The day I touched $5 billion

Years ago, we pitched a little business in the Silicon Valley. A growing company in the field of CRM Management, Siebel Systems.

We met the company officers, toured their pristine facility, even shook hands with the chairman and company namesake, Tom Siebel, who at the time had a net worth of more than $5 billion dollars.

I'm not sure, but I do believe he was #198 on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest people in the world. Just ahead of Sheik Abdullah Abdullah, who foolishly spent $38 million to have his mansion outfitted with toilets made of solid gold, thereby dropping him to #199.

In the pantheon of witless clients I have encountered over the years, Mr. Siebel falls somewhere in the dullish middle. I don't have his tremendous wealth or robust knowledge of database management software, but I do know that "a picture of two businessmen shaking hands and making a deal" (a literal quote from Tom) does not make for the most compelling advertising.

Just out of curiosity I Googled Siebel's name and found out that my initial assessment of him was squarely on the mark.

Turns out that in 2008 he threw his substantial weight and money behind Sara Palin, the hockey mom with her finger on the pulse of real Americans. In fact, he organized a fundraising gala for her, offering everyday Joe's and Jane's a snapshot with the wunderkind of Wasilla and a seat at her table for just $50,000.

He also spoke at a brunch during the campaign, offering these choice words of wisdom,

"Sara Palin carries the flag of outrage...for each of us who cries out, 'we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore."

Really Tom?

In 2008 you just had 8 years under Republican leadership. What are you so mad about? You have $5 billion. Would $10 billion make you happy?

How's your hole?

A few weeks ago I celebrated a landmark birthday. Landmark because my driver's license had expired. To renew it I couldn't fill out some paperwork or transact the data online, this time a physical visit to the DMV was in order.

The DMV is one of life's great equalizers. It attracts folks from all walks of life: the rich, the poor, Eastsiders, Westsiders, people who watch Jeopardy and people who get stumped at Wheel of Fortune.

It's like Dodger Stadium but without the $7 hot dogs or the 25 foot piss trough.

As you can imagine, it's a great venue for people watching. Sadly however, because of the close confines, it's not so great for people smelling. Near the eye exam area, I caught whiff of some body odor I'm sure would raise an eyebrow on the 8:15 train from Peshawar to Islamabad, where they are certainly no stranger to exotic perspiration.

To these angry aromas, add in a mixture of underpaid employees, frustration, layers of bureaucracy and unrestrained surliness, and you've got yourself a powder keg of ugliness that can go off at any second. At one point I heard an older Hispanic gentleman tell a customer service rep that he couldn't reach a state official in Sacramento to straighten out an issue.

Man: I dialed this number. It doesn't seem to work.

Service Rep: Baby, I can't help with your phone problems. I ain't got no degree in electronics.

After much back and forth, she finally did help him resolve his situation.

Service Rep: When you dialed the long distance number, did you dial a "1" first?

In all, the DMV visit cost me about 95 minutes of my life. But I was richly rewarded for the experience. Because now I have a fresh new license will last me the next 10 years.

And on the way back to my car, parked across the street from the Culver City DMV (the low slung building with lines of people out the door), I spotted this little gem spray-painted onto the sidewalk.

Exactly.

Ass backwards

The other night I was watching ABC's Nightline with Martin Bashir. You might remember the disturbing interviews Mr. Bashir conducted years ago with Michael Jackson.

Well, on this night, Martin was reporting on other odd creatures. More specifically, hybrids like Ligers (tigers/lions), Wholphins (whales/dolphins), even mules, which are a cross between a donkey and a horse.

Mules, I found out, cannot reproduce. Which begs the questions, where do mules come from?

Cue the wikipedia.

But this is where it all gets confusing. Mules are the result of inter-species sex between a male donkey and a female horse. While the hinny is the offspring between a male horse and a female donkey. And all male mules, as well as all female mules, are infertile.

I think its a good bet that when our Intelligent Designer was drawing up the plans for the Mule he might have been imbibing on some old grape juice.

Even after reading the material I'm still not clear about the differences between mules and donkeys and hinnies.

But I do know a little something about jackasses. I know it can't be hard for them to reproduce, because there's certainly no shortage of them.

In advertising.

Banking.

Or politics.

