Wise.

One of the toughest things so far about being without a job, is how many people tell are apt to tell me how "wise" I am.

"You are the wise man of advertising," they tell me.

"You bring such wisdom and insight to every problem."

"You're so wise, any agency would be fortunate to have you."

If I can put aside my preternatural self-deprecation for a minute or two, I'd say all of the quotations above are true.

I have experience.

I have distance.

I am measured and intelligent.

And these are, unfortunately, exactly the qualities most agencies DON'T value today.

If you're unconvinced, just look at Ogilvy's new "E*Trade" work.  It's such an affront to all five senses that it makes me wish I had more than five senses so those too could be appalled.

My friend and ex-producer from Ally & Gargano posted this spot on his Facebook feed last week. I can't help thinking it would be a breakthrough spot today like it was forty years ago. It doesn't scream, there are no pyrotechnics. Nothing really but a good actor and a great script.
Pan Am spot

It swims against the tide the same way "And God Made a Farmer," did. It's different, the same way Google's "Dear Sophie" is.

Yet most work we see reminds me of fire engines speeding to a conflagration. Who can be the loudest. To the point where most people respond no longer to the noise.

The Pan Am spot understands the life, the hopes, the fears and the dreams of its customers. We could muck it up by dissecting it with today words like "insight," and "empathy." But if you think of it as a letter from an older, wiser brother to a younger, more cautious one, you get it.

It saddens me that I am wise in an industry that favors glib.

Cook's.

When I was a kid, there was a restaurant in my neighborhood called "Cook's." Cook's was a big barn of a place that had a peaked room, the highest point of which was an old Dutch windmill that was nailed stationary. I guess, somewhere in the Cook's family, perhaps they were Dutch. Or, they just wanted a tower people could see from the highway, and leaning towers were already taken.

Cook's was about a block long and had a food counter (you served yourself) running the whole length of the place. They started with steam tables, where they served turkey, roast beef and a really delicious fatty corned beef, either as platters or sandwiches. From the steam tables, moving left, they had cold sandwiches, like tuna etc. And then fryers for fries and a grill for burgers and franks.

There was a break in the sea-foam green counter at this point, a hallway into the back room, and then it continued after about seven open feet with an ice-cream fountain, where you could get cones, shakes, sundaes or whatever.

In the back of Cook's there was a small game-room. I suppose if you were a parent of little kids, you and your wife could eat and you could get rid of your kids for 20 minutes for only a dollar or two. That was enough to play pinball, skeeball, get your fortune told by Zoltan or pick a prize with a miniature claw.

Cook's was open all night and it was one of the places we would go late after we were done drinking. We'd get a couple of franks, fries or an ice cream and pick up, on Saturday night, Sunday's Times. Often times, there were girls there to boot, and we'd try to pick them up too. I can't remember ever having had any success.

One of the funny things about being 56 is that the first 40 years of your life, at least according to the internet, didn't exist. Since Cook's salad days were pre-world wide web, you can't find any images or even memories like this one online. Cook's closed a couple of decades ago and like the old song goes, "You don't know what you got till it's gone."

I miss the place. There was no pretense. No hand-picked fair-trade coffee. No artisanal gourmet ice creams. It was a vanilla, chocolate and strawberry type place and that was enough.

In fact, as I get older, I can't help but feeling that friends who shoot photos of candied pheasant breast on their Facebook feeds are like Roman plutocrats. We have fetishized almost everything, and made a place you'd hang at 2 in the morning with a bunch of fellow teenagers somehow precious.

Like I said, there was something nice about having a clean, well-lighted place you could snack off a drunk, play a little Skee Ball and read the Arts and Leisure section until it was time that you had to go home.

Maybe all this is a bit too American Graffiti for your tastes. But I'll tell you. A few times a year, I Google Cook's. Just to see if someone, just maybe, decided to open a new one.

Mickey Rooney.

If you have a chance and you want to see Mickey Rooney and early American television at its best, see if you can find the 1957 Playhouse 90 production of "The Comedian." Criterion re-released the show about five years ago in a collection called "The Golden Age of Television."

