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 264: Write about romantic love without mentioning sex.
I am heavily involved with this chick right now. It’s great! She feeds me and cleans and lights candles and sprays nice smells and kills bugs and hangs Halloween decor and puts DVDs into the PS3 and picks me up at bars and roots on Cleveland sports and snuggles and sprays lotion on me at the beach and does my laundry and buys me presents and rubs my back and gives me hummers. I wish my wife’s sister wouldn’t have to leave already. Oh! Wah, wah, waahhhh. Fucking hack.
DAY 261: Expand your vocabulary: Find a word you don’t know and write a bit about it.
The word I’m doing today is NDE. It stands for Near Death Experience. I had one this past weekend. I went out to the beach to dominate some peaks with a buddy of mine. We swam out pretty far and didn’t realize that we were also caught in a rip current. I’m floating around, waiting for the next wave to snag up. Meanwhile, he starts saying “Dude, I can’t feel the ground.” I realized how far out we went and noticed it was about 60 yards from the shore. So we started fighting the current and swimming like crazy, which is what you’re NOT supposed to do. But in any case, I ended up swallowing 3 huge gulps of water and got stuck under water 2 times. It was pretty crazy and I actually thought once, “Shit, my weight’s gonna kill me.” Only because I knew how tired I got while trying to swim. Eventually we got in enough where the waves were breaking and our feet was touching, thank God. Needless to say, the physical activity level was fairly high and I marked my Weight Watchers with 6 points, creating the new category “cheating death”.
DAY 246: Write a bit about exotic animals.
I wanna own an exotic animal. Something crazy. Like a skunk. Then I could just have him spray my asshole neighbors or my friends who piss me off when they beat me at Madden. It’d be so funny to see him move around the apartment. I’d be like, “hey, look at how my skunk is indoors and moving around the apartment.” I guess I’d need to figure out how to not smell it, because I doubt I’d get used to it. I’ll mark it on my long term list of goals.
DAY 240: Go outside and write a bit.
I’m in Cleveland and all I see are hopeful fans. One thing that bugs me though is that our Indians owner, Dolan, thinks nothing’s wrong with the Tribe? He says “oh, we made $10K last year. That’s good money!” Are you fucking serious?! What we need to do is get rid of Dolan, then work our way down. First thing’s first. Get rid of Slider. Fuck him as a mascot. What the fuck is he anyways? A bird? A dinosaur jacked up on acid? I remember a time in high school when he came to a rally, shot off hot dogs as he is so famously known for doing, and we just threw the dogs back at him. Sure we got yelled at as a school, but man you shoulda saw his face. It looks the same as it always does, but it looked hilarious on him that day. I say, ban him and bring on a real Native American Indian. From Arizona! And have Friday scalping days. We literally scalp a fucking human during the 7th inning stretch at 2nd base. Not only a human though, but a fugitive. We’ll post his picture in the Plain Dealer during Sunday’s edition and have fans scouring the town to find the dude, just so we fill 44,000 seats on Friday. I mean, our mascot can be the Native American guy on horseback, holding a fucking human head, dripping with blood down his arm, as he battle cries for us to hit the ribbie in the bottom of the third. That’s how it should be. Oh Cleveland. City of lights, city of magic.
DAY 237: Free associate on what’s going on in your life right now.
Right now I’m on vacation…in Cleveland. I love how my old hometown is the new vacation spot. I love coming home. But after 5 years, I also feel dopey as shit sometimes when I’m driving around, using a Garmin, getting lost. I’m like “Christ dude, how did you forget to get around?” But I love seeing Browns and Indians gear all over. I love seeing bar signs saying “Go Browns!” I don’t see it enough in NC, obviously. In Wilmington, if I see someone wearing Cleveland or Buckeye shit, I strike up a conversation. In Cleveland, everyone’s wearing it, so I’d get rubbernecked if I did that. But I want to, I really want to. Just bark and verbally assault everyone in Cleveland about Cleveland shit. Ahhh, I love being home.
DAY 236: Write a comedy bit that’s purely physical.
