Herzschmerz in the Tempus Fugit.

It was raining. Raining like all the gods were pissing on me at once. But Whiskey wasn't sleepy and I was losing a four-decade's-old battle with recurring insomnia. We looked at each other and silently decided a trip to the Tempus Fugit was in order, divine urine be damned.

I wrapped myself in an old oil-skin coat I have had since the 1980s--a coat old and worn but staunch and impenetrable, I threw on a similarly staunch and impenetrable pair of Wellingtons, and Whiskey and I headed out into the flood. In just under 20 minutes we were sloshing down the labyrinthine hallways and stairways that led to the Tempus Fugit--a place as dry as a dessicated cotton ball in a furnace.

Whiskey shook the wet from her fur and I threw my hat and coat on a rickety rack by the entrance and settled onto my stool. In a trice the bartender provided Whiskey with a wooden bowl of cold water and had pulled me an eight-ounce juice glass filled with Pike's Ale (the ALE that won for YALE.)

"The rain," the bartender said to me, "the rain."

I nodded and pushed my now-empty glass in his direction. He filled it effortlessly.

"It is a rain at the end of time," I said.

"And, you," he said, "is your end of time nigh?"

I laughed at that and sipped gently at my Pike's.

"I saw his Eminence, my cardiologist, yesterday. I don't have a clean bill of health, as yet, but I am nearly whole."

"Ah," he said as he began swabbing the teak of the bar with a well-handled white terry rag. "Ah, to be whole in this, a time of half-measures, could be a detriment."

Again I laughed and again I sipped gently at my Pike's.

"Herzschmerz," he said, not looking up from his terry.

"Heartbreak," I translated.

"There's a lot of herzschmerz in the world. It's become a meaner place."

I nodded in agreement.

"As Sammy Glick said, 'going through life with a conscience is like driving with your brakes on.'"

"Well, personally, I think we'd all be a little better off if we all drove a little slower. Maybe my gypsy cab-driver wouldn't have crashed into that concrete wall."

"It will do you no good crying over spilt Town Cars."

He filled me up a third time. Whiskey, still wet, was still sound asleep.

"Maybe the cure for herzschmerz is to slow down. To not blow with the prevailing winds."

"The opposite of Captain Renaud. Yes. Don't accept our cruel, more mercenary world. Don't think it's ok to shop on Thanksgiving. Some things just aren't right."

"Most things," I answered.

I pushed two twenties his way.

He pushed them back.

"Happy Hannukah," he said "Happy Thanksgiving."

Whiskey and I walked slowly home.

42 Insults.

1. "Fine words! I wonder where you stole them." - Jonathon Swift

2. "What's on your mind? If you'll forgive the overstatement." -Fred Allen

3. "Why are we honoring this man? Have we run out of human beings?"- Milton Berle

4. "I feel so miserable without you, it's almost like having you here." - Stephen Bishop

5. "He is a self-made man & worships his creator." - John Bright

6. "I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." - Irvin S. Cobb

7. "I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure." - Clarence Darrow

8. "She has been kissed as often as a police-court Bible, and bymuch the same class of people." - Robertson Davies

9. "He was one of the nicest old ladies I ever met." - William Faulkner

10. "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." - William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

11. "He has sat on the fence so long that the iron has entered his soul." - David Lloyd George

12. "He has every attribute of a dog except loyalty." - Thomas P.Gore

13. "Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it." - Moses Hadas

14. "God was bored by him." - Victor Hugo

15. "He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others." - Samuel Johnson

16. "He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up." - Paul Keating

17. "Her only flair is in her nostrils." - Pauline Kael

18. "He had delusions of adequacy." - Walter Kerr

19. "There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure."- Jack E. Leonard

20. "I wish I'd known you when you were alive." - Leonard LouisLevinson

21. "He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." - Abraham Lincoln

22. "His speeches left the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea." - William McAdoo (about Warren Harding)

23. "You've got the brain of a four-year-old boy, and I bet he was glad to get rid of it." - Groucho Marx

24. "I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception."- Groucho Marx

25. "From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it." -Groucho Marx

26. "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."- Groucho Marx

27. "He is one of those people who would be enormously improved by death." - H. H. Munro

28. "He has the attention span of a lightning bolt." - Robert Redford

29. "They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge." - Thomas Brackett Reed

