Hare-brained Schemes
1. — Open a restaurant in Los Angeles or Toronto or Vancouver or New York (but I don’t think it’d fly there) called “Crackers!” The food: 1) a gazillion types of crackers (Ritz, Premium Plus, Breton, Raincoast Crisps, Stone Thins, Melba Toast, Triscuits, tons of fancy ones, local organics, etc.); 2) A gagillion types of meats, cheeses, vegetables, spreads, sauces, condiments, garnishes, fruits, misc. Crackers! will recommend 20 or so popular combos (Breton with peanut butter and banana and honey — “The Sofa”, Some fancy Euro cracker with cambazola, proscuitto, and pear and pecan — “The Limo”, Triscuit with endangered smoked salmon, cream cheese, and three capers — “The Lighthouse”, etc.). Customers are free to make their own. Crackers will vary in price according to the combos from 50 cents to 4 bucks. Target market: Fucking everyone, especially people who buy expensive sandwiches and shop at farmer’s markets. We will sell booze out the back door and for an extra 2 bucks you can yell anything you want at a white person (Crackers!). We will advertise that everything is local, eco-friendly, and organic and we will be lying. Possible restaurant design: It could be a very small 1m x 1m dollhouse-type facade of a shop. The actual service window could be the size of my hand, where you slide the money and get your cracker. It’s cheap, satisfying, and healthy. Why go for a big portion when you can live like a European! A cracker European!
2. Open a bar at Dundas and Ossington in Toronto called “Crocodile Dundas in the land of Oss”. The sign should have Australia stuff on it and Wizard of Oz stuff and inside there should be a used clothing store that is licensed so people can drink while they shop.
3. Book a shitcom and get a guarantee of a whole bunch of episodes. While shooting the pilot, sabotage the whole thing. Laugh track all the way to the bank.
4. Buy land in Nova Scotia and spend the next 10 years building a cabin. Hide all essentials in a safe in the ground and invite people to go hang out there and make stuff or hide from things. Go there when the world explodes.
5. A cartoon about urban animals: A raccoon, a pigeon, some seagulls, blind dog, albino squirrel. Should be kinda like Bugs Bunny. Make it with dave macleod and retire on syndication money.
6. Find a person with bags of money to create a kids’ show with Josh Dolgin. A new Mr. Rogers, Mr. Dressup, Fred Penner’s Place, Friendly Giant, Sesame Street with breakdancers and live children in the audience and puppets and magic and music and shit like that. If that person is you, then let’s go. I’ll host and you’ll be rich, I promise.
7. Make a human-sized birdhouse and put it in a tree in downtown LA.
8. Produce Alex Usow’s “Prison Rom-Com” movie.
9. Ride on the coat-tails of my focused friends and family.
10. Learn to play the trumpet and float from band to band forever.
11. Make more craigslist video classifieds:
12. Go back to street performing, Jesus.
13. DJ Play with Skratch Bastid.
14. Hello is carpentry school there, please? Can I speak to him? Hello carpentry school? I’m coming over for a year and half.
15. Ad for cell phone company where I choreograph a thousand dancers to move like people who are on cell phones and don’t realize how they’re moving.
16. Make t-shirts for Montreal Canadiens play-offs that say: “Halak it. Halak it a lot.” and “Ha you Lak me now”. Sell them to stores. Make 200 at 5 a pop, 20 to each store at 10, let them mark up the rest.
17. Starta restaurant where the chefs are always rotating, always a different national cuisine. The chefs bring their own food and shit, they pay for the space? I don’t know how the money breaks down (but it probably does…break down).
18. Make a tv show that stars Nick from Family Ties, Balky from Perfect Strangers, Janet from Three’s Company, Steve Irkel, Kurt Cameron, with special guest every other person. Call it “Hollywood Squares” and make it about a bunch of corrupt cops redeemed by one lone-wolf good cop (played by Malcolm Jamal Warner or me, whoever’s available).
19. Open a sushi restaurant in Brockton Village, a fish and chips place in Montreal, a casse-croute in Vancouver, a Korean barbecue joint in Halifax, and a cheap southern (“soul”) food place anywhere in Canada.
20. Sell booze illegally.
21. Open a dollar store and fill it with shit found on craigslist free, in the alleys, at garage sales, and penny candies.
22. Sell “I heart NY” t-shirts for Toronto that say “I like T.O.” and “I NY T.O.”
23. Disappear for a while, then come back stronger.
24. Make a music video for a Luddite-y band where you feature the band in all kinds of jobs which are dying (print journalist, elevator man, clock repairer, supermarket bag-boy, etc.)
25. Music video for Radiohead where you mount cameras in permanent places with permanent live feeds with solar panels so when the viewers watch the video the song is always the same but the video is always different.
26. 3-d cell phone.
27. Dramatic, hyper-violent cooking show.
28. Good-news show.
29. A show where you prank “comedians” who prank people.
30. Feature film about the war of 1812, you know, where Canada beat the US.