Wisdom from Roseanne Cash.

I'm not a fan of country music. I like Hank Williams, Johnny Cash and Bob Wills and his Texas Cowboys, but I really don't have enough time in my life for another musical genre. That's probably not fair. But it's the way it is.

That said, last night there was an interview on NPR with Roseanne Cash, the daughter of the aforementioned Johnny. Imagine growing up at Johnny Cash's daughter. Interesting.

The reporter quoted her website which in the "about" section, had this line: "Roseanne Cash keeps her head down and shows up for work."

Keeping your head down and showing up for work seems pretty fair to me. Wherever you are, whether you're playing basketball at a local school yard, at a holiday meal with a bunch of relatives or in a conference room working on a Fortune 100 company, there will always be people looking to steal the limelight, people who seem to spend half, or more of their energy, drawing attention to themselves.

It's best in these situations to just button it.

Take in the assignment or the task or the objective. Leave and do it. And come back with it done.

When I played playground basketball there were always gifted showmen who could shoot like a Katyusha and dribble like a Harlem Globetrotter. I could do neither of these attention-getting acts. So I focused I was good at. I played tenacious defense and I rebounded.

I kept my head down and showed up.

It's good to do that at work, too.

Don't get distracted by the furor around you and the hyper-competitiveness. Write simple clarifying thoughts while others are dabbling in flamboyance.

Keep going like a diesel engine.

Keep your head down and show up.

An olde advertising story.

This is an old advertising story. One that was told to me when I was a kid by my father. It predates all the Mad Man crap people seem to care about now.

When my old man was about 25, he went to work for Weightman Advertising in Philadelphia. Weightman was founded and run by my uncle Sid, my father's brother. The building they opened up in was called "The Weightman Building." And they thought by naming the agency after the building, it would appear to the world that they owned the building.

One of Weightman's accounts was the baseball club, the woeful baseball club, the Philadelphia Athletics. These were the early days of TV when more seasoned agency people didn't want to work in the medium--they preferred print or radio, both of which were more prestigious than TV.

As the "kid" and the new kid, my father got the TV assignments. One of those assignments was to supervise the live commercials that would be announcer-read on post-game show after the Philadelphia A's games.

Post-game shows in the early days of television weren't that much different than post-game shows today. A player and an announcer would sit around and talk about the game. That was about it.

One day, my father's story goes, an A's player called Elmer Valo was being interviewed. Valo was a middling ballplayer. He ended his 20-year career in the bigs with a respectable .282 batting average. His best season was probably 1949 when he batted .283 with 85 RBIs and 119 walks against only 32 strike-outs.

In any event Elmer was being interviewed and he crossed his legs. As he did, his pants rode up and revealed a large swath of skin between his shoes and the hem of his suit. This was de classe back in the early 1950s, and my father, responsible for the show reacted accordingly.

"Tell Elmer to pull his pants down," he stage-whispered.

Elmer didn't hear him. My father was sometimes easy to ignore.

"Elmer, pull your pants down." My old man was now shouting loud enough to be heard on the broadcast. "Elmer, pull your pants down."

For a short time my father was the Philadelphia pervert who wanted Elmer Valo to pull his pants down.

The Whore of Babylon.

The Whore rides into Babylon on a seven-headed beast.

An old friend of mine called last week. He had just lost his job and was turning to me for some insights, and maybe a soft shoulder, about the world of freelancing.

Ordinarily, when I go out for a drink, I go solo and I go, almost exclusively to the Tempus Fugit. Many of my friends have asked exactly where the Tempus Fugit is, or have urged me to take them. But since it opened as a speakeasy 90 years ago and was thereby hidden down a labyrinth of hallways and stairways in a Verizon warehouse on way east 91st, I have yet to reveal its exact whereabouts.

The place is well-hidden and a secret. I intend to keep it that way.

That said, when my friend asked me if I knew a bar where we could bend an ear and an elbow, I came up empty. Finally, pressed, I blurted: "Let's go to a place I heard about on 114th and Pleasant Avenue, The Whore of Babylon."

