How to write good. (A re-post.)

I have no time to write this morning, owing to the resumption of my usual Thursday therapy and a 9:30 meeting that I can't be late for. So, regrettably, here's a repost.

Back tomorrow.

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.

New York morning.

This morning, I got out of my car service at 53rd and Madison and decided to hoof it the remaining mile-and-a-half to work. That's been my regimen for about the past six months as I attempt to battle the ravages of age and adipose. 

It also put me back in the center of the city, a welcome melange that I miss since I started working on 11th Avenue (East New Jersey) almost two years ago. I like the cacophony and the mayhem. I like the noise and the bustle. I like how everything, even a leisurely walk in the morning, is done at double-time.

On 53rd and Park, I saw a well-dressed 50-something couple waiting on the corner for the light to change. Standing in front of them was a young woman--their daughter, probably next to a gowned soon-to-graduated Columbia man, wearing his skyblue robe and a mortar board.

I'm not sure where they were going. I was sure Columbia's graduation is up on campus, some 60 blocks north. But I stopped and said to the old man--the father, I guess, congratulations.

36 years ago I graduated and the world was more like the photo above than it is today. Somehow, I was more comfortable in time.

New York, of course, was more dangerous, and grimier, and dirty. But we didn't know any better. That was the New York we had always known, and for all the collapsing of the rafters like "The Fall of the House of Usher," there was a comfort to the place. Change seemed to come a little slower.

That's probably not true.

Change always comes too quickly.

And even back then, the tides of change were sweeping clean the beaches you had grown up with. Even back then, Salters, the great bookstore and Columbia institution, had given way to a 24x7 food market, and rumors were afoot that the giant Chock Full O' Nuts coffee shop with the serpentine formica counters and the 32-cent cup of coffee was being razed for a trendy Chinese restaurant.

My old man used to joke that New York will be a great place when it's finally finished. Though I'd love to give my father credit,  Thomas Wolfe--not Tom--said it better: "One belongs to New York instantly. One belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years."

I've been in New York, been eating, breathing and living New York since 1957, just a year after Diane Arbus took the photo above. Sometimes I hope a 1950s Checker will pick me up in the rain and take me through a wormhole back to the black-and-white world I miss.

Where, like I said, you could get a cuppa for 32 cents, rent an apartment for $90/month and the future was still in the future.

Public Masturbation.

As Woody Allen said many years ago, "Don't knock masturbation. At least it's sex with someone I love."

That said, I think there's no place for public displays of what used to be called self-gratification. 

That's what the flap over Instagram's new logo seems to me. A self-indulgent display of "creativity" in a bubble for creativity's sake that has no bearing on the brand but is trumpeted with all the fanfare of a royal procession.

Of course, the un-fucking-veiling of the logo was accompanied by a video that showed the ardour and brilliance and rigor with which it was created. When did work begin to have to be accompanied by a video announcing the work for it to qualify as work? I suppose somewhere, some be-tatted wool-cap-wearing hipster is creating a video on his latest bout of flatulence (tracing it back to an artisinal bean burrito he ate consisting of farm-to-table hand-picked pintos) and posting it on YouTube where it might collect four dozen views, including two from outside his immediate circle of friends and family.

We are so pompously full of ourselves.

Creating fictions around our work to tell the world how effective and special our work is.

Imagine if you took the tens of millions that agencies spend on award submissions and aimed it at improving diversity, or some other more-noble cause.

I'm tired of it all, really. Tired of the pomp without circumstance. Tired of the self-congratulatory glow. Tired of the mania that takes away--distracts from--the purpose of our jobs and makes us look like little children at a carnival craving a balloon.

I'm just tired of it.

Tired of the trophyization of everything. When basically everything sucks.

If the work is good, IMHO, it should speak for itself.

I don't need a cheering section to help me judge something.

Untying knots.

What a glorious March day dawned today in late May in New York. The sky is bright and blue and little puffs of cumulus are wafting over the city. The temperature is in the high forties and the wind whipping up 11th Avenue is in the high twenties. There are whitecaps like a convention of nuns on the nearby Hudson and little kids on their backpack-laden way to school are holding onto their colorful hats against the breeze.

