May 2009
48 posts
1 tag
Religion Sans Non-Believers
I’m trying to come up with a new religion that deals with the problem of non-believers without damning them or going to war against them. Since all religions — though they may have some good insights or advice — are, at their core, irrational, religion only seems plausible when you surround yourself with other people who believe the way you believe. Since your immortality rests...
One Review That Covers Them All
Movie review site that compiles multiple reviews from critics into a single review. Each line or series of lines gets a notation for whatever critic said that, whether direct quote or paraphrase. The twist is, negative reviews are built from snippets of positive reviews, and positive reviews from snippets of negative reviews. There will be a point-counterpoint on every movie, but the critics...
Confused Rookie Massacre
Television skit: Two young guys walking in the Financial District in Manhattan. They see a cop holding a large semi-automatic gun. One of the guys says, “Watch this.” Walks to the cop and throws his arms in the air. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” The cop, a rookie, is confused. He looks around, but there is no one to tell him what to do. After a beat, he shoots the kid dead. The guy’s friend runs...
T-Shirt Appropriate For Most Occasions
“Awkwaaaard”
Sleeping Shirt
T-shirt: “If you like sleeping, you’ll love death.”
Rock 'n Roll Writer
Writer destroys his laptop every time he finishes writing a novel.
Idea Provincian Slip
Whenever someone makes a Freudian slip, instead of invoking Freud’s name, it would be a little less cliche if you attach “ian” to the name of the person who slipped. Like, “Whoa, was that a Rhysian slip?” Or “Ha! Ianian slip!”
Another nice thing about this is that it removes the “subconscious motives seeping though unintentionally” aspect of...
Edible Bones Variety Pack
Pork skin is fried and packaged as a snack food, so why not bones? As far as I know, the only bones humans can eat are fish bones, like from sardines and salmon, so it would be a package filled with the bones that would otherwise have gone wasted from fillets of these smaller fishies. It would be a crunchy and high-calcium snack, but I don’t know how filling it would be. Are there calories...
T-Shirt For Anti-Leather Meat Eaters
“I don’t tan…” (image of a cow hide being tanned for leather) “… I burn.” (image of a cow being roasted in a pit)
The sort of shirt you’d give or re-gift to someone, but never buy for yourself.
Gary Coleman, Private Eye
I had an idea for a skit about a private detective whose growth was stunted by a Gary Coleman-esque Kidney disorder, making the detective appear to be an innocent kid, when really he’s a grizzled adult. He would work undercover, using himself as bait to attract child molesters, and then bust them.
Then someone informed me that The X-Files had an episode that used pretty much that same idea,...
New Drunk Driving Myths (probably better not to...
Myth 1: Drunk driving requires intense concentration and utilizes special portions of your brain more intensely; as a side-effect, you won’t get a hangover the next day if you do it.
Myth 2 (with assists from Brooke Moreland and Miles Southan): The only reason drunk driving is dangerous is that drunks can’t see through the lampshade on their head. Just cut eyeholes in the shade, and...
Bush Sticker
Bumper Sticker: “Where did all the Bush/Cheney stickers go?”
Be The Miracle Berry Guy
Want to be a party hijacker? Joe Weisenthal has an idea for you.
Every time you’re invited to a party, buy a bunch of miracle berries (West African berries that make sour foods taste sweet) and fill a backpack with sour foods like lemons, tamarind, rhubarb, grapefruits, and limes. Go to the party and hang out like an average anonymous party-goer for a few minutes, just to get a sense of the...
Only Liking The Final Episodes of Twin Peaks
This is similar to my idea about Only Liking the First 20 Minutes of Juno. Since everyone agrees that Twin Peaks goes downhill after Laura Palmer’s killer is revealed halfway through season two, it would be cool to be someone who only liked the second half of season two, and absolutely hated the pilot episode. It would be hard, but if you could pull it off, you might get quite a few...
A Jewish Christmas Story
A “Nothing Like The Holidays” sort of Christmas movie, except about a Jewish family that celebrates Christmas, or at least the present-swapping aspect of it (unlike Christians, they don’t believe in Santa Claus).
