Andy’s Solutions

Teddy Roosevelt once said 'Complaining about a problem without providing a solution is called whining.”

Roosevelt, a top-four president in United States history according to the sheer number of heads on Mount Rushmore, seamlessly transitioned us into the 1900s, a century that saw six Chicago Bulls championships and two World War wins for the United States, so he obviously knew what he was talking about.

Much like our old friend Theodore, today I am all about solutions. In this edition of 'Tuesdays with Andy,” I'll be throwing out some well thought out ideas on how to defeat the Novel Coronavirus. Too bad, by the way, that it's not called the 'Naval” Coronavirus, because we have the best Navy on earth, probably thanks to Teddy Roosevelt, and we'd probably be the most prepared country if that were the case.

Before I solve all of our problems, though, I'd like to give thanks to our readers. I looked at my bank account over the weekend, and I had an extra $1200 in there, clearly a result of many donations from readers of this column. It is much appreciated.

It's actually crazy how far the Tuesday Troupe has come. I mean, secretly raising over one-thousand dollars? That's big stuff. We are clearly taking steps to becoming our own self-sustaining economy, and technically could probably start our own country/cult soon and just kind of all live together and hang out.

By the way, if I were to transition the Tuesday Troupe into a full on cult, and not saying I am thinking about that just yet, I'd actually be a pretty formidable leader.

Think about it for a second. What's the worst part about joining a cult? We'll all say it together. One, two three. It's marrying the leader. Look at Heaven's Gate, the Manson family, Myrtle Beach Safari, etc ... In all cases, you have to marry, or basically marry, whichever whack job is in charge.

But guess what? I'm already married and am not a polygamist so that wouldn't even be a concern.

Again, not saying Tuesday Troupe is or will be a cult one day, but let's just stick a pin in that and come back to it if the donations keep rolling in.

We got a little sidetracked there, but let's move on to the main point of today's column. While I'm no scientist, I think I have drafted a few ideas that could help us take social distancing to the max while still staying away from ultimate boredom.

My first suggestion will be my most outlandish. What if we just all cryogenically froze ourselves? In case you didn't know, there is a theory out there that you can freeze yourself now and get unfrozen years later. In this case we'd just need a few weeks.

I've never been frozen myself, but I know three people who pulled it off; Austin Powers, Dr. Evil and Walt Disney. Mr. Disney is still on the pending list but the other two were able to go about life pretty normally after the unfreeze.

I know what you're thinking: How are we going to freeze literally every person in America? Well, read back to where I said I wasn't a scientist. That's not my problem. I'm just the ideas guy.

If there are any world-renowned scientists reading this right now, it's your turn to make something happen. I came up with the plan. Your job is to take care of all the dirty work. Whole country is counting on you, bub, so you better figure it out fast.

My second suggestion: A nightly trivia lottery game that pits the entire country against one-another. Let me explain.

The government should run a one-hour trivia show, hosted by Ryan Seacrest, for free on the internet every single night until things are back to normal. It's like a game show but everyone plays at home. Do 20 completely random questions a night, multiple choice, and one grand winner is chosen at random out of the citizens who went 20-for-20.

The key to making sure people stay at home all night, is that you have to make the show pop up randomly some time between 4 p.m. and 10 p.m. That disallows people to make plans to go out. Also, give some sort of bonus/free play to people who participate every night.

This new game show needs to really reel people in, so we need to make the winner get bookoo bucks. That's right, I said 'bookoo bucks,” which is somewhere around $10,000. When people see the minimum nightly winner makes $10,000 they'll say 'Wow, that's literally like, bookoo bucks!”

I cannot stress how important bookoo bucks is to this plan. If you're not familiar to the term 'bookoo bucks,” it is the direct and polar opposite to the term 'chump change.” We don't want our big winner winning chump change. That's why $10,000 has to be the minimum. Also just for fun, let's make the maximum amount a couple billion. Don't worry, it's the internet, so we can rig it to make sure nobody actually wins a couple billion, we just need to goat the big heavies like George Steinbrenner and Warren Buffett in, so they want to play too. See, to them, $10,000 is 'chump change,” and NOT 'bookoo bucks.” We can't have them running around and spreading germs while the rest of us are being responsible.

Idea number three is going to be another game show called 'The Mask.” As you know, the CDC wants us all to wear masks around when we're outside of our homes, but as you know, not everybody is wearing them. But don't worry, I've got a plan.

In this new game show, hosted by Ryan Seacrest, people will randomly get paid if they are wearing masks in public. That's right, Ryan Seacrest will be traveling America and handing out wads of cash to people who are taking the right precautions. You want to get people to wear masks? Convince them that wearing masks can make you bookoo bucks. It's as simple as that.

Normally, you'd have to pay bookoo bucks to get ideas like this, but I am throwing these at you, the Tuesday Troupe, for free (with purchase of the Southeast Iowa Union). So go forth and spread these ideas to the world.

Also, please find a way to watch 'The Last Dance” documentary on ESPN and NETFLIX because next week's column is probably going to be about Dennis Rodman. That's what we in the entertainment business like to call, a teaser.