Why Blogging Is The Worst

My largest issue with blogging is the perceived need of the creator to produce content on a regular basis, which inevitably leads to shit content. Many blogs giving advice about blogging say that you should find a peak blogging hour to post and to do it regularly so that your audience knows you will always be there for them and blah blah blah…

Why must we pretend like we always have something important to say? Why can’t Anderson Cooper just pop on screen and say, "the plane is still missing, there are still not enough jobs, and Obama is doing something that you find displeasing?"

I think that blogs have done to creative writing what the twenty-four hour news circuit has done to journalism. I’m sure there are probably thousands of blog posts communicating this very idea. It is almost as though this medium, which was meant to give anyone and everyone the power of publishing and distributing through a digital medium, has become so large and over-saturated that it is in fact, stifling and murdering the creative impulse.

I caught myself thinking, why should I care what time of day I post a blog post? Especially considering that my audience is essentially my girlfriend… and she’s just making sure I’m not trash talking her on any public forums.

Love you, sweetie.

But I feel as though if we as a people want to hail the Internet as a landmark achievement in human history, we should regard it with respect, and try not to soil it with even a silver-lining of nonsense.

Porn is fine.
The weirder the better.
Just shut up about your cat.

Love, me.

Eric Wong is a writer.

19 March, 2014 23:14

Hello You,

It’s been a while since we did one of those self-affirmation letters, probably because you’ve been so busy doing amazing things that you should be proud of. For the past few weeks you’ve been hustling to book some little showcases in SF and around the Bay Area. That is a big accomplishment and a huge switch from your previous mode of behavior which was very cowardly. I’ve also decided to start planning out my first tribble run up to the Portland/Eugene area.

A lot of comics who have been helping/advising me asked what I wanted out of comedy/stand-up, and the idea of going on the road seemed really appealing. An old high school acquaintance who happens to be a comic recommended I try doing a little vacation/run up north to see if I liked the general feel of being "on the road." Of course, I have a lot of preparation to do… namely, I don’t know if the ten-twelve minutes of solid, working material is enough to have under my belt to do a run up north. I think it should be fine since I’m not expecting to feature, just do some mics and have fun… It’ll be fine.

But it is very exciting to see the way things are changing. Anyway, good job.

Love,
Me.

Eric Wong is a writer in San Francisco. He will be at the Sanctuary Lounge in Livermore on Thursday at 7:30PM telling some amazingly well-crafted jokes with impeccable delivery and timing.

On education

School teaches us how to work on things we don’t particularly like, but were ordered to do so, eight hours a day, five days a week for the foreseeable future. Unless you happen to be particularly clever, in which case it is a breeding ground for your own destruction under sex, drugs, music and boredom.

Eric Wong is a writer in San Francisco. He was not particularly clever in school.

I dream of days

I dream of days when men can walk the earth free of fear and anxiety.

When there is no need for art to quell the dread of mystery, I hope there will still be time for artists to look back on what they accomplished in darker times.

Because does art ever fix anything? Do band-aids heal wounds?

I think they are supplemental covers, that in some respect prolong the healing process, but satiate the pain and its fear of.

A poet once told me, “Make it beautiful. Take reality’s dark side and show the unearthed gems in light.”

A comic once said, “Look into the hideousness of it all. Confront it for what it is, and see there is nothing to fear. Laugh.”

Whatever the approach, I see a similar bravery between two classes of people, poets and clowns, who lack the strength of a soldier but charge into the human condition with the same uncompromising bravado.

Now, classically speaking, I am meant to end with a solution to embracing a life that seems intent on horrifying us. I have no solutions, only pretty words and band-aids. I am just as alone as the rest. And for some reason, I can’t help but think that the smartest man on Earth is too, terrified of dying. And that, to me, is comforting.

Eric Wong is a writer in San Francisco.

Today’s Headlines and Subsequent Joke Practice

1. National Geographic reported that scientists were able to track a great white shark across the Atlantic ocean for the first time… Or at least that’s what the shark wanted them to believe…

2. The Global Post released an article today claiming that elephants can pick up clues about a person’s gender and ethnicity by their voice. Or maybe it had something to do with those gigantic ears…

3. In Portland, police had to subdue a 22 pound cat after it attacked a 7 month old baby and its parents. Because its Portland, the family is not pressing charges, and have actually put the cat in therapy. I have no joke here. Just… come on, Portland…

Eric Wong is a writer in San Francisco. He will be going to Portland in a few months. Read nothing into this, Portland.

Obscure Philosophy Joke

The real tragedy of Sisyphus is that he never thought of bowling.

Eric Wong is a writer in San Francisco. He came up with that on a run by the Golden Gate Bridge. He saw surfers by a cliff on China Beach and thought, “a surfer is just a referee in the fight between gravity and the tide.” By the time he got home, he realized it was not a joke at all, but more of an alternate means of looking at opposing forces inadvertently creating a physical art for man.

An idea of happiness

In a real world sense, I think in order to be happy you must enjoy two things.

Firstly, you must enjoy the process of building something. Anything really, as long as it is the process of creation, and not the glory of the product that you find appealing.

Secondly, you must also enjoy those moments where everything you’ve built up comes crumbling down around you, and you must appreciate that liberation from yourself.

If you can find joy in both of these things, I would guess that you are a happier person than those who seek peace in one or the other.

This is a metaphor for watching pornography on the Internet.