30. "He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them." - James Reston (about Richard Nixon)

31. "He never said a foolish thing nor never did a wise one."- Earl of Rochester

32. "He has no more backbone than a chocolate eclair."- Theodore Roosevelt

33. "A little emasculated mass of inanity." - Theodore Roosevelt(about Henry James)

34. "You're a good example of why some animals eat their young."- Jim Samuels

35. "The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation, but not the power of speech." - George Bernard Shaw

36. "Gee, what a terrific party. Later on we'll get some fluid and embalm each other." - Neil Simon

37. "Had double chins all the way down to his stomach." - Mark Twain

38. "I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." - Mark Twain

39. "His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." -Mae West

40. "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."- Oscar Wilde

41. "He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." -Oscar Wilde

42. "He has Van Gogh's ear for music." - Billy Wilder

Things I don't do.

I don't create content.

I don't deliverable deliverables.

I don't ideate.

I don't strategize.

I don't make assets.

I don't push pixels.

I don't re-purpose.

I don't best practice.

I don't insight.

I don't scope.

I don't create tool kits.

I don't bucket.

I don't do work streams.

I don't leverage.

I don't leverage conversations.

From Sir John Hegarty.

"...One of the other problems I have today is people have retreated to the edges of advertising. You know, they’re happy to do some small little campaign somewhere or they’re doing something on the net that hardly anybody sees and they’re getting awards for it and everybody’s cheering. But they’re not changing the way people feel or think."

I ran across this just now on Jacob Dutton's blog.

Uncle Slappy arrives.

Uncle Slappy and Aunt Sylvie arrived at my door late yesterday afternoon, bundled up against the New York cold as only residents of Florida can be. They wore puffy winter coats, thick Russian hats, scarves, gloves and winter boots. It was 40-degrees in New York but the weatherman said that overnight it was going down into the teens with strong winds.

I took their luggage--though he's 86 Uncle Slappy still refuses to use a roller-bag. "When I can't carry a bag anymore, I'll stop traveling," he says defiantly. Aunt Sylvie, who has grown inured to Uncle Slappy after almost 60 years of marriage, abides by no such strictures. Her bag glides like a beautiful virgin on a dance floor.

I settled the two of them in our guest room and in a split second or two they were parked at the small table in our eat-in kitchen awaiting a cup of my wife's famously potent black coffee and a schtickle. (A schtickle is something small to nibble on--usually something sweet, like a piece of babka or a danish or a few rugelach. I offered Sylvie and Slappy a selection of all three. They are not getting any younger.)

Uncle Slappy sipped deeply at his coffee and closed his eyes with its goodness. Though he is my uncle, I think he and Sylvie come up so often for my wife's coffee. I don't know how she does it, but I think she makes the best in the world.

Fortified by Sumatran caffeine, Uncle Slappy began his routine.

"Aunt Sylvie and I saw the Grateful Fred last night. They were playing at the recreation center in the village."

"The Grateful Fred?" I asked.

"Fred Weintraub, Fred Steinmetz and Fred Kopinsky. They live in our condo development. They play jazz," Uncle Slappy explained.

"They ain't Tommy Dorsey," Aunt Sylvie chimed in between bites of cherry danish.

"It's a funny name for a band," I added.

"Well, the Grateful Fred are no Grateful Dead," Uncle Slappy concluded.

"Thank god," said Aunt Sylvie. "Thank god."

She was never one for rock-n-roll, Aunt Sylvie. I was surprised they even knew who the Grateful Dead were.

"Download them you can try to, on the iTunes," Uncle Slappy said.

Then, tired from their trip, Sylvie and Slappy went to their bedroom to rest, impervious to the caffeine they had just ingested, and just about everything else.

50 years later: half-mast in Union Square.

Thoughts from E.L. Doctorow.

Last night at the National Book Awards (remember books?) E.L. Doctorow was awarded the 2013 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

On receiving his award, he gave a long speech on the Internet.

He called the Internet "ubiquitous and loomingly present in everything we do."

The virtual world has changed our world forever, he said:

"Like all worlds, the virtual comes with its heaven and its hell.

“Its substance is not mountains and seas, but information, data and knowledge in every form and every kind transmitted for every person,” he described it, pointing out the myriads of purpose that the world wide web serves from creating wealth and educating to spying and making war. He called us “immigrants” in “a new world.”

