Thursday, October 30, 2008

The Big Lebowski Musical


There might be some friends lost, enemies made, pins split, and some CCR played because of this idea.

Please, believe me when I tell you that I did a lot of soul searching before deciding to let this one out into the public consciousness. I looked deep into my soul, consulted several holy books, thought about going bowling, and took a bath before I decided that I should let this idea float out into the world, like that mylar balloon that I lost on my fifth birthday and have missed everyday since.

Here is the idea: A musical adaptation of the Cohen Brothers classic film, The Big Lebowski.

I know what you are thinking. I know. I hate all the crappy musical adaptations of everything from Lord of The Rings to Legally Blonde, just as much as you do. Believe me, I really do hate them.

So, why am I here telling the world that there should be one for an amazing film like The Big Lebowski? Two reasons. First, if there is going to be a musical adaptation of The Big Lebowski, it should be written by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Second, I see it as inevitable force of nature, something not to be stopped.

As to the first reason, I am a big fan of Jesus Christ Super Star. The movie is the most amazing thing ever. The music is epic, the costumes and actors are 70's in a bottle, and it's much easier to understand than The Passion of The Christ.

The music and lyrics for Jesus Christ Super Star were written by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber. If you don't know what I am talking about, just believe me when I say that these guys are the only guys that I would trust to write and compose the music for a Big Lebowki musical, with help, of course, from the Cohen brothers themselves. These guys aren't getting any younger. I am introducing this idea to the world right now, to any producer who wants to touch it, because I strongly believe that if these guys aren't behind it, it will definitely be total crap. Don't let these guys die before you decide to get off your butt and get the bowling ball rolling.

As to the second reason, there is no way that there is not going to be a musical of The Big Lebowski made. There might even be one being produced right now. I did some research, but I might have missed something. Trust me, there will be a Big Lebowski musical, even if it is a rogue production called The Dude Sings, begging to be sued by
the Cohen brothers, there will be a Big Lebowski musical.

You can look past the fanaticism and unabashed loyalty of many of the movie's super fans. You can look past the action figures and the conventions. You can look past all these outside tell tale signs. All you have to do is watch the movie, and you will understand the inevitability of a Lebowski musical. The dream sequence is an homage to Busby Berkeley, several of the movie's pivotal scenes consist entirely of music, and the there is no shortage of over the top characters. Essentially, it is already a musical.

Don't not be the Broadway producer to take the Dude to The Great White Way. The people want to hear a chorus of German Nihilists sing about no'sing.

P.S. My mom subscribed to Ideas By Chuck, and she doesn't even know what a computer is.

P.P.S. If you haven't seen it, you should see the movie version of Jesus Christ Super Star. If you like Jesus in The Big Lebowski, you will love him in Jesus Christ Super Star. Plus, Judas is a pimp daddy! You hear me cat?

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Coffetti


The other day I was having some coffee with my friend Jen X, not to be confused with Gen X.

The coffee was already made, when we realized that we didn't have any sugar.

What did we have?

Candy sprinkles for ice cream (by the way, I have worked for four different ice cream franchises, and it still blows my mind that ice cream is two words).

Guess what we did.

That is right! You are so smart. I am always telling people that I have some of the smartest little readers in the world, and there you go again being smart.

We used candy sprinkles to sweeten the coffee, and it was delicious. What's more, it was fun.

It was at this moment that we started a long, coffee fueled, think-party, geared towards developing this discovery into a marketable force not to be denied. The jabber and the gibber went on for hours. Quick. Intense. Fast. It was just like a game of badminton.

This is what we came up with: Coffetti, coffee with sprinkles in it.

Think of the endless paths to be taken. You could make tons and tons of different flavored sprinkles, different shaped sprinkles, different sized sprinkles. You can do a good number of things with sprinkles.

Don't wait to be the first to launch a line of specialty coffetti sprinkles or to open a coffetti cafe in your hipster rich neighborhood. Don't be left in the sugar dust. Don't be that guy who didn't open Pink Berry because it seemed to simple. You know who you are.

We came up with about a million different names for coffetti shops, but I am not going to share them with you. Half the fun of opening a coffee shop is trying to come up with some new pun that hasn't been used already. By adding sprinkles to the mix, we have opened a new door to millions of new cutesy names, and I don't want to ruin your fun.

Fine. It's not a name for a coffetti shop, but I have included in this post a picture of a coffetti franchise mascot that I came up with, Java The Hut.

People love to have fun with their coffee. People love to have fun with their food. When was the last time you heard someone say, "Don't play with your food."? A long time I bet. People love to play with their food, because it is fun. Go make coffee more fun and when you make your first million, send me some(dollars not sprinkles).


P.S. Wracking your brain for a fun Halloween gift to give your loved ones? Why not subscribe to ideasbychuck.com?

P.P.S. I think you know what you need to do.

P.P.S. I have said it before, and I will say it again. Why do we still use post scripts?