Shut your piehole

Recently, an art director I was working with suggested I change some dialogue in a script to make it sound more contemporary. Having embraced a new spirit of flexibility, I yielded and summarized a teenager's expression of shock with the simple, "for reals?"

It pains me to even write that down.

I know this is the "get-off-my-lawn" old man in me talking, but here are some other expressions I will not ever commit to ink:

"my peeps."

"get my drink (or any other verb like eat, sleep or shower) on."

"who's ready to party?" (party is not a verb)

"that's sick."

"that's tight."

"that whack."

"Awesome." (there are 8 wonders in this world that might qualify as awesome. A cheeseburger, a cup of coffee or even a sweater are not one of them)

"let's bounce."

"bromance."

"at the end of the day."

Even,

"dude."

Yesterday I added another phrase to the list.

While at the DMV, I overheard a man on phone telling his friend, "this place is crackin!" I can think of a 1000 adjectives to describe the DMV environment and the DMV experience. Crackin' doesn't even make it to the 100.

In fact, I still don't know what "this place is crackin" means, but it's a safe bet I won't be using that expression even if I did.

One word Benjamin: plastics.

Once again, I feel the need to apologize for the verbosity of the two previous posts.

Today's will be much shorter.

Over the weekend my wife dragged me out to go furniture shopping. Or as I like to call it,

domestic waterboarding.

In any case, there wasn't much I was interested in. With the exception of this display with the unspilling lemonade.

Sadly, it was NOT for sale.

ZOG 101

On occasion I like to check out stormfront.com to see what white supremacists have to say about the events of the day.

I suppose you can file that under, "keep your friends close and your enemies closer."

In any case, the third grade educated pinheads have a lot of interesting things to say about the state of the economy, the war on terror, global warming, etc.

Most, if not all, lay the blame for the world's ills at the hands of the Jews.

And all subscribe to the belief that Jews literally control the world. So if you'll grab some scrap paper -- a must I tell my daughters before doing any math homework -- we can take a look at the numbers and demonstrate how this canard is indeed a canard.

According to wikipedia, there are approximately 7 billion people on this planet. 13 million of them claim to be Jewish. That works out to be a minuscule .19% of the world's population.

Of these 13 million Jews, more than half of them are females. All due respect to women out there, but I think we can agree that if Jewish women were in control of the world, fellatio would be a capital offense.

So that brings the number closer to 6.5 million.

But simple demographics tells us that of that 6.5 million, 25% are under the age of 18. I don't think anybody seriously believes the world is being controlled by a bunch of 12 year old schlubby boys who can't even climb up a rope in gym class.

That leaves us 4.9 million able-bodied Jews. Or does it? We must deduct another 20% of those males who are over the age of 65. Let's face it, if old altacocker Jews were controlling the world, a lot less cold soup would be making its way back to the kitchen.

So now we're looking at 4 million Jewish men, between the ages of 18 and 65, lording over the entire universe. Which in and of itself is laughable. I know we're clever and crafty, but seriously.

Of those 4 million powerful men, one million are dentists. Now dentists may be good at scraping enamel off your molars, but they are definitely not world domination material.

So now the number is closer to 3 million.

But we're not done yet.

There are Lazy Jews.

Dimwitted Jews.

Alcoholic Jews.

Dyslexic Jews.

Incompetent Jews.

Apathetic Jews.

Self Pitying Jews.

And Jews that work in Advertising (I know if Jews who worked in Advertising controlled the world there'd be a lot less dipshit clients.)

When all is said and done, the number quickly gets whittled down to about 4, 963 potentially omnipotent Yids. As a percentage that works out to an infinitesimal .000000512.

So here's the thing, if 4,963 guys named Goldberg, Feldman and Cohen have been able to wrest control over all of mankind and command the fate of every living being on the planet, I don't think we should curse them or begrudge them their rightful title.

In fact, from where I sit in my cozy home, with my healthy family, HD DIRECTV, a fridge full of food, and a medicine cabinet filled with the finest painkilling medicines, I say Hail Morty, Hail Bernie, Hail Shlomo.

Is there any way you guys could get me a faster internet connection?

Rain on me

There's a lot of talk about this being a wet El Nino winter in California. Even as I write this, it's drizzling outside and the local media are on a 5-alarm Storm Watch. But I remember the rainiest winter in Southern California history because it was also the year I drove a motorcycle.

