A compliment from Uncle Slappy.

Last night I got home late but as if by magic the phone rang the moment I unlocked the last of the seven locks that keep the outside out in the wilds of upper Manhattan. It was, naturally, Uncle Slappy, the only non-fundraiser who actually calls on my home phone.

"So, Mr. Big Schott," he began. (Uncle Slappy begins roughly 40% of all his sentences with the word "so.")

"Passover. It's coming. So what do you want I should bring, besides my kishkas and my weak bladder and Sylvie?"

"Hi, Uncle Slappy. Don't even think of bringing anything. You're coming all the way from Florida."

"Some coconut patties, maybe you'd like?"

We had in the dark recesses of our over-stuffed kitchen cabinets about 12-year's worth of coconut patties.

"No, we're ok in the coconut patty department."

"So, maybe some fruit, dried. A nice package of figs?"

"No, really Uncle Slappy, we're up to our pupicks in figs. Just bring yourselves."

"So the room is finished, no more smelling like Mr. Benjamin Moore's armpit?" We had been painting our spare bedroom last time Slappy and Sylvie were up and our apartment fairly reeked of paint.

"No, Uncle Slappy, your room is shipshape. Copacetic. And all decked out with a new internet radio and a flatscreen."

"So, a Sony Trinitron you got us? Boychick," he said hanging up, "A mensch, you are."

An old man vents.

Tonight I had the great good fortune of going to an awards show and dinner for an award that means something to clients and planners and researchers, but is all but meaningless to me personally and to creatives in general.

But this is not my usual philippic about awards shows.

It's about a bigger problem:

The mix.

Now, I'll admit from the outset that I could give a rat's ass about Lady Gaga or Amy Winehouse or nearly any other contemporary talent. It's nothing against their contemporaryness.  It's just that my tastes--while broad and eclectic, run in different areas. My prerogative.

But tonight the "entertainment" at the awards show was a quartet called "The Midtown Men" whose claim to fame is that they were in the original cast of the "smash Broadway hit" Jersey Boys. So their entertainment consisted of re-warmings of songs from the 50s and 60s, from Frankie Valli to the Mamas and Papas.

I've spent some time thinking about this, I've spent time listening to the originals of the songs the Midtown Men imitated. One thing was clear: You could actually hear the words. And the melody. They were both important. Just not at the same time.

Listen to the Beatles. You can actually hear their poetry.
And Dylan.
And Simon and Garfunkel.
And scores of others.

Much of what I hear, see and read now gets the mix all wrong. Everything is turned up an extra notch so you can hear it. It's all too loud. Too shrill. Too insistent. Further, there is no hierarchy. Everything, every voice, every instrument, every riff is of equal importance. It becomes a melange of all colors...black.

It's like when a client asks you to bold "the important words, phrases or sentences" in a piece of copy. Before long, so many words are bolded, the regular type stands out.

Maybe this is just the venting of an old man who doesn't understand what "the kids today are listening to."

Guilty as charged.

However, that doesn't change what I believe.

When everything is turned up to 11, you can't hear anything.

Bert Sugar, 1936-2012.

There's an obituary worth reading in today's "New York Times," because although it's nominally about Bert Sugar, the boxing writer, it's really about hard-nosed writing that's blunt, tough and without pretense. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/27/sports/bert-sugar-boxing-writer-and-commentator-is-dead-at-74.html?_r=1&hpw

Here are the sentences from the "Times" that I think are most thought-provoking: “In the world of the early 1900s, still awash with Victorian gentility and doily-type embroidery on everything from manners and modes to conversation and conventional heroes,” he wrote to introduce an essay on the great black champion Jack Johnson, “the name of the heavyweight champion stood out in stark relief, a man of swaggering virility who epitomized the turbulent yet proud surety of the populace of a nation destined for greatness.”

In other word, there was bupkis Marquess of Queensberry about Jack Johnson. He was a subtle as a ham-sized fist to the face.

