I tried!!! 15min off!!

I guess I broke my own test. Submit an idea everyday for a year and I missed today the 10th by 15min. Let this be a lesson, never try to start a 5 year old deal with hard drive problems and expect it to boot up like a macbook pro. I was sooo close to posting under the deadline too. I had the idea as I was running back from El Carmen on 3rd St. I had just went to a fashion show/bachelor auction at Em and Co also on 3rd St. and I met the organizers and some bachelors and some all around good people. I tell you, I was not dressed for fashion in my old jeans, gray hat and gray sweater, carrying a backpack full of avocados from a friends yard. But, they took me in and with the vodka/cranberry drinks flowing like fast moving lava, I was in my element. So, met some great people and tried to run home and just got here too late so Feb 11 get two submissions. Here's my first one. A reality competition show for amateur and professional photographers. If it's not being worked on it should because everything else has a damn reality show. Hairstylists, fashion, cakes, drinks, security guards. Hell, why not have a great reality show a la Top Chef that pits the worlds greatest photographers together and challenges them in ways they never thought possible. No photoshop, b/w, only one roll, no lighting, only reflective surfaces. Must make inanimate objects look lifelike. Think how fun and crazy this show would be. We would get an inside view into the minds of the worlds best photogs. They'd have to be papparazzi's and run around, have to shoot weddings, kids parties, high school prom photos. Heck, the list is endless. But, who could be the judges? Liebowitz? Jim Marshall, Arbus, Avedon, Mapplethorpe, Newton. I know a lot of them are dead, but we could find some great ones to judge the challengers. Oooh, it'd be good. I just know it.

Travel Show: Comedy

I love to travel. But when I can't, I indulge myself by watching tv shows about traveling. There's regular travel shows of the Rick Steves kind but there's also travel shows about food, travel shows about drinking and travel shows about the weird and eclectic. They're all great and I find myself learning more about a culture or a continent by watching them. But what has always intrigued me, is what makes people laugh. We all laugh, by some estimates, we laugh in some form or another every day about 30 times. In fact, I just laughed watching an old snippet of Dick van Dyke playing the piano and trying to scratch an itch. But I wonder if someone from Okinawa would've laughed at that, and if not, what makes them laugh? In short, that's the idea for my travel show, what do people all around the world laugh at? I know we live in an ever connected world, but that doesn't mean people in Ireland understand the references of The Simpsons or Seinfeld. Conversely, I'd bet money that they laugh at stuff I'd find downright odd. That's exactly what the show would be about. Me traveling around the world and finding out what all the cultures of the world laugh at. Is it slapstick? Satire? Fairy tales? I know from living in Prague in the Czech Republic that theater during the communist occupation was allegorical because any blatant criticism of the regime would've been met with death. To this day the Czechs still laugh at it because it is so deeply rooted in history and is a part of their identity. Do Norwegians participate in stand-up comedy? Are Samoans into sketch? Is there an improv troupe in Bulgaria? What I would hope to achieve through this would be to foster some goodwill and help cultures understand each other better. We're all on the same earth. Might as well laugh together about it.

Top Chef: Home Cookin'

I don't watch a lot of television and I do not have a tivo or a dvr but there are some shows I enjoy watching when they are on and I have the time. One of them is Top Chef. I look past the blatant advertising and product placement and try to focus on the meals and more importantly, how they are prepared. I'm not a big meat eat nor do I eat any pork and sometimes I think they use it too much. I enjoy the show and had this idea for a new concept of the show that regular watchers like me can relate to. Instead of making the food so high concept and hard to conceptualize, my season of Top Chef would be to challenge the contestants to come up with new takes on old-fashioned classic recipes. Think of the recipes they could come up with for lasagna, mac and cheese and mashed potatoes. It doesn't sound too sexy but this would force the contestants to think really hard about how to make an old recipe better. The same way new musical artists cover old songs and find ways to bring new meaning to them, these chefs would do the same to classic foods. I'll still watch the next season of Top Chef no matter what it is, but if you're reading this Padma, think about it.