A Father's Day post.

Down the street from my parents’ house was a vacant lot surrounded by six to ten story buildings on two sides. Those buildings had no windows looking out over the lot because where the lot was now, a building used to be. The lot was square and the city did some work on it, putting down some grass, a backstop and a couple of benches for players and a small section of bleachers for people to watch. A couple of evenings a week in the summertime when it stayed light out till almost nine, a couple dozen neighborhood men would show up there and play baseball.

The games weren’t formal affairs. There was no umpire and no uniforms, just a bunch of older guys in shorts, sneakers and t-shirts drinking beer and playing ball. All the kids in the neighborhood and some of the moms would head over there in the evening to watch the men play. Even though we lived less than five miles from Yankee Stadium, and the Yankees were on TV virtually every night, these games somehow seemed more important than those played by Big Leaguers, at least until it got dark out and the kids would run home to watch the Yankees.

The dimensions of the lot were such that the building that loomed over right field was close to what was designated home plate, maybe 150 feet away. This gave the field a drama that was missing from more traditional fields, like normal school yards. It was like the “short porch” in right in Yankee Stadium that was just 296 feet from home; it was something to aim for and since a ball hit off the wall was ruled as in play, it led to a lot of excitement and even more arguments.

My father never played in these games. They were more the province of the heavily muscled Italian men who lived in the neighborhood and who didn’t work in the city. The neighborhood I grew up in was divided roughly in two. On one side lived the Italians, the people who worked locally and made the town run. They were the carpenters, the shop-owners, the plumbers, the auto repairmen. The mothers often worked too, as nurses or they helped out in the family shop. Some were substitute teachers or worked in the school as cafeteria ladies.

They lived in run-down little houses with fake brick fronts attached with two penny nails and neatly manicured lawns. Or slightly larger houses covered in stucco, with detached garages further back. Or in two-family homes that were symmetrical like a Rorschach blot.

These Italians were tough men who had heavy beards by the time the game started even though they had shaved that morning. They were men who had lived in our neighborhood for generations in houses that were even smaller and more beat up that ours and big families accompanied them to the sandlot. They were the regulars.

On the other side of town lived the Jews. Men like my father who didn’t look at home in a tee-shirt. Not a bit like the Italians with major-league-looking sweat stains under their arms and big, burly forearms like Popeye. My father was a big guy, more or less gone to seed, but over six-feet tall with broad-shoulders and long arms. One night, I suppose one team was short a player, my father was coaxed into playing. It had probably been 20 years since he played a serious game of ball and you could tell he was nervous in front of his children, nervous that he would look uncoordinated or un-athletic or not adequate in the way that the other men were adequate.

A couple innings passed uneventfully. Not a single ball was hit to my father who was manning second base. But in this inning it was my father’s turn to come to the plate. I had never seen my father hit a ball before except for fungo with me and my brother so we could practice our fielding. I wasn’t sure he could do it. The guy on the mound for the other team threw entirely too hard and seemed entirely too cocky.

Nevertheless my father stepped into the box and went through a slightly comical major-league pantomime, rubbing his hands with dirt, tapping the dust off the soles of his sneakers, taking a couple of slow, looping practice cuts and checking down the line with the third base coach for any signs and instructions.

The pitcher wound up and zinged one in and my father let it whiz by for a strike. Because my father wasn’t one of the regulars, the few people rooting for him called him not by name but by “hey, batter.” “Hey batter,” I repeated, cheering my father on.

There were standard baseball insults in those days that didn’t involve either profanity or originality. To a pitcher there was “we want a pitcher, not a belly itcher” and the infinitely wittier “we want a pitcher, not a glass of water.” For guys at the plate there were barbs like “ya swing like a rusty gate” or the slightly cleverer “Aunt Jemima makes a better batter.” I dreaded hearing either of those about my father. I knew, somehow, he was no match for the Italian men, nevertheless I was hoping some muscle memory would allow him to make contact with the ball. My big fear was that he’d swing like a rusty gate. That Aunt Jemima was a better batter.

