Hey! It's Dr. Dan the Pancake Man! The guy who made those crazy Avengers pancakes, AMA!

Dan, when will you have your food truck, and what will it be called? Also, I think I helped make you (somewhat) famous!

MORAMARCO I WILL NEVER FORGET YOU

You posted the picture, that Brent Holzapfel took, that landed me on the today Show. You ROCK, my friend. You catalyzed the weirdest fucking career in the world

And I'm still pretty partial to 'The Dancake Van'. It's easy to remember.

How many "professional pancake artists" are there in the world?

I think that depends on what you define 'professional pancake artist' as.

To the best of my knowledge, I'm the only person who's bought himself a mobile kit and rents time out to do private parties and corporate events where I'm actually taking live requests from large numbers of real people, face to face.

The bulk of my competition seems to be for media attention and advertising gigs (like, hey man, will you draw this thing on video for a commercial we're working on). And all my rival pancake artists seem to be dads cooking for their kids...I'm the one schmuck who was just desperate for tips at a diner.

I'm particularly fond of Brek Nebel of PancakeBREKfast...he's the reason I started using such vibrant colors in my pancakes, and he's also REALLY FREAKING GOOD at drawing. Check him out.

I don't know why you got downvoted for this. I like you pancake man.

I like you too, cat with giant boobs.

/u/audioapetersen oh! Hey! I saw your request, here's your questions, answered:

How many attempts does it take to make the perfect pancake design?

I guess that depends. Since I do my art in public more often than not, I really only get one shot for most requests because I've gotta keep the line moving (and after the first pancake at any given event, I get a line pretty much immediately and I'm usually cooking for 2-6 hours without breaks). For some of the promotional videos, though, (like the avengers) I make a couple of mistakes and try faces again. On that video in particular I think I tried Ultron 3 times before I was satisfied. Dude's got a weird head.

When did you decide to start making pancake art?

I answered this further down in the thread, because apparently my reddit-fu SUCKS, but I'll paste it here for your inbox. It's kinda long. Bear with me.

BASICALLY, when I got out of high school I had NO CLUE what I wanted to do with my life. I don't think I'm alone in this feeling. I was also scared of student debt, but more than that I just had no ambition, and no self-esteem. I didn't really think myself capable of doing awesome shit with my life. So I got a job at a diner and got married to someone that was...let's just say we were bad for each other. But when you're aimless and despondent, fuck it! Right? So I was working in a diner for shit wages, just kind of waiting to die, or have kids, or whatever, not really taking an interest in my own future, and I saw that folks on the busier shifts (I got slow shifts cause I was dumb and slow then) would put mickey mouse ears on their pancakes. I asked why, they said 'cause it makes their tips better. I thought, yeah, that makes sense...and then I thought, oh. So it doesn't have to be round? I first served a piece of pancake art after toying with the idea for a few weeks and eventually promising myself that the next person to come in and order a pancake was gonna get the most exaggerated smiley face I could muster. When that person walked in, he had face tattoos, and gold teeth, and he looked like he'd had a rough day and if I tried any funny shit he would mop the floor with me. And I almost didn't make him the pancake. But then I thought, 'That would be racist', and so I did it anyway. I wish there were a way for me to illustrate the way his face changed when I slid his plate in front of him. That smiley face MADE THAT DUDES DAY. He was so impressed that he left me a $15 tip on a $3 stack of pancakes, shook my hand and thanked me for showing him something he had never seen before. And I thought, jeez. It worked once. I gotta keep doing it. I finally made the transition to 'professional' after reddit made me famous around late summer 2013. There was a picture of me that just hung out at the top of the front page for a few days, and that whole shebang culminated in me getting invited on The Today Show. After THAT I started getting offers to come exhibit my talent at birthday parties and private events and such. And I kept doing it. I almost feel like I didn't really have a choice; the alternative was working in a diner for a LOT less than these folks were offering me.

What is the most challenging design you have ever attempted?

It's all over the place! I actually encourage my guests and clients to try their damndest to mess me up. If I had a choice, I'd rather be messing up something ambitious than nailing something simple that I've done a thousand times (like queen elsa, lol).

What pancake batter has the best consistency for designing?