It doesn't feel like summer is around the corner, and though I like the San-Francisco-ness of the briskness, I am already saying to myself that I hope it warms before I head to Cape Cod in two weeks for some much-needed r and r.

You'd never know that global warming is upon us, that carbon in the atmosphere has reached, after 200,000 years of human life, 400 parts per million, the climatologists' measure of "deep shit." No, the weather is unseasonably cool--a perfect day to walk the four miles to work, not to think about weather-related disasters and rising sea-levels.

I walked and walked, past, like I said, the hat-holding school kids. Past the tie-askew business men. Past the lycra'd runners and the construction workers and sanitation men and the office-goers like me.

So often the world seems like it's on the brink of absolute disaster. There's the aforementioned climate-change, the sprectre of either Republican-or-Democratic-apocalypse. There are terrorists who blow themselves up along with 30 or 40 others. There are madmen with nukes. There's the dumbing down of virtually everything. And income inequality that makes ancient Rome look equitable.

It's easy to get tied up in knots about all this. And then, on top of that, there are all the work-related knots to get tied up into. 

It's enough to make you crazy, really.

But, then, the day comes bright and clear and crisp. And you find yourself with enough sap running in your veins to walk to work.

And somehow, just somehow, everything is ok.

A late start.

I got a late start this morning--at least on the blog--for a couple of reasons.

First, I had a 7:30 conference call. That seems like something you'd have if you worked for the East German government before the collapse of the Communist Bloc. But it's how things go in advertising these days.

Not only share work in the least effective way imaginable, we do it at an hour when most self-respecting creatives are not even close to their first cup of hand-picked, sustainably-grown, cold-poured cup of seven dollar coffee. 

Then, while on the call, I had an eye doctor's appointment. Since my near-death car crash almost three years ago put me on almost a year of steroid treatment to combat a nasty run-in with pericarditis, the eye doctor has been watching some slight abnormalities in my corneas. Accordingly, I have to see him and his bevy of fetching eye-dropping assistants every six months. 

Right now, I can barely see what I'm typing--the effects of dilating drops.

It's been a long week but I can sense its end like a champion Kenyan long-distance runner can smell the finish of a marathon. Like that runner, the end of this week can't come soon enough. It's been a week dominated by an offsite and the concomitant over-eating, over-drinking and worst: over-talking.

Yesterday, starting around 9AM and ending around noon, I sat through 17-hours of pedagogy on the transformational importance of "design thinking."

I couldn't help but think of a quip by either Alexander Woolcott or Monty Wooley, I can't remember which. "My foot's asleep, do you mind if I join it?"

I guess that's all for now.

I'm two hours late.

And I can't actually see what I'm typing.

Would that I could join my foot.

Sorry.

Yesterday I was up at 3:30, preparatory to catch a 6AM flight from Newark airport to Austin, Texas.

A bunch of people flew down a day earlier, but my natural, and I'm afraid, increasing diffidence held me back in New York. I had work I wanted to do. Besides, I'm not much good in large groups. I'm like a flounder in the desert when it comes to socializing. And, to be honest, while I like--very much in some cases--and respect the people I work with, I'm smack in the middle of one of the best books I've ever read, and I need that reading time at the end of the day to cleanse my brain and re-orient myself.

I guess if you get down to it, it seems to me that as the world has grown increasingly noisy, I have the increasing need for quiet. That is, time for me to think, read, and think some more.

My need for quiet--my insistence on it, really, is one of the reasons I've been able to keep up this blog as inveterately as I have.

I need that time, quiet time, to be alone with my thoughts.

I suppose this is an apology of sorts. 

I'm sorry I came late and went upstairs to read early. I probably should have taken in more of the city, listened to live music, had another drink, maybe learned to dance or ride a mechanical bull.

I feel guilty that I can't bring myself to do those things.

I guess I just like quiet more.

America, the Beer-tiful.

Of all the boneheaded displays of tone-deafness I've ever seen or, heard, the most egregious might be the recent rebranding by the Belgian owners of Budweiser who have temporarily changed its name and its packaging to "America."