Mickey Rooney plays a mind-fucking comic, Sammy Hogarth, who tortures his weak-willed brother played by the great (but under-rated as an actor) Mel Torme. Rod Serling wrote the screenplay and John Frankenheimer directed.

I was never a big Mickey Rooney fan. I always found his acting over-wrought and his optimism face-punchable. But his performance in "The Comedian," shows you a side of him that his Andy Hardy and 'Let's Put on a Show" flicks never did.

It's also great and admirable to see a guy with 340 film credits, running from 1926-2014--88 years. There's something I respect about a guy who takes a lunch pail approach to work. You show up everyday, you do your job, you go home.

I'm in a bit of a commenting on advertising slump lately. I see crap on TV and crap everywhere else and I don't find it interesting enough to type about.

I'll get back to the plot soon.

A day in the sun.

Not long ago, after 35 years of living in the city without a car, our name finally cleared the waiting list for the parking lot underneath our apartment house. We were offered a parking space. We decided the planets were aligning and it was time to get a car.

Most of the cars in my building, this being the Upper East Side, are high-end German or Japanese models. You can't spit in the garage without hitting a BMW, Mercedes, Audi, Lexus or Acura. But my wife and I decided to swim against the tide. We'd get something not luxurious, but instead frugal, fun and practical.

I decided, with the help of a friend from New Zealand, to search for a Simca, a car of French manufacture with a reputation for both sportiness and reliability. My friend Terry had had a Simca in his youth and fairly gushed over it. Whether the gushing was from his actual affection for the car or was instead a burst of rosy-hued nostalgia didn't matter to me. I fell in love with the notion of a Simca.

I was fortunate enough to find a 1966 model 1000 in good condition, with only 78,000 original miles on the odometer. It set me back $1100 and transporting it from Concord, NH to a Simca-specialist I located in Toms River, NJ, cost me $1000 more.

The specialist, a small Croatian man who incessantly cracked walnuts one-handed as I spoke to him, said he could have the car running "good as a top," for about $3000. He would have to rebuild pretty much the entire machine, do some light bodywork and some work as well on the threadbare interior.

In all, for a little over $5000, I had what I consider a beautiful and unique automobile.

Today, with sunshine and warm-weather in the forecast, we drove the Simca up to Rye Beach with Whiskey in the back seat and all was well. It shudders a bit when it hits 75, and there were potholes on 87 that could fairly swallow the whole kit and kaboodle, but all was well, we made it there and back without any duress.

A party I went to.

The other night I went to a party.

I know that's the equivalent of Adolph Eichmann going to a B'nai-Brith fundraiser. But I was invited by a lovely friend and we figured we could use the time together to catch up and talk about my career arrears.

The party itself was organized around the launch of a book titled "Creative Block." You can find the book here. (If you're a creative person, or a human, it may be helpful to you and your loved ones.)
In it, dozens of artists talk about both their art and how they reckon with those periods of time when they feel:

1. They suck
2. They'll never do anything good
3. They're a fraud
4. Everyone knows they're a fraud
5. Everyone knows they suck
6. No one will ever return a phone call
7. They'll never get anywhere
8. Soon, they'll be eating Sheba cat-food 
9. They'll never work again
10. They suck

The artists involved at this launch were painters and sculptors and mix-media types. There were no writers present or mentioned in the book.

But the pains they talked about feeling and struggling to overcome are, I think, universal. 

Everyone, even the most self-assured, I think, has demons to deal with or sloughs of despond to struggle through.

Overcoming hardship, doubt, adversity is as the core of Western thought. Think of the story of Job. Or the Jews wandering in the desert. Or "Robinson Crusoe." Or "The African Queen." 

It's all right there.

Here's the best advice you'll ever get.

When you're up against a wall or a block or even abject stupidity, keep going.

Or as Yogi Berra might have said, "when you can't go any farther, go someplace else."