 

Pleasant Avenue is often anything but.

I don’t usually think of city-planners as blessed with a sense of irony, but Pleasant Avenue is and always was a misnomer. It’s a scab of a street. The scabs hiding the bruises beneath. As such, however, the location suited my needs. It was far away from the sequined banality of the Upper East. Far away from the short-skirted and tight-shirted.

 

A long way from the short-skirted and tight-shirted of the Upper East Side.

The Whore of Babylon, tonight, would suit me just fine.

The Whore, like the Tempus Fugit, also started in the wake of Prohibition. It also boasts no sign and puts up a threatening front so as to discourage hipsters and other temporal phenomenon. Like the Tempus Fugit, it has made no concessions to the 21st Century. There are no flat screens, no music, no neon. Just a dark old bar, three tables shoved against a back wall, and a burly, Popeye-forearmed barkeep. His tattoos show no trace of irony.

We sat at one of the tables, the bartender brought over our beers, wiping our table damp before setting them down.

"Nice place," my friend said.

The bartender kicked at the sawdust accumulating on the floor.

"This was a place of dissolute wickedness in its day," the bartender began. "As they say, it was fairly swarming with hot and cold-running temptations."

My friend and I toasted to temptation. We drank to those we succumbed to and even more to those few we resisted. The bartender, quick as a furtive kiss, whisked around the bar and brought us another.

"So how is it," my unemployed companion asked. "How is it dealing with the caprices of the job market?"

"You are a ditch-digger now. Wake up, grab your shovel and dig."

"Dig?” he asked.

"This is when you find out if you did your homework. If your reputation's solid. If your opus precedes you."

"And if it doesn't?"

"Well, I can't help you there. Then you're the Whore of Babylon. A wicked creature, the Queen of the prostitutes riding on a seven-headed beast."

"Fuck, you're gloomy."

"There was a time when personality--even a personality on the spectrum like mine--was permitted. We're all supposed to be Little Mary Sunshine these days, but I am that I am."

He drained number two. I was about four sips behind him. I caught up, then signaled the bartender for a check.

We laughed for a minute, like old times. Laughed about the banality of our business. Laughed about being old when we knew each other when we were young.

“Stay away from bars like this,” I said as I got up to leave. “The Whore of Babylon blows often an ill-wind.”

I treated, and we walked silently home.

Deep-dish Thursday.

The problem so many us in the advertising industry face—no matter what our age or position—is one of mankind’s great issues.

Wherever we are, we wish we were someplace else.

I suppose this goes back to pre-historic times. We were happy when we worked in a group and killed a mammoth for sustenance. But chances are, the minute the job was done, or while the job was being done, we wished for something else.

A bigger mammoth, or maybe a wildebeest, or maybe a different cave to drag said mammoth back to.

This outlook infests the advertising industry.

For decades it’s plagued me.

No matter what you’re working on, you wish you were working on something else.

No matter who you’re working for, you wish you were working for someone else.

No matter what your salary, you wish you were getting paid more.

If your hours are short, you wish you had more challenges. If they’re long, you wish you could take things a little easier.

You can call this “a lean and hungry look.”

You can call this ambition.

You can call this drive.

Or you can call it foolish.

The ever-striving, ever-conniving pursuit of wherever, whatever, whoever you’re not.

You see this most virulently in the comments section of Agency Spy.

The hatred for what our industry produces and most of the people in it. The dirty, spiteful, petty mean-spiritedness is as virulent as ebola. Miserable wormy wretches trying to make others miserable and wormy.

Grow up.

Get over it.

Be bigger.

Today while you’re at work do yourself a psychological favor.

Take a second, or ten, and shut down your computer. Find a quiet place if you can. Shut out all the distractions around you, even if you’re ensconced in an ugly meeting room.

Take a moment.

Be thankful.

Be generous.

Be reflective.

Be surprising.

Be quiet.

Be thoughtful.

Be happy.

Be.

Most of all, be where you are.