This has to be some sort of a misbegotten stunt, I said to myself when I saw it. But no, in all seriousness, they are wrapping their Belgian-owned selves in a foreign flag and banging our drum with it.

I can't even go into the "copy" on the can, which takes America's National Anthem and uses it to sell. They appropriate our national credo--E Pluribus Unum. Or words like "indivisible," which, I'd imagine about one person in 100 could actually define.

This is dumb writ large and with tens or hundreds of millions of advertising dollars promoting it.

My guess is that right now  90% of Americans think that Budweiser is still brewed by an American-owned company. That percentage, IMHO will plummet after this affront is on the air and on our shelves. 

The hypocrisy of this re-packaging is as monumental as it is dumb.

Look, if you're owned by someone else--whether you're a beer, a car company or an advertising agency, the owner takes some of the profit. In Bud's case, that means profit leaves our country. That's just the way it goes. Hasn't Trump made hay saying this must stop?

I don't know the branding firm responsible for this monstrosity of stupidity--they're called "JKR," which I hope stands for "Just kidding, really."

My guess is this will be a colossal failure. That Bud will pull the promotion by Memorial Day and dozens of jobs will be lost.

Of course, it could be worse.

They could have rebranded Bud, "New Jersey."

Some dark thoughts about Ad Tech.

You can’t spit in the ad industry these days without hearing something about the inexorable rise of Ad Tech.

Ad Tech, they’ll tell you, is more important than creative. By using data to serve the consumer with the right message at precisely the right time, companies that use Ad Tech will prosper as never before.

With such timely messaging, consumers will leap to engage with ads. I’ll get an ad for mustard just as I buy a pound of salami. Just as I hit a pothole on the Cross Bronx, I’ll get a coupon for new Michelins. It’s all going to be great and magical—and creative (which is unpredictable, expensive and made by temperamental people) will be unimportant. That’s how perfect our timing and data mining is going to be. Step right this way! See base-metal turned to gold!

I can’t help but think the same sort of blathering was blathered by the now-billionaires behind the chain-stores and chain-restaurants and chain-hotels and chain-movie-theaters that dominate the American landscape.

Service consistency will improve. Operations will be streamlined. Prices will be lowered.

Here’s what they never let on: everything will suck.

You can’t get help. Quality is abysmal. And god-forbid something doesn’t work, just try to return it.

IMHO, you can hardly go to a movie in America where the theater isn’t filthy. You can hardly buy anything in a Home Depot that isn’t shoddily made. You can hardly stay in a Sheraton that isn’t teetering on pestilential.

In fact, most of America now has the charm of LaGuardia airport during a snowy rush-hour in February. It’s dank, dreary, delayed and dismal.

This is what happens when the money boys move in to an industry.

And they’ve moved into ours.

They’re putting the final nail in the industry’s coffin by saying creative doesn’t matter, Ad Tech does. What they don’t let on is that Ad Tech—giving the consumer the right message at the right time—is only a competitive advantage if you’re the only one doing it. Once it’s ubiquitous, and it will be, like Starbucks or McDonalds, it’s meaningless. Because everyone is sending you the same splendidly-timed but creatively indifferent undifferentiated message. No sales are made without offering deep discounts, no loyalty is fostered. All you’ve done is filled another phone, or another website, or another social media feed with crap.

Returning to Saltillo.

About three weeks later than last year, I got my official letter and agenda for the Juegos de Viejos weekend down in Saltillo, which is to commence Friday, May 27th and wrap-up with Sunday's game on the 29th.

I quickly glanced at the agenda, which included, of course, an old-timers dinner the night of the 27th, a trip to a local orphanage and practice and another, informal, team dinner on the 28th. And then a tribute to Hector and the game itself on the 29th.

I immediately picked up the phone and dialed Teresa Quesadilla, Hector's wife of so many years. 

"Teresa," I said as she picked up. I spoke in my broken doorman's Spanish which, since my year in the league has lay roughly fallow except for vacations and the like.

"I will be coming down to Saltillo to tip my hat once again to Father Hector."

"You will stay in my house," Teresa said. It was by no means a question.

"Yes, I said. I will stay in your house." And she hung up the phone.