The second pitch came in high and my father swung hard if a bit late but somehow lined a rocket hard off the close-by rightfield bricks. He hit the ball hard. It resounded off the wall with a crack. This ball clearly would have gone far, but for the wall. On a regular field—or in Yankee Stadium with its short rightfield porch, it might have cleared the fence for a homer.

My father ran toward first, slowly. He was creaky and could hardly move. His body unfolded like an over-starched shirt as he transitioned from hitting to running. He probably hadn’t run for at least as long as he hadn’t hit a ball, twenty years or more. As he slogged toward first, the ball ricocheted fast off the wall and was fielded cleanly by the first baseman on one bounce not far from the first base bag. The first baseman ran quickly over to first and beat my still unfolding father there. My father was out by two steps and a half. It seemed unfair, somehow, to hit one so hard and to put out so easily, but as my father said as he trotted in after making an out, “It’s a game of inches.”

I don’t remember who won or lost the ballgame. Or what my father, or anyone else did after that. I suppose it got too dark to continue playing and we all went home to our little houses or too-small apartments and watched the pros on TV. I don’t remember if my father got up to bat again, or if he had to perform in the field, catching a towering popup or deftly turning a double play.

I just remember that he hit the ball. Hard. And that was good enough.

No country for old copywriters.

Ah.

I had dinner last night with an old friend.

We had worked together at "the mid-sized agency of the year," Rosenfeld and Sirowitz in the 1980s.   We had each hoped to learn from the skill and eclat of two advertising Hall-of-Famers, Ron Rosenfeld (Ron was the first copywriter in the business to earn $100,000) and Len Sirowitz, the art director behind literally hundreds of great ads from DDB.

Alas, Ron and Len had left art behind and we're in full and break-neck pursuit of the crassest of mammon.

I escaped the clutches of the agency in just 20 months--despite them offering to pretty much double my salary. My friend was more tolerant and stayed there for more than a decade before finally landing a job at Ogilvy.

That's where we were re-united, at Ogilvy. And though we were in different groups while there, we had each ascended to pretty lofty titles and had each done work of skill and eclat.

But the industry has changed and fortunes, like the moon, wax and wane.

My friend and I have each--over about the past decade--been wandering Jews. Jumping from one freelance job to the next, with sporadic full-time employment sprinkled here and there.

We spent the evening over taglioni and branzini, crying in our New York tap water.

At one point I told my friend what it was like playing racquet ball with my father. I was sinewy and in shape. My father was dying with his perennial heart attack.

He slaughtered me. Hardly moving from his spot on the court.

I would rocket balls off the walls at impossible angles.

He would shift a centimeter and kill the shot.

I finished our match under buckets of sweat.

He didn't even need a shower.

And this was a man who for all intents and purposes was dead.

It's a funny thing about being in the business for thirty years and near the top for twenty.

You learn the angles.

Advertising. 2013.

There is, near the bar at the Tempus Fugit just one piece of art work besides an old ad for Pike's Ale (the ALE that won for YALE.) It's actually a famous piece of advertising done  many decades ago by the Anheuser Busch Brewing Association. As such, until we entered our present era of pretend political correctness, copies of the lithograph used to hang in hundreds or even thousands of bars across the US.

DIGRESSION: I hate political correctness. People are no more or no less prejudiced than they were in any other era. But today we as a society teach everyone how to hide their hatreds under a phony mask of politesse. I think the world was a better place when the assholes were out in the open with their assholery.  Also, jokes were funnier.

Over the months that I've been going to the Tempus Fugit, I've spent a lot of time looking at the print. It's a pretty vivid and gory affair, complete with comic book cowboys and indians, mutilation valor and more. What's more, the print reminds me of advertising in 2013.

Let me explain.

Let's say it's 1890 and your brief was to do a painting of Custer's last stand that could be hung in bars and saloons that cater primarily to an audience of men of legal drinking age on up.

You take that brief and come back (in three days) with something that looks like the above. Here's how it goes from there.

Oh, and in the spirit of true political correctness, there's this:

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious.
Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

PERSON 1: I love it.

