East River brothers.

Last night was another of those all-too-frequent evenings where I was visited by my old nemesis, insomnia. She kissed me awake around 3 and led me out, with Whiskey my pup, for a long walk, once again, along the river.

The East River, as we call it in the City, is not a river at all. It's a tidal strait that connects the turbid waters of the Long Island Sound, to the turbulence of the New York Harbor. Centuries ago when the Dutch were ascendant, the Dutch called the Connecticut River the East River, the Hudson, the North and the Delaware, the South. The names have changed over time and as New York and its Grid became dominant, the strait assumed its current name.

Old New Yorkers, and I count myself among them, will sometimes called the FDR Drive, which runs parallel to the East River, the East River Drive, the highway's name before Robert Moses gripped New York and made it powerfully his own.

There used to be tanneries, glue factories, abattoirs and a host of effluents that teemed into the river. Its filth was the butt of many jokes when I was a kid. But things have cleaned up since the 70s, and today there are jet-skiers in the river and the occasional kayaker.

Once years ago, my older daughter who is an accomplished open-water swimmer was going to enter a 2.4 mile race in the waters off Manhattan. She persuaded me to try a half-mile swim, though for the life of me I couldn't bear the thought of entering waters that when I was a child were considered open sewers. Fortunately, my daughter backed out before race day, and I was, like a witch who emerged from trial by dunking with her life, spared.

Whiskey and I walked, as we almost always do, north. I don't like walking south. The promenade narrows and the terrain is less interesting. There's also an interruption around the UN that disturbs the peace I find when I travel in the opposite direction. So, as I said, I go north, where the people are fatter and the crowds thinner.

Walking north there is a flagpole across from Gracie Mansion, a tall, naval mast of a flagpole that has at its tip the US Flag and on a cross spar the flag of the City of New York, an orange, white and blue affair with the seal of the city on it--a Dutchman and an Indian, and the green-leafed and white flag of the city parks department.

The land around the flagpole circles out over the river, an ideal spot for observing the turbulence of Hell's Gate. There were two Puerto Rican men in the overhang tonight, from the looks of them, twins around 30.

They knelt down in Diane Arbus-like unison and beckoned Whiskey and me over.

"Buenos noches," they said in perfect New York Puerto-Rican-Spanish, leaving the esses of their greeting off in true New Yorican-style. I greeted them back, imitating their island twang.

My dog looked tired, in fact she lay down at my feet, and we three humans leaned against the curved cast-iron that bowed in a semi-circle over the water. One of the twins began talking, looking at the churn of the current, not at me.

"Mi hermano and I married twin sisters," he began. "We are twins and they were twins." He took a long drag on the night and spit twice into the water. He was in no rush to tell his story. And I was in no rush to hear it.

"For one year all was fine. But soon it became clear that mi esposa and I, we loved each other."

The other man spoke now.

"And mi esposa and I se odian. We hated each other."

We all three now spat into the water.

"We cannot stand to be with each other at night. So mi hermano and I walk. Though he loves his wife, he walks with me."

"I would rather be home with my wife. But he is my brother and him I must be with."

Again we spit.

Splat. Splat. Splat.

Whiskey was up now, she pulled against her leash. I left the brothers to themselves, bidding them a buenos noches with no esses. And let Whiskey lead the way home

The two ways of writing.

There are two ways to write an ad, or a manifesto, or even an email.

The first way is as you might expect. It involves order, planning and discipline. In common parlance, it's writing when you have a rough idea of your beginning, middle and end.

The second way is equally important and equally effective.

It comes into play when you're stuck with a problem.

Or your partner and you aren't connecting.

Or he's unavailable.

Or you have an idea you need to work out alone.

This kind of writing is like Jackson Pollack's painting.

Let your words splatter over the page.

Don't start out trying to form something eloquent.

Just start dipping your brush into the paint, your fingers on your keyboard.

Type.

See what comes out.

See what's behind the part of your brain that's smart, that seeks order and logic.

Let your words drip.

Go.

Give yourself an hour and type. Type about anything. Don't worry if it makes sense or not. See what happens.

Then don't read anything you've written. Instead take a walk around the block. Before you come back to the page, walk away from the page.

