Curmudgeonly.

A lot of people of late have taken to calling me a curmudgeon.

I don't like this.

I feel it is today's au courant language.

A politically-correct way of calling someone old and grumpy.

I am not old.

I am not grumpy.

I have run a dozen marathons and can out think and out write and out present nearly anyone out there.

I get frustrated which leads me to vent my spleen at stupidity.

At asking consumers to engage with brands in ways that are more complicated than building in balsa wood a scale model of the "Little Indian Girl" genuine replica cedar canoe complete with reinforcing ribs.

Or in making things that no one will ever see that might win an award but does nothing outside of Madison Avenue's bubble.

I get frustrated when people treat this business as if we make toys not drive sales.

I get frustrated at grand proclamations that are 100% puffery and 0% accountability.

I get frustrated by people who phone it in when something doesn't interest them.

I get frustrated by a lot of things.

Healthy outrage is healthy.

It doesn't mean I hate my life, or my boss, or my agency, or my client, or the industry.

It just means I want to make it and them better.

Fuck perfection.

I'm in the filthiest place on earth, or one of them, LaGuardia airport, on my way west to present some work to some C-level people.

The work has stayed essentially the same for the last six weeks.

But for the last six weeks we have probably permutated two versions of the deck a day, everyday.

We are trying to make it perfect.

With not an extra space between words.

Not a punctuation mark hanging.

Not a participle dangling.

I hate perfection.

I hate the mania, the obsession to scrub something so clean that it's antiseptic.

They say kids today don't have the resistance to illness enjoyed by previous generations because over-protective parents have shielded them from every germ.

I fear that we are doing the same in our business.

In the quest for perfection we are destroying humanity, life, wit and worst, serendipity and surprise.

We have plowed over reality and laid down astroturf.

It might look good but it has no life.

I just looked up "goofs" on IMDB's listing of "Citizen Kane," arguably the greatest movie ever.

I counted 34.

Fuck perfection.

The pizzo.

There's an article in today's "New York Times" about a restauranteur, Vincenzo Conticello, in Italy who's refusing to pay what's known as a "pizzo" to the Mafia.

The pizzo is a protection fee. In Conticello's case, the pizzo runs to tens of thousands of euros. When he refused to pay, some of his customers' cars were damaged. One of his house cats was killed. Arson is another popular tactic. As is murder.

According to the "Daily Telegraph," around 80% of businesses in Italy pay a pizzo. This translates into untold millions of euros in graft.

Contincello is joining a small but growing movement to resist the pizzo. He says, "I know that many prefer to pay the pizzo. But in the long term we become slaves of criminality..."

Naturally, I think some form of pizzo is in effect in our business. Four major holding companies hold 70% of the ad business in New York. Which likely "limits trade, movement, salaries and benefits."

The advertising pizzo also places restraints on your freedom. There are no longer scores of shops to choose from. Instead there are essentially four.

It ain't criminal what the unofficial gang of four are doing. There's no anti-trust legislation in the ad business. And of course, you're "at will." You can quit any time.

But it still feels, at least some days, that we have become slaves to a system.

Reflections on writing and life.

I've been writing Ad Aged for six years now. Except for a few days while on vacation, a few more while chased by the darkest of Black Dogs and most Saturdays and Sundays, I've written every day. In fact, over the past 2,000 or so days, I've managed to write something like 3,500 posts--more than one and a half a day.

That said, it's unusual that I wake up knowing what I want to write. And that's why I love having a blog. I feel the need to write, but don't know what to write about. So, I am forced every morning to think.

That is to think. Really think. To think about what's going on in my world and our industry. To balance that thinking with the consideration of what readers may or may not find interesting. And then to throw all that together and come up with a post.

I suppose if I had a more orderly mind, I could plot out days or even weeks in advance what I want to write about. But I prefer the spontaneity of fear. Of having to face every morning this white rectangle. Of having to type and hoping for the best.

Along the way, I've created a few characters who speak to me when I am up a tree. There's my Uncle Slappy--wise in the way of the world and always ready with a crack or a witticism. And there's the bartender at the Tempus Fugit, another man wise to the world with a view, I think that's jaded but unique. These guys help me. They're almost always there when they're needed.

There's a third guy I think about when I am stuck and though I've never written about him, he spurs me on when I can find no reason to keep on going.

This is a guy called Andre who I played baseball with when I was a precocious teenager.