I came to the Honda CB 450 out of necessity and not from some misguided romantic dream of riding an iron horse.

My old Toyota Corolla had developed a crack in the steering column. Every time I hit a pothole, I had to corral the steering column like an out of control jackhammer. The simplest right hand turn turned into aerobic workout. The mechanic told me it would cost $1500 to repair the steering malfunction. Which was a little steep considering I had only paid $900 for the car.

And so I retreated to the Pennysaver in search of a motorcycle, conveniently ignoring the fact that I never even sat on one. The seller drove the motorcycle to my apartment and had a pretty slick sales pitch. The bike was a classic he told me. He even offered to show me how to ride it in an empty church parking lot. We shook hands. And I parted with 400 of the hardest earned dollars of my life.

That was in September of 1983. In October, it started raining. And it didn't stop until May. Now the misery of riding a motorcycle in the pelting rain should paint a pretty ugly picture. But that's only half the story.

In addition to the finnicky kick start engine, which turned my right ankle black and blue within a couple of weeks, I had great difficulty getting the bike to GO. I would be stopped at a red light and when the light turned green I would throttle up the gas and the old CB 450 would stutter and falter and just not jump off the line.

I took the 'classic' bike in to a mechanic who gave it once over. Took a test drive. And concluded there was nothing wrong. Nothing whatsoever. Then the mechanic remembered that I had told him I was a greenhorn and he asked the kind of question a TV lawyer asks at the end of the show. You know the Gordian question that solves the case and answers all the riddles in one swift motion, "when you slow down to come to a stop do you remember to downshift?"

Doh. I guess I missed that part of the driving lesson. All this time I had been trying to pull away from a dead stop in 3rd, and sometimes, 4th gear.

I could see the mechanic was enjoying the pained look on my face and couldn't wait to tell his pony-tailed, tattooed friends in the shop.

So I took this newfound knowledge, kicked the gearshift down into FIRST gear and made a hasty escape. Of course before I could enjoy the fact that I made it out there without facing mass humiliation, it started raining.

G-d Bless You

I realize that people who carry signs like this or put up websites like www.jewskilledjesus.com (thanks go to my deicidal buddy Alex Grossman for the link) do not merit any attention or response, but it's a slow news day and picking apart their logic is like shooting gefilte fish in a barrel.

The only hard part is knowing where to start.

So let's start with the end. If Jesus really was the son of G-d and did fulfill the Lord's prophecy then wasn't his crucifixion all part of the master plan? What if, G-d forbid, he didn't die on the cross and instead fell victim to gall stones. Think how that would have altered all that rich beautiful Christian symbolism. I'm not sure the Renaissance painters could have done any justice to a blocked cystic duct.

Maybe the woman carrying this sign is actually thanking Jews and giving us points for the assist?

But let's work backwards from there.

Wasn't it Christ who said to "turn the other cheek" and forgive thine enemy? Seems a little odd that a few hundred imbeciles from Topeka, Kansas want to hold me accountable for the actions of a great, great grandfather, about 100 generations removed.

I'm no more knowledgable about what took place in Nazareth 2000 years ago than the people from Fred Phelp's Church, but I do know as a general rule and in accordance with Tribal Behavior 101, Jews do not go around killing other Jews. Mostly because you gentiles have gotten so good at it. (Shall we go to the scoreboard?)

Besides, didn't Jesus die for your sins? I may be wrong here, but it's my understanding that you can lie and cheat, drink, curse and steal your entire life, but if you're lying on your deathbed and you ask for forgiveness and take Jesus into your heart, that can buy you an eternity's worth of harp music, white robes and milk and cookies?

But let's end this discussion at the beginning.

If it weren't for Jews, Judaism, the Old testament and the entire Messianic story, written by your favorite scapegoats, there would be no Jesus in the first place. There would have been no prophecy to fulfill. And the bearded young man spouting love, tolerance and brotherhood -- all the attributes NOT embraced by Christian Extremists -- would have been given the same cold shoulder as the homeless guy in front of the Starbucks at the Third Street Promenade.

Without his matrydom on the cross, it's doubtful there would even be such a thing as Christianity.

