MORE ABOUT ME

But serious journalism is a thankless career so he switched to comedy writing.  Derevlany founded a  weekly, comedy newspaper called The Hoboken Review, which was funny enough to attract the attention of editors at National Lampoon magazine, where he soon became a regular contributor.  He also freelanced frequently for Seventeen Magazine and The Village Voice.

At the age of 23, he published his first book, Yuppies Invade My House at Dinnertime A tale of brunch, bombs, and gentrification in an American City.  The book was a collection of letters to the editor that had been written to the Hoboken Reporter while Derevlany was its editor.  The letters were arranged to show the dramatic transformation of a city  -- from struggling, urban area to trendy, upscale neighborhood in a matter of a few years.  The New York Times Book Review called it "a vivid picture of a community in transition... It is that rare thing: a light book about a big issue."

The Yuppies Invade book is still used in several college urban studies classes, and was adapted into a stage play in 2023 by playwright Joseph Gallo and the Mile Square Theater in Hoboken, NJ. It was also the inspiration for a 2023 exhibit at the Hoboken Historical Museum.

Television

While writing for National Lampoon, Derevlany was recruited to work on his first TV show, Night After Night with Allan Havey.  It was on a new network called Comedy Central, and Derevlany wrote daily monologue jokes and sketches.

With his mix of journalism background and comedy writing, Derevlany was hired a few years later by the legendary documentarian/provocateur Michael Moore to work on a reality-comedy show called TV Nation that aired on both Fox and NBC.  The show pioneered a type of reality, stunt-based "comedy journalism" that is now practiced regularly on programs like The Daily Show.

Derevlany also performed as "Crackers the Corporate Crime-fighting Chicken," a spin on the crime "mascot" of the day, McGruff the Crime Dog ("Take a bite out of crime!").  But Crackers only fought "white collar crime."  Crackers was one of the most popular features on the show, often drawing thousands of fans to his public "crime gathering" appearances.  For video of Crackers, see VIDEOS page.

Running around in a giant chicken suit somehow led (inexplicably) to long-term jobs at both Nickelodeon (on the show Angry Beavers), and at the Jim Henson company, where Derevlany developed multiple shows for both puppets and humans, including the dance-party-preschool show Animal Jam.

From there, he began a long career creating, developing, and writing TV shows for children.  He has written for more than a hundred different shows, and been a show-runner or head writer for about a dozen of them.  The biggest of these shows was probably LEGO Legends of Chima (which is getting its own page on this website).

To learn more about some of these shows, visit this site's VIDEOS page.

The band appeared on a variety of TV shows and was featured in the 2003 documentary, Rock that Uke.  And, yes, that is Derevlany on the film's poster.

However, Derevlany's more recent musical work has been limited to theme songs for his shows, or his own short films and projects.

Street art and Culverland

During the 2008-9 recession, the financing for several of Derevlany's TV projects dried up.  So... what can an out-of-work TV writer do?  Why, become a professional street artist!  This was Derevlany's biggest commission at the time... Culverland, a 90-foot-long board game painted on the sidewalk of downtown Culver City, in front of the Culver Hotel.  The temporary art project was installed as part of the Indiecade International Festival of Independent Games, that used to be held in Culver City.  The game of Culverland is played by standing on the colored squares, and only progressing to the next square when a moving vehicle matching that color passes by on the street in front of the game.  The majority of cars are either black, white, or gray, so the game moved pretty quickly until you got to the red or green squares.  Unless there was standstill traffic.  Then the game took a REALLY long time. See more here.

Video Games

In his spare time, Derevlany has also built and programmed his own video games.  But doing the art, music, gameplay, and coding all by himself is so time-consuming that none of them ever made it beyond the prototype phase.  Two of the more interesting projects were Best Parent Ever, The Game.  This was based on the once popular blog run by Derevlany and his wife called "BestParentEver.com."  The game  is about parenting, sort of (note: drinking red wine in the game will keep you from exploding).  There is a playable version at right, but it is an old Flash (swf) file so it may not work on the current versions of Chrome or Edge without some browser tinkering (it still works on Internet Explorer though, or by just downloading the swf file).  If it doesn't play, there's also a video playthrough here.

The other game is Giant Big Shoe Man, an F.P.S. game -- or "First Person Stomper."  See the promo at left.  It's a Flash game that uses a Dance Pad, an electronic floor mat that hooks up to a game console or computer (these kind of pads used to be used with games like Dance, Dance Revolution).  You play as a Gulliver-style giant who stomps on all these bug-like guys with your "giant" shoe.  You also have to clean off the bottom of your shoe.  There's a working prototype, but it's a little tricky to find Dance Pads these days to play it with.

Personal

Derevlany grew up in Bayside, Queens and Ste. Foy, Quebec.  He currently lives in Culver City, CA, with his wife, the awesome Kim Derevlany, and his kids, the amazing Ian and Ava Rave.  He surfs every week and plays way too many video games.  He also has a really annoying dog named Stanley, who looks at him every morning like this.