The longer story

Honolulu, then the Inland Empire

I was born in Honolulu in 1975. In 1984 my mother moved us to San Bernardino, and I grew up as the poor kid who kept getting into places without quite belonging to them: first San Bernardino, then the University of Southern California. That position, inside enough to understand a place and outside enough to notice what's absurd about it, never left. It's in my journalism, my comedy, and the way I look at any organization I join.

Writing came first

At USC I studied English with an emphasis in creative writing, in the program run by T.C. Boyle, and took every film class at the cinema school I could get into. All I wanted was to write. The question was how to get paid for it.

Journalism was the first answer. I wrote celebrity biographies for PublicFigure.com, went from intern to editorial assistant at the Yucaipa News Mirror, where I also shot the photographs and laid out the pages, then reported for the Venice Paper after I moved to Los Angeles. I reviewed films for WriteMovies and wrote as "The Cynical Blur" for MovieSetNews.com. On my own time I kept writing: a memoir about growing up in the Inland Empire, a satirical novel, screenplays, stories and essays.

Comedy made me the author and the infrastructure

In the mid-2000s I worked with the sketch troupe The Billingsley Estate and helped create Big News, a weekly stage show and newsletter at iO West in Hollywood. I produced it, ran the camera, contributed a few sketches and hosted one show. Between 2004 and 2007 it produced about 170 sketches and a television pilot pitch, and I ran its website. I also wrote topical comedy for radio stations across the country at Premiere Radio Networks.

In 2007 my friend Brandon Burkhart and I founded StudioFred, a comedy video company from the early days of YouTube. We wrote, acted, shot, edited and did our own effects; I did everything on the production side and handled the technology. Big News became Top Story! Weekly, and for eleven years I was its entire video department: I shot, cut and posted every show and ran the channels. The most-watched episode passed 566,000 organic views, and we never paid for traffic. The footage I kept is a record of a Los Angeles sketch scene that would otherwise be gone.

Photography as a way of keeping the world

I got into photography around 2004 as an assistant to another photographer, and I've shot freelance since 2008: events, concerts, theater, weddings, headshots and step-and-repeat. My pictures live at rjmillsphotography.com. I was the house photographer at iO West from 2012 to 2014, and I've assisted the fine-art photographer Eric Minh Swenson for years. Most of what I photograph is people making something together, on stages and in galleries, classes, rehearsals and parties. The camera gives me a role in the room, and the pictures outlast the night.

A hundred episodes about art

From 2020 to 2022 my friend Chris Korbel and I made Arts & Entertainment with Chris & Randall: a hundred episodes on modernism and post-modernism, whether video games or photography count as art, the CIA and abstract expressionism, Hilma af Klint, Marcel Duchamp, and Hitler's taste in painting. I handled production, audio and distribution, and every episode is still up.

Operations: carrying scale

From the summer of 2017 to 2026 I worked for a lifeguard and aquatics company and ended up as its de facto operations and staff manager. It grew from a seasonal Southern California business into a year-round one with national reach, with about 300 staff at peak. I took shift coverage from around 60% to 100% while it grew, pushed the training side until the company was one of the American Red Cross's top lifeguard certifiers in 2025, and landed a YMCA contract. I spent about a year finding the software the company now runs on, then got the owners and staff to adopt it without any authority to require it.

Behind those numbers was a library I built and kept up: emergency action plans, facility guides, training calendars, certification trackers, forms and memos. And a lot of young lifeguards got their first serious job.

AI work brings it all together

Since 2024 I've designed software and directed AI agents to build and run it: eleven live products on a server I maintain myself, with payments, databases, email, print-on-demand fulfillment, monitoring, and an agent that looks after the rest overnight. It's the first field big enough to hold nearly everything I've done. Journalism becomes product copy. Comedy becomes concept and voice. Photography becomes visual judgment. Operations becomes workflow design, and managing people becomes directing agents and reviewing their work.

Community

I've been a Mensa member since 2002. In 2007–08 I produced the first StaRGazing stand-up show for Greater Los Angeles Area Mensa, headlined by Frank Conniff. Now I'm co-chairing StaRGazing 2027, the regional gathering, which means the program, the promotion, the budget, the registration system and everything in between. I've also volunteered with the American Red Cross and trained and certified a lot of lifeguards. These days I also run the lights for a stand-up show in Calabasas.

One temperament

Reporter, critic, comedy writer, photographer, videographer, producer, trainer, operations manager, server administrator, product designer, organizer. They aren't different people. I notice the gap, learn the tools, take responsibility, make the thing, and keep the record.