Two sentences.

I ran across the sentences below in an email from "The New Yorker," announcing the publication, late next month of a new collection of writing from the really very surpassing writer Joseph Roth. You can read the whole piece here. And I think it's worth it. 

I've read a lot of Joseph Roth in my day, and I suppose he's in the top three of Roths out there. He's not Philip--the Roth who stands head and shoulders above all other Roths--read "Portnoy's Complaint" if you doubt that. And Joseph probably falls in behind, just barely, Henry Roth, whose "Call it Sleep," is pretty damn good.

Joseph specialized in feulletons. Little incidental marginalia. Still I regard his "What I Saw," as one of the great books of early pre-Hitlerite Europe.

But back to the sentence at hand:

"On Sundays the world is as bright and empty as a balloon. Girls in white dresses wander about the streets like so many church bells, all smelling of jasmine, sex, and starch."

When my younger daughter was about 15 or 16, I taught her to drink espresso as it should be drunk. Let a drop on your tongue, like ambrosia, and let its flavor spread over your palate.

That's how I feel about Roth's sentence. Each word or phrase is perfect and evocative. Let it sit on your tongue for a while.

Achy Monday.

On Thursday afternoon, after what seemed like 96 straight hours in this giant brainstorm somebody deemed a hothouse, I felt a itchy in my throat and a burning in my eyes. By Friday this had advanced into a full-blown summer cold and by the time I woke up this morning, I was dizzy, disoriented, sick as a dog and dreading the 65-step ascent to the particle-board table I am working at with four or six other people.

I'm not sure who conceived of the idea that four or five dozen people in close confines in an unventilated apartment rife with too much noise and too few bathrooms would be conducive to productive thought. But it probably wasn't a person charged with doing the thinking. I'm 99% sure the people who come of with innovations like these never have to live with innovations like these. And more often than not, no one has the nerve to tell them that the wretched little creatures suffering under conditions like these are none-too-happy about it.

Nevertheless, I made it here, sweaty and achy and fairly disoriented at 8:20. There are just a couple more days and nights of this. Of course they promise to be late and riven by the effects of this illness that is having its way with me.

That's all right, really.

It's life and work and all that.

Still, I wish, as they say, I coulda stood in bed.

Dig, we must.

Once again I started early this morning.

Early at a 'hothouse' where only the women putting out stale bagels were there ahead of me.

There's a lot of work that needs to get done over the next week.

A lot of work and not a lot of time.

A bit too much pressure for me to be loose enough to be productive.

But that's not my call.

You deal with the situation. You try to make the best of it.

When I was a kid, Con Edison, the electric company was, like now, always digging up this street or that. Seemingly causing the maximum amount of congestion on the maximum number of streets.

I guess due to the then-nascent women's movement, Con Edison changed its disruption signs from "Men at Work" to the pre-emptive, no argument "Dig, We Must."

That's how you get through days like today.

Weekends like this coming one.

Keep your fingers close to the keyboard.

Talk low. Talk slow. And don't say too much.

And dig we must.

Is there a hell?

I am, if you've been reading Ad Aged you'd know, ensconced in the middle of a two-week exercise my agency calls a "hothouse."

This is a round-the-clock affair where we work all day and into the night trying to solve some problem or another.

On Tuesday, our second day of the hothouse, we all got called into a group meeting. We returned to our wobbly desks clear out in the open after about 45-minutes. Someone, some bastard, stole the little $9.95 adapter that works with my old Macbook power source and lets me use it on my new machine.

I will say this to whoever stole it.

You'll wish there is a hell.

Because it's surely better than the place I have picked out for you.

Foul mood Thursday.

Lately, I've felt like Burl Ives' "Big Daddy," in Tennessee Williams drama "A Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."

Fat. Immobile. And angry at the state of the world.

We've been sequestered, us cats, in a hot, crappy apartment in Soho trying to solve problems, collectively, intensely, concentratedly. 

It's been hot as ass-sweat in New York the past week, and I half expect to start seeing gloomy Spanish moss begin to drape off of lamp posts.

The sedentariness of the setting (and sitting) has gotten to me. So today, I had my car drop me off way up on 23rd and Broadway. I was in the mood to walk a mile or two. Though when I finally arrived at our Soho address I was wet like a scuba diver and as pissy as a flight attendant.

But as Con Ed used to say when I was groaning up in the 1960s, 'Dig We Must.' And that's my deportment here.

I may not like any of it.

That won't stop me.

I'll do my best.

Same old same old.

One vestige from my 15 months of freelancing--some of it for silicon companies--is I get a lot of calls asking for my creative eye and hand, mostly from silicon companies.

I'm too busy now to take on such work, but still, I take a moment or two to try to discern who these companies are and what they do. What strikes me most as I do this research is the absolute sameness all these companies seem to exhibit--in the design of their sites, in their use of icons, in their color palette, in their tone and manner. It's as if one universal designer and one universal artificially-intelligent writing machine constructed all these sites during one rainy weekend when they had nothing else to do.

Leaping elsewhere now, I look at a lot of creative portfolios. The same sameness, more often than not, pervades these as well. From design to architecture, everything looks the same.

Our creative looks like a North Korean fashion show. Every outfit is a blue serge Mao suit.

Further, what I realized when I was making the freelance rounds, all agencies look the same. Their faux loft-like open plan, open ceiling mess of people and wires. The faux comfortable seating areas. The faux communal spaces. There is no uniqueness of design or ambiance.

Almost 30 years ago, a start up agency, Keye Donna Perlstein, ran a series of ads announcing a spoof agency they called "Mammoth Pervasive and Bland." They were, I think, prescient.

