Snideties

Of Cows and Copywriters

2012-01-11T01:09:00.000-08:00

My daughter recently took a cab with a rather nosy driver. He was a grandfatherly sort, too old to be seriously coming on to her, but he asked a lot of smarmy questions. DId she have a boyfriend? Why not? Didn't she want to get married? So to amuse herself and shut him up, my daughter responded, "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?"

That corny old saying came back to me recently as I hovered over a Linked In conversation in an advertising writer's group. A company of architecture and lighting experts was asking for name ideas for their business, and dozens of copywriters happily obliged, only too eager to out-do each other. The architecture-and-lighting-expert was crowd-sourcing his corporate identity, or at least a critical part of it, and saving himself some bucks, and my creative brethren were eager to be his chumps.

Whether one is roaming Linked In out of boredom or necessity, it's easy to get drawn in to playing ain't I clever. These are tough times for copywriters. Unless you're working for the man, or under 35, or made CD by age 40, or have a niche or long-term client base, you're probably screwed. Most of us have fragile egos and need the thrill of competition to feel good about ourselves. It's only natural for a writer who's been unemployed for a while to want to play, just so she can reassure herself that she's still got it. As for the writer who's making a grim if honest living writing mind-numbingly repetitive pharma websites, she's starved for variety. Naming a business sounds like big fun.

(Caveat - playing ain't I clever in the company of other writers is invigorating. Doing it in front of clients is usually a bad idea, Yes, you have a gift, but inspiration doesn't always flow like tap water. Some assignments are hard. Sometimes you get stuck. Why make clients think it's that easy? So they'll question your hours? So they'll want to pay you less because they now believe it only takes you a half an hour to write a 12 page brochure? It's OK to be entertaining and crack up your clients, but not by playing insta-headline. So put away the pen and cocktail napkin, for your own good.)

Back to the Linked In crowd-sourcer. I didn't directly call him out – a sleaze is a sleaze is a sleaze. I called my out my fellow copywriters instead, in the following post:

I don't get why everyone is blithely participating in crowd sourcing on what is basically a brand identity job which any and all of us would normally GET PAID FOR. Then we whine when clients ask us to take a pay cut, or give them a freebie. If you wanted to remodel your home office, would these "best lighting designers and architects" come over and do it for free? I think not. I would suggest that the moderators of this and similar groups weed out posts that trawl for free ideas. It devalues our work in a time when writers are already underappreciated and underpaid. Lets keep the pro bono for Taproot and good causes, NOT for legitimate businesses trying to cut corners. And by the way, if we were truly being professional here and doing an actual branding exercise, we would need to sit down with this person and ask him a lot of questions about his targeting, business plan, competition etc. and factor that into our thinking. It's not just about pulling a cute name out of our happy place.

I felt better after my rant. It also helped to scan the thread and notice that three or four others had made similar comments. But the majority of writers had submitted ideas, the best of which was arguably Beam, which covers both lighting and architecture in one efficient syllable. The architecture-and-lighting-expert suggested the group put it to a vote. When someone asked what he planned to pay the winner, he repeatedly ducked the question. At which point several writers felt their testicles begin to descend and warned that their ideas were "copyrighted". The architecture-and-lighting-expert made a vague, ungrammatical statement about negotiating some kind of compensation with the winner. Good luck collecting: The business is somewhere in South America.

So there you have it. A group of American copywriters, shooting from the hip to name a South American business they know nothing about, targeting a Spanish-speaking client base they have no information on, for a con artist they've never met and can't take to small claims court.

All I can say is moo.

A Very Scary Christmas

2011-12-11T23:56:00.000-08:00

Roll over, Billy Bob. Meet the original Bad Santa. Krampus, abductor and consumer of small children.

Krampus is a demon from Alpine folklore in Austria and Switzerland. Now, these nations gave us sachertorte and Toblerone. Anschluss and neutrality. Klee and Klimt and Jung and Freud. One has to give their folklore its due. But this Krampus thing is horrifying. It has goat hooves and huge antelope-worthy horns growing out of its skull. Its dentition resembles that of the evil clown in the movie It, and its tongue would put Gene Simmons to shame. Krampus is a scary-ass demon who stalks your neighborhood wielding a birch switch and toting a giant murse, into which it crams naughty children to snack on later. If one craves this kind of symmetry, Krampus serves as a counterpoint to Santa, evil to good, dark to the light. How you behave during the year determines whether your December visitor will be a jolly old man or a devil from Hell.

Alpine children are exposed to Krampus at a young age through the yearly Krampuslauf - literally, Krampus Walk. Village folk, mostly strapping young guys, wear disturbingly realistic Krampus costumes and march down the streets, terrifying kids, teasing cute young women and smacking folks with their switches. In order to ensure that their Krampii are sufficiently impressive, some villages actually audition them and have a 6 foot height minimum. The Krampuslauf takes place around December 5th, St. Nicolas Day, and the parade usually includes a Santa or two. I'm going to have to add it to my bucket list.

Now, it seems Americans are discovering Krampus. Philadelphia just held its first Krampuslauf and similar parades are cropping up across the country. (If this is the beginning of an Alpine culture movement, may suggest we bring back fondue. I'll also take a secret Swiss bank account, but I'm voting "No" on Lederhosen).

I get the naughtiness of subverting a family holiday. I realize folks like to push against the constraints of happy smiling earnest cornball Christmas. Some people have taken to celebrating the Seinfeldian holiday Festivus (Must say it: For the rest of us). Others are members of the Santarchy/Santacon movement, in which legions of Santas descend upon a town, swarm its watering holes and act like elves (and a few trolls) on a Christmas cookie sugar high. I was in San Francisco during Santacon and the streets were red with bar hopping Santas. They seemed mostly well behaved, but then it was only 6 pm.

Still, I question the need for Krampus. I can't speak for religious people, but I suspect the Satanic imagery doesn't jive with a holy night. I seem to recall that Jesus liked little children, and not in a stew pot way. I imagine he and Krampus wouldn't get along. I myself have two children (In fact, my now adult daughter sent me the Krampus article linked to above). I can tell you from personal experience that to kids younger than 5, realistic masks are scary even if your mommy puts one on right in front of you. Heck, I once had to leave a puppet show because my daughter couldn't handle the troll in The Billy Goats Gruff. The holidays are about family, and warmth, and love, and charity, and lights a-twinkle everywhere. For kids, at least those whose parents are employed, it's a magical time. Why ruin their mellow? It's bad enough that we need to tell young children about bad strangers, for their own good. Do we really want to have to reassure our little ones that Krampus won't eat them?

While a Krampuslauf provides a nifty excuse for young males to party and get devilish, there's a subtext to this Krampus business. In the article my daughter sent me, a distillation of a story on NPR, the reporter interviews a woman who plans to fashion herself a Krampus costume from dozens of rib bones and wear it to a Krampuslauf. And she's a middle aged mom, not a hard-partying, 22 year old bro. Like the other Krampus fans interviewed for the news story, she sees the creature as an antidote for the icky side of Christmas, the carols in October, shopping frenzies and excessive sentimentality.

I understand the urge to escape the relentless seasonal corniness, but I think there may also be a therapeutic aspect to this Krampus business. Maybe a hairy, long-horned devil is just what people need to combat their own holiday demons. Think about the folks for whom Thanksgiving and Christmas are dysfunction fests. Greek tragedies. Third-rate sitcoms. Overpopulated Sartrian Hells. Imagine you have to dig really deep to view certain relatives with empathy. Maybe you need to hit the egg nog before you can view them at all. And yet you feel bound to these people who make you crazy, and besides, they can't help themselves, and you're no prize yourself, and you have to get your holiday attitude on.

Krampus provides perspective. That blast of demonic anarchy is like a reset button that makes your family appear kinder, gentler and yes, less insane. And in this time of strange politics, environmental catastrophes, freakish weather, protests, revolutions, layoffs and economic instability, perhaps only the craziness of a Krampuslauf can make normal life look normal.

One man's first hand encounter with the Kramposse

Another Krampus victim speaks out

I admit she doesn't look too traumatized. Maybe she's a demon seed.

Two horny devils.

A white Christmas nightmare

"No, little girl, I did NOT star in Werner Herzog's remake of Nosferatu."

Primal Scream Therapy

Today, Krampuslauf, tomorrow, leather shorts and accordions.

The Name Game

2011-11-27T13:22:00.001-08:00

Years ago, the first time I went freelance, I thought it might be cool to call my business iCopy. It said copywriter, it was military slang for "I get it" and making it one word with a lower case "i" seemed really cool. So cool that before I could get around to ordering business cards, Macintosh beat me to it and launched the iMac. I was disappointed, but I took it as a sign that iDontsuck.

This has happened to me more than once, and if you are a half-way decent copywriter, it will happen to you. That cool TV spot, great headline, or indelible tag your client rejected pops up in the mind of some other copywriter, somewhere. Their version gets produced, and all you can do is stew in your own bile – especially since that other person's take is usually lame compared to what you had in mind. But if you want to experience the Deja Thought Of phenomenon at it's worst, try naming something.

When I first got on the Internet a million years ago, I thought I could be curly@aol.com. No, I could not. I could be curly33. I ran into the same problem when I tried to name my other blog. There's a reason I defaulted to Eucalyptus Way. The blog was intended to chronicle a seasoned East Coast woman's adjustment to West Coast ways. I riffed on California, on midlife crises, on change itself. I explored every possibility. The truth is, it's easier to name your child than it is to name your blog. And that is a piece of cake compared to, say, naming a new line of intravenous fluids. Healthcare and IT are gigantic baptismal maws that suck up all the most evocative names – the ones that instantly create a vibe, evoke an attribute of the product or just plain sound cool.

Finally, you cobble together a list of names, some of which aren't half bad. You google them as you go along and eliminate any names that crop up in your same category. Of course, if you're naming something for the international market, you're just getting started. Does your name mean toe jam in Hebrew? Heartburn in Danish? Group sex in Farsi? (Do they have a word for that in Farsi? Maybe not. If there is, the religious police would give you a good lashing just for uttering it.) Eventually, you realize that your winning monicker is Swahili for fuck your mother and you're back to square one.

So you move on to combining syllables, and again, any halfway decent sounding non-word belongs to some IT or pharma company. It's enough to make you want to howl at the moon. Some people specialize in this – the naming, not the howling– although I suspect they have their moments of animal despair after nomenclating for twenty hours straight.

A few years back, I was working on a pharmaceutical account. They had contracted a branding agency to name a new medication, and they shared the results with our agency. The list consisted of a bunch of seemingly random three syllable names. Except they weren't really random because each syllable had a rationale. Rationales not unlike these:
" We used the syllable "Tor" because it's strong, evokes Taurus the bull, and also the Nordic god Thor."
"Na". Sounds like no - subtext is eliminating or doing away with. Also the root of Navigate - good for a chronic condition. "
"Vel? It's soft, like velvet. The el sound is feminine, like the word Elle. Good syllable for a dermatology product.

To make matters more challenging, the name has to be stealthily persuasive because it can't sound like a claim to the company attorneys. That's why, to this day, there is no medicine called Siknomor.

