Are we there yet?

Can a fat old man swim the distance from Great Britain to France? 

We'll see.

More importantly, what are you willing to do for the American men and women returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan?

William Arthur Ward once said, "Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it."

Don't bother me I'm working

Had a very Woody Allen-like email exchange last week with fellow blogger/copywriter/kvetcher George Tannenbaum. I wanted to know if he had been watching The Pitch, AMC's new advertising show. In his inimitable way, George wrote back, "I don't watch TV. It would cut into the amount of time I obsess about the Holocaust."

His answer was flip.
But then again, it wasn't.

Like George, I find myself still angsting about the Shoah. I have the History Channel, or as my daughters call it The Hitler Channel, on speed dial. I am intimately familiar with the rise and the fall of the Third Reich (I like the fall better). And I tend to gobble up any books or articles written about that awful time, when one out of every three Jews was murdered. The story of the 6 million must have been told 6 billion times.

To venture into this territory is to risk being repetitive, dull and uninteresting.
Of course, that has never stopped me before.

So let's take a look at the sign that every Auschwitz victim saw before entering the death camp. It reads Arbeit Macht Frei ,which translates to Work Makes You Free.

The sign was hung in irony, by Nazis who were mocking those on their way to the gas chambers and the ovens. But it does more. I believe that Germans saw in Jews that which they lacked in themselves, an indomitable spirit. That is why we became the target of their hate.

In the post-depression, post-World War One era, Germans were suffering through difficult economic times. But Jews were succeeding. In science, in academics, in finance, in art and in literature.

Why? Work.

Long before there was a Protestant Work ethic or an American Work ethic, there was a Jewish one.

My substantiation for this is all anecdotal. But it is also self-evident.

How is it that a people who represent .2% of the world's population account for 22% of the Nobel Prize Winners? How is it that people who prior to 1948 had no country, no home and no will to fight, now find themselves as a prosperous, self-sufficient nation at the cutting edge of technology? And why is it that many gentile parents will tell their daughters to settle down with a nice Jewish boy?

The answer is straightforward and simple. It has nothing to do clannishness. Or some secret plot to dominate the world. Or even an some old-timey biblical pact with the devil. Those canards are just canards.

We Jews simply work hard. Harder than others it appears.

Look at three of the most arguably influential men in civilization: Albert Einstein, Karl Marx and Jesus Christ. All of Jewish lineage. One slaved tirelessly to answer the riddles of our universe. One rewrote politics and created, albeit misguided, a new system for sharing resources. And another convinced billions of people to treat others the way they would like to be treated. Though many of his followers could use a refresher course.

Our propensity for hard work is why the Nazis, the Cossacks, the Inquisitors, the Mohammedans, the Romans and countless others wanted to kill us.

It is also why they have failed.

So if you see an unusually wealthy or successful Member of the Tribe, don't hate them because they're Jewish, hate them because they work hard.

That's enough ranting about anti-semitism, the Holocaust and our alleged super-industriousness. At least for today. If you have an upcoming project and need a hard working copywriter, I invite you look at my credentials, here.

There's a Nap for That

I was reading the Harvard Crimson the other day -- significant pause so you can regain your breath -- and discovered a few inventive grad students had developed a new app for the iPhone. It's called Sigmund and it works off a very simple premise.

If you've ever found yourself dreaming in the early morning hours you know that sometimes your brain will incorporate outside stimuli into a dream.

If for instance, your wife starts making coffee in the kitchen and starts listening to Pink Floyd, there's a good possibility you could find yourself sipping iced lattes with Scarlet Johannsen on a rocket ship doing circles around the Dark Side of the Moon.

That's how dreams work.

So these bright young men devised an application that calculates your REM cycle, that is the time you are most likely to be dreaming, and uses the voice activation mode on your iPhone to suggest words or phrases that will be incorporated into your dreams.

Before you get ahead of yourself here Sparky you should know that the folks at Apple run a very Disney-like corporation. But you can be sure there are coders and programmers in Chatsworth feverishly working night and day to remedy that as we speak.

The most prurient words you'll find on Sigmund are: mistress, sex, bikini, silk and fruit. Hardly the stuff of libidinous magic. But had these Harvard nerds done a little more right brain thinking they could have creatively short-skirted the Apple guidelines and still produced the desired results.

Here are some perfectly innocent words that could have innocently been added to the app:

Lollipop
Lincoln Tunnel
Doughnuts
Hot dogs
Pipe cleaner
Sandbags
Lubricant
Leather Collar
Piston
Fishing Net

I'm sure you can think of a thousand more.

At this point you're probably curious to know whether it all works. And I'm here to tell you, "I don't know." I downloaded the app, picked out my five words for the evening, set the phone on my nightstand and let it do its thing. I woke the next morning, experienced a night of unusually vivid dreams, but can't recall if any of them involved: chocolate, lipstick, Paris, speedboat and a catcher's mask.

In fact, I can't remember anything.

Dreams, as you well know, are flighty, non-linear and thoroughly insignificant.
Not unlike roundseventeen.

Reader Appreciation Day

Today's post is about you.
OK, one of you.

You see it dawned on me the other day, probably after watching a recent report about online narcissism, that I write way too much about myself. Granted this is my blog and I'm free to do as I please and you are free to ignore this as you please, but still I do find the trend disturbing. Even writing about myself being upset with how much I write about myself, is a tad unsettling.

