If you're interested in the patter of the people, the patois of the hoi polloi, there ain't no place better in the world than New York Fuckin' City.
LA has weather over us.
Chicago has cheaper apartments.
But there's only one New York.
I had to run to mid-town just now to have a con-fab with my accountant. There were two security guards behind a console in the lobby. The younger guard had screwed something up. The other guard, an older guy had to do something more to check someone in.
"It's ok," the old guard said.
"I'm really sorry," said the young guard.
"Hey," the old guard reflected, "You can't unscramble eggs."
Thursday, November 13, 2014
Nobody asked me, but...
...The stock market has destroyed more wealth than it's created.
...Social media is gossip.
...Gossip is the pornography of the 21st Century.
...I'd rather have a Rothko than a Koons.
...I'd rather chew tinfoil than go to buzzfeed.com
...I don't trust creatives who don't create.
...The digital Times is better than the paper Times.
...But I miss the print ads.
...No agency should be located more than five blocks from a bookstore.
...Or a museum.
...I will never buy anything at the new Moleskin store on University place.
...Fact is, I'll never even go in there again.
...Your random thoughts are not so precious that they need to be bound in a book.
...Selling food from a truck doesn't make you cool.
...I'm not sure I'll ever make the switch to e-books even though my apartment can't fit anymore books.
...99% of everything is no big deal.
...Agency compilation reels are bullshit.
...The secret to happiness is getting up early and walking your dog.
...40-degrees in November is not cold enough to comment on.
...Elijah Cook, Jr. was in more great movies than just about anyone.
...The 1969-1970 Knicks could beat the current Knicks. Right now. Though they're all 70.
...All professional sports' seasons are 30% too long.
...People who trumpet how late they work didn't need to work that late.
...The best looking trucks in New York are from the Bronx and deliver fuel oil.
--
A tip of my fedora goes to the great Jimmy Cannon who wrote a column for various New York newspapers for more than 40 years. Without any particular news to report, Cannon would start a column like I started today's post. Thank you, Mr. Cannon.
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
My roots.
When my grand-father, my father's father fell out of the dank steerage compartment that spilled him, just 100 years ago, onto these hallowed shores, he had neither a penny nor a friend in the world. He escaped the Pale of Settlement--a wide swath of land in Russia considered so poor that only Jews lived there--and he escaped the mandatory 25-years of conscription in the Czar's army, where surely he would be beaten, bullied and otherwise brutalized until he either died, or wished he had.
Morris Tannenbaum, like me a blue-eyed Russian Jew with a German last name, a volatile mixture, spoke no English save for one phrase he picked up somewhere, maybe from a book, maybe from the gutter in Hamburg while he waited passage on a ship West. "I'll have the lamp chops and pineapple." That was Morris' sole foray into the English tongue.
He made it somehow, emaciated and coughing, past the tough Irish inspectors at Ellis Island and onto the teeming ferry that would unload him onto Manhattan's gold-paved streets. From there, he followed the horde's to the Lower East Side, to start his new life in this Promised Land.
He saw, somewhere on Rivington Street a sign in Hebrew, "Man Wanted," it said, "No Experience Necessary" and he removed his cap and responded.
"You speak English," he gruff prospective employer barked at him.
"I'll have the lamp chops and pineapple," Morris replied, proudly.
"Wiseguy, eh. Ok, you're hired. But no monkey business."
It was there, Morris Tannenbaum started his journey in America. He had gotten a job as an "iron tester." It was he who would touch the surface of irons with his index to assure that they were hot enough to press clothing smooth. Testing hotness 200, 300, 400 times a day, till his index finger cried out with all the indignities suffered by Jews since the beginning of their troubled time on Earth.
A humble beginning, surely.
Leading, perhaps inexorably, to a life of lamb chops and pineapple.
Morris Tannenbaum, like me a blue-eyed Russian Jew with a German last name, a volatile mixture, spoke no English save for one phrase he picked up somewhere, maybe from a book, maybe from the gutter in Hamburg while he waited passage on a ship West. "I'll have the lamp chops and pineapple." That was Morris' sole foray into the English tongue.