Friday, October 24, 2008

Select-A-Soda...JERK!


For any of you out there who aren't familiar with some of the basic history behind soft drinks, let me give you a little crash course.

Back in the day, soft drinks, sodas, pop, etc. started off as medicines, or a way of delivering medicine. Syrups, sugars, and carbonated water were used to disguise the bitter tastes of the medicines, many narcotic and opiate based. Coke isn't called coke for nothing. Alka-Seltzer is kind of a throwback to the old school.

There were no canned or bottled drinks at first. Each soda was hand mixed by a pharmacist, and then when these drinks became more popular for their tastes than for their medicinal powers, soda jerks, teen boys with acne and funny hats, would make customers drinks, basically like a bar.

When companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi started, they were just producing and selling the syrup flavoring. Eventually they started mixing and bottling the drinks themselves, but to this day, a majority of their profits come from the sale of the syrup flavoring separate to restaurants and gas stations etc. where the modern day soda fountains abound. You have seen these, and most of us know how to use them now due to the fact that a huge percentage of the population has worked at McDonald's or some other fast food place, and they are so simple that a chicken with a broken leg could probably use one.

Of course, I have left some things out, but I am sure that there are books or something somewhere that you can get more info from, but
that is not why I am here.

Back to the soda fountains, they basically work like an automated soda jerk, kid with acne and a funny hat. They take the syrup flavoring and mix it with carbonated water in the right ratio to give you a tasty beverage.

But, because of differences in machines, water quality, settings, dirty pipes, a guy named Murder Clown and his soda fetish, or whatever, drinks don't always taste exactly the same from fountain to fountain. Moreover, these fountain drinks also taste different from the bottled versions. It's true, you can ask my friend's mom Nancy. She only gets her Diet Pepsi from Taco Bells.

Fine, I know you are sick of reading this crap, so here is the idea: A soda fountain that allows you to vary the amount of syrup in your soda - at least 3-4 choices of how sweet you want your drink.

Plenty of people in this country are already diabetics, why not let us decide how sweet we want our soda?

I wasn't there, but I would assume that back in the day, when ugly, loser, teen boys with bad acne were serving up drinks, I would assume that you could have told these ugly losers to make your drink the way you wanted it. After all, they were essentially really ugly, horribly deformed by acne, bartenders. Bring that back, but without the acne.

Most fast food places make you get your own drink anyway, why not have some more power over it?

Do this. Make this happen. There are advantages all around.

Fast food restaurants will love this. Their highest profit margins come off of the sales of soft drinks. Imagine how happy they will be if they can sell soft drinks for the same price, made with less syrup. Maybe less people will develop type two diabetes, and soft drink companies can use this angle as a PR boost. Plus, the carbonic acid is really what eats away at your teeth, not the sugar, so dentists won't care. It won't affect them one bit.

P.S. I have heard that a blind man subscribed to IdeasByChuck.com, but I wasn't there to see it.

P.P.S. This post is dedicated to all those poor, horribly deformed, bastards...the soda jerks. God bless em.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Waste Of Ad Space


What do the billboard companies do when no one wants to buy space on their billboards?

Most of the time they just put up their phone number and the word "available," and or some stupid, but effective phrase like, "Look HERE!"















If a billboard is empty for long enough, they drop their rates, or maybe decide to run one of the God Speaks billboards.

What a waste.

Here is my idea. Billboard companies and any other similar companies, should start their own websites, kooky content based websites with kooky names. I would suggest teaming up with an established company with tons of content not yet fully exploited on the internet, i.e. The Bathroom Reader Institute.

Companies could sell advertising on these sites and have links to their own site.

Why does this make sense?

First of all, is much easier to sell advertising on a website, especially when the rates are based totally or partially on click throughs. Second of all, you might not make a huge profit off these internet ad sales, but you can probably at least offset the cost of printing placeholder ads. Third of all, the number of visitors to your site can be used as statistical proof of the effectiveness of your billboards. You can use these numbers to make future sales.

I know that billboards are about as old school as you can get in the advertising world, but they are still a big business (not meant to be a pun). If you work for one of these companies, go into your bosses office and tell him this idea. Yell it at him if you have to. Here is a good mantra to use at all the meetings and focus groups that will probably result from your initial suggestion: Let's STOP wasting that space.

P.S. I subscribed to Ideas By Chuck today, and it was amazing.

P.P.S. I made another appearance on TBTL hosted by Luke Burbank. Click here to hear me on the radio.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Home Grown


Being a man and a great thinker, I am constantly thinking about two things, sex and the environment.

Recently there has been a good amount of turmoil in the global economy triggered by the pop of a housing bubble glistening with fraud and the fact that our economy is based on a good number of imaginary machinations, so confusingly laid out that people believe in them, kind of like the theory of relativity. Saving the economy could be as easy as bringing Tinkerbell back from the dead. We just have to believe.

But, I am babbling now. Let's get back to the point.

