Quiet.

Someone somewhere sits in a giant office.

A giant corner office.

A giant corner office with an outer office.

A giant corner office with an outer office that has an outer office.

This someone has decided that throwing a couple hundred people in an open floorplan is a good idea.

He's figured it all out.

He has his talking points.

It's good for openness.

It       f   a   c   i   l   i   t   a    t   e   s       conversation.

It encourages collaboration.

I invite that someone to my desk.

I'm always there.

A lot of the time looking at my new app.

A decibel meter.

Uncle Slappy and Tillie Tickets.

I got home late last night--late enough to have missed the first seven innings of the first World Series game. It was another frustrating--perhaps futile day at work--but I had no time for that. The land line was ringing and that could mean only one thing, Uncle Slappy was on the phone.

I don't know why people of my generation still have land lines. The only ones that call us on it are telemarketers, high-priced telemarketers (aka politicians seeking office) or even older loved ones like Uncle Slappy.

Slappy, in fact, does have a cell phone, but like many of his ilk, he leaves it turned off lest he rack up ungodly charges. He doesn't quite understand how the billing of the things works, so to be on the safe side, he abjures from using it at all.

"Boychick," he poked, as soon as I picked up the blower. "Boychick," he said by way of 'hello.' "Have I ever told you the story of Tillie Tickets?"

I turned the Mets game on the TV and turned the volume off. I settled into my favorite chair, and made myself ready for yet another episode of the Uncle Slappy Show.

"Tillie Tickets," I answered dumbly. "I don't believe I've heard of her."

"Tillie," the old man harumphed, "like much of the Upper West Side in the 70s was a widow in a seven room apartment with a river view, a rotary phone, a cat and a threadbare Oriental rug, was living on a fixed income. An admixture of about $90 a week from Social Security and $120 a week from when she was a teacher in the Bronx before it changed."

"Not a lot of live on," I observed.

"She made do. That's how Jews have survived for 6000 years. She wasn't eating filet mignon, but she wasn't eating cat food either. Besides, Tillie Tickets found a way to supplement her income."

"Go on," I added unnecessarily.

"The two things the elderly did in those days to scrape by were 'bruised fruit Tuesdays at Fairway' and free samples at Zabar's. By the way, I was in the service. I've been in combat. You've never seen hurly burly like bruised fruit at Fairway. Do you know what it means to an alte cocker on a fixed income to get a slightly bruised cantaloupe for only 19-cents?

"In any event, it was at Zabar's where Tillie Tickets earned her fame. At the fish counter, where they give out the free samples, she noticed a lot of people, frustrated by how slow the lines moved, would leave their 'now-serving' ticket on the counter and abandon their wait.

"Tillie would grab these tickets and sell them to the highest bidder. Sounds stupid, right. But when the 'now serving' sign is on 19 and you have number 79, no question you'll slip an old lady a fiver for a 26 or three bucks for a 32.

"Before long, Tillie Tickets was pulling in a good $20 a day re-selling discarded tickets. This in addition to all the free samples of lox she was getting."

At this point the old man took a pause. I took a sip of my soda water and bid him go on.

"In the end," Uncle Slappy continued, "Saul Zabar, the owner of the place, got wind of it. And justice came down hard on Tillie."

"He called the cops?"

"No, worse. He barred her from the store on weekdays."

"Exiled to the Gulag Delipelago."

"However, Saul Zabar is a mensch, and it all worked out."

I breathed a long sigh of relief.

"Each Monday to her apartment he had delivered a dozen bagels, assorted. A pound of lox, sliced thin. And..."

"And..."

"A cantaloupe. Unbruised. A mensch," he said, hanging up the land line.

One night in Chicago. Long ago.

When I was 20, just before my senior year in college, my parents moved from New York to Chicago, and it was decided, against my will, that I would go with them.

My first order of business upon arriving in the City of Broad Shoulders was to find a summer job. To that end I bought a copy of the Chicago Tribune and went through the want ads. I quickly found two jobs that were close to my parents' apartment and required neither skills nor brain-power.

One was a clerk in a newsstand at a near north side hotel. The other, the one I got, was a cashier at a prominent liquor store, across the street from a whore house, on Rush Street, just north of the loop.

