Celebrity Teabag!

I know this post is a day late and a chromosome short (just like Glenn Beck!), but I didn’t think about it until I was falling asleep last night.

I forget even where this started. I remember laughing about it with my brother-in-law. And my friends Paul and Mike. And my old lifting partner. Which is perhaps why neither of us got very big in the two years we lifted together.

In any case, somebody I know somewhere in my past came up with the idea for Celebrity Teabag!, a fabulous new game show where everyday citizens get to meet famous celebrities … once they guess who they are.

Each show would start with some catchy theme music followed by a meet-n-greet where the convivial host makes awkward small talk with three contestants. Once we get back from commercial, the contestants are blindfolded and placed on their backs on low, narrow tables with their heads toward the camera.

Then the first celebrity comes out. He or she (if it’s Bea Arthur) smiles and waves to wild applause, walks up to the first contestant, drops trou and starts making tea … one contestant after another. Overhead cameras focused on each contestant’s face capture the aftermath as our ordinary citizens struggle to decide which celebrity just Dropped In for Some Tea™.

Celebrities two and three follow suit, and as the contestants ponder for the cameras we break for our second word from our sponsors.

When we get back, the contestants are standing side-by-side at a podium under dramatic lighting. They’re told to write their celebrity guesses on an electronic pad as a thoughtful version of the theme music plays in the background. Once the music ends and the lights come up, the points add up as the guesses—and the celebrity names—are revealed. The contestant with the most points wins cash and valuable prizes … and gets to cavort with the celebrities as the audience cheers, the balloons drop, the credits roll and the catchy theme music plays once again.

And just like Jeopardy! has theme weeks like “college” and “military” and “spinster librarians,” Celebrity Teabag! could have had an awesome “batshit crazy Republicans who can’t do math and who are too lazy to understand history” tie-in theme yesterday. If only I’d gotten this post up in time.

Who would you like to see on the next Celebrity Teabag!? The winner in most of our casting discussions back in the gym tended to be Karl Malden. Followed by Bea Arthur. With an occasional Matthew McConaughey thrown in as a sorbet to cleanse the palate. So to speak.