You do!

This is a list of 25 challenges we would like someone to do.  Why?  Because we want someone to do them, but also because we would like the doer of said thing to write a blog post (hopefully with a picture) and post it on our site, next to our own postings.

Why is that?  Because ultimately we would like this site to be a place where anyone can post and accept challenges. 

We love writing about ourselves, sure, but it would be great if the site was (eventually) a sort of forum, or community, where many people posted, read up, and accepted challenges.

That way more cool things would be done, and a lot of people would have an excuse to do something strange (and exciting and memorable) things.  And people would feel a little connected.

We have not worked out 100% how this will work, exactly.  (No surprise there, probably).  BUT, it will work. 

If you are interested in doing any of these 25 challenges ( = feeding the Challengezor)—or really, any of the ones from the full mega list—just send us an email, letting us know you are taking on the challenge.  Then . . . do it, I guess.   And don’t forget to take pictures.

—

TWENTY-FIVE CHALLENGES WE CHALLENGE YOU TO DO

Interpersonal

• Embarrass yourself every day for a month.  Funny that this is the first challenge we would like to see someone do, but, seriously, we think it would be a mind-expanding thing.  Reduce fear of others’ judgment.  Free yourself of the constraints society places upon you to bind you . . . blah blah blah.
• Find a cause, and pull off a critical mass sort of escapade (like when everyone wore blue polo shirts to Best Buy.)   Lots of freedom with this one.  It’s basically: orchestrate your own flashmob.  But for a good cause, however broadly defined.  Don’t know what a flashmob is?  Click here.
• Develop a dance routine with someone tailored to a particular song.  Agree to perform that dance routine ANY time that song plays.   This is a potentially embarrassing thing.  But that’s the excitement of it:  Turn any public music-playing into a game of roulette (of sorts).  Also, dancing is fun.

Artistic

• Write a short story by sending text messages (or text message length emails) back and forth with someone.  Okay, this one is easy.  Know someone intelligent, creative, and phone-possessing?  Then just go back and forth.  No need to have an idea how the story might end, or a set length, or any requirement at all.  Just do it.  We’re pretty sure it will be fun.
• Invent a game that uses custom-made cards and/or dice and/or equipment (the dice don’t have to be custom).   Needless to say, the game should be fun, if possible.  And you should play it with people.  Re-imaginings of existing games are more than okay, and it might be easiest/best if you take an existing game as a model.  Think Calvinball from Calving and Hobbes.
• Create and perform a play in 24 hours in a public venue.  We would love to be involved with this one.  And, remember: it doesn’t have to be amazing.  Also, remember: some people can be rehearsing scene 1 . . . while some people are writing scene 2.  Who hasn’t seen Shakespeare in Love?  How hard is it to write a play?

Physical

• Run a half marathon dressed as Elvis.  This one speaks for itself, doesn’t it?  I mean, who doesn’t want to run a half-marathon dressed as Elvis?  Well, I guess that depends on your love of Elvis and long-distance running.  Might we suggest: if you don’t already love these things, a little exposure might just impart it.
• Create an instructional two-person yoga video with you and a partner as actors.  Okay.  This is just a “be goofy” one.  Unless you’re really good at yoga.  Which you might be?  In which case, there’s a little earnest sincerity in our desire to see your video.
• Join a sports team on which you are CLEARLY the worst player(s).  This would be fun in a group, but not too large a group, as then the overall skill level drops, and you’re just a bad team, as opposed to a good or decent team with one (or a two) clearly worst players.  We think this would be fun, and a good excuse to try something like fencing, or another sport too exotic to be imagined here.

