Lying to the world.

A lot of the commercials that seem to be running during the coverage of the Olympic games from Sochi seem to be predicated on ridiculous, stupefying and tremendous lies.

There's the one from Tyson poultry that hopes you forget the vivid imagery of thousands of chickens being factory-raised, factory-abused and factory-slaughtered. Nope, we're the friendly chicken people.

There's the one from United Airlines that shows Olympians in their skin-tight armor gliding effortlessly into their comfortable seats, all to the glorious strains of Gershwin. There's nothing about having your gonads crushed in about as much space as the aforementioned poultry is allotted.

Perhaps worst of all is the Citibank story of some skier who decides, for whatever inexplicable reason, to pay his bills via smart phone just as he's about to descend thousands of feet at 70 miles per hour. This is about as realistic, once again, as  the happy chickens above.

I guess these three ads all come from the same place and the same thinking. That is, if you paste enough smiles on people and lie persistently enough and with enough money behind your asinine blandishments, people will come to believe them. Dumbing down is in fine-fettle in all three of these ads. Smiles have replaced facts and, as in monkey see, monkey do, if we see someone on TV smiling, why there's nothing else for us to do but smile ourselves.

According to these three spots and dozens and dozens like them, the consumer is a moron and therefore is treated as such. It's all part of yet another pernicious advertising trend--likeability. That is, if our brand is happy and smiley, people will like us and if they like us, they'll buy us.

Personally, I am more than a little sick of likeability. I'd rather a dose or two of brainability.

I'd like to hear that Tyson chickens aren't conduits for e-coli, that they've been raised and slaughtered as humanely as you can do such things. I'd like to hear that their workers make a living wage.

I'd like to hear from United that their seats aren't busted, that their planes are staffed by people who aren't disciples of Adolph Eichmann and maybe that they have more than one toilet per 300 passengers.

And I'd like to hear from Citibank that they're sorry for destroying the US economy and they won't do it again, or at least until the next time.

As an industry, we are like fast-food restaurants. The crap we produced is fortified with the pink slime of likeability.

It tastes bad.

It's bad for you.

And it's killing us all.

Uncle Slappy has root canal.

Uncle Slappy just called and it worried me. He was slurring his words, never a good sign from an 86-year-old.

"I had to have," he told me "emergency root canal. It hurt worse than child birth."

"Uncle Slappy," I admonished, "you and Aunt Sylvie have no children. How can you compare anything to the pain of child birth?"

The old man got defensive.

"Believe me," he answered "I know pain. You don't get to be 86-years-old without becoming an expert in pain. I know all sorts of pain. Heart ache, and headache, and stomach ache, and back ache, and front ache, and foot ache, and knee ache, and shoulder ache, and elbow ache, and pupik ache. I have aches in places I don't even have places--psychic aches. If child birth felt like my mouth, there wouldn't be seven-billion people in the world."

The old man had a point. People willingly have children but nobody opts in to a root canal.

"So how are you feeling now? Are you better?"

"My mouth you could poke with a shish-kebob skewer and I wouldn't feel a thing. I'm as numb as a statue. Vicodin they gave me and some anti-ballistics. So alright I'll be in a bit."

"Well thank god you found a dentist working on a Saturday."

"Not a dentist," he corrected, "a fancy-schmancy endodentist."

"Endodontist," I said.

"When I was a boy, now then did we have a dentist. The worst dentist in all of Philadelphia was what we could afford since two dimes we didn't have to rub together."

"The worst dentist?"

"Thumbs Salzman. We called him Thumbs because dropping things he always was in your mouth. Once on the little pointy poker I almost choked to death. He speared my uvula like Moby Dick."

"That sounds absolutely horrific."

"Well, it was no picnic. But today with Dentist Mort Gershman, he was like a Maestro in my mouth, the Maven of the molar."

"I thought you said the ordeal was painful."

"The endodentisting, that hurt," the old man said. "But the real pain came later."

"When the novocaine wore off?" I asked.

"No," he said, pausing for the punchline. "When I got the bill."

And with that, he hung up the Ameche.

Ralph Kiner, 1922-2014.

A piece of my childhood died yesterday in the form of a strapping home-run-hitter and baseball raconteur Ralph Kiner.

Kiner, who played for the perennially horrible Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago Cubs, began his baseball playing career in the late 40s and ended it only ten years later when chronic back pain disabled him. Though he played only a short time, he led the National League in home runs seven times and was seventh on the all-time list (ahead of the great DiMaggio) when he retired with 369 round-trippers. Mays never hit as many home runs in a season, neither did Aaron, or Banks, or Musial or Matthews.

