Yeah, I Got Nothing!
For the past ten months I’ve written four blog posts a week here at the Big Whoop, like clockwork everyday Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. They haven’t all been winners. In fact, most are so egregiously racist that I have to scrap them at the last minute and substitute something only slightly less bigoted, like last Tuesday’s “Mexican People Are Terrible!”, which, in hindsight, I never should have run. It did not meet the editorial standards of this publication, seeing as it was just its title repeated seventy-five times, followed by a flurry of exclamation points.
But when I’m not railing nonsensically against our neighbors to the South, I try to use this space to say something substantive and insightful about the world we live in. I’ve written about being a father, struggling with Depression and mental illness, the grim economics of the pop culture media landscape and, of course, our perilous political state, particularly the rancid orange bloviator in the White House.
It’s been a wonderful challenge coming up with good topics for blog posts and then executing them in a satisfying and intellectually rigorous fashion. Well, today I officially ran out of good subjects for blog posts. I got nothing. The old brain-bone was supposed to spit out a juicy subject to write about. Instead it let out a sad, exhausted belch so it looks like I’m on my own and I’ll have to finish writing this without use of my brain. Fine. I’ve done it before. My brain can get kind of snooty sometimes, thinking that I’m nothing without it and whatnot.
I’ll show it! Actually, I do have a topic for a blog post. A literally juicy subject for a blog post no less! On a classical blog theme, even! That’s right, readers: your intrepid blogger is at this very moment eating a sandwich. What a dramatic and fortuitous development! Truly, something worth composing a “web log” or “blog” about!
Why, when it comes to providing fodder for great writing, my sandwich makes Hemingway’s fancy-pants World War I look like a pile of horse shit by comparison, inspiration-wise! He had a dramatic, world-testing backdrop for men to come of age and confront the insanity of war. I’ve got a Jimmy John’s vegetarian sandwich with guacamole and provolone. Advantage: Rabin. But that’s not all it’s got: it’s also tomatoes and cucumber and mayonnaise. Okay, now this is just starting to sound like a commercial for Jimmy John’s. I don’t want that, both because it’s not and I’m not getting paid but also because they’re out of sprouts and have kind of an attitude about it, and sprouts make all their sandwiches a lot better.
Not a great sandwich, to be honest.
But bloggers don’t just look at things literally. Instead, they look at the things in front of them, in my case a sandwich and a laptop and ask, “What about society?” Isn’t society like a mediocre sandwich from a chain sub restaurant? Aren’t we all sub sandwiches without sprouts?
What about Donald Trump and/or the spend-o-crats in the Senate? Aren’t they also like speedily prepared but ultimately forgettable aggregations of meat, cheese and vegetables? Also, as a 41 year old taking care of both his elderly father and his growing family, I’m part of what sociologists and Saturday Night Live funnyman Jim Breuer have both called “The Sandwich Generation.”
Does belonging to the “Sandwich Generation” affect my feelings about actual sandwiches? That’s, honestly, probably too good of an idea to burn off in a blog post like this but I may pitch it to Vanity Fair and see if maybe I can’t get a fat payday out of it. The kind that buys an awful lot of inexpensive sandwiches.
Is life ultimately just one giant sandwich? I believe it is, but also that life is a highway. And an adventure. And a sandwich.
Thankfully Hollywood will never run out of fresh ideas.
Yes, everything is like a sandwich, even this essay. It’s what I like to call a “Think Bomb” since I throw it all up in your brain and thought inevitably ensues. So the next time you’re looking at a sandwich, or even eating one, think about its metaphorical as well as literal aspects and know that some day it might save your ass when you’ve got nothing to write about either, and be thankful. And then eat the fucker before it goes bad or gets gross.
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