MikeLortz.com/JordiScrubbings.com

Way back in my college days, I took several communications classes. Most of these were good-to-know type stuff – studies on media, advertising, and the like. One, however, was just plain terrible. This course was by far the worst class I took in my five years at Florida State. It’s only saving grace was the fact that more than 75% of the class was in a sorority. Of course, that made it all worth while.

Also in this class was a guy my roommate and I called “Pilot Guy”. Pilot Guy was unknown until one day, towards the end of the term, the professor called on him to answer a question. Unfortunately for the professor, Pilot Guy was fully engaged in furiously writing in his notebook. When asked what he was writing, Pilot Guy answered with “a pilot for a tv show”. During class. Hence the name “Pilot Guy”.

Anyway, I bring up Pilot Guy because I have a great idea for my own TV show. Well, not my TV show – that will be revealed at a later date – but a TV show based on my idea.

I call it “The Four Foot Friends” and it stars a man over 7’1 and little person (male or female) who is 3’5 or shorter (for reference Verne Troyer is 2’8, so I don’t think I am asking the impossible).

(Why “The Four Foot Friends”? Because there is at least four feet of height difference between them.)

My idea is to cast these heightly highlighted people in different roles, sort of like Paris Hilton’s “A Simple Life”. Imagine watching a giant and a midget (or dwarf) run a convenience store, work at an oil change place, manage a retirement home, perform in a dance troupe, or maybe even go door-to-door as vacuum cleaner salesmen (do they still have those?).

Or we could have them as the sole contestants in an “Amazing Race” type show, where they alone have to travel from one place to another by working as a team. I think it would be interesting to see two people, both with height-created advantages and difficulties, working together for one common cause.

I know it might not be much of an idea; I am not that much of a TV viewer. But I think it is time to take reality shows to the next level. People are getting bored of watching “common folks” on reality shows. It is time to challenge convention and put on some of the more interesting people in our society. The way I see it, after we exhaust the different folks among us, the next step is robots, programmed to respond randomly to key events. Imagine a show where a robot stays mild-mannered for 23 minutes only to explode at the end of the show when someone says hello.