He made it somehow, emaciated and coughing, past the tough Irish inspectors at Ellis Island and onto the teeming ferry that would unload him onto Manhattan's gold-paved streets. From there, he followed the horde's to the Lower East Side, to start his new life in this Promised Land.
He saw, somewhere on Rivington Street a sign in Hebrew, "Man Wanted," it said, "No Experience Necessary" and he removed his cap and responded.
"You speak English," he gruff prospective employer barked at him.
"I'll have the lamp chops and pineapple," Morris replied, proudly.
"Wiseguy, eh. Ok, you're hired. But no monkey business."
It was there, Morris Tannenbaum started his journey in America. He had gotten a job as an "iron tester." It was he who would touch the surface of irons with his index to assure that they were hot enough to press clothing smooth. Testing hotness 200, 300, 400 times a day, till his index finger cried out with all the indignities suffered by Jews since the beginning of their troubled time on Earth.
A humble beginning, surely.
Leading, perhaps inexorably, to a life of lamb chops and pineapple.
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
4,000 posts.
Some time ago, without fanfare, without balloons falling from the rafters, without a deluge of confetti, Ad Aged and I celebrated our four-thousandth post. I guess, since as a culture we herald the arrivals of zeroes and fives, 4,000 is really not a seminal milestone. Still, it seems to me, maybe a little reflection is in order.
When I started Ad Aged, er, 4,000 posts ago, I had no idea it would become so important to me. Frankly, I started writing this blog before I had ever even read a blog. So I had no sense of right and wrong. I just tried to write about things I found interesting or important or, heaven forfend, funny.
I wasn't sure how much I was going to write. I didn't know the protocol. But what I learned is that writing is what I do, and for me, a day without writing is like a day without shaving. I feel dirty and unkempt if I don't do it.
Ad Aged started with a question. "Will Madison Avenue Become Detroit?" It's a question I still ponder. Will we slink into obsolescence and oblivion, or will we make something that people actually value and need. Since I first posed that question, Detroit--the auto industry there, anyway--has had something of a rebound. So maybe my question is moot. But Detroit, the city, still suffers and its very existence as a metropolis is threatened.
The same, I'm afraid, can be said of Madison Avenue. There are a few bright spots in the industry, but for the most part we play on the sidelines. We self-promote and self-aggrandize and masturbate publicly. In general agencies seem to care more about their own business than their clients' success.
That said, I have a fundamental belief in things, eventually, righting themselves. I believe that some agencies will emerge, that will once again understand the importance of advertising. And will once again create informative, intelligent ads that help consumers become aware of and make buying decisions.
The best agency credo I ever encountered through a lifetime in the industry was written by Carl Ally back in the early 1960s. "We impart useful consumer information in an executionally brilliant way."
That's what I believe and all the Biblical epithets of Old Testament stubbornness apply to me. I am bull-headed, stick-necked and mulish.
I realize that, in an effort to write every day, that many of my posts don't really concern advertising. However, if there's a leitmotif at all in what I write here, it's my belief in Ally's statement.
So, after more than 4,000 posts, that's what this space is about.
When I started Ad Aged, er, 4,000 posts ago, I had no idea it would become so important to me. Frankly, I started writing this blog before I had ever even read a blog. So I had no sense of right and wrong. I just tried to write about things I found interesting or important or, heaven forfend, funny.
I wasn't sure how much I was going to write. I didn't know the protocol. But what I learned is that writing is what I do, and for me, a day without writing is like a day without shaving. I feel dirty and unkempt if I don't do it.
Ad Aged started with a question. "Will Madison Avenue Become Detroit?" It's a question I still ponder. Will we slink into obsolescence and oblivion, or will we make something that people actually value and need. Since I first posed that question, Detroit--the auto industry there, anyway--has had something of a rebound. So maybe my question is moot. But Detroit, the city, still suffers and its very existence as a metropolis is threatened.
The same, I'm afraid, can be said of Madison Avenue. There are a few bright spots in the industry, but for the most part we play on the sidelines. We self-promote and self-aggrandize and masturbate publicly. In general agencies seem to care more about their own business than their clients' success.