That said, as a child of the 60s and 70s, I was introduced to Kiner when he was an announcer for the Mets--a job he held from their inception in 1962 and continued at least sporadically through last season. He also hosted a cheesy post-game show where he'd talk about the game with a notable Met (there's an oxymoron) called Kiner's Korner.

I never liked Kiner as an announcer. He was, in the parlance of baseball journalism, a "homer," meaning that he rooted for, while he was announcing, the Mets. I guess I always believed an announcer should behave more like a journalist and be impartial. My point of view, of course, was a minority one. People loved hearing from Kiner and his "kolleagues," that the Mets could claw back an win a game where they trailed by six runs in the eighth with Felix Milan coming to the plate.

Kiner also rubbed me the wrong way because he often seemed to be drunk while announcing games and while hosting Kiner's Korner. He slurred his words and slaughtered the English language. Some baseball announcers (and players, and managers) do this in an endearing way. For instance, I was cool with Dizzy Dean saying something like "He slud into second," but I always looked at Kiner, perhaps uncharitably, as a sloppy sot.

In any event, Kiner being something of a New York fixture, his obituary quickly made the rounds in New York's three major daily newspapers. All the obits I've read, and I've read many, remarked on Kiner's gift of malaprop.

Whether these malaprops were the product of a naturally addlepated brain, or one muddled by drink, I don't know. But my policy has always been, never look a gift malaprop in the moth.

• All of his saves have come in relief appearances.
• All of the Mets road wins against the Dodgers this year occurred at Dodger Stadium.
• Darryl Strawberry has been voted to the Hall of Fame five years in a row.
• Hello, everybody. Welcome to Kiner's Korner. This is....uh. I'm...uh.
• He's going to be out of action the rest of his career." 
• If Casey Stengel were alive today, he'd be spinning in his grave."
• I think one of the most difficult things for anyone who's played baseball is to accept the fact that maybe the players today are playing just as well as ever."
• Jose DeLeon on his career has seventy-three wins and one-hundred and five rbi's.
• Kevin McReynolds stops at third and he scores
• On Fathers Day, we again wish you all happy birthday.
• Solo homers usually come with no one on base.
• Sutton lost thirteen games in a row without winning a ballgame.
• The hall of fame ceremonies are on the thirty-first and thirty-second of July.
• The Mets have gotten their leadoff batter on only once this inning.
• The reason the Mets have played so well at Shea this year is they have the best home record in baseball.
• There's a lot of heredity in that family.
• Tony Gwynn was named player of the year for April.

Shaw in the Tempus Fugit.

The New Year has hardly begun yet already this winter we have had three or five “storms of the century.” Last night we had another one and its freezing rain against my bedroom window wrest me from my slumber.

Whiskey, my 22-month-old golden retriever was similarly disturbed, and before long, the two of us, like Damon and Pythias were heading up town, through the slush, sleet and ice, to the Tempus Fugit.

I had once heard somewhere that the iceberg that damaged the Titanic, causing it to sink is still floating around the Arctic. I think of the Tempus Fugit in a similar vein. It has and it will survive the passage of time, the assaults of winds, seas and storms as well as the calumny of man. I’m sure, and I’m not being particularly lugubrious here, that the Tempus Fugit will long outlast me.

The fact is, the Tempus Fugit, in our increasingly ephemeral world, has survived longer than is its right. It opened first in 1924--90 years ago, and has had a light on in its proverbial window since that time, never closing its doors, not for holidays, nor tragedies like the death of FDR or JFK and not even during the Biblical power-outages New York sustained in 1965 and 1977. 

This stalwart demeanor is one reason I keep coming back to the place. It's nice to know that in a world where businesses, restaurants and bars come and go with the frequency of a firefly's light, the Tempus Fugit is something you can count on. No matter what my mood, no matter what's happened during the day, no matter what sturm und drang I am going through, I will be greeted by the bartender with a warm hello and a cold Pike's Ale.

Whiskey and I arrived at the Tempus Fugit more than a little worse for wear. Though I had on my three-quarter-length oilskin, welted boots and my grey Russian Astrakhan hat, and though Whiskey, being a golden retriever, is all but impervious to the elements, we each looked like a survivor of the aforementioned Titanic. We were fairly soaked through.

"You look like a man in need of a Pike's," the bartender offered, pulling a glass for me.

"A Pike's and maybe a towel." 

He reached beneath the bar and gave me a small white terry. I dried my face and hands and, too, gave Whiskey a once over with the towel, drying particularly her head and snout. She showed her appreciation by licking my hand graciously and laying down once again at my feet to sleep.

"How are things with your heart?" he began.

I answered as I usually do. "I had been getting better. But I am once again feeling the affects or incipient pericarditis. Not enough for me to call my cardiologist. But enough to foul up my mood."