My first weeks at Bragno's, I worked the night shift, from 4PM till midnight and I quickly got an education. There were the daily bottles who would come in every day for their 86-proof sustenance and a bit of cashierial conversation.  There were the parking lot attendants who would, every night, buy another pint or half-pint of Hennessy or Remy Martin, to warm themselves through the Chicago chill. There were the cops, glomming a free case of Old Style beer, and the hookers buying a bottle or two for medicinal purposes.

I took it all in. It was, as they say, all in a day's work.

One evening, I suppose around seven or eight, the shop was quiet and I was sitting behind the counter reading a book. I heard the front door bells tinkle and then a booming voice.

"What are you reading, young man?"

It was Orson Welles.

I was reading something Snopesy by Faulkner, "The Sound and the Fury," maybe.

"Faulkner," I replied, showing him the paperback.

"A lightweight! A misbegotten fool. A dabbler in words. A nothing. A non-entity. Wasting your time in the fourth greatest city in the world, a city of Lucullan excess, a sybarite's dream, and you, a miserable little clerk, working on your hands and knees, with the audacity, no, the TEMERITY to read the the second-rate ramblings of a second-rate mind."

I put the book under the cash drawer and stood up.

"Young man," he roared. "I would like a steak. Rare. Smothered in onions and mushrooms, two baked potatoes dripping, no oozing with butter, and a bottle of your finest port.

"A simpering simpleton. A pusillanimous profferer or putrid prose. A plodder. A nodder. A dodder. The idiot that tells the tale."

"Mr. Welles," I stammered, "I can help you with the port, but this is a liquor store. Not a steak house."

He looked deflated, crushed. He scanned the premises.

"So it is, boy! A steak, bring me my meat and some mutton, a big shank of mutton."

He left cradling like a baby four bottles of port.

"I will be back with funds," he shouted. "But for now, I bid you farewell."

I never saw him again.

Thoughts on the future.

There are people out there who believe.

They believe in an always on, driven by data, written in code, interconnected future where your doctor will ping you if you have a bacon cheeseburger or take a shortcut during your seven mile run and all the terabytes you generate will be fed to a supercomputer which will tell you to lose two pounds, or barring that, will summon a tiny sewing robot to let out your pants.

There are people out there who believe.

I must confess....I want to believe.

I want to believe in driverless cars and getting hot food delivered in an instant and speedy internet and superbrains that have access to all the information ever-generated and curing leukemia will be no more difficult than curing bacon.

I want to believe.

And then.

Then, you get to work early, for a conference call with Bangalore.

And of course no one is on-time.

And then 31 people dial in, and it's echo-ey, as if all 31 people were inside 31 buckets and talking simultaneously and you can't understand a word.

So beep beep beep, all 31 people hang up and hold-music hold-music hold-music, all 31 people dial in again, and  now there's a sound like a busy signal so you can't hear a thing, much less yourself think.

I want to believe that the future will be a seamless place of never-ending bliss, where things just work.

I want to believe we'll make more intelligent decisions and be able to discover and learn and communicate like never before.

I want to believe all that.

But in reality, I believe that the future will be like the world's always been.

Full of dumb mistakes.

Missed connections.

Beeps and echoes and static.

Where we believe the future will be better.

The Mets. 1969.

In 1969, when I was just 11, the New York Mets suddenly became a good baseball team. This was their eighth season in the major leagues and they finished last in six of their seven previous seasons, and next to last in other.

But this year the league expanded to 12 teams and broke into two divisions. The Mets, behind the arms of Seaver, Koosman, Gentry and a young Nolan Ryan, somehow won their division, the East, and now were facing the Atlanta Braves, the champions of the West.

(BTW, the Mets were 9 1/2 games behind the Cubs on August 13th of that year.)

Somehow, my old man (who was a young man at the time) had wangled tickets to game three of the Mets versus the Braves in Shea Stadium.

I don't remember anything about the game itself, except that, extraordinarily, the Mets won and won their first pennant with it.

I was standing next to my father as after the last out,  the assembled stormed the field. Finally, my father released me and I, too, got to climb over a low fence or two and run around on the field.

It was mayhem. People quickly began literally stealing the bases and tearing up the turf. I managed to rip up a six-inch square of the infield. I also, in my typical oblivious fashion, started aimlessly walking around the field, not watching where I was going.

