Modernity.

When I was last on vacation, back in January, I kept a promise to myself to either read or re-read a classic book.

By classic I do not mean something written in the last 30 years.

I mean something writ long ago that will last forever.

In the past, I've read "Don Quixote," "Robinson Crusoe," "Canterbury Tales." "Gilgamesh." Things like that. Things that help demarcate Western thought and civilization.

This past vacation I read Peter Ackroyd's new translation of Thomas Mallory's epic "Le Morte d' Arthur." It was published about 650 years ago and was, in a sense, the "Harry Potter" of its day. In fact, without "Le Morte d'Arthur" chances are there would be no Hogwarts.

Just now I was reading an ad blog or online magazine, I forget which and a new hire was called by his new boss "a modern creative."

I wonder what that means.

No, really.

Modern, when it comes to art, means the period after WWII until about the early 70s. It does not mean contemporary. In fact, Rockefeller's bequest to the Museum of Modern Art prohibits it from becoming a museum of contemporary art.

I read these classics and try to picture myself in the era they were written. Reading them as current works, not antiquities.

I found this line from "Arthur."

When Arthur discovers Gawain dead, he says he is: “face down in the field, fists full of grass.”

Is that not modern because it is 650 years old?

Wrath.

A few weeks ago I heard a talk about a guy who's made a living thinking about the nature of happiness.

Yes, I said happiness.

His name is Brian R. Little and he's a Distinguished Scholar in the Department of Social and Developmental Psychology at the University of Cambridge in, of course, Cambridge, England. Before Cambridge, he plied his cerebral trade at a different Cambridge, the one that is the home of basketball powerhouse Harvard University.

All this to say, Little is a very brainy guy.

There was a lot to the lecture but what stuck most with me with Little's notion of the need of a "restorative niche."

Most people when they extend themselves--either in their work lives or their life lives--exhaust themselves. After making a great effort, there is a equal and opposite reaction. Often that reaction is the need for collapse.

Little calls it the need for a "restorative niche."

Restorative niche.

One of the dopiestier things that's happened in our business is the absolute and complete destruction of restorative niches.

Offices allow no privacy. If you're lucky you might have access to something called a huddle room or some similar--when the last thing you want is a huddle. You want a time out.

Speaking of time outs--the timesheet tyrants have all but eliminated downtown. Make changes to an asinine deck till 2:30 in the morning and you'll still have hell to pay for some timesheet peccadillo. Eeek--your "usability" or billability might be sullied.

I have news for all the asses who treat us like chattel.

We are humans.

We need our Restorative niche.

The joys of advertising.

Yesterday we had to prepare a couple of ads for testing. Like an expensive Swiss watch, the client called exactly on cue--this is after having seen essentially the same ad for about three months.

"Make the call to action larger."

There was no push back from account, their suits as empty as a one-armed paper-hanger's sleeve.

"Make the call to action larger," they harumphed.

Of course, we resisted.

But as the deadline neared we gave in.

We made the type 1/2 a point bigger.

The client was now happy.

The call to action was now 1/144ths of an inch larger.

Titles.

One of the things that has, over the last few decades, fucked the world with a jagged iron rod is the ridiculous names and titles that are today given to jobs that used to be perfectly respectable.

I waited in a stupidly long line at a drug store today only to be surlyized by a cashier who instead of being called a cashier was called a customer specialist.

I am surrounded by people at work who have superfluous words like senior, group, associate and director in their titles--words that are all but meaningless.

I suppose this obfuscation is cheaper than giving people more money. They hand out complicated names instead, hoping they will inspire pride.

Naturally, the most egregious name change is a department-wide one. From personnel to human resources. Most often human resource people aren't human and they have no resources.

Personally, I've had a raft of titles in my life. A few of them teetered on the edge of lofty.

But whenever I'm in a meeting and have to introduce myself I say I'm a copywriter.

 I don't say I'm an Executive Creative Director.

Or I'm a creative.

I write copy.

The paper principle.

