DAY 362: Edit some of your older material.

Here’s an edited scene from the Dale Archdale feature film. Screw editing.

INT. FANCY RESTAURANT - FRONT ENTRANCE - EVENING

The Restaurant staff are dressed in black dress pants with white dress shirts and black ties. A STRING QUARTET serenades all the well-dressed DINING PATRONS.

Music stops and everybody turns to look at Dale and his crew entering. Dale wears a tuxedo print T-shirt and Archie sports a plain white T-shirt with a black clip-on tie. Renee wears a leopard tattered dress with the red thrift store tag still attached. The boys all have slicked back hair and are wear matching plaid shirts with jean shorts. Rick is wearing old-fashioned night-out gear.

Dale spits chew in a cup he’s holding as he approaches the HOT HOSTESS, a twenty-year old blonde.

DALE: Table for six.

Dale is misunderstood because of the large dip deflecting his speech.

HOT HOSTESS: Excuse me?

The dip spit dribbles onto his chin.

DALE: Six. Table.

Dale tries to catch the dribble on his chin.

DALE: Woops.

Renee jabs him with her elbow.

RENEE: There’s six of us.

DAY 358: Write a bit about the holiday season from an unusual point of view.

It’s the hawliday seesers. And friends of friends. And little ole friends. Then you meet some friends of fwiends, and they become your fwiends. They’ll be coming down the chimney town. You put a big spac spuck upon the duck. Hanging from the window tree-ee. It’s the hawliday season. Friends of those fwiends get the fwiends. Doopa-doopa-doobity-do.

Above is a picture of my name in the credits in the film, Parental Guidance. Make sure you go see it in theaters now!

DAY 356: Write a follow-up piece to something you’ve already finished.

Here is an excerpt from the Dale Archdale feature film, set to start shooting February 15th! Screw format.

EXT. FAIRGROUND - WALKWAY - DAY

Security Guard 1 and Security Guard 2 walk up to Fauxman, holding the chili. He nods and raises his hands insinuating that they should follow him.Rick looks around discouraged. He see some laxatives on a table. He grabs them and rushes off.

Rick encounters BAMBIE, a hot female thirty-something.

BAMBIE: Excuse me, can you tell me if these feel ripe?

Bambie is holding 2 melons up against her large tits. Rick stutters and looks around. He grabs em.

RICK: They feel good to me.

She smiles.

DAY 355: Write about your earliest holiday memories.

My earliest holiday memory was when I was really little and my siblings actually woke ME up for Christmas. I was 6 and they were in their late teens. Go figure that one out.

DAY 353: Write a funny poem and perform it at a poetry slam.

I wish, I wish but for a chance

To have a peek at the last dance

For a time will come where we can cheer

For a chance to subscribe to SI, get the free football and bark highlights over a beer

About how this was the team, the one that won

These were the players whom would echo the conversations of who was second to none

Oh my, oh my, we took the cake

It was our time, these were the days

And as I reminisce about the days of old

All the hardships and tears that were shed in the cold

This victory was as much ours as theirs

For as a die hard Cleveland fan, nothing else matters…no one cares

So let’s go open a new credit card so I can buy all the shit

That comes with being the best in the world, this feeling wont quit…ever

DAY 352: Have someone read your comedy to you. What does hearing it tell you?

That I should give up and go back to MJW Careers work, ASAP. Oh yeah, “don’t ever give up” thing. Well it certainly isn’t going to be my focus after the Dale Archdale feature film. That is my last stab at producing, unless something comes out of it. No more short Youtube videos that cost me more money and time to make than views I actually do get. I doubt I will continue to do any live performing, like theater and standup. I don’t know if I’ll rejoin my improv group on Mondays. The only thing certain is that I will continue to write, because that’s what I wanna be when I grow up: a writer. So I will continue to write and start putting more efforts into finding a lit agent. As far as acting…I will continue to do auditions, because those only come once every 3 months, so that’s fine. As you can tell, it’s been a grind for the past 8 years and I am about at the end of my rope. I know some people go on for 40 years at this business and I commend them.  But with a family coming sooner than later, a house I wanna have with the ole lady and a new car probably in our future (mine this time), I need to be an adult. And that means growing MJW Careers. So I’m not going to necessarily “give up,” but I will dial it back a bit in 2013 and see what happens with MJW Careers as well as the Dale Archdale feature.