I started thinking about housing, the housing market, houses, and how they could be better, because if there are better houses out there, people will want to live in those, and we can start blowing up a new housing bubble.

New and environmentally friendly houses...


Here is the idea: living, growing houses.

If you are a biotechnologist, get to work on this. I have a feeling that I am not the first to think of this, but I really am upset with all of you that you haven't made it happen yet. I am pissed that my house isn't alive.

I would start with Bamboo. Certain strains of bamboo can grow up to four feet in a day and it is strong, really strong. Yeah, it is stronger than you. I don't care how much you can leg press. Yeah... no. That's not even impressive. No... Most people can leg press that much. Trust me... No, that is not impressive. I know 12 year old girls that can leg press that much.

Imagine, houses that are growing, living structures.


Now, I know that some of you probably hate rattan and bamboo furniture. Deal with it. I don't like that kind of furniture either.

Also, some of you are probably going to tell me that bamboo doesn't grow so well in Wisconsin. True, but it does grow well in places like Louisiana. Hmmm. I don't think that bamboo is filled with formaldehyde, but maybe they can do without the formaldehyde. Those crazy Cajuns.


I could go on and on with different advantages and thoughts that I have on this idea, but I don't want to bore you guys. Just think about this. Humans have been manipulating plant and animal genetics for thousands of years. We have created square watermelons, can grow a human ear on the back of a mouse, clone sheep, and transplant hair (this hair restoration plug brought to you by Bosley Medical Systems). We should be able to figure out how to grow a house.

Don't let the Smurfs make the human race look stupid. I know Papa Smurf is smart and all, and they have been outsmarting Gargamel for years, but come on.

P.S. Why haven't you subscribed to Ideas By Chuck.com?

P.P.S. Cheer up. The only people who could stand to gain from the entire world economy being in the dump are aliens looking for cheap real estate. Just keep on trucking, and maybe look into getting the new Gold-Pressed Latinum card from Visa.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Get Together


This another one of my more socially conscious ideas, so if you are looking to get rich quick off of this one, you might as well stop reading now.

I am sick of the whole Red State/Blue State country divided 24 Hour News Channel marketing scheme that is actually doing as much to polarize Americans than any of the real issues. People are buying into the idea that the 300+ million people who live in our country can be broken down into the limited color pallet of a box of crayons from IHOP missing several colors, lost to a bowl of grits and a four year old Willy Wonka wannabe.

Of course it isn't just maps that are creating this disconnect, this divide between small town and small apartment, homegrown and homeboy, urban and noodlin, but the maps are important place to start if we really want to come together as a country. If you look at a map of the 2004 election not drawn up by Fox News or CNN's Best Political Team On Television®, you will see that our country is still essentially purple. Plum and mauve are much harder colors to rally around. Most people don't even know what mauve is.

We need to return to maps that actually reflect what is going on in this country, maps that don't discount people and try to break things down into absolutes, black and white, red and blue.

Write to FOX, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC and any of the others that might have left out. Tell them to keep the Red and Blue maps in the closet, at least until election night.

The truth is, we are all much more alike than we want to admit, both inside and outside of the voting booth, so don't cling to a color before or after this election. Instead, remember that we are stronger indivisible than divisible, and none of us should be invisible(sorry, I couldn't resist).

The place for blues and reds in our country is on our flag, together. After all, if these colors did run, more people would know about the color mauve, and we would get even less respect around the world.

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P.P.S. For all of you who can't read, you can still get old Ideas By Chuck on iTunes.

P.P.P.S. Commenting on Ideas By Chuck is still easy. You don't have to give any information, and I welcome, with open arms, ridiculous and insulting commentary on my ideas. Plus, I might be able to help you with your own personal problems... just nothing to do with bodily functions or mental health, please.

Monday, October 6, 2008

Black Bean Burger Boys


Are you a vegetarian? Why are you a vegetarian? Is it for geopolitical, socioeconomic, health, and environmental reasons, or do you just not like baby bunnies being bashed?

Well, if you are a vegetarian for the right reasons, which are a reduced carbon footprint and healthier arteries, and you want to start a profitable food franchise, then this idea is for you.

Start a fast food restaurant that sells veggie burgers, and ALMOST veggie burgers. The ALMOST is the important part. Don't try to pretend that you aren't using filler.
Exploit the fact that you are using filler. Make burgers that are mostly black bean, a compromise for those people who still need a little meat in their diet and on their tongue.

Sure, people will be reluctant at first, but because beans are cheaper than meat you can beat the competition on cost. Your burgers will be healthier, and just as tasty.

Then, on top of all of that, you push the green angle, and publicize how much better for the environment eating one of your burgers is compared to say, McDonald's or Burger King.

I can hear some of the slogans now.

"Black Beans, our burgers are good for you inside and out!"

"Black Bean Burger Boys, our burgers taste F'n good!"

"Black Beans: Great for your heart...no really."

With the cost of shipping beef from what used to be the rain forests of South America rising, someone is going to do this eventually, why not you?


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