But enough about me, let's talk about you.

If you look in the very lower right hand corner of this blog you'll see the 74 people who have taken the time to sign up and follow roundseventeen on a regular basis. The number hasn't grown much lately. And frankly that doesn't bother me. I have signed up for other blogs and haven't read them in ages. So, in essence, the whole practice is meaningless.

But recently, I picked up a new follower. A fellow who goes by the name Kold Kadavr. I don't remember going to school or working with someone with that moniker, I'm pretty sure I'd remember if I did.

Not to mention Mr. Kadavr's striking and unforgettable pompadour.

So once again I indulged my curiosity. After all, if Kold Kadavr was interested in my daily spouting, I could at the very least show some interest in his. And it turns out that this Accountant from Topeka, Kansas (which is not a place you want to visit in the middle of summer) has put me to shame in the blogging department.

You see, where I maintain but one admittedly narcissistic blog, Mr. Kadavr lists himself as the author of no less than 15. That's right 15 blogs!

And these are no ordinary blogs, trust me, I've taken the time to look at all of them. Here's a small sampling of his writing:

I've admitted it before and I'll admit it again, I'm not the world's biggest reader. My tastes tend toward current events, history and non-fiction. I'm not much on prose, nuance or subtext. I appreciate writers who wield those tools, I've just never been one of them.

However, I'm open to new experiences, new literature and new authors, like Mr. Kadavr. And even though I haven't the slightest clue as to what he is talking about, I would like to publicly thank him for sharing his unique brand of schizophrenia. If for no other reason than to expand my vocabulary.

In fact in recognition of his distinctive and indecipherable style, over the course of the next few days, either on this blog, or in one my commercials, I will actively be seeking to use my new word for the day: askance.

Thanks KK, keep on blogging.

I'm working with Lindsay

Last week I received an assignment from my friends at a Hollywood boutique ad agency. They needed ideas for the upcoming Lifetime movie "Liz and Dick". The movie, if you haven't heard, will be starring Lindsay Lohan as Elizabeth Taylor.

I do a lot of work for these guys and the process works out incredibly well.

They send over a brief, via email. We talk on the phone, when necessary, and a few days later I send them back a whole bunch of scripts. Few, if any, ever get produced. Cable TV networks have a tendency to fall back to the default of a few clips plus a very short, snappy pun-filled voiceover.

And that's fine with me. I understand my role is to provide meeting fodder. I give the agency ideas that Cable Networks might use if they ever wanted to step out of their comfort zone. They, being television people, rarely do.

Anyway, I received the brief for Liz and Dick. And they also included a sneak preview of the movie script to help me develop promos ideas. Highlighted, underlined and bolded in the email, was an addendum about the very confidential nature of the project. None of which I have violated in this post.

In no uncertain terms I was told NOT to share the script with anyone.

Share it?

I'm not even going to read it.

This sucks

I don't make a good patient. I suspect most men don't. Fortunately I don't get sick very often, but when I do, I generously share the discomfort with my wife and my two daughters.

I often compound that discomfort by gleefully ignoring my wife's counsel.

When stricken with a bad cold she will tell me to apply some Vapo rub. While I enjoy the smell of Eucalyptus, my thick hairy chest is no place for a sticky herbal gel. She'll tell me to drink some green tea to break up the congestion. But I'm a coffee man, and despite my Scottish heritage, have no inclination towards tea.

But God bless her persistence -- perhaps it's just her desire to get me to quit bitching -- she will also suggest I try the Neti Pot. I think you can probably guess where I net out on this ancient Himalayan nasal irrigation system. The thought of running semi-boiling water up my nostrils usually has me running straight for the medicine cabinet and 10mg of hydrocodone.

Vicodin (hydrocodone) does very little to relieve the symptoms of a cold or bronchitis. But when combined with a fews cups of coffee, none of that, or anything else, seems to matter.

But this year, after 10 years of rejecting her intimations, I caved in. (The Weinblatt women have nagging down to an art.) Like so many other occasions, my wife was right. I'm now a Neti Pot convert.

I love its efficacy. And firmly believe in the power of direct nasal cavity drainage. But let's face it the Neti Pot can get quite messy. But then I came across the device pictured above.

Now I've got to convince my wife to get on the receiving end of the Nasal Suck 9000 and assist me the next time I catch a cold.

That could also be a 10-year process.

Gentlemen, start your engines

Ever since Hiller and Diller was canceled I don't watch a lot of network TV.

That is not say I don't watch any, I'm particularly fascinated by some of the reality shows. As I mentioned yesterday I enjoy The Pitch, mostly for its high schadenfreud content. I dig the treasure-finding adventures of Storage Wars. But my new favorite, and this is born from my innate need for justice, is Bait Car.

Perhaps you've seen it. The cops rig a new Cadillac Escalade or a Ford Taurus with a gaggle of hidden lipstick cameras. Then they plant two undercover cops in the vehicle who stage a phony argument. Some of these officers of the law may have missed their calling to the stage or the silver screen. The sparring battle ends with the two combatants leaving the vehicle in a huff. In all the excitement they purposely leave the keys in the ignition.

Act Two begins.

