My father gets a gift from Mae Clarke.

One day when I was about 14 my father decided he needed to tell me a story about Mae Clarke’s pubic hair. According to my father, I was 14 and coming of age, and stories like this were important for me. They were part of becoming a man. So my father piled me into his 1949 Studebaker—a car he kept not because he liked it but because my mother didn’t and we went for a ride.

My father’s drives were a lot like my father’s moods—they were impulsive, almost autistic in their focus. He decided he wanted something, or wanted to do something and that was his complete focus until he got that thing.

Once it was salt-water taffy from the boardwalk in Atlantic City. It would start simply enough. “When I was a kid,” my father might say, “me, Herbie and Peacock used to hitchhike to Atlantic City and try to meet girls.” (This was the Atlantic City of the early 1940s—a lower middle class beach resort about an hour’s drive from Philadelphia where my father lived.) Twenty minutes later my father might say, “Damn, I loved the salt-water taffy they used to sell in those little shops along the boardwalk.” At dinner that night, after finishing his meal, he might belch, “You know what would cap off a meal like this one? Salt-water taffy.”

Then, the next morning he was still at it. “You know,” he might say “the salt-water taffy they sell around here is terrible. No flavor.” An hour later, he might turn to me and say, “I bet you never even had real Atlantic City salt-water taffy. Never had real salt-water taffy.” An hour after that he might utter, “Store-bought salt-water taffy is just like plastic. Not the real thing.” A little while after that it was, “It’s a tragedy, not having real salt-water taffy." Before long we’d wind up in his Studebaker, heading down to Atlantic City at 80 mph for salt-water taffy.

With him it was never a yen or a hankering. It was an obsession. Which of course brings me to my father and Mae Clarke’s pubic hair.

Clarke was a 1930s vamp, a putative film actress, the poor man’s “it” girl. Her most famous role was in “Public Enemy,” when she’s shacked up with Jimmy Cagney and Cagney violently pushes a half-grapefruit in her face. But even in that role, Clarke was uncredited. I guess you could say that even though the grapefruit scene made her somewhat iconic, Clarke never really crashed the big time.

By the time Clarke reached her 30s, she still got work, but bit parts and no film credits. Toward the end of her career she had a small part in the TV show “F Troop.” I guess that qualifies as bottoming out.

Like my father, Clarke was born in Philadelphia. Her real name was Violet Mary Klotz and I guess you can safely say she never really transcended her Klotzness. Despite looking pretty good in a tight sateen flapper-style gown and having had some critical success, she was really never anything but two-bit. She never became the star she wanted to be.

By the time my father started cavorting with women—say when he was around 18, Clarke was already crowding 40 and the bloom was off her rose. She had already been married and divorced three times and was spending less time in Hollywood as Mae Clarke and more time back in Philadelphia as the former Violet Mary Klotz.

My father starting dating Clarke around then. It wasn’t really dating to hear him tell it, because all they really did was schtup. That was the word my father used, schtup. “We’d schtup for hours,” he’d tell me, “have breakfast in bed the next morning, then schtup some more. Then I’d run off to school or to work and maybe not see her again for a month or so.”

There aren’t many 18 year olds who can be discreet when they’re schtupping anyone—much less a woman who used to be something of a film siren. My father couldn’t help but brag to all his friends that he was Mae Clarke’s gigolo. “Mae who?” they would ask, and my father would reply, “The blonde with Jimmy Cagney and the grapefruit in Public Enemy.” He’d then, to hear him tell it, break into his purported dead-on Cagney, “You know, I wish you was a wishing well. So I could tie a bucket to youse and sink ya.” And then he’d pantomime the smash.

At this point in my father’s story his Studebaker had just about reached the corner of Broad and Walnut in Center City Philadelphia. The Bellevue-Stratford stood there, still a few years before it became notorious for something called “legionnaire’s disease.”

“The last time Violet and I were together was right here. This was a grand place, a palace,” my father told me. “She said to me, I want you should always remember me and she gave me a sealed small blue envelope. It was too small for money—which I wouldn’t have taken anyway. I stuffed it in the inside pocket of my jacket and ran off to school without even opening it. I was late for class, and was more worried about getting there on time than the envelope. I always figured I’d see her again.”

My father pulled his Studebaker to a stop in front of the old hotel. Next to all the newer cars it looked old, beaten. “You know back in the 30s, the sex goddess of her day, Jean Harlow died suddenly when she was still in her twenties. Kidney failure or something. She was the original platinum blonde. More than anything else, Violet wanted to be Jean Harlow—Jean was the star in “Public Enemy.” The one Jimmy Cagney dumped her for.

“Now there were always rumors about Jean, gossip I guess. How she put ice cubes on her nipples before she’d shoot a scene. Or how she never wore panties. Or how she dyed her pubic hair platinum. Some pretty nasty ones about the number of lovers she had. And after she died, how she had given one of her lover's, some gangster, a lock of her pubic hair. That’s what Violet had given me. A lock of her pubic hair tied up with a violet grosgrain ribbon.”

We drove in silence pretty much the rest of the way home. My father was talked out. Me afraid to say anything.

When we reached our block it was already late. My father shut off the engine of the Studebaker to “let her coast home.” “Your mother,” he told me “found Mae’s gift in my wallet about fifteen years ago. She never said anything to me. Never asked about it. She just threw it out.”

He got out of the car, slammed shut the door and went up the walk. I sat there for a good twenty minutes in the dark.

Breasts.

There's a full page ad in The New York Times today that struck my eye. Mainly because it seems like someone interpolated an oddly-shaped mammary and pasted it (nipple-less) on the woman in the ad.

There's a lot I don't understand about the world and the science of marketing, I suppose, and this, somewhat unfortunately adds a new chapter. I can only imagine the discussions among the MBAs that promote Kristina Train.

