I'm in a meeting and I heard this.

From an account guy.
"Can I ask a clarifying question on this?"

Is there another kind of question?
An obfuscating one?

Oprah Opdate.

Since launching her online video conference book club class meeting get-together event chazarai with Eckhart Tolle, Oprah has attracted over two million viewers and has had the iTunes top podcast download every day since 3/3.

In short, without any real infrastructure, just enormous popular appeal, Oprah has created a brand new Web network.

Historically speaking, I wonder if Oprah's network is a precursor to the 21st Century version of the formation of United Artists in the 1910s and 20s. United Artists was a creative consortium of DW Griffith, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin. They used their collective popularity to undo the strictures of the orthodox studio system and create better content.

Betcha this is what happens next.

Ghandi on Advertising.

With all due modesty I believe I have more ideas per second than about ten creative people put together. I think I was born blessed with dual-core processors in my head and they keep spinning well after the assignment is "done." I learned early on, again I was blessed, that what separates mediocre agencies from the one or two good ones is that good agencies keep making their work better even after it's sold. They keep pushing.

I do the same, speaking to account and creative people about ideas. They nod politely and hope I'll go away. In other words their complacency is akin to Ghandi's passive resistance. Their attitude, "If I listen to this, I have to work harder, call my client, stay late." Fuck it.

They'd rather suck. No wonder I've had four jobs in four years.

Nikeperbole.

This morning on the way to work, I wore a baseball cap from my Alma Mater. The hat was manufactured by Nike, and on the back these words are embroidered: "Engineered to the exact specifications of championship athletes."

Come on guys. This is a fucking hat with a velcro closing.

Women with stones on their spines.

Every resort, every spa, every portrait of luxury I see these days, seems to have a photo of a topless dame with rocks on her back.

So-called creative people, who gravitate toward Apple computers seldom "think different." In fact most often they "think same." And allow their clients to regress to the mean as well.

Satires on the ad industry.

You don't have to be Jonathan Swift to satirize the ad industry. Mostly because the ad industry satirizes itself every day.

There was a good one in this week's issue of Adweek. On page 10 there is a headline that says: "New Business." What follows claims to be an agency scorecard--keeping tabs of pitch performance since Jan. 1.

This chart which delineates the net gains and losses of 25 agencies has a total of approximately $2.5 billion of new business won this year and only about 1/4 of that or $600 million lost. My favorite line item? Mullen lost $50 million of Lending Tree and Euro RSCG picked up Lending Tree worth $225 million. So the account grew by $175 million when the client switched agencies.

Ah, truth in advertising.

Kicking the bucket.

Everyday I go to more fucking meetings than former Soviet dissidents went on death marches. There's one word that I hear in every meeting I attend. That word is bucket, as in:

"We put this content in three buckets."
"We broke this down into buckets."
"We bucketized this."

I think bucket is an ugly word and I don't understand why its use has proliferated. Can't you say you categorized this? Or we classified this? Why is everything in a bucket? Fuck it.

A new word.

Just this morning I read something I liked in Wired magazine. It emphasizes the necessity of reading absolutely everything you can put your hands on in this fast-moving era we live in.

As the rest of the world is saying we've moved from Mass to personalized, Wired is proclaiming this the era of hyper-local.

Hyper-local.

And yes, there will be a quiz tomorrow. As there is everyday.

While you were sleeping.

Oprah changed the world.
That's right, the big-headed, leonine-haired media mogul did something that could sound yet another peal from the death knell of broadcast television. In a partnership with e-bay-owned, VOIP-pioneer Skype, Oprah, with Eckhart Tolle, conducted a simul-international-bookclub discussion which attracted 500,000 viewers and has been the top podcast on iTunes for the past week or so. Another session takes place tonight and every Monday for the next nine weeks.

Media traditionalists, best-practic-ites and Luddites have reveled in the fact that Oprah's experiment crashed.(Though its feed was 240 Gbps.) But Oprah is smarter than the nay-sayers (most of whom come from shops like Digitas who abhor innovation--these cretins are the 21st Century version of the 20th Century people who used to shout "Get a horse!") As the Big O writes, "pioneering this new platform will always come with risks. We will keep moving forward, attempting to break new ground,..."

So, there you go. While you were writing a spot or "crafting" an ad, Oprah was having a live interactive, international conversation with half a million people. Once again, the best way to predict the future is to invent it.

Einstein on Marriage.

Most people don't know that Einstein married and divorced a woman, Mileva Maric, and had two children with her, one of whom was mentally handicapped and died, probably during WWII in a mental institution. When he was on the outs with her, he wrote her these conditions:

A. You will make sure
1. that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;
2. that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room;
3. that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.

B. You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, you will forego
1. my sitting at home with you;
2. my going out or traveling with you.

C. You will obey the following points in your relations with me:
1. you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reporach me in any way;
2. you will stop talking to me if I request it;
3. you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.

D. You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behavior.

I feel like writing notes like this sometimes. Not to my wife. To account people. And clients.

Thanks, Al.