Mayor Bloomberg and advertising.

New York inaugurated a new mayor on Wednesday, its first new mayor in a dozen years.

The out-going mayor was the bland, technocratic billionaire, Michael Bloomberg. After 12 years a lot of people turned on Bloomberg and were happy to see him go. But personally, and this is no slight to the new mayor, Bill Di Blasio, I think we're going to miss him.

What Bloomberg did well is the kind of thing we ignore in agencies today. He got the little things done.

Crime dropped precipitously.

Streets were cleaner.

Trains ran more often and they, too, were cleaner.

Trees were planted, bike lanes built, and some new parks opened.

None of these things were bold innovations. None of these things were giant headlines. But over his three terms, things were steady.

I think people got bored with Bloomberg's steadiness.

They forget that the opposite of steadiness is often lurching unpredictability.

I think most brands and most cities would be best served  by Bloomberg's style. Day in and day out you know what they're about.

Rather than being something new every couple of weeks.

I'm not advocating boredom, not for a second.

But getting the basics done, doing things right and predictably makes sense to me.

Kale.

There's an article in today's "New York Times" about kale.

That in and of itself is not unusual.

Over the past year--since kale got "hot," there have been dozens.

Back in September there was an article about a woman who proclaimed herself "The Kale Crusader."

Around Hannukah, there was an article about kale and potato latkes.

Coinciding with the launch of the movie "The Great Gatsby," there was an article about kale being a hit in New York's social circles.

And of recipes, there have been myriad.

Today's article about kale shivered a bunch of timbers.

It postulated that kale isn't that good for you. Something about the thyroid. Something else about tooth decay.

Screams of terror have wailed through my Facebook feed.

The Kalenistas have been going mad.

The 7,000 pounds of kale they konsumed in 2013--in liquid, solid and gaseous forms, might have been for naught.

Here's the thing.

And my wish for 2014.

Moderation.

Kale is probably good for you.

In moderation.

Just as social media is probably important.

In moderation.

Just as certain agencies are so hot they're worth trying to get into.

In moderation.

Just as so-and-so is really talented.

In moderation.

Just as your job sucks and is so horrible you can't stand it another day.

In moderation.

That's it.

Keep calm.

Keep cool.

Don't bet the farm on new foods, new fads, new fortune, new friends, and new fame.

Moderation.

New Year's with Fellini.

My wife and I eschewed the parties we were invited to. We decided to celebrate New Year's alone, just the two of us. Three, if you count Whiskey, who, it must be said, is pretty much the center of things at all times. She's a remarkable pup, and endlessly playful and amusing.

We settled in front of the flatscreen and Laura beckoned me to load the movie I had selected for the evening. I had thought long and hard. What's a good New Year's movie?

I quickly eliminated the 60 or 80 films I rotated among that are about Nazis. I also didn't think film noir would be a good expression for the New Year. And silent movies, while I love them, I didn't think my wife would appreciate. Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin and Charley Chase all have their charms, but they didn't feel right for celebrating New Year's.

Finally, I settled on "Amarcord," the Oscar-winning film by Federico Fellini and I truly think I could not have made a better choice. In the Italian dialect of Fellini's youth, amarcord means I remember, and this was his look back at a year--a single year--of his adolescence as he was growing up, along with Mussolini's Fascism in 1930s small-town Italy.

It's the lives, the loves, the laughter and the horror we all reckon with, softened by celluloid, spiced with genius. It's a year. A year of beauty, a year of pain, a year of fun, and hijinx, and, again, horror.

It's an amazing movie, Amarcord. One of my favorites of all time. Something as detailed as a great Monet, as real as a Bernini sculpture. As funny as the Marx Brothers. As frightening as death.

It was a perfect way to end one year and begin another.

A New Year's Eve call from Uncle Slappy.

Uncle Slappy called as I knew he would, it being New Year's Eve. They aren't given to parties, Uncle Slappy and Aunt Sylvie and there's more than a good chance that they will be in bed by 10, partly because, like me, Uncle Slappy has had more than his fill of popular culture, and popularity in general. If you really must know, he'd rather read William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" for the 89th time than make small talk, drink and wait for the ball to drop. There's nothing wrong with those things, it's just not what Uncle Slappy and Aunt Sylvie are all about.

"Boychick," he began "a Happy New Year. You have plans, tonight? You are making the rounds?"

"Actually, I think we'll just watch a movie. To tell you the truth, I just started a new biography on Bach, and frankly, I'd rather spend the evening reading that."