The would-be thieves pounce on the abandoned vehicle. Sometimes it's a solo miscreant, but more often the vehicle is boosted by a bandit and his buddy. The Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid of joyriding, as it were. For some reason the stealing of a car is best enjoyed by two. And that's OK with me. Because the dialogue between the carjackers, while not of the Newman/Redford standard, is so delicious. The joy of getting a $40,000 car for free makes for some great repartee.

"Dude, check it out, the car has a stereo."


"Oh dude, look at this, it's got a glove compartment!"


"I get the wheels Monday, Wednesday and Friday, you get it Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. And then we'll switch off every Saturday."


"I'm gonna take my lady to a movie and maybe some Mickey D's afterwards, it's gonna be sic."

It's as if these bozos have never known the joy of working hard at job, earning enough money and buying a car for themselves...oh wait.

Using a remote control, the cops lock the doors to the vehicle. Call me crazy but I love that sound. They shut down the engine. And then surround the vehicle in their shiny black-and-whites and muscular unmarked Dodge Chargers. The cops have a lot of toys at their disposal and it's satisfying to see my tax dollars at work.

Every episode of Bait Car ends the same. But what it lacks in a twisting denouement, it more than makes up for in spontaneity and on-the-fly-excuse-making.

The clueless thugs exit the Bait Car and begin spinning their yarn.

"I didn't do anything wrong. I was parking the car for this lady."


"Which lady? What's her name?"


"I don't know her name. But I saw she left the keys in the car and I didn't want anybody taking it 'cause you know there are some bad mother*ckers on the street. So I was doing her a favor and was parking the car somewhere safe."


"And how were you going to return the keys to her?"


"We didn't get that far with the plan."


"Get in the back of the patrol car."


If ever a television show warranted a laugh track, Bait Car would be that show.

I often tell my daughters, life isn't always fair.
But at 8PM, Wednesday Night on TRU-TV, it can be.

The Pitch, Bitch.

I missed the Mad Men train about 4 years ago and have no intention of renting the DVD set to catch up. When my colleagues start their eventual recap of last night's episode, I'll simply grin and nod and turn my inner attention to the next campaign I'm supposed to be writing.

But when AMC introduced us to The Pitch I knew I couldn't make the same mistake twice.

This is train wreck television at its worst. Meaning at its finest.

Contrived scenarios. Sound byte dialogue. And punch-worthy villains, like last week's Ray Johnson, who are literally part of my inner career circle. That's right I named names. I'm living on the edge.

What's most interesting about The Pitch and its semi-documentary portrayal of the advertising new business process is how little it actually resembles reality. Particularly in my case.

You see, I had the unique fortune to spend the majority of my agency life at TBWA Chiat/Day under the leadership of Lee Clow. I had the even greater fortune to work on several "pitches" with him. And in many ways these experiences -- like the show -- also bore very little any resemblance to way things are in advertising.

Lee is that iconic.

He's the industry star who is actually known outside our industry. I remember chatting with him at an airline terminal on our way to do a meet and greet and seeing passengers lugging their suitcases, pointing at Lee and murmuring as if they had seen a celebrity. And in truth, they had. Lee has crossed over into mainstream. He's the Jenna Jamison of advertising.

As you can imagine, that kind of star power can change the dynamics of a new business pitch. Not only does he look like Moses, he brings the same presence and conviction. So persuasive are Lee's powers I suspect that had he visited the Pharaoh and proclaimed "let my people go", the Egyptians would have saved themselves the nuisance of 10 pesky plagues.

I don't know what the rest of The Pitch season has in store for us, but I do know you will not see anyone in Lee's league.

Walking into a Pitch with Lee made all our jobs easier. It was like being Earle Combes, the Yankees center fielder who batted in front of Babe Ruth and came away with a .356 lifetime average.

And it explains why, unlike the uncomfortable participants in the TV show, I never felt nervous during the actual pitch. Ever. There was very little stammering. Or stumbling. Or painful silent pauses when a powerpoint or DVD player wouldn't cooperate. And that's because Chief Marketing Officers and CEO's were always thrilled to have Lee in the room, telling them what they could and should be doing to improve their business.

Did we win everything we pitched? Of course not. And some of those, like the Wall Street Journal and Lowe's, still sting. But to this day I'll never understand why clients weren't lining up outside our door to work with the architect and the ad agency responsible for so many incredible campaigns including the resurgence of Apple Computer, the most successful company on the planet.

So yes, there were times when potential clients didn't pick us.
And we weren't the winner.
But we weren't the loser either.

A Marquis Piece

This is the ad that was good enough to appear in two portfolios.

Permit me to elaborate.

A little less than twenty years ago, I was an Associate Creative Director at Team One Advertising. We had been experiencing rapid growth and needed to expand our staff of writers and art directors. The call to recruiters went out. And the portfolios came in.

This was before the Internet, when creatives actually had a box or a leather case with all their laminated work and 3/4 reel of their TV spots.  Now it seems all Creative Directors want to see are tiny flash-animated banners and social media prowess ("that's a nice Tweetdeck"), but I'll save my diatribe on that for another day.

It doesn't take long to spot a good portfolio from the rest of the dreck one normally sees. And my partner had singled out a promising young writer whose work he suggested I see. I was very impressed with all the work in his book. Particularly a long copy print spread for the Nissan Pathfinder.

Why was I so taken by this one piece? Because I WROTE it.

That's right, this ambitious go-getter had pilfered my ad and posed as its author.