Many organizations have been making a concerted effort over the last few years and decades to eliminate paper.

We no longer get paychecks. We can check, but don't, our direct deposits online.

We no longer get memos on our desks when important agency news is announced. People we never talk to send us emails we never open.

Even when we present print ads--which are often read on paper media--we show them on flatscreen monitors, ignoring how dissimilar looking at an ad on-screen is like looking at an ad in a magazine. (So much for our concern with user experience.)

And many of the companies who hold us in their extortionate grip either because they're near-monopolies or because they charge you to leave them, seek to charge us for sending us bills on actual paper.

Further, paper-based institutions reel. The post office is bankrupt, or nearly so, and few newspapers are what used to be called going concerns.

Well, let me say this.

I like paper.

I like my paystub in my hands not on my screen. I like to hold memos in my hand and actually take a moment to read them. I like to see on paper with ink what I am being charged.

The real nail in the paper coffin isn't its lack of utility or its environmental unfriendliness. I don't even think it's its cost relative to pixels. I think paper is a commitment that most people and companies don't like to make. It has a stature. It demands a thoughtfulness. It must stand up to additional scrutiny.

I like paper.

It's simpler.

It's clearer.

It can be held.

It's better than it's digital alternatives.

And I miss it.

A thought during a status meeting.

What's dumber, a bag of rocks or a box of hammers?

My big brother Fred.

My big brother Fred turns 56 today. 56. Which to me, a mere stripling at 54, sounds both old and significantly closer to 60 than I could ever imagine. After all, when Mozart was 56, he was dead for 21 years.

Fred was always the fastest and the brightest of us kids. He was also probably the most linguistically able--he could turn anything into a groan-inducing pun. And he was by far the most argumentative. He's a lawyer, Fred is, and has been for about the last 35 years. All those skills serve him well, though I suspect some of his more austere corporate clients want to throttle him when he makes one of his horrible jokes.

We grew up in an advertising household. My father was a three-martini-fueled skirt-chaser, which would have been ok if he hadn't been so light on his feet as to catch a few dozen of those skirts. It's hard on a marriage skirt-chasing is, but not nearly as hard as skirt-catching.

Fred and I, unlike other kids in the neighborhood, grew up watching the commercials not the shows. But when it came time to choose a career, Fred chose law. And I, instead, chose advertising. Unlike my old man, who had had a number of heart-attacks and a well-honed drinking problem, Fred and I aren't in bad shape. We both run a few times a week and try to stay within spitting distance of our fighting weight, though I've been less successful at that than Fred..

We probably make around the same amount of dough, Fred and I. But he is much smarter about money than I and probably has a lot more.

Fred and I are both sober types, not given to great displays of enthusiasms. Our wives--both of whom are more social than we--regard us, I'm sure as misanthropic or even lugubrious. But that's ok. That's who we are.

Every birthday for about the last 30 years Fred and I call each other. My conversation with him is roughly as it's always been.

"Happy Birthday, Fred."

"It's not my birthday" he lashes. "It's the anniversary of my birth."

That's life with my brother.

Happy birthday, Fred.

Mr. Veal Chop.

For most of my life I've been going to an out of the way restaurant in a secluded corner of Manhattan, under the elevated IRT tracks on the fringe between Morningside Heights and Harlem. For a large portion of that time the neighborhood around the restaurant was downright frightening--scary enough to keep the casual diner away, but now as the neighborhood has bloomed (a la there is a rose in Spanish Harlem), the restaurant's popularity has gone through the roof.

Fortunately, most of the staff know me, and I can almost always get in with only a short wait. One of the advantages of going to a place for over 30 years.

I went this weekend, solo (my wife hates the place) and talked to Gil Altman, the founder and owner of a joint called "Mr. Veal Chop."

Ad Aged:  Tell me about  starting Mr. Veal Chop.

Gil: I woke up one morning in the 60s and realized New York didn't have a really great Veal Chop restaurant. There were places that specialized in Mutton Chops and Lamb Chops but no place that lived and breathed veal chops.