Quick summary of my 2013 focal points:

1. Dale Archdale feature film post-production, film festivals, distribution

2. MJW Careers - everything and anything, including finishing my job hunting book

3. Lit Agent - keep piling up my scripts and make my kit to send out to them

4. Capturing Smell feature film. It’s going to happen this year!

5. Start prepping for 2014: bringing motivational speaking/humor in the workplace development and branding back into my goals

DAY 350: New Year’s Eve is two weeks away! Start fixing up your end-of-the-year material now.

Dag gone dawg dang dong, man. It’s the end of the year. I feel like I’m an actor in a god dam Richard Simmons workout video at the end of every year. Like I’m motivated and wanting to be there, but then realizing all the shit I gotta do to get paid non-union pay plus a free copy of the shitty video, and so I decide to just stare at Simmons all afternoon between eating free crafty. Probably don’t even serve chocolate or pastry. Stuck with bananas all day. Which is fine! I need too anyway! At the end of every year, I enjoy watching stupid countdowns. VH1, MTV, Food Network, Golf Channel, whatever. Just give me a countdown, so I can rant about more morons I hate. I started my own countdown:

Top 5 Things That Irritated Me About the Year

5. The 2012 End of the World Shit. Alright, let’s think fuckers. You believe in other men’s ideas about the end of the world. I think we have a better chance that the Cleveland Browns win a Super Bowl then for the world to end anytime soon.

4. Female ESPN reporters. Go away. Just…go away. Acting like you’ve played the god damn game before. Reading teleprompters makes me smart in sports, I swear.

3. Cavs, Indians, Browns. Constantly. All the time. Forever. And ever. Thought I told you that we won’t stop, said the owners. Although, Haslam might be the gleam we’ve been waiting on. Wait, stop believing. It’s Cleveland. Yeah, right. Ahem. Nevermind. We still suck. Ahem. And we always will. Ahem.

2. Hunger Games. What a piece of shit. And that was the biggest movie this year? God help us. Might as well add on any Twilight shit that came out this year too. All of pop media makes me rather have the squirts for an entire night out, than having to watch Honey Boo Boo or Carrie Underwear.

1. The shootings. These asshole cowards need to keep within his own personal space. Don’t bother people besides yourself. Even if you’re the most fucked up through nature, nurture, both, whatever. Just maintain your own personal space and we’ll all be fine. I continue to pray for those children and their families. We must change, like the President said. Take care of mental illness. Face it head on!

DAY 339: Is what you’re writing relevant? What emotion do you want each bit to play off? Tailor your material to present your ideas more clearly.

I feel I like to develop a mixture of 2 types of comedies: Dumb (like Farrelly Brothers or Will Farrell) and Care (like Homer Simpson or Bill Murray). I think it hinges on slapstick and blue collar/toilet humor. So when someone says, “that’s so dumb” or “look how the lead guy doesn’t care about shit,” I think it gets me bones laughing the hardest.

DAY 329: Try another form of comedy writing, such as sitcom or essay writing. Just write outside of your comfort zone. 

I am currently writing a pilot to go into my literary agent kit. This kit is what I will use to try to get a literary agent. Here is a “scene pitch” from the pilot I am writing. It’s an HR comedy.

-It’s Office style where the camera blinks on from black…it shows a guy in the car screaming (low stomach kind of yell, like you’re lifting something, but also a battle cry mixed in with it) and pounding the dashboard and his buddy starts slamming a beer, then taking a shot of Tequilla, then hitting the joint…then the other guy and the yelling guy cheer at the guy slamming beer…then we quick cut of them sitting in lawn chairs as if they’re tailgating and slamming more beers…then smoking cigarettes and doing beer bong…then they look at watch and are like “fuck” so they put on their business clothes (like Superman style) and head into the office saying “man pregaming for work is the best.”

-Cut to a board meeting - one of the guys starts talking and he dribble pukes a little on himself, then picks back up where he was and barks smart terms (“cradle to grave”) as the stain just sits on the shirt

DAY 328: Expand your vocabulary: Find a word you don’t know and write a bit about it.

Today’s word is soft-peddle. It means underrated. I just watched Funny Farm and holy shit is that underrated. It has just as much Christmas in it as It’s a Wonderful Life. The way they present the characters and the rules of 3 throughout the movie is astounding. It’s almost John Hughes-esque. The script builds well and the jokes/characters that thread throughout are developed perfectly (all having a rule of 3). I do notice that it is a typical formatted 3 Act structured script, but so what. The final idea of them paying off the town, who have been dumb shits up until now, so that the new potential buyers think it’s a town straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting is brilliant. Plus, the performance of Chevy Chase. He does a great job combating the lead actress’ bad acting. I love when he goes “I could reach in with my bare hands and pull out fish.”

