Note To Self: Use Your Recorder More

I was digging through my junk drawer the other day and stumbled upon a voice recorder that I bought about four years ago. This is especially poignant since Norm MacDonald, the inventor of the note-to-self bit…classic, recently started hosting a new show on Comedy Central.

Which is great by the way, any show that utilizes the throwaway line, “Ping Pong is the only sport named after its inventor”, is aces with me.

Anyways, I remember purchasing this voice recorder years back because I was always coming up with hilarious blog topics and jokes in the most inopportune places and I needed a system to keep track of them all. But like everything else I embark on, it seems sweet and life-changing at first but then I revert back to my old ways because…well…eh.

So I started going through my old recordings. The very first recording was “Extra! Extra! Joe Smells!”, which is strange because I bought the device to record new information. I already knew that.

The next three recordings were ideas I had about a potential Brett Favre retirement sympathy card idea. WHICH WOULD HAVE WORKED. That idea was worth tens possibly hundreds of dollars. I had this brilliant scheme to come up with a line of sympathy cards to express your condolences to fellow Packer fans when Brett Favre inevitably retired back in 2008. Hindsight is 20/20, my friends.

Go back to early 2008 and that’s still a good idea. The problem was my creative copy. My third recording was “Sorry for your loss, he will be four-ever in our hearts”. Uh, terrible. I sounded really smug on the recording too, like I was the first person to ever use four-ever in some capacity. I’m embarrassed for myself.

On a side note, I did perfect that card eventually. The card cover: a guy wearing a Brett Favre jersey sitting on a card table chair in the middle of his garage, his head buried in his lap in frustration, a dozen crushed Miller High-Life cans strewn about his feet. The card inside: blank.

The front cover says it all. Simple. Perfect. Admit it, you would have bought that for your dad or uncle or buddy if Favre retired when he should have. And I could be on a beach somewhere with my big payday. Ashwaubemay beach most likely, but still, the beach.

I had two other recordings for blog ideas that I actually followed through with so I guess the recorder paid off. The last recording was “email Grandma”. That reminds me, I should probably email my Grandma.

I think I’m going to start using the recorder again. I still come up with great ideas all the time, maybe this time around I’ll consistently follow up with them.

I already recorded a new idea today. Maybe I’ll follow up with it soon. Or maybe four years from now. I hope “Dave Weisnicht + Mike Hubert = Tosh.0” is still relevant in 2015.