That's a great question...The best analogy I can think of is, you know the consistency of ketchup? How you can write your name or a stupid message to your server on your plate after you finish your french fries? My batter is kinda close to that. It's a different material so it works a little differently, but it's close, and it seems to make sense to most of the people I tell about it.

You're definitely not gonna get phat, fluffy pancakes with my pancake recipe, but that's not exactly the point, y'know?

What are some of your next ideas for designs?

I've got so many stupid crazy ideas I couldn't possibly list 'em all. But I think I'll probably start making the rounds on my favorite bits of pop culture, after the success of the Avengers video we did. Probably DBZ, Harry Potter, stuff like that. Things that I love that a ton of other people love too.

Thanks for the questions! And for getting me into this Denny's, answering questions online, I'm having a blast!!

have you gotten laid using your skills???

Oh lawd. Yeah, I have.

Actually, probably the last 5 women I've slept with were initially attracted to me because I cooked some sort of crazy pancake for them. Usually it ended in betrayal and pain and heartbreak and then a whole goddamn album of sad songs ( psychsquared.bandcamp.com ) but this last one seems to be working out a lot better. We met when I started working monthly events at her sister's badass coffee shop in Alton ( maevascoffee.com ) and for a few months we didn't really know each other. But every time I came there she would request a different one of Eevee's evolutions in pancake form. She's such a fucking kick ass girl.

What ever happened to the breaking batter production?

OH MAN! I'm so glad you asked!

Okay, so, my buddy Ben Vogelsang was the director of the badass little shorts we did, and it was his skills and resources that really turned our dumb idea into somewhat of an entertaining miniseries. Right around the time that we filmed THIS promo ( https://youtu.be/ZZCLNUXGJzk ) Ben ended up having a whole buttload of new work to do - he's the main videographer with a couple of major radio stations here in STL - and so as soon as that video went up, he pulled out.

Hank and I have the next few scripted out but we've been so busy with just running the business that it's been hard to justify more BB without a bigger fan response. There's folks that ask about it, but they're few and far between.

It's definitely not done for...the idea's too frickin stupid and funny.

Good to hear... Good luck in your journeys good sir

Thanks, man! I'm gonna need it, I'm a fucking fool sometimes

How long does it take you to figure out how to do a new image?

Well, about 90% of the time I'm drawing from a reference; usually something I've googled or a photo on someone else's phone (draw my puppy dog!). So I don't know if I 'figure out' how to draw a new image...I just kinda look at it and...start?

I learned the hard way (so many ugly pancakes, dude) that you always start on the eyes. If you mess the eyes up, it doesn't matter how perfect you get the other features, the head shape, the jawline, whatever. If the cake you're trying to draw has eyes, HONE IN AND GET THEM MFers RIGHT or else it'll look...you know...not like them.

Most of the pancakes I post I knock out on the first try (you have to get good at that if you're gonna cook in public like I do) so I'd say it usually takes me the 5 minutes you need to cook it.

Have you ever tired to make titty-shaped pancakes ??

I never, EVER turn requests down. I've done titties, I've done assholes, I've done vaginas, I've done penises inside of vaginas, I've done papa smurf with a massive hardon...last week I had a request for 'A giant penis riding a motorcycle with the text I was born to watch my penis ride'. They got such a kick out of it.

I draw the line at hateful stuff. Nazi iconography, hateful or threatening messages, misogyny, the usual PR-suicide bag. I have no interest in promoting that agenda, nor in setting fire to everything I've worked towards.

Oh! I can actually support /u/drdancake's answer on this one, 'cause he made me a topless lady pancake once.

BEHOLD!

The reference photo was one that I took of a friend of mine hula-hooping topless in an abandoned building.

(If you're curious, it tasted DELICIOUS)

I COULD DO THAT SO MUCH BETTER NOW

But do they taste good?

Hell yeah they taste good! I have always insisted that if you're a pancake artist and your pancakes don't taste good that you have no fucking idea what you're doing. Flavor is everything! If they don't taste good how are you gonna answer for yourself if you mess up the flip, or the eyes, or whatever?

I don't mix my batter from scratch or anything crazy fancy like that; I have a dependable just-add-water mix that they use in a lot of restaurants that tastes great and requires very little input from me.