"I'll tell you what I learned this year," the old man began. "I figured what I'd do if I had ten billion dollars."

"Ten billion is a lot of money."

"The first thing I'd do is donate one billion dollars to the Jewish Museum on Fifth Avenue. With conditions."

I knew I was being set up for a joke. But that's ok, when you're close to Uncle Slappy, it comes with the territory.

"The condition would be that they install an automatic rain machine on the roof. I want it raining right at the entrance to the museum day and night. I want it to rain in front of building 24/7."

I laughed. "That sounds like a plan," I said. "Any particular reason for the rain? Is it art? Does it make a statement? Does it symbolize our race's 6,000 years of suffering?"

"No," the old man replied. "After 50 years of being a Rabbi, I figured something out."

I let his pause sit there. I know better than to rush him.

He finally spoke. "I like to hear Jews complain."

With that he wished me Happy New Year and hung up the blower.

I won't complain.

Happy New Fear.

That title was suggested by my good friend Tore Claesson, a brilliant art director and my ex-partner. Tore has traveled the world art directing. He has the uncanny knack of zeroing in on important things.

Happy New Fear.

I hope in 2014, we can lose some of our fear.  Our fear that "proven, tested and safe" is better than "new, funny and real."

I hope we can look at the chances Dodge, for instance, took with their Ron Burgundy spots and we can say, fear = best practices, and best practices = drivel. I hope we can look at creativity and innovation not as things to fear--because they haven't been done--but things to embrace--because they haven't been done.

I hope in 2014, we can lose some of our fear. Our fear that we'll lose our jobs if we speak our minds. 

I hope we can lose the fear which leads to acceptance, complacency and suck. I hope when we're confronted with some inequity at work--the purported wage freezes, or the 2% increase, or the "there are no bonuses because..." we can overcome of fear of unemployment, our fear of the shitty economy and say, "wait a second. Your financial calculus is bullshit." I hope we don't accept the beatings with equanimity because the job market sucks. I hope we can lose some of our fear and say, "well, that ain't right."

I hope in 2014, we can lose some of our fear. Our fear that we have to embrace every new trend lest we be labelled "old."

The internet has proven that most hallelujahs don't pan out, at least as marketing tactics. They come and gone, most of them. Facebook "likes," Google +, Xynga, Second Life, hashtags and more. I hope we lose the fear that compels us to herald the new, simply because it's new.

I hope in 2014, we can lose some of our fear. Our fear of calling people out for using jargon, hyperbole, and false data.

I hope when someone says 'social works,' we have the utz to say, 'show me a campaign.' Likewise, when they say 'TV is dead,' I hope we can either assail them with data or ask for theirs. I hope one someone blathers on, we have the presence to say, 'I don't understand. Explain it to me.' We should lose the fear of saying the emperor has no clothes.

A Tempus Fugit Ghost Story.

"When the Tempus Fugit opened up," the bartender said to me by way of introduction, "When the Tempus Fugit opened up, all the buildings around us that are health clubs and gourmet shops and doggy day-care and nail salons, were small industry."

He wiped the teak in front of me and pulled me a Pike's Ale (the ALE that won for YALE!) He hustled around from the back of the bar and brought Whiskey, my 21-month-old Golden Retriever a small wooden bowl of cold water.

"One of the businesses was owned by a German man, Berkholdt, I think it was. He was a flour merchant. Though it might of been Berkholdtz."

"I suppose it doesn't make a difference. They're both long gone."

He ignored my characteristic gloominess and plowed ahead with his tale.

"Mrs. Berkholdt--that's the name I'm landing on--was a big woman, and there was nothing she liked to do more than dance. Not the Charleston or the dances the flappers were doing. But formal waltz-like dancing, like she had grown up doing before she emigrated from Germany."

"This was a German neighborhood back then," I added.

"Berkholdt was quite prosperous and when the couple went to a ball, the Mrs. would gird herself with all kinds of jewelry. They were proud of their wealth--their accomplishment, and they liked showing it off.

"This particular dance happened in the summer, they might have been celebrating July 4th. In any event, it was hot as the gates of Hell in the dance hall. These were days long before air-conditioning."

I had finished Pike's number one and the bartender silently pulled me number two. He filled a small bowl with salted Spanish peanuts and pushed them in my direction. I pushed them, politely, away. As always, I am watching my weight. The last thing I need is salted nuts.

"Mr. and Mrs. B were having quite a time cutting the rug, as they say. But it was hot, and all of a sudden, Mrs. Berkholdt swoons and collapses to the floor."

