Marathoners and sprinters.

From about the age of 20 until I hit 45 and various parts of my body gave out on me, I was a fairly accomplished long distance runner.

During that time, I had run 12 marathons, 11 in New York and one in Philadelphia and was consistently running upwards of 40 miles a week. I could run, seemingly all day, at a 7:30 pace. And while this wouldn't count for much among the Tarahumarra or the Masai, for a Jewish New Yorker with Jewish New York adipose, it was quite an accomplishment. I had made myself into a long distance runner.

Long distance running skills are of great use if you're in advertising. Most goals are accomplished only after long days, nights and weeks of hard work. The mere showing around of work--what many people call a 'road show,' can occupy weeks at a time. 

It pays when facing situations like these to do what distance runners do. Drop your hands low to open up your lungs, stand up straight, moderate your pace and chug along relentlessly, come what may. That's how you survive the long haul.

However, every so often a different sort of situation arises. Work is due to the client in 48 hours and we have to be finished and shipped and on the air in four weeks.

In other words, a sprint.

In these circumstances, you keep your head down, you pump your arms hard and you move like a missile. Anything that gets in your way, you knock over. Nothing slows you down.

The best ad people are distance runners with sprinters speed. People who can adjust their wiring to the pace demanded by the circumstances.

Long and loping.

Or short and fast.

They each have their place.

Uncle Slappy cures my cold.

I've worked basically every day since the New Year, having added to the usual crush of my daily work routine, the production and finishing of six new commercials on a very tight timeline.

Yesterday morning we shipped three of the spots and by yesterday afternoon a chest cold had begun to overtake my ox-like constitution. This morning it was even worse.

Uncle Slappy called and I told him I was coming down with something. As usual, he had some salient advice for me.

"Back in the old country," he began, "we knew how to handle the flu."

I didn't remind him that the Spanish Influenza epidemic had wiped out millions world-wide less than a century ago.

"Fill up the bathtub," he continued, "with 100 pounds of ice. Frozen ice. And get in naked up to your neck. Wear only your astrakhan hat on your head and sit buried in ice.

"Then, when you are almost fully submerged in the ice, have your wife bring you a 12-ounce glass. Half lemon juice/half tabasco sauce mixed and served piping hot."

"That sounds awful," I interjected.

"Finally, under each arm--right in your armpits, place two bay-leaves and a two cinnamon sticks.

"Then sit there for an hour or until the ice is fully melted, whichever comes first."

"That will cure my cold?" I asked.

"No," the old man replied, "but you'll forget about it for a while."

Aspirations.

Young people often send me notes, LinkedIn invitations and the like.

In these they describe themselves as "an aspiring copywriter." Or "an aspiring art director."

Since both my daughters are "aspiring ____________s," I've been thinking lately about the word aspiring.

Some people think it simply means hopeful, as in "I hope to be in advertising someday."

And because of that many people think aspirations are the domain, therefore, of the young.

But aspirations are all those things all of us hope to accomplish.

Aspirations are about ambitions.

About striving.

Even about soaring.

I've been working for 33 years.

I'm 55 years old.

I've led agencies, accounts and clients.

I'm heavily titled.

But I got that way because I'm still an aspiring copywriter.

About abbreviations.

When I was an ACD, I saw the resume of a fellow ACD who abbreviated her title "Ass. Creative Director."

I vowed never to be an Ass. Creative Director.

Just today I saw an online quip: "I always thought ECD stood for Extra Creative Director."

There are a lot of Extra Creative Directors in our business.

They don't do.

They review.

They're usually first to second guess.

When the going gets tough they're usually gone.

My point isn't to blast them.

My point is to urge you to look inside your title and the work you do.

Are you intrinsic?

Does your work matter?

Do you create work that makes a difference?

Regardless of your title, don't be an ass or an extra.

Underground art.

Art, like laughter, love and lunacy, is where you find it.

I took this picture this morning as I entered the #6 Lexington line (downtown) at 77th and Lex.

"The Lady in Gold" is in residence at Ronald Lauder's Neue Gallerie, just nine blocks further uptown.

Storms.

My younger daughter, Hannah, is 21. Ever since she was a little kid she's had a strong will and a mind of her own.

Like over-protective parents everywhere, we would strap her into her stroller, but Hannah would find a way to wriggle out. She did not then and does not now like being tied down.

For the next few months she'll be studying marine biology--and whatever else strikes her fancy--at Auckland University in New Zealand. But first she's spending a few weeks in a place called Roratonga, the capitol of the Cook Islands.

She wrote to me last night, a little worried, because a storm named Garry, which threatens to turn into a cyclone is bearing down on the island. In 2010, the island was devastated by Cyclone Pat, and five years before that, in 2005, Cyclone Meena met and damaged the island.