8 AM - Alarm sounds. Slam it. Up already in my outfit.
Cut to:
8:13 AM - Car screeches up, buddy jumps in, screeches out.
Cut to:
8:21 AM - Car screeches to stop. Trunk opens. Poker chip looking suitcase is pulled out. Trunk closes.
Cut to:
8:27 AM - Suitcase opens. Wrench looking device is pulled out. Head nod from me. Head nod from buddy. Hand is tweaking an LED Sign with the wrench.
Cut to:
8:33 AM - Head nod from me. Head nod from buddy. Hand puts wrench away. Suitcase closes. Scurry away.
Cut to:
8:39 AM - Car screeches away. High fives. Buddy tells me to go “this way.”
Cut to:
8:43 AM - Car pulls up to LED sign. It reads “Welcome College Grad Families! Your daughter had sex last night”.
DAY 235: Analyze a comic you haven’t seen before. What does he or she do right that you’d like to try in your writing?
I’ve decided to do Jim Breuer, because let’s be honest, he’s fucking hilarious. I’ve never seen him live, so I’m gonna use him. Let’s do his infamous “Alcohol” bit.
1. I love his crazy sound effects and dialects.
2. It’s best when he acts like the guy questioning himself out loud - “I don’t know what happened tonight.” - I enjoy acting as if also. Talking like how you think they might have talked in that situation. He does it again when he goes “he’s here man” when he’s acting like Beer.
3. I like how he imitates each of the alcohols.
4. When he says “what’s up” and “he’s crazy man”, it’s hilarious because he talks how I do. He reminds me also of my brother and how my bro talks.
5. Stomach if funny too. As the bouncer. All throughout. Especially when he goes “I had it up to here now.”
6. I like how he compares it to how a real party is - “People find out about the party”, “Not knowing each other, that creates tension.”
7. Heineken vs Scotch is an awesome premise.
8. Saki is the best accent.
9. Tequila stereotypes is on point. I like the Tony Montana influence. I love the leg thing where they all sneak under his legs. But when he starts mimicking the Mexican music and them shooting off guns, I lost it.
10. Stomach kicking everyone out is a great ending.
DAY 234: Expand your vocabulary: Find a word you don’t know and write a bit about it.
Today’s word is fortuitous. It means “chance” or “lucky”. I am a firm believer that luck does come and help out a lot. Especially when you’re relying on others sometimes to get ahead. But these people that take Extra work so serious drive me nuts. They rely on luck. They don’t spend thousands of dollars on classes, headshots and marketing collateral to advance their careers. They rely on some Director to say “get that bald guy in this scene and have him say ‘He went that way!’”. Fuck off! I’ve spent the money, I’ve taken the time to learn the craft. Drives me nuts. But, I never rely on luck and never get excited about possible opportunities or connections. I just keep pluggin along doing my thing and hope one day it pays off. Fuck luck. It’s only good as a skill factor in Tiger Woods 2007.
DAY 232: Edit some of your older material.
CAR HORN - How about when your car horn not collecting your anger! if someone cuts me off and I wanna use my car horn, I go to do it and it goes “beep” real pussy-like and you’re like FUCK! Why cant I have a freakin semi or tanker horn? I want it to sound like a lion and it sounds like the damn road runner. I want it sound like Russel Crowe in Gladiator and it sounds like Mark Wahlberg in Italian Job.
DAY 231: Ask a friend for a subject to write about, then make it funny.
I asked my ole lady and she told me to write about candles. Let me tell you about candles. I love em. I love smelling shit. I always smelled shit growing up. I love nostalgic smells and smells that are reminders of the past. I love how I have a friend who can’t smell. We always make fun of him. We’re like “Well at least you have music as a sort of nostalgia, Rick.” Then we make fun of how chicken tastes like steak to him. But candles. Yes, right. I love how candles are probably the most feminine thing a man buys and enjoys. We are all like “Hey, hand me that wrench. And light that fucking summer lemon candle, brah.” I always light candles when we’re gonna play hanky panky. You have to, that’s the other 50% reason we have them. Sometimes I just wanna eat the shit outta a candle. Sometimes it’s good to light a candle when you are having a rip fest…you know, to combat the fart molecules. Anyways, candles rule, I love em and I am loud and proud about it. Ya heard.