Names 101

On no! It's Finnish for enema!

Think globally, check globally.

International butt-coverage

Detour Through the Land of Cosmo

2011-11-10T19:58:00.000-08:00

Even as a nubile young thing, I never was a Cosmo Girl. The hair, the makeup, the analyzing men as though they were a different species. I couldn't relate. It seemed like so much work. (I admit, I did like clothes - still do). Anyway, that demo is behind me now. Today, I am the mother of a young woman just the right age for Cosmo Girlitude. Except she takes after me.

So imagine my surprise when a shiny, hot-pink Cosmo arrived in the mail, with my name on the address label. Adele adorned the cover, all plump and fetching, her leopard print frock offsetting the burnished gold of her locks. I briefly considered tossing the rag but changed my mind. Gift horse – dentition irrelevant. At least I'd get to read up on Adele.

I picked up the magazine and my eye went straight to "When He Shouldn't See You Naked." Some hack milked a whole article out of that. The answer is simple. Never. Guess they pay by the word. Oooops. The piece is actually about the eroticism of semi nudity (no, they don't mean naked but for your socks) and smoldering looks. Me, I have to decide whether to wear distance or reading glasses before I can smolder. But I will give Cosmo props for covering both sides of a story, because in the same issue as "When He Shouldn't See You Naked" they also published this:

To strip or not to strip. What's a girl to undo? In "Seduction Secrets French Women Know", we read "Part of maintaining mystery is holding back a bit during conversations. " But in "5 Reasons Raunchy Girls Are Winning," it says "Comeons don't have to be subtle. Telling a man you want to "climb him like a tree" will most likely lead to faster, more satisfying results than surreptitiously exposing a bra strap and hoping he'll notice." Again with the objective reporting. How is a girl supposed to know whether to go all Jane Austen or channel Lady Chatterley?

Oooooh, lets look at the ads. Like this one, for "Le Male", a men's fragrance by Jean Paul Gaultier. Now I ask you, what is the gay male readership of Cosmo? Because this ad ain't aimed at chicks, be they young, old, cosmopolitan or trailer park. That is one homoerotic confection, and the sailor hat is the cherry on the sundae.

If you're not convinced, I suggest you take a long, hard look at the bottle for "Le Male". Notice the striped tank on that ripped blue torso. Can't you just hear the house music pulsing?

Sorry, Vince. I just don't think my orthotics will fit. There's a reason they call those things "fuck me shoes". Because those shoes really could fuck a shoe-whore in countless ways. Bunions, callouses, neuromas – and that's if you don't trip, fall and break an ankle.

More editorial content: "Is Being Too Nice Holding You Back?" Uh, no. Because I am not too nice.

I skipped "Sh*t My Man Says." After nearly 30 years of marriage, mine doesn't talk much. It's hard to get a word in when you're married to me. When he says something, I promise I'll get back to you. OK, lets check out some of the other feature stories.
"What's Sexy Right Now."
"How to Crank up Your Kissability."
"Fire it up!"
"Five Sensual Massages to Do Together."
The common denominator here is setting the stage for romance. So labor-intensive. It's not easy being young and single. As an old married lady, all I have to do is cock my head and say "Hey, Honey, it's Friday!"

Common ground at last! I totally agree with Cosmo on this new porn stash trend. It makes Jude Law, Marc Anthony and Anthony Kiedis look really sleazy. Not that they needed much help achieving that vibe. A man sporting this kind of facial hair is making some sort of statement. Probably one of these four:
A: I am a total sleezeball
B: I am playing a total sleezeball in the remake of Boogie Nights
C: I wish someone would remake Boogie Nights so I could star in it as a total sleezeball
D: How else am I supposed to conceal my raging attack of mouth herpes?

Now, I am an advertising copywriter, and this cheap ploy would have occurred to me right away, BUT it ain't funny nowadays. People are broke and desperate and what would have been cute when the nation was living high on the hog feels like a low jab today.

And now to the cover story, Adele. Here are a few things Cosmo taught me about Adele. She got discovered on My Space by some enterprising label exec. She wrote and recorded the song Rolling in the Deep the morning after the break up of her first serious relationship. She's never told a guy she loved him. And she remains hopeful about her relationship future.

There is more knowledge to be gleaned from this article, but Adele is a force of nature and her mystique should be preserved. That voice tells you everything you need to know. Adele is impulsive, soulful, passionate, direct and open. She does not conform to the weight norms of the fashion industry and she does not care.

She is probably not a Cosmo Girl.

Footnotes:
NOT a Saturday Night Live skit.

Sole Survivor

2011-10-14T08:19:00.000-07:00

The Republican field is starting to look like a bad heist movie. In the lead role, we have Romney as the handsome one who has a romantic past with the hot female con artist, played by Michelle Bachman. Herman Cain gets the Don Cheadle role, for obvious reasons. Newt Gingrich is the seasoned criminal they coax out of retirement for one last job. Rick Santorum is the dim bulb who's there for comic relief and gets shot in the ass during the nearly botched getaway. John Huntsman is the producer's son who's trying to break into acting and got cast in a bit part as the driver of the getaway car. Ron Paul is the old time safe cracker. And Rick Perry's just a cracker, period.

Body Talk

2011-09-27T22:43:00.000-07:00

Grab your mat - we're going to yoga. There's a nice, quiet little studio in my new neighborhood. The majority of the yogis and yoginis are over 40, and the classes are pleasant, if not overly challenging. On the mat behind me is an attractive, chatty 50 year-old blonde, obviously well-exercised and at most a size six. We are all sitting on floor trying to lower our torsos as close to the ground as possible, and the move is hurting her lower back. Even with our instructor's help, Blondie still can't get her chest to the floor.
"Oh!" she says, looking up at our teacher." It must be my fat stomach getting in the way, ha ha!"
Now, Miss Botox doesn't have a fat stomach, but the yoga instructor does. She's an earth mother type, big boned with a bit of a menopot. I'm sure she's long past caring, as she's well on her way to enlightenment of the Buddhist kind, but she knows a prompt when she hears one.
"Of course not!" Our teacher coos reassuringly. " What fat stomach?"

Years ago, I worked with a dramatic and self-absorbed female art director, a slender, attractive woman. She was maybe 36 at the time. Some of the women in our office took occasional smoke breaks, I, just to socialize, the other ladies because they were hooked. We had barely gotten off the elevator before GLBAD (not a new sexual orientation, an acronym for Good Looking Blonde Art Director) started complaining. She's gained weight. She's hovering around a size four instead of her customary two. Her clothes are a little snug. It's a tragedy. GLBAD is ranting now.
"Look at me! I'm fat! I'm a heifer! I'm a fat f*@king pig!"
Cue the rest of us girls.
"Of course not! You look great! You're so skinny!"
Meanwhile, several of the women in GLBAD's instant support group are overweight, one of them morbidly obese. As we head back towards the elevator, the big lady turns to me and whispers, "If she thinks she's so fat, how am I supposed to feel?" So I have a little chat with GLBAD. I explain why her behavior was insensitive. And she does not get it. It seems we haven't come such a long way, baby, because my twenty-something daughter has friends who pull the exact same number.

Female fishing for complements is nothing new. No woman asks "How do you like my new dress?" because she really wants your opinion. If she wanted it, she would have asked BEFORE making the purchase. A woman who asks this wants affirmation, not honesty. Ditto the dreaded question that makes men feign temporary hearing loss, "Does my butt look big?" This kind of insecurity is probably hard-wired in heterosexual females. (Lesbians seem to have a more relaxed relationship with their bodies). But bitching about putting on five pounds to a woman who needs to lose fifty is just plain mean.

Why do women do this? Is it:
a). Blatant narcissism, like Snow White's Wicked Queen.
b). A subtle form of sadism
c). Vision issues.
d). Pure stupidity
e). Congenital insensitivity (That would be my guess).
Why can't these chicks just take a bathroom break to monitor their own cuteness and leave the rest of us alone? And isn't fifty a little old to be playing this game?

I have my own body issues. It gets really hard to be objective about your appearance in your middle years, especially if, as my husband recently said of me, your mental age is 17. (He has since taken it back and adjusted the figure to 26). As a middle-aged female in a class full of fellow AARPies, I find myself dividing the other yoginis into two groups: the ones that make me worry that I don't look as good as them, and the ones that make me wonder whether I look as fat/old/droopy as they do. At least I am self-aware enough to get that this is wrong in multiple ways. From a yogic perspective, it's the kind of thinking that will get me reincarnated as a gerbil. Hopefully, a svelte one.

What's the emoticon for schadenfreude?*

2011-07-19T09:45:00.000-07:00

Because I am so darn ecstatic over the Murdoch empire debacle, words are no longer enough. But that's hardly the only Schadenfreude-inducing story in the news these days. There's the J-Lo/Marc Anthony divorce announcement, just months after this smoldering display. The dismal box results of the Sarah Palin bio-pic, The Undefeated. The dumping and dissing of Hugh Heffner by a woman young enough to be his great grand daughter. The news that one of Charlie Sheen's Goddesses just took the first bus back to Olympus. Then there's the debt ceiling debacle. Mostly schaden, (sorrow), but hard to overlook the freude (joy) of watching congress get what it deserves, the lowest approval rates EVAH! (Take that, Eric Cantor, you obstructionist, egomaniacal little twit). All of which leads me to conclude that schadenfreude needs to be added to the emoticon vocabulary ASAP. I've provided a few design suggestions below.

;-]

[:>)

(:^’

:-[

{:–D

(:–/

(:-*

* Schadenfreude (sorrow/joy) is a German word for taking pleasure in the pain/suffering/misery/abject humiliation of others.

Check out wikipedia's emoticon chart. At the risk of sounding politically incorrect to the max, I have to say the East Asian ones are totally inscrutable.

Crosspollination

2011-05-21T09:58:00.000-07:00

Like this blog? Then maybe you'll like my other blog. And maybe you won't think I'm such a slacker for not posting often enough...

Sexy Beasts

2011-05-08T10:47:00.001-07:00

Finally, florida outlaws bestiality. Some 1.3 million alligators are breathing a sigh of relief. You can choke the chicken, but you can't poke the chicken. And you better not horse around with your pony, or do it doggy style with Rover. Going to the cat house? Stay away from any actual cats - no pussy for you. Got bitten by a trouser mouse? it better not be an actual rodent - yes, gerbils count. And if you think you can still lie with your lizard, truss your turtle, fondle your ferret, spank your monkey, charm your snake, get jiggy with your iguana, pork your potbellied pig or go all the way with your gold fish, fuggedaboudit. Control your animal instincts, because bestiality is officially illegal in the Sunshine State.

Iggstrapolations

2011-04-10T19:10:00.000-07:00

I confess. I watch American Idol. I know it's cheesy. I know it's terminally uncool. I know the TV audience consists of grandmas and 14 year old girls. I know it might be rigged, and people vote multiple times. I suspect that Taylor Hicks is probably the king of the cruise ship circuit by now, and while Kelly Clarkson is a great singer, I'm not sure the music world needed someone whose idea of a good lyric is "You got a piece of me and honestly my life would suck without you." I know all these things. And yet, I watch. And thus it was that on results night last week, I saw this. Ladies and gentlemen, Iggy Pop.