I'm not worried about Hannah facing down Garry.

Hannah has always been a breathtakingly level-headed person, mature and wise beyond her years. She will find high-ground and a building with a deep foundation. She will hunker down and withstand the winds. She knows that storms come and go. How you handle them is how you handle life.

Storms, whether they are meteorological, political, work related, or interpersonal are part of life. Some people seek to avoid storms, some just hope they never come. A few, like Hannah, will prepare and prepare properly.

They will let the winds and the debris do their stuff.

When it blows over, they will emerge from their safe place.

Stronger.

Steve Hayden.

Last night there was a ceremony in New York held in a grand old bank building, honoring five men by inducting them in the One Club's Advertising Hall of Fame.

I went which is unusual for me.

I usually shun socializing.

And an event such of this, I guessed, would be just the kind of affair I usually avoid.

Still, I was invited as a friend of Steve Hayden.

And Steve Hayden did more for me than any other man in my life, perhaps including my father.

Steve was introduced by former Ogilvy Chairman Shelly Lazarus.

Shelly made this post easy for me to write.

She summed up an essential part of Steve's greatness in a sentence.

He always gave credit to others and he made the people around him better.

Steve taught me confidence.

He taught me persistence.

He taught me patience.

I had the best years of my career at Ogilvy, under Steve's tutelage.

I had someone in a high place who gave a shit about my career.

This post was written quickly and is not a fitting tribute to Steve.

I'm not good enough a writer to write that tribute.

All I can say is, like a few hundred other people at the induction last night, I love Steve Hayden.

And thank you.

A meeting.

A friend from afar writes:

We just got off the blower with a client. Our big assignment for 2013 is to do a raft of about ten commercials, come up with a new campaign line, a new website, a host of banner ads and more.

"We want ten commercials, the client said. One for each of the products in our product line, two dealer spots and two brand spots."

That seemed clear to me. My client sells plastic wrap and they're in intensely competitive marketplace.

Then our ECD piped in.

"I know you want ten commercials," he conceded. "But they shouldn't look like commercials."

"Of course not," stammered the client.

The ECD galloped ahead. "And the tagline. Well, it shouldn't sound like a tagline. It should capture the emotion of what we do as opposed to saying what we do.

"The same goes with the website. It can't look like a website."

"Naturally," said the client.

My ECD continued: "I mean it will have navigation and scrolling and deep information. But it can't look and feel like a site. And the banners too. Make them feel native.

"We're not looking for a big idea, either. Big ideas get in the way of making things. Let's look for a way to make something that's important to the consumer."

The client was nodding.

And I left the room wondering what any of this had to do with plastic wrap.

Uncle Slappy and the hat.

Uncle Slappy called this morning from Boca. He must of heard on one of the news programs he listens to constantly on the radio, that it was cold in New York.  Colder than it's been for some time, with the temperatures in the low 20s fahrenheit.

Slappy was worried I'd be cold. And he wanted to make sure that I'd wear the great grey Astrakhan hat that he had bought me for my 55th birthday.

"Your Russian hat I bought you, today you'll be wearing it?" He jumbled.

I had complained to him a couple weeks ago that with the absence of really cold winter weather the Astrakhan was laying fallow.

"It's on now," I told him. "I put it on when I walked Whiskey.

"Those hats saved the world. The Russians turned back the Nazis wearing hats like yours."

"I've seen the pictures, Uncle Slappy."

It drives Slappy crazy when people go out in the cold without a hat. The complete illogic of it fries his still active brain.

"So it's cold, cold enough to wear the hat?"

"Well, it's not the Siege of Leningrad," I answered "but for New York in the age of global warming, it's plenty cold."

"Let me know how you survive. Drop me a line when you get in."

I promised I would:

Uncle Slappy, my head was positively toasty. Thank you.

Perspective.

There are people, and sometimes I'm one of them, who proclaim loudly and often that the world is going to hell in a hand-basket.

Watching Barack Obama inaugurated for the second time belies the notion that everything in America and the world is getting worse.

In fact, there was an obituary in today's "Times" of a guy called James A. Hood, who died on Thursday at the age of 70. (Obama is 52.)

49 years ago, in other words, in President Obama's lifetime, Hood sought to become one of the first blacks to pursue a degree at the University of Alabama.

Alabama Governor George Wallace, who carried five states and received almost 10 million votes when he ran for President in 1968, tried to block Hood's entry into the public university. John F. Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard, and Hood entered the school. The next day,
Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers (whose widow gave the invocation at today's inauguration) was shot to death in Mississippi.

Hood was able to last just a few months before he left the university "to avoid a complete mental and physical breakdown."

This is all recent history.

49 years ago a fellow student sent Hood a dead black cat in the mail.

And now we have an African-American as President.