As they used to do on "Dragnet."

Dum de dum dum.

Stuffed into my paper New York Times this morning was a catalogue from Saks 5th Avenue department store that was beautiful and impactful. Except for the gigantic headline on the cover which read: "Better than fruitcake." (Despite the fact that Saks actually had a fruitcake for sale in the catalogue, tucked away on page 63.)

Here's the deal. The fruitcake joke? Done. Done. Done. Done. Done to death.

I know there are only so many places you can go when you have a Christmas theme to deal with. "Even Scrooge would approve." Something with Mrs. Claus for a change. Snowflakes! A reindeer joke.

But this catalogue is so defiantly uncreative it would put me off shopping at Saks even if I were in the market for a $22,000 watch.

46 years ago, George Lois did something different for a Christmas cover. He put heavyweight champion Sonny Liston as Santa on Esquire's cover. Esquire gained what today we would call huge WOM (word of mouth) and sold a shit-load of magazines. It was daring, controversial, unique, notorious, memorable and enduring.

Looking at the Saks catalogue makes me think that our entire world has been "beiged" to death.