Just in case you are Iggnorant of Mr. Pop's contribution to contemporary music, let me fill you in. He is best known as frontman for his band The Stooges, which disbanded due to Iggy's heroin problem. Nerdy types who like to play spot-the-influence think of him as a godfather of punk, and he is credited with inventing the reckless sport of stage-diving. Pop and David Bowie have been friends and occasional collaborators since the Ziggy Stardust days – China Girl was actually co-written by Iggy. (The two met in the Thin White Duke's bisexual period but whether Bowie and Iggy ever did each other, I cannot say. Iggy – big sigh of relief, ladies – says he is straight). Anyway, for reasons even Google was unable to reveal, Iggy has performed shirtless since at least 1977. Fortunately, he has managed to keep his pants on the whole time.

The Idol performance was deeply disturbing, visually and vocally. He looked like a well-preserved mummy back from a trip to the hair salon for highlights and a Brazilian blow out. My friend Maura and her sister are convinced Mr. Pop has COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease) and had an oxygen machine waiting offstage. I kept flashing on the killer doll from that awesome camp classic, Trilogy of Terror.

It was especially entertaining to watch the pint-sized provocateur get right up against the judges' table and do a pelvic thrust in Jennifer Lopez' face – a juxtaposition reminiscent of one of those Medieval Death and the Maiden paintings. Poor J-Lo, who has probably never heard the first few bars of Lust for Life without immediately changing the station, looked as though she wanted to scream for her body guard, or maybe her wimpy husband Mark Anthony (although I suspect Iggy could kick his ass).

The whole thing was, as Maura put it, out of context – waaaaay out of context. But why was the sight of that dehydrated little dude bouncing all over the stage so unnerving? After all, I've seen Lady Gaga perform with a dozen half-naked gay guys in thongs and dog collars. Context does have something to do with it. We think of American Idol as a family show – those aforementioned grandmas and tween age girls, the occasional references to Jesus taking the wheel, the home town crowd rooting for their local hero or heroine (down, Iggy, that's heroine with an e on the end). And then there's the greater context of contemporary pop, which is all about dancing and taut young bodies in revealing outfits. The Iggnoble one is not taut. He is well-exercized and veiny. And probably waxed. Hardly a wild child - more like an old dude.

So why does he persist in singing topless? Call me overly analytical, but I have actually pondered this in detail:

1. He believes the beef jerky look is part of his brand.

2. He can't afford a stylist. Or maybe even a shirt.

3. He is completely deluded and thinks he's still got it, like a male version of Madonna.

4. He has a Peter Pan complex and refuses to grow up. Ever.

5. He's still on heroin and suffers from the sweats if he waits to long between fixes.

6. He's proud of being the only remaining non-tattoed rock star on the planet and wants to flaunt his virgin epidermis.

7. He'll do anything for the money - including TV commercials in the UK and providing the singing voice for one of the babies in the Rugrats movie.

8. He's ACTING. And the guy has worked as an actor before, including cameos in Sid and Nancy and the color of money, and an appearance on the Crypt Keeper. (No, he did not play the C.K.)

9. Irony, baby. Icky's semi-nudity is an in-your-face rebuke of the air-brushed, over-choreographed, auto-tuned slickness that infects so much of today's popular music.

I think I'm going to settle for the last explanation. At least it allows Iggy to keep his dignity - if not his shirt.

Those were the days, my friend...

F*@k Fest

2011-01-03T12:53:00.000-08:00

The English language is all fucked up, and I don't mean metaphorically. Sometimes it seems like the f-word is fast closing in on "the" as the most commonly used word in the American vernacular. (Can't speak for the Brits - they fuck but they also shag, which makes me suspect that British English is a bit less, uh, frisky).

It's been decades since the late George Carlin's seminal routine about the seven dirty words. We used to find them shocking – now we just don't give a fuck.The Entertainment Industry blithely uses obscenities to signify grit and relevance. Thanks to hip hop and rap, motherf*@king is now the high school adjective of choice, as in "That motherf*@ker has a motherf*@king third period pass." Just look at all the foul mouths among your friends and family. Now, multiply that by legions of families, nationwide.

In my case, the desensitization began when I started working in advertising. Other than high school and the military, I can't think of a more expletive-friendly environment than the average creative department. I learned this my first week on the job, when I had lunch with my new colleagues. The humor was definitely ribald - I remember the hard-boiled female producer was making smegma jokes over her pizza. Everybody swore – a lot – with fuck a frequent root word. I was shocked, but it didn't take long for me to shed my propriety. After a few months, I made sex jokes without blushing and used fuck reflexively. I still do – In fact, I joined a face book page entitled "Intelligent, classy, well-educated women who say fuck a lot." I say fuck a lot. And I am a woman. Two out of five ain't bad.

When used literally, the word retains its graphic shock appeal. To this day, I would never use it in the dictionary sense, as in "I think she's f*@king him". It would make me feel like an entitled Manhattan artiste from a third rate Woody Allen movie. I prefer to default to something genteel, like "sleeping with", or goofy, like "boink" or" schtup," or maybe tongue-in-cheek technical, like "exchanging bodily fluids". I'll jokingly say fuck you to all my dearest friends, but I'd never say it to anyone if I really meant it. Foul language makes for ineffective rage. You appear out of control. The swearing is a distraction and an invitation to dismiss you as a hysteric. Far better to contain yourself and keep it cold, direct, polite and lacerating.

Still, there's no getting around it. Used with finesse and a sense of timing, an f- bomb can be f-ing funny. But there's a fine line between funny and lazy, as in this recap of 2010 from the website Jezebel. You heard the expression "phone it in'? The writer fucked it in. She wrote a lame piece and used the f-word to try and liven it up, but bad meat, even if you drown it in hot sauce, is still bad meat. Another example of uninspired writing, this anti-prop 8 video has been making the rounds online. Now I H8 prop 8. I find it appalling that we could pass a law that actually takes people's rights away. Still, expressing a critical civil rights issue as an angry fuckathon is a tad reductive. I get that the spot is preaching to the converted, not trying to sway the opposition, but a foul-mouthed 6 year old makes a lousy poster child for gay parenting. If Annette Benning and Julianne Moore were that child's moms, they'd send him to his room without dessert.

So this is the part where I'm supposed to tell you about the empty water jug in my kitchen. The one folks throw a quarter in every time they swear, until the day when the whole family is 100% fuck-free – like the Shakers, only metaphorically. But there is no such coin receptacle in my kitchen. Why? Because I'd rather give up chocolate than profanity. No doubt chocolate is in better taste. But profanity's less fattening - and you can't beat the mouthfeel. I need fuck and its derivatives to express another f-word, frustration. I'm not just tired: I'm fucking exhausted. I'm not just angry: I'm fucking furious. And after three rounds of running around the house looking for my keys, it's only natural to wonder where the fuck they are.

Quickies

Get your etymology on!
Cole Porter, where art thou?
Shagadelic

The Many Faces of Julian Assange

2010-12-08T09:31:00.000-08:00

While Interpol was casting its net to capture Julian Assange, my daughter and I have been casting the inevitable biopic. Her idea. She's a first year law student, I've been jamming on a multi-media ad campaign for a hospital in Palm Springs, and we both needed a break.

The leakage to date has been embarrassing and, in terms of American foreign policy's ability to get with the times, disheartening, but I confess that what I find most fascinating about this entire affair is the Wiki-Leaker-In-Chief. A rumpled and slightly sleazy international man of mystery whose motives remain debatable, despite his passionate claim that all he wants to do is get the truth out.

Is he a whistle blower fueled by righteous indignation? An anti-American trouble maker? A pioneer of 21st century journalism? An overgrown preschooler looking to see just how many of his classmate's block towers he can knock down before the teacher puts him in time out? A bonafide anarchist in the Emma Goldman mode? An egomaniac who never had enough attention as a child and has been overcompensating ever since? An internationalist looking to clear the air so we can bypass the bullshit and get cracking on our global problems? A sexual deviant who forced himself on two Swedish women? The victim of a CIA smear campaign to brand him as some kind of perv? (Re: the sexual deviant stuff, there is a lot of chatter on non-mainstream news sites about the actual "assault" being much ado about a broken condom, aka Quicky Leaks. I researched the broken condom thing and all the references I could find are alternative, which, depending on your perspective, makes them either more suspect or more believable).

Assange is obviously the role of a lifetime, with major Oscar potential given the right director. (Oliver Stone, this does not mean you). Anyway, without further ado and in no particular order, I give you our shortlist:

Kevin Spacey. He has the chops, and the round, doughy face. He's also 51 to Julian's 39, which I think makes him too old. Daughter disagrees.

Peter Sarsgaard. Good physical resemblance, proven acting talent, inde-film street cred, which means he may have too much taste to take the part if it's directed by, say, Ron Howard.

Christian Bale. Daughter thinks he's too good looking, despite his obvious nose job. (We have very different taste in men). I thought he was remarkable in The Machinist and believe his acting ability trumps the total lack of physical resemblance.

Edward Norton. Not an Assange lookalike, but bottle of bleach would help. Norton knows how to disappear into a role. Assange knows how to disappear, period. At least until now.

Cillian Murphy. Sorry, dear daughter. Too young, too creepy and too feminine. Not that he wasn't terrific in Red Eye.

Sam Rockwell. Can't say. My daughter likes him but I haven't seen enough of his work. Didn't go to The Green Mile because I am allergic to movies about magical black people who help clueless white protagonists find their authentic selves.

Leonardo DeCaprio. Yes, I know, he's too good looking, but it's amazing what you can do with a little nose putty. He's only three years younger than Assange and he's played morally ambiguous before – he rocked in Catch Me If You Can. I could see him getting the part if Spielberg directs.

Kevin McKidd. Blondeness, check. Pock marks, check. Hotness, check. Hotness is probably secondary here, but he made one smoldering centurion in the miniseries Rome, which, by the way, makes a great holiday gift for the amateur historian in your life.

Michael C. Hall. Creative suggestion on daughter's part, and if you look at Stephen in Six Feet Under vs. Dexter, you can see how Hall could pull off the duality of the Assange character.

Paul Bettany. This was actually my husband's idea. You may remember Mr. Jennifer Connelly from A Beautiful Mind. He is also a Beautiful Man in an aging British school boy kind of way. He was decent in the Darwin biopic Creation though the film itself was a bit dull.

Eric Bana. Boring as a romantic lead, but as an inter-galactic villain, he was the best thing about the otherwise totally lame Star Trek 11 (Yes, that's an eleven, not a roman numeral two - no wonder it was totally lame).

Well, that's the short list for you. Next step is finding a director. Is it better to go with a foreign candidate who won't take the whole affair too personally? Or would a foreigner have too much of an anti-American perspective? I'm ambivalent – pretty much how I feel about Assange in general. Our phantom production company is open to suggestions.