PERSON 2: Yeah, it looks terrific. I love the colors.

PERSON 3: This is great. 

PERSON 4:  It certainly answers the brief.

PERSON 5: It's great.

PERSON 6: Wow, stunning.

PERSON 7: Great, I love it.

You begin to think, maybe, you're out of the woods. And then it begins.

PERSON  7: I love it, I think now we can really start trying to "push" it.

ME: Push what.

PERSON 8: Well, push the idea. The execution. We should think about it.

PERSON 3: I agree. We need to see how we can push this.

ME: Push it?

PERSON 2: Well, the Indians. Can some of them be space aliens.

PERSON  4: It would be good to have pirates, too. We'll be in some pirate books.

PERSON  5: We're not going to the client until tomorrow at 8:30, we have time to rework this.

ME: Rework it?

PERSON 6: Yeah, I like the pirates and aliens idea. And we can add buccaneers, brigands and blackamoors. And maybe some Hell's Angels(R).

ME: It's supposed to be about Custer. He fought indians.

PERSON 7: Look, you're the ECD, you have to do what you think is right. But I want you to look these things. To push it.

PERSON 3: We're just questioning things to try to make it better.

PERSON 2: It's very violent. What if we're in kids' media?

PERSON  4: Do we need the guns? I like the scalping and the tomahawks.

PERSON  5: I hate the scalping. It's gross.

ME: Scalping is gross. But that's what happened.

PERSON 7: Let's push it a bit and see if we can make it less violent. Like maybe there are balloons.

ME: Balloons.

PERSON 7: You know. I'm trying to make it better. Water balloons.

PERSON  4: I have a question. Which one is Custer?

PERSON 1: Good question. I'm not sure.

PERSON  2: I think he's the indian on the horse waving his arms.

PERSON  6: No way! I thought that, too.

PERSON 1: Can we do something that points to who Custer is? Makes it clearer? Just trying to push it.

PERSON  7: This is a crazy idea. What if Custer were holding soft ice-cream. You know, custard.

PERSON  4: It's like a mnemonic! LOVE IT!

Et ita abscedit.

And so it goes.

How to write good.

Every so often someone asks me for advice on how to become a better writer. My standard response is usually pretty simple and includes three general thoughts.

1. Find writing you like and admire that is considered good. Study that. Imitate that. Copy that style. Until you're confident enough to find a style of your own.

I remember when I was a kid finding in an old record shop an early LP by Ray Charles, who was then as he is now, my favorite musician. This album was old. And on it Ray was singing, but not as Ray. He was imitating Nat "King" Cole.

There's nothing wrong with imitation. Especially while you're finding your voice.

2.  Write everyday. Write long copy ads to get your thinking straight. Write and write and write then write some more. I read somewhere that the great baseball player Ted Williams would take batting practice until his hands bled. If it's good enough for Ted Williams, it's good enough for you.

3.  Read a lot. This is really part of point one. It's about studying and searching until you find a voice of your own.

Those are some broad strokes.

Now here are two specific tricks I learned along the way.

1. When you've written your copy, cross out the first paragraph and start right in on the second. Usually first paragraphs are tip-toey and timid. Get right into your story with vigor and confidence.

2. Re-write your headlines backwards. You'd be surprised how much better things sound when you jumble them up a bit. I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but try it. Adidas would have been less successful with the line "nothing is impossible." "Impossible is nothing" is lightyears better.

Finally, thank your reader for reading.

With a nice turn of the phrase or a smile.

If that fails, just say: thanks.

Bad mood Wednesday.

I suck at doing things for the sake of doing them.

I suck at continuing to spin out ideas when I'm sure I have the right one.

I suck at confining my work to someone's asinine strictures.

I suck at taking direction from people who are uninformed. Or scared. Or wholly political.

I suck at lot of things.

Playing the game.

Speaking the newspeak jargon.

Eating shit on command.

Until recently I never really worried about sucking at these things
because I was good at work and was able to find clients that appreciated
my honesty, brains and dedication.

Now I worry that those things are no longer valued.

And we must leave no assed unkissed.

