I hate offsites, part 274.

About six-weeks ago the senior "leadership" of the agency at which I work had an offsite where we spent about ten hours cosigned to a windowless, fluorescent lit room in which we discussed how to make the agency a better place.

I was cynical when we started the session. But now that I've just been forwarded the notes from the session (you know, those words written without context, grammar or sense on 24"x36" over-sized sticky pads)my mood has not improved.

Here are some of the selected gems two-million-dollars worth of compensation came up with that day:

• Remove silos.
• More cohesion.
• Common understanding and plan of where we’re going
• Knowledge and respect (for each other’s roles)
• Purpose/Direction
• More cohesion
• Same page/clear focus
• Improve quality of work/life
• Improve listening, understanding

As Sartre wrote, "everything began to spin and I found myself siting on the ground: I laughed so hard I cried."

What makes New York different.

Today's "To-Do" List.

1. Avoid getting hit by construction cranes falling 27-stories.
2. Kiss three-dozen Irish girls wearing "kiss me" buttons.
3. Vomit on street.
4. Buy major investment bank for 10 cents on the dollar.
5. Tour Iraq while wearing body-armor.
6. Declare the surge a success.
7. Ask my doctor.
8. Worry about a celebrity.
9. Eat tainted food or give a carcinogenic toy to a young child.
10. Over-pay for sex. (Again.)
11. Drink pharmaceutical-tainted water.
12. Cater to a super-delegate.
13. Bail out a billionaire.
14. Warm the Earth.
15. Submit.
16. Obey.
17. Shop for consumer goods I don't need.
18. Buy a house made of emulsified wood-chips for no money down.
19. Be foreclosed.
20. Live with my family of four on $40K/yr.

There are no right angles here.

Kino, the film restorers (kino.com) have just released a four volume set of early German Expressionist movies, which included the 1919 movie, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It's been a long time since I'd seen this movie and I must say I had forgotten how good, raw, original and elemental it is.

The sets had a look that combined Van Gogh, Chagall and Andre Kertesz. The still here is one small example. Next time you think Tim Burton is original, brush up your Caligari. Sometimes you need to go backwards to see something you haven't seen before, tonight I went back 89-years to do so.

What's in a name?

This is a dry-cleaner in NY. Adventurous dry cleaners are one of the last things I need.

Laurel and Hardy and Macbeth,

Yesterday I went out to Brooklyn and saw Patrick Stewart in an innovative production of Macbeth. (Macbeth, for those of you who don't know it, is not a new McDonald's burger.) The production was modern--complete with impressive lighting, videos projections, dissonant sound design and hip-hopping "weird sisters." There was fear, horror, laughter and language. Timeless truths. All in Brooklyn.

Then at home on Turner Classic Movies I watched two Laurel and Hardy essentials. The Music Box in which the boys try to move a piano up a steep flight of steps (yes, the plot is that complicated) and Sons of the Desert, in which the boys try to go to a convention in Chicago.

Yes, Laurel and Hardy are hardly high comedy. But as anyone, even Shakespeare, will tell you there's a lot of comedy in a fat man falling into a fountain. Stan Laurel was a genius. His face, his eyebrows, his mangling of the language ("we're like two peas in a pot") are genius.

I guess there is an advertising point here.

The threesome of Laurel, Hardy and Macbeth are original, real and evocative. They move and touch. Kind of what advertising should do.

Another reason I love New York.

When the subway re-routes, you are forced to take a different path to work. This is a trompe l'oeil I passed this morning on Prince and Mercer, I think.

Buick does it again.

There is a Buick ad on the front page of today's Wall Street Journal a beaming picture of Tiger Woods wearing a ridiculous green apron with a giant Buick logo on it. (Of course, Mr. Logo himself has in his contract that he can't be shown without wearing a Nike emblazoned hat, but the fact that Woods is merely a spokes-shill for any company willing to pay him millions hasn't deterred the "marketers" at either GM or Leo Burnett, Buick's agency.

Does anyone anywhere really believe that Tiger Woods, the Bill Gates of the links, drives a Buick? But that's besides the point I guess.

The headline says, "Win Tiger as your caddy." For some reason the word caddy is italicized, but I can't figure out why. Is it a reference to Cadillac? Or is the notion of Tiger Woods carrying your golf bag so stupendous that Burnett italicized the word to underscore the high-comedy of this concept.

About ten years ago, Buick sold almost one-million cars a year in the US. Today they sell way fewer than 300,000. Most people wouldn't be caught dead in a Buick showroom without their portable oxygen tanks. In other words the brand is wholly irrelevant.
Does anyone believe that linking the brand to Woods will invigorate Buick?

I hearby proclaim this ad campaign and its website www.teeoffwithtiger.com as the winner of Ad Aged's first DUMMY AWARD for meritorious efforts in insulting the intelligence of the public, wasting money and jerking off in public.

A Chai-ku.

That is, a Jewish Haiku...

Some weeks feel like ten,
Never-ending and awful,
Oy oy oy oy oy.

As I got out of bed this morning.

And kissed my $4000/hr. hooker and bid her godspeed , I went into my living room to write this blog. Ah! the lures of the flesh are great, her firmness, her expertise, her...willingness to fulfill my every whim and caprice, BUT I HAVE A BLOG TO WRITE. And as Con Ed used to proclaim in olde New York, "Dig We Must." And so, while young Ashley in the other room bares her soul and her self and beckons me oh so alluringly, I reassert that though for most the spirit is weak but the flesh is willing, that as a Captain of the Blogoshere, the blog must go on, and so it goes. And here it is.

There is yet another new campaign for the world's number two chip maker, AMD. In about the last three years, my count says there have been about five other campaigns. Imagine for a minute how quickly AMD would be buried if Intel's work didn't suck the silicon right off the bone. AMD's new online ad? "As innovative as..." And then a photo slides in of sliced bread! Whoo hoo as WaMu would say.

I have a small bug up my keister about AMD because as an independent contractor I tried to pitch it once. This is the most banal, ham-handed, stooooopid work I've seen since Eliot Spitzer discovered the wire transfer.