This article appeared in the Summerlin View, a newspaper here in Las Vegas. The article appeared January 20, 2006. To view the article as it appeared, click here.

The Message is the Medium for Resident:
Summerlin Man Goes Into Parody Business

By Jan Hogan
View Staff Writer

There are plenty of billboards out there, but none like Scott Roeben's. The Summerlin resident has an entire Web site—www.dribbleglass.com—partly devoted to slightly-ascewed, always irreverent parody billboards he'd like to see.

Apparently other people would like to see them, too. His site with 300 humorous observations on roadside advertisements regularly receives 800,000 hits a month.

The billboard messages include: "Sushi—still your best bet for intestinal worms," "Las Vegas—it's only a gambling problem if you're losing." Some of the billboards carry more adult-oriented humor.

In addition to billboards, Roeben's site is packed with parody movie posters, humorous photographs and articles.

Roeben grew up as a military brat. His teen years were spent in Hawaii, where he fit in by joining his high school's theater group.

"It was my way of getting out of being beaten up," he said. "The military is not well received there and here I was, this skinny little white guy. It was like having a target on your back."

Besides theater class, he and a couple of friends performed mime for tourists for fun.

He later was a columnist for the University of Hawaii's newspaper. At the same time, he indulged his creative side in improv. He graduated from college with a degree in communications.

Roeben spent nearly a decade at the Writers Guild of America, in Los Angeles, where his creative side came out in different projects. One of the things he didn't joke about was letting the public know how valuable writers are—that everything from jingles to slogans to the descriptions on movie storyboards is done by writers.

Technology proved the perfect outlet for his humorous side.

"When the Internet came about, it provided a national platform for me," he said. "With Photoshop, the average person can suddenly do all these miraculous things."

Roeben came to Las Vegas after taking a job as communications and content manager for travel site LasVegas.com. He left there a few months ago and now devotes all his time to his parodies.

Matt Phillips was a fellow employee at the travel site.

"We'd be in a serious meeting and he'd come up with the one sentence that added a moment of levity to the situation," Phillips said. "There's always something funny going on in his head."

Not everyone appreciates Roeben's sense of humor.

"A lot of the corporate targets, they're sometimes not thrilled with what I do," Roeben said. "Their lawyers occasionally send me a cease and desist letter. Some are nastier than others."

Krispy Kreme, he said, was not amused when his parody suggested overweight people ate the company's product, so he changed it to read Dunkin' Donuts. So far, no one from that company has contacted him.

Roeben's site is popular because "the material on it is viral," he said. "Friends tell their friends about it. There are companies out there that would slit their throats to have a marketing (vehicle) like this."

Now Roeben has put out a small book, with everything from how the site came about to the meaning of life. The book is titled "Dribbleglass.com's Twisted Billboards" and comes with 10 refrigerator magnets featuring some of his top parodies. It's being sold at various venues, including Barnes & Noble Booksellers and Amazon.com.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Dave Barry said of the book and accompanying magnets "These billboards are sick, perverted, gross and tasteless. But in a good way."

"Dribbleglass.com's Twisted Billboards" is published by Running Press, a company known for producing quirky miniature book kits such as "Therapist in a Box" and "Mini Office Voodoo Kit."

The billboard book came about as a direct result of the Web site. Every writer's dream come true, a publisher contacted him out of the blue and asked him to write the book. He was not only paid an advance, but was given a contract to write a second palm-sized book.

Sarah O'Brien, editor of Running Press, said she found the billboards "absolutely hysterical. We find humor does sell, especially in these little kits we put out. Our target market, they like (humor that's) kitschy and lightweight, and his stuff lends itself to that."

The book took all of two weeks to write, but it took two years before it came to fruition. There were legal clearances to jump over before the parody went to press.

Roeben's family always indulged his creative side but is confused by his book.

"My grandmother said to me, 'You got a B.A. in college, but nobody would know it by reading this,' " he said. "And my parents, they don't get it, either."

Roeben said ideas for billboards hit him when he's in the shower or while he's out and about. The site brings him instant gratification—he can post a new billboard in 10 minutes.

"Sometimes I'll put up something on the site and then I'll ask myself, 'Is that really funny?' " he said. "I'm always second-guessing myself."

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