Mission: Sustainable

duhn duhn DA na duhn duhn DA na duhn duhn DA na
duhn duhn DA na. DA-NA-NA. DA-NA-NA. Duhn NUH!

There's this game called "I never." Most people know how to play, but for those who don't, you sit around in a room and say something (usually something fairly funny or shocking) such as: "I've never had sex with a pygmy goat from Afghanistan." If you or anyone else in the room can't honestly say that's true, you drink. If some dude you didn't invite to the party takes a sip from his drink to my particular example here, I advise you get up, place your drink down carefully, and then run screaming from the room tout de suite.

There's another game. Let's call this game, "I'd never." It's just a simple contraction "I" plus "would" along with "never" signifying the future. We all play this game in our lives.

My particular version of this game has involved sitting around having a conversation and someone says, "would you ever want to be on television?" I say, "I'd never!" which feels true, but I'm finding that if you treat life in this fashion, as if you can read all future versions of yourself and how you'll react to any circumstance with perfect accuracy, you really limit yourself. I've said this for most of my life "I'd never want to be on television." Especially now, with all of these reality shows, with all their drama and stress. I wrote about whether I'd want to be on Top Chef or not, and truthfully a lot of it came down to fear. Fear of failure. Fear of being judged. Fear of not being liked. But the biggest reason I didn't want to be on television was because I didn't feel like it was important enough to me to wade through these fears.

Until along came something different. Something so good, something much, much, bigger than little me and all my fears. Something I could get behind. Something that might land my sorry ass on television after all.

Education is my passion, and food is my muse and along came a television show concept that would allow me to reach a larger audience and teach people how to possibly make the world a slightly better place, by respecting food and who produces it and therefore the environment and community, in a way that is not the norm. The show is called Mission: Sustainable. It's produced by the charismatic and idealistic Rose Thornton. It's an idea built on a dime with an all-volunteer pilot cast of supremely fun and interesting people. Like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy meets What Not to Wear meets a little Extreme Home Makeover for a person who wants or needs a green lifestyle makeover. A show where a person's life is examined and consultants are brought in to lovingly, snarkily, teasingly, sensitively, firmly guide the person to make different choices in their lives, all the while educating the public about reducing one's carbon footprint to- excuse my cliche - make our world a better place (feel free to hum "we are the world" right now).

In short, this is a television show that I can get behind.

For more information, including cast bios and videos check this out. I'm thrilled to be working with such an amazing gaggle of talented experts and plan on looking carefully at my own life to see what changes I can make to live more lightly in my own loafers, so to speak. If anyone reading this is inspired to nominate someone for their green makeover and you live in Seattle, nominate them here. If you are inspired to volunteer along with us to get this pilot produced and then pitched to the cable networks send an email here.

Thanks to St Sandwich, Flikr photo credit

And just for the record, I'm still comfortable saying, "I'd never have sex with a pygmy goat in Afghanistan".