Is it safe?

Allow me to be honest with you.

There are days, sometimes weeks, when I get to thinking about this damn blog and wonder, "What the hell am I gonna write about now?"

I'm sure you've had similar thoughts, as in, "Oh shit, how many times is he gonna rehash those old Chiat/Day war stories, bitch about planners, or rag on the open office space thing?"

I get it.

And yet, the work goes on. I crank out this drivel. You lap it up. And the money I make from the Google-placed ads on this site continues to accrue and will someday be used to keep me out of a dirty nursing home.

Today was one of those days when I had nothing. Nothing. Despite the glut of material that appears to be gushing from the new White House.

And then I came across this ad in the LA Times.

Holy crap, that's a mouthful.

First, you should know I have a strange fascination with dentistry. It is truly one of the oddest professions on God's green earth. I simply can't imagine some kid thinking...

"When I grow up, I want to strap on a rubber apron and stick sharp utensils into people's pieholes."

Moreover, I was introduced to the notion of orthodontics at an extremely young age. While wrestling with my five year old brother, I was kicked out of the top bunk bed and landed face first on the hardwood floors of our Jackson Heights apartment.

My two beautiful front teeth had been knocked out and bounced across the room into the opening of my PF Flyers.

Now I sport a bridge in my mouth that forces me to be very careful when biting into apples or beef ribs. And absolutely precludes me from eating a cob of corn impaled on a power drill.

What struck me most about the ad clipped from the newspaper was not the pointy-titted receptionist inexplicably pictured in the ad. Though that in itself could probably warrant its own blog posting.

I was inordinately drawn to the ad because not long ago I was contracted by an ad agency to pitch a competitor of...er...OK, that's weird, there's not even a name to this company/ dentist office/implant factory.

Is pointy-titted Ani the one who actually does the dental work?

I'm so confused. Even more confused about the pitiful trajectory of my career and how I ended up writing similar ads about dental implants. That too, is its own blog posting.

For now, all I can do is unpack this ad and study its craftsmanship.

Damn, we didn't include a bullet point about FREE! Sedation. That could've been a game changer.