When you do come back to what you've written, there's probably something there.

A thread to pull.

A pattern that presents itself.

Find what's good in what you've written.

And start again from there.

Maybe this manner will work for you.

Maybe it won't.

But sometimes it works for me.

A clean, well-lighted deck.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the absurdity of our business.

About 65 page decks talking about strategy.

About two-hour meetings about a 30-second commercial.

About 200 hours producing work two dozen people will see.

I was thinking about how much we talk.

And how little we say.

I wondered what would happen if an agency had a directive.

Self-imposed.

Write your decks like Hemingway would.

Or McCabe.

Or Bernbach.

Design them like Krone would.

Or Glaser.

Or Lois.

Take out everything that doesn't matter.

Everything that's windy.

Everything that gives you linguistic gas.

In short, what if an agency remembered this from Hemingway, and took it as creative direction:

“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.” 

The replacements.

The National Football League season is about to mercilessly start, though no one ever intended 400-pound men to wear 75 pounds of equipment and bang into each other in the ever-longer-lasting heat of summer. But no matter, sport is quaint, but money is where it's at and money is what the National Football League is about, so it's coming and there's nothing we can do to escape its hormonal/steroidal apocalypse.

Yesterday's "Times" ad column--what's left of it, it's now written by people who are not reporters, they're press-release-sifters--called the NFL and its 181-million viewers, "the greatest advertising delivery vehicle ever invented," and I think that's about right. There is no sport involved. It's about selling tires, nachos and beer.

It's about to kick off, the NFL mammoths are, and not with professional referees presiding but with, from what I glean, "replacement" referees who have neither the skill nor composure to adjudicate a game in which two tons of mean slams into the opposing two tons of meat with intent to kill.

We have disposed of the professionals, of the trained, of the experienced. Bring on the replacements.

Replacements infect our everything.

Our ads are rife with them.

Stock photos instead of real. Replacement visuals.

Cliches instead of thoughts. Replacement copy.

Hyperbole instead of emotion. Replacement soul.

We are a world which has embraced the replacements.

In hipster heaven our arms, back, legs and necks are sloganeered in permanent ink. Replacement wisdom.

Our clothing, our shoes, our handbags, our glasses are festooned with brand logos. We rely on brands for our identity. Replacement personality.

We labor under the delusion that every snapshot is a photograph. And never look at the work of masters. Replacement taste.

Because we're too lazy to read, we rely on idiots, windbags, professional pontificators, limbaughs, coulters etc. for our opinions. Replacement judgment.

In our business, where our goals have mutated from building brands to winning awards, we rely on pay-per-trophy award shows to affirm our worth. Replacement qualifications.

This is what we have come to.

A plasticized, synthetic, naugahyded world.

Throw out the originals.

They are trouble.

Here come the replacements.

Commodities.

There's certainly no shortage of bad advertising in the world--and there's no one in advertising who isn't responsible for at least some of it. We all fail now and again, despite the vigor of our effort or the nobility of our aspirations.

Perhaps the central cause of most failures comes not from thinking viewers will find it hilarious seeing white men dance badly (bad dancing has replaced the one-eyebrow-raise as the sure-fire laugh-getter that no one laughs at) but rather the underlying belief that the product or service you're advertising is a complete commodity.

A commodity to such a point that there's nothing important to say about the product or service, so let's not even try.

The Avis ads I've pasted above are a case in point. Avis apparently rents cars that have both radios (always magically tuned to a song you like) and space inside them. Those attributes appeal, of course, to busy businessmen who will suddenly break into song in their own private Malibus.

I'm sure some pea-brain of a MBA, on either the client or agency side, said something like this to the creative team: "Our insight is that the space inside a rental car is a private zone where our target can get himself ready for the challenges that come."

That's an insight on par with this one. On hot summer days fat people like ice cream.

50 years ago Avis developed an ethos to differentiate itself from a bigger, richer, more-established brand. We try harder.

Today the company and its agency is run by cowards who rather than try to do something smart, something unique, something ownable they instead write un-believable drivel acted by un-real people.