Before long, I found myself almost on the steps of the Atlanta Braves' dugout, and almost face-to-face with its lone occupant. Hank Aaron was sitting on the bench, smoking a cigarette and taking in the scene.

There he was, Hank Aaron. Smoking a cigarette. Not as shocking as say, Willie Mays shooting heroin, but still.

I walked closer before one of New York's finest grabbed me by the arm and guided me away.

From there, I found my father, or he found me, and we headed home, to the sedate dumbness of my parents' suburban home.

It was a decade before I threw out my souvenir turf.

Repair.

Long ago and far away when I played third base for the Saraperos de Saltillo in the Mexican Baseball League, I spent a year traveling from city to city through the dust and grime of various Mexican bergs with about 40 other young men as we bused from game to game.

These were the days before Walkmen and iPods, before even boom-boxes. These were the days when we were lithe and alive and full of hope about the future.

It's a common thing today for people to say they want to change the world, they want to make an impact. They want to make pollution-free cars, or traffic-free cities, or cold-fusion warm toast or they want bring clean water to remote villages in something-or-other-stan.

I've never harbored any such illusions. And certainly did not 40 years ago when I was just 17 and more interested, of course, in the rewards of the flesh and in, perhaps, slamming a clean double down the line. Those two pursuits were more than enough for me.

There's a Jewish notion called Tikkun Olam--repairing the world. I could be wrong, but I've always interpreted it this way: If you help one person, if you've saved one person, if you've raised one person, loved one person, you are doing the job, your job of repairing, repairing the world.

If everyone was a decent sort, doing kindnesses, doing--in the parlance of today--a solid, well the world would be a better place.

When I played ball, I never tried to hit a grand slam when no one was on base.

I never tried to win the game with one swing. I just tried to move the runner over, or get on base, or put wood or leather on the ball. Maybe by doing my job, in as exemplary a manner as I could, I could make the guys ahead of me or behind me in the line-up do their's.

Maybe by raising children who are good citizens of the world, and loving, caring, human beings to boot, maybe that's how you heal the world.

I find it's the same at work.

So I do my best. My best according to my brains and my skill and my craft and my judgment. I can't and won't browbeat others into doing the same. I can only control what I can control.

I write my copy, rag my rags, read my proofs.

And maybe repair what needs repair.

Five minutes with our CGHDO.

Ad Aged:         CGHDO? I don’t recognize that acronym. Tell me what does it stand for?

CGHDO:         CGHDO? Didn’t I answer that question yesterday? CGHDO is Chief Ground Hogs’    Day Officer.

Ad Aged:         So what is it that a CGHDO does?

CGHDO:          Didn’t I answer that question yesterday?

Ad Aged:         Not that I’m aware of.

CGHDO:        As I said yesterday, I make sure nothing changes. Particularly nothing asinine. 
In fact the loonier it is, the more I make sure we keep doing it.

Ad Aged:        Give me an example.

CGHDO:       Well, let’s say an ad is due to release at noon.

                        I make sure to come in with enormous changes at 11:59.

                        I do this every day.

Ad Aged:        Uncanny.

CGHDO:       There’s more. Say it’s 2AM before a new business pitch.

                        It’s my job to make sure the copiers go down.

                        Before every new business pitch.

Ad Aged:        Anything else?

CGHDO:        Like I said before, I always come late to meetings.

                        That way whoever's leading the meeting has to start over and  

                        repeat what they've already said.

Ad Aged:        Our time is up. Thank you for talking today.

CGHDO:        As I said yesterday, thank you. Oh, one more thing...

Ad Aged:         Yes?

CGHDO:          As I said yesterday, thank you. Oh, one more thing...

Lies.

There's a Chrysler commercial running now that annoys the shit out of me.

It annoys the shit out of me even though Wieden and Kennedy did it and they seldom make a misstep.

For whatever reason it has a lot of silver balloons in it. Which has a nice artistic effect. I guess because they're celebrating something like Chrysler's 90th Anniversary.

I guess what irks me is not so much bad advertising but when advertising leads with a lie.

Somewhere in the copy the gritty VO says something like "celebrating 90 years of quality and innovation."

I don't know about you, but Chrysler and quality--at least if you lived through the last 50 or 60 years of American manufacturing go together about as well as Ted Bundy and Mother Teresa.

