February 2006
60 posts
Summit for the Rad
This one comes from Jocelyn Giannini: So I recently had an idea for a reality show called “Social Physics”: a person gets to choose two random friends from different periods in her life who have never met, but she’d be interested to see interact. The two friends go off on some camping trip in the Himalayas or sailing around somewhere, and then the friend joins after a week, and...
Coo over me... the lone genius!
In a large group of friends, a few of the friends smile and coo over two of the friends who are kissing and in love.
“Aww, look how in love they are,” one says. “They complete each other,” another adds.
This annoys the Solitude-loving, people-not-needing intellectual of the group. “I complete myself! Why doesn’t anyone ooh and aww over me? ‘Aww, look how...
A Risk-Averse Olympian
Terrified of falling and ruining his score, a highly-regarded Italian figure skater at the Olympics who won the gold four years previous decides to avoid all risk. Skipping jumps and spins and spirals completely, he just does simple laps around the rink - something he knows he can pull off perfectly - to very dramatic, thundrous classical music.
It’s kind of like a very slow, graceless...
When your life's meaning is defined by your...
A paranoid anti-government type is convinced that the state is recording every moment of his life - everything he says, everything he thinks, everything he does goes right into the Federal log. The government keeps invasive files on everyone, but their file on him is especially extensive because of his “dangerous” notions about freedom.
Knowing that he has no privacy tortures him to...
Glaring flaws and continuity errors in the movie...
This one comes from Elisabeth L. Lissy:
Whenever some girl hears something she doesn’t believe, she doesn’t think it’s a lie or a joke, she automatically assumes that god messed up; that is, her suspension of disbelief in reality falters. For example, she’s sitting with friends, one of whom is a poetry writer, and the writer implies that she only just heard of Adrienne...
Homemaker
A T-shirt that says “Homemaker” at the top. Underneath is a drawing of a Rosie the Rivetor type female house builder with a hammer in one hand, a nail in her mouth, and a house under construction behind her.
Too obvious?
Perhaps. That’s why I put this one under Elisabeth’s idea, even though I posted her idea earlier.
An uncompromising view of the present
According to advertisements, the Wachowski brothers have helmed an “Uncompromising view of the future” with their latest movie, V For Vendetta. This uncompromising view is, of course, a fascist future against which a man and a woman in love must join together and fight. Nothing brings average-looking cranky men and sexy rebel women together like totalitarian state oppression in the...
Astrology Slaves T-shirts
A series of T-shirts, one for each astrological sign. Each shirt will say “Taurus,” “Aquarius,” “Pisces,” - or whatever your sign is - at the top of the shirt in big silver glilttery letters.
Underneath the name of the sign, it will have the sign itself, the constellation of your birth out in space, connected together with lines.
The constellation then is...
Insane Ramblings in Public Without all the...
A semi-crazy man takes ventriloquism night classes so that he can talk to himself in public without everyone realizing how crazy he is.
How I should have put the New York is expensive...
Last week I saw a performance art piece at P.S. 122 called “The Money Conversation.” Normally I hate art, but I was getting in for free, and I knew that the performer was giving away her entire life savings of $5,000 to the audience (hence “Money” in the title), so it seemed worth it.
She was a dancer, so I thought she’d be prancing with wads of cash in her hands,...
The Late Jesus Christ
Always affix “The Late” before every mention of any historical figure who is no longer living.
For instance, “The Late Henry VIII of The Late Tudor Dynasty,” “The Late Oscar Wilde, author of The Late Picture of Dorian Gray,” “The Late Benjamin Franklin, inventor of the The Late lightning rod,” “The Late Adam” and “The Late...
Screenwriting T-Shirt
“Screenwriting is Life. The Rest is Just Expository Dialogue.”
Where's the meat in vegetarianism?
As I was heating some leftovers from Angelica Kitchen, it struck me how weird it is that there’s no meat in vegetarianism. The closest things to meat in vegetarianism are wheat protein and soybean derivitives. That’s an entire food group, gone completely AWOL. Where did it go?! It can’t have just run away!
