Uncle Slappy's First Monday Slap of the Week.

I'm taking the day off today. So my mind, such as it is, is today as fallow as Donald Trump's moral code. Ad Aged will be back tomorrow with something the industry calls "original content." Though how content you'll be, or how original I'll be is open to question.

Reflections on someone leaving.

One of the worst things about this business--a business, frankly, that these days is filled with bad things--is when someone talented and special leaves your group.

Maybe it's not amazing, but it amazes me still how close a good group can become, how connected, and special, and, yes, loving.

So when someone leaves, it's sad. It's like parting with something special, like your first car or the baseball glove that saw you through high school and your one season down in the Mexican league. Only it's a person. Not a thing.
So it's worse.

There will be new people, of course. People who come along and do the work. In time, the new people will become old people, and new friendships and connections will be made. New jokes to share, new approaches to work, even new styles of work that even an old guy like myself can learn from.

That's the circle of agency life, I guess. People come and go. Stephen King wrote in "Stand by Me,"Friends come in and out of our lives like busboys in a restaurant."

That's true, I think. And more than a little sad. After all, Dunbar's Law says you can maintain about 150 friendships. No more than that. Despite what Mark Zuckerberg tells you.

But my friend who left is going on to bigger and better. She'll find new challenges and rise. She'll slay new dragons. And I'm happy for her, for that.

Maybe she'll take a little of the love we had for her with her. I'm sure she's left some love behind, that's the kind of person she was. That love is probably taped shut in a corrugated box just where she loudly left it.

As the wise one once said: and so it goes.

Uncle Slappy's semi-sporadic Slap of the Week.

Eggplants, pigs and pallor.

"I am not a crook."

Ben Shahn's "The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti"

Way back when I was a teenager we had a president and a vice-president (Richard Milhous Nixon and Spiro Theodore Agnew) who were every bit as corrupt, venal, spiteful and yes, out-of-control as our current administration.

Milton Glaser, er, the great Milton Glaser, was working at New York Magazine at the time, and capturing the spirit of the times and the sump of Richard Nixon, they ran the page above.

The eggplant with its hook nose and sagging jowls seemed to, somehow, capture the Ben Shahn-ish-looking Nixon--his dour mien, his ever-present scowl, his ghostly, ghastly pallor. 

I've never been a big fan of New York Magazine. It was always too slight and gossipy for me. I was, and am, a New Yorker man. Maybe that's the prep-school, Ivy League in me.

That aside, at New York Magazine they do some really nice satire, and their journalism in the age of Trump, is muckracking and good.

I love the art below.

Not as much as the eggplant shaped like Nixon. But that might just be a parmagiana thing.

(BTW, Frank Bruni in today's Times had this to say about the New York Magazine cover: "The cover imagines the president with a snout instead of a nose. How apt. He presides over an administration of piggies gorging at the federal trough. Michael Flynn’s consulting deals. Tom Price’s private flights. Steve Mnuchin’s romantic eclipse viewing. David Shulkin’s grand European adventure. Ben Carson’s dining set. Scott Pruitt’s bargain condo.")

Twenty things I don’t understand.

1.        

People who say they’re focused on “user-experience.” What’s the alternative—focusing on the non-user experience?

2.        

How a “grid system” contributes to story-telling.

3.        

People who don’t wear a hat when it’s snowing or raining.

4.        

People who wear wool hats outside when it’s 97-degrees.

5.        

Brands that do April Fools’ ads. To me they say nothing more than a brand is making too much money.

6.        

Seven page briefs.

7.        

Long-copy banners.

8.        

Short-copy banners.

9.        

Banners.

10.     

Why radio stations aren’t almost constantly playing Bob Dylan’s anti-Vietnam/anti-war masterpiece, “Masters of War.” I prefer the rendition by the Staple Singers.

11.     

How did Spectrum cable become so incredibly hateful just about a year after they launched?

12.     

If every time you play a commercial people hate your brand more, why do you run so many commercials. Yes, I’m looking at you Spectrum and Verizon, too.

13.     

Why do people use the word transparency? 

I’d rather just be honest.

14.     

Ditto for the word Agile. If it’s a process for creativity, you need to do two things. 1) show me great creative that’s come out of the process, 2) show me how much quicker and simpler it is.

15.     

Why people don’t turn their Privacy settings on social-media all the way to 11. Is it really worth sacrificing your personal data to see how you’d look as a member of the opposite sex?

16.     

Fox supports racists. Gives air-time to racists. Gave air-time to the Birther lie (which was racist.) Why do advertisers advertise there and why do people tune in.

17.     

Carpet tiles.

18.     

Buying water in bottles.

19.     

Am I the only one left who remember how good fresh-baked bread from the bakery is? Especially a loaf of rye with caraway seeds.

20.     

People who love lists.

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