Yet there they are.

Balloons artfully wafting to the top of the screen.

Announcing their celebration of 90 years of quality.

Everyday, and I wish I were being funny here, I get about three or five emails telling me I've been chosen by something I think is called the Women of Distinction to pay some fee or another and become part of their organization.

As an industry--as a culture--I think too many people, companies and institutions are willing to lead with lies. They're too willing to assume that their "audience" are susceptible dimwits who will fall for such lies.

I think the reason blogs like this one, Dave Trott's two blogs, Rich Siegel's, Bob Hoffman's, Sell Sell's! have such followings is that we tell more truth than the "trade press."

When Adweek and Ad Age went into the re-printing press-releases business, they lost their reason for being.

I think the same is true with much of advertising, politics and interpersonal relationships.

In 60 years it's happened.

From We Try Harder.
To     We  Lie Harder.

Five minutes with our CCAMO.

Ad Aged:  So you're a CCAMO. That's a title I'm unfamiliar with. Tell me what it stands for, please.

CCAMO:  CCAMO. I'm the Chief Call a Meeting Officer. Whenever things get crazy, or busy, or threatening, whenever there's a lull, employee dissatisfaction, or, rarely, employee satisfaction, I call a meeting and straighten things out.

Ad Aged:  If there's a new business pitch on Friday and no work?

CCAMO:  I call a meeting.

Ad Aged:  And what happens at this meeting?

CCAMO:  I assign people to call small-group meetings. Other people I assign to produce hotsheets. Still other people I designate to stand over your shoulder looking anxious.

Ad Aged:  And then?

CCAMO:  Then, I call a meeting of all these people. I get everyone together in one big meeting and we settle things.

Ad Aged:  Like what, for instance, what do we settle?

CCAMO:  Well, for one, that we have too many meetings. So we have a meeting to discuss how we streamline things. Then we produce a spreadsheet--an unintelligible spreadsheet that designates who will be doing what and when it's due. But most of the lines on the spreadsheet we mark with TK for to come.  And that means....

Ad Aged:  That means it's time for another meeting, I assume?

CCAMO:  Exactly. Then we talk about the problem. At which point, I defer to the CIHAHSO, and we take it from there.

Ad Aged:  CIHAHSO?

CCAMO:  Chief I Have A Hard Stop Officer. He makes sure that the moment something is about to get done at a meeting, the meeting ends.

Ad Aged:  Well, thank you for your time today. Just one more question...

CCAMO:  Send me an email.  I can't answer now. I have another meeting to run to.

This should be red.

For at least a decade now, advertising pundits and new-media landscapers have been declaring that print is dead.

And maybe it is.

I seldom have time to read the paper edition of "The New York Times." Even my paper issue of "The New Yorker," often gives way to the pixeled press. And books, well, about nine months ago, I finally gave in a bought an Amazon Kindle.

Still.

Still.

When it comes time to get a platform, an agenda, a concept, words on a flag, or--heaven forfend--an idea down to its purest essence, when you're letting a client know what business they're really in, there's nothing like a line--a single line--written on a piece of paper. There's nothing like the power, the focus you get from writing six or nine defining and powerful words.

On Friday, in the mail from London, one of the authors, Alfredo Marcantonio, of "Remember Those Great Volkswagen Ads," sent me a complimentary copy of another book, a 3.8 pound, 256-page cinderblock called "Well-written and red." It's a collection of stellar ads for "The Economist."

And in this particular case "stellar ads" might be a redundancy. Because for a couple decades, The Economist has run nothing but stellar ads.

Let's think about what these ads do.

They define the ethos, the brand promise, the very being of the magazine.

The compliment the viewer for their intelligence, surprising them with wit and intelligence.

They are clear as ice.

They are "unique-ifying." No other journal, tv show, newspaper or magazine can match them. The Economist is one of a kind.

Oh. And they do those other things too. Drive subscriptions and single copy sales. Way better, probably, than "Save 40% on your next 12 issues."

If you're a writer, or a strategist, if you work in 'new business,' I'd recommend getting your nail-bitten fingers over to amazon.com, post haste.

You won't just be a better writer for buying the book.

You'll be a better thinker.

And surely, that couldn't hurt.