99 times out of 100 you advertise something that has no differentiating assets. Your job as marketing practitioner is to find one. A creed. A fact. An idea.

It's not just to cast for white people dancing.

Walking north.

It's only Wednesday, but I've already had a helluva week. I'm not busy at work--which is rare. I'm experiencing that lull that comes before a big shoot. That stillness before a storm. But that's ok, I'm enjoying it.

There is still, of course, the daily dosage of drudgery to attend to. Small ads that need to be done, well and on-time. And meetings called by people whose job it is to call meetings. Agencies are teeming with meeting makers these day, people who, like cardboard actors, come to life only when amphetiminized by powerpoint.

My youngest daughter is home for the first time since late May, and my oldest is coming home today for 48 hours or so. The new puppy roars to the rafters. And my wife is back and forth from LA like a tennis ball at the US Open. In all, the usual delicious mayhem of family.

Last night, with the Republicans glowering on TV, fat and pale like marzipan, I headed north, as I so often do, for a walk with my dog Whiskey along the river.  There was not a dark face in attendance in republican Tampa last night and once I got north of 96th Street, there was not a white one--except for me. Up here I was safe from the dying elephant bellows of New Jersey charlatan governor Chris Christie. I was safe from the Stepford wifery of Ann Romney who spun a Horatio Alger tale of she and Mitt accomplishing the American Dream, oMITTing the part about starting with a $50,000,000 nest egg.

Up north, amid the as-yet-un-gentrified precincts of Harlem, I was happier, away from those parts of America where they don't believe in minimum wages, health care, pollution controls, Darwin, taxing the rich, unions and global warming.

Whiskey and I walked north. North through the broken sea wall of the East River Drive, collapsing into the drink. North past the Triboro. North past the projects where the great ballpark the Polo Grounds used to be, where Willie Mays caught Vic Wertz's flyball and wheeled and made that throw to second.


We exited the promenade around 165th Street, four miles from my apartment and walked through the broken asphalt of Highbridge Park, leaving the park at Yeshiva University, not far from the original Washington bridge over the Harlem River, a span that predates its more famous namesake by almost 50 years.

Whiskey's tongue, by now, was as long as my forearm. I found a gypsy cab manned by a fat Dominican, got in, and headed $20 home.

Regimens.

We are assured through various advertising campaigns featuring women with firm perky breasts and men with granite abs and prodigious biceps, that we are all athletes. We are told that our slog around the reservoir in their gear will make us glorious, victorious and valorous. Puma calls us "after hours athletes." Nike tells us to "find our greatness" (and urges us to track our every motion through their 'fuel band.') And adidas assures us that impossible is nothing.

With billions of dollars beamed at us we suit up and run and bike and swim and lift and spin and step and jump and box and skate. We do it every day, a modern-day religion of self-actualization.

What strikes me as odd is this: I may fantasize about running a three-hour marathon (30 years ago, I came close, clocking in at 3:10:15) but my reality is I am a writer. Writing, not writhing, is what I get paid to do. And while there is nothing wrong maintaining a fitness regimen, I question why so few maintain a creative regimen.

How many art directors, how many copywriters train everyday to improve their skills?

More than 300,000 words ago I began writing this blog. 300,000 words is 1,200 typewritten pages. And those 300,000 words have made me a better writer than I have ever been. Because I have been practicing.

My blogging friends, Rich Siegel at http://roundseventeen.blogspot.com/, Bob Hoffman at http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/, Tore Claesson at http://toreclaesson.blogspot.com/, Ben Kay at http://www.ben-kay.com/, the people at Sell! Sell! http://sellsellblog.blogspot.com/ and Dave Trott at http://www.cstthegate.com/davetrott/2012/08/the-answer-asks-the-question/ practice their skills every day, or nearly so. They are doing the creative equivalent of 50-mile weeks. They work and work and work to sharpen their skills, their perceptions, their insights.

They practice every day. And, as my mother would be sure to bludgeon me: practice makes perfect.

To bastardize a line from above, they, like me, are "after hours creatives." They find time late or early, to do what they do and by doing get better at it.

It's the only way, I think.

Language.