"She was a big woman, I assume."

"They all were at that time. She had the arms of a butcher and the shoulders of a milkmaid. She was large, heavily dressed and dancing like St. Vitus.

"They tried to resuscitate her. An ambulance showed up, a local doctor. But she was gone."

"Dead," I said sagaciously.

He took my empty glass and dipped it into sudsy water and then into clean water. He polished it dry then filled it again.

"Berkholdt wanted her buried right away and he wanted her buried just as she died. In her dancing gown and in her jewelry. A day or two later, they were all ready to lay her to rest in the family vault in Woodlawn, in the Bronx. But just as they were about to commence with the burial, the heavens opened up."

"It poured," I added.

"It was positively diluvian. They laid her on a slab out of the rain and decided to try again the next day. Everyone left except for the undertaker. He saw her jewels and he wanted them.

"He took off her broach, removed her watch, her earrings. And wrestled a large gold ring from her finger. It was hard to get off. She had been running to fat, might have been swollen, or it could have been rigor-mortis. In any event, he ripped the skin of her finger as he was removing the ring."

I sipped at Pike's number three. "Go on," I said.

He said nothing for a good minute, instead he wiped the well-polished surface of the bar top with a damp white terry.

"Taking off the ring woke her up. She sat bolt upright and screamed. Of course the undertaker did too. And he ran away as fast as he could."

"Jesus."

"Jesus is right," he agreed. "Mrs. Berkholdt, I don't know how she did it--she made it out of the cemetery, out of the Bronx and right to our door. Right to the door of the Tempus Fugit. Where she collapsed again. And this time she really was dead."

"That's quite a story for a Sunday night," I said. And I shoved two twenties his way.

"Cover charge," I said, "for entertainment."

"On me," he said and he pushed the bills back.

Whiskey and I walked, gingerly, home.

Words without meaning.

Timothy Egan, who writes op-eds for the digital edition of "The New York Times," has won the writer's "Daily Double." His book, "The Worst Hard Time," won a National Book Award and he's also won a Pulitzer Prize for his study of how race is lived in America. Earlier this year, he also earned acclaim for his latest book, "Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher," a look at the life of the pioneering photographer Edward Curtis.

In short, Egan is someone worth reading, way moreso than the mindless lists that seem to have taken over serious writing the way red algae destroys marine eco-systems. It baffles me that people choose to read "14 Desserts Better than Cronuts," rather than the writing of someone like Egan, or three-time Pulitzer-winner Thomas Friedman, or Nobel-Prize-winner, Paul Krugman.

Of course, there's no accounting for taste, or how people spend their time. And if you choose to be a nimrod, well, fine.

In any event, Egan's column today is called "Words for the Dumpster," and he lists and explains words he hopes never to see again. Many of the words Egan writes about have infected our industry. I'm with Egan. Not only would I love never to hear them again, I'd love to see the blowhards who use them ostracized and excoriated. You can read Egan's article here.

Here's a sampling from Egan's hate list that we've heard all too much of in our offices.

Artisan. Today everything is artisanal--from Ziploc bags to Hot Pockets. The word has become so ubiquitous that it has lost all meaning.
Brand. We speak today about brands the way philosophers speak of life. As if it's something theoretical and wooly. Brands are not about design, they're about doing things, standing for something. As for you personal brand, show me your work. Show me what sort of integrity you have and what your work-ethic is like. Those things are much more important than your fucking logo.
Gluten-Free. Unless you bona-fide have celiacs disease, eat in moderation and chill out.
24/7. Here I'll quote Egan: No longer a byword for helpful availability, 24/7 evokes bad hours, poor pay and some customer service rep in India trying to explain an HDMI cable at 3 a.m.
Best Practices. To my mind, best practices is a coded attempt to make copying acceptable.
World-Class. I can't even understand what this phrase means. By the time it's applied to dry cleaners, virtually every car on the road, and every coffee bean ever picked, it has really lost all meaning.

There's more, that you'll find  from Egan.

That's enough from me...

"He never made a great catch."

There was a great obituary of a good ballplayer in today's "New York Times." The ballplayer was Paul Blair, a fixture in centerfield for the great Baltimore Oriole teams in the late 1960s and through most of the 1970s.  You can read his obituary here.

The thing that really got me was a quotation about Blair's fielding prowess by Hall-of-Fame manager, Earl Weaver. Weaver said Blair "...Never made a great catch because he was standing under the ball when it came down."