Copy Comments

2010-09-30T13:50:00.001-07:00

I have a husband and two kids who never listen to me and a dog who won't come when I call. I can't tell any of them anything without being accused of lecturing. (The husband gets surly, the kids talk over me, the dog farts). So when I went on Linked In and saw that a budding copywriter was seeking writing advice, I couldn't resist the opportunity to pontificate. In fact, this post started as a wall comment, but I got so carried away, I figured I'd paste it in to the old blog.

Cadence:
As anyone who's ever experienced a frisson of delight reading Shakespeare knows, good writing is auditory. Even if your middle English is rusty, even putting aside all that timeless insight into the human condition, even sans access to the Cliff notes, the bard's words sound beautiful. Granted, a product website isn't exactly Hamlet, but cadence and rhythm still count. Lets say we were listing the ingredients for a minimalistic picnic. Should it be...
Wine, bread and cheese.
Bread, cheese and wine.
Cheese, wine and bread.
Wine, cheese and bread.
I won't list all the possible permutations, but you get the idea. There is no objectively right answer or wrong answer, unless you are a writer. Maybe you think cheese is an ugly word on which to end a sentence (unless you're on the Laughing Cow account and want to end on cheese for emphasis). Perhaps you prefer to end the sentence with wine, for its promise of intoxication and romance. You might want to start the list with bread because that's the most basic element of the meal. Not that you need to overthink it: a natural writer will just go on instinct and pick what sounds good – to her. If you can't hear the rhythm in your head, read it out loud. When you start to trip over your tongue, you need to do some more fine tuning.

Repetition
Try to avoid repeating the same word in one paragraph. Lets say you're writing copy for a hotel. You could just dash off something like this:

Our rooms are spacious and elegantly decorated. Each room has room for a roll-out cot, and every room has its own ocean view.

I'd say there's room for improvement. Take five minutes to craft that copy and see if you can make it sing without saying room four times. There are exceptions to this:
•The word you are using has no synonyms, or using one wouldn't feel conversational.
• You are using repetition for effect. Inspirational speeches may use a word or phrase as a mantra or rallying cry.
• You are writing SEO copy, otherwise known as "content", which means you will have to shove a key word or phrase into a small copy block three times.
•You are toiling on a heavily regulated pharma account (akin to donning a straight jacket and writing with a pencil in your teeth). If that is the case, the regulatory team will make you repeat not just the same word, but the exact same phrase, until you develop psychosomatic symptoms for the disease you are writing about. (By the way - it's now officially OK to end a sentence with a preposition.)

Back Off
Are you writing a brochure or a complex website? Take a step or two back, like when you're hanging art. Look at your paragraph order. (Paragraph. Now there's a perfect example of a word that's hard to avoid repeating. "Sentence collection" just doesn't cut it as a synonym). Make sure everything flows logically. Do your best not to start two back-to back paragraphs with the same word or phrase. Let's say you have two sequential paragraphs that start with the words "Collingsworth Finials." There's a school of thought that says great, you're beating the reader over the head with the client's name. I say do it more subtly. Why remind people that they're reading marketing copy? You can insert the client's name into the text just as many times and make it seem perfectly natural. Even starting two sequential paragraphs with the innocuous "We are" can make your copy look stilted and uninspired.

Kill all your darlings.
I love this. It's Faulkner's advice to writers, and if Spike Lee followed it, he'd be a much better film maker. Many of his films have entire scenes that feel like they belong in a different movie. They work on their own but not in context. To paraphrase the late Johnny Cochran, if it doesn't fit, you must edit. (No, that doesn't work. Why? The rhythm of the word "edit" is off. Instead, try "If it doesn't fit, you must omit.") Translation, if it's clever but it's not working tonally or contextually or even word count-wise, kill it. You can keep it in your bag of tricks for later. The point is to sell product, not demonstrate how clever you are.

De-clause your sentences
Try not to write sentences with more than two clauses. Three clause sentences are OK for a really high end target, say, people reading up on a hedge fund, but it's generally a good idea to pare down your sentence structure. Stay as conversational as you can. Remember that the public is, alas, getting dumber every day (OK, less educated). 8th grade reading level is about right on many accounts. You want your copy to sink in. Dish it out in digestible morsels. Avoid honking long paragraphs.

You talking to me?
Never forget who your audience is. If you are a 20-something writing for boomers, give us a little more content. We don't mind reading. If you are a boomer writing for 20 somethings, run your copy by your kid. 20 somethings are a jaded bunch. They think everything is "cheesy" - romance, sentiment, alliteration, word play of any sort. Fine tune your nose for cheese, even if it means smiting a darling or three. And don't be the dork who panders to a young audience with dated slang. If you're over forty, rest assured that slang will be passe by the time you first hear it. Of course, if you're sure of your colloquialisms, use 'em!

Write for actual people
Stop viewing focus groups as drudgery, or creativity killers. They are a goldmine. This is where you learn how to talk to people in their own language. I know it's entertaining to make fun of the people on the other side of the mirror, but you can learn a lot from them. Besides, if you pay attention, you'll eat less focus group junk food.

Ins and Outs
Watch your first and last sentences. You need to get people hooked immediately, and not leave them hanging at the end. A really good first sentence is like the cork in the champagne bottle. Get it out of the way and your copy starts to flow.

Seek reality checks
If you "get it" but two other smart people in the creative department don't, throttle that darling, bury it and continue to concept. Even Colbert comes out with a bad joke now and then - a self-indulgent gem that no one gets but him. Sooner or later you will come up with an idea that appeals only to your quirky sensibility. Give quiet thanks for your capacity for self-amusement and move on.

Strategy
Stay focused on the strategy. If you don't get one, go back and ask for one. If you still don't get one, come up with your own, based on the research. Yes, read the research. And do your own - go on line and visit chat groups, look at what the competition's doing, know the product/service in-depth. Make sure you check your brilliant concept against the strategy.

Jargon
Cranking out collateral or webwork for a jargon-happy industry can be painful. Finance, tech and education are just some of the categories that have their own lingo. Your natural impulse will be to simplify and humanize their language. For a first draft, it's the right thing to do. Maybe the client will say "Wow! This copy sounds like it was written by an actual human being. It's so clear, so friendly, so concise. Don't you dare change a thing." And maybe, to quote Wayne's World, monkeys will fly out of my butt. Here's what usually happens: you get slapped on the back for writing something simple and direct, and then, change by annoying change, the jargon seeps back in. It's easier to accept if you understand why:
• Using industry lingo helps position the client as an industry insider, especially in the B-to-B arena. You're simply more credible if you can talk the talk. Of course, if the end user is a consumer, simplifying language is usually a good call, and worth a little push back on your part.
• Political correctness may be an issue. In the non-profit world, for instance, there is no longer any such thing as a disadvantaged community. It's an underserved community. If your copy gets scrubbed for un-pc terminology, just smile and make the corrections.

When funny isn't
Most advertising people are funny. Most clients are humorless, at least when it comes to their brand. If you're going to use humor, make sure it is in the service of selling more product. Find a left-brained way to sell your idea. Your client isn't going to buy into something just because it's hysterical. And remember who you are talking to - don't go all Jimmy Fallon on a Leno crowd.

Spelling and grammar
Spelling matters. Grammar is relative. Hopefully, you get to work with a proofreader. Make those pesky little grammatical changes. When it comes to informal elements such as sentence fragments or sentences that start with "and" or "but", put your foot down and tell the proofreader to take a hike. Of course, your client may be the grammarian, in which case, you will be viewed as a hack until you comply. And if your target is affluent and/or over 65, they may be more inclined to follow the rules of proper English.

Punctuation
Ellipsis marks are cheesy. Unlike puns and wordplay, which were once common tools of the copywriting trade, they were already considered tacky twenty years ago. The only excuse for using the dreaded dot dot dot is when you have edited out part of a quote. Exclamation points are usually redundant and should be used extremely sparingly. Deploy commas, colons and semi colons as you see fit and hope you have a good proof reader.

Bite the bullets
Yes, they are ugly from a graphic standpoint. No, you do not want bullets in a print campaign you plan on putting in your portfolio. However, bullets are useful in crafting long copy. Anything that breaks copy down into scannable, easily digestible chunks enhances readability. Bullets, sidebars and callouts help make collateral more reader-friendly. Remember, nobody has an attention span any more.

Sublimate your ego.
Here's a painful truth: the best idea may not always be yours. Sometimes, the art director comes up with the headline. If you're worth your salt, sometimes you think of the visual. There will be occasions when the creative director, in his infinite dickishness, decides to reward you and your partner for your hard work on an account by opening up the TV job to the entire department. (The sad truth is, by the time TV comes along, the client may have beaten you into a creative rut, and your CD may know that.) You have to muscle through this, and you may not win - whether you have the best idea or not. Get used to the taste of bile.

Transcend style
Every brand should have its own voice. Not YOUR voice. The product, the target and the strategy all factor in to finding the appropriate tone for marketing communications. Your job is to find and maintain that tone.

Help me. I just can't get over myself.

2010-08-25T12:07:00.000-07:00

My husband and I were watching Bill Maher. We're fans. We usually agree with him unless he's ranting about the evils of things like lamb chops or the polio vaccine. But when it comes to politics and world events, the guy is spot on, and he knows it. He positively radiates self-satisfaction. Which is why I made the comment that Bill Maher was quite possibly the smuggest man on the planet.

Hubby did not agree. In fact, he took it as a personal challenge to come up with somebody, er, smugger. He only had to wait long enough for Bill's next guest to come on stage.

Salman Rushdie. Fatwa target and erudite author of convoluted novels for academics. I tried to read The Moor's Last Sigh, but I got tired of looking up obscure historical references just so I could follow the plot. If I have to consult Wikipedia more than once per chapter, there better be a test at the end. (In all fairness, Rushdie's cat-that-ate-the-canary demeanor could be a relic from the days when he was married to Padma Lakshmi, a most gloat-worthy companion).

As someone who, to paraphrase Mick Jagger, can't get no self-satisfaction, I decided to take the smug challenge and see if I could come up with some folks who could beat, or at least meet, the level of smuggery set by Messrs. Maher and Rushdie.

The dictionary defines smug as follows:
Smug. [smuhg] - adjective. Contentedly confident of one's ability, superiority or correctness; complacent. Somehow, that made me think of political pundits. Being unabashedly partisan, I had to work from right to left.

I know, it's too easy, but surely Rush Limbaugh is the fattest, most fatuous fathead in the smug-opolis of professional punditry.

Now here's a righteous mug just begging for an "S" in front of it. Bill Kristol, one of the original architects of the Iraq war.

Smug with a bow on it. Sorry for the old picture, but George Will appears to have given up his trademark bowtie. Even without the eunuchoid neckwear, he still maintains a high level of proper preppy smug-itude.

It would take a lot more than a flag pin to burst Sarah Palin's smug bubble. She's earned it by proving that ignorance truly can be bliss. The kind of bliss that comes with millions of dollars, closets crammed with glad rags and adoring throngs of admirers. She has subverted the old American belief that if you work hard you can succeed. The new paradigm is read nothing, learn nothing, know nothing and keep telling us how much you love America. The woman actually makes George W Bush look smart.

