Traveling in Place.

Not too many weeks ago, I wrote a piece in this space about the myopia, or the bubble, or the solipsistic cocoon we so often find ourselves in.

In modern advertising, we look at the same commercials, covet the same agencies and awards and seldom get out of our closed-looped world to see how others imbibe. That and the elimination of visiting factories, talking to customers, doing road trips, etc. contributes to making the work we do very in-bred. I don't know if, like the Romanov's in Tsarist Russia is there is a creative equivalency of hemophilia, but that ain't a bad metaphor. In-breeding in real life or in advertising, is bad for the gene pool.

Or as Slim Pickens, playing Major Kong in Stanley Kubrick's all-too-real Dr. Strangelove, said "Stay on the bomb run, boys! I’m gonna get them doors open even if it harelips ever’body on Bear Creek!”

Today, we have a lot of creative harelipping.

My point today, as it is almost every day, is about broadening our horizons--or doing something different and turning things upside down. 

Sameness doesn't deliver stopping power. And stopping power is Part One of any successful advertising work. If no one sees it, I don't care how the fuck well-crafted it is, or that the director used the lenses used at David Lean's nephew's Bar Mitzvah.I don’t even care if it’s dead solid perfect strategically, if no one sees it, it’s plastic sushi. 

The other day, I stumbled upon this item in the New York Times, about "the last living number painter in Naples." You can read the article here. I suppose Mr. De Stefano is being replaced by computer generated comic sans, and the world suffers yet another unkind cut as another breath of life expires.

In the article, they mention that Mr. De Stefano has an Instagram site. Given that Meta (which owns facebook and instagram) are two of the three biggest child-trafficking sites in the world, I closed my accounts about three years ago. I can't. We have to start unaccepting the horrible acceptingness we are forced to accept. We have to be rigid and binary. We have to be "This will not stand." 

I know I have an Old Testament mien, and I don't even have a beard. But I ain’t supporting child rape. I’m funny that way.

My wife, however--no child-trafficker, mind you--is still on both. She sent me much of Mr. De Stefano's art below, so I could post this.

In this vein, and for whatever reason, I ordered a book from abebooks.com last week that arrived at my fuking bucolic doorstep on the Gingham Coast just last night. Just owning a book of Cuban Revolución art will be enough to get me kicked out of the Gingham Coast Uplift Society, but so be it. Besides, I had pecuniary reasons for getting the book. That is, an idea that could make me some money.

Owing to my particular manual ineptitude, whenever I photograph something from a book it comes out all lopsided. That's ok. There are still many things here, lopsided or not, to marvel over. I particularly like the beisbol umpire poster.

My assertion is simple.

You can if you want find a way to see the world from your favorite chair. 

Just try opening your eyes.