Tag Team Graffiti
On my way to work one day, I saw a poster for the new Pink Panther movie starring Steve Martin, which was only partially defaced. Someone had drawn a talk bubble coming out of Steve Martin’s mouth, but put nothing in it!
This revealed a possibility that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. “I could make Inspector Jacques Clouseau say something! What should he say?”
I...
I have something in my eye, and yet I go on
I’ve been reading a book about Somalia, and one of my favorite things in it was this poem, which is apparently popular with the Somalian nomads, who have a really hard life. I’ll tell you what I like about it after you read it:
Like a she-camel with a large bell Come from the plateau and upper Haud, My heat is great…. One of my she-camels falls on the road And I protect its...
Honest Tea MI
Instead of dusting off “TMI - Too much information!” when someone tries to tell you about how their day went, or how depressed they are, you could say: “Whoa, man. You need to stop chugging all that Honest Tea!”
When “lay off the Honest Tea” gets as tedious as “Too much information,” you can respond to anyone who uses it with: “Whoa, man, you...
A Literal Mirror Site
A Web site that is nothing but a shiny, reflective surface, so that you can use your computer screen as a mirror. It would be called www.mirror.com.
This way you’d always have a mirror when you need one, like if you thought you had food stuck in your teeth, or needed to get something out of your eye.
Currently www.mirror.com is taken for a dating service called “Me: The Meeting Place...
Roach Motel misunderstanding
Someone who sees a roach poison contraption called a “Roach Motel,” and angrily misinterprets it:
“A Roach motel? What’s next? A roach mansion? A palace for roaches?! A roach kingdom? ‘Yes, bid me to do your will, King Roach!’ Give me a break! What the hell is wrong with this country?!”
Confused time travelers
An Encino Man type movie where someone from the past stumbles into our modern times and gets confused. This person is from more traditional times, when wearing black always signified that you were mourning the loss of someone. The time traveler ends up in New York City in the late ’90s, sees all the people dressed in black out on the streets, and stops everyone she can to passionately wish...
"Why are you hungry? Don't you have tons of food...
Someone who just doesn’t get that everyone in the world doesn’t have the exact same life as him.
"Strip Your Mind, The Rest Will Follow"
One morning, I woke up with the line, “Strip your mind, the rest will follow” in my head. I’d had some very disturbing dreams the night before, most memorably one about a powder-skinned, gray-haired Scandinavian scientist who was in charge of this South American concentration camp for doing cruel experiments on people, preventing kids from going to the bathroom until they burst...
A painting called "The Art Thief"
A painting of a skinny burglar, dressed in an all black body suit, with a black ski mask over his face. He’s standing in a golden field of wheat, surrounded by trees, and holds a stolen painting to his chest while looking nervously behind him.
A good model for this painting would be this poster from Safe, in my humble opinion.
Brothers with a memory problem
Two brothers who grew up together, and are now adults, talk about their childhood, and realize that they have no shared memories. Their memories make sense within the context of the other’s memories, and they clearly had similar childhoods, but every single moment one of them recalls draws a blank in the other one.
A good self-motivation type of slogan
“What if every conceivable opportunity in the world were presented to you at once? WHICH WOULD YOU CHOOSE?”
When ideas come to life
Some of my posts on here will quite possibly never come into existence. Like that one about the vegan restaurant on top of the Empire State Building with all you can eat for $5. I’m no fool. That will never, ever happen.
But today I got solid proof that some of my ideas on here do come true.
It was this one.
After complaining that there were only posters for movies, and not for books, my...
Punny Coworker
A new guy at the office makes what seems to be an intentionally bad pun. Everyone groans, exaggeratedly, thinking they’re groaning with him, not at him. Then he makes another bad pun, and everyone groans again, still thinking it’s pretty funny that he’s purposely making these horrible jokes.
The new guy, however, continues to make these awful puns, and everyone finally realizes...