In writing, the best compliment I get is when someone says, “I like you’re shit, it’s so dumb.” Dumb meaning good. I think Funny Farm is so dumb.

DAY 327: Write a funny letter to a friend.

This past weekend I performed in my first reenactment. It was not the kind where we hoist muskets and charge at each other, but none the less, I was a Revolutionary War solder. I had lines to memorize and a whole outfit. How this worked was a friend of mine, who had to do this act of community service to aid with his DUI community service hours, and I would sit there for 15 minutes until a group of 30 people came over to our spot to hear us speak in English dialect about some of the history behind the park we were at. Then they would move onto the next station and we would sit there for another 15 minutes. I cannot tell you how hard I laughed all weekend. Shit was fun. However, we got into the characters so much (and my DUI friend is not an actor), that our Park Ranger friend, who signed us up to begin with, mentioned that his boss and co-workers LOVED us! They said we got so many compliments and shit. We knew we were dominating the reenactment peak, but we didn’t know we would be in such high demand. So here’s my letter to my Park Ranger friend, Jon:

Dear Jon,

No pun intended, as I am not attracted to you.

Anyway, the reenactment was a success. It would not have been had Dave and I not been there. We killed it. Now we have a list of demands that should be included in our contracts next year. Yes, we want contracts. Should you not meet these demands, we will not be back to charge up the crowds next year with some battle cry spirit.

1. Trailer that allows us to park our car in it so we remain discrete, 2 air purifiers, and is furnished with helium-filled red balloons

2. Guitar case for collections

3. 5-piece background band so we can sing drinking songs while we wait

4. Slice of Life pizza

5. Authentic 18th century beer mugs with Moore’s Creek Battlefield coozies

6. Williamsburg acting and dialect coach for tech rehearsals

7. 4th of July swag

8. Cornhole set

9. M&Ms with only the red, white and blue included

10. A bunch of free PBRs and 5 Hour Energies

11. 100 figs and prunes in some aluminum foil

12. Framed photo of Benedict Arnold

13. 25 cases of Kabbalah Water

14. 7 dwarves dressed up as those dwarves out of that film about the dwarves

15. Peach colored toilet tissue to match our complexion

16. Dave wants a life sized cut-out of himself

17. No less than 19 6-foot tall leafy green plants and 4 6-foot tall plants should adorn our dressing room in the trailer

18. And the dressing room must be draped with Moroccan drapes

19. A fresh scrubbed and disinfected backstage toilet at temperatures of exactly 78 degrees

20. Coffee that must be stirred counter clockwise

21. A physician back stage to administer B-12 shot

DAY 321: Write 5 topical jokes.

1. So Knickerbocker fans are finally happy again with the team’s 6-0 record start. I’m so glad that the largest city in the country with the most shit to do than any other city in the world is finally back to being happy. I would hate to see them react if Spike Lee actually made a good movie anytime soon.

2. Miguel Cabrera won the AL MVP. In other news, some kid in Venezuela just got his wings.

3. Petraeus came for the Libya hearings today. That’s not the only time he came today.

4. Jesse & Joy take 4 Latin Grammys. In similar news, my 6th grade volcano science project won too.

5. Hostess, maker of Twinkies, to go out of business. I have to run…the gun in my closet’s calling me.

DAY 319: Thanksgiving is a week away! Write 3 turkey jokes now.

1. What do they call Thanksgiving in 18th century England? Skanksgiving. Take my wife, please!

2. What did the first pilgrim say to the Indian? Orange ya glad I didn’t say I was Thomas Hunt.

3. How do know when the turkey is done? He leaves his Senate seat.

DAY 317: Write a funny letter to the editor.

Dear Resume Writers of America Magazine Editor,

Please stop trying to sell resumes to people for $400. It takes you 2 hours at most to write one! Scamming on people who probably can’t afford bread let alone a piece of paper with some fancy font is not moral. It’s down right wrong. You should be ashamed of yourself.

That is all.

Matt

DAY 316: Rearrange the order of jokes in a piece. Does changing the order show you more places to put jokes?

No! Yes! New meme.