Sitting in an open workspace exposes you to a lot. Not only can I hear just about every conversation within 50 yards of my table, I get to hear the sort of language that fairly makes my skin crawl. If we think about language and the semiotics behind language, the words I hear almost every day are upsetting. If language reflects thought, we are as an industry moribund.

I hear people talking about "decks." Not about a presentation--something living. But about a deck. Something large, ponderous, heavy and inanimate. No one ever said, I'm looking forward to reading that deck. But decks are what we produce. Boring.

I hear account people say, "we'll get the assets from the creatives." Not the ad, or the banner, or the commercial. Again, we as an industry, use a dead, material word. A word that commoditizes that which we get paid to produce.

And we are no longer people, it's no longer "I'll get the work from Tom and George." That sentence is human. It's "I'll get the assets from the creatives."

Even our departments are tainted. Human resources. I am a resource, like a geyser, a fir tree or a vein of coal. Thank you for admitting I am a human.

I remember once when I was in charge of a large Boston agency and we were moving buildings, the General Manager came to me with a "stacking plan." We are not people. We are cord-wood.

We no longer take a day off. That is too casual and not officious sounding. We're on PTO. Some relative, I suppose of PCBs. As if our employer is doing us a favor by paying us for our leisure day. PTO could, after all, be ETO--earned time off. But we willingly give the linguistic power to the holding company.

Language is power and we have given it away.

That's all for now. I have some assets to ideate and have inserted into a deck before a conference call.

Eulogy.

By some unfortunate twist of fate I was born, not with the gift of laughter, but on the cusp of slaughter. Not at the hands of the father, like Isaac to Abraham, but at the hands of a cruel and knife-wielding mother who was narcissistic, unstable, borderline and, worst of all, just plain mean.

We have complicated and fancy words now and rarely call people mean, but that is what she was, like a kid pulling the wings off of flies or burning ants alive, I was her insect.

My father, who should have been my protector, because he was aware, was largely absent. Gone for days every week and weeks every month on business trips. And my mother saw in me, magnified and right before her eyes everything she hated in my father writ large. So it was me she scorned, punished and kicked the shit out of.

It was me she slaughtered, more than my older brother and my younger sister, I bore the scars--scars in three places on my head by the time I was four. I was a pin-cushion for her invective and her cruelty.

Yet, she gave me gifts, even if they came from the back of her hand. A love for books, a love for words, a sense of humor (the only way I have survived) and for those I thank her. She gave me a hunger to learn, which I still have. Most of all, she gave me a bad example. She showed me in real life every day, day in and day out, what I would not become. In this way, she became an inspiration.

But for the abuse, the cruelty, the lack of support, the absence of niceness, I can't forgive and after 33 years of therapy, I can't either forget. It's just there, her. Like a permanent limp, or those scars on my face that, being scars, will never be erased.

My brother called this weekend to tell me that she had finally died. We had been watching her for months sink even deeper into her living coma, not leaving her bed, much less her apartment. And now the people who gave her round-the-clock care that we paid for, said she sunk dead.

I can't cry, Willy.

I had done all my crying growing up. I had done all my crying for the past 54 years.  I am cried out.

And I can't cry.

Neil Armstrong, a remembrance.

Reprinted on the occasion of Neil Armstrong's passing.
Years ago--I think it was the 10th Anniversary of Neil Armstrong's moon walk, I had the honor of interviewing Armstrong for my college newspaper.

Being a "writerly" sort, asked him specifically about his words on setting foot on the moon. How did you come up with "One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind."

Armstrong looked me dead in the eye, "I never said that."

"Mr. Armstrong," I replied, "I've heard the recording a thousand times. I've read about it in history books. Every school child knows you said 'One small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.'"

Armstrong said, "What I said was 'one small step for man; one giant leap for Manny Klein."

I begged the famous flier to explain.

Armstrong told me this story, "When I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn, the walls in our apartment house were very thin. You could hear everything. And every night I would hear our neighbor, Manny Klein, begging his wife for oral sex. Every night, Mrs. Klein would demur.

"Finally," Armstrong continued, "Mrs. Klein relented. She said when a man walks on the moon, I'll give you oral sex. Hence 'One small step for man; one giant leap for Manny Klein.'"