He polished the shiny teak of the bar. He thought about presenting me with a small wooden bowl of Spanish peanuts, but hearing of my pain, he demurred.

"You don't need heart pain to put you in a mood," he surmised. "What's called a foul mood by some, I happen to call realism."

"As in," I answered, "the power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those who haven't got it."

"Shaw, I suppose."

"Who else?"

"Speaking of Shaw, I think you should try to be more like Man, and less like Superman."

"Relax is what you're saying. And this from a man whose bar never closes."

He laughed at that.

"Like you, I too am an unreasonable man."

"A man upon whom all progress depends."

He laughed again at that and for the third time pulled me another Pike's. He slid it over to me but kept his catcher's mitt gripping the glass.

"What you have to do," he whispered, "is let go. The stupidities, the pomposities, the bluster, the bullshit, the slights, the morons, the thieves, the poseurs, the do-nothings, the no-shows, the advice-givers, the takers. Let go of the liars, the half-truthers, the know-nothings, the politicians, the glad-handers, the self-promoters, the tearer-downers, the short-cutters, the glib, the dishonest, the reprobates, the scoundrels, the weasels, the rogues and the rascals. You have to let go," he said, letting go of the glass.

"Let go," I echoed.

"Otherwise." He paused the length of an elevator ride. "Otherwise. Heart ache."

I drained my Pike's and let two twenties go across the bar. He rang open the ancient cash register, making a show of accepting my bills, but then shoved shut the cash drawer and pushed them back my way.

"On me."

Whiskey and I walked home, once again, through the slush.

An Empire of Illusion.

The world of advertising has turned into an Empire of Illusion, where nothing makes sense.

• People who create work get paid less than people who pontificate about the work.
• People who create work are out-numbered by people who monitor the work, measure the work and monkey around with the work.
• Work that doesn't run wins more awards than work that does.
• Showing product benefits or prices is beneath us.
• We spend more time meeting than creating.
• It takes more work/hours to create a social media campaign than a television campaign.
• Our only contact with upper-management usually is prompted by missing timesheets.
• Agencies stop getting paid when they produce actual work. They continue to get paid while creating decks.
• Most agencies have gone open-plan, though it's been shown to decrease productivity.
• We spend more time on decks than on creative.
• We spend more time in meetings than on creative.
• Type breaks, leading and kerning no longer matter. Our "design" is responsive.

90% owned.

My account guy stopped by my table last night. (I call them tables, because frankly, they're too cheap to be considered desks. There's not a single drawer for your valuables, nothing but a $29 file cabinet underneath so you have something to bang your knee on.)

Anyway, I digress.

My account guy stopped by last night, glowing. He had bull-dogged his way through our client and gotten our 2014 scope of work signed. This is a bigger accomplishment than producing a spot and winning a gold pencil for it. It's more important, too. Because it means we will be paid.

Speaking of paid, he told me, and I quote "I'm 90% owned by the client."

To which I declared, "I thought slavery was abolished in 1863 by the Emancipation Proclamation." But apparently it wasn't. Because I am 90% owned.

I understand the employment security that comes from being 90% owned. I am not vulnerable to the caprices and the aggressive ageism of my agency. To them I might be one of the last old guys standing, but my salary and mark up are paid for, so, chances are, they'll leave me be until I'm not 90% owned.

Still, I don't like the concept of being owned.

The slavery-esq nomenclature.

I don't like being bought.

At the very least, tell me they bought not me, but my work time.

That takes the sting off it a bit.

State of the industry.

Something has gone terribly wrong in our business. And by "our business," I am not discriminating between those of us who create TV commercials and those of us who create sponsored tweets.

We no longer make a product people want.

We interrupt--but we don't delight, inform, entertain. We take, but we don't give anything in return. We are the assault and battery of communications, we are the abusive husband of marketing. We are brutal and demanding, always asking for more and returning less.

First, I think, is the notion that copy is an anathema. Frankly, my mind wandered during those :60 second spots that told you nothing, including who's paying for them, for :50 seconds. Believe it or not, though we are crushed daily by thousands of pieces of marketing shit, none of them provide anything useful. We hope our likeability is enough to make us attractive. I happen to think people want information and reasons why.

Second, we appeal only to the lowest common denominator. Surely, much of the world has gone dumb. But there are some people who haven't. Yet, we forget about them. We assume that meaningless tidbits of bullshit, that is, "engagement," is what people want. I think people hunger for something more. But we have USA Today'd communications. We have reduced everything to the equivalent of a puerile info-graphic.