They invite all their family over, which includes a variety of colorful characters, including an Aunt who hates Christmas and doesn’t understand how any...
Invisi-Screen
A setting that makes your computer monitor only readable if you’re wearing special glasses, so you can privately write in public.
Idea Province TV
A live, half-hour television program of me at a desk, trying to think of ideas. If I have some ideas, great. If not, hopefully you had a few ideas of your own while you were watching me think.
The Magical Ivy League Robe
A homeless man in Harlem, digging in a dumpster for food, finds a Columbia graduation robe. He keeps it, thinking he can sell it, but he finds that nobody wants to buy a graduation robe that he found in a dumpster. That night, he gets caught in the rain. Soaked, and with nothing else to change into, he puts on the robe. The second he zips it up, he becomes a genius. The robe is magical! He’s...
Family Culture
Children’s book about a family that invents all of their own holidays, rituals and spiritual beliefs, and the chaos and isolation that ensues. At the end, they decide to immerse themselves into the culture of their community, as arbitrary and irrational as it may be.
Spoused
From John French in Austin, Texas:
a classic film version of the Faust story - ‘Spoused’ - a man sells his soul for a hot demanding wife only to find himself neck deep in diapers and community disgust. not like mr. mom, more like if luis bunuel remade mr. mom. the humorous main character can find solace only in serial killing at night to petetion the darklord for a recount. good...
A high school movie in elementary school
It’s common Hollywood practice to take the outlines of classic stories and impose them into a high school setting. I’d like to see a typical high school movie plot play out in an elementary school.
Cross-Religion Costumes
This Halloween, go as a Catholic priest with a yarmulke and payot, a nun with a veil, a Muslim wearing a cross, or a crucified Vishnu (with extra cross boards for the extra arms).
Phase III
A heist movie in which the wise-cracking group of robbers is wise enough to include getting arrested as part of their high-level burglary scheme (Phase III of it, in fact). They figure that if they are optimistic and don’t plan for their arrest, they will probably be arrested anyway and be unprepared for it.
And so, after casing out the the joint they will rob, they case out the prison they...
1 tag
Rude Awakening
Just when things finally start to look up for someone who has had it horrible all of his life, he wakes up and finds out life was just a dream.
Esperanto of Religion
Take all the best parts of each religion and build a new religion from it.
So take: Reincarnation from Hinduism, the worship of the sun from ancient Egypt, the Four Sights in Buddhism, the hijabs from Islam, the celebrity cred of Scientology, the born-into-it and thus you don’t need to believe in God aspect of Judaism, Christmas from Christianity, and blend them together.
What would this...
Solution For Fake Environmentalists
A blue glass with lines crisscrossing over it to give the illusion of a solar panel. Put them near your building to create the perception that you’re concerned with the environment.
Anger Management Through a Disbelief in Reality...
When I was younger, I got upset easily. Then, toward the end of high school, I started to believe that life was an illusion. I also started to suspect that the manner in which all these illusions transpired were already decided in advance. Since nothing was real, and since nothing could be done to change how these illusions played out, I saw no reason to be angry anymore.
Eventually, I started to...
Alternative to Traditional Birth
Instead of growing inside of a womb to be flushed out after nine months, the fetus could develop inside a magic Chinese box that has a complicated, secret way of being opened. The fetus will try to get that thing open as soon as it has hands, but when its brain develops enough to figure out how to open the box, that’s when it’s ready to be born.
Movie Criticism Show With the Filmmaker Defending...
Instead of debating another film critic, the critic will debate either the movie’s writer or director. (This only works if the critic doesn’t like the movie.)
1 tag
High School Revenge
An older writer is going out with a high school senior who made valedictorian. She’s not much of a speech writer, so she has him write her speech. At first he’s reluctant, because he hated high school and all the rituals involved with it, but then he realizes that this is the perfect opportunity for him.
On graduation day, he gleefully observes the audience of aghast parents and...