In those days, say in 1973 when I was 15, I played on a summer league team with mostly college kids. The most gifted of these was a pitcher named Andre. He didn't stick around long enough for us to learn much about him. But what we did learn was pretty frightening.

He had come home from Vietnam without all his faculties intact. He could hardly have a simple conversation--he seemed like a fuse that had already been lit, a temper waiting to explode. However, he had a fastball like Tom Seaver, and that was good enough for us. I would put a small sponge in my mitt when I caught him.

About halfway through our summer season, Andre got arrested and taken away. He had been using heroin and was caught. Another casualty in a world full of horrible casualties.

Five years later, I saw Andre again. I was riding the number one train up to my dorm room and I saw him begging on the subway platform at 50th Street. He looked like a Central Casting homeless man. Still long and thin, but somehow longer and thinner. His hair cascaded around his unshaven face like a waterfall. He had on his fatigues which were filthy and he was begging loudly and aggressively.

It scared me seeing him. I didn't know what to do. I probably should have run out to help him, but he scared me. And what could I do that the Veteran's Administration and Social Services hadn't already tried? Besides I was late for class.

I never saw him again.

But I've thought about him often.

I've thought about the sadness that arrives when someone can no longer fight. When someone has succumbed to the defeats that are all around us. When someone is ruined and without hope.

I think about Andre as I struggle, at times, through my own depression, through the travails of my life and my career. I think about him the way I think about Viktor Frankl.

We are all handed a portion of hell.

How we deal with it makes all the difference.

A heat wave in the Tempus Fugit.

Last night it was as hot in the city as the handles on the gates of Hell. The temperature during the day had risen to the mid-90s. Though the mercury had dropped some when the sun went down, nearly every surface of the city was radiating stored heat. What's more, the exhaust of a million cars and a million more air-conditioners only added to the swelter.

The heat must have awakened Dame Insomnia, because she jostled me from my slumber at around 2:15. I tried ignoring her as I almost always do.

I picked up my book and headed to the living room. Whiskey followed me and curled at my feet as I read a dozen or so pages on America's entry into Vietnam. Those pages didn't tire me. I looked at the clock, it was now 3. Whiskey and I made eye-contact. It was time to face facts. This night would only pass from the welcoming environs of the Tempus Fugit.

I be-leashed Whiskey, grabbed a handful of low-calorie biscuits and we headed north. With ever-watchful eyes and bearing scars, we headed up-town, full of the hazy notion that sleep would someday come unsullied, undiluted, unending.

In just a few minutes, we arrived in the cool of the Tempus Fugit. There was an old oscillating fan on the bar-top. It sat in the place of the large jar of pickled hard-boiled eggs that a few of the regulars, not me, enjoy. I'm not much of a pickled hard-boiled egg guy; I suppose they're delicious. I'm just not ready to take the plunge. Somewhere, perhaps, a hen is thanking me.

As I do, I sat on my usual stool, one in from the end, and Whiskey once again curled at my size 14s. The bartender was out from behind the mahogany like Nijinsky, and was quick with her small wooden bowl filled with icy water.

Back behind the bar he slid over to me a cool Pike's Pale Ale (the ALE that won for YALE) in an eight-ounce juice glass. I've found through more than 40 years of drinking that beer is best served in an eight-ounce glass. You can nurse it along and it doesn't go warm or flat on you. They understand nuance like this at the Tempus Fugit.

"It's nothing, this heat, compared to 1972. In that year, 891 died in New York alone. That's more than died in the Chicago fire and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake combined."

"I was living here then, and I don't even remember that."

"No one remembers anything anymore. We have sensationalized everything. Nothing has any meaning."

"You're running a little gloomy today."

He slid a bowl of salted Spanish peanuts my way. I slid them back his way, saying as I always do "a pound in every nut."

Then he took my glass and refilled it again with cool amber.

"I remember there was a movie theatre up on Broadway and 88th Street in those days. There's a Duane Reade, a Starbucks, a condo and nail salon there now." (Here's what the street looked like in 1971.)

"Ya, the New Yorker," I said. "I used to go there when I was in college at Columbia. They tore it down probably 30 years ago."

"New York isn't worth shit anymore thanks to nail salons, Starbucks, Duane Reades and condos." He wiped the already spotless bar-top ever cleaner with a damp white terry towel.

"You're damned right, I'm gloomy. I'm tired of hearing about the weather. We knew how to handle it before New York got pasteurized. Before they took the impurities out of it. We went to the New Yorker--the air-conditioned New Yorker--they would play Charlie Chaplin movies all day long. $5 would get you in for as long as you wanted to stay. That's how you beat the heat."