So I did what you would do, assuming you harbor a persecution complex and an overblown sense of indignation. I called the aspiring writer from Canada who was aching to join the Team One team.

"Hey, ______ ________, we're looking at your portfolio and really like what we see."


"Great",  said the clueless one.


"We need writers who can actually write and from the long copy ads in your book it appears you might be one of them." I said exercising unprecedented restraint.


"Oh, I think long copy ads take some real craftsmanship. Not many people can do it well."


Clearly, I thought. 


"This Pathfinder ad is beautiful", I said never missing an opportunity to pat myself on the back. "Did you write it?"


" Yep", he replied without a moment's hesitation.


"Really? Cause according to several awards annuals I was the one listed as the copywriter" I shot back.

You could feel the air being sucked 1753 miles through the telephone line.

Then he gave me some half-hearted bullshit about having to resize the ad for a different publication and filling out a widow or two. But in no way did he write the 1526 word double page spread.

After a long silent pause on my end and much to his credit, he fessed up. And admitted he had made a terrible mistake. We Fed Exed his portfolio, minus one Nissan ad, back to him. I also included a finely worded note about integrity. If you haven't noticed after 642 entries here, I'm kind of a stickler about integrity, particularly since there's so little of it left in our industry.

Two days later, he sent a heartfelt letter of apology with a plea to never air out this ugly piece of dirty laundry. And true to my word, I haven't mentioned the young man's name.

But now I've had a chance to reread the ad and I cringe at how poorly it's overwritten. It's slow, it's meandering -- not unlike this story -- and the phrasing is abysmal. I don't know what I or my Creative Director was thinking.

With the benefit of hindsight I realize I should have removed the ad from my portfolio and let him keep it. He would have been doing me a favor.

Stroke for stroke

There was a very interesting article in last week's NY Times on a topic of which I am intimately familiar.
Daniel Jones eloquently lays out the benefits of being bald. But not just bald. Down to the skin bald. As in shaved head bald.

I don't want to tell a reporter at the Old Gray Lady how to do his job , but in an apparent oversight, he only devoted one paragraph to the actual process, that is the shaving of own's head. And since it's that time of the week and my computer has a built in camera, I thought I'd give you a first head account.

Unlike Mr. Jones, I don't do my head shaving in the shower. But I do agree, a good lathering is crucial. I find it very soothing to rub shaving cream over my massive skull. I never got any joy from applying shaving cream to my face but palming my head and spreading a thin layer of blue skin-sensitive Edge is different.

Next, I pop in a brand new Fusion cartridge with the patented 5 Blade Shaving Surface Technology. It seems like just yesterday the fine folks at Gillette were offering the double bladed cartridge. That was quickly followed by the 3-blade and the 4-blade. We seem to have been stuck on the 5-blade cartridge for an unusually long time. I know why it takes car companies three years to roll out a new model, I don't understand the delay on the 6-blade model.

My dad taught me how to shave my face, but there was no one there to mentor me for that first auto-scalping. At first I was very nervous, but much to my delight the sensation was quite painless. Enjoyable, in fact. I start on the left side, just above the temple and slowly drag the blade back to the nape of my neck. Then, as if mowing a lawn, I repeat the process, forming a new line of attack with each progressive stroke.

When I have completed the forward to back motion, I reverse course and go over the covered ground, starting from my neck and ending near my eyebrows. This is important, because sometimes the grain of the hair goes the other way. And you don't want to leave any patches or stubble. 

This too creates an odd sensation because as you drag a razor blade over the bony areas of the skull, you can actually hear the blades shearing off the hair.

Finally, because one has to complete a major chunk of this operation without the benefit of vision and because thoroughness is important, I will rub my left hand over my newly barren scalp to find any errant hairs. When I'm done, my head is cue-ball smooth. Only it's slightly slick from the gel shaving cream. It's an indescribably clean feeling that sadly only lasts a day or two before the stubborn follicles make their unwanted return.

Most of you will never know the joy of this unique experience. And my intent was not to convince you to give it a try. But one of these days I will put my powers of persuasion to the test.

You see, I work with a woman who is very Jewish. She is Orthodox and keeps kosher. Meaning she has never satiated herself with a rack of fall-off-the-bone, smothered-in-BBQ-sauce, baby back ribs. That is a sin. A wrong that needs to be righted.

I have a blog and a computer with a camera and, as I have demonstrated, I'm willing to use them.

Holy Kroc!

Seeing as today is May Day I figured a story about labor was in order.

Last week, I stumbled onto this little nugget.

By the way if you're a regular reader of this blog, you know I do a lot of stumbling. That's the nature of being a copywriter. Or any writer for that matter. You don't just step up to the terminal and the keyboard and start throwing words on the page. Granted, there's a little of that. But in between well-crafted sentences and solidly-contained paragraphs, there's a lot of dilly dallying. And dilly dallying leads to stumbling. And stumbling leads to blogging.

I'm fortunate to count myself among those who never worked at McDonalds. But that is not to say I  escaped the greasy clutches of the fast food world. I put in considerable amount of time at Jack in the Box, their less corporate, less dogmatic rival across the street.

Not sure if it applies today, but at the time there was a palpable hierarchy in the kind of kids who flipped burgers and stuffed tacos. And in many ways it mirrored the pecking order in high school. This was captured brilliantly in the "C" story line in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, more specifically Judge Rheinhold's painful descent into fast food hell.