--

The Artist by William Carlos Williams

Mr T.
bareheaded
in a soiled undershirt
his hair standing out
on all sides
stood on his toes
heels together
arms gracefully
for the moment

curled above his head.
Then he whirled about
bounded
into the air
and with an entrechat
perfectly achieved
completed the figure.
My mother
taken by surprise
where she sat
in her invalid's chair
was left speechless.
Bravo! she cried at last
and clapped her hands.
The man's wife
came from the kitchen:
What goes on here? she said.
But the show was over. 

Flogging in the Tempus Fugit.

Belaying pins in use. They were also used to club disobedient sailors.

“Most people don’t realize it,” the bartender said to me as he pulled me the cool, effervescent amber of yet another glass of Pike’s Ale (the ALE that won for YALE) most people don’t realize it, but flogging was outlawed in the US Navy only in 1850.”

“Practically in your lifetime,” I responded like a jackass.

He glared at me briefly and continued.

“Practically. When the Secretary of the Navy polled senior naval officers in 1850, only seven of 241 were in favor of banning flogging. Corporal punishment, hitting, clubbing with belaying pins, punching with brass knuckles was banned only in 1915.”

I sipped at my Pike’s, waiting for a point to come around. It could be, I reckoned, a long night.

“Personally,” he had pulled out his damp white terry and was buffing the already mirror-like mahogany. “Personally, I believe that the way things are going, we will, before many more years go by, see an upswing in corporal punishment.”

“You’re dour tonight.”

“I’m just playing it as it lays,” he answered. “The short end of the stick is getting shorter and shorter.”

“It’s getting sharper, too. You can barely grasp it at all.”

“Exactly,” he said as he hied around the bar to refill Whiskey’s bowl from a pitcher brimming with cold water.

“Quinescit orare, discat navigare,” he Latinized. “He who does not know how to pray, let him go to sea.”

“It seems everything worth saying was said first and best by the Romans,” I said.

“You obtain a broad view of the world when your days and nights are filled with orgies and debauchery. As Jean Renoir once said, “the foundation of all Civilization is loitering.”

The bartender filled my glass once again with Pike’s. He slid over a bowl of salted Spanish peanuts. I picked at a few and pushed them away.

“A pound in every nut,” I said.

We were all once "wretched refuse."

“We will go back to flogging. It’s the way the world is going. A disdain for the little guy.” He paused. “Not disdain, actually. Abhorrence. Disgust. Hatred. We were, not long ago, 'the wretched refuse on these teeming shores'. We will be again.”

“As the rich get richer,” I added.

“And the poor pay their taxes.”

“That’s right,” he said.

“A friend of mine saw a job listing online. First it listed the myriad computer skills that are required. You’d think the job was paying a quarter-million. Then he saw the salary: sixty thousand.”

“Barely a living wage in New York. But the flogging enthusiasts would have us starving and in debt if they had their way.”

“This is pretty heavy for a Tuesday night.”

He pulled me another Pike’s, my third. Not really a lot since the Tempus Fugit serves beer in little, six-ounce juice glasses so it stays cold. I drank it down and prepared to leave.

I pushed two twenties across the bar-top, his way. He pushed them back.

“As usual,” he said “Preston Sturges said it best.”

“’I need him like the axe needs a turkey’” I asked.

He laughed. That line, delivered by Barbara Stanwyck is about as good as it gets.

“Close, but no cigar. Try this on. ‘A man works all his life in a glass factory. One day he feels like picking up a hammer.’”

Whiskey led me the mile home, past dozens of plate-glass windows.

More on fake ads.

A friend of mine just sent me an email about my previous post, "Fake Ads." He's a courageous, outspoken guy and would have put his thoughts in "comments" but employment circumstances have prevented him. 

That said, what he said is dead on. So, I am publishing a slightly edited version here:

"Awards are creating an inner circle of [creative] royalty hiring each other.

Leeching on the guys and gals who do the real hard lifting at the agencies. 

The ones that work every weekend and vacation on difficult accounts that are the bread and butter of the industry. The people who toll for the more meager salaries, and effectively pay for the extravagant salaries, awards fees and Cannes trips that the privileged fakers enjoy.

