i'd boot the door
The kickdrum sound in 'Theme from S'Express' was made by the producer dropping a metal crate on the ground and kicking it... hence 'kick drum'. You can also do some awesome stuff with an old school biscuit tin with cutlery in it.
hitting a cushion with a drumstick and pitch shifting down
Yeah, did something similar, with a book and a condenser mic jammed right up against it. Telephone books and hard backed encyclopedias are best. Made a whole album where the rhythm tracks were made up of hitting a guitar case with an acoustic on top of it, cutting it up in ReCycle and looping it.
Also, I really like rulers played with a bow and the mic holding it in place on a desk... Actually, if you lean the mic against the desk and drop [shirt] on it and then sample the sound, you get pretty good single percussion hits...
Basically, anything where the mic's in actually physical contact is good (thus contact mics, I know) - you just gotta be reasonably careful with what you're doing not to munt the mic. I've got no time for [oh! my dirty mouth] mics - not very free noise, I know - bought a $500 one about ten years ago and it's still awesome. You get much more flexibility out of having sound with a wide dynamic range that you can then [fork] about with rather than something with a weak dynamic range which provides you with much more limited opportunity to do stuff with.
That said some friends of mine did an awesome recording of some studio jams with the input mic on their micro korg.