Doctorow pointed out all of the words whose meanings have changed because of the Internet. “Text is now a verb. More radically, a search engine is not an engine. A platform is not a platform. A bookmark is not a bookmark. An eBook is not a book. A cookie is not a chocolate cookie. A cloud may be in the sky, but it is not there to produce weather,” he said. “Language has been stolen or … metamorphosized. We in this room have to appreciate metaphor. When was the last time in hearing the word mouse that you thought of a small rodent or heard the word web and thought of a spider.” He referred to The Internet as an, “overbrain,” saying that “it could easily be mistaken as a cross section of the human brain.”

To Doctorow, a book represents the essence of interactivity. “It is only when a book is read that it is completed,” he said. “A book is written in silence and read in silence.”

Doctorow closed out the speech referencing a recent report from Pen America in which authors revealed that they are self-censoring for fear of government surveillance describing this as, ”the first step down the stairs to the Internet world’s hell.” Suggesting that authors not let governments and corporations win.

“Everyone in this room is in the free speech business,” he closed.

50 years ago.

Fifty years ago today I was a first-grader in Ridgeway Elementary School in White Plains, New York. Even though I was only five, and my brother Fred just seven, we walked by ourselves to and home from school. It was about half-a-mile from our little cookie-cutter homestead built on a treeless lot.

We had in that cookie-cutter home a single black-and-white (there were no color sets in 1963) TV set. It had maybe a 13-inch diagonal screen which was built into a big wooden case. You could close the screen off with wooden doors. This set sat in the livingroom of my parents' house.

There was a long hill between my parents' house and Ridgeway that was always a little scary. The rumor was that a pizza delivery kid had been screaming down the hill on his bike in the rain. The pizza slipped off the bike and the kid veered to retrieve it and was killed by a car. We always shuddered a bit at the thought. I'll admit, I still do.

In those pre-carbon days, Novembers were cold. We bundled up when we went out, with warm coats, gloves and hats. We had rubbers for the rain and fat-buckled galoshes for the snow. We were much less cavalier about the weather it seems, maybe because the weather seemed so severe.

Of course, like today, we were all looking forward to Thanksgiving. I'm sure in my first-grade class we studied the Pilgrims, made turkey drawings and thought Squanto got a raw deal.

The next day, John Kennedy was killed.

All the leaves were off the trees.

Schmedricks.

This is a small business.

I remember reading many years ago that if you took everyone in America who works in advertising, it wouldn't fill the University of Michigan's football stadium on a chilly Saturday.

For the last few weeks I've had a constant reminder of just how small the industry is. I've been sequestered at an editor's and I know every other creative there--though they are from a handful of different agencies.

Yet despite the closed-loop nature of advertising, you still find people who are, in the words of Uncle Slappy, schmendricks, that is stupid, self-absorbed asses.

You find people who grab credit.

People who lie, cheat and steal.

People who put self-promotion above real work.

Naturally, it's easier to be a schmendrick when you're riding high in your career.

It's a pain in the ass to return phone calls, to be gracious.

But schmendrickism catches up with you.

When your personal coffers are a little less full.

When your high horse is a little closer to earth.

By then it's too late.

Your reputation is tainted.

There are two things that keep you employed in advertising, ultimately.

Your portfolio and your reputation.

Don't let anything sully them.

Don't be a schmendrick.

Working through pain.

A few years and much avoirdupois ago, I was a fairly good long distance runner. I had run a dozen marathons, a few 25Ks and assorted ten-milers, all at around a 7-minute pace.

In the course of most races there were times, of course, where I began to falter, where my pace would begin to flag. In time, I learned how to handle my fatigue. I would drop my wrists to waist level, stand up straight and count my steps to a thousand.

I would push myself to do a thousand paces strong. Then when I had finished those thousand steps, I would refresh my count and do a thousand more. This approach was particularly helpful when facing a long, steep uphill. A hill can be daunting but counting to a thousand is mechanical--something to occupy the mind when the body isn't cooperating.

I find counting to a thousand is useful in the long slog of advertising, too.

There are strenuous uphill miles in every project we face--weeks and weeks of pain before the finish line can even be sniffed.

It's best to drop your arms, stand up straight, count and work through the pain.