"I guess watching Chaplin in "The Gold Rush" would lower your temperature a bit," I said.

"You're darn tootin' it would. Today, the city opens up 'cooling stations' for people without A/C. Today if we had a heatwave like we had back then--today with the cooling stations, ten-thousand would wilt and die. They ought to open up the old movie theatres and play Chaplin."

"The old movie theatres are no more," I said sadly. "Like you said, they've been Duane Readed, and Starbucked, and nail saloned and condo'd."

He filled Whiskey again and me too, with my third Pike's. He stood behind the bar from us, wiping in an efficient circular motion. He had gone laconic on me. Something that had never happened before during all my hours in the Tempus Fugit.

I didn't like seeing him like this--didn't want to leave him like this. But it was time to leave. I pulled two 20s from my wallet--it was clammy with sweat--and placed them on the bar top.

"On me," he said.

And then he smiled. And then he laughed. And then he said, "stay cool."

Whiskey and I walked home along the East River.

Hoping to do just that.

Hoping to stay cool.

The 4th on the water.

My kids have been in for the last couple days, Hannah from all points of the globe (most recently New Zealand) and Sarah with her boyfriend in tow, in from Boston.

My wife got tickets that gained us entrance to Pier 66A, which juts out into the muddy, turbid Hudson from just about 26th Street. The pier itself is on two levels, and because we paid at a higher rate, we were allowed to go topside.

We finally found a small round table near the western-most part of the pier. We were about 20 or 30 yards out into the Hudson and about 150 yards from the southernmost of the four Macy's barges from which fireworks were being launched.

There was an open bar and some runny hummus and we each got a drink and sat down to watch the night darken and the fireworks light up the sky.

Around eight o'clock a fleet of seven NYPD helicopters flew low overhead in a classic V. It looked like something out of "Apocalypse Now" and you could hear people humming Wagner from various other tables. The sun was going out and the lights of the city were coming on, most spectacularly the new Freedom Tower, about three miles south of us was illuminated in three tiers of red, white and blue.

Seven miles north or so, the towers of the George Washington Bridge went on. Then the string of pearls, the illumination of its suspension superstructure. Further down the river, about five miles you could see the green of the Statue of Liberty.

At 8:30 it wasn't yet completely dark, but some towns in New Jersey couldn't wait and their fireworks flaccidly lit their small portion of sky. All the while the massive Macy's barges sat stolidly in the river, each with a Macy*s logo burning bright.

The city seemed to quiet as it neared 9:20 and time for the fireworks. A police boat sped by, its emergency lights flashing a bright blue. And then a Coast Guard zodiac boat. The area around the barges was cordoned off. Boats, there were literally thousands of them were kept about 100 yards away.

New York's police, fire and emergency services departments are probably the best in the world outside of Israel or London. They are supremely efficient and frighteningly paramilitary and they had cordoned off a fair portion of the west side, for safety's sake. There were numerous check points, no bags allowed, and radiation detectors to boot.

At 9:20 the explosions began. Boom! Boom! Boom! Loud, palpable percussions that you could feel in your bones. The sky lit up a variety of colors and the pyrotechnics went on and on. It's astonishing, really, when you see something like we saw how your vocabulary and your cameras fail you. Neither words nor pixels can capture the effect of such an event.

Around 10:00, the whole affair was over and everyone in New York streamed away from the river, toward mid-town and in search of a toilet.

Magically, I found, almost immediately, a gypsy cab and we got the hell out of there without getting our hair too mussed.

That was it.

New York on July 4th.

Uncle Slappy on the Egyptian revolution.

Uncle Slappy called tonight just as the news on PBS was over. I picked up the phone on the second ring. I knew it was Uncle Slappy and I knew he had a good one for me.

"The fancy Puerto Rican anchorman with the mustache said the Egyptian army got him," he began, as usual without even saying hello. "They ousted their President Morty."

I'm used to playing his straight man. The fact is, I actually enjoy it.

"That's President Morsi, Uncle Slappy, not President Morty."

"The last I saw of Morty he was kicked out of the co-op association for stealing paper towels from the clubhouse. The first time, they looked the other way. But when they caught him again, he was gone."

"Time and tide wait for no man, I suppose."

"I'm not quite sure how Morty became president of Egypt, but there you have it. Let me read you the Times' headline: "Army Ousts Egypt's President Morty.

