A Guest Post from Rich Siegel.

Rich Siegel and I are growing old together. As Rich writes below--in a blog post I never asked for--we met decades ago and have been friends ever since. 

Rich is good.

I've been around a lot of great creatives in my life. I've worked for six Hall-of-Famers. No one's done a campaign as laughed about and ubiquitous and shared as Rich's "ABC Yellow" campaign.

Rich and I met through blogging. His Round Seventeen is Chandler's Philip Marlow to Hammett's Sam Spade. They both do their job with inelegant efficiency. Rich, a lightweight, takes Friday's off from blogging. But outside of that, he's as stony and permanent as a Greek Kouros.

Thanks Rich. For being you.

And for the post. And for day off.

xxx

From an undated photo. 
Rich and George in the Bronx.
At play in the fields of the lord.

I read George Tannenbaum’s blog every day, that is from Monday to Friday, and the occasional times he feels compelled to chime in on a breaking news story that through some Georgian machination is related to advertising.

 

George and I are friends, more in the digital arena than the one where one agrees to meet on a Tuesday afternoon for a cuppa. In fact, to the best of my knowledge we’ve only broken bread once when he and his lovely wife Laura were passing through Los Angeles to see one of his daughters.

 

Nevertheless, I feel a closeness to George.

 

And not just because we are advertising copywriters and life doppelgangers. Consider this: we are both native New Yorkers, born a mere 3 months apart. Both from The Bronx. Both of lapsed Hebraic Seasonings. Both have two daughters. And both happily married for a long, long time.

 

In fact, when George and Laura found out about my late wife’s liver cancer they went out of their way, pulled some strings and arranged for us to have a one-on-one consult with Dr. Fong, a leading liver cancer specialist, and worldwide speaker on the topic, who worked out of City of Hope in Los Angeles.

 

It was the menschiest of menschy things he could do.

 

You can imagine how shocked I was to read one of George’s posts last week when from deep in the ether sphere, George wrote:

Thems’ writing words, my friend.

 

When I showed this to Ms. Muse, she mused (that’s her job), and suggested I write a retort. I went one better and said ,”No, I’ll demand equal time to contest that scurrilous contention and request an opportunity to refute my alleged stubbornness.”

 

Stubborn? Me? How am I stubborn.

 

Do you mean because I refuse to sleep with a top sheet. And haven’t for a good 66 years and 7 months? And find all unnecessary bed linen-age to be excessive and disruptive? No, I thought, that’s personal and George knows nothing about my lifelong top sheet abhorrence.

 

Perhaps George was referring to my bull-headed obsession with Donald Trump. As well as my compulsive need to “burn” him, cryptically and non-cryptically, in the public arena of social media. I don’t see that as stubborn as much as I see it as a relief valve for the synapses that are still firing but are no longer getting paid to pimp brown sugar fizzy water, underpowered SUV’s and overpriced men’s toiletries via Dollar Shave Club.

 

Bear with me, I think I’m getting closer.

 

Advertising, that must be it.

 

Ironically enough George is good friends (IRL) with Rob Schwartz my former TV writing partner and colleague at Chiat/Day. Rob can speak with a certain authority about my alleged obstination. And like all good Ad Aged blog posts it always comes back to advertising.

 

When in the gainful employ of ad making:

 

I picked apart briefs written by freshly minted college graduates who despite having no life experience would nevertheless assume they had the wherewithal to solve major brand problems.

 

I fought with account people who, having never written or art directed an ad, even a lowly disposable banner ad in their entire career, would tell me, a one-time seasoned veteran 44-year old, how to “fix” what we had created.

 

And I occasionally went toe-to-toe with CCO’s, CEO’s and even clients, in the spirited stubborn defense of work that I rightly, and perhaps wrongly, believed could have changed the playing field. Had I not engaged in a little obstinacy, there is a good chance I would have surely been destined for a dirty nursing home, laying on 75 thread count sheets and sucking on pureed chicken tetrazinni.

 

OK, I’m stubborn. But I’ll take that as a compliment.

Thanks George.
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