Too much on story-telling.

The alarm rang this morning interrupting a story I was having in my head while I slept. I swept the covers off of me, telling them a story about an angry and restless giant who could be soothed only when covered with a magical blanket. Then I walked the 11 feet to my bathroom, thinking along the way of a story of the road not taken and where unexpected twists and turns could take us. Like what if I turned left into the utility closet or continued straight into the linens? What amazing stories could come from those occurrences.

I ran the water in the sink and thought of the story of where that water came from. How Irish immigrants fleeing famine and persecution came to this country many years ago and built the reservoirs and aqueducts that sustain New York City. I thought of the story of Megan O’Keefe who died from the grippe while caring for nine kids and her husband who would, nonetheless, cuff her around.

I thought of Dr. Washington Sheffield who was first to put dentifrice in collapsible tubes. Thank you, Dr. Sheffield! I imagined a story of Dr. Sheffield presenting his life and accomplishments to St. Peter. What a story it would be. What life! What love! What laughter!

Here it was, I was awake for just six minutes and I had already told four or five stories. Why?

Because, don’t you see, everything is all about story-telling and I’m a fucking story-teller. Everything has a narrative. An arc. A pathway. Everything.

And we are story-tellers.

Finding stories in everything from experience design to SEO.

We will tell these stories and thereby use our finely-tuned story-telling skills to tell the story of our clients’ brands.

Because we are story-tellers.

Early morning in the Tempus Fugit.

Last night at 4:48—about an hour earlier than I usually get up—Dame Insomnia paid me her insistent visit. She didn’t jostle or shake me. She slapped me across the face with a Christmas ham, and up I obediently rose.

I could have sat around the apartment, could have put away some books and DVDs I had ordered, but instead a sleepy Whiskey and I hied uptown to the Tempus Fugit, a bar that never closes, or at least it hasn’t closed since first it opened in 1924.

At the Tempus Fugit a bartender as old as a slide rule holds court, and he makes it look easy, dispensing wisdom along with Pike’s Ale (the ALE that won for YALE) in sparkling eight-ounce juice glasses.

He began the moment I tripped down four slight steps into the place.

“It seems to me,” he said “a cocktail should approach us on tiptoe. Like a demure maiden whose first appeal is long-lashed innocence.”

I laughed, as I do so often when I am in the Tempus Fugit. There aren’t a lot of people who “get” me, whose sense of the world is as mine. And on those rare, cherished occasions that I find one, I seem to spend a lot of my time laughing.

I planted myself onto my usual stool, one in from the end, and Whiskey curled into her space at my feet. In apple-pie-order she was served a bowl of water and the bartender slid over to me a small wooden bowl of salted Spanish peanuts.

I pushed them away as I always do, saying as I always do “a pound in every nut.” I waited for my usual Pike’s, but it wasn’t forthcoming.

“No Pike’s for you this fine morning,” he said. I looked at the clock; it was already 5:45. In fatter times I’d have been heading for work.

“It’s too early and immoderate for Pike’s,” he continued. “I have something special for you.”

I nodded assent. He turned his back to me and his hands flew like wild birds as he handled various bottles behind the bar.

“There’s been much talk of late,” he said while concocting, “of that new skyscraper downtown, the Freedom Tower.”

“My client’s offices are cater-corner to it,” I answered. “Over the last four years I’ve watched it rise.”

“I want you to think about this.” He continued pouring and shaking. “The Empire State Building, perhaps the apotheosis of American engineering achievement was the tallest building in the world for about 40 years, from 1931 when it topped out until 1972 when the World Trade Center went up.”

“Yes,” I murmured, not sure where he was going.

“40 years as the pinnacle.” He wiped the mahogany in front of me and placed there a frosted glass.

The Suffering Bastard. A dramatization.

“The Suffering Bastard,” he said presenting the drink. “Something the soldiers drank in Paris while on leave.”

I sipped it tentatively. I am not much of a fan of mixed drinks. And it was good.