Will Ferrell gets mugged
This movie scene idea comes from Joseph Weisenthal (with a little bit of input from your’s truly!):
A hapless character played by Will Ferrell gets mugged by an African American man in broad daylight. It’s a brutal job. Will Ferrel is cut, punched, scraped, has a black eye, a giant lump on top of his head with a bandage covering it, and even has one of his teeth knocked out.
He...
The Best Restaurant in the World
There should be a vegan restaurant at the top of the Empire State Building. It should be free to get up there, since after all you’re going to be a patron of this restaurant. You’re not going up there just to sneak a view. RIGHT?
It should be a fast food vegan restaurant, but healthy (whole wheat buns, grain burgers, yam fries, etc), offering a variety of world cuisines personally...
Man.Hat.Tan
A head and shoulders drawing of a man in a tux, wearing a top hat. He has an orangish complextion. Above him it says in fancy Broadway Marquee-style letters: “Man.Hat.Tan”
Marriage and the name problem
Who should be named what after a marriage is a complicated issue. But not nearly complicated enough.
There should be a law saying that when two people get married, one has to change his or her last name for sure, but the other has to change something in their name too - though it doesn’t have to be last name. Even better, one person - traditionally the woman - has to change two of their...
Skeptics Versus Geniuses
A bunch of short films about famous artists having minor ideas, or mentioning some minor aspect of a larger idea, and skeptics calling them crazy for it, then being proved wrong.
In one:
A skeptic is looking over the shoulder of Lou Reed as he writes a song lyric.
Skeptic: “What lyric are you writing?”
Lou Reed: “I could sleep for 1,000 years.”
Sketpic:...
A homeless man who makes change
A homeless man who asks for change, but also breaks dollars and fives and tens for people.
This one has to have been done already.
God should judge you by whatever religion you're...
If you’re Muslim, God should deal with you as if Judaism is right. If you’re Buddhist, the gods should pretend that Hinduism was the The Way, The Truth and The Light all along. If you’re Pentecostle, God will judge you by the rules of Unitarian Universalism. If you’re Catholic, God will apply the rules of Mormonism mercilessly.
If you’re Spiritual But Not Religious,...
"At" as a middle name
Pretty soon kids are going to be named after email addresses and Web site addresses, and HTML code, and Pearl code, but for now it makes sense to take a subtler approach. Give your kid “At” as a middle name. Rhys At Southan, for instance. It’s not Rhys@Southan.com, but it’s implied, while maintaining some dignity. Joe At Weisenthal. Brooke At Moreland. Brad At Pitt. Modern...
Blurry New York
A young man with okay but naturally blurry vision forgets to bring his glasses with him on a trip to New York City with his friends. “Aw, man,” he sighs.
He’s quietly bummed the whole time that he can’t really see the sights while he’s there. His friends don’t seem to get that he’s missing out, and assume he’s having the full experience like them....
"Oh my God, you must be a Scorpio. Scorpios are...
I like it when a belief system can take the objections of non-believers and use those objections (or the fact that they are objecting at all) as further evidence for the correctness of their belief. It’s a pretty effective way to belittle counter-arguments if you can pull it off.
Last night I was wondering if astrology, that king of spurious beliefs, had such a mechanism in place. I...
If Brooklyn hipsters found God
Brooke Moreland woke up this morning, rolled over and said to Joseph Weisenthal, “I just had a dream that would have really annoyed you.”
And then Brooke told Joe her dream.
“I would have hated having that dream,” Joe confirmed.
Normally I wouldn’t post a dream to Idea Province, but this one was actually a pretty brilliant commentary on hipster culture in...
A real morning drink
When I heard that Bloody Mary’s were considered a “morning drink,” I was taken aback, to say the least. Why is a combination of vodka, tabasco sauce, tomato juice, pepper, lemon juice, salt, and Worcestershire sauce considered more of a morning drink than, say, a screwdriver?