"I wonder" he continued "if they caught him with a roll of bounty."

With that, the old man hung up the phone. And I was left staring at mine.

Golden Retriever paws.

A little over a year ago my wife came home from one of her many trips to California with a bouncing 10-week-old Golden Retriever whom we named Whiskey.

We had no idea how big Whiskey would get. While her parents were large, she was the "runt" of the litter--the smallest of the dozen or so of her brothers and sisters.

Maybe it's a unique feature of Manhattan living, maybe it's the magnetism of a puppy, but as we walked Whiskey in those early months, we would often be stopped by dog-lovers, experts and a variety of commentators.

It wasn't unusual for us to be stopped on the corner of, say, 83rd Street and hear someone say "look at those paws, she's going to be big." And then be stopped on the corner of 82nd Street and hear someone say, "look at those paws, she's going to be petite."

My point, of course, has nothing to do with Golden Retrievers.

It's twofold.

1. Everyone always acts the expert.
2. People are usually wrong about 50% of the time.

I think that holds for Golden Retriever paws.

I know it holds for advertising.

Death at an early age.

I've been working in the industry since 1984, at major agencies, for major creative directors, on major clients.

During those 29 years I've earned applause--actually hand-clapping--maybe three times. Each time, it was pre-cursor to a painful death.

The last time before this time was back in the 90s. We were pitching an account that, if won, would have brought Ally & Gargano back to respectability. It had been one of the great agencies of all time and winning this account would have given it the opportunity to be great again on a national stage.

My partner and I worked all weekend long and came up with something we knew was good. We presented it to about 15 people at an internal meeting Monday morning. To a man, they stood and applauded.

Over the next six weeks of the pitch, that work was picked at and emasculated. Finally, just a week before the client presentation, I ripped the tissue off the wall, crumbled it up and threw it at the Chief Creative Officer.

I remember what I said to him like it was yesterday. "You want it dead, it's dead."

The same has happened recently. A client screamed after I presented a campaign, "I love it. We have to do this."

Since that point, six weeks ago, advertising cadaver-ists have stormed in. They are the most thorough type of surgeons. Armed with razor sharp implements of torture, they've had their way with the work.

Removing real. Removing grit. Removing truth. Removing humor.

The campaign is now cardboard thin.

An embarrassment.

We are showing it to the big boss in a week, only because he saw it before and liked it. We have an obligation.

But the destroyer-gnomes who never liked it (they exist at both clients and agencies) have gnawed it into nothingness.

So much for applause.

Black Dog Monday.

I don't feel like writing today.

In fact, prolific as I am, there are many days I don't feel like it. I either can't think of anything to write. Or, more often, I am in such an abyss of a mood that I feel like crawling under my metaphorical rock and shielding myself until such time that I can emerge.

Most days, I write through my lethargy and/or anger. I'm a stupidly committed type of person, and I'm afraid that the few readers I do have would disappear if I stopped writing so assiduously. Rich Siegel over at Round Seventeen is taking a full week off. I have never been able to do that.

Today I'm in a shitty mood.

Shitty because for the past ten weeks everyone has been telling me "it's my pool." And then they go ahead and piss in it. There ain't enough chlorine in the world to make it mine again. I'll be looking elsewhere to swim.

Along the way we've subjected ourselves to literally two client "check-ins" a week. Two opportunities for them to express disdain, to show their pusillanimity, to make things worse. Today this buggery is called "working together," or "partnering" with clients. It's supposed to be good.

We have also constructed an elaborate schedule of about two agency check-ins a week. No good ever comes from people who say "we're just trying to make this better."

I can think of no creative pursuit worth its salt (I am not talking Hollywood movies which are an industrial product) that allows itself this sort of gestation.

Last night I saw Shakespeare's "The Comedy of Errors," via New York's Public Theatre, outdoors in the Delacorte Theatre in New York's Central Park. It's as about as dumb a play as you will find anywhere. A pure conceit with two sets of twins not realizing the other set are alive and in the same small city. There's canoodling, merry mix-ups, dull-witted jailers and pompous Dukes.

In all, it's about the level of the old Patty Duke TV show where Patty Duke plays both herself and her identical cousin Cathy. Hijinx abound.

No point here today, except that some days it's harder than others.

Somedays you wish all the people who were telling you that they care about what you think didn't really mean "we don't give a rat's ass for your talent and experience. We want to get our grips on this work and make it ours."

Somedays I handle the bullshit better than others.

Today isn't one of those days.