1. The Remote Finder. Like a lot of people, I watch a lot of TV. Like most of those folks, I use a remote to do it. Like a large percentage of such humans, I'm lazy and messy. Like a lion's share of the guys to which I'm referring, I often lose the remote. Like a healthy sector of chaps with which I share the above characteristics, I get extremely angry when I lose the remote, and start banging my head with my fists, moaning, and frothing at the mouth. Like a plethora of homo sapiens who find themselves caught in a similar or analogous pickle, I am then sedated by men in white coats.
Has this happened to you? It has to me, and others, probably. That's why I thought of but will probably never market or sell the amazing new Remote Finder! It's a small thing that you attach to your remote. Then there's another small thing you attach to your TV that has a button. When you press the button on the TV, the thing on the remote beeps. Then you find the remote!
Post script: A lot of TVs have this built in. And I actually looked online and found that a lot of other people have also had this idea, but presumably have also been too lazy to actually do anything with it. Oh well. As Kurt Vonnegut would say, so it doesn't go.
2. iKaraoke. My wife just got an iPhone. It's fun. I thought you could have an application (I refuse to call them "apps." I don't care if they call it the "App Store." Apple may be powerful, but they do not have the power to turn annoying abbreviations into legitimate words. The day the public library puts up a sign saying they are now called the "Pube Libe," then maybe, MAYBE I'll use the word "app" in a sentence non-ironically. But only then.)
What was I saying? Oh, yeah, how about a karaoke application? The iPhone already can send its music into a radio station. So all you'd need is a program that will take in your voice (which shouldn't be hard, since this thing is ostensibly a phone) and play it over an instrumental track. And the screen could play the words.
Why, you ask, would I want an iKaraoke application? Well, I love karaoke. There, I said it. It's a great way to have a performance in your own house. There was a time, back in the old days, back in the times I don't remember, because no one who experienced them is still alive, when people would regularly perform music for one another, just in the house or on the street or whatever. Everyone could play an instrument or yodel or hambone or yodelbone or something. And it's a fun thing, to see people you like doing something besides talking and watching some person you don't know performing on TV.
The thing is, learning to play an instrument sucks. It takes a long time just to get terrible at it, especially if you're me. Meanwhile, anyone can sing, sort of. But no one wants to hear people sing without some sort of backing band. That's called "a capella music," and is illegal in most states, for good reason. A capella music is strictly the domain of painfully white young guys who have floppy hair, wear button-down shirts, and think they're much more charming and funny than they actually are. It's the improv comedy of the music world.
The answer to this dilemma? Karaoke. But who wants to drop a zillion dollars for a karaoke machine? And who wants to sing the songs that are actually available in karaoke form? Most of the time you get both kinds of music, country and western. If you get a hip-hop song, it's Kris Kross. Seriously. When I do karaoke, I want to sing a GG Allin song in the style of Morrissey. This is seldom an option. So with iKaraoke, you would somehow make an unlimited library of songs available for download.
Post Script: This has probably already been done. I'm too lazy to check.
3. The Lasagna First Piece Not So Fucking Sloppy Pan (the name isn't quite finalized yet). If a device involves cooking, and seems like it could potentially be useful once in a person's life and never again, it will fly off the shelves. I've been to cooking specialty stores that are packed to the gills with rosemary mincers and tripe squashers and bread injectors and all sort of crazy gizmos that are absolutely vital in order to save a few seconds making one recipe that you will make once and fail at and then never try again. Kitchens are getting bigger and bigger to provide plenty of storage in which to put all these useless pieces of crap so that you can stack them on top of one another, forget you have them, and then die, leaving your kids with the task of trying to find a use for pork tossers and potato sodomizers.
In that spirit, I think the world is in desperate need of the Lasagna First Piece Not So Fucking Sloppy Pan. It's a lasagna pan that has two extra metal walls in the corner, each perpendicular to the sides of the pan. These extra walls connect to make a small square within the larger square of the pan, about the size of one piece of lasagna. Then you fill the pan with lasagna, all except that one square. When it's done, you then lift the two extra inner walls out (I forgot to mention that they're removable), and voila! You can now cut the lasagna and use the spatula in the open space made by the removable walls there to remove a first piece of lasagna that's not so fucking sloppy. That's where we get the name of the product: The Lasagna First Piece Not So Fucking Sloppy Pan. Ask for it by name!
Post Script: Probably invented. I don't know. I'm bored now.
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1 comment:
If you're interested, I sort of experienced your iKaroake app while I was reading your article. Except there was no singing. What it was was my husband putting his Citibank hold music on the speaker phone because we just got a new phone and he uses the speaker function at every opportunity. Ironically, or maybe not ironically, the hold music was noodley easy-listening jazz.
The lasagna pan is genius.
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