That's dope, bra.

I've written much on the benefits of being a freelancer.
Perhaps, as my fellow freelancer and good friend Mike Folino, suggests, too much.

"You're causing people to leave in droves."

"Relax, Mike. For one thing, no one listens to me. And for another, I don't think my readership measures up to half a drove."

Besides, I'm not going to let good logic stand in the way of another post on ad agency life.

You see as a staffer, you only get to see the nightmares and dysfunction of one agency -- the one you're working in. As a freelancer, I get to experience, and enjoy from an emotional distance, the collective BS that goes on from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon.

Moreover, I'm quite the active networker, so you can multiply that by a factor of 10.

Last week I was chatting with a friend who was freelancing at a shop in Orange County, where there was a mild Santa Ana and the temperatures were into the high 80's. Of course that didn't stop three cretins in the Creative Department from donning full scarf wear. One was probably a keffiyeh.

The only time I wear a scarf is when I'm skiing at Mammoth Mountain and the temperature dips into the single digits. And even then I do it reluctantly, mostly to stop my wife from nagging me.

I can only imagine these hipster-douchebags....er, fellows, broke out the neck warming gear because they thought it "would look cool."

I don't know where this misguided notion comes from but I do know that the desire to look cool now seems to supersede any other goal in advertising. Including the desire to "do" something cool.

Accoutrement trumps achievement.

Several months ago, I was working out of a large agency with a large communal area where creative people could "get together, collaborate and have a meaningful exchange of ideas, blah, blah, blah."

I heard this:

"That's dope, bra."

"Tight shit, yo."

"If that's not da bomb, I don't know what is."

They weren't talking about a concept, or a TV spot, or even a social media idea.

They were talking about shoelaces.