Contempt of Court
A reality show that takes place in a courtroom. Participants in the show would be people who already have upcoming trials for crimes they may or may not have committed. But one thing will be commited for sure: contempt.
For the sake of the show, they will represent themselves in their trials, being as arrogant and outrageous as they can be in the court, calling irrelevant witnesses, mocking the...
Do Jesus' Points Hold Up When Isolated?
Go through the New Testament, dig through all those parables and distill exactly what Jesus said people should do and not do. Make a list out of this, and see if there’s even a single profound insight in there. If not, people will have to stop worshipping him, because then he’s just a guy who died, and there are plenty of those.
Charades Game Called "Do As I Say, Not As I Do"
A mixture of Taboo and Charades, except what you do with your hands and body has nothing to do with the word your teammates are trying to guess. So they have to pay attention to your words and ignore your actions.
1 tag
A Life-Changing Headache
A man who has a really awful headache for three days straight is forced to make major life changes to deal with it.
An Environmentalist Watching a Horror Film
An environmentalist watching a horror film yells at the TV screen/protagonist, not about the killer being right behind her, but that she left a bunch of lights on in rooms that nobody is in.
Self-Satisfying Prophesy
A prophesy that the end of the world is near. How near is it? The second the prophet dies, the world ends.
I met someone who believed this. Though to be fair, she thought the world would end at some point not too long after she died, not necesarily the second after.
Mixture of The Crane Game and Operation
Instead of grabbing for giant stuffed toys with the joystick controlled crane, you have to try to take body parts out from the poor man on the operating table in Operation. If it buzzes, you lose.
Vegan Compromise Shirt For Icelanders
T-shirt for Icelandic aspiring vegans: “VEGAN (except for whale)”
Maintaining More Things Outside Their Habitat
I like how people have devised ways to capture and maintain creatures outside of their habitats. Plants, for instance: we take them out of the earth and away from the rain, but we’re able to keep them alive by surrounding them with just enough dirt to convince them they’re still in the ground, and we pour water on them to make them think it’s raining.
And fish, they...
Sleeping Pill Protest
A good form of protest could be to take sleeping pills in the middle of the day and fall asleep at inappropriate places (such as a fancy dinner with a lot of important speakers.)
Presidential Debates
Instead of just presidential candidate debates, have bi-yearly presidential debates, in which the president would have to debate one of his most articulate opponents (whether political or journalistic).
1 tag
Grizzled Old Man Who Is Probably Indifferent To...
An old man who only bothers to meet new people if their career has something to do with reversing aging or curing death. He dismisses everyone else (movie directors, businessmen, educators, lawyers, doctors, mechanics, you name it), since their careers are obviously futile and a waste of time.
1 tag
Assassin Who Just Doesn't Get It
An assassin who wants to go out while making a name for himself brings a gun to the speech of a high-profile world leader. But he gets there too late to get into the main lecture hall, and is sent to the overflow room, where there is a video screen of the speech. After the event coordinator introduces the world leader, and the leader walks to the stage and appears on the video screen, the assassin...
A Clutz With Matrix-Esque Reflexes
Character who is constantly dropping things and knocking things over, but is able to catch them in mid-air, so there’s never any damage. Rather than evolve out of his clutzy ways, he has adapted to them.
Muscle man with a weakness
A good cheap joke for a cartoon: a muscle-bound man in a gym lifting hundreds of pounds like it was mere feathers, but then he’s unable to pull out the peg to adjust the seat on one of the weight machines.
Exercise guru who doesn't understand the science...
A weight lifting guru who mistakenly believes that working out creates entirely new kinds of muscles rather than builds up existing ones. He talks about various lifting exercises and exclaims things like, “And this will create a bunch of new muscles near where your quads used to be!” etc.
But You Should See The Other Car
A bumper sticker for cars with huge dents and scratches on them, possibly from an accident: “But You Should See The Other Car.”
He Gains His Freedom By Eating Ours
Main character is a politician who is miserable, weak, has no privacy, and feels unfree. But then he finds that the more he restricts the freedom, power and privacy of his constituents, the more he gains for himself.