And so to the pony-tailed woman holding this sign and to the others of her ilk who want to let the world know that the Jews killed Jesus, I say, "you're welcome."

Things Jews Don't Do Part 6

I own a chainsaw. I never thought I'd be a chainsaw owner, but now I am. And now I wonder why I waited so long.

Let's face it chainsaws and Jews go together like politicians and productivity. You could spend months scouring the logging camps of Northern Oregon and still not produce a 1/2 a minion.

Yes, there was one famous wood-working Jew who made a name for himself. But let's face it, lumberjacking is different than litigation or investment banking or neurosurgery. No one says, "I've got a 100 foot Douglas Fir that needs felling, quick get me Feinberg."

Nevertheless, thanks to some poor landscaping choices made years ago, we now have several trees with weird protuberances. And since I'm unwilling to hire somebody to do what any normal man should be able to do, I found myself at the local Home Depot, excited and frankly, a little intimidated.

I didn't want to deal with those loud gas engine and the rip chord ignition models, so I opted for an 18 volt battery operated 10" Ryobi. It's a starter chainsaw, if you will. But as you can see, it does the job pretty well, thank you.

But here's the funny part. Now that I own a chainsaw. And now that the trees have been trimmed and cut up into handy disposable pieces, I have nothing left to cut. And I want to.

Maybe I'll go next door and offer to cut my neighbor's trees.

That's what Jesus would have done.

No business like show business

Studio Exec A: What do we have next?

Studio Exec B: We got COP OUT, a buddy comedy with Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan?

Exec A: Who is she?

Exec B: He, sir. He's on a TV show.

Exec A: I don't watch TV.

Exec B: Anyway, it's a cop flick.

Exec A: Good. Reviews?

Exec B: Not good. Very bad, sir.

Exec A: How do you screw up a cop flick with Bruce Willis? Who directed this piece of crap?

Exec B: Kevin Smith, sir.

Exec A: Oh Jesus. He hasn't had a hit since...has he ever had a hit?

Exec B: I'll look into that, sir.

Exec A: We need a publicity stunt. Something big. Something that's gonna get all over the interweb. Maybe we can do something with one of our marketing partners.

Exec B: I don't know what we're gonna do with this overrated, fat-ass gasbag.

Exec A: Wait. What did you just call him?

Exec B: Overrated?

Exec A: No.

Exec B: Gasbag?

Exec A: No, no the other thing.

Exec B: Fat Ass?

Exec A: Bingo. I've got an idea. Get me Southwest Airlines on the phone.

They say it's your birthday

Yesterday was my birthday.

More importantly, it was also the birthday of the blog. Roundseventeen was born 365 days ago. I wasn't sure it was going to go this long. Or go anywhere for that matter. But that's what makes creative endeavors so interesting.

More importantly than my birthday or the birthday of this blog however, it was also the birthday of my nephew Jack.

He was adopted by my brother-and-sister-in-law and he has brought great joy and many dirty diapers into their life. As you can see from this video he is a ball of energy and already a confirmed dog lover.

We're all thrilled that Jack is part of the family. But having watched the entire bureaucratic process I find it a shame the system makes it so difficult and arduous for loving families to adopt a child.

Equally puzzling is why a well-financed brand --Starbucks/Pepsi/Google -- with millions of marketing dollars cannot find a home for a refreshing, and I'm told sometimes humorous, daily blog.

Everyone's a critic

Earlier this week I posted an entry about the movie STAY TUNED, the film that single handedly ended Peter Hyams career as a comedy director. Just out of curiosity I visited the imdb.com site to see some of the details about the film.

I started reading the user comment/reviews. And while critics didn't see the high concept brilliance of the movie, Joe Sixpack and Betty Bag O'Donuts begged to disagree.

Many were quite amused by the non-stop spoofs and silly take-offs of the TV landscape. But of all the reviews, the most interesting comments came from jim3874, who was apparently looking for greater titilation.

Sadly, jim3874 did not give the movie Two Thumbs Up. Or any other appendage for that matter.

Idiots among us

I don't want to say that people who choose to smoke cigarettes are stupid, but people who choose to smoke cigarettes are stupid.

Take this character for instance, the guy standing in front of the white sedan while his girlfriend pumps high octane fuel into the car. He was in such dire need of a nicotine fix that he decided lighting up a ciggie, on a windy day, within easy sparking distance of a 25,000 gallon underground tank of refined petroleum, made perfect sense.