If you're a writer, just type. Just write what you're feeling and know that by sheer Sisyphusian perseverance, you'll break through.

If you're a painter, paint.

If you're a marine biologist, go to the sea.

If you're a clinical psychologist, see a patient.

The point is simple.

You are harder on yourself than anyone else. Just do what you do and you'll be ok.

Or as I say to my kids, "there are seven-billion people on the planet. Don't be one of those who is anti-you."

A nice moment.

Throughout my long years in advertising, I have been, I think, a mentor to many people. In a sense, I was born old, and even when I was in my mid-30s, two decades ago, people would turn to me. They'd talk to me about work issues, problems with partners, or just the general upsets of ambitious people in a business that doesn't always run on merit.

About seven or eight years ago a young woman reached out to me in this space. She started, as people sometimes do, by commenting. That contact grew into email communications. And from there, we would meet occasionally for lunch. My treat.

That's the way I generally do things. I am almost always busy, but I'll almost always make time for young people, especially if they are good and eager and have the stamina to chase me down. I'm not always good at follow up and need to be corralled at times, and there are people who have learned how to do this with grace. The young woman I mentioned above was one of those people.

When I first met her, she was new to New York, having just graduated from the Creative Circus in Atlanta. I helped her by introducing her to a few friends who are recruiters and to some people at Ogilvy. There, she eventually found a job as a copywriter.

Since then she's moved about a bit. Most of her moves, I suppose you could say I played a small part in. Either offering advice or connections or just a few words of guidance.

Today my friends is at another blue-chip agency working on a Fortune 50 account and her feet are getting itchy. She's getting ready to move on or at least to think about moving on.

She took me to lunch at a wonderful place to talk about her career and to talk about how I'm coping with unemployment.

We talked and laughed and laughed and talked. When the check came, my friend took it.

"I insist on paying," she said.

"I can't let you do that. It goes against every fiber of my upbringing. Boy pays for girl. Old pays for young."

"I insist," she repeated. "It would make me so happy to treat you."

She paid.

I can't remember ever feeling so flattered.

New York bus ride.

I did something this afternoon that I don't generally do. I took the bus to meet a friend for lunch.

Usually, as New Yorkers, we are so terribly busy, or so profligate, that we jump on the train or take a cab. Today being a beautiful Spring day, I took the Second Avenue Select bus to the 34th Street crosstown.

Heading downtown I took a seat next to a woman of a certain age. I took my book out of my bag, but after a few blocks of traffic, I couldn't help but remarking about the book she was reading.

"You don't see many people reading "The Vicar of Wakefield," I said. "The Vicar of Wakefield," by Oliver Goldsmith was first published in 1766. As such it's regarded as one of our language's first novels.

She said, cautiously of course, "I haven't read it for years. I found it in a little used book store on the Upper West Side. It drives me crazy, though, that it's been underlined." She showed me the underlining and the 79-cent sticker on the beaten front cover.

She continued, "Do you know many used bookstores?"

"Well, the famous one, of course, is the Strand on 12th and Broadway. 18 miles of books is what they say and I believe them."

"Oh I never go down there," she pished.

"Well, there's something called abebooks which aggregates hundreds or thousands of used bookstores. I'm sure you could find a clean 'Vicar.'"

I showed her the book I was reading by a City University Sociology professor who decided to walk all 6,000 miles of streets in all five boroughs of New York. It's called "The New York Nobody Knows."

"Does it have a lot on Yorkville?" she asked.

I laughed. "I live there, too," I said. "I think the author, like me, thinks it's New York's most-boring neighborhood. He's barely mentioned it."

That set her off a bit. She was clearly a lover of the place. "Well there's Schaller and Weber, and Glasers, and the Old Hiedelburg," she said, thinking of an era when the term Yorkville was interchangeable with "Germantown."

"Remember 'Ideal Coffee Shop,'" I asked, my mouth watering at the thought of weisswurst and red cabbage.

"Oh, and Elk Candy Store and their marzipan." She had mentioned one of my daughter's favorite places. It too had closed.