McDonalds was the domain of the overachievers. Bright eyed kids with good skin and even better teeth. They smiled a lot. Said "yes mam" and "yes sir". And they all seemed to be bucking for a promotion to shift leader. They were Hitler Youth in polyester uniforms.

The Burger King kids were next in line. They didn't get hired at McDonalds and didn't take that rejection particularly well. They had the same good looks and get up and go spirit, but for some reason they didn't make the cut. The BK company slogan was "special orders don't upset us", but special orders did upset them. And you could see it on the kid's faces. And the cheeseburgers that were missing pickles and onions. Their can-do attitude was bitterly replaced with an up-yours.

Then came Wendys.
Followed by Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips.
And bringing up the rear were the Jacksters from Jack in the Box.

We were the outsiders. The independents. We hated our jobs. We hated our bosses. We even hated the food. It was not uncommon for some of us to have a pizza delivered for our lunch break. But, oddly enough, we also loved each other.

Perhaps because we were not jocks or cheerleaders or in the band or part of the rocket club, we formed a bond and enjoyed a special camaraderie, rarely seen in today's workplaces. We drank together. We went out together. We took mischief-making trips to New York City and almost went to jail together.

Other than folks who worked in the Creative Department, I couldn't name five people who I worked with at Y&R. But decades after the fact, I could rattle off 10-15 names of people who punched the clock at Box #1428, 10 Central Ave., Spring Valley, NY.

Like Armand, uh....I don't remember his last name, but I do remember he was from the shallow end of the gene pool. I also remember the time -- I want to say one time but he might have done this on multiple occasions -- he dropped his tongs in the 450 degree cooking oil to fry the tacos. No sooner did the tongs go in the hot oil than did his hands go in trying to retrieve them.

That's a scream I can't erase from my hard drive.

Steve Shayne, the assistant manager quickly rushed Armand to the hospital which was located nearby. It wasn't the first or the last time Steve had to drive Armand there. But he didn't mind. Because like the rest of us, he didn't care for Jumbo Jacks. And the hospital was just across the street from the McDonalds.

Suck it Gelberg

Today is April 30. Time for a little self congratulation.

If you look at the accompanying chart you might notice a favorable incline (I'm getting close to the age where all inclines are favorable) in the web traffic. In fact, with more than 5,000 hits this month, we have set a new record.

Granted, some of this month's eyeballs are due to the linking in agencyspy.com and the popular April 5th posting of I'm Outtahere. But as many of you advertising people know, I've had quite a few links on that dubious site, so that doesn't nullify today's celebration.

Just to digress a little and set the record straight. They (agencyspy) have in the past referred to me as an old friend. The truth is while I appreciate the additional traffic I'm not a big fan of the character assassination that takes place there and have no affiliation with agency spy other than the occasional linking. The other truth is, I'm not old.

So where do I go from here with all this new website traffic? Like any good copywriter, I decided to do a little more digging. And the news is not so great. According to freewebsitereports.com, I had better keep my day job:

After three years of writing, countless pots of coffee, and valuable time not spent with my family, this damn blog is only worth $442.

That's about $999, 999, 658 away from instagram territory. $442 may be a year's salary for the average Yemeni, but it barely covers the cost to keep this computer churning.

Being overly competitive I took the liberty of looking up the value of blogs written by fellow copywriters.  Even though his writing is better than mine and he has a distinct flair for the dramatic, my buddy Jeff Gelberg and his excellent blog Rotation and Balance, is close to 20 million blogs behind me at:

But we've both got a lot of work to do if we are to ever catch the unmistakable wit of George Tannebaum, whose unique brand of crankiness has netted him $634:

Finally, to complete the comparison and to satisfy my unbearable curiosity I was going to take a look at Kathy Hepinstall, who just to make us all feel like losers has just published her fourth novel.  But for some reason her hilarious blog could not be evaluated. Maybe freewebsitereports.org has some filter that excludes real writers? 

That's OK, because the last thing Kathy Hepinstall needs is more publicity. 

Lights Out

Last week a friend of mine was on his way to a Jewish funeral, he had never been to one before and was curious as to what we believe viz a vie death. I told him he had called the wrong Jew.

My understanding of the official company line is a bit vague. I know we don't have a heaven or hell. There's no standing at the Pearly Gate. And there's nothing I can recall about violins, clouds and long white robes.

I do remember something about a soul. And getting bound up in God's great book of life. And in order to do that I couldn't eat cheeseburgers, or bacon, or lobster. So I gave up on that tale pretty quickly.

Seeing I was of little help, he asked what I believed and I told him.

I ascribe to the notion that nothing happens. The light switch goes off. You're done. No more conscious after life than you were before it. In fact, why would I believe otherwise? Where is there anything to suggest any kind of afterlife? Moreover, if there are deceased family members watching and looking out for me, why am I having such difficulty with my refi and why does my prescription for Vicodin always run out on Friday afternoon after my doctor has checked out for weekend?

Does this make me a Nihilist?
Unabashedly so.

And the evidence is more in my favor than it is in the Pope. Or the holiest of Imams. Or the beardiest of Rabbis. That's the oddest thing about religion and the existence of God. It is a collection of fables and myths without a shred of physical or visible corroboration.

None.