Ad Aged: So, in a sense, you willed yourself to become Mr. Veal Chop.

Gil: That's right. And Mr. Veal Chop became the only place in New York you could get a bucket of veal chops for a reasonable price. We make each veal chop by hand and serve them, proudly by the bucket.

Ad Aged: What's changed over the years?


Gil: Not a lot. Today we still make every chop individually and sell them by the bucket. Now we have original and extra crispy and back in the 80s we added Brussels Sprouts as a side dish, served by the flagon full.


Ad Aged: I think your flagons of sprouts are the best I've ever had. Though sometimes the Brussels Sprouts get trapped in the spout.

Gil: Last year, we added pitchers of Kale as an alternate side. But the demand just wasn't there and we dropped the item. We're testing Swiss Chard as we speak. Would you like a gourd of chard, on the house.


Ad Aged: No, I'm stuffed. I had the hungry-man bucket of veal chops and two flagons of sprouts. Thanks for your time today, Gil. I'll see you soon.

I paid my bill (which has just about quadrupled since I began eating at Mr. Veal Chop) and waddled my way home.

Bad mood Monday.

As people who know me and readers of Ad Aged are aware, nine mornings out of 10, I get in hours before everyone else. Not only is this the time of the day when I think most clearly, it's well before the banal crush of the day-to-day tumbles over me like boulders down a steep escarpment. Morning is the time to get things done without interruption, without oozing account people, without chatter and without incessant, encroaching chazerei.*

Since I've been in the agency business for almost 30 years, people often ask me what's changed. And, undoubtedly plenty has. But, as I like to croon Dooley-Wilson-like, "the fundamental things apply, as time goes by."

There is, and always has been in our industry a subject-object between what people say they're going to do and what they actually do. There is, always has been, always will be a purgatory between the talkers and the doers. Between pontificators and pen-to-paper-ists.

I come in early because I am alive and energetic and eager to "do what needs to be done." I have little regard for those whose attitudes are bigger than their portfolios.
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 *cha·ze·rei

[khah-zuh-rahy; Eng. hah-zuh-rahy] 

noun Yiddish.

anything of little value; junk; garbage.

The importance of being retail.

Years ago there was a giant fruit stand on the West Side, on Broadway between 74th and 75th that was the apotheosis of cantaloupes, apples and the like. In those days, the late 70s and early 80s, there were fruit stands every couple of blocks in Manhattan but nevertheless, Fairway was worth the trip. The fruit was fresher, bigger, better and there was virtually always something, some kind of delicacy you'd never seen before.

Over the years that single Fairway grew and grew. It expanded from its fruity roots to include fish, deli, a butcher, breads, cheeses, olives and grocery. Fairway also opened up in a variety of different city locations. They opened a big store in Harlem on 12th Avenue and 129th Street, they opened in Red Hook, Brooklyn, Douglaston, Queens and even in Stamford, Connecticut. Last summer they opened in my neck of the wood, the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

There's something about a great market that excites me. In a great market they know many of the things great clients and great agency people know. They know how to display their wares attractively, they know how to innovate, they know how to create signage. They know, most of all, how to make shopping fun, convenient and even exciting.

I worked at Bloomingdale's in their advertising department when it was widely considered the most exciting and important store in the world. Those attributes that I listed above applied to Bloomies as well. I've also been to two of the great Bazaars of the world, Khan El Khalili in Cairo and Kapalıçarşı, the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. You get the same rush from those places, as you do from all the various Apple Stores that dot our landscape.

It's stunning to me that most e-commerce sites are anti-septic while most successful retailers are anything but.

I've often thought that the best way to see if a creative is worth hiring is to take a walk with them through a grocery store. If they're excited about products, display and marketing they'll likely be excited about doing interesting work. If they're not energized by the selling of stuff, thank them very much for their time and keep looking for someone who is.


Finally, and the precipitant for this post was this sign I just saw in Fairway. "Our Nuts Are Now Alphabetized."