DAY 226: Write a very funny letter to the editor.
Dear ESPN the Magazine - This has nothing to do with you, but I don’t know how to get in touch with your TV station programmer, but wanted to take out my frustrations on you. Regarding your flagship show, SportsCenter, I wish to express the following concerns:
1. There are more NFL teams besides the Broncos and Jets.
2. There are more NFL players besides Tim Tebow, Mark Sanchez, Peyton Manning and Drew Brees.
3. No one cares about NBA shit, especially during the summer. Trades and shit? Yeah, no one cares. We would rather have live look-ins of training camps (again. besides the Jets and Broncos) and more Olympic coverage, but you screwed the pooch on that one. Oh, Dwight Howard might go here. Lebron James was spotted here. Nash this, Joe Johnson that. Care a lot, ESPN, a lot.
4. If you want to provide us with top quality sporting news, please have your anchors not be annoying. A list of the worst in order: John Buccigross, Sage Steel, Chris McKendry, *Chris Berman, Linda Cohn, **Trey Wingo.
*was cool when I was 12 (since has lost all cool)
**never was cool
5. Get rid of Erin Andrews. Her voice sounds like bad cartoon. Does she play the teacher in Charlie Brown?
6. Please put efforts into not repeating shit all day long. C’mon man!
7. Please lock the gates on Herm Edwards (the comedian) and Merril Hoge (the most unbiased, not in your face, non-Steelers fan).
8. Do more ESPN commercials.
9. Please have a VO actor dub all of Tim Kirchen’s dialogue.
10. Deliver more news about Cleveland (OK, now I sound like Hoge too).
That is probably only half the shit, but I gotta go watch SportsCenter.
DAY 225: What did you want to be when you were a kid? Write a comedic piece on what your life would be like if you were that.
Sorry this is a day late. I was too busy yesterday dominating the PGA Championship peak in person. But I’m gonna do a quick one-liner bit for today’s post. Assume you’re standing there and you wanna get in that quick side story to your friend, but don’t want to steal his thunder, because you know your story isn’t great (and you want to avoid a “Cool story bro, tell it again” moment), so you do a quick one-liner blurb just so you can get it out of the way. Here’s mine: “I wanted to be a Doctor so much that I took Latin classes in High School, which I stunk at, and then in college for my 1 language course because that’s the only language I knew. Turned out to be my only D I ever got in my life and I still don’t know anything about old Greek mythology.” So you were saying that the Browns look like shit this year?
DAY 224: Write something funny about your body.
PENAL IMPLANT - This old Mexican guy who had 2 daughters came into the ER, and the girls are complaining about him having a heart attack. He was sweating profusely and he’s grabbing his chest. He’s beating on his chest, like a damn ape. So we take him in the trauma room and of course his daughters aren’t allowed in. And we get the gist of his story as we’re working on him that his new wife isn’t with him, but she’s en route. So we put him in the trauma room. And this one nurse who spoke Spanish is tryng to say to him “do you have chest pain?” And he’s saying “Grande mucho pain, grande mucho pain.” And we have an EKG on him to see what his hearts doing and he’s going “no, no, no, no, no” with his hands. He stands up and pulls down his zipper and his penis is big and black. So we got an issue here and we come to find out that he had a penal implant cause he had a new young wife and didn’t want to tell his daughters that the penal implant was for his new wifey. So we cover him back up and the Chief shuffles in (a little Fillipino guy who always had his hands in his pocket) and pulls back the curtain, thinking he’s gonna see a heart attack victim and he goes “Jesus Christ, God Damn.” He puts ice on his junk, calls the squad for some pain medication, and rushes him back to the Cleveland Clinic where he had the implant. It’s like a god damn Cialis commercial, “Call the doctor after 4 hours if your new wife fucked up your penal implant, literally.” Blood flow is just messing his shit up. Oh, and his lying to the daughters.
