should be allowed one final, complicated, incredibly idiotic commitment to the bit.
Anyway, click below to snag some of my stuff. Nobody’s claimed my motorcycle yet if you want that.
Woodworking Projects2010-Present
Fifteen years of custom furniture and an increasing supply of power tools
A collection of various woodworking projects.
Lenses: Touchable Stuff, Legit Business, Work for Hire, Useless Nonsense, Useful Nonsense, Wood
Roles: Woodworking
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I’ve been making custom furniture for over fifteen years. The hobby started with a TV stand made from a few planks of pine when I couldn’t afford actual furniture. Back then, all I had was a jigsaw and a drill. You’d be surprised what you can do with just those two tools.
In the years since, whenever a friend has asked me to make them something, I’ve charged them just enough to cover materials and the cost of a new power tool. Built a bookcase, bought a table saw. Built a coffee table, bought a router. I’ve got a pretty good collection now, as I’ve built a ton of furniture over the years for myself, friends, and clients.
Some of my woodworking projects are featured elsewhere on this site, but I’ve made too much to give each piece its own space on this website. Also, I’m bad at remembering to take photos of my work. There are a few selected pieces in the image carousel above, and if you want to see a larger gallery from the old version of my site, click below.
Related: Franklin Chair · Portable Tiki Bar · Murphy Bed · Lumber Stack Drawer · Squirrel Table
Machine-readable list: /llms.txt