On behalf of the non-smoking community I'd like to thank you for sharing your emphysema-causing 2nd hand carcinogens.

And if that doesn't kill us we can always thank you for the giant fireball and the flesh-piercing projectiles of asphalt, shredded metal and broken glass.

Staying Tuned

Survival in the advertising/entertainment/branded content business is all about shameless self promotion. After all, if you don't tell people how talented and gifted you are how can you expect them to pay you exorbitant day rates?

In that spirit, I've added the movie poster for STAY TUNED to my blog adornments.

If you read the fine print you can see I've been given a story credit for the movie. When in actuality, the screenplay was truly written by my good friends Tom Parker and Jim Jennewein. I merely helped with the story development at the very beginning of the process and couldn't keep pace with Tom and Jim after my dad had passed.

Nevertheless, in a testament to their good grace, they agreed to put my name on the project in the event the screenplay ever got sold -which was a long shot considering we were all junior copywriters at the time with nary a Hollywood credit to our names. That, and nobody but nobody sells their first screenplay.

But the producers at Morgan Creek liked what they saw on the page and ignited a weekend bidding war for the screenplay. By Monday morning, the deal was struck and we were all instantly wealthy men, wealthy being a relative term in Los Angeles where 1/2 million dollars barely affords you a 1 bedroom/1 bathroom condo.

That didn't stop us from celebrating like Powerball Billionaires. The day the first checks cleared, we packed our girlfriends/future wives into a stretch limo, drank like rock stars and for 7 hazy hours, lived the life others only dream of. Just thinking back on it brings a smile to my face.

I wish I could hunt down Meg, our limo driver, for a more detailed account of the evening.

And since she was as much a part of the Stay Tuned story as any of us, I like to think that maybe Meg is somewhere out there in the blogosphere. And that she too is using this poorly produced jpg of the movie poster to promote her career.

Godpseed Meg.

RIP Mahmoud

Earlier this week, Hamas leader Mahmoud al Mabhouh was found smothered to death in his hotel room in Dubai. The consensus is that the hit/assasination/delivery of justice (whatever you'd like to call it) was the handiwork of Mossad.

Palestinian leaders, who apparently do not possess photo enlargement machines, were shocked by the covert operation. They are calling for Interpol to issue warrants and arrest the Israeli culprits.

I would suggest they take a trip to the nearest Blockbuster video and rent a copy of Munich. Then they will know that the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers and the rocket attacks on civilian targets like the city of Sderon will not go unanswered.

I am reminded of a glorious summer day in 1976. I believe it was July 4th and the Israeli army had masterfully rescued over 100 hostages being held at the Entebbe airport in Uganda. While America celebrated the bicentennial, my father, elated by the news, broke out the slivovitz to celebrate the cunning and bravery of those Israeli commandos.

I've never copped to the false belief of an afterlife and have no illusions of my father looking down and smiling about the events that have transpired. But, in his honor, I'm going to pour myself a libation and toast a world with one less cowardly terrorist.

Wiggapedia

One of my childhood heroes, George Carlin once said, "the very existence of flamethrowers proves that sometime, somewhere, someone said to themselves, 'you know, I want to set those people over there on fire, but I'm just not close enough to get the job done."

In any case I heard something the other night and got around to thinking what Carlin -- a self-professed language tactician -- would say on the matter.

Somebody had used the word "wigga" on TV. It might have been on MTV. Or VH1. Or even A&E. The fact that it hasn't raised a media firestorm is testament that the word "wigga" is perfectly acceptable. Even though if one were to explore its roots, one would find it is derived from a word that is clearly unacceptable.

If one were to follow Carlin's logic, the powers that be, who have rendered one word verbotten, should see to it that a word like 'wigga', derived from the poisonous n-word fruit, should also be banned. Particularly since the sound-a-like word is meaningless without somehow drawing on the connotations of the aforementioned banned word.

But then this leads us down a slippery slope.

If we were to start banning words that sound like bad words, where would we draw the line? What about chigger? And jigger sounds like chigger? And jogger sounds like jigger. And lager sounds like jogger. I really like lager.

It can all get ridiculous, really fast. So what do we do?