They may be more creative, they may be better designers, when taking batting practice, but they rarely do the real work. Something has gone terribly wrong.

And even the worst of agencies play along. Every job post asks for major awards, even though the agencies in question and the clients they work for have never even been close to winning any prestigious awards.

But how those awards can be prestigious any more I just don't know. Some agencies winning hundreds and hundreds of awards at the same show???

Thousands of awards are handed out each year at Cannes.

Does anyone really care any longer? 

Well, the ones who call the shots do. That's their weapon. Their whip. Their way to keep the worker bees in line. Making them feel useless for not winning awards, when they in fact make all the money for their agencies.

Time for a French revolution in the ad business."

Fake ads.

There are plenty of guys who can get ahold of a batting-practice pitch and put it over the fence. Doing so, however, is not the same as hitting a homer in a game that counts. Then, the pressure is greater, the pitches are faster and the stakes are higher.

Recently, a luminary in our profession, a Hall-of-Famer and vaunted Cannes judge has asserted that it's ok to give fake ads a "pass" because they push the boundaries of what we do.

It's hard for me to conceive of a more Orwellian universe, where fake is real and posers are considered sage.

At the root of what's wrong is the very idea of what an ad is. An ad is a communication at the service of those people who pay for it. First and foremost, it is meant to move their business forward. If it becomes your calling card as well, that's fine. But it must never be forgotten. Ads are communications designed for a client.

If you want to reward fake ads, ads that aren't paid for, ads that don't have to garner client approval, that's fine.

Just create a new category for them.

Call it "Batting Practice Homer."

Tegwar with Uncle Slappy.

No one, not even Cezanne, plays Tegwar like Uncle Slappy.

Uncle Slappy, I'm sad to report, has taken ill. Though he would pish and say it's nothing more than a bit of dizziness, Aunt Sylvie and the vaunted staff at Boca Raton Regional Hospital, think otherwise.  Sentences containing the word "stroke" were uttered and so was the admonishment, "you'd better get down here."

So Friday morning, rather than going to work and collecting a freelancer's daily wages, my wife and I packed our overnight bags and headed to La Guardia to visit Uncle Slappy. When we arrived in steamy south Florida, we didn't even check into the Debacle Tree, the hotel at which we would be staying. We went right to the hospital to see the old man.

Surprisingly when we arrived in his room, he was sitting up in bed and playing cards with one of the nurses. The "Times" was spread all over his bed, National Public Radio was on the small transistor radio Aunt Sylvie brought to brighten his room, and Doris, a middle-aged African-American nurse was sitting by his side.

"Uncle Slappy," I said stupidly.

"You were expecting Tallulah Bankhead?" he said. He put down his hand for a minute while I gave him a kiss.

"I am teaching Doris the Gonif to play Tegwar," he said, shuffling the deck of cards absent-mindedly. "I teach and I teach, but she doesn't learn."

Doris smile wanly at me. Her patience was a gift from the gods and I think she knew it.

"It's the craziest game I've ever seen," said Doris.

"When he's playing Tegwar," I said, "we're all in trouble. "

"Let me play a hand," I told Doris. "It's the only way to slow him down."

Uncle Slappy dealt six cards each. He examined his as I examined mine.

"Lorna Doone!" he declared throwing in a dollar. He picked two cards from the deck and threw out two others.

I checked my cards. As far as I could tell, I had nothing of significance, but since he called Lorna Doone, I threw out three cards, took four and exclaimed "Pork Pie!"

"You can't take three and call Pork Pie after a Lorna Doone," Slappy said seriously, "Not when you're playing Norwegian High-Low."

"Norwegian?" I shot back. "I thought this was Tippecanoe."

"I haven't played Tippecanoe since I left New York," the old man said. "It's all Norwegian down here. Pony up."

I added two dollars to the pot and Slappy drew a card from the deck.

"Bus stop!" And he took the pot.

"Bus stop when I have two pair," I said, showing him my hand.

"If you have two pair," he said with some disgust, "you have to call hobo or the three counts as a Jack."

