Writer’s Bloc

It’s been almost a month since I’ve posted anything. I know most of you have probably been wondering “what’s going on with Calvin? Why’s he not writing anything? Is it my fault?”. The answer, dear reader(s), is that it isn’t your fault. It’s just that for the past or month or so I’ve been over come with a crippling case of writer’s block. Well, like everything I say and write, that’s an over-exaggeration. What I’ve actually had these past few weeks is a bad case of Samuel Clemens Syndrome.

For those of you who don’t know… ah who am I kidding, everyone knows that Samuel Clemens is Mark Twain’s real name (Twain was a stage name). In Clemens 2nd most famous book, The Adventures of Huck Finn, he was overcome with a severe case of writer’s block about 2/3 of the way through the book. Because of the deadlines his publishing company had administered , Twain was forced to rush out the third of the book and that’s why it has the sort of helter-skelter, seemingly rushed ending*. So what does any of this have to do with me? Well for the past few weeks I’ve started several different posts and have been unable to find a satisfying way of ending them. So instead of mucking up potential gold like Clemens did, I’ve just decided not to write anything. Yet at the same time, I don’t want to go a month or more in between posts, so I’ve been at a loss about what to do.

Finally an idea came to me that was just crazy enough to work, I thought “Why don’t I write about not being able to write anything”. Then the more I thought about it, I started to dislike the idea. I mean writing a blog about writing, isn’t that like those a—holes in Hollywood who go ‘Hey, why don’t we make a movie about making a movie!’ and then everyone nods in agreement thinking it’s a great idea. But honestly how many movies have you seen with that premise that didn’t entirely suck? Did I really want to be potentially associated with those types of people. The answer is no, I don’t want to be ‘that guy’. But desperate times call for desperate measures, so I am going to be one of those a-holes… kinda.

Below you’ll find a brief summary of some of the things I almost wrote about in the past month. I guess in a way this is like my b-sides album. Enjoy.

Title: A Different Kind of Cool
Synopsis: A self indulgent story of me attending a Rouge Wave concert and remembering when I actually use to do things, i.e. have a social life.
Potential Jokes: A joke/question about which group has a bigger disparity in the attractiveness of couples, hipsters or Mormons**.

Title: A Truly Super Sunday (working title)
Synopsis: A post about, you guessed it, the Superbowl
Potential Jokes: Not too many jokes would have made it into this post. I would have reiterated how it was the best Superbowl ever and that after the game I had the same pleased look on my face that Viggo Mortenson had in the scene from “A History of Violence” where his wife came to bed wearing her high school cheerleader uniform. I then would have noted, most likely in a footnote, that Viggo and I had different reasons for sporting the ‘completely shocked and extraordinarily happy’ face. I also had some a few Tiki Barber jokes to throw in there as well.

Title: That’s Amore
Synopsis: An autobiographical piece about how I’m always disappointed by any slice of pizza I order
Potential Jokes: No jokes here, this one’s a tragedy.

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Title: Time to Finally Give Peace a Chance
Synopsis: My reaction to the news that Israel is finally apologizing to the Beatles for canceling the bands tour there 43 years ago.
Potential Jokes: Me wondering how the New York Times writer missed the obvious gag of something along the lines of: 'apparently the Israeli government didn’t want their youth corrupted by songs like Come Together and Give Peace a Chance'. And I had another one about hoping that the Israeli government showed their musical chops by sending George Harrisons’ apology letter to Eric Clapton. I also probably would have noted that Ringo still sucks.

Title: A Roller Coaster Ride (Probably would have changed the title once I realized that no one associate it with the Belle & Sebastian song like I intended)
Synopsis: An investigative look into the highs and lows of online sports gambling
Potential Jokes: The one about how I won 260 dollars on a 5 dollar 3-team parlay bet and then lost most of my winnings by betting on Rodger Federer in the Australian Open. Wait, that wasn’t a joke, that actually happened to me. F*ck! In other news, I have a gambling problem.

Until We Meet Again
* There’s actually a much more viable theory to this, but it’s not nearly as fun and would kill my entire point, so I’m just not going to mention it.
** The Answer: Mormons, by a large margin. While hipsters, scenesters or what ever the hell you want to call them tend to put some lopsided couples out on the market, no one comes close to Mormons in this area. And those f*ckers get have multiple girls that are out of their league. Unforgivable.