In advertising B.B. (Before Bernbach) and, sadly, today, we are currently "still awash with Victorian gentility and doily-type embroidery on everything from manners and modes to conversation..." Ads, presentations and everything else are tarted up like waterfront hookers. They're painted and laced and full of a frenzy of colors and decorations.

In boxing parlance, they feint and dance but don't hit you. They are cold and empty.

I come from a world where advertising was meant to be stripped down and bare. No pretense and decoration was allowed in.

Today, we've gone back to a more decorous (and decorative) time. And I think by adding things to our craft we have subtracted much.

Like meaning.

George Lois.

Last night, through the good graces of the robots at Amazon and the I heart logisticians of UPS, George Lois' new book "DAMN GOOD ADVICE (for people with talent!) How to Unleash Your Creative Potential by America's Master Communicator" arrived at my apartment. I haven't read it cover to cover as yet--I think Lois is a lot like a very rich cheese cake, you can really only stomach two or three bites at a sitting.

I was never a big fan of Lois' advertising output. As even the title of his book displays, I found his later work too full of forced exclamations and ALL CAPS. Too absolute and borrowed. Also, he seemed to create a helluva lotta ads with people flying through the air.

Nevertheless, no one can take anything away from much of his work and his Esquire covers remain the apotheosis of visual design.

His book is similar in format to Paul Arden's "It's Not How Good You Are, Its How Good You Want to Be: The World's Best Selling Book." And, Phaidon is publisher of both. And like Arden's book, Lois' is breezy and easy to read. Which does not mean it's slight, it means you can take it in, put it down and easily come back to something that provokes you. Like Arden's, Lois' is a bit of a pep talk, done in Lois' "you fuck-head" style.

Years ago I read a book called "The Strangest Man," about the great English physicist Paul Dirac. Like Einstein and other greats, Dirac maxed out at around the age of 26. He did important work after that but his giant bursts of creativity had ended.


The amazing thing about Lois is that you get the feeling reading the book that he hasn't yet burned out. He's been going and going and going for 60 years and could probably still smash you in the face and out work you.


The book cost $9.95 in the States.

When you got it, flaunt it.

Work.

I have written a short thought piece for a client of mine about the tumult ordinary American consumers have gone through since the advent of the Great Recession. In it, as evidence, I inserted a fact: "7 out of 10 of the biggest stock market drops in history have occurred since 2007."

Late last night I got a note from an account person: "Where did you find that statistic."

I did not find that statistic, dear account person. I created it.

I thought.

I worked.

I said to myself, what would illustrate fear and disruption. I answered stock market drops.

Then I googled a list of largest declines.

I went through each one and marked the dates.

Then I saw a pattern.

That's where I "found" the statistic.

I don't know what is wrong with people. I'm often stopped and admired. "You know so many things; how do you do it?"

Well, here's how I do it.

I don't waste my time on stupid sports that eat up your free time. I don't follow Lady Gaga or Kim Kardashian's ass.

I read. I observe. I think.

In the case of interesting facts it is digging.

Not finding. There isn't a magic google button.

I work.

Work is work.

There are no shortcuts.

It happened to me.

Last week I was in focus groups in Dallas. We were using stimulus I had written and were now getting people's reaction to that stimulus.

One person said something I wrote was too upbeat, too happy.

And then a lady said it, "It's too yippee skippy."

That's me in a fucking nutshell.

An afternoon at the Met.

My wife and I spent this lovely Spring day at the Metropolitan Opera in New York seeing Verdi's Macbeth, based, of course on Shakespeare's. After running through Wagner's Ring Cycle over the last couple of years, seeing an opera where you're in and out in about three hours is like watching a sitcom.

But naturally, this was no sitcom. It was wonderful Verdi, wonderful performance and the stirring psychological drama of the Bard.

A tenor called Thomas Hampson sang the title role and at the end of the opera as the cast and conductor were taking their bows, there was a special tribute to Hampson--who was celebrating the 25th anniversary of his debut at the Met.