Eric Wong is a writer in San Francisco. He used the “female friendly” filter on most pornographic websites.

Keeping It Fresh

 

Hello Sir,

I’ve been thinking a lot about the shelf life of jokes.  I’m starting to get tired of a handful of mine. They’ve lasted me two months, which is fine. The jokes are all short, throwaway types anyway. It’s just interesting looking at the sheer volume of energy and work it took for me to come up with five minutes of clever little sentences and the projected “expiration date” on the joke. Some of them, I won’t say which one’s (but they were the not so good ones) took a whole day to write. That’s right. I spent an entire day thinking about one joke. And it ended up being one of the first one’s that I knew I had to take out of the rotation. (Luckily, many have managed to save themselves from the chopping block by updating themselves slightly)

But yeah, it’s hard to look back and not see some of those jokes as poor time investments. Given the amount of mind power, concept graphing (an experiment I did for some jokes involving diagrams. It was weird) and research I put into something that didn’t work and then taking into account that the best jokes I have are those that came from divine moment of inspiration, it begs the question: Is all this writing practice a waste of time?

Some writers will just wait for inspiration to strike, and I never wanted to play that lottery game. However, if I’m churning out a lot of crap in the meantime, and the “wait it out” individual is inspired at the same rate as I am, then their body of work will contain a higher overall quality because they did not lower the quality of their opus by gunning for quantity of materials.

How wordy of you.

Did anyone get that?

Did you get that?

Honestly, at the end of the day I don’t think it will matter that much. This is probably just me being insecure and unsure about the process. I’m still such a noob at stand-up. I have no idea what I’m doing, but in a weirdly exciting way.

I was talking to my good friend Jeff Liu, an animator for the Cartoon Network show Steven Universe. Jeff is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and one of the most brilliant artists I’ve ever encountered. And that is not just limited to animation. I mean artist in a general sense. Like, including musicians, writers, martial artists, anything that is considered art. He is a great artist.

Usually when we talk, we geek out about craft. I’m constantly amazed how many universal things we end up talking about in regards to honing a craft. We did play music together, and if you take a look around the blog, you will find some Soundcloud recordings where he is featured as a guitarist on some of the tracks.

In his own time, Jeff also composes music in very interesting ways. He owns an original GameBoy which he has had modified so that he can use the sound card to program 8 bit music. It’s fucking insane.

 

 

I don’t really know where to go from here.

I’m sitting at work, craving a red bull. I have a water instead because I’m fairly confident my brain will explode down my balls if I have any more caffeine today.

There’s just so much to learn in this comedy game. Last night I went out at Neck of the Woods. I had an okay set considering I was performing for an audience of two, but it was a great learning experience (that means I sucked). But I did notice some things that I had only been vaguely aware of. For instance, I kept noticing one of the veteran comedians wandering around the room, just checking everything out. When he went on he knew exactly who was an audience member and who was a comic, and he played to the real room. It was an interesting thing to watch and it got me thinking about adaptability.

When I went on, I had a game plan, but after a few jokes I realized that my plan was shit and that the audience of two and some staff/comics were not really into it. So I abandoned the plan and just kind of started pulling jokes that I could remember were performing strongly at the other bars. Once I found a “type of joke” that was working with them (they tended to like the “thinker” jokes) then I started throwing out the jokes that required that extra beat for everything to come together.

Now, perhaps I can make that work for five minutes with a good amount of floundering, but I think if I ever want to be able to do a larger chunk of time, I would need a lot more audience-energy-specific jokes. Which means I should probably just keep writing more, huh?

 

Well that was me using 900 words to make a complete circle.

Still gonna write a bunch.

Still learning.

Still a noob.

Love, me

Eric Wong is a writer. He stopped saying he was a comedian also because it is offensive to those who can actually do the thing… He’d like to be one. How’s that?

A Love Poem

I wouldn’t consider myself a shallow man,but I cannot tell Isla Fisher and Amy Adams apart.

Yet I would donate my organs to them
if they needed them
or not

Based entirely on the fact that they are physically impeccable humans
and I want to be inside of them
under any capacity
although I cannot tell them apart
nor am I entirely confident in the pronunciation of the former’s name.

What I am sure of though
is that there is a margin of flexibility within perfection
and within that margin, we can find comfort in our differences
and embrace them as part of said perfection
(for what is inflexibility but a flaw)

Knowing all the while that red headed women are perfect
and red headed men are monsters.

An irony so balanced in perfection
that the more freakishly horrific a fourteen year old angst ridden ginger boy is
the more lovely his female counterpart may be.

This is the Shallow Tao.

Eric Wong is a writer in San Francisco. He once trained as a poet. It did not go well.

“Let’s have a redbull and then do some customer service work!” – a man full of terrible ideas

I got a total of two hours of sleep last night because I stayed up playing Marvel Universe Legos.

I have had 6 cups of coffee and a red bull.
I am serving the public between 9:30 and 6:00.

Yesterday I ate 29 hot wings, had six beers,
and made a pot of kidney beans.

No beans were eaten.

This morning, at about six, I had a fart that smelled exactly like a shit soaked in buffalo sauce. Because that is exactly what happened in my body.

I literally used an entire bottle of Frank’s Wing Sauce. Which means that I ate 29 chicken wings, had 6 beers and a bottle of wing sauce.

Eric Wong is a writer in San Francisco. He has the body proportions of an anorexic midget who is also gigantic.