That said, I have a fundamental belief in things, eventually, righting themselves. I believe that some agencies will emerge, that will once again understand the importance of advertising. And will once again create informative, intelligent ads that help consumers become aware of and make buying decisions.
The best agency credo I ever encountered through a lifetime in the industry was written by Carl Ally back in the early 1960s. "We impart useful consumer information in an executionally brilliant way."
That's what I believe and all the Biblical epithets of Old Testament stubbornness apply to me. I am bull-headed, stick-necked and mulish.
I realize that, in an effort to write every day, that many of my posts don't really concern advertising. However, if there's a leitmotif at all in what I write here, it's my belief in Ally's statement.
So, after more than 4,000 posts, that's what this space is about.
Monday, November 10, 2014
How stupid could I have been?
When I was a kid, the funniest show on TV, at least to my "tween" sense of humor was "Get Smart." It was a send-up, basically, of the spy genre. It spoofed the wildly popular James Bond, replacing the suave and debonair Sean Connery with the bumbling and ridiculous Don Adams. Much of the show sprang from the deliciously comic minds of Buck Henry and Mel Brooks. So maybe though I was only 10 or 11, my taste in Borscht-Belt humor was not so far off.
The star of the show, Maxwell Smart had many an odd locution that made me laugh. "Would you believe..." was one. "Sorry about that..." was another.
The one that struck me as funniest was this. Say someone handed Smart a cup of coffee roughly the size of a 50-gallon aquarium. Smart would look at it, think for a moment, and then remark, "That's the second biggest cup of coffee I've ever seen." It was always the second biggest, strongest, fastest something or other. And no one would ever ask him about the first biggest, etc.
Some months ago as I began to parry and thrust through the freelance world, I changed my Linked In epithet to "New York's busiest freelance Creative Director." Since then work has clustered to me like moths unto a flame. And many have asked me if I'm too busy for them. (I'm not.)
Despite being busier than ever, today I'm changing my moniker.
It's much better now.
The star of the show, Maxwell Smart had many an odd locution that made me laugh. "Would you believe..." was one. "Sorry about that..." was another.
The one that struck me as funniest was this. Say someone handed Smart a cup of coffee roughly the size of a 50-gallon aquarium. Smart would look at it, think for a moment, and then remark, "That's the second biggest cup of coffee I've ever seen." It was always the second biggest, strongest, fastest something or other. And no one would ever ask him about the first biggest, etc.
Some months ago as I began to parry and thrust through the freelance world, I changed my Linked In epithet to "New York's busiest freelance Creative Director." Since then work has clustered to me like moths unto a flame. And many have asked me if I'm too busy for them. (I'm not.)
Despite being busier than ever, today I'm changing my moniker.
It's much better now.
Sunday, November 9, 2014
Driving New York.
I've been a New Yorker for my whole life--except for brief sojourns here and there in cities that while admirable on their own, are by no stretch of the imagination New York. I lived in Chicago a couple of winters and a couple of summers in my early 20s after my old man had been transferred there. In my 40s, I took on the role of Wandering Jew and spent a year in San Francisco and two in Boston. But ever and always, I return to New York.
A little over a year ago, having not had a car for 30 years, I spent $1100 to buy a 1966 Simca 1000 and another $5000 making it safe to drive and ready to enjoy. My mechanic, a crotchety Croatian named Lothar, installed a powerful 3.0 liter in-line 6 he had taken from a BMW. He fixed every ding and dent, painted and reupholstered her and now I have a better than new 50-year-old sedan.
She's a tiny car, not much larger than a Mini-Cooper, really, but capacious on the inside with legitimate seating for four George-sized adults. Lothar even put in a decent stereo system and ran a jack to the center console so I can speak hands-free on my iPhone and play MP3s as well. In all, my Simca is a great car. Perfect for exploring the city I've called home for my entire life.
