A Salad Premise
35th president of the United States John Fitzgerald Kennedy once said “We choose to do these things not because they are easy, but because they hard.” But what he wasn’t considering is that there is a third option: Because they are incredibly, fundamentally stupid.
A thing you should know about me is that I can’t justify doing something mildly outside of my normal comfort zone without thinking about a way to churn it into content, regardless of whether or not I actually follow through with it. During a recent conversation with two of my coworkers - let’s call them David and Kathy - the topic meandered towards the 1993 religicational children’s cartoon VeggieTales, a show I have not thought about in well over a decade. When I was the target age for the show, I only watched maybe half a dozen episodes, and I vocalized the idea of going back and watching every episode of the show, but noting that I would need some sort of content-related justification for doing so. David and I brainstormed a couple of ideas, then the conversation fizzled and we went back to our respective jobs.
About five minutes later, I had a thought.
I stood up and got David’s attention (they sit in the desk right next to mine, it’s very convenient) and, with no explanation, said the words “Every VeggieTales Episode Ranked By How Well The Characters Would Taste Together In A Salad.” Words that would haunt me for the next six hours until I got home and had the opportunity to write them down, as I am right now.
David laughed (Chuckled? Chortled?) and said maybe I was onto something. I initially thought they were being polite, but then they pulled up the VeggieTales wiki and began helping me flesh out the idea. Truly one of the greatest friends I’ve ever had.
But maybe I’m getting ahead of myself. Maybe you’re reading this and you don’t know what VeggieTales is. First of all, welcome, glad you’re here. Second of all: “VeggieTales is an American Christian computer generated musical children's animation and Christian media franchise created by Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki under Big Idea Entertainment. The series sees fruit and vegetable characters retelling Christian stories from the Bible, with episodes presenting life lessons according to a biblical worldview.” Okay cool, glad we cleared that up.
As I said, I watched maybe six episodes of this when I was a child. In spite of this, I remember being a big fan and owning several toys based on characters from the show, some of which I’m sure still exist… somewhere. So overall I’m very curious to go back and watch everything. And the concept of revisiting a property from your childhood always ends up favorably, right?
So anyway, what is the main conceit of this project? Well, if it wasn’t obvious, I don’t know. It’s very fresh in my mind and I’m kinda just hoping I’ll figure it out along the way. But I’m not limiting myself to just salad; there’s a finite number of characters and it would get very repetitive very quickly. And if it becomes any deeper than “watch cartoon, make food” you’ll figure that out at roughly the same rate I am.
Until then, have a great week, I guess.