Chief Stupidity Officer.

I got an email the other day--you know, one of those pregnant missives from corporate--reminding me and every other employee of Monolith Advertising Holding Co., to either not do or to do some certain sort of behavior. Naturally I paid no attention whatsoever to the "content" of the note, but I did observe that the sender's title was Chief Risk Officer. How small is your penis if you need to be compensated by such a title?

The trend I'm remarking on is the proliferation of banal titles. Chief titles. Chief Integration Officer. Chief Strategy Officer. Chief Compliance Officer. Chief Facilities Officer. Chief Digital Officer. Chief Digital Strategy Officer. Chief Client Operations Officer. Chief Creative Officer.

What does an officer do anyway? He offices? He officiates? He's officious? (Sorry for the gender specificity but the dumber the title the more likely it is to be filled by a schlong-challenged man.)

There's a point here, I think, and it's about the demise of the original intention of advertising.We are no longer in the creativity business. We are in the managtivity business. People, ideas, relationships, spontaneity, spark, insouciance are controlled by faceless Chief Squash Your Spirit Officers.

Ad Aged. Now with 30% more conspiracy theory.

As I walk around the world I have noticed that latex gloves are popping up everywhere. On letter carriers, food service works, transit workers. They are as ubiquitous as pimples on a steroid user's ass.

Last weekend my 2.5 oz. can of shaving cream was confiscated by the TSA while I was passing through LaGuardia because I hadn't placed it in a plastic bag.

Latex gloves and plastic bags are petroleum by-products. My guess is that this is another way the oil companies profit through the alleged terrorist threat. In other words, terror = profit.

PS: If you are an employee of Halliburton in Iraq, rape is not illegal.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=3992370&page=1

I started writing copy for credit card refinancing this morning...

and this came out of my computer:

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not
me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling
you seem to say so.

I think I must be on copywriter steroids.

If all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail.

Traditional advertising agencies--scratch that--old-fashioned advertising agencies are in deep shit. By old-fashioned I mean any agency that favors one medium over ones that may be more viable simply because that is where their expertise lies. In other words, interactive agencies that think the solution to every marketing problem is a bunch of banner ads and a site or a sitelet are just as dumb, ossified, calcified, hobbled, crippled, lame and obsolete as the former behemoths who think every marketing problem can be solved via TV and print.

The answer is much more egalitarian. First, what's the involve-the-consumer-idea. Second, what different media do we use to disseminate or dissovaryate that idea. That's the future, boys and girls. And it's coming at you way faster than you think.

A perfect name for a new agency.

I hate the new naming taxonomy for ad agencies. I don't want to trust my dollars to a place called "Purple Sweat Socks" or "Ashcan Skool." That said, in a tribute to Jean-Paul Sartre, how about an agency called "Being and Nothingness"?

Being because agencies "be" by attending meetings and writing decks. Nothingness because nothing actually gets done.

I laughed so hard I cried.

Some Olympian suggestions.

Listening to NPR this morning and reading the New York Times, it's just occurred to me that we in the West are going about this anti-terrorism thing all wrong. We could fix the entire problem with just a slight change of perspective. So, here's what I propose:

Dear 2008 Beijing Olympic Committee:

I know the games are less than a year away and so suggesting a new competition will likely meet with your derision but that said, I feel this is an idea whose time has come. Let's make car-bombing an Olympic sport.

There are certainly enough nations "practicing" now, and perhaps if we make car bombing official--with rules, provisos, codicils and regulations, we will be able to exercise a bit more control over it. Let's make car-bombing a demonstration sport in 2008. Iraq, Afghanistan, Algeria, Spain, Pakistan, Northern Ireland and a few other nations already have strong squads. None of those nations do well in traditional sports like swimming and running, so perhaps this is a chance for more egalitarian medal representation.

If car-bombing succeeds, I suggest another sport, though it's possible that only the good ol' USA will be able to send a squad: Mall Shooting.

Wrong on every level.

"White Kwanzaa"

I’m dreaming of a white Kwanzaa,
Just like the ones I never knew,
Where the roof-tops glisten
And gangstas listen
To hear po lice in ‘hood.

I’m dreaming of a white Kwanzaa,
With every Kwanzaa card I swipe
May yo' days be merry and bright
And may all yo' Kwanzaas be white.

The best job I ever had.

Walking to work this morning I saw a few hoodie-clad men on scaffolding knocking down a four-story building. They weren't razing it with a crane with one of those Looney Tunes wrecking balls, instead they were knocking it apart, floor by floor with sledge hammers.

That reminded me of the best job I've ever had. When I was twenty, I got a job working for a guy called Olindo Nocito and his brother Frankie, who spoke virtually no English. Olindo and Frankie were aluminum-siders. They also installed casement windows. I was their helper and their prep-boy. That meant that I was given the job of removing all of the old siding before we could put up the new siding. So a couple mornings a week, they would drop me off at a site with a ladder, a crowbar, a hammer and a few canvas bags and tell me to rip off every shingle on the place.

It was pretty brutal work, but cathartic. At the end of eight or ten hours the house was de-nuded down to the plywood. And the next day we'd be there to insulate and galvanize it.

I bring this up because it occurs to me that a lot of agencies need to be torn down and refurbished. I know there are weaknesses to this metaphor--that aluminum siding is ugly and we don't want to make agencies uglier and that the changes were primarily cosmetic. I hope, however, you'll get the point. The agency business needs to be remade. It's going to take more than a couple of Chief Change Officers to do it. It's probably going to demand a couple of people armed with ladders, crow bars and hammers. And few canvas bags--for carting off the old carcasses.

The "Citizen Kane" of talking chipmunk movies.

Thanks to my ongoing work with Hollywood's Weinstein boys, I got invited last night to a preview of the new soon-to-be-smash-hit movie "Alvin!" It crackled with excitement. The wit was Shavian. The dialogue brought to mind the best of Preston Sturges. All-in-all a veritable tour de force.

OK, let's get serious for a moment. Is today's America so devoid of creativity and imagination that the best we can do for holiday entertainment is resurrect a third-rate cartoon that is memorable mainly for its breakthrough use of helium. I've just heard a report on NPR about more and more animation being shipped to Mumbai and Bangalore. And one of Alvin's producers going on about the detail and realism in the chipmunk's eyebrows and facial expressions. After I cleaned up my vomit, I remarked to myself (the only one listening) that movies--story-telling--is about the story, the characters. It's not about runaway art-direction and technology.

There's a slim chance "Alvin" will be fun. If it turns out that way it will be because of the innocence and camp humor of its plot and the wit of the language. It will not be because of an arched-eyebrow.

Productions values cannot trump originality, humanity and humor. If your work has been eviscerated of those qualities by your own inability or by your client's over-active thyroids, you can pray for a good result. But chances are your name will be attached to another snippet of well-wrought crap.

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If you want to see acting and script-writing, chemistry and production at its very best, rent a movie from 1934--the Thin Man, directed by WS Van Dyke and starring Myrna Loy and William Powell. You can turn off the volume completely and just watch the body language between Loy and Powell--and Powell's eyebrows--and you will laugh. Any single frame contains more originality that the entire Alvin opus.

The world is too much with us.

THE world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The Winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;
It moves us not�-Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

William Wordsworth (formerly of Grey Healthcare)