So then I came up with my own alcoholic morning drink. It would be vodka, pureed tofu scramble, chopped...
Live Theatre Multiplex
A live theatre multiplex that has ten stages and stadium-style seating. It would follow the same schedule as a movie theatre, with each stage hosting two hour performances about five or six times a day. Except that these would be live plays, not movies.
Also just like a movie multiplex, each stage would have a completely different play (though the big blockbuster Hollywood musicals might be...
Guaranteed hangover cure (works in seconds!)
One day Jay, one of my co-workers at Angelica Kitchen, came in looking kind of hung-over. The first thing he said to me was something to the effect of: “I had too much to drink last night. Ugh. But I know something that will cure any hangover in seconds.”
Then he opened up the fridge, took out a spoonful of umeboshi paste (deseeded, mashed umeboshi plum, also known as Bainiku Ekisu),...
A city that makes small towns even more irrelevant
A city that steals the thunder of small towns everywhere by constructing duplicates of every crazy roadside attraction in the country and putting them all in this one city. And, of course, making all of them slightly bigger.
Want to see a giant ball of yarn, a golden statue of popeye, a circus performer’s mass grave, the world’s largest cat, a 2-story outhouse, Elsie the Cow’s...
Debate Team Theatrics
The cockiest, most-successful person on the debate team always punctuates the end of his debate turns by singing - in a gloating, over-confident voice (to the tune of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow”) - “Which nobody can deny. Which nobody can deeeeennnnnnnnyyyyy!”
When he finally meets his debate match, the one who will have her ups and downs but finally beat him in...
Advanced Flowbee
A haircutting machine, kind of like a giant Flowbee-style hair vacuum, which has millions of tiny compartments that it sucks hair into, so that it can cut each individual hair separately.
The kicker is that it cuts each hair a completely random length, unrelated to whatever it cuts any of the other strands of hair.
Haircuts would be a real mixed bag with this one, but you might get some...
Love as a series of conveniently opposed...
Esme Rilke once believed that love would become evident upon the sharing of a fruit salad.
When she first had this notion, she hated cantaloupe (for some reason, this no longer holds true) and adored grapes. Love then, in her youthful imagination, would mean sharing a fruit salad with someone who adored cantaloupe and hated grapes. That way, he would eat her cantaloupe, she would eat his grapes,...
Dumb kid
A kid who always thinks it’s midnight the second it gets dark.
How to get a job at a newspaper
Applying for a writing or editing job at a daily newspaper? Take that morning’s issue of the paper, re-write the entire issue that day, making it better, then deliver it to the paper’s editor the next morning.
Only do this if you really, really want the job.
Philosophical shoot-em up character
A character in a violent, nihilistic shoot-em-up video game blows the head off his hundredth victim, and suddenly becomes philosophical about death and paralyzed by sadness. He just sits there, re-evaluating everything he thought he knew, while the teenager playing him gets really freakin’ pissed off.
One last coerced kiss, forever
Someone with a life-looping power that he can only use once just got dumped, unexpectedly. In desperation, he pleads to his ex-girlfriend: “Wait. Before we break-up forever, can we kiss one last time?”
“Sure,” she shrugs.
They kiss for five seconds. And those five seconds are the part of his life that he decides to loop.
He lives those five seconds of kissing his...
Air mattress facade
A mother, her daughter, and the daughter’s boyfriend go through a huge ordeal to inflate a big, awkward, half-broken air mattress to put next to the daughter’s bed. This is supposedly for her boyfriend to sleep on while they’re visiting her mother’s house.
Yet every single person involved with this – the mother, the daughter, and the boyfriend – secretly know that he’s not actually going to sleep...
A partisan book consisting solely of quotes from...
For instance, it is probably possible to edit an entire book staunchly defending capitalism entirely consisting of patched-together quotes from speeches and books by people who are staunchly against capitalism. The quotes shouldn’t be out of context, because that would be cheating. Rather, they should be of the “Well, admittedly, this ONE aspect of such and such [captalism in this...