And all the outlines and shading I do? Basically anything that's BROWN in my pancakes? That's COCOA. Smells like a damn chocolate factory. On pancakes that have big areas of dark, like people with black hair and what have you, you don't even need syrup to enjoy them. The cocoa sweetens the hell out of em. They're like big, soft cookies.

Having eaten /u/drdancake's pancakes (Here's a picture of a pancake of me taking a picture of /u/drdancake as proof), I can confirm that they're damn tasty pancakes. I ate my face immediately after taking this photo.

And you weren't even on bath salts!

What is your opinion of waffles?

WAFFLES KILLED MY FAMILY

I mean they're delicious. It's just more awkward to try illustrating with them. I love anything that offers you the chance to eat pockets of butter and syrup with every bite.

What is your favorite pancake topping?

MY favorite pancake topping?

I'm old school, man. Butter and syrup. Actually, when I still worked at the diner, there was a customer named Tom who would dump 4 butter packets on the side of his pancakes, pour about 2 tablespoons of syrup over it, and mash the butter and syrup together into this weird sweet salty paste that he then applied liberally to his short stacks. I tried it once. And then I started doing it all the time. It's probably not healthy. Fuck it.

And now it's time to go get some fuckin pancakes.

When is it NOT time to go get some fuckin pancakes?

Do you have any qualms with not wasting everyone's time with the glorified flapjack monkey routine, and get me some hot buttered griddle cakes, yay high, and syrup yay deep? Those are for eatin' Doc!

Actually, I have no qualms at all. Some of my larger events Hank and I actually set up separate griddles specifically so we can kick out a freaking boatload of silver dollar pancakes, in plain and chocolate varieties.

I completely understand when folks are straight up hungry, especially with how good it starts to smell when I start drawing. If we don't have a separate griddle, I can usually squeeze 2 or 3 silver dollars on the griddle next to whatever art piece I'm working on. I try not to be a dick about my art; it's transient, it's edible, it was never my plan to be so damn good at this ish. I always try and put my clients and their guests ahead of my own ego.

What is the largest sized pancake art you have created? Have you ever thought about a video concept where you work with an engineer on some comically large mechanical flipper and make a large scale work like a landscape?

I've never thought about doing something massive like that, but it's a good idea and if there were an opportunity around me I'd leap on it. I need more engineering friends.

The biggest pancakes I've made have been about the size of my griddle, which I think is 12" x 15" or so. And they're always, like, renditions of classical art, or movie posters. I did the lineup of the Usual Suspects once, that was pretty bananas.

So what's the strangest pancake request you've had? Or tell us a story of a pancake that went horribly wrong...

Well, I once did a pancake of me making a pancake of me making a pancake...

It was real meta. Too meta. There's a picture of it floating around on the internet somewhere, but I think I might actually try and reprise it now that I've gotten so much better at this thing.

As far as pancakes that go horribly wrong...Man, there's plenty that have gone wrong. There's one in particular that's actually a pretty funny story.

Okay, so I was in a small town in Illinois, doing my first ever out-of-state pancake art event, and I did NOT have my shit together. Not only was my kit still SUPER minimal (I hadn't figured out how to do cocoa in my batter, I wasn't using colors, I hadn't even really figured out a good system for mixing)...I'd spent the previous night rolling around in forest park on acid, composing a REALLY long message to my ex-girlfriend about how set on proving myself to her I was and...look it was a weird day in my life. And one of my more unprofessional moments.

So I get my car packed pretty late and I'm racing out to this town's annual fair because it's 45 minutes away and I've only got 20 minutes to get there. I got lucky on the highway and no cops saw my madness. By the time I get there, I'm still halucinating a tiny bit. I need a table, I don't have water, I forgot my whisk, I forgot plates, I forgot paper towels. I remembered batter, thank god, and my griddle, but I was so embarassed. And the people were SUPER understanding! Seriously! They all ran around their fair and found me everything I needed. One woman ran back to her house and brought me HER whisk and I got the event under way.

And as soon as I flipped the first pancake, everyone was on my side. The novelty of what I was doing seemed to completely wipe away what a fucking idiot I was being, and I distinctly remember laughing to myself how ridiculous that is. It's, like...Unfair, or something. How the hell did I stumble into this??

