An ontological advertising question.

Do two people who don't know what they are talking about know more or less than one person who doesn't know what he/she is talking about?

I think of this virtually every time I present creative.

As my august responsibilities grow evermore onerous.

The burdens on the editor-in-chief of a major international blog on something as relevant, important and potentially world-changing as Ad Aged are wearying. As Harry S Truman said when he assumed the Presidency after FDR's death, there are times "I feel like the sun, the stars and all the planets just fell on me."

To that end, I have hired (at a salary in the low seven-figures) an assistant editor. This was no easy task. This person had to have an outlook with insight--insight as benighted as mine. This person had to have the experience, the sagacity, the humor, the wit, the Shavian profundity coupled with Oscar Wilde's gift of the epigrammatic. This person also had to know the advertising industry.

After months of searching, I've found an assistant editor.

Here she is, my friends, the only candidate I could find to meet all those qualifications. The most qualified person for the job.

A hat and two t-shirts.

On a good day walking around Manhattan exposes you to more humor and oddness than, in the words of Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove, you'd get from "one World Fair, a picnic, and a rodeo."

Bumped into my therapist this morning wearing a "Curb your enthusiasm" baseball cap. Is that behaviorial advice or homage to Larry David?

Came across a woman wearing a t-shirt that read: "My nipples get harder than most guys' dicks."

And another woman, a large-breasted one with these words emblazoned across her decolletage: "Couture starts here."

The road to html is good intentions.

Web design at its very second best.
By and large web advertising and web sites suck. Suck, suck, suck. Suck, suck, suck, suck, suck.

The typical landing page has about six places to click and no focal point. Think about opening one of those dentist-office-blue Val-Pak envelopes, take out all the buckslips and arrange them willy-nilly into a rectangle. That's what most landing pages look like.

"Geo, you ignorant slut. You're bringing a print ethos to a new medium that you obviously don't understand. The web is all about giving consumers options, therefore many places to click, facets to explore and offers to weigh. It's not about ideas--this is a post-literate world--it's about interaction design."

Oh, fuck me with an iron rod.

Communication hasn't changed since the beginning of time. God gave Moses Ten Commandments (ten headlines) not fifty-eight places to look each with nineteen codicils. In other words, clarity, simplicity and cogency work. A hodgepodge, visual and typographic spin-art rationalized by pseudo-new-media Newspeak doesn't.

I dare you to debate me.

Paul Arden explains it all.

This is something Paul Arden wrote in his book "It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be." He had it as a pie chart titled "Life's Creative Circle."

Age 0 - 1 -- Nothing

Age 1 - 3 -- Minimalism

Age 3 - 5 -- Fantasy

Age 5 - 10 -- The Beginnings of Copying

Age 10 - 15 -- Art Becomes Grown Up

Age 15 - 20 -- A Need to Change the World

Age 20 - 25 -- Beginnings of Political

Age 25 - 30 -- Maturity

Age 30 - 40 -- Hell Bent On Success

Age 40 - 45 -- Repeating Success

Age 45 - 50 -- Trying to Keep Up With the 25-Year Olds

Age 50 - The Watershed

Age 50 - 60 Reinventing Yourself

Age 60 - 75 A Gentle Decline Into Senility

Age 75 - 85 Youth Regained

Age 85 - 100 Inhibitions Lost, Don't Give A Damn, Me, Me, Me

New York lunchtime observation.

I had Cuban food from a Tex-Mex place run by Chinese.

You think you have it bad.

This is from Dante's Inferno. Canto Three. As Dante and Virgil enter Hell.

"Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric moved:
To rear me was the task of Power divine,
Supremest Wisdom, and primeval Love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I endure.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here."

A poem for yet another Tuesday.

As another day emerges,
I'd rather stay home with
Preston Sturges.

The auteur who gave lines like this to Barbara Stanwyck in "The Lady Eve."
"I need him like the axe needs the turkey."

I heard this on a client conference call and it sure sounds dirty.

"We can dive in and then circle back."

Some thoughts on "Death of a Salesman."

I guess I am in a bad mood this morning. Feeling captive in an industry or a world that tries to suck out your brain, eviscerate your soul, and spit out your integrity.

Some years ago I heard an interview on NPR with Arthur Miller. He was talking about his apotheosis, Willy Loman. Here's how Miller described his creation. I quickly wrote it down and have carried it with me ever since.

"He was trying to be great without being great."

"He's a man trying to carve his name in a block of ice on a hot June summer day."

And Loman's eulogy, from the play:

"I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person...you don't have to be very smart to know what his trouble is. The man is exhausted...

"...He works for a company thirty-six years this March, opens up unheard-of territories to their trademark, and now in his old age they take his salary away."