I have this idea. I've had it for a while. It's a good one. Are you ready? A trampoline amusement park. You're probably thinking, "I want to go there." And you might also be thinking, "Lawsuit waiting to happen." And to that I say...well, it's possible that you're right. The thing about my trampoline amusement park is that I think it would be a fun place to visit, but that doesn't mean I have any desire to invest in real estate or equipment or liability insurance or even, for that matter, the time it takes to do a Google search showing me I would apparently have a number of competitors.



Still, you can't deny that a trampoline amusement park is a pretty solid idea, and today I would say it more than paid for itself when I fed it into The Idea Swap. The Idea Swap is a website run by Hyper Island, a digital media education firm, where you can enter your ideas in 150 characters or less and then trade them with strangers around the Internet, continuing to swap until you get bored or your boss comes by your desk to ask why you're not working. For "trampoline amusement park," I got "make toast, cut out two holes and put it on top of two fried eggs to make a face," "self-cleaning sweater" and "create a play based on a potato's life." Sure, they're not all million-dollar ideas, but they're a good reminder of the wealth of creative output we're capable of, both collectively and individually. And on that note, I'm going to go work on my new play, His Own Private Idaho: The Life and Times of Spuds Terkel. When it's nominated for a Tony, I intend to celebrate by taking a vacation at a trampoline amusement park.

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