What a game, huh?
To celebrate one of the most thrilling sporting events in history, I’ve put together this list of unexpected facts about the Super Bowl. Hope you enjoy!
Creative Writing
Record Leftovers: Heroes and Villains
Some outtakes from the most recent issue of The Yale Record.
The League of Slightly Extraordinary Gentlemen
Chaos: Can generate perfectly random numbers using only his mind. Never needs to flip a coin to make a decision.
Firebrand: Can light a match on the first try, every time. Currently battling Stage 2 lung cancer after a lifetime of looking really cool while smoking.
Puberty Boy: Able to increase his body mass by seventy percent in only three years.
Badass Baby Names #1: Salazar
Welcome to the first article in the Badass Baby Names series! In an attempt to give your future child a more awesome life, I am writing about the most badass names I can find: The way they sound, the nicknames they offer, the famous people to whom they were given, and the lifestyle they might promote.
The first name in the series is “Salazar”. With a sinuous “S”, soft “L”, and commanding “Z”, Salazar hints at power wielded from the shadows — but with a good purpose in mind. Salazars overcome challenges by slithering around them, or turning them to personal advantage, rather than smashing them to bits with brute force.
Is “Salazar” the right name for your child? Read on…
Two Muffins
“Two muffins are sitting in an oven…”
In the vein of The Aristocrats. This time, built around a joke that was popular with my fifth-grade classmates.
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Warning: Contains profanity, and one instance of extreme pain.
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If you know of any jokes you’d like to submit to this treatment, send them to aaron at gertler dot com. These are pretty good writing exercises!
20 Things I Wish I Knew At 20
I may be only 20 years old, but there are many things I wish I knew.
So, in honor of these endless lists:
1. Who wins Super Bowl XLIX?
Vegas is already accepting bets. I could use the money.
2. Which of the 715 books on my Amazon wish list are worth reading?
I just know I’m going to waste weeks threshing my way through all the chaff.
3. When will the next big earthquake hit Los Angeles?
Frankly, I’m shocked that this wasn’t on the other lists. If I knew this, I could save thousands of lives. Think big, people!
Three GIFs That Will Make You Cry If You Stare At Them Long Enough Without Blinking
Skrillex Visits His Hometown Barbershop
I’m fond of thinking about stuff that must have happened, even if nobody ever saw it—probably for the same reasons as the good people of Cracked. Famous people and people in the past lived real human lives! They lived those lives for many years. And they all got their hair cut at some point, which is the inspiration for this short screenplay.
Here’s the story. I still need to work on my dialogue and character development before I make any short films, but for a conversation that happened in my head over the span of a single shower, it could be worse.
Partly inspired by B.J. Novak’s One More Thing, perhaps the best book of short stories ever written by a well-known television actor. Lots of celebrities in that book—though I guess B.J. knows them all personally.
I do not know Skrillex personally, but I’d love to meet him: He seems like a really nice guy.
Bonus track:
The Aristocrats
Before you read this, if the title doesn’t remind you of a certain joke, click here.
Warning: Risque. Not especially polite. 72% meta-fictional.
The story is long enough that I’ve linked to it here rather than keep it on the main page.
Book I’d Like to Write: “Our Lives in the Shadows”
Elevator pitch
“It’s The Breakfast Club meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
Plot
Sleepy town in semi-rural America. Small public high school, too small for any actual cliques to form. Some kids are more popular than others. Every one of them is an individual with goals, hobbies, and a detailed personal life, though they are not, on the whole, especially introspective or knowledge-seeking.
In addition, each member of the senior class spends much of their time fighting the forces of darkness.
- A shy boy with controlling parents is also a sorcerer who deals with eldritch monstrosities whenever they rise from the town’s lake in the dead of night.
- One of the school’s three cheerleaders woke up one day with impeccable hand-to-hand combat skills, which is good, because that was the same day the ninjas started showing up.
- An aloof contender for the state tennis championship duels featureless, humanoid ghouls armed with a steak knife and a can of pepper spray.
And seventeen other stories, besides.
None of these characters has any inkling of the others’ struggles; teenagers are very good at hiding their secret lives from others. But one day, all the hidden stories intersect, and the senior class will have to band together if they want to save their town…
…and the world? No, probably not the world. The world is a big place, with millions of hidden stories. But one town is enough.
This might be a metaphor for the fact that everyone has a unique set of problems and we shouldn’t judge from outward appearances, but it’s mostly a way for me to deal with real high school social dynamics (few books do this well) and also write lots of supernatural fight scenes.
Recent Work: Fall/Winter 2013
September
Unschooled: CT’s Most Radical Homeschoolers (in the cool surfer sense of “radical”)
Review: Janelle Monae, Electric Lady (the album was good, this review isn’t)
Interview: Chris Stedman, author of Faithiest (part of the launch of the Yale Humanist Community; I’m on the board of directors)
Making Believe: Religious Conversion at Yale University (includes this companion post)
“Witt’s religious awakening was outside my realm of understanding. I wondered if it was really a coincidence that her new relationship with Jesus began at a retreat where she’d begun new relationships with a few dozen Christian friends. Why would God wait to find her on a dock in the woods when she’d been going to church her entire life?”
October
Yale University Commencement Address, May 2014 (Yale jokes)
“As I look upon this crowd—with your narrow shoulders, your pimply foreheads, your dumb, bovine gazes—I almost pity you. You must have been overwhelmed when Yale opened its gates to you, for some inexplicable reason. Perhaps you were Australian, or a mediocre synchronized swimmer. Perhaps your mother was an especially talented applications-essayist.”
Levels of Hell Left Out of Dante’s Inferno
Indiana Jones and Printing at Bass Library (Yale jokes)
A Playlist for Your Worst Moments (Yale jokes, pop music, fourth essay down)
“Heaven has a plan for you, and the plan is that you will grow old and die, like everyone else.”
November
Long Day’s Journey Into Cambridge (Yale jokes) (alternate universes)
Profile of a Coffee-Shop Owner Who Bans the Internet
December
Gourmet Heaven, Wage Theft, and the Convenience of Indecision (warning: angst)