In fact, when Tommie Agee of the Mets made a diving catch on Blair's line-drive in the 1969 World Series, Blair claimed he would have made the catch without leaving his feet.

There are showboats in every industry who earn plaudits and acclaim by doing spectacular things at the very last moments. Then there are workaday people who seem to come through, without elan or fanfare, day in and day out. They get the job done without leaving their feet.

I looked via Google and on YouTube.

There are no highlights of Paul Blair in centerfield. That could be a function of the era in which he played. It wasn't as heavily videotaped as every scrotum scratch seems to be recorded today.

It could be, more simply, that his extraordinariness was ordinary.

I think there's something extraordinary in that.

Christmas in the Tempus Fugit.

Last night was unusually festive in the Tempus Fugit, a former speakeasy I stumbled upon some years ago that has maintained its speakeasily comportment.

The Tempus Fugit is not generally given to either mirth or merriment. In truth, it is dour place, a place where the clientele prefers to stare into their glass rather than in the eyes of someone they hope to hook-up with. No, the Tempus Fugit isn't about conviviality, comradeship or togetherness. It's bar for people like me: maladjusted misanthropes--people who are Garbo-like in their preference for alone-ness.

I arrived with Whiskey, my nearly two-year-old golden retriever in tow. People have said to me "the Tempus Fugit can't be real. No bar allows dogs." But, for whatever reason, the Tempus Fugit does. Whiskey has a home away from home on its sawdust-covered floor and settles in at the foot of my favorite stool without even circling the place.

The Tempus Fugit is like that. Since it opened as a speakeasy back in 1924, you expect it would be a place that followed its own rules, that marched to the beat of its own drum-machine. That iconoclastic behavior hasn't changed with the times. The Tempus Fugit is no more conforming and tractable now than it was 90 years ago.

It has no flatscreen TVs, no thumping music, no neon signs. In fact, they serve just two kinds of beer at the joint, neither of which you can find anywhere else: Herzmorder, with an umlaut over the 'o,' which is imported direct from the Schleswig-Holstein district of Germany, and of course, Pike's Ale (the ALE that won for YALE.)

Pike's, the brewery went belly up in the early 60s, and the bartender of the Tempus Fugit bought all of their remaining suds. He tells me he will finally close up shop when he runs out of Pike's. Personally, I've seen the room where he stores his kegs. It is dark and deep--you might find a cask of Amontillado or two--and I don't think he'll ever run dry.

Now, as I said above, last night was unusually 'gay' in the Tempus Fugit. When I sat down on my stool and settled into my first glass of Pike's, the bartender brought over from the back shelf a small model of an old Moran's tugboat, of the type that used to chug through the East River slurp, hauling garbage and dredgings three-miles out to sea. (Today, there's no dumping three miles out. You have to go 12 to comply with the law.)

It was a nice model he showed me, about a foot long, and with its tall conning tower, almost as high. It was even girded with appropriately sized bald tires--the tires that serve tugs as bumpers and its front was a miniature rope fender which had sprouted realistic looking rope filaments which reminded me of an ugly mermaid's hair.

He then threw a small switch that was on the main deck and both the bridge lights and the running lights went on. He placed the tug in front of me and pulled me another Pike's.

"Red," he said, pointing to the lights on the Starboard.

"Green," he concluded with a gesture to the Port-side illumination.

"Christmas colors," I added.

"Merry," he said.

I merried him back, shoved a $20 his way and tugged home.

The Fear Industry.

Paul Krugman has an important op-ed in today's "New York Times." Krugman is an avowed liberal, a Nobel-prize-winning economist, and a professor at Princeton. To my mind, he more often than not hits the nail on the head.

His column today is called "The Fear Economy." It has import and resonance to me because I believe that today, we who work in advertising work in a "Fear Industry."

1. We are meant to believe--we've been told this repeatedly over the last two decades--that our business model is fried and failed and that virtually every form of media is dead.
2. We are meant to believe that we--the people that create ads--are commoditized and that our work can be done more cheaply in Bangalore or Buenos Aries.
3. We are meant to believe there's good reason wages have decreased (in real dollars) over the last few decades. While CEO pay and holding company-chieftain pay has soared.


We labor in a Fear Industry because the labor market is weak. The labor market is weak because a cabal of just three holding companies controls 70% of the ad jobs (at least in New York.)

The labor market is weak though the Dow reached new highs 50 times in 2013.

And corporate cash reserves and profits are robust.

The labor markets are weak because it's good for business to keep them weak.

Here's to a stronger 2014.