Learning

• Go to the best restaurant in your town. Order the most popular dish.  Then, reverse engineer the dish at home and learn how to make every aspect so that it is indistinguishable from the original dish.   This one doesn’t have to be technically at the “best” restaurant in your town (for all the New York and Baltimore folk) but it does have to be pretty darn good.  And your “reverse engineering” needs to be magical.  Bonus points for taste tests, pizza-hut-commercial-style, because it is important to be objective about  . . . things like challenge-completion.
• Learn how to jump out of (off of) a moving vehicle.  Now, we were thinking car with this one, but “moving vehicle” includes bicycles, trolleys, boats, and certain animals.  The idea I think is to look stylish and athletic, as if your life would fit seamlessly into an action movie.
• Tai Chi.  Nuff Said.  The “nuff said” is a direct quote from the challenger, and we are loathe to add onto a challenge which seems so obviously sufficient in its own right.  That said, tai chi is pretty easy (to do mediocre-ly), and you do it outside with other people.  Which is cool?  Just need to learn some moves beforehand.

Experiential

• Float down a river in inner tubes with a boombox blasting nursery rhymes.  This one seems fun.  Nothing for making sure you don’t take yourself too seriously like having nursery rhymes come out of a boombox (which you have, in fact made come out of the boombox . . . )  And floating down rivers is very nice, I hear.  And you wouldn’t have to listen to them the whole time you were floating . . .
• Eat a meal consisting entirely of ingredients you have never tasted.  Not hard to explain.  Should be fun.  Might have to use an internet and an automobile and some dollars to make it happen, but very doable, generally.
• Catch fish with your bare hands.  –A lot less doable.  But don’t forget—Gollum does it in Lord of the Rings, and he’s a degenerate (ancient) hobbit.  Plus, hobbits aren’t even real.  How hard can it be then?  Yes, the fish must be alive.  (Yes, goldfish are acceptable.)

Do-gooder-y

• Plant 500 trees.  Don’t do it by yourself, or all in the same day (or do ones that are too heavy and which you don’t handle appropriately, lifting entirely with your back).  But, it would be a great project.  And we would love to help.  Groups in different places can coordinate, if the total then is 500 or more.
• Knit (red) scarves for women with X.  You know that you and your significant other frequently spend Tuesday evenings playing online game X (scrabble, scrabble variant X, scrabble variant XII, whatever)—or maybe even playing a not-online game (probably not scrabble) while the TV is on.  Why not knit instead then?  Knitting and Tuesday nights go together like . . . multitasking and 2011.  Materials and directions are all provided by Y.  Talking allowed.
• Hug a stranger every day for 30 days.  We think this would be very interesting to do—and we’d love to hear about it.  Also, don’t forget: you can still choose your strangers very carefully.  Even the stranger selection process (choosing who to hug) would be interesting.  Also, doing this does not make you a hippie.  You can go ride a motorcycle or sharpen some knives afterwards.

Other

• Eat oatmeal while simultaneously giving a piggyback ride.  Now.  Horse experts may note the differences between oats and oatmeal.  Horse experts who do so are very astute.  However, the spirit of the horse resides in oatmeal as well(!).  This is essentially a horse impersonation exercise, and bonus points if you eat the oatmeal from a canister strapped to your head.  (Isn’t that what horses do with oats . . . sometimes?).
• Create three time capsules, one to be opened 1 year from now, one to be opened 5 years from now, and one to be opened 10 years from now.   We think your future self or selves will thank us for this one.  Plus, we will remind you to open them when the time comes.  Also, no need to publicize the contents of the capsule necessarily.  What to include is entirely flexible, though there are guidelines in the corresponding challenge accessed in here.
• Have a pet rock, care for it, and document its health and exploits for all.  Yes.  The way to add more excitement to your life has arrived, and it is small and inanimate and a retro-wily consumerist fad.  A pet rock for you!  Tell people you don’t know all about your pet rock using the internet, and document its exploits(!).  You can have the Most Interesting Rock in the World, just like in the XX commercials.  But for rocks.

READ ABOUT CHALLENGES OTHERS HAVE TAKEN ON:

–“Melissa” hugs 30 strangers (one a day for thirty days)
–“A” and “B” write a short-story/novel  together by text message

-Soon…a few people adopt those lovable, huggable, irresistibly take-me-home pet rocks.

And again, if you would like to do any of the above challenges, or any other from the mega list, just send the Challengezor an email at challengezor@gmail.com.