So that long-ass message I sent my ex, she replies to it during the pancake event. And like a tripping idiot I take my phone out and read it, and it says all the things that, had I been a little wiser, I would've known were coming. And my heart just sinks to the bottom of my stomach. IMMEDIATELY AFTER that, the town's...prom queen? Beauty pageant winner? Whatever, she wants a portrait of her face in pancakes, and I'm still on the clock, so I swallow my sadness and fight my tears (made all the more intense by the lingering LSD) and get started...

and it's AWFUL. I mean, it's one thing to be an overly simple caricature, but...I made this chick UGLY. And she wasn't ugly, she was gorgeous. I knew it when I flipped it, I was like, ahhhh fuck. Fuck. 'Cause there's a whole line of people behind her that want their pancake too, and she's just looking at me like 'this guy is a goddamn joke'.

'Course, in retrospect, she did seem a little too full of herself for being small town prom queen. But that's judgy of me. I didn't really meet her. Point is, everyone else's pancakes were great, I got paid, and I drove home in one of the weirdest mindsets that I've ever been in.

The end.

We need to see that picture of a pancake of you making a pancake of you making a pancake.

I CAN'T FIND IT. AUGH.

I'll have to make it again, and SOON. Probably tomorrow. Ben and I need to find a hotel, crash for the night, wake up and get to caking.

How does one become a professional pancake artist?

That is the question, isn't it?

My story is weird. And kinda long. I'll try and get you the short version so you don't kill me for textwalling.

BASICALLY, when I got out of high school I had NO CLUE what I wanted to do with my life. I don't think I'm alone in this feeling. I was also scared of student debt, but more than that I just had no ambition, and no self-esteem. I didn't really think myself capable of doing awesome shit with my life. So I got a job at a diner and got married to someone that was...let's just say we were bad for each other.

But when you're aimless and despondent, fuck it! Right?

So I was working in a diner for shit wages, just kind of waiting to die, or have kids, or whatever, not really taking an interest in my own future, and I saw that folks on the busier shifts (I got slow shifts cause I was dumb and slow then) would put mickey mouse ears on their pancakes. I asked why, they said 'cause it makes their tips better. I thought, yeah, that makes sense...and then I thought, oh. So it doesn't have to be round?

I first served a piece of pancake art after toying with the idea for a few weeks and eventually promising myself that the next person to come in and order a pancake was gonna get the most exaggerated smiley face I could muster. When that person walked in, he had face tattoos, and gold teeth, and he looked like he'd had a rough day and if I tried any funny shit he would mop the floor with me. And I almost didn't make him the pancake.

But then I thought, 'That would be racist', and so I did it anyway.

I wish there were a way for me to illustrate the way his face changed when I slid his plate in front of him. That smiley face MADE THAT DUDES DAY. He was so impressed that he left me a $15 tip on a $3 stack of pancakes, shook my hand and thanked me for showing him something he had never seen before. And I thought, jeez. It worked once. I gotta keep doing it.

I finally made the transition to 'professional' after reddit made me famous around late summer 2013. There was a picture of me that just hung out at the top of the front page for a few days, and that whole shebang culminated in me getting invited on The Today Show. After THAT I started getting offers to come exhibit my talent at birthday parties and private events and such. And I kept doing it. I almost feel like I didn't really have a choice; the alternative was working in a diner for a LOT less than these folks were offering me.

What inspired you to start making pancake art? Were you the first that you knew to do it so well?

I did it for several years before I was good enough to even consider taking it seriously. I was a frycook in a diner trying to make my tips better, and that was the long and short of it for me. I was definitely pulling in better tips than other folks I worked with, and a lot of them tried to emulate what I was doing but lacked the patience or the knack for geometry that I possessed.

I gotta give props to my friend Tracy, who worked with me on graveyard shifts. She was the only coworker that held a candle to me and she's the reason I ended up figuring out how to layer your pancake art and draw an outline that you fill in later. Using the heat of the griddle to establish contrast, she blew my freaking MIND. She did a kickass spongebob that changed my future, man. Respect, Tracy.

