No Cannes Do

I miss Cannes.

For the second year in a row the legendary Cannes Festival to celebrate the finest in Advertising has been canceled because of Covid. With the exception of the endless back-patting, linkedin updates, humblebrags, tweets and retweets, I don't know how we are going to be able keep abreast of all the groundbreaking work that's out there.

Let's be clear, when I say I miss Cannes it's not because I miss going there. I never did. Not because my work didn't merit the honor, I'm happy to say much of it did. My absence was more personal. And stems from the fact that a certain sodden agency president and I butted heads too often. 

Mostly because my logical, sane points of view were expressed while I was sober and his never were.

As a result, I never made the invite list.

So what do I miss about Cannes? The opportunity to skewer it for all the obnoxious pretension and the ridiculous pomp and circumstance  and fabricated fawning given to a bunch of ads and TV commercials.

To demonstrate that utter disposability, consider the fact that that my sister-in-law can tell you the names of Academy Award Best Picture going all the way back to Citizen Kane.

Or, that my brother can rattle off the names of every Super Bowl winner starting with the Green Bay Packers back in the time when players would smoke ciggies during the halftime show.

I defy any of my colleagues, including the many ad nerds I know, to tell me what and who won the Grand Prix in 2005. Or 2013. Or even as recent as 2018.

In short, this shit just does not matter. Except to the event organizers who were, and will be next year, more than happy to collect the exorbitant entry fees, in all the various categories:

Automotive, 30 second TV spot, 4 door sedans

Automotive, 30 second TV spot, 2 door coupes

Automotive, 30 second TV spot, hatchback

.

.

.

Zoo, Public, Onsite posters, Mammals

Zoo, Public, Onsite posters, Marsupial

Zoo, Public, Onsite posters, Predatory Birds

And as if all that were not enough, I'll miss all the tone-deaf pictorial evidence, flashed across social media, documenting all the obscene naval-gazing debauchery by advertising's cool kids. 

I guess it's just as well they canceled the event. Because after 18 months of being locked down in our homes, there's no way all those Cannes-goers would fit in their white Euro-tight Capri pants.