Bla Bla O'Reilly. There's no denying Bill's smug factor.

I know what you're thinking: Where's Glenn Beck? Well, as of this writing, he's on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The unfair and unbalanced one did not make this list because he is insane and I don't think it's right to make fun of the mentally challenged. But, like Fox News, I like to maintain the illusion that I am fair and balanced, so, I must point out the undeniable smug-osity of...

Keith Olbermann. Unlike his right wing counterparts, the man does deal in facts. And he can write a good rant, though he apparently finds it impossible to edit himself. Keith's heart is in the right place, and his frequent indignation is genuine but Lordy Lordy, does that man like to hear himself talk. He's also not half as funny as he thinks he is - "The worst person in the WOOOOOOORLD," just might be the lamest bit on the, uh, planet.

Rachel Maddow, Queen of snark. I like that she's on, and I like that she's out, but her commentary tends toward the obvious. Like Keith Olbermann, she's way too enamored with her own humour. And her mother should have warned her that smirking is like crossing your eyes: if you do it often enough, your face freezes that way.

So much for politics, on to religion. Mother Theresa notwithstanding, faith and humility aren't necessarily a package deal.

Does it take a mega-ego to lead a mega-church? Just ask the purpose-driven Reverend Rick Warren. Whether God is pleased with him, only God knows, but Rev. Rick sure looks pleased with himself.

The hair. The arched eyebrow. The smirk. The Reverend Al Sharpton. The smug bug is colorblind. Just like ... Steven J. Colbert.

Really smug, or faux smug? I'm not sure even he knows anymore. And it's OK, because his fearless roast of George Bush at the 2006 White House Correspondent's dinner proved that he has the biggest cojones in comedy.

Yes, Alec Baldwin is smug, and he plays smug on TV. Plus, he can be really pompous about his politics. But damn, the man was hot back in the day. At least he doesn't wax his chest like some metrosexual little bitch.

Oprah Winfrey. So successful, so smart, so self-satisfied that rather than name her magazine after herself, she simply called it "O". Because when you're Oprah, you get to brand things like vowels. And in case anyone might think the O stood for Olive or Ophelia, Ms. Winfrey makes sure her face beams at us from the cover of every issue.

Donald Trump's ruddy skin tone may clash with the pink background, but his smugness remains undimmed. The famous hair construction that would look idiotic on your dad is an emblem of his smuguousness. Don's not balding and that's not a combover. Why? Because he says so and his reality trumps yours. Besides, after everyone's stopped chuckling at your lame hair joke, he'll still be filthy rich, and you'll still be struggling.

Get over yourself, Scarlett Johannson. You are not the first large breasted blonde to hit Hollywood, and you won't be the last. No matter how hard she acts, Scarlett always seems to be watching herself approvingly. And we always feel like we're watching her watching herself.

Why do I get the feeling Alice Waters grew her own Halloween costume? Why am I so sure that, when the party is over, she will make that necklace into a slow-cooked, Tuscan-style vegetable soup? Why would I bet money that tucked away in that berry crown, she's harboring a quail, to be impaled and roasted on a spit once its egg-laying days are over? Why is Alice so ditz-ily, deliciously smug?

Chevy Chase, a former Saturday Night Live comedian whose very mention dates me, said it best. He used to open his comedic news segments with the catch phrase, "I'm Chevy Chase and you're not." And that, my friends, is the essence of smug. If you don't believe me, just substitute a name – Sean Penn, Barbara Walters, Ann Colter, John Mayer, Nancy Grace – and see if it fits.

Think Ink

2010-08-11T10:29:00.000-07:00

Meet your new creative team. I dare you to tell these guys they'll have to work without a brief.

I just participated in a linked in discussion about tattoos in the workplace. Everyone was weighing in about the significance of body art as a marker of creativity, which I frankly think is a load of crap. Can you be tattooed and incredibly creative? Absolutely. But I've also worked with my share of illustrated slackers. Creativity is not, and never will be, skin deep. So I amused myself by posting the following:

I used to be a hack. My headlines were corny, my copy was constipated and I hadn't had an original thought in years. Then, I realized what the problem was. No tattoos. Heck, I don't even have pierced ears. So I went down to my neighborhood tattoo parlor, stripped down to my skivvies and handed the guy my credit card. I started with a tramp stamp on my lower back. Being a minimalist at heart, I dispensed with the curlicues and simply had him etch the words "tramp" and "stamp" in Helvetica bold, right above my back dimples. Next, I wanted to do something celebrating my French and Jewish heritage, so we etched a mezuzah and an eiffel tower on my left bicep. Since I am also part Armenian, I honored that by having the artist do a stuffed grape leaf on my other bicep. (Sadly, it looks more like a dog dropping, as dolma, while delicious, don't translate well to epidermis.) Then, it occurred to me that in the winter, I might have to wear long sleeves to keep warm, thus concealing, or worse, stifling my creativity, so I made sure I inked my hands - we wrote CHOCOLATE in script on the left hand and NUTELLA on the right, in bubble graffiti to up my street cred. Finally, I opted for an argyle pattern on my calves that allows me to dispense with socks. The resulting ink-rease in my creativity has been nothing short of phenomenal.

I don't have to prove. That I am creative. I don't have to prove. That I am creative. - David Byrne

No words.

2010-08-06T10:40:00.001-07:00

I'm sorry, I can't talk now. It's August. I have been working like a dog for the past three months, including weekends. I have been writing non stop about things like hip replacements, multiple sclerosis and gynecological surgery. I'm about to devote my entire weekend to a website for a PR firm. Am I grateful for the income? Very. Am I having interesting, potentially blog-worthy experiences? Nope. That would require leaving the house.

Now, my daughter is here visiting for a month before she starts law school. Or doesn't start law school. She is getting cold feet because she's having such a great time as a freelance writer and would rather become a journalist. I alternate between the you-will-never-make-a-living-in-that-dying-industry speech and the follow-your-heart-and-do-what-you-love speech. Truth is, I know she will have regrets no matter what she chooses. She is a glass half-empty kind of gal. That is not my daughter in the photo, by the way. I was looking for gag visuals to illustrate the concept of "no words." I picked that girl because she wasn't trussed and leather clad. Don't do a visual google on "gag" or you just might.

Anyway, since I have had no life recently, I have nothing to say. I need a break, and I need to spend some time with my kids and my husband. So I am officially going on hiatus for the rest of the Summer. See ya' in September.

Moe' Hotter

2010-06-09T08:36:00.000-07:00

OK, Ga Ga. I get the whole post modern throw-all-the-visual-influences-up-in-the-air-and-see-where-they-land mashup thing. But since when is it considered hot to for a man to have hair like Moe from the Three Stooges?

Meet my other blog.

2010-05-26T10:24:00.001-07:00

Like Snideties? Check out my other blog, Eucalyptus Way. Generally more personal and meditative.
http://eucalyptusway.blogspot.com/

My Semi-Jewish Identity

2010-05-24T23:33:00.000-07:00

I am the wrong half Jewish. My Jewishness doesn't come from matriarchal, and therefore undeniable, lineage. The Russian/Polish Jewish genes are my father's. Not that he is in any way religious. My father is an avowed free thinker, all the while keeping encyclopedic tabs on all successful Jews, half-Jews and quarter-Jews. I think it alleviates some of his guilt over eating pig's feet and marrying a shiksa. I didn't go to a Seder until I was fifteen. It was at the home of my father's uncle Jack, who was married to my aunt Elinor, sister of Martin Landau. (Yes, the one from Crimes and Misdemeanors. No, I've never met him.) I was self-conscious because I had no idea what to expect and no understanding of the ritual's symbolic significance. I suspect my great aunt and uncle felt a little sorry for my sister and me for being such clueless goyettes.

While hardly the most kosher of Jews, I have been mistaken for a full fledged member of the tribe. I have blue eyes and olive skin, courtesy of my grandmother, Momma Paula. Thick curly hair, probably a legacy from my grandfather Poppa Irving though he was bald by the time I came along. A decidedly Jewish tinge to my humor, via my acerbic Aunt Bunny. And a thankfully more feminine version of my father's considerable nose. I think civilization would lose a portion of its depth, flavor and sophistication without Jews like Sigmund Freud, Lou Reed, Einstein, David Mamet, Barbra Streisand, Daniel Day-Lewis, Maurice Sendak, Dylan, John Stuart, JD Salinger, Elie Wiesel, Paul Newman, Sarah Silverman – I could go on and on. I love the work ethic, values and achievements of the Jewish culture. I am proud to be half Jewish, even if it's the wrong half.

All this to say that I take it personally when Bat Puchanan decides his big issue with the nomination of Elena Kagan is that there are enough Jews on the Supreme Court. Gee, on the one hand, conservatives decry affirmative action to help Blacks, and then they turn around and want a quota against Jews. I guess the idea is to support whatever will keep the most minorities down. Isn't "a level playing field" what the Republicans said they wanted? To try to evaluate someone's judicial decisions based on their presumed faith is dangerous and unreliable. I don't know if Kagan is a good or bad choice – I lack the expertise to judge. I just want her vetted on criteria more relevant than the fact that she was bat-mitzva'd.

As if that were not enough, Ann Coulter has been foaming at the mouth again, this time in an interview with Donny Deutsch. Deutsch asked her outright if it would be better if we were all Christians. It was a locked and loaded question and Coulter put her mouth around the rifle. She agreed that America would be a better place if we were all Christian and invited Donny to church. ( How can a grown man go by Donny? On the other hand, let's think about this. Donald is awful, associated with ducks and rich boors with combovers. Don, well, Don Draper is redeeming that one, but that's recent. Before Mad Men, Don was the suburban dork next door. So yeah, I get the Donny thing.) But back to Ann. Beef jerky blonde Coulter explained to the dumbstruck Donny that Jews needed to be perfected and become Christians. Donny was rightfully shocked.

I'm shocked too, and not just at the implication that Ann Coulter is somehow "perfect". Please tell me anti-semitism is not going through some retro-chic revival. I want to believe our society has evolved beyond the days of A Gentleman's Agreement. I know there are klansmen and skinheads and other creeps out there with leather-bound editions of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, but I'd like to believe they are a lunatic fringe. I don't begrudge Ann Coulter her religion. But faith is faith, and it's personal. It can't trump the collective reality of a diverse society. Ann needs to balance her faith with the understanding that it's still a subjective belief system and not try to impose her perspective on everyone. Believers and doubters like me can coexist and even be great friends, but not if we strive to remake each other. You can pray to Jesus, Allah or Yahweh. You can chant, or meditate, or not pray at all. Ultimately, what matters is your menschitude.

Scrod.

2010-05-04T08:41:00.000-07:00

So what is Scrod, exactly? Haddock? Whitefish? Pollock? Cod? All of the above? Some sources define it simply as "immature" fish - the veal of the sea. In Cape Cod, where my parents used to have a summer cottage, scrod is simply the catch of the day - white, breaded and hopefully, fresh. But to my sister and I, scrod was a state of being. This used to be our lame joke as kids, when we'd be lobbying for pizza and our parents would pick a seafood restaurant and make us eat fish. We'd groan, look at each other and mutter "We're scrod."