I feel like we all need a Tracy in our lives. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to ask more questions in these but do you have any other cool talents?

ASK AS MANY AS YOU LIKE I love talking about this stuff.

And, yes! I've got tons! If you're really interested, my band is called Psych Squared ( psychsquared.bandcamp.com ), and I'm the lead singer, lyricist, and composer on our first album - Painted Red. I'm really proud of it, but it's a whole helluva lot harder to get peoples' attention in the music scene than it is in the (relatively) untapped market of pancake art.

ALSO, I'm in the process of writing a book about my crazy adventures on the road as the pancake man, and I post my updates mostly on my facebook page, at facebook.com/drdancake . I will probably be talking about this AMA in tomorrow's update.

I'll definitely look into that band! And the book when it's published.

I definitely have a lot of questions. Haha.

How much would you charge for a pancake portrait?

What is your favorite pancake that you've made?

Do you beatbox?

Pancake Portraits are free if you find my at an event IRL. If you want to commission one online, I think we charge $25 for images, and $50 for time lapse videos. Prices subject to change based on request complexity, etc, but yeah. That's my usual rate.

My FAVORITE pancake, ever? Hard to say. I've got a lot that I'm really proud of. I guess right now I'd say the Thor I did in the Avengers video. The colors, the shape, the contrast, everything worked out on that guy. And he got me more famous than I was, thanks to imgur and reddit. So, yeah.

I...kinda beatbox? I'm definitely no beardyman, but I've got rhythm and I can make noises with my face. I prefer to be rapping, though.

Hmmm well I don't suppose you'll be in Washington anytime soon? :D I'll beatbox for you if you'd like. Haha. Also, that Thor was sick.

Washington state? I'm going to Northern california in a few weeks to get my mom's car hand-me-down, and hell, if I can budget it, I'd swing through Washington. Don't y'all got legal recreational marijuana? I want in on that shit. Someone get me a bar gig and a bucket of cannabutter, I'll make a goddamn KILLING

Haha well I'm good friends with the daughter of the lady who makes the States most potent legal cannabutter. I'll hook you up lol

Wait, seriously? That's a helluva connection man. Are they like famed for their cannabutter?

What is your dream tour?

Interesting question.

My dream tour will happen after my band of hardy scientists have figured out how the hell to permanently preserve pancake art. Once that golden ticket is in place, I'd get my pancake truck, my band, my hip hop set, and I'd book showings of badass multicolor pancake murals in galleries across the world. Tokyo, right? I wanna be big in Tokyo.

Preserve it by freeze drying it. The issue us most lyophalizers aren't that big.

Remove moisture and preserve in a dry container, and it will last forever.

The process is basically, cool down to -80C using liquid nitrogen or a fridge, then reduce the pressure to ~200 torr. The Ice will sublimated leaving the structure of the cake unchanged.

Seal that cake in an acrylic case with some dessicated, and it'll last a lifetime.

1) what is a lyophalizer

2) holy hell thank you for the advice

3) freeze dryers are expensive. You wouldn't happen to know what sort of people are out there that might let me experiment with one of theirs, would you?

Get your hands on McDonald's pancake batter obviously.

Do they not degrade?

Man, that's an interesting idea.

Do you have a list of appearances or locations you'll be at besides Corvid's in the near future?

Hey! Well, at the moment I'm out on the road doing a tour of the southeastern US. So in the immediate future, it's Greenville, South Carolina (May 28th), Carrboro, North Carolina (May 29th), and then Louisville, Kentucky (on the 31st, christ I love Kentucky). After that, I oughta return to my usual Sunday mornings at Corvid's but since the success of the Avengers video my requests for long-distance bookings have skyrocketed. At the risk of jinxing the damn thing I may be set up at the BET experience in LA next month. I have a weird job.

Max Cassily and I have touched base over doing appearances at the City Museum on maybe Saturday afternoons, but we haven't locked anything in for certain so I'm hesitant to commit to anything. I'm only human!

What's the best syrup to go with your pancakes?

(Admittedly, I don't use syrup. I prefer blue agave nectar! But ever curious what you prefer...)