As a free thinking, partial Libertarian, I say we do nothing.

I am just happy that we live in a time when people who choose to use those ugly words bring more dishonor and shame upon themselves than the group they intended to insult.

Finger Whiffing Good

Today, the humor gods smiled upon me.

I wanted to find out all about the buzz (pun intended) regarding LA's newest crop of legalized marijuana stores.

It struck me as so odd that, with a doctor's note in hand, I could walk into virtually any strip mall shop and walk out with a $40 ounce of high grade weed.

So I decided to check out and stopped by the Natural Ways Always store on National Blvd. You can spot an "herb" shop by the tell tale green cross.

The minute I walked through the door I caught whiff of that magical aroma that brought back so many memories. Well, there would have been memories had I not been so high.

To my surprise, an ounce of marijuana no longer sells for $40. To my even greater surprise, as I walked back to my car I spotted another legalized marijuana store not more than 100 yards away. And that's where providence prevailed.

Someone had the good sense to take a business that no longer enjoyed an abundance of demand and turned into a business with a near limitless supply of demand.

Of course if it were left to me, I would have left the word "FRIED" on the storefront.

Mmmmmm, lumbar support

I'm not that big on self indulgence.

Any income I'm able to dispose of, usually gets put in the kid's college fund or the I-don't-want-to-end-up-in-a-dirty-nursing-home fund (401K).

That's why for months I've been fruitlessly trying to repair my old desk chair, with its wobbly casters and broken tilt mechanism.

I can't tell you how many trips I made to Home Depot in the vain attempt to right the ship. Perhaps I should have documented it all and posted Things Jews Don't Do Part 5: Fixing Furniture.

I broke down this weekend and made a trip to a fancy designer furniture store on Beverly Blvd this weekend and picked up an outrageously expensive ergonomic chair. And now I wish I had done this 6 months ago.

Comfortable, doesn't even begin to describe the American-made Mirra. It's as if the concept of 'sitting' has been redefined.

And because the chair is a legitimate office expense, it sits in my house complements of the American taxpayer.

So I'd like to thank you, readers of roundseventeen, from the bottom of my heart.

And thank you Herman Miller.

From the bottom of my ass.

Boccaccio Botched

Last night on Jeopardy the word Boccaccio came up in one of the clues. That's not a word you see everyday. But to a pre-pubescent boy with raging hormones and a mustache just aching to be set free, it was a word filled with magical carnal visions.

Let me explain.

If you were to look on imdb.com you'd find a movie called Boccaccio 70 made by Frederico Fellini in 1962. It was an Italian film composed of four vignettes about the evolving sexual mores of the 60's. In one of the shorts, a voluptuous Anita Ekberg plays a 50-foot tall blond woman plastered on an outdoor billboard for milk. She had the mystical ability to step out of her billboard to tease a prudish college professor upset with her ample cleavage.

I never missed an opportunity to watch Boccaccio 70 whenever it came on TV. If only to fantasize about a giant blond woman snatching me from my adolescent hell and nuzzling me in her Scandinavian bosomage. Keep in mind this was long before basic cable or today's ubiquitous access to the pornographic arts.

Out of sheer curiosity, and because this week's posts all seem to have an element of nostalgia, I went to Google images did a search for Anita Ekberg.

And now I have one less happy place to go to.

Drive One

The way the economy seems to be turning around and the way my phone has ringing off the hook lately, I've been thinking about buying myself a new car. If nothing else but to quiet my daughters who claim my current Lexus is an "old man's car."

All of which got me thinking to some of the beauties I've owned in the past.

A long, long time ago, before manufacturers recalled faulty products and people wore seat belts, my father bought me a Ford Pinto (like the one spotted on my street the other day.) My mother wasn't too thrilled with his choice, particularly after there had been reports of Pintos blowing up upon rear end collisions.

But my dad grew up in the rough and tumble South Bronx and was big believer in the power of adversity.

"Poppycock (or whatever people said at the time)", he barked. "The boy needs to build character, besides what's a minor fuel explosion?" Often followed by the story of eating ketchup sandwiches and going to school in hand me down shoes and a burlap sweater.

Speaking of explosions, here's a commercial for the aforementioned Ford Pinto. Make sure you stick around for the rather Nostradamus-like end tag.