We headed up to Liebman's on W. 235th Street in the Bronx on Saturday, having read an article in "The New York Times" that trumpeted their superior nosheries. I selected a pastrami and brisket sandwich on seeded rye, a side order of kasha varniskas with brown gravy and a Dr. Brown's cream soda. My wife and younger daughter shared a platter of corned-beef and pastrami with an order of french fries and a fist-sized scoop of chopped chicken liver. My wife also had the requisite Dr. Brown's. My daughter, an apostate, somehow chose a Sprite. Of course the table was festooned with a variety of pickles, both sour and half sour as well as a heaping bowl of cole slaw.
Finished with our meal, we walked the small enclave from Johnson Avenue and 235th to Netherland, back around more than a couple closed-for-the-sabbath bakeries and the usual Jewish varieties of Chinese restaurants.
My wife, as you may or may not know, had had her hip replaced in late October and this fair bit of Bronxite traipsing was enough for a blustery Autumn afternoon.
On Sunday my younger and I fired up the Simca once again and headed downtown to Chinatown for what many consider the world's best soup-dumplings.
Soup dumplings are impossible to describe. Eating them is like trying to describe your first sexual escapade. You quickly lapse into superlatives unable, most certainly, to capture the effect. All I can say about the soup dumplings at Joe's Shanghai is that if you're a reader of this space and you're visiting New York, I will gladly treat you to an order, just to watch your reaction as you taste Chinese ambrosia.
Take-out food in hand, we headed up the Bowery, the slowly gentrifying bleak avenue, merged onto third and made it home while everything Chinese was still steaming like Vesuvius.
I've lived a lifetime in New York.
I'm enjoying it even more having a car.
A little over a year ago, having not had a car for 30 years, I spent $1100 to buy a 1966 Simca 1000 and another $5000 making it safe to drive and ready to enjoy. My mechanic, a crotchety Croatian named Lothar, installed a powerful 3.0 liter in-line 6 he had taken from a BMW. He fixed every ding and dent, painted and reupholstered her and now I have a better than new 50-year-old sedan.
She's a tiny car, not much larger than a Mini-Cooper, really, but capacious on the inside with legitimate seating for four George-sized adults. Lothar even put in a decent stereo system and ran a jack to the center console so I can speak hands-free on my iPhone and play MP3s as well. In all, my Simca is a great car. Perfect for exploring the city I've called home for my entire life.
We headed up to Liebman's on W. 235th Street in the Bronx on Saturday, having read an article in "The New York Times" that trumpeted their superior nosheries. I selected a pastrami and brisket sandwich on seeded rye, a side order of kasha varniskas with brown gravy and a Dr. Brown's cream soda. My wife and younger daughter shared a platter of corned-beef and pastrami with an order of french fries and a fist-sized scoop of chopped chicken liver. My wife also had the requisite Dr. Brown's. My daughter, an apostate, somehow chose a Sprite. Of course the table was festooned with a variety of pickles, both sour and half sour as well as a heaping bowl of cole slaw.
Finished with our meal, we walked the small enclave from Johnson Avenue and 235th to Netherland, back around more than a couple closed-for-the-sabbath bakeries and the usual Jewish varieties of Chinese restaurants.
My wife, as you may or may not know, had had her hip replaced in late October and this fair bit of Bronxite traipsing was enough for a blustery Autumn afternoon.
On Sunday my younger and I fired up the Simca once again and headed downtown to Chinatown for what many consider the world's best soup-dumplings.
Soup dumplings are impossible to describe. Eating them is like trying to describe your first sexual escapade. You quickly lapse into superlatives unable, most certainly, to capture the effect. All I can say about the soup dumplings at Joe's Shanghai is that if you're a reader of this space and you're visiting New York, I will gladly treat you to an order, just to watch your reaction as you taste Chinese ambrosia.
Take-out food in hand, we headed up the Bowery, the slowly gentrifying bleak avenue, merged onto third and made it home while everything Chinese was still steaming like Vesuvius.
I've lived a lifetime in New York.
I'm enjoying it even more having a car.
Friday, November 7, 2014
Call me Ishmael.
-->
Whenever
I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly
November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin
warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially
whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral
principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and
methodically knocking people's hats off--then, I account it high time to get to
sea as soon as I can.