Pure canadian maple syrup has been my favorite to use so far, but it might have more to do with those neat glass maple leaves the stuff comes in than the actual flavor. I'm not that picky! If it's sweet and there's butter around then I'm a happy camper.

For my events I usually buy the gallons of various brands that they sell at restaurant depot. It's a bulk thing.

Try B class maple....

What's the difference between class b and class a, or whatever? I know I'm a pancake artist I feel like I should already know this

Not to trot out a sob story, but.....my kid's was in the hospital for a few days. 8 years old, bored out of his mind, listening to a baby in the next room crying and crying and crying. We entertained ourselves for awhile by looking at your pancake pics. He like the Nick Fury cake the most, I think.

I'm a fellow St. Louis person - we'll be at Corvid's when you come back - I'm assuming you'll let us know through FB? Kid has a request for you to make a Dancake of his super swollen face.

bahahahahahaha, super swollen face? I hope your kid's hungry!

I'll be returning home triumphantly in the wee hours of June 1st. So I oughta be at Corvid's the following sunday. Hank is handling the event while I'm out of town, and he's getting a lot better really quickly, so don't be afraid to go try and trip him up. He needs the punishment, he NEEDS IT

What was the hardest thing you've created into a pancake?

It's hard to say with certainty just because I've done so many and there's always different challenges depending on what the request is, what I'm drawing from, the environment I'm in, etc. The other night I did a rendition of The Joker holding his head and cackling from 'The Killing Joke'...It was pretty goddamn hard. You have to keep your mind on the fact that he's got little strands of hair passing between every finger, he's got intense wrinkles and laugh lines, he's got an expression of madness that is CRUCIAL to how he ends up looking on the flip.

I probably could've pulled it off better than I did, but it was a dark room, and I was ten feet away from one of the loudest and smoothest jam bands going ape shit on the solos...I don't think the guy I was cooking for even noticed. Artist is always his biggest critic, I guess.

Can you make a DickButt pancake for us?

You must not follow me on instagram or vine:

https://vine.co/v/eA0pZbEuWFL

I sure as hell am now

yes, YES...JOIN US

If I ask nicely, will you make me a raptor-cake? Pretty please? With unhealthy amounts of butter and syrup on top?

If you ask me in person, I'll do it for you as many times as you like. If you just want me to make one and send you a picture or something, I consider that a commission, and I charge a small fee for that kind of work.

But yeah, at my events I never charge for pancakes. When I get a food truck I will, but for now I just charge folks an hourly and so long as I'm making that, I give all the cakes free of charge.

What's your recipe for a quick and tasty pancake to make at home?

I hope you don't hate me for it, but I seriously use a just-add-water mix. I don't wanna have to worry about eggs, milk, butter, vanilla, whatever else people put in their pancake batter (one guy uses applesauce and I tend to think it's why my pancakes always look so much better than his...).

The way I see it, if the product tastes good, and it requires next to no prep and cleanup effort on my part, that gives me more time and energy to devote to making pancakes that look so good you can't even really tell that they're pancakes.

Kick your griddle on, mix some batter, cook that shit, plate that shit, cover that shit in syrup and butter, god damn.

So who is Hank? Is he a pancake artist too? Or just a friend? I've seen some of his posts, did you make those or him? Like dickbutt?

Hank! I'm glad you asked!

So! Hank is, for all intents and purposes, my best friend and confidant, my manager, my assistant, my apprentice, and my general go to guy for keeping my neuroses from devouring me. I think for the first 6 or 7 months we hung out he basically spent most of his energy trying to keep me from losing my mind to black mold (long story, I'll tell you when you're older).

He co-owns the Dancakes brand with me, and in the last few months he's slowly taken on more and more of the responsibility for handling our booking inquiries. Alo! When we inevitably get a food truck, he's already got the licensing to drive the thing, and he's WAY better (and more interested) at dealing with government bullshit, licensing and insurance and what have you. For lack of a better word, Hank is my rock. It's pretty bromantic.

And He's also my test-subject for the bulk of my pancake art curriculum. I figure, if I can teach him to get on my level, I can teach other people too. And, hahaha, yeah. He did the Dickbutt. And the Sad Pepe. He's a funny motherfucker.

