Eat your meat

Today we're doing another book review. 

"But we did a book review yesterday", I can hear you muttering. 

Yes, yes, I know that. But the truth is that in my current hip replacement rehabilitation I've been doing a lot of reading lately. 

In addition to polishing off the Precedent Shitgibbon Trilogy of Clusterfuckian Catastophres, I just finished Cameron Day's Chew with Your Mind Open. I would have teased this post with a cover shot of his book...

...but Cameron was kind enough to take his own advice and steal from himself (see his outdoor board above) thus saving me the awkwardness of leading with a weak come on. Sorry, Cam, book cover posts never do well, traffic-wise.

Obviously, I loved the book. 

And I'm not just saying that because of the homages he has sprinkled throughout his tome, including a very sly reference to this here very blog. If my two daughters wanted a pursue a career as a copywriter or an art director, and thankfully they don't, I would make this book required reading.

Whatever vocational path they finally decide on, they should read it, because Cameron, unlike myself, has a acquired a vault full of sage career advice, much of which revolving around the process of pushing ideas to the forefront and navigating that process with diplomacy and smarts.

Something I frankly sucked at. And still suck at.

"Why should we do that? Because I wrote it, that's why."

It should be noted that Cameron and I came up through the business at roughly the same time and followed roughly the same paths. We even worked at Bozell during the same shitty time when Hy Yablonka was trying make something good of the place, but couldn't. 

We both had colossal ego-fueled run ins with the same violent, unbalanced director, Cameron calls him Toby O'Toole. In my book, I went decidedly less veiled and called him Sonny Jay.

And we both started as juvenile young copywriters determined to make a mark on this business. In the years that followed, he has matured and accumulated enough wisdom to fill two of these books and help launch the careers of thousands. 

I began writing a crappy blog.

If the powers that be at the host of ad schools throughout the country including Miami, Richmond and even Syracuse were smart, they would put this book into the curriculum. 

It's that good. And that helpful.

And if Cameron hadn't thought about that and then decides to follow through on my suggestion and then scores multiple contracts with the aforementioned Ad universities, I should claim a finder's fee of at least 17%

At least.