Yesterday
was for me Melville’s “damp, drizzly November in my soul.” When I feel like
this, when I “find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and
bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet;” I don’t like Ishmael head to the
sea. I head to Broadway—steering clear of coffin warehouses and funerals—and
have myself a long meander.
I
headed downtown from 11th Street, past the cheap shoe stores and
quick service restaurant. Past the still-green students of NYU walking slowly
in suburban clumps and smoking cigarettes in the mist.
Broadway
down here in the Village is not like the Broadway youth, the Broadway of the Upper
West Side. That avenue was seedy, intellectual, bum-filled and slightly threatening.
Especially in the low-hundreds where the old single-room-occupancy hotels
filled the street with the hollow-eyed and unshaven. (Decades before it was a
hipster look.) The Broadway by Columbia was different still, filled with
radical students with hair like a wild-fire and bookstores spilling out into
the street and cheap restaurants like Chock Full o’ Nuts when 32-cents got you
a cellophane-wrapped sinker and another quarter got you a small dose of joe.
I
walked only down to Bleeker then turned around and headed uptown to the Strand,
where I hid in the stacks for a while and resisted the urge to buy seven more
books.
Then,
back to work.
I
had knocked off no hats.
Thursday, November 6, 2014
Reflections on foundations.
I’m a lover of obituaries and read every one I could find on Koenig. I stumbled through Google to find more information. I was particularly intrigued by his decades-long feud with his ex-partner, George Lois whom, according to Koenig, took credit for work he didn’t do. In my book and Koenig’s the most heinous crime a creative can commit. (Koenig once wrote an ad attacking Lois. The headline: Low, Lower, Lois.)
Somewhere along the way, I discovered that Papert Koenig Lois after its first year in business produced a hardcover book containing each of their ads done that year. They did the same after their second year. The books were entitled, appropriately enough, “Papert, Koenig, Lois, Inc. The First Year” and “Papert, Koenig, Lois, Inc. The Second Year.”
I quickly found them on abebooks.com. The pair cost me $50 and they arrived in short order in very nearly perfect condition. I have them here, in front of me.
Each volume is organized by client. The First Year (1960-1961) features work for: Ladies Home Journal, Renault, Pharmacraft Laboratories, Granada TV Networks, England, Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Ronson and Dansk, among others. There are probably about 75 ads in all, many of them I recognize from old Art Directors Annuals or from George Lois’ books about, primarily, himself.
Here are a few of the ones that I either recognize from annuals or I think have held up for half a century. Sorry for the crappy photographs. I took them from my iPhone and couldn’t get things quite square.
The Second Year looks identical to the first. Same size. Same black linen cover. Same forest green frontispiece. Clients include: Dutch Masters cigars, Dansk, Evan-Picone, Faberge, First National Bank of Miami, The New York Herald Tribune, Peugeot, Harvey Probber, WNEW Radio, Xerox, as well as many of the clients from the previous year.
I don’t know much about the further history of PKL, beyond those first two years. I assume George Lois imploded and Julian Koenig spent too much time at Aqueduct Racetrack. They scaled the heights of New York advertising, but never reached the pinnacles achieved by DDB, Carl Ally, Scali McCabe Sloves, Delahanty Kurnit & Geller and one or two others.
I might be the last person on earth who’s even heard of them.
Years ago, I taught some classes at New York’s School of Visual Arts in putting a portfolio together. I decided I wanted to move past stylistic trends and get to the heart of what makes a strong communication. Not what’s “hot,” what is enduringly moving and motivating.
What I did what go through my trove of awards annuals from the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s. I picked out disparate ads then we spent the next few hours discussing their alikeness.
It seems to me that PKL’s ads here are built around the basics of good communication. They are simple and clean. They make a promise. They find something human. They often flatter the reader—letting her know that we regard her as intelligent. We might even reward her for that intelligence.
If this were a better world, and I were rich, I would offer to send these two books to anyone who’s interested as long as they swore to return them. The thing is, I lent them to my boss in May and only got them back around Halloween. So I’m not parting with them so easily.
