Better than TED

So I'm thinking my invitation to speak at TED this year got lost in the mail or something, but you know. Whatever. It's like the third year in a row and honestly, the mail's not that bad around here, you know? The LA County Clerk always manages to put the summons in my hand when it's time to go sit in the jury box cooling my heels for a day, but, you know: Fine. Whatever. Because I really don't mind at all. You know why. It's because I got my own pretty damn sweet international confab of edgy, out-of-the-box Big Thinkers happening right here in my carport in Santa Monica. I had to shove some bags of charcoal and dog food out of the way and get creative with the wife's car, but it was totally worth it because I got the best damn multinational gathering of unconventional, thought-provoking thought leaders in the world right in my own backyard, baby, or right next to it. It's accessible from the yard, anyway, if you prop open the gate (it's been sticking since we had all that rain). Who have I got? Oh, nobody. Nobody very famous or thought-provoking or conventional-wisdom-challenging. Just a few very good friends. Does the name BONO mean anything to you? No? How about a little guy I like to call MISTER STEVE JOBS. How about that. Plus I got Buffy Sainte-Marie and that guy who invented the Snuggie and 1976 Nobel Prize winner Dr. Baruch S. Blumberg, and they're all mixing and cross-pollinating and whatnot out in the carport, and then after they're tired from altering each other's fundamental assumptions about the world and stuff we all kinda take a break and chillax and crack some Red Bulls. And baby, you HAVE NOT LIVED until you've argued semiotics with Kevin Garnett after he's gotten a few Bullies under his belt. What's that? It sounds all cross-disciplinary and stuff? Oh, we get cross-disciplinary up in my carport, and if you don't believe that, you should just ask MY VERY GOOD FRIENDS NOAM CHOMSKY AND DR. OZ. Yeah, it's pretty sweet, even if shit gets real once we have to find a place for everybody to bed down for the night, what with Brewster Kahle refusing to sleep on the air mattress and the sexual tension between Sarah McLachlan and Atul Gawande. But it all works out, and when we straggle out to the yard for coffee and donut holes the next morning, you can just tell it's gonna be another day of MAD CRAZY ASSUMPTION-CHALLENGING, BAYBEE. Look, if you work for TED, just read this part: Please invite me next year. I'll sit in the back and be very quiet and not bother anybody. I swear it. Just put me on the list for next year and I'll be there on time and look sharp. I'll even drive myself there, although I'm gonna have to have some work done on the Gremlin because somebody sat on the fender and dented it, I'm not naming names STEVE WOZNIAK. So call me, okay? Please. Please please please. I won't beg, though.