“The British began drinking it after El Alamein and brought it to Paris with them. Originally, it consisted of black market gin from South Africa, stolen British army-issue brandy, a home-made lime cordial, bitters from a local druggist and ginger ale from a shady Greek merchant.”

“It does approach on tiptoe,” I said, wondering, however, if my hair had grown curlier.

“I have found it suitable for what ails us suffering bastards. Or should I say ‘we suffering bastards.’”

“Grammatically, I’m not sure,” I said, downing another sip.

“Forty years the tallest,” he continued. “Whereas the Strausbourg Cathedral was the highest man-made structure for 227 years, from 1647 to 1874. And even then it was 30 feet shorter than the Old St. Paul’s Cathedral which was built beginning the 11^th Century and ultimately destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666.”

I tapped my glass and he filled it with the remainder of my suffering bastard.

“Human achievement is spurious,” he said as he continued polishing the bar top. “We hail, award, and proclaim heroic all sorts of things that are tiny and ephemeral and ultimately without meaning. Tales…”

“Of sound and fury.”

“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more.”

“In other words, ‘go home,’” I said.

“On me,” he said.

Writing help needed.

Over the last few decades I have been frugal enough with my money to accumulate enough money so that I need to pay someone money to help me manage my money.

This morning I got a form letter email from him. I suppose I could be nervous about my financial advisor's grip on English.

On the other hand, maybe his son really does have Crohn's and Colitis only on Saturdays.

Hope everyone had a good weekend.  We watched our daughter run a half
marathon raising money for the fight against Crohn's & Colitis which our
son has on Saturday.  

Separation.

One of the collapses of our age is the fall of separation.

There used to be something of a wall between spheres of our lives. That wall has been thoroughly breached and over-run. We can shop till we drop every minute of every day. Many stores are now open on what used to be our most hallowed of days--July 4th, Christmas and New Year's.

The idea of a day of rest, of moments of repose and reflection are relics like the antimacassar your grand-mother used to make. Escape from sales of the century, from inducements to indebtedness are rare--confined to scarce patches in northern Maine where 1010110s don't reach.

Work, of course, never shuts down. People don't know when to say when. And since even the most-secure of us have only tenuous job security at best, very few people have the presence of mind, the back-bone and capacity not to work 24-7.

Is there anyone, anywhere who doesn't check his messages the moment he wakes up. YOU MAY MISS SOMETHING! No, missing something, failing to respond is a sin without equal.

No, we no longer have any separation from the demands of work, the lures of mammon and the blandishments of advertisers.

We get dozens of email notices everyday heralding savings the likes of which we've never seen before and when they're gone, they're gone. And we believe these notices though we get them every day.

We, as a society, are worn out and brutalized by the constant "on-ness" of our being. We don't look at art, or books, or culture or other humans. They are the interruptions. And I think we are worser for it.

Years ago Buckminster Fuller wrote:

"I think our bedrooms spend two-thirds of the time empty.
I think our living-rooms spend seven-eights of the time empty.
I think our office buildings spend one-half of the time empty.
I think that is something to think about."

Native advertising.

I’m going to say it, something nobody ever says.

I don’t think everything is a medium.

I don’t think everyplace is a place for advertising.

I don’t like brands taking over baseball stadiums. I don’t like to hear how a bank that almost took down the world’s economic system is “bringing me” Shakespeare in the Park. I don’t like logos on uniforms, or sunglasses, or restrooms or museums or Broadway theaters.

I don’t like “official sponsors of Summer,” and the official dog food of Nascar. I don’t like concerts logo-raped by credit card companies and commercials on the TV they mandate to be in the back of taxis.

I don’t like bikes with bank logos on them.

I do understand ads when I’m getting something for free—the ads pay for the freeness. But I don’t understand ads when I’ve already paid for something.

I don’t want ads on my phone. On my operas. On my public broadcasting. 

I don’t want ads when I go to a museum. Or when I vote for a Senator. I don’t want ads when I go to the park or see a parade.

I’m sorry.

I can’t be the only one who when he sees such placements gets angry.

We readily say to people, “you’re getting into my space.”

We need to say it to brands.

Not everything is a medium.