For those of you that have faith, I wonder, do you believe that when a termite dies he or she goes to heaven or hell? Is there an afterlife for termites? No, that would be silly, you say. Termites are so tiny and insignificant. Our lives and the lives of a common termite are world's apart. Are they?

Even though he was from a second-class lacrosse school like Cornell, Dr. Sagan offers us some beautiful insight on the topic.

I know it's comforting to think that as occupiers of the top tier on the food chain, we have some special place in the universe, however I don't think it is that special. Yes, we have built buildings, created art, composed music, and documented our existence with some panache. But in the grand scope of things, is what we have done any more lasting or of greater import, than what a monkey can create by throwing his own feces at a wall?

I've looked at my own body of work and can honestly, without any hesitation,  say, "No."

Keep On Trucking

I've gone off before about people who text and drive.

In fact, much to my daughter's collective chagrin, I have no problem confronting these imbeciles and in one instance, during stop and go traffic on the 405, came within a hair of getting out of my car and giving some hipster a thorough tongue lashing.

However, in accordance with the 'people in glass houses' maxim, and as the photo above indicates, I'm not above using my iPhone while driving. In my defense, I only did it to document another variety of the douchebag driver.

As you can see, he has skillfully crammed an entire apartment's worth of crap into the back of a sub-compact pick up truck. You would think that someone so adept at packing and logistics might have considered doing the haul in two trips, thereby not putting hundreds of other innocent drivers at risk, but he didn't.

He saw the open flat bed as an open ended invitation to reach for the sky.

And he almost got there. With a couple of bicycles, a baby's crib, an industrial sized desk, and two Weber grills, (which are not visible in the picture so don't go looking). Had it not been for those pesky 15-foot overpasses that criss cross the San Diego Freeway, I'm sure Mr. I-Can-Make-That-Fit would have gone even higher.

By the way, also not in the picture, is this man's family, his wife and two kids shoe-horned into the cab of this tiny truck with their lips pressed against the windshield.

Astute readers of roundseventeen know that I write a regular series entitled People We Should Kill. It's an exercise in thinning our very overcrowded herd. And they may be wondering why this candidate did not make the cut. The answer is very simple.

 I think fate and this driver's discernible lack of intelligence will take of that on its very own.

Bring Me the Head of Charles Schwab

Last week I made mention of my recent trip to the offices of Charles Schwab, where under great duress, I had to divulge all my financials mishaps over the course of my lifetime. While it was painful it was also therapeutic. A way to get my financial house in order and rid myself of the investment demons that have haunted me for years.

We all have inner demons. 

Perhaps those of us in the ad industry have slightly more than others. We pour ourselves into our work, and day after day that work is rejected. Or Frankensteined. Or picked apart by a former sorority girl, who now has a degree in advertising and a junior position with a client but doesn't have a clue as to the contributions of Gossage, Bernbach or Jay Chiat. 

It takes a thick skin to work as a creative in advertising. It takes an even thicker skin to look back at the file of all the great ideas that never got produced. That file seems to grow exponentially. 

Here's where these two paths -- Charles Schwab and year's of unproduced work -- collide. 

In 1999, we, that is TBWA Chiat/Day, were asked to pitch the Charles Schwab account. I love pitching new business. It's one of the rare opportunities to hit an unmitigated home run. You start with nothing, no client mandates, no past faux pas, no limitations. And if you win, you come away with new billings, new opportunities, new ways to start losing the business. 

One of the writers on our pitch team was Mike Collado. I actually wrote about him last week and you can see more of his brilliance here. Mike and his partner Cody, had come up with a breakthrough campaign that I will in no way do any justice to. Sadly the campaign never made it past the front door and the good folks at Schwab never had the opportunity to see it.

But thanks to magic of the blogosphere, you will.

While driving himself home from a three day intensive industry conference, Mr. Schwab falls asleep at the wheel. His car careens off a cliff. And he is decapitated. Miraculously, the head of Charles Schwab, the vessel of all that financial acumen, survives. 

A young couple in a pick up truck stops to investigate the carnage. They find the head of Charles Schwab, rescue him and nurse him back to health with ice and aspirin. In return, he tells them the advantages of a diversified portfolio with a balanced mix of asset allocation. They prosper and have the wherewithal to send their three children to college. 

The story doesn't end there. In subsequent commercials, the head of Charles Schwab travels this great nation of ours, dispensing valuable and actionable financial advice to all those who will listen to this disembodied guru. I don't recall the narrative gymnastics of how the head got from place to place. But it did. And anyone who had it, had the means to secure financial independence.

It was the classic 'talking head' campaign. 

And this one, if you'll pardon the pun, had legs.

Sadly, we'll never know if this would have succeeded or not. But riddle me this, can you tell me about the last Charles Schwab commercial you saw? I'm betting you can't. 

The tagline they use is Talk to Chuck. And in essence it's the same strategy, get great advice by talking with Charles Schwab. But it's sleepy and it doesn't have anything memorable, like a decapitation.

And that's the fundamental problem with today's advertising, not enough decapitations.

Not that Leo Sayer

My wife and I have lived in our house in Culver City for close to 20 years. It is officially the longest time I've ever spent in one place. In those two decades we've seen people come and go. New owners. New renters. New girlfriends. New dogs. New babies.

Last night my wife and I were out to dinner and we started talking about our neighbor, Leo Sayer.

