I, Musical Genius: On Baseball

Almost three years ago, I had the idea that I was going to make a print version of I, Musical Genius because after having the idea it seemed like it made too much sense to not follow through on it. I absolutely LOVE zines and thought that some of my longer entries on here would make great content to fill the pages with. I picked a few entries that I thought I had done a good job on and narrowed in on the vague theme of betterment through self-reflection that permeates my writing on here and started to comb through them for errors and syntax.

I dreamed big on the print version of I, Musical Genius right away. I was going to fill each page of the zine with hand-drawn stuff. I would have one issue on nostalgia, one on sports, one on music stories, etc. If I was finally going to turn this long-term project into a real, tangible thing, then I wanted to put in a lot of effort and make it really good. However, because of those lofty goals, the project really got away from me. I got caught up in small tasks with it and lost interest and never ended up finishing the thing.

When I decided that I was going devote my free time to writing last December (lol), I made finishing that zine part of the goal. Even though I hadn't touched it in ages, the idea definitely still thrilled me and I wanted to do it. While I kept working on songs consistently and short stories intermittently, the zine, again, went untouched for the entire year because I felt like the other goals were more important than printing out stuff that I had already written on the internet.

BUT, a couple of weeks ago, I was approached by a friend to help organize a punk/baseball trivia night at D-Beatstro in Toronto. While I was house-sitting for my parents, with Roy Halladay's death still fresh in my mind, it struck me that I had a lot of baseball writing sitting on here that I hadn't really done anything with and would make for a great zine. What pushed me over the edge was looking at my dad's drafting board and thinking about cutting the paper up. Finishing the zine in time to "launch" it at the trivia night seemed like too good of an opportunity to pass up.

I started planning it right away and made the initial versions of it that afternoon and then kept tweaking and tweaking until it looked the way I wanted.

I got a friend of mine, Octavio Contreras to draw the cover for me. He did better than I could have hoped.

The end result is this: I, Musical Genius: On Baseball, the first thing I've made of my creative writing. While three autobiographical short stories ain't much, I am very proud of what I've made.

So I guess the only thing left to do now is distribute this damn thing. If you are reading this and would like a copy of this, I would be more than happy to mail one to you. I guess I'm charging $5 for it, but you are welcome to pay whatever you would like. Get in touch with me on here, or on Twitter, and we can sort it out.

Thanks.