Nice! You always need a Robin to your Batman! Plus his pancake art is looking good. Also a food truck?! I'm there

He's simultaneously my Robin and my Alfred. Without him my life would probably fall to shit in about three weeks, lol.

And, yes! We tried to do a kickstarter for it back in 2014, but we hadn't really figured out what we were doing yet and it didn't go through. But we learned a lot, and we're gonna launch another one here in a couple months. Keep your eyes open!

What's your thoughts on the future of breakfast? For example it's no longer a sit down and eat but more grab and run.

Breakfast is becoming less and less about a time of day and more and more about a style of food. You can get breakfast all day at a lot of fast food joints now, and diners have always been like that. I personally ADORE breakfast food; I'll take a plate of bacon and eggs over a sirloin steak literally every day of the week. It might just be how that damn diner conditioned me, but, yeah. Breakfast is my religion.

Whaddup Dan! What'd you get at Dennys? Better be pancakes!

Bahahaha. I'm literally sitting in another Denny's right now (I'm assuming you're referring to my post from yesterday??) drinking coffee next to Ben. And, uh, duh. I don't get high on my own supply, so I gotta get my pancakes SOMEWHERE.

I'm talking bout your post from 20 minutes ago home boy!

buuhhhhhhh yeah okay I'll get some fuckin pancakes

On a more serious note, how do you feel now that you've stormed the reddit front page not once, but twice now?

I'M GOIN TO DISNEYLAND

Real talk though, it's really awesome. And it's been kind of unexpected every time. I never thought this would be my job, and that I would gain a level of international notoriety doing it, but here I am, doing an AMA on reddit at midnight out of a Denny's in the Florida panhandle. It's nothing if not exciting.

How will reaching the front page change your life? Aka, where do you see yourself in the long run?

Food truck fleet. Restaurant chain. Series of autobiographical books. A launchpad for my hip hop and rock n roll career. I got a lot of big plans. Believe me, this is barely even the beginning.

Hey man! I've seen your work before and I live in St louis.. where can I check out one of those tasty pancakes in person?

Hollaaaaaa

Well, the best bet you have to find me in public in STL is to come check out Corvid's Cafe's Sunday Brunch. They're an AWESOME little restaurant run by the sweetest people in the world and they gave me an amazing opportunity to get paid honing my skills. Anyway, they're in the kingshighway hills neighborhood at 5001 Mardel Avenue, and I'm there on Sunday mornings from 10am to 2pm, usually alongside Dave Black who is a PHENOMENAL jazz guitarist. He gives my art a freaking beautiful soundtrack. I can't wait to get back home from this tour so I can work Corvid's again!

If and when I'm not there, Hank or another Dancakes Pancake Artist are usually working that event. I like to maintain brand visibility and I like to teach people how to do what I do, so it works out.

In your opinion what's the best sausage?

You mean patties or links?

Bro. Patties. Patties, bro.

My landlord told me I live in your old apartment behind courtesy. Is this true? The kitchen is yellow.

DUDE IS YOUR LANDLORD CRAIG

Could u please consider doing a video with all the Breaking Bad characters?

We've definitely talked about something like that. It would be right up our alley; everyone involved in my company ADORES that show. I gotta catch up on Better Call Saul, too.

But yeah, keep your eyes open and follow us and I'm sure something like that'll pop up soon.

I've see you! You made me this! It was awesome seeing you work. WHat sort of artistic training do you have? gl with all your ventures and stop by /r/StLouis sometime!

Hey man! That's an old school dancake, I use a lot more colors in my process now. Thanks for sharing it!

As for artistic training, I'm totally self-taught...I WANTED to go to art school out of high school but I had an AWFUL academic record (because of issues at home, because of lack of ambition, because of a lot of things). Fortunately, part of the reason my grades were so shitty was that instead of paying attention in my classes I was drawing, writing, and daydreaming. I got lucky with the pancakes. It was quite the splendid twist of fate.

I'll definitely have to spend a little more time on reddit after this. I'll visit sometime.

How's Chris Powers, Jr. doing?

This is over my head. I don't know Chris Powers, Jr. Halp?

Didn't you use to work at Tiffany's?

Nope! My ex wife did. I worked at Courtesy, on S. Kingshighway.