I blame a lot of this sameness on the gradual then rapid squeezing out of time from the creative process. I also blame it on the epithet "award-winning." Award shows are so ubiquitous and redolent that every communication now tries to look award-winning, so, they all look the same.

We have become an industry, I'm afraid, of blanderizing copycats. If something doesn't look like what it's supposed to, it isn't accepted. It never gets out of the agency.

With apologies to Malvina Reynolds:

"And the people in the agencies.
All went to four-year ad schools,
Where they created boxes,
And they came out all the same."

That holds for ads, points of view and people.

We have homogenized ourselves until we have the character of dull government cheese.

Uncle Slappy on my Hothouse.

I got a call last night, as you may or may not expect, from Uncle Slappy. I haven't seen the old man in a while, he stayed away from our family reunion in New Jersey two weekends ago, and I have to say I missed the old man more than usual.

The truth is, barely a week goes by where I don't talk to he and Aunt Sylvie, and hardly a month passes that I don't see them. But this hiatus was a long one. I haven't seen Slappy and Sylvie since my older daughter, Sarah, defended her PhD. back in June.

"Boychick, you're dead maybe," he began with a bit more than his usual sarcasm.

"I'm sorry we haven't seen you lately, Uncle Slappy. But now that our apartment is 95% finished our guest room is up and running."

"For the Joosh holidays we're coming up," he mangled. "They're early this year."

Uncle Slappy was the one who formulated the astute thesis that the Jewish Holidays are always either early or late.

"Yes," I replied mechanically, "they're right after Labor Day. With any luck our Hot House at work will be over by then."

About 60 of us, for the next two weeks, are being sequestered off campus to think about one of our major brands. I enjoy the challenge and pressure, though not necessarily the sequestering.

"I realize," the old man began, "that advertising is prostitution. But a whore house at work? No good will come of that."

"Well to be frank," I answered, "It is a little more intimate than usual. Maybe too intimate."

"Listen, take my advice. And I was in the service. When you're in whore house."

I gave him the respect of not interrupting his Jack-Benny-esq timing."

"When you're in a whore house, keep one eye on the blondes and the other on the exit."

With that, he hung up the blower.

I began to count the days to Rosh ha Shanah.

Prior to two-weeks offsite.

I am a solitary worker. I enjoy shooting the shit with planners and art directors and even supervisors. But when I have something to really do, I arrive at work at six or seven. Usually by that point I've turned the issue over in my head a couple hundred times. Usually I have an idea or two that I think are pretty good.

I arrive early and work out the 'structure' of the idea. I work to put it in the shape it needs to be in.

That's how I work.

That's how I write.

That's how I formulate ideas.

It's not a group activity to me.

I guess I'm not loose enough, confident enough to brain blurt. I tend to keep to myself. Until I've worked out what I need to work out.

We'll see how the next two weeks goes.

Two weeks of brain storming.

Five Minutes with our CFO (Chief Fear Officer.)

Ad Aged: I remember when CFO stood for Chief Financial Officer.

CFO: No. If we kept with that mode of thinking, we'd all belly up and perish. The CFO--The Chief Fear Officer keeps everyone on their toes.

Ad Aged: So what is it that today's CFO does?

CFO: Well, primarily I issue proclamations. Let me run this one in a 300x250 banner space and see if anyone clicks at it. 'We are entering a new modality in which the old rules will be abnegated and new paradigms and cost-exingencies will demand more from agencies at enhanced productivity coefficients."

Ad Aged: That's pretty daunting. Do you mind telling me what it means?

CFO: Well it means what most everything that comes out of the ever-expanding C-suite means. You have to work longer and harder for less money. Or else.

Here's another one: Periodically we have to make strategic reductions in resource alignment to coincide with diminished client expectations due to fluctuations in the new media landscape.

Ad Aged: Translation, please.

CFO: That's easy. It means I'm going to lay your fat ass off.

Ad Aged: Wow, that does the trick. I'm feeling fearful.

CFO: Before you get too comfortable just being afraid--check out this one: "As part of the growth and evolution of our business, we have made some tactical and strategic adjustments of our staffing structure to align with current market needs. Team members will be referred to in-network contingencies.

Ad Aged: That means?

CFO: We're laying you off but will give you some phone numbers at other agencies in our holding company.

Ad Aged: Any final remarks?

CFO: Yes. Are you writing this on company time?

Laborare est orare.

Some mornings, and I suppose this is one of them, the words aren't coming to me. Maybe it's because I was out late last night with a friend and had one too many. Or two too many. Maybe it's because I am effectively sublimating my disdain for some of the shit happening in the office and it's serving to keep me quiet. Most likely, it's just because I'm weary. I've been going pretty hard for a long time, under a lot of pressure, and at the very least I need a day off.

Today would be a great day for that. The sky is a deep blue. The temperature is moderate. As I walked Whiskey alongside the East River this morning, the breeze had just a hint Autumn in it. Nice.

I thought about calling out from work and taking a day. But my o'erweening sense of responsibility chastened me. So here I am. Here I am with nothing to write about.

Some friends tell me that maybe my writing, and my mood, would be better if I did take days off. But I have too much of an austere work ethic for any of that. I am like an old New England farmer. I work come hell or high water.

Writing for me is exercise. There are some days when your muscles ache and your bones creak and your mile times are a good two minutes slower than the day before's. But. You do it. You lace up your shoes and go.

So, with the soft light of a beautiful summer day for illuminate and the whoosh of white noise as the soundtrack of my morning, I write this. I exercise my fingers and get something down.

Yeah.

I know, it sucks.

But I did it.