I had to admit, the old man had me. It was a technicality, but he had me.

He handed me the deck and told me to deal. I began shuffling when Doris pulled up her seat and tried to unravel the mysteries of Tegwar. She called it the craziest game she ever saw.

Uncle Slappy and I played for another hour, Uncle Slappy winning about 14 of the 15 hands we played, including one hand where he took me for $11 by calling a "Gator Tail," on a full house. I put the cards away meekly and dumped the contents of my wallet on his night table. As usual, Uncle Slappy had won big.

After some time, Uncle Slappy's enthusiasm waned. He picked up the front section of the Times.

"We'll be back later," my wife said soothingly. "You rest up for your next game of Tegwar." She kissed him on the forehead. 

"I have a date this afternoon to play with Dr. Mushnik," he said. "I plan on cleaning his clock."

I knew when I saw him playing Tegwar, Uncle Slappy would live to see another day, maybe another decade. He's spent his life playing Tegwar and he taught it to me, so I'm pretty good, too. But no one plays like he does. He'll call "steam pipe," and "sail fish" on the same hand, go 'round the world and end up holding "pixie sticks" Albany-style. You'll sit there gaping in disbelief.

"Tegwar," he said to no one in particular. "The Exciting Game Without Any Rules."

He closed his eyes for a nap. I'm 100 per-cent sure he was smiling.

Ten minutes in the Tempus Fugit.

A cocktail napkin from the bar. (Artist's rendering.)

The longer I live, the more I think 4:15 in the morning is the best time of day. Sure the streets are littered and the garbage men haven't yet arrived. Sure the other people who are out are likely to be drunk, or larcenous, or both. And sure you might have to have more than a trace of Nijinsky in you to avoid the clumps of vomit from the aforementioned drunks.

That said, the city is nearly perfect at that hour. In the Tempus Fugit, it's just me, Whiskey and the bartender, unraveling the riddles of life. Some people were in earlier, I can tell from the misplaced chairs at the tables in the back, but no one is in now. I like it that way.

The bartender pulls me my second Pike's Ale (the ALE that won for YALE!). I look into the amber and see my past and my future. It's all ok. There's not a lot I don't like. Not a lot I would change if I could. No more than the usual million regrets.

"August," says the bartender. "Tempus Fugit," he says.

"Yes, it does," I answer. "It flies."

"This August marks our 91st year in business. We opened during the saddest days of Prohibition. And haven't been closed for a minute since."

I look at him, sizing up his face. It is like the surface of a river. It tells no time, it shows no age, it betrays no years.

"Nintey-one years," he says.

He polishes the teak in front of him with a worn old terry. It's threadbare and wrinkled and shows the years more than he.

He starts to fill me again but I demur. It's time to go, I tell him. He agrees.

I slip onto Whiskey her collar. He comes out from behind the bar and, for the first time ever, he hugs me as I leave. We do not hug easily. Hugs aren't our natural element. But nonetheless, we hug.

"Tempus fugit," he says.

And I know what he means.

Life as a freelancer.

After four months now, I'll admit, I am still adjusting to life as a freelancer. 

There are aspects of freelance that I absolutely love. Mostly because, I suppose, I've been lucky enough to have landed an extended gig at a place I respect and admire, working with some really good, honest people.

Since I am at heart a homebody, however, there are aspects that I find less than ambient. I'll admit like Cinderella in the Rodgers and Hammerstein version, I miss having "my own little corner." I feel a little bit like a traveling surgeon in days of yore. Like I ride into town, unload my tools, go to work, then pack up and leave, leaving nary a trace.

But that's ok. I can handle that.

What's more my work-time to meeting-time ratio is outstanding, about 10:1. In most agencies I think that number is reciprocal.

Most of all, for all my personal ebullient misanthropy, I like working at different places, with different people, on different pieces of business. After nearly five years of slogging on the same account nearly everyday, having something new is like an a rainstorm after a heat wave.

All in all, it's going well.

Even when you show up at your work station in the morning and are welcomed by someone's dinner from the night before.

That's ok.

It tastes like chicken.