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Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Where the Wild Ideas Are

It started with an email…

My friend Kelly sent me an email with these pictures of a supposedly very dangerous route to a mountaintop restaurant in China.





The kicker is that if you make it all the way up, your food is free.  Right off, it sounded to me like one of those ridiculous email things that goes around, completely mis-captioned.  But still, the shots looked real enough to me.  Thus began the following email exchange…

But first, some back-story:

I used to work with Kelly and we had lunch together most every day.  Lunchtime talk usually centered on her dating and love life, which was far more interesting and bizarre than my own.  We eventually decided that her life was the basis for a great sit-com.  All we had to do was (barely) tweak the stuff that actually happened to her, or just expand on some of our lunchtime conversations.

At the moment, we have a document that’s over 6 pages, full of story ideas, running jokes, gags and what not.  Whenever something happens, we’re like, “That’s an episode!

I’ve already used one here once before… Last September I included a bit about how I had a friend that wanted Penguins season tickets, just so when the Pens players personally delivered the ticket package (as they do with some packages every year) she could lure Kris Letang into the Silence of the Lambs pit she intended to dig in her basement.  (The very last line of the post was her line and it makes me laugh every single time I think about it.)

Obviously, we’re never going to actually do anything with this “series”, although she thinks we should get it done with animation.  I think it only works with real actors, because so much of it is nothing but spoofing the television medium itself. 

One of the downsides is that from time to time, we find our jokes being used on other TV shows.  Kelly saw a show a week or two ago that featured a debate on having a specific side of the bed.  It featured a character having her alarm go off with her on the unfamiliar side and consequently clubbing her bedmate about the head trying to turn it off.

I totally thought of that 2 years ago, as part of a montage of things that could go wrong if one was stuck on their “off side” of the bed.  The last of which was the alarm going off, “Kelly” clubbing her bedmate repeatedly as the alarm continued to blare, followed by a quick cut to the bedmate sitting in the kitchen with rolled up tissue stuffed up each nostril, saying, “OK, you can have that side of the bed.”

OK, with all this in mind, Kelly having sent me this email about the mountaintop Chinese restaurant, and understanding that real Kelly as well as character “Kelly” are staunch vegetarians, we had the following email exchange:

Bluz: One quibble though… if everyone that reaches the restaurant gets free food, then who is it that gets charged?  I wanna check Snopes to see if that’s as dangerous as it looks.

(I did check… I couldn't find it on the site.)

Kelly: I’m guessing there is a way to get there that is less dangerous.  If you go that route, you pay for your meal, which they probably charge enough to cover free meals.

Bluz: Helicopter and a rope ladder?  Hang gliders?  Parachutes?

Hey, episode idea… “Kelly” hears that they serve the world’s best (insert something non-meaty) so she makes the trip.  Along the way, she keeps bumping people off that are coming the other way… We’d have to come up with some bizarre scenarios… maybe it’s just like eating potato chips…

Then when she gets to the top, they’re all out of (whatever) so they’re serving bacon-wrapped kittens or something… (omg, I’m laughing out loud at that)

Oh God… when she comes up to the place, they have a whole pen full of kittens outside, she says “Oh, isn’t that cute… they have “Welcoming Kittens”

Kelly: That’s not funny…

Bluz: Are you kidding me?  I’m on the floor here… OK, so it’s a little “dark”…

Kelly: Eating kittens IS NOT a laughing matter…

Bluz: Of course it is… everyone knows it’s dogs they eat… Eating kittens is ridiculous, which is why it works.  Maybe substitute hamsters or ferrets or something else…

Kelly: No!!  No animals… 

Bluz: It wouldn’t be funny with tofu.

Kelly: We can use cardboard or tree branches or chalk …  just no animals!!
It’s China – we can use bamboo.

Bluz: OK, what is it that you would be horrified to eat, upon getting to the top of the mountain?  I mean; that’s the point… it has to be something you’d never eat in a million years.

Kelly: Hmmm…. I’ll have to think…  Babies would be better than kittens…

Bluz: Remember, you’ve been nudging people off the cliff all day…

Kelly: I don’t like this episode…  Is this how writing teams break up?

Bluz: OK, how bout this… once “Kelly” gets to the top, sees the kittens, learns they’re about to be wrapped in bacon, she sets them all free.

Then on the way down, she sees them all jumping off the edge of the cliff, like lemmings.

Kelly: Kinda funny…

Bluz: See?  There you go! 