Third, we are like over-eaters at the Golden Corral's endless buffet. We routinely have commercial pods with a dozen or more :30s in it. It's too much. The value of programming isn't worth the cost you have to pay in the commercials watched. The networks and channels are killing themselves as well as agencies with their greed.

In short, we have dumbed down and over-retouched our work so it's beautiful to look at but nutritionally empty. Then we air it amid dozens of other similar spots. Then we wonder why none of it is effective.

We need to go back to Bill Bernbach or Carl Ally.

We need to impart useful consumer information in an executionally brilliant way.

We need to inform. Not just entertain.

And we need to be judicious.

Does a bank really need to send out a post on lemonade?

Something has gone terribly wrong in our business.

We are building Edsels.

And then wondering why no one values us.

Four minutes and 19 seconds of your time.

I came upon this today. Way more important than anything else I did.

Thoughts on XLVII or something like that.

As far as football itself goes, Super Bowl XLVII or whatever Roman numeral it was, was a bust. I'd say the same for the commercials too.

I'll admit, I dislike football. I also disliked watching on Fox. If any company was ever deserving of being boycotted, Fox is at the top of the list. Their lies, their smearing, their deceptions, their denial of two of the central facts of our time--evolution and climate change--make them eminently shunnable. But this is America. We stick to our principles as long as no inconvenience is involved.

In any event, against my better angels, I turned the game on about a minute after the opening kickoff, just in time to see the Seahawks score a safety. But I was there primarily for the commercials and the community. This is one thing, it seems, that all Americans were tuned into--a shared event in our atomized world.

I'll also admit, I could bear the game no more and turned off, commercials or not, at the end of the third quarter and I went to read the 600 page biography I am slogging through on the Duke of Wellington. No commercials allowed.

One thing I noticed about the spots is how YouTube has changed our attention spans. There were plenty of commercials that were beautiful pastiches for 45-55 seconds, only to reveal a logo at the conclusion. This is supposed to make a spot a brand spot, when it is lofty, beautiful and non-selly. But such spots bored me. Tell me what you're about and tell me about your product.

Even Chrysler's Dylan spot bored me. It was ok and certainly grand, but man, you sullied Bob Dylan with your axe-grinding Americanism, and I don't really appreciate that. The Bud spot with returning vets made me sick. More false patriotism. I'd rather hear that a dime from every Bud sold went to find a cure for PTSD than more tear-jerking American-ness.

Virtually nothing else got me. Somethings, like Oikos and Butterfinger and I suppose if I plumbed my memory made me hate the brands more than I already do.

I also think that, hopefully, this year is the last year that commercials are released before the game. This is like having sex before the first date. Nothing to look forward to. An otherwise decent effort by VW (decent, not great, not particularly funny) had the air let out of it because I knew what was coming. Their spot was a one liner. It only works once. Take my spot, please.

That's it for me.

A lousy game. Mostly mediocre spots.

This will change everything.

I sat in one of those agency meetings yesterday and watched and listened to a lot of earnest young people who have no sense of history.

A sense of history gives you perspective on how the world works, how people generally think about the future and vanity of human wishes.

In this meeting a painting was painted. People would no longer work for big corporations--big corporations, after all, will have gone, in the future belly-up, primarily because they are big. Young people will be satisfied working around the clock and sleeping under their desks because, well, they're working to change the world. They will spend their days making amazing apps and turning down $4 billion buy-out offers because their drive and principles are unsullied and untainted by silly things like reward and money.

We will live on organic food, we will reverse global warming and of course wars, hunger, disease will vanish in a single stroke of nirvanaization.

Every generation has balanced an apocalyptic view of the future (perhaps a Malthusian view) with a Utopian view. I suppose my father sat in agency meetings half-a-century ago and listened to putative beatniks blather on about flying cars and the robotic home.

Let's take a breath. Let's take a step back. Let's have a sip of seltzer.

Change is good and I'm all for it.

I do hope the world can be a better place. That peace and love will prevail, and I will spend my waning years tiptoeing through the tulips and eating no cholesterol no carb pastrami sandwiches from Katz's which will instead of making me fatter will magically make me thinner.

History says differently.

Somethings will, in the future, get better. My guess is that some Israeli will figure out a way to cheaply desalinate ocean water. Some Stanford 21-year-old will devise an app that reverses global warming. We will find a way to grow more food and curb our exploding population.

But many things will, in the future, get worse. New problems I can't even conceive of will arise. Regional and religious hatreds will continue to slaughter innocents. Perhaps the NRA will prevail and say that the right to bear arms means each of us can carry around a nuclear device.

My point is, almost as always, moderation, please.

Change, even though when we're in it seems enormous, should be looked at historically. We should try to view the world through a 50-year-lens, not a 15-minute one.

Let's take a pill.

And gain some perspective.