Not the one-hit wonder who made a splash in the 70's with his "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing." Our Leo Sayer was not a singer or a dancer or an artist by any stretch of the imagination. He just happened to share the celebrity name.

Leo and his wife Doris came to Culver City in the 1950's. They moved here from Middletown in upstate New York. My mother lived in Middletown for many years. Perhaps that's why I felt a connection with them.

Leo, who passed away about 8 years ago, had many admirable qualities. He served in the big war. He and his wife worked hard at MGM studios, which is just up the street from our house. He raised a family of equally conscientious hard workers. And he kept his house  meticulously clean and in perfect condition.

Even in his early 80's, he would nonchalantly fetch an old wooden ladder from his garage -- that featured a hospital-clean workbench and a picture-perfect pegboard with a slot and peg for every tool in his impressive arsenal --and he would climb on the roof to replace a shingle or clean out the gutters.

Up until the day he died, he mowed his own lawn, changed his own oil and marched to his own beat. As I said, he had many admirable qualities.

He also had less-than-admirable qualities. The man with the right tool for every job found himself ill-equipped to deal the changing times. He saw his lily white neighborhood become not so lily white. And made no secret of his disliking for outsiders. My wife and I would play this game and literally time out our conversations with Leo and guess how long it would take before neighborly small talk devolved into a rant about Negroes or Hippies.

His dropping of the N-word was always our cue to go home with a "I think I left something in the toaster oven" type of remark.

Leo is long gone, but his memory is fresh as the many heated confrontations he found himself in with my next door neighbor Pedro, and this is important, who is of Mexican descent.

They fought about cars parked on the street, barking dogs, loud leaf blowers, all the typical stuff that makes neighbors want to call in an air strike on other neighbors. Those battles were often rehashed whenever I'd go across the street to borrow a miter saw or plumbing snake. And I will admit to relishing the neighborhood gossip.

But nothing sums up Leo Sayer better than his retelling of these border skirmishes with Pedro, who Leo perpetually referred to as, "that damn Puerto Rican!"

That still sends the milk squirting from nose.

Happy Birthday Mein Fuhrer

Tomorrow is Adolf Hitler's birthday, so I thought I'd tell you about my first and my last trip to Germany.

But first some background.

My father was a belligerent Jew. He would take umbrage at the slightest hint of antisemitism. Though hardly religious or physically intimidating, he would relish the opportunity to put on the gloves and stand up for the Tribe. I think growing up in the hard scrabble South Bronx and spending a year in an Army jail (I'll tell that story a different time) did that to him.

He was also around when the newspapers bore witness to the atrocities of the Holocaust.

Naturally he directed all that anger and turmoil towards Germans or Germany. We didn't drive cars built in the Fatherland. We didn't watch Hogan's Heroes. We didn't even have Bayer Aspirin in the house. (Headaches were for pussies anyway.)

So you can imagine my trepidation when, in April 2001, I was hired to be the Creative Director of the local Kastner & Partners office being assembled in Santa Monica. Kastner & Partners is the agency of record for Red Bull, a chemical-laden stimulant that is brewed in Austria. Before starting the gig, I was asked to fly to Frankfurt, and later Salzberg, to meet the client.

The 13-hour non-stop flight to Frankfurt was followed by a 10-hour day at the office meeting my new Aryan colleagues. To stay awake and maintain a cheerful disposition, I chugged Red Bulls all day long. At about 10 PM, we were finally dropped off at our "hotel."

But it wasn't an international Hyatt. Or a Hilton. My new boss thought it would be charming if we stayed at the Schlosshotel Kronberg, a Dracula-like castle that was built in 1893 for Empress Victoria Friedrich.

I was escorted up to the 5th floor (that's right, a 5 story castle) and shown my tiny room that for some reason reminded me of Rapunzel.

This is when things started getting ugly.

For the first time in my life I was experiencing jet lag. Not helped in the least by the consumption of three Red Bulls. That unpleasant insomnia was turbocharged by the gut feeling I had made a bad career decision. Not to mention the fact that I was half a world away from my 3 and 4 year old daughters. I was getting claustrophobic. And this was all happening in a country, where a little more than 50 years ago, my ancestors were being dragged from their homes and gassed in ovens.

Even as I write this I feel my skin tingling. I didn't know it, but I was having a full blown panic attack. Something I had never experienced before.

I tried to calm myself by turning on the TV. That did not help as all the programming was in German. And try as I might, every piece of dialogue seemed to contain the phrase, "Achtung Juden."

So I left my room and walked the hallways of this majestic castle. That didn't help much either. As the hotel's curator had lined the hallways with statues and paintings that celebrated the rich Teutonic past.

Lots of skulls, knives and medieval torture devices. This did little to dissuade of my perception of Germans as dark, militaristic and given to the taste of blood. Particularly of the Hebraic variety. 

Finally, I went down to the hotel bar, hoping to bourbonize myself to sleep. But sour mash is no match for Taurine, one of the 131 stimulants in Red Bull. Besides, it's difficult to nod off when you're convinced a pack of Bavarian wolves is about to burst through the door for its midnight feeding.

So after a night of cold sweats and no sleep, I was onto Day Two of more client meetings. Naturally, I had trouble keeping my hungover eyes open. Fortunately, there was an endless supply of energy drinks to keep me going.