It would be all feel-goody… setting all the kittens free… then the very last shot, you see this curtain of CGI kittens (or even obviously stuffed animal toy kittens) raining off the cliff.  Because nothing ever goes as planned for our “Kelly”, as you know…

Kelly: I’ll have to think about it…

Bluz: Well, we could always just talk about it in the episode… kelly sees this email and wonders what they serve… the rest of the plot points come up as a conversation being had…

It’s just that the mental image of bacon-wrapped kittens is so wrong it just cracks me up.
Hey, Bacon Wrapped Kittens would be a good punk-band name…

And so it ended.  For the record, I haven’t added this idea to our “Episode Document.”  After all, I’m not completely insensitive…

Note:  No actual kittens were hurt during the creation of this bit, and that’s actually chicken under all that bacon.  Because we all know we only worry about killing the cute animals.

17 comments:

  1. I would SO watch that show.

    (And not just because my name's in it.)

    (Or because of the bacon-wrapped kittens.)

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  2. Trust me, I WILL find a way to use some of these ideas...

    Gee, maybe I should post a disclaimer that Bachelor Girl Kelly is in no way connected to the Bacon Wrapped Kittens. I'd hate to see your good name dragged through the mud. Oh sure, it's all fun and games now... Just wait til the PETA protesters start showing up...

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  3. Can I just say that this blog was tasteful? ba-da-ching!

    Do you find those bacon wrapped kittens in the bacon field you speak of? I'm SO on board for that show. Can I be one of the random people being pushed of a ledge. I think I could act scared. Really.

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  4. Cassie:
    Your comment is living proof of my theory that everything becomes better when wrapped in bacon.

    (note to readers that aren't Cassie: "Bacon fields" comes from a comment I left on her site where I mentioned that I am able to love animals AND meat, because I'm in complete denial as to where it comes from. I know that my hamburgers come from a hamburger tree, which stands in a large grove, beside the bountiful fields of bacon.)

    OK, back to Cassie now...
    You can totally be one of the people pushed off the ledge. You'd be perfect because you would be talking about how much you love your husband and 2 lovely kids, and have so much to live for... then ... over the edge. That would would work perfectly with the whole bacon-wrapped kittens theme.

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  5. i think it's fake.

    nice band name, though.

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  6. There's got to be an angle to it that's not being presented. Or just out and out fakery.

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  7. OH OH OH! Or, since I don't eat bacon or any pig or cow or red meat for that matter, you could try to force me to eat said bacon wrapped kitten. I could totally over-act the crap out of that!

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  8. Cassie, when would that be? As you're plummeting into the giant gorge? I supposed we could thrown some bacon-wrapped kittens down after you...

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  9. I guess they're organic kittens they raise right there on the mountaintop. It would be too expensive to have fresh meat and produce delivered daily!

    Actually they do eat cats (and we may have too). Out where I live, an asian-style restaurant was shut down a few years ago after the health department found cat carcasses in the freezer! A new twist on eating pussy I suppose. What kind of sauce goes with that?

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  10. It would be great if you got to the top of the mountain and it was a McDonalds... with a playland where Buddhist monks were playing in the ball pit.

    Or maybe a Starbucks. Reminds me of one of my favorite Onion headlines: Starbucks Opens in the Bathroom of another Starbucks.

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  11. I can't even look at the photos without getting scared! And the cat? Whoa, I'm already afraid to eat in some of the best restaurants here. That would do me in.

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  12. Carpetbagger, I so saw that one! *giggle*

    How about this, I am about to tell "Kelly" about how awesome it is when you get to the top, but then I slip because my hands are greasy from the bacon wrapped kitten?

    Then I over act to my death?

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  13. Dog:
    Oooooh... bacon-wrapped pussy! I'm ready to franchise!

    Bagger:
    That would be hilarious! Right beside a WalMart…

    And I think I saw that headline on the Onion Day by Day calendar I had a couple years back…

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  14. Cher:
    I don't see how, even with China's famous disregard for human rights and safety, that anyone would be up on those little ledges without being tied off or a net underneath. But is sure looks wild, doesn't it?

    Cassie:
    You must really be a frustrated actor... maybe you should try community theater...

    OK, I can see that scene you describe. Here's how I'd do it: "Cassie" is gushing to "Kelly" about how good the "exotic" food is up top. She's holding onto one of those chains but her hand slips. Before she plunges over (acting fabulously) "Kelly" reaches out and grasps her hand. Then "Kelly" says, "Hey, look! A cloud shaped like a duck", as she lets go of "Cassie".

    (Prior episodes establish that Kelly has the attention span of a flea.)

    How's that for off-the-cuff script-writing?

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  15. I just hope "Kelly" isn't a huge fan of exotic food. She totally is going to miss out with an attention span like that.

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  16. Oh, she eats all kinds of wild-ass stuff. But she usually picks out half of the ingredients.

    This is a chick that orders quesadillas but doesn't really like cheese.

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  17. wow, very nice picture
    it must be screamy

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