"My research says her album will see more if we add a breast."
"Right, CB, but diamond shaped breasts pull best."
"That's right, especially if we tack it onto her clavicle."
"Middle-aged Jewish men love clavicle-breasts."
"It's settled then. Kristina Train gets a new frontal caboose."

And so it goes.

I expect over the next few months we'll see more and more companies hiring breast consultants.

Which can only lead to one eventuality.

Chief Tit Officer.

--
Actually, I just heard from the president of PETT (People for the Ethical Treatment of Teat) and she claims they are looking into this affront.

Hale Smith.

I just read an obituary in The New York Times of a composer who "mixed classical and jazz," a man called Hale Smith who played, arranged and composed for Chico Hamilton, Dizzy Gillespie and Duke Ellington. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/arts/music/28smith.html?ref=obituaries

Mr. Smith called himself "one of America's most famous unknown composers." As you might have guessed, I couldn't find much of his music online, but I did find one composition, a 12-minute piece performed by the Chicago Sinfonietta called "Ritual and Incantation." It's well-worth the download.

You have to make something.

I finished Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" last night and one of the last stories, "The Canon's Yeoman's Tale" concerns alchemy--the pseudo-science of turning base metal into gold.

As I read this wonderful story I couldn't help but think of Goldman Sachs and the like. They are modern-day alchemists who turn nothing into great amounts of wealth then disappear before anyone figures out they are perpetrating a flim-flam. As long as there are people who are buying what they are selling the scam goes on. Once greed is suspended, even for a second, there is collapse.

Now, there is a report on the radio about the collapse of Dubai--the indoor ski slopes, the skyscrapers half a kilometer high. It appears people might stop buying what Dubai is selling. Then, of course, I started thinking about advertising agency holding companies. Have they any reason for being? Do we really need the Chief Risk Officers they provide?

My question for all of these sort of entities is: "What do you make?" What value do you bring?

Today I went to see Vermeer's "The Milkmaid" at the Met. It's quite a painting. A living breathing thing that seems almost luminous. It is only 18 inches tall, and probably about 14 inches wide. But I could see what Vermeer actually created and in my own simplistic way, I could understand its value.

Goldman's CEO Leonard Blankfein claimed that bankers do "God's work." I suppose Blankfein would say the same of advertising holding companies. After all, a few people have gotten quite rich by them.

But neither have left behind anything like a Vermeer.

More on story-telling.

We hear a lot about story-telling in the business and most of it seems to me to be so much blather. People--that is, clients, don't really want stories, they want brand litanies--copy points--masquerading as stories.

I think a lot about stories. About the essential elements that make up good stories whether they were written five thousand years ago like "Gilgamesh," seven hundred years ago like "The Canterbury Tales," or even a story I've just watched "Bang the Drum Slowly," which was written nearly sixty years ago.

Criterion (criterion.com)are film archivists who do a great job of preserving and propagating great stories. They have just released and I have just begun watching a box set called "The Golden Age of Television." This three-disc set includes "Bang the Drum Slowly," "Marty," "Days of Wine and Roses," "Requiem for a Heavyweight," and others and looks to be fabulous.

"Bang the Drum Slowly," stars a 31-year-old Paul Newman and is the story of a young ballplayer dieing of an incurable disease. It was shot as a stage play in the early days of television and on the cheap. There are about four sets. No special effects except lights turning on an off. And a lot of looking at the camera and talking to viewers directly.

Paul Newman wept at the end as he performed his lines. I've read the book a dozen times, seen the DeNiro version a few times and this version a few times as well. I teared-up anyway.

It is a great story.

Now, come on.

For the last time,
It's not Black Friday,
It's
"African-American Friday."

Still thinking of Billy Wilder.

Lest we think focus groups are a recent affliction, Billy Wilder told a story about audience reactions to a film he wrote with Charles Brackett,"Ninotchka" which was directed by Ernst Lubitsch.

Wilder, Brackett and Lubitsch are sitting in the back of Lubitsch's limo and are reading the review cards from an audience nearby Hollywood. Wilder decided this was ridiculous and unbeknownst to Lubitsch decided to write his own cards.

The story goes that Wilder wrote a lot of cards, but the funniest was probably this: “This movie was hilarious. I laughed so hard I peed into my girlfriend's hand.”

Thanksgiving Special. How to artificially inseminate a female turkey.

Probably a bit late for this year's feast.

Quotation of the day.

I adapted this from Bruce Mau.

"Cool is fear dressed in black."

How will the world end?

Fire and Ice
by Robert Frost

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

There's a thoughtful movie review in today's New York Times of two movies that portray the end of the world, "2012" and "The Road."

It starts this way: "Bang or whimper? Fire or ice? Happily, holiday moviegoers interested in pondering the end of the world can select scenarios far more elaborate than those simple, traditional choices."

The review praises "The Road," based on Cormac McCarthy's grim novel but chides the movie for being sentimental when it could be more real or chilling. The movie review ends this way: “The Road” is engrossing and at times impressive, a pretty good movie that is disappointing to the extent that it could have been great. Is this the way the world ends? With polite applause?"

It's the last two sentences that get me vis-a-vis the advertising industry. So often it seems to me we pull back from the genuine and visceral (so as not to offend) and we wind up with the communications equivalent of a processed cheese-food product. It might look like something but it tastes like nothing and has no nutritional value. You know, the type of work that gets polite applause, a gentle chuckle and touches, moves and motivates no one.

Lincoln: "Four score and seven years ago...
Focus group: "Too complicated.
Lincoln: "87 years ago...
Focus group: "That sounds, like, so old...
Lincoln: "A long while ago...
Focus group: Still old...