He thanked all the people who had supported him along the way. But what really got me is when he said, "Most of all, I want to thank my detractors. For making me always try harder."

It was a beautiful afternoon.

Friday in the park with George.

For about the last three decades I have had a Thursday routine. (Occasionally Thursday happens on Friday, as it did this week.) It starts, my routine does, with a half mile walk to my psycho therapist (two words.) And ends with a walk across the park, another half mile to the subway. I do not listen to music during these walks, or walk as so many do so frequently with my nose to the screen of my iPhone. No, I walk and wonder and wander. It's, in all, about a two-hour escape from everything that is around me. A restorative niche. Something I need.

Today, as I walked across the park I saw a talk lanky Puerto Rican shadow boxing amid the blooming dogwoods, the forsythia and hordes of young women about to bring forth new Upper West Siders. I saw dogs cavorting and chasing. Kids of all ages on their way to school. And well-abbed runners ripping across the asphalt.

But mostly I watched, I stopped for a minute and watched the Puerto Rican jabbing at the ether. He danced nimbly and feinted the punches of his invisible opponent. When he turned around I noticed he had white block lettering on the back of his faded black t. His shirt read: Anthony "The Nightmare" Castellano.

His nickname, "The Nightmare," made me think of an agency president I worked with almost two decades ago. If I were a little more clever I would have called him  back in 1993 'Warren "The Nightmare" Dechter.'

Warren was one of the nicest guys I've ever met. He cared for his two daughters--which puts him high in my book. But as an account guy, Warren was a nightmare. I remember once he and I walked down 3rd Avenue together (this was the era when agencies could actually afford office space near their clients.) I was holding a 3/4" tape and said to Warren, "Listen when we present the spots, don't say anything about the mix. I know it's a little hot." Naturally, before the tape was even inserted in the machine Warren said "The mix is a little hot."

He could unsell ice cream in August.

The Nightmare.

Chaos and order.

As I have mentioned, I am reading George Dyson's new opus "Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe." It's a good book if you like reading about geniuses and machines that have fundamentally changed the world. At times, Dyson is over my head and I feel I need a degree in computer science to comprehend him. But it's no different really than reading a Russian novel and keeping all your Ivanoviches straight.

Last night I came upon a bit that really set my wheels turning. It was a statement by Turing and an associate of his, Jack Good. Something they realized when they were working together breaking German codes at Bletchley Park.

Here's the line: "Random search can be more effective than non-random search."

This statement, of course, is anti-podal to the way we expect the world to work. We look for answers--in life and in advertising--in a linear way. We Google, we research methodically, we create under the strictures of timesheets and allocation martinets.

As anyone with a messy closet, desk or unorganized set of bookshelves will tell you, searching--finding things is about getting lost. It's about finding a thread and pulling it until something interesting comes along for the ride.

Creativity, I think, is discovery, not mapping. It's turning blind alleys and dead ends into clear sailing and big sky.

I think it's more like Jackson Pollack (Jack the Dripper) than paint-by-numbers.

In other words more random than ordered.

Etch-a-sketch-vertising.

Earlier today Eric Fehrnstrom, a senior adviser to Mitt Romney, said on CNN “Well, I think you hit a reset button for the fall campaign...Everything changes. It’s almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”

Fehrnstron, and this is unusual for a Republican, got me thinking. I thought about how often clients and agencies act as if their marketing communications can be shaken up and restarted. Wiped out with no trace left behind. Previous campaigns, previous viewers can be erased or lobotomized--wiped clean from our memories.

Of course, despite the way so many of us act, campaigns--even individual components of campaigns--are not so easily expunged. Nevertheless, we too often flit from one to the next simply because a franchisee's wife doesn't like it or we grow tired of it.

Regardless of the dumbing down of our world, our minds are not so easily toyed with. Our messages therefore must be adroit and impactful.

We can't just shake them away.