"I had some goulash in the Old Hiedelburg the other day," she started, talking about one of Deutschland's last neighborhood stands.

"The last time I was there," I said "they had their Mexican waiters wearing Lederhosen."

At that she snorted. And we had both reached our stops. I crossed 34th Street, she continued walking west on the south side of the street. Uncharacteristically, I think, for someone in her 70s, she yelled at me from across the width of 34th.

"Mexicans in Lederhosen," she shouted. "You made my day."

Like I said, it was quite a day in New York.

A public service message.

Earlier this week in this space, I made an off-hand, somewhat dismissive reference to an ailment called Williamsburg Beard Lice (WBL.) I didn't know it at the time, but that mention of WBL ignited a firestorm of venom and acrimony. The fact is, I received more phone calls, letters, pings and emails in response to my cavalier remark about WBL than I have on any other topic I've ever written about.

So, some clarification is in order.

1. I meant no harm. In fact, if you read my original post carefully, I merely said that something was spreading through Williamsburg as rapidly as beard lice. This statement in no way minimized either the pain and suffering associated with the ailment or the ailment's gravity.
2. If you have Williamsburg Beard Lice (WBL) do NOT feel that you are alone. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC) approximately 22% of beards in Williamsburg are afflicted with the disorder. However, most people who have it choose, for whatever reason, to suffer in silence. I urge you to seek help and to join a support group. Don't let WBL become another silent killer like PSBSE (Park Slope Baby Stroller Elbow.)
3. You do not have to shave. Though there are no reported cases of clean-shaven people contracting WBL, there are safe and effective treatments that do not necessitate the pain and hardship of shaving. Soaking your beard for 30-minutes daily in a mixture of one-part bleach to three-parts white vinegar has proven useful to some. However, be sure to "burn the burns," that is, soak your side-burns as well, a known breeding-ground for beard lice.
4. Stay away from caffeine. CDC studies have shown that when the host (you) ingests caffeine beard-lice reproductive activity increases between 8%-32%. Remember, as little as a cup-a-day could cause "the beard lice to stay."

5. Act now. As virulent and distressing as WBL is, the disease will get worse if it's not treated. Follow the steps above. See your doctor. And prevent the advent of SCWBL (Sub-Cutaneous Williamsburg Beard Lice.)

Something happened.

It's not unusual for a ballplayer to lose a step over time. Plays he used to make, he can no longer. Shots that used to fall, clang off the rim. A pitch he used to be able to get the bat around on, eludes him.

It's that way for me this morning.

I have lost my sense of humor.

I asked my wife if she had seen it.

No luck.

I looked through my winter coat which I put away last week,
thinking I might have left it in a pocket.

It wasn't there.

I looked in my over-stuffed sock drawer. Maybe the cleaning lady had put it there. Maybe I left it in an old pair of jeans and it went through the wash.

I examined the places my puppy hides things. Maybe she had absconded with it.

But no.

It's gone.

I have lost my sense of humor.

Thoughts on one-to-one.

For months, I've been thinking about how so many people in my LinkedIn and Facebook networks could waste so much time, and I suppose, energy on asinine memes like "what's the first word you see," or "can you find the missing number."

Each of these particular games remind me of the sort of things that "Highlights" magazine published when I was a little kid. It's about the stupidest crap you'll ever run across, yet it sweeps through my network like beard-lice through Williamsburg.

Here's the thing that the people heralding the one-to-one future have missed.

People, no matter how atomized or sophisticated, want to feel like they're part of something. They want to feel they belong. They want something to talk about the next day at work. They want, in short, something to share.

I know there are legions of pundits who are still declaring mass media dead. But I think our national calendar denies this. Now, though it's April, we are, as a nation, tuned into March Madness. We're getting ready for another season of "Mad Men." We just got through the Academy Awards and the Winter Olympics.

These are national happenings.

Because we need national happenings.

As much as we value our individuality, we are social animals.

Technology will not change that.