Lately, it's occurred to me that we could use more scrod in the vernacular. And not because it's more genteel than "screwed,". When Katrina hit, and New Orleans was left to sink or swim, you might say they were screwed by FEMA and "heckuva job" Brownie. (You could also find some weird reason to blame the Almighty but we have Pat Robertson for that.) 1,836 people died in the hurricane but the survivors kept on keeping on, making gumbo, playing music, and selling real estate to Brangelina. But what about now that the Big Easy is getting coated in petroleum goo? What about the barrier wetlands that were in the process of being rehabilitated and are once again ruined? The three species of endangered sea turtles that may no longer be endangered because they're probably all dead? The lines forming for ten dollar an hour jobs cleaning up beach tar for BP, aka Big Polluter, because the fishing, shrimp and oyster industries have been destroyed?

This time, there's no picking themselves up and pluckily persevering. New Orleans hasn't just been screwed. It's been gutted, scraped, battered and totally fried. New Orleans, and the entire Gulf Coast, is scrod.

Eye on the Tiger

2010-04-09T10:27:00.000-07:00

I hate golf. The snail's pace, the early morning tee times, the business-shmooze aspect, the historically all-white-male club culture, the lumpy terrain and buzz-cut grass. I'm the freak who actually drove down 17 Mile Drive bitching about how the golf courses had ruined the landscape. If Jack Bauer were to torture me, I could probably name five golfers: Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, Nancy Lopez and Tiger Woods. Ooops, that's four. No, Jack, please, not the electrodes! But as much as golf to me is the television equivalent of Ambien, I admit I've been following the saga of Tiger's wood. It's been a welcome diversion from the Healthcare Bill. Besides, my husband is in control of the remote at all times, so it's not like I can avoid the Tiger tales.

So now, right during Augusta, Nike has put out an instantly infamous spot (No, I will not provide a link. If you are that out of it, you probably don't care). The video is a single shot of Tiger, looking sheepish. The audio is an old clip of his father lecturing him, seemingly from beyond the grave, and asking if "he learned anything."

Well, let's see. What could Tiger have learned?

Don't send incriminating text messages?
Never piss off a female Viking?
Keep it in your pants unless it's time to shower, pee, or have sex with your beautiful, blonde wife?

How about keep it in your pants long enough and you will start hallucinating that your dead father is talking to you? Tiger is almost 34 years old. A grown man with two children of his own who is way past getting lectured by Daddy, even if the old man is yelling at him from a cloud. The spot attempts to strike a "boys will be boys" chord and it works, if that's what you already believe. The wink-wink-nudge-nudge-way-to-go-stud crowd doesn't need to be convinced to keep backing Tiger. The how-dare-you-break-your-marriage-vows-and-publicly-humiliate-your-wife set isn't budging either. Nor is my subset, the people who can't stand phonies and hypocrites. The folks who didn't give a fig about Tiger's private life before, during or after the scandal still don't care. About the only people who could possibly change their opinion are those who believe Tiger is a "sex addict" who can be cured through therapy. And in fact, if he were to carry around a recording of his dead father's voice and play it every time his, uh, club wanted to swing, it would probably be a pretty effective "cure". Nice implants, Brandy, hold on while I switch on this tape of my Dad...

We had a long and spirited online discussion about this spot in one of my linked in writer's groups. People thought it was brilliant, stupid, creepy, clever, tacky, classy – it was a concerto of opinions. Some speculated that the spot was written by a 22 year old, an age bracket that can still wilt before a disapproving Dad. Others suggested that people who speculate about the copywriter's age are embittered old has-beens. One old school (as in strategic) copywriter posted the following questions:

what does that spot sell?
who's its target audience?
what's the expected take-away?
what benefit might it have for the brand?
why should people care?

I couldn't answer any of them.

I posted the spot on facebook, in a message addressed to my advertising friends. To my surprise, it's the non-advertising people who started commenting. The thread went on and on, and a lot of strangers chimed in. All the comments were about Woods' character, or lack thereof. Tiger was a slimeball. A great athlete with a right to a private life. A sick man in need of therapy. A vulnerable human being exposed to constant temptation. The spot was long-forgotten, it was all about Tiger.

And that's the thinking behind that Nike commercial: it keeps people talking about Tiger. Once Nike decided not to drop him, they couldn't pass up a buy like the Augusta telecast. To do a heroic great golfer spot would have been goofy – we all know what he's been up to the past few months. All that rehab, groveling, meeting with attorneys and cold showers three times daily. There was no ignoring the proverbial elephant in the room, not to mention his wayward trunk.

Nike has a stellar advertising history, but any spot featuring Tiger the athlete would inevitably be about Tiger the womanizer. So they made a brilliantly simple spot that could be instantly deconstructed and spoofed on You Tube, with the parodies spreading like H1N1, all across the social media universe. Within the first 24 hours, somebody had already done a version with new audio featuring Tiger's infamous voicemail to...whatever her name was (sorry, I left my Enquirer in the bathroom).

As an old school strategic type myself, I too tried to understand the messaging, the goal, the benefit to the brand. It's all beside the point. The spot is a clean slate - you can stick on a new voiceover, slap on some color supers, guaranteed to pop against that black and white film, add some porno chickaboom boom background music – the possibilities are endless. As will be the stream of parodies. And the one constant throughout will be the swoosh on Tiger's shirt.

Guidelines for Taglines

2010-03-12T15:42:00.000-08:00

Well, I did it again – blathered online to a perfect stranger and ended up with a blog post.

A lady in Women in Consulting, a networking group I belong to, emailed the following question to the WIC community at large:
I am looking for guidelines or best practices in designing a "tag line" or phrase that describes a company at the highest level. If you have suggestions or sources for such guidelines, please send them along.

I wanted to help her, but more than that, I wanted to help the unfortunate copywriter who might have to toil under someone who believes there are rules to this sort of thing. So I wrote up this nifty guide to writing taglines:

While there are no specific rules to writing taglines, there is a process. The actual tag line writing just requires a talented writer with an agile mind. The important work is strategic, and that happens before you ever think of a tag line. You have to consider:

• The size and focus of your company. If you have a very focused, b-to-b type business with a limited array of products and services, you might want to have a really hard working, granular tag line that says exactly what you do. You're small. You're not going to have to fold a huge array of products under one tag. Your advertising budget is limited and your tagline needs to work extra hard. Lets say you make latex surgical gloves and that's it. So you end up with something like The hospital glove people or Your patients are in good hands. (Tell your inner critic to stuff it. Not writing actual tag lines here, just giving examples, OK?) But what if you are making the leap into other surgical accessories? Then, you might want a more general line about your surgical expertise. Nothing else can cut it. Perhaps your business plan is to expand into other latex products, in which case your strategy might be about all things latex. You are Experts in Latex. No, that sounds too much like Perverts in Leather– but you get the idea.

• What if your company is enormous? At that scale, your tagline has to be more of a topline statement. Perhaps it's a positive spin on what you do – Disneyland. The happiest place on earth. GE. We bring good things to life. Another way to go might be a call to action – Just do it. Obey your thirst. Or a promise. You're in good hands with Allstate. We try harder. Note how you can stick the NIKE and GE lines on just about anything those companies make and they'll work. The important thing is to have an umbrella line that evokes some kind of emotion and still manages to mean something. Just do it is motivational. It tells you to get off your butt, but it also believes you can succeed. Perfect for sports stuff. We bring good things to life is comforting, almost cozy. Note the use of "good" and "life" in one sentence. It subconsciously evokes the phrases "Life is good," or "the good life." Just right for appliances.

• Product benefits Are your latex gloves so sensitive surgeons feel like they're operating with their bare hands? The healing touch. Or Because nothing should come between you and your patients. (Again, just illustrating a point, not saying these are great. Great, I charge for). The benefit is one way to go, but another one is a pain point. Are your hospital gloves less likely to break? Strong hands for Surgery. On the other hand, don't try to shoehorn more than one or two benefits into a tag line. Strong, yet delicate is fine for your gloves - two benefits, but it kind of works because there is some tension in the fact that strong and delicate are opposites. Strong, delicate, and available in six yummy pastel shades, on the other hand, is no longer a tagline. It's a cut line for a catalog photo.

• Your competition. Do you have an indisputable advantage - are you better, stronger, smaller, more portable,easier to fix, less breakable, more cost effective etc.? (Make sure the advantage you choose to lead with isn't some small technical thing that is meaningless to the end-user. Nobody cares if your surgical gloves come with an extra finger). If you have an edge over your competition, use it. Is your advantage temporary because the other guy is coming out with the same thing next year? Then, you might want to proactively own that benefit, so that your competitor is a me-too by the time they roll out their product. If you choose this route, you need to be able to spend, spend, spend before your competitor's launch. Also, don't just look at your competition from a product standpoint - look at what they are doing creatively. Make sure your line doesn't take the same position as, or sound too similar to, theirs.

• Your target. Whether you're targeting consumers or other businesses, shell out for some focus groups. You just might be surprised at what you learn. What are the perceptions of your product? Your competition's product? What are the top pain points? It's conceivable you might hear your future tag line come out of someone's mouth! If possible, invite your writer to the focus group and pay her for her time. If she's any good, she's strategic, and she'll want to attend. If she's REALLY good, she won't even mind suggesting a tag line that emerged fully formed from the ramblings of a focus group participant.

• Your budget. The less money you have, the harder your line needs to work. Fluff is not for the faint-of-budget.

• Tone. Attitude can be great or completely wrong for the product, target or category. Nobody wants a catheter with attitude, but a snack food? Why not? Humor can be endearing or a huge mistake. Just remember, it has a short shelf life. Bragging about the fabulosity of your product or company is a no-no unless you bring it back to the consumer. GE's We bring good things to life may seem like bragging if you look at it just using your left brain, but switch on your right brain and you'll discover that line is actually about the end user. We all have a life, we can all use toasters or cell phones.

Career Advice from an Ad-broad.

2010-02-22T11:32:00.000-08:00

Hey, kids. Just got carried away on linked in when someone put out an APB for advertising career advice. Then, it occurred to me that maybe I know something, so I'm gonna share. Here, in no particular order, are a few pointers for your survival.

Learn to keep your mouth SHUT. I learned this the hard way in my early thirties. I was a gossiping fool. No more.

Beware of sociopaths. There are a few out there that stay on the right side of the law and will stab you in the back for their own amusement. I've only met one, but I still have the scars.

Watch out for people who present themselves as the most down to earth, outspoken person in the room. That may mean they are keeping it real or it may mean they are playing you because they know your type. The "what you see is what you get" player is the most dangerous workplace con artist there is. See sociopaths.

Don't be afraid to say what you think, but get the lay of the land first. If you are working for someone who surrounds himself with yes people, you may have to keep your mouth shut. If you are working for someone who invites opinions from the staff and sometimes acts on them, keep that job!

