Bonjour Date Night

Online dating is booming. Booming. People are looking to the silicon circuits to get their hands on some silicon circles, if you know what I mean.

Sure online dating is convenient and cheaper than regular dating, or going to a bar or church to try to pick up chicks. You don't have to pay for gas, food, or drinks (that church wine isn't really free). You have a certain amount of anonymity and safety. Plus, you don't have to feign interest in the arts or belief in god. You just have to have a nice picture of yourself and learn how to type "LOL" without thinking.

This is of course also the problem with online dating, misrepresentation. People use pictures of themselves from 10th grade or the last time they had a full head of hair and didn't have a double chin, and if the picture is recent there are a host of different techniques that people have quickly mastered to make themselves look better, from only posting pictures taken from more than fifteen feet away, to the always effective "Myspace angles." Moreover, don't every forget about Photoshop. With Photoshop I could make myself look like a Jewish Mel Gibson if I wanted to.

What if you could have the best of both worlds? What if there was a dating service that would let you talk to and choose who you wanted to talk to and meet through your computer, while at the same time being able to see them in person? Wouldn't you be interested in that? Don't you think other people would like that too?

Here is the idea: a bonjour dating night.

If you have a Mac, Bonjour is a program that you have on your computer ( Mac or PC is one of the eHarmony 29 levels of compatibility). Bonjour is part of the iChat program. Basically, when you log into it, it allows you to see and talk to anyone who is using the same wireless network as you and signed into Bonjour. It is a pretty nifty tool for file sharing etc. Even if you don't like this idea, you just learned something.

Basically, you would have a night at a coffee shop or somewhere like that with free WIFI. All the singles interested in participating would log onto Bonjour and chat away. If you meet someone you like talking to enough, someone you are interested in, they are sitting right there. They can tell you where they are, or you can tell them where you are. If you like each other enough, you can talk in person. They are right there, so there can be no misrepresentation, at least as far as appearance is concerned ( this does not take into account any whigs, pushup bras, or fake noses ).

Moreover, the singles participating are most likely from around the area, so you don't end up in a long distance relationship with a French model, or being asked to go sailing in the Adriatic as a first date by a Greek dignitary. In the very least you could meet some people from your neighborhood ( smart, cool people with Macs ).

P.S. Subscribing to Ideas By Chuck is hip and cool. I heard that Don Johnson was a subscriber. You want to be like Don Johnson? Subscribe.

P.P.S. Monique, if you are reading this, I still miss you. If you ever get your green card for modeling, please let me know.

P.P.P.S. I am thinking of giving up freelance thinking, so if you own a think tank and have any openings, let me know.

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?

Dry Erase Bored?

I have been going to the same coffee shop on a regular basis for the past year or so. I have come to recognize some some of my fellow patrons, the regulars. It also seems like they are all working on similar futile pursuits: writing scripts, writing blogs, looking at myspace, looking at facebook, surfing craigslist, pretending to think, thinking, writing emails, and waiting for that one call or email that will change everything.

I want to reach out to them. When I see someone staring at the same page of their movie script about two friends caught up in an alien drug cartel's evil plot to smuggle human hair back to their own world, struggling with what should happen next, I want to reach out to them, to help them. When I overhear a couple of girls discussing a guy who did or didn't do something, I want to tell them why. When I hear a teacher support group talking about striking and what they can do to gain leverage, I want to help.

Two heads are better than one. Three heads are better than two. What am I talking about? Group-think. Networking. Helping yourself by helping others.

Here is the idea.

A coffee shop, maybe one you own or go to, should put up a dry erase board up where everyone can see it. When people come in, they can write their name, email or IM, and what they are working on.

Other people in the coffee shop can then contact that person, shoot a couple of emails back and forth etc., and if they both feel like it, meet in person by getting up and going over to the other person's table.

When you leave the coffee shop, you erase your info from the board.

It is all totally voluntary, and anyone can use a dry erase board.

Maybe you have something to say that would help someone else with an ad campaign for edible underwear, and they know a guy that would be perfect to produce your one act play about heroin addicted penguins (he has probably been looking for a penguin project, because penguins are so hot right now). Helping yourself by helping others.

Ideas would be traded, connections made, and the coffee shop you go to or own will become a powerhouse of productivity, fueled by mocha lattes of course.

P.S One time, a person who subscribed to Ideas By Chuck found five dollars shortly after subscribing. Just something to think about.