Embrace the Good Bad idea

The Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The world’s largest arts festival. Where such talents as Stephen Fry, Emma Thompson, Craig Ferguson, and Robin Williams (?!) started their careers. A quarter million people bought 800,000 tickets there last August, sweeping in and out daily like the tides.

To be part of such an huge event, of course I went with an act that was safe, right? Something simple, something I’ve done before. Like standup comedy. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Get in, tell some jokes, get out, nobody gets hurt (especially me). I mean, that's the safe thing to do, isn't it?

You’d think.

Instead, I decided I would write an original jukebox cabaret (which I had never done before), featuring me as a solo singer (which I had very little experience with), and – AND – I would do the singing via a puppet whom I would be operating onstage.

When I tell people about this decision, they all ask the same thing: why? Why did I choose to hinge the whole act on several performance skills I had never done before?

Easy.

The whole idea was irresistible because it was crazy. It was a Good Bad Idea.

"What’s a Good Bad Idea?" you ask. Well, I’ll tell you. Right after the news.

What’s going on?

• Your Parasite and You has been chosen as an Official Selection of the 2025 BoneBat "Comedy of Horrors" Film Fest. It’s an honor to be in the only festival I know of that is specifically for horror-comedy. If you’re in the Seattle area on April 5th, you should check it out.

Just crazy enough to work, or just crazy?

Jane Austen said it best:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a person in possession of good ideas, must also be in possession of ideas that are bugnuts crazy.

That was Austen, right? I’m pretty sure that was her...

I’ve talked about generating ideas before. But let’s face it, there are Good Ideas and Bad Ideas. Not every idea I have is a winner. They all arrive with a lot of excitement and a new idea trumpet fanfare. Then a lot of them fade pretty fast, and get tossed into the Bad Idea grinder.

Then there are the strange ones. The ideas that at first take are Bad Ideas. They’re impractical, or more work than I was expecting, or something I’ve never done before, or just weird.

But they won’t go away. I can’t stop thinking about them. Because they’re interesting. I’ve never seen anything like them before. They’re original. And if I don’t take them on, they might never happen.

They are still Bad Ideas, compared to the low-hanging fruit of a lot of other, more reliable ideas. But they are also simultaneously Good Ideas – they’ve already grabbed my imagination, and will hopefully do the same for my audience.

Thus: the Good Bad Idea. Like deciding to try several entirely new entertainment formats on my first Fringe foray. At least I was in really good company.

Chances are your pants are not as fancy

Remember when I talked about Jonathon Coulton and his self-inflicted Thing a Week challenge, where he wrote, recorded, and released a new song every week for a year? It was a crazy idea – you could say a Good Bad Idea. And it paid off big time.

And it was the Good Bad Idea-ness of the challenge itself attracted people to him so they could find out how good his music was.

In fact, the year of Thing a Week produced layers of Good Badness. For instance, one of his most beloved songs started out as a Good Bad Idea. Here’s the opening lines of “Mr. Fancypants:”

Chances are your pants are not as fancy as the pair
Of very fancy pants that Mr. Fancy Pants will wear

He had a more conventional song planned for that week, but this nutty little concept wouldn’t leave him alone. As his very detailed fan-led wiki describes it:

Jonathan has explained in many concerts that it was one of the pieces of music that rattled around in his head, made no sense whatsoever and didn't want to write, but wouldn't get out of his head until he did.

“Mr. Fancypants” was an odd song, even for Coulton’s ouevre of songs about corporate-speak zombies, lovelorn mad scientists, and Swedish superstores. Yet it went on to become a live-performance staple for Coulton. And that happened when he started playing it with yet another Good Bad Idea, the Zendrum. The result was an amlagam that was uniquely Mr. Coulton, encapsulating his humor, originality, and deep musical talent. In a song about pants.

First, pack a chute

I’m not going to lie to you, Marge: a Good Bad Idea can be a car crash waiting to happen. That’s one of the things that makes it so attractive. We love to watch things that might go hideously wrong at any second (NASCAR, SNL, your friend trying to do a cannonball from the 3-meter board).

But car crashes and bellyflops are no fun at all from the inside. So avoid them. Prepare, practice, rehearse, edit, review, proof. Do Beta tests and preview shows. Then do it all again. And again. We had layers of trial shows for the Edinburgh run, including an early one to a select audience of performers we admired just to ask the question “should we even bother going ahead with this?"

So make sure your chute is properly packed. Have a pro check your chute. Check it again. Maybe a third time. Then step off the cliff.

You are the secret sauce

When I first had the idea that would become Danny O’Hare, the Fifth Most Popular Lounge-singing Puppet in the Greater Puget Sound Area, I ran it by my top advisor and most belovéd Shoulder Devil, Mari. I told her how much the idea intrigued me, but what if it turned out I’m bad at puppeteering? Her response:

“Oh, no, honey—it would be perfect if you were bad at the puppet."

You can see why she’s such a wonderful Shoulder Devil. And just this morning, I asked her about that reassuring/terrifying bit of advice. How did she know that this particular crazy concept was a Good Bad Idea, and not just Bad Bad?

It had the feel of my favorite Tarot card: the Fool, stepping off the ledge. The whole concept was definitely outside your comfort zone, but also unique – and uniquely you.

A Good Bad idea arrives with a feeling of opportunity. It requires growth – which is painful, but ultimately rewarding and life affirming. And yeah, it’s also scary as hell.

And a Good Bad idea speaks to you. And speaks of you. I know it sounds like cliché self-help speak, but you really are the only person who can do you. Your viewpoint has it’s own insights and quirks that just might provide a needed spark to someone else – if you let them experience it.

And they’re probably waiting for you somewhere outside your comfort zone.

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Over to you

Is there a glorious Good Bad Idea that has been following you around? We don’t always have the time or resources to indulge a Good Bad idea, but as a thought experiment, what would it take to make your Good Bad Idea real? What would be the price of failure? And what would be the prize of success?

Sometimes just contemplating a Good Bad Idea can remind you of the great things you are capable of. The world needs more you.

Until we talk again, I remain,

Your pal,

Jamie