When you get a new head honcho, watch who's kissing his/her fanny and how he/she takes it. If the boss is susceptible to flattery and all the sleazeballs and slackers are suddenly golden, get the hell out of there as fast as you can. You've entered the bizarro world.

Be nice to everyone, from the receptionist on up. Maintain a team spirit and positive attitude.

Learn to apologize. People appreciate it, you'll feel better and it helps keep your ego in check.

Keep your ego in check! Get over yourself- everyone else already has.

Don't indulge in the idiotic "us vs.them" mindset with your account people. You're better off befriending them. They'll find you entertaining, and you will appreciate an occasional reality check from a level headed account person.

Take your deadlines dead seriously. Pretend you will have to commit Hari Kari if you blow one.

Don't do the chronically late thing. No one is that special, except maybe the owner of the company.

Try your darnedest not to lie - in business and in life. Liars almost always get caught because they forget what they said and to whom. One exposed lie and your credibility is tainted forever.

Spare everyone the name dropping of glamorous agencies you've worked for. Guess what? No one cares, and you're not there anymore. Which doesn't mean you can't share a good war story.

If you're funny, great. If you're always the funniest person in the room, take it down a notch. (Cracking wise is like Tourette's to me and I am always checking myself so I don't start riffing)

If you're cute, young and female, lucky you. That's an extra trick in your arsenal. Just don't dress like the office sex pot. Older women will resent you and men won't take you seriously. Trust me, unless you come to work in a burka, people already know you're attractive. Save the tube top and butt-grazing mini for Saturday night.

Don't dominate the meeting unless it's your show. Disagree diplomatically.

Never get drunk at the office Christmas party, or any other professional function. Nobody ever forgets the girl whose strapless dress fell down or the guy who puked on the boss' shoes.

Watch the line between gallows humor and a negative attitude, and don't cross it.

Don't call in sick when you are not. You'll get found out. I know a guy who lost his job because he forgot he'd already killed off his uncle. I know another guy who "caught" what one of my female colleagues had been out sick with. Only problem was, some of us girls knew the real reason our friend couldn't come in: killer menstrual cramps!

If you have young children, suck it up and find a way to sometimes stay late or come in on the weekends, even if you have to bring your spawn with you. Childless people resent being the default slave because the breeders have to go to all their kids' soccer games and it really isn't fair. (I have kids btw and I lived by this when they were little.)

If you're gonna cry, go to the ladies room. If you're gonna yell and throw things, don't.

FOR MANAGERS ONLY:

If you supervise people, remember to handle them individually. Some thrive on praise, others on intimidation, still others want and deserve a more egalitarian approach. Always temper criticism with praise unless you are dealing with the slacker from hell. Give people a second chance, explaining clearly where they are falling short. Then, if they don't get it together, don't be a wimp. Get rid of them. Yes, it's a tough economy, which means there's someone really deserving out there who needs that job and will give it the attention it deserves.

Never cuss out or humiliate people, unless you truly covet the title of office douche bag.

Give credit where credit is due. If you head a team, don't just bask in the glory of their work. Tell others who the shining star was. It's fair, and it endears you to the troops. Stand up for your people if they are being maligned or treated unfairly.

If you are the creative director, act like one. You are not competing with your team. You are inspiring them to greatness, or at least greater competence. If you're all working on a big pitch, it's your job as creative director to pick, tease out and hone the best idea - which may not be YOUR best idea. Being a pig about this is the quickest way to turn your staff against you. Keeping all the TV or other plum jobs for yourself is porcine behavior as well.

Be open to other opinions. It's actually possible you might be wrong.

Don't dance around substance abuse. If someone has a drug or drinking problem, do the HR thing. Warn them, send them to rehab if necessary. They are sick and need help. If, however, the situation continues after the intervention, keeping them makes you an enabler. Do them a favor,and let them go. It could just the come-to-Jesus they need.

Liberally consult people with an expertise different from yours.

Know how long it should take to do a job and keep an eye out for dawdlers. Time dumping is not cool.

Respect the damn hierarchy. Yes, people under thirty, this means you. Even if your boss is an idiot. Don't go over your boss's head unless you have a true HR issue like harassment. No matter how friendly you are with your supervisor, he/she is the boss of you.

Patriotism is not enough.

2010-02-09T09:11:00.000-08:00

Dear Presidential Aspirant,

I don't need you to start off your speech with how much you love America. We all love America. All of us involved in the political process, donkey or elephant, are engaged in it because we love America. Your implication is clear: only you and your present company truly love America and you are gathered here today to defend her from the rest of us. Which is a crock.

Here's what I want from my politicians, especially would-be presidential candidates.

Dignity and decency. If you are having extramarital sex, writing lewd emails to underage male pages or creating blackmail fodder for yourself by doing the nasty on film, guess what. It will out. It always does. You could bring down your party along with your sorry behind. Don't run for anything. Well OK. Run for for cover. The Enquirer's coming.

You have to be smarter than me. If I can see the gigantic pothole in your thought process, that is not a good thing. I am smart, but I am certainly not smart enough to be president. If you are not brighter than I am, neither are you.

The ability to think on your feet. No, I don't care too much about verbal jousting though it's fun to follow. I mean have a grasp of the facts and understand how things interrelate. If you are running for president or vice president, I expect you to know your stuff enough that you can go on Meet the Press, a right of passage nobody gets to blow off. This means you, Sarah Palin. And while I'm at it, darling, I want to thank you for inspiring this entire rant. Credit where credit is due.

Which brings me to honor. A quaint concept, I know. If you were elected to do a job, then do it. Don't quit after two years "for the good of your state" and then think you can run for president for the good of the country. (Sarah, are your ears burning?).

A knowledge of history. Because it's true that it repeats itself. No, of course not literally, but you see patterns of behavior, tactics that have backfired, cruelty, greed and hubris - all opportunities to learn and therefore act more judiciously. I want you to understand our allies and enemies. What they may owe us in treasure or gratitude, what we may have done to piss them off, how we get along with their rivals, what our balance of trade is, what kind of a human rights record they have, whether they're in bed with people we don't like... I want you to already know all this. That would indicate that you are truly intellectually committed to Presidential leadership. You're INTERESTED in this stuff.

Personal experience with diversity. Know and interact with people who are culturally, sexually and ethnically different from you, and have friends and acquaintances from other nations. It's essential to factor in cultural relativity when you conduct foreign policy. It's also important that you don't perceive yourself as the leader of only the part of America that looks and thinks like you. In your heart, you must understand that you represent everyone.

Class. Of course, it would be nice if you had some. But I'm talking about class as a barrier to advancement and a predictor of poverty. You need to know how much people struggle, and care about it deeply. The fact that there are children in America who miss dinner on a regular basis should enrage you.

I know you're going to spin things - you're a politician. So spin away, but I ask that everything you say be grounded in truth. Don't ever lie to me or lie about your opponent. You will earn my lasting contempt.

It's important to me that you not think your candidacy is divinely ordained. People who "know" what God thinks or wants terrify me, and I certainly don't want one running the country. Whether or not you believe is your business and something only you would know.

I need to be sure that you are motivated by what's good for this country, not what's best for you.

Finally, can you look in the mirror and believe that you are up to the task of running the most powerful nation in the world? If that's not the case, then why are you running? And how much can you really love America?

God in the cross hairs

2010-01-25T00:15:00.000-08:00

Lately the weather has not been fabulous. It's what's known here in the Bay Area as the rainy season. Days upon days of endless drizzle. Well, no, not quite: On a good day, some time between noon and two o'clock, the sky is suddenly swept clear of clouds, the sun shines gold on everything and... on, false alarm. The clouds are back. Anyway, you can't really plan a hill walk under those circumstances, because you could find yourself slipping precariously down a muddy incline and teetering at the top of an impressive drop off. So instead of my usual walking meditation in Briones Regional Park, I decided to drive over to the top of Berkeley, park the car and walk the neighborhood at the crest of the hill.

This entails strolling through a nice sixty year old neighborhood, past the Lilliputian Sculpture Garden, and up short, steep incline to the Pacific Lutheran Seminary. It's the back entrance: You walk in through a carport and there's a little latched gate. The Seminary is small and unassuming, despite its choice hilltop location. The views are mostly obstructed by trees, but it's quite possible that from the Manor house, visiting clergy can look out the window and see San Francisco Bay on one side and on the other, the verdant hills of Tilden Regional Park.

Anyway, it's quiet up there. There's an asymmetrical (aren't they all?) modern church at the top of the hill. It starts out ugly but grows on you over time. Sometimes I try to open the door to check out the architecture from the inside, but it's always locked.On occasion I might encounter another dog walker or a couple of small boys but it's rare that I see an actual seminarian. I do have an idea of their mindset, though. They are inclusive,tolerant souls. Last election, they had a lot of signs up condemning prop 8. One beatup old car had a bumper sticker that read "God wants faithful fruits, not religious nuts."

It's peaceful up there at the Pacific Lutheran Seminary. I'm a die hard agnostic, but I can sense the kindness and generosity of spirit that pervades the place. And so, as I cut through their modest campus yet again, I can't help but think to myself, these are not the kind of people who would approve of putting bible verses on the cross hairs of a rifle.

It's scandal enough that the Michigan-based Trijicon arms company is endangering the lives of our soldiers by encoding bible verses in their view finders. Reflect on Corinthians as you blow Mahmoud's head off in the name of Jesus Christ. Think it's harmless, maybe even inspirational? Trijicon probably does. Their themeline is "Brilliant Aiming Solutions." How sterile, how bloodless, how slick. But consider this: we are using Jesus rifles to train the Afghan Military. Be grateful that nation has 10% literacy or they would have already turned those rifles against our guys. Just what Bin Laden needs to fuel his propaganda. Proof, to his mindset, that we are crusaders waging a religious war. What is this communicating to our Christian soldiers? That they are killing in the name of Christ? What about our Jewish or Muslim soldiers? Should they be proselytized to as they risk their lives, just because they've been issued a Jesus rifle?

And what about poor Jesus? How is it right for his name to be co-opted by the military Industrial complex and used like some kind of peekaboo prize on a killing machine? What would Jesus do? What would he think? Who would he shoot?

It won't be long now

2009-11-12T23:35:00.000-08:00

before there are more yoga teachers than students. And, contrary to the cliche, just because you can do doesn't mean you can teach.

Give me some skin.

2009-10-22T01:42:00.001-07:00

I think I'll make a deal with my son, just to get him to drop the whole tattoo argument. He's not 18 yet, so we still have 15 months before he goes all human canvas on us.

Here's the deal: you can get a tattoo now if your parents get to pick the design.

Dave and Stephanie and Regina and HR

2009-10-17T00:05:00.000-07:00

I don't judge anybody by their sex lives. As far as I'm concerned, consenting adults can consent to whatever they want. Just please don't tell me about it. Still, I'm glad I'm not married to David Letterman, whom I never met despite having once shared a corporate suite and bleachers with him at the Indy 500 – entirely another story. Anyway, I suspect poor Regina Lasko, who waited the guy out for twenty years, has long made her peace with his philandering. It seems he likes funny, smart, nerdy girls who wouldn't be out of his league in the real world. The crew and production team must be crawling with them. So what's Regina to do if the Late Show women are there for the picking, like craft service M&Ms? As the old Irish proverb says, "What cannot be cured must be endured."