When Hector died two Decembers ago, I had vowed to be a better surrogate son to Teresa. She was more than a mother to me when I played ball for the Seraperos. The truth is, she showed me more love, more positive regard in the few months I lived with her in the Summer of 1975 than my mother had done in the 17 years I lived with her.

Of course, when Hector died, and I looked at this small woman in her big house, I vowed that I would visit, write and call more often. But life makes a heel out of us all, and our best of intentions are often seen smoking and with the hood up on the side of the road. 

Since Hector's death, I have visited Teresa just once--at last year's Juegos de Viejos and I've called and written not much more often. 

I had meant to be a good man and take Teresa under my wing--as she and Hector had taken me under hers. But, in all, I had started a new job, put in a new kitchen and have been too busy being busy to be a good son. Why is it that everything seems more important than the ones we love? Why do we have time for everything save what's really important?

I fully meant to call Teresa back. But like a lot of people of her generation, and mine, she does not like to speak on the phone. My daughters will think nothing of speaking for an hour or two. Teresa just wants to know you're not lying in a ditch somewhere. That is enough for her.

Between now and the Juegos de Viejos weekend, I have plenty to do. I am flying to Austin, Texas  early tomorrow morning for some sort of offsite, then heading down to the Jersey shore to see my cousins this weekend, then I am heading up to Cape Cod for a week of R&R.

And all that is good, and things I can look forward to.

But mostly for the next three weeks, I will think of Teresa, of Hector, and how I can get through another Old Timers' game without hurting or embarrassing myself.

Raleigh.

I'm taking the day off from work today, one of only a handful of days I've had since I lost my job in March, 2014, through a year of non-stop freelance and then about a year of non-stopness at work.

My wife and I flew down to Raleigh, North Carolina to see our younger daughter before she ventures out for yet another summer leading scuba diving trips in the Caribbean. I had been down to see her once before, but hadn't seen her new apartment and also hadn't met her new room-mate or her latest collection of friends and co-workers.

Raleigh, I guess, is like a lot of small and not-so-small cities across the US. Their manufacturing base and industry has dried up and left for China, their downtown is troubled and wealth has left the city for the suburbs.

That said, the city is coming back. You can hardly spit in the downtown area without hitting an artisanal barista pulling an artisanal beer or fetishized coffee with their artisanally-tattooed arm. All these tiny artisanal restaurants have taken over space in the old factories and mills and have exposed brick and hard-wood beams to die for.

The question remains, of course, is how do you prime the pump? How does the community support all these bars and restaurants when, in all likelihood, the bars and restaurants don't pay enough so that the people who work in them can actually eat and drink in them.

There are two big tech companies in town, Red Hat and Citrix and their downtown office complexes are sprawling and expanding. Red Hat, in particular, seems to have its name festooned on every concert-hall and venue in the city. And what they haven't covered with their name, sundry banks, energy companies or the remaining tobacco companies have plastered theirs.

It's a nice little town, really, Raleigh. Where about $200K will get you a house the size of a city block and three cars stopped at a traffic light counts as rush-hour traffic. My wife has friends--they're nearing 60, I suppose, who have sold their house in New Jersey and are test-retiring down here.

Recently, I saw an 18th Century house featured in the Times, an old mill abutting an old mill pond just twenty miles from Chapel Hill. It cost about 1/3 the valuation of my apartment in New York and sits on 70 acres with a pool and a guest house.

I guess when you get to my age and my increasingly diffident temperament, you think about things like this. I imagine myself taking walks through the woods with my dog, building a fire and reading the books I haven't got time or the patience for now.

Of course, I also think about being accosted in the forest by a snaggle-toothed hillbilly and strung up as a carpet-bagging Yankee Jew who polluted the local waterways with the detritus of old kasha-varishkas. They'd hang me high on the old elm tree and pelt me with hardened buckwheat groats before they immolate me, or if I'm lucky, only tar and feather.

So, I return back to New York. My home since 1957. Where everything I loved about the city in the first place has been torn down and replaced by a bank, or a nail salon, or a Starbucks. 

But it's my place, this anesthetized, sterilized and sanitized island of asphalt. And work is what I do. 

At least for now.