The second night was a horrific repeat of the first. The next morning, following 54 hours of being awake, I followed my body's lead and aborted the trip. And the job. (Which in retrospect was the right decision.)

I remember collapsing at the American Airline's Admiralty Club and waking up on the plane hours later sitting in first class. A chatty Japanese woman was seated next to me. She started telling me all about her vacation and her moving experience at Dachau.

She gushed about the visit and said, "It's a magnificent museum. You really have to go there and feel it firsthand."

Yeah, I thought, that's probably not going to happen.

Chemistry 357

I fear I've been overstaying my welcome lately.

The posts over the last month have grown quite wordy. Today will be mercifully short.

Last week was Parent Teacher conference night at the high school. As I was chatting with my oldest daughter's chemistry teacher I noticed she had displayed the latest project all around the room. The students were asked to assemble a large collection of their favorite "things" on a poster that resembled the Periodic Chart of Elements.

There were TV shows, football teams, classic cars, flowers and candy bars. The kind of things you'd expect from 10th graders.

Then there was the chart pictured above. I asked about the student who was fond of Glocks, Tech 9's and AK-47s. The teacher assured me he was a nice young man who was pleasant as can be.

I gritted my teeth and smiled accordingly.

When I came home I told my daughter I wanted her to request a new seating assignment in the class.

Somewhere close to a window.

Or the exit door.

A Post Post

Recently I just finished work on a new set of TV commercials for the Acura RDX. It was a great opportunity to do some spots with special effects, which I rarely do. Work with some very talented British directors, Dom and Nic. And spend quality time in some fancy Westside edit bays.

And anybody who works in advertising knows, the latter is the real reason any of us got into this business in the first place.

You see at the edit facilities, where the film is cut, the sound is recorded and the special effects are effected, writers and art directors are treated like kings and queens. It's a magical world filled with impossibly attractive young women, omnipresent deference and in-house chefs eager to prepare elaborate breakfast delights with exotic meats and fresh farm-picked herbs.

As a freelancer, I'm not often involved in production, so this was pleasant reminder of days gone by.

Of course it wasn't always like that.

When my partner, John Shirley, and I were in charge of the ABC account we had a chance to do a lot of fun work. Most people remember the big yellow outdoor boards that blanketed the cities. What most people don't remember is that in the span of one year we produced more than 75 TV spots for ABC. All of them produced for a combined cost of less than one of the aforementioned Acura spots.

How did we do it? Well, one of the joys of having a media company as a client is the "opportunity" to save money and use their production facilities. You'd expect ABC, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Disney company, to possess the finest in state of the art production facilities.

You'd be wrong.

A trip to their Silverlake campus was, as my partner once put it, a trip behind the Iron Curtain. Akin to visiting Czechoslovakia in the late 1960's. It was dirty. It was primitive. It lacked any of the qualities that made post production a joy.

One time, we met with the editor, handed him the film and told him what we were looking for. The sausage maker...er,...editor turned around and said he'd have a rough cut for us in 30 minutes. 35 minutes if we wanted it to be title-safe.

I also remember a voice-over recording session where the engineer, the talent and myself were all in the same room. There was no sound proof booth. We literally held our breath for 30 seconds as he gingerly read into the microphone.

I hated it then, but I'm proud about it now. Because we turned these limitations and obstacles on themselves and used it as inspiration for work that still stands the test of time.

James Cameron spent over $200 million dollars to make a movie about the Titanic. Here's how we did it for $13,000.




Update: it should be noted this spot was written by the great Michael Collado. 

It's Good To Be Rich.

I'm Rich.

OK, by name only. It's an old joke that always comes up at parties, business meetings or any function that requires an introduction.

And while I'm not cruising the freeways in a Bentley or teeing off with my custom-fitted TaylorMades at the Beverly Hills Country Club, I am rich in family, friends and health. Did I just write that? Soon I'll be penning blogs for some touchy-feely Venice Eggplant and Tofu Co-Op.

The truth is, it's difficult to write about money.
It's hard to even talk about it.

Last week, after 15-20 years of procrastination, I finally sat down and talked with a financial advisor at Charles Schwab. I had to divulge every detail of my financial life. This was very awkward considering that 5 minutes prior to walking in his office, this man was a total stranger to me.

But he had an MBA, he wore a nice white shirt and tie and his office was well over 400 square feet.
Large enough in fact, that he could situate his desk in a kitty-corner position. I don't know about you, but to me that says success.

Then my real financial ignorance began to show.

He asked how I had decided to pick the mutual funds I had bought into in the early nineties.  I confessed to being a victim of my own occupation and that I was easily swayed by packaging and the power of a good brand name. Morningstar ratings be damned, I told him, I'm a sucker for funds like Windsor, T. Rowe Price and J.P. Morgan.

Names that wreak of old 19th-century gentile money. Names that conjure up images of industrial magnates with top hats, fat cigars, and short-skirted French Maids.

He rolled his eyes and started looking over my financial statements and the returns of my measly investments. I'm pretty sure at this point he was thinking to himself, "This half-Jew, half-Scot could be the most financially-inept man in the world.  And could single-handedly debunk the myth of Worldwide Jewish Banking domination."

Then he scooted in closer to his desk, adjusted his glasses and began to roll up his sleeves.
Which I took to be a very encouraging sign.


(UPDATE: For the record that is not my wife and I in the picture above. I don't own any grey board shorts.)