I think they’re esoteric. They probably have an audience of seven, mostly people interested in “Mad Men” but only because of the wardrobe. But to me, finding them was like finding a Cuneiform tablet. Nothing remarkable may be written down (they were usually tallies of goats, grains and wine) but still, they’re priceless. They tell us how we lived and how we thought.
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Blue Collar thoughts.
Maybe I just don't feel like writing about yesterday's election. Or living in a country where Congress has approval ratings in the single digits yet returns more than 3/4 of its incumbents. I don't need that agita this morning.
I was thinking this morning as I rode the bus to work.
When it's not crowded, about one day a week, I open my Mac, get online by tethering my iPhone and do a little work. Either for myself or for my clients.
This morning I scanned Linked In.
I'm working full-time but I'm always looking for something more fulfilling.
I saw a friend who's a managing director (whatever that means) at a small creative shop is looking for a designer.
I sent him a note about a friend of mine who recently lost his job. Then I sent my friend a note.
All this happened between 57th Street and 42nd Street on the M15 Select bus.
My friend wrote to him, he wrote to my friend. Wheels started turning.
I started thinking about this approach to work.
It's a blue-collar approach if you ask me.
You see a problem or an opportunity and you jump at it. No meetings are convened. No Hamlet crap is ruminated. You do shit. You do your best to make things happen. You throw something at the wall and see what sticks.
Along the way many of us have gotten too smart for our own goods.
Even something that should be simple, like say, baseball, has more data today than a rocket launch had when we went to the moon.
Man oh man. Just send Rodriguez up and tell him to get ahold of one. Fuck "Sabermetrics." Hit the fucking ball.
We are all so smart.
All so pensive.
All so deliberate.
That we lay there like a lox.
We are soul-less.
Emotionless.
We are abstract.
The other day I saw an internet meme about how well the nation has done under Barack Obama's leadership. Inflation has stayed microscopic. We're experiencing net gains in employment of one-million jobs a month. The deficit is shrinking. Taxes are lower.
We're doing well but we're allowed to think everything stinks.
I wondered what the results would have been last night if the Democrats in 2014 stole a song sheet from FDR and blanketed the airwaves with "Happy Days Are Here Again" as FDR did during each of his first three campaigns.
No.
We analyzed the shit out of humanity.
I was thinking this morning as I rode the bus to work.
When it's not crowded, about one day a week, I open my Mac, get online by tethering my iPhone and do a little work. Either for myself or for my clients.
This morning I scanned Linked In.
I'm working full-time but I'm always looking for something more fulfilling.
I saw a friend who's a managing director (whatever that means) at a small creative shop is looking for a designer.
I sent him a note about a friend of mine who recently lost his job. Then I sent my friend a note.
All this happened between 57th Street and 42nd Street on the M15 Select bus.
My friend wrote to him, he wrote to my friend. Wheels started turning.
I started thinking about this approach to work.
It's a blue-collar approach if you ask me.
You see a problem or an opportunity and you jump at it. No meetings are convened. No Hamlet crap is ruminated. You do shit. You do your best to make things happen. You throw something at the wall and see what sticks.
Along the way many of us have gotten too smart for our own goods.
Even something that should be simple, like say, baseball, has more data today than a rocket launch had when we went to the moon.
Man oh man. Just send Rodriguez up and tell him to get ahold of one. Fuck "Sabermetrics." Hit the fucking ball.
We are all so smart.
All so pensive.
All so deliberate.
That we lay there like a lox.
We are soul-less.
Emotionless.
We are abstract.
The other day I saw an internet meme about how well the nation has done under Barack Obama's leadership. Inflation has stayed microscopic. We're experiencing net gains in employment of one-million jobs a month. The deficit is shrinking. Taxes are lower.
We're doing well but we're allowed to think everything stinks.
I wondered what the results would have been last night if the Democrats in 2014 stole a song sheet from FDR and blanketed the airwaves with "Happy Days Are Here Again" as FDR did during each of his first three campaigns.
No.
We analyzed the shit out of humanity.
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