But that's all between Dave, Regina, Stephanie, the tabloids and only Dave knows who else. It's the work thing that bothers me. Some office romances are kinda kosher. Like Sam in Accounting and Jan in Human Resources. But the head honcho mousing around with assorted female staff members is completely uncool. Dave's ladies, however innocent or sincere, will have a red I-had-sex-with-David-Letterman-to-get-ahead on their foreheads for the rest of their careers. Women who won't play with Dave, or are too old, or otherwise not Dave's type will be bitterly resentful and despise Letterman - not really an emotion one wants to elicit in one's employees. Men will state ruefully that they can't get ahead at The Late Show because they don't have tits.

I don't know that any of the above is happening at The Late Show but on the work front I've seen it all. There's never any hiding these relationships. The couple smolder at each other, close a lot of doors, have too many private jokes. People notice, people talk. Incessantly. "What a lousy decision. Wonder if it was HER idea." "Did you hear Martha got promoted? Wonder if SHE slept with him too." "No, I'm not going to the conference. The boss is bringing her boy toy."

When employees conclude that the playing field is not level, they lose faith in the company leadership. The boss has proven him/her self all too human, and people start to question management's decisions. If the economy is good, intelligent employees may feel they have to leave to get ahead. Meanwhile, the slackers find it easier to stay under the radar or rationalize their lack of advancement. Bad for morale, bad for productivity, bad for quality control. There is simply no upside for an organization when the person at the top is fooling around with the staff. Unethical. Disruptive. Tacky. Really stupid human trick, Dave. By the way, did you notice that honey in the editing suite? A little broad in the beam, but I hear she went to Columbia.

Yes, I know, Regina. He makes you laugh.

Boom!

2009-10-05T23:27:00.000-07:00

I just don't get this youtube video all my friends are posting. It's set to Dueling Banjos and stars a Caucasian rube (I'm a Caucasian - I can say that) who is about to demonstrate the efficacy of some home made fireworks in what appears to be his dining room. Instead of the discrete shower of sparks he promises, the guy makes a huge boom and startles himself silly. Except that when the boom cloud clears, he appears to be wearing a different shirt which I don't think we're meant to catch. This is not a genuine wack job, it's a dweeb with a twisted sense of humor. He looks like David Letterman's slightly unhinged younger brother who lives in their mom's basement. The twisted sib makes fireworks and wishes he had Dave's sex life – or wishes he could have sex for once in his life. (Don't start a rumor - I made up the thing about DL.)

Anyway, real or fake, I see nothing funny in watching someone risk burning down his house, possibly singe his face (or duck on cue?) and make a complete ass of himself. If this is real, it's tragic. If it's not, it's just dumb. Now let us put aside the idiotic specifics of setting off fireworks in your home and simply look at the fact that this person comes off like a complete fool. Why is that funny? Some people are accident prone or clumsy. Yours truly, for example. I have inadvertently embarrassed myself on more than one occasion.

Once, I was participating in an ad agency creative exercise. We were divided into teams and each one had to put on a group presentation before the agency and a panel of judges from upper management. We were pretending to sell some kind of software - the details elude me - and we had determined that the overarching benefit, the one that could serve as an umbrella for all the others, was adaptability. So I decided to dimensionalize adaptability and add drama to my part of the presentation. As I was making the case for staying agile in a changing marketplace, I pulled a ball from my pocket with the intention of throwing it at my creative director friend in the judge's panel. "And you have to (BALL TOSS) think fast...". Only my aim has always sucked, and instead of lobbing the ball at my friend, I spiked it into the lap of our frail and delicate head of account services who almost fainted from the shock.

Oh, I hear you laughing. Go ahead. Chortle away. I will maintain my solidarity for that terminally immature fellow and his home made explosives. Not funny. And even less amusing if they're shooting the video at his mom's house.

Got it.

2009-09-28T23:40:00.000-07:00

All of a sudden, everybody gets it. You tell your kid to cut you a little slack because your other kid is having a crisis and you're told "I get it. You don't care about my problems." You start to make a case that you deserve a raise, or a break, or a job, and the person you are beseeching replies. "I get it. I just can't do anything for you right now." You want to call someone to task for their behavior and you get back "I get it. I was a jerk. " And then they change the subject, short-circuiting any constructive discussion to make sure said behavior doesn't happen again.

I get it is the new conversational reset button. People can use it to dismiss, reassure or mollify you, but it's always a way of taking control of the discussion. Sometimes, this is done because the person who gets it has no interest in further exploring " it" - the defensive I get it. Sometimes, it's to cut off whatever long and involved statement you were about to make - the preemptive I get it. Seems like everybody's so busy getting it, you just can't get through.

False prophets and false analogies

2009-09-09T18:04:00.000-07:00

This inane controversy over the President's speech to school children was petty and paranoid and, yes, I must alliterate, pathetic. And yet it made me think. We on the left spent 8 years thinking of Bush as the Idiot-in-Chief, and now the far right sees Obama as the AntiChrist. Was this demonization and reverse-demonization?

I thought I might be on to something and perhaps we could all meet in the middle. This frivolous notion lasted all of 10 seconds. The truth is, one can build a lengthy and convincing case demonstrating that Dubya deserved to be dubbed the Idiot in Chief, but no logical case can be made that Obama is the AntiChrist– even if you buy into that superstitious concept.

Today, I was listening to a discussion about the war in Afghanistan on NPR. One expert was lauding the Afghans for their turnout in dangerous situations and the thorough distribution of ballot boxes in remote and difficult terrain. Another pundit tempered the expert's enthusiasm by pointing out that Afghanistan was a tribal society and people were voting along those lines. Nobody mentioned the low female turnout, with many women afraid to work the polls and other women kept at home for fear they might encounter a male pole worker. The one comment that struck me was by a professor, born in Afghanistan and raised here. How can we take this election seriously, he asked, when 90% of the electorate is illiterate? They are voting along ethnic lines, in response to bribes or threats or just because they like the look of the guy (no need for unisex wording here).

My sick mind immediately returned to the conspiracy theorists getting their panties all in a wad over death panels, Kenyan birth certificates and a traditional inspirational speech to school children. Yeah, they are literate, and they vote. But they aren't very smart. Stupid people vote, and it's right and fair that they should. Sometimes, they elect stupid people. That's democracy's Achilles heel, and it certainly accounts for the high number of bozos in the House and in the Senate. So yeah, compared to the poor, undereducated people in Afghanistan, our electorate is pretty sophisticated. They can read, but apparently, they don't.

That Vision Thing

2009-08-21T03:34:00.000-07:00

As far as I'm concerned, the nature/nurture debate is over. All you have to do is reproduce and try your best to raise your kids. Just as you come to the realization that your children have inherited all your worst traits, you're hit with another epiphany: you're turning into your parents.

My father is quite nearsighted and has always worn glasses. Without them, he has that telltale soft, myopic gaze and is, if not helpless, definitely challenged. He is a physician and health-conscious, with just a touch of hypochondria, so he wears sunglasses – over his glasses. But because he fears that's still not protection enough against those pesky, cataract-inducing UV rays, he adds on little clip-on shades. Every day is a gray day in the land of Dr. Dad.

Then, there's my grandmother. As a girl, I found her spectacles truly annoying. No, not the frames themselves - the daily drama of finding the right specs when she needed them. She would start by asking my grandfather in their native French if he had seen her "glasses to see far" or her "glasses to see close" , depending on which pair had gone missing. Pretty soon, the entire family would be searching the house, the car, the beach or the restaurant for my grandmother's glasses, which somehow always turned out to be in the first place she'd looked, her purse. My mother does not yet need distance glasses (wish I'd gotten that gene). She only wears readers, but she makes up for it by losing them twice as often as her mother did.

Growing up, I found my father's redundant eye wear and my grandmother's daily vision quest incredibly embarrassing. Surely everyone was staring at my eccentric family, thinking "That poor girl. She's related to these people." Of course, I had 20/20 vision, and I wasn't about to hide my best feature behind a pair of shades. Five presidents and a digital revolution away from middle aged lucidity, I didn't know that with maturity comes a blissful lack of concern about looking goofy.

Fast-forward a few decades.

Don't know if it's from staring at a computer screen for a living, but my eyes went south surprisingly fast. Right around my fortieth birthday, the type on paperbacks began to blur. Menus in dimly lit restaurants became illegible unless I squinted like Renee Zellweger and dislocated my arm. I got a pair of cute little red 1.0 reading glasses which quickly became inadequate. Soon, I needed glasses to look at the thermostat, the dosage on the cold medicine, the needle I couldn't thread. Too vain to go full-grandma and get an eyeglass chain, I started wearing my readers like a utilitarian headband.

I had graduated to 2.0 lenses when I noticed an annoying development at the movies: The projectionists were all too lazy to properly focus the image. Tired of reading fuzzy credits, I'd duck out of the theater and bitch to the nearest theater employee. Eventually, I realized it wasn't the projectionist who had the focusing problem. I got my eyes tested and officially graduated to bifocals, which I have never gotten used to. When came time to change the prescription, I had the optometrist give me regular distance lenses. Now, I switch back and forth, just like grandma did. Sometimes, I too can't find my glasses, which usually turn out to be on my head.

It's when I go on my nature walks that things get really complicated. I need reading glasses for the trail map, sunglasses to protect my peepers and distance glasses to make sure whatever is causing that rustling in the brush isn't a mountain lion. The distance glasses give my vision a tantalizing clarity. I can see every leaf dancing in the breeze. But the glare can be intense, so I've resorted to wearing sunglasses over my distance glasses.

Just like my Poppa does.

On Hiatus.

2009-08-02T23:44:00.001-07:00

I have temporarily lost my mind due to a difficult move. We had to move out on the 21st but couldn't get into the new place before the first. I had to schlep my non-laptop computer around and set it up in hotels so I could work. Now, I am in a new place, surrounded by boxes. My husband is grouchy because his internet's not working. My kid is nasty because he didn't want to move and is choking on his own testosterone. My daughter is having her 25 year life crisis a couple of years early and has decamped for the East coast. My supply of St. John's Wort has run out. The only sane person around here right now is the dog. Consequently, please bear with me while I unpack, clean cabinets, write hospital brochures and howl at the moon.

Taking the glove off.

2009-07-04T05:42:00.000-07:00

Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson.
Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson.

"I can't believe this," grumbles my husband, the boomer curmudgeon. "It's not like he was John Lennon."

Well no, but MJ did have the best-selling album of all time. He danced with astounding elasticity and grace. He invented the expensive music video. His music is an instant flashback to the lost youth of GenXers everywhere. He broke the color barrier.

"What are these people talking about?" The curmudgeon growls." What about Motown? What about Marvin Gaye, or Stevie Wonder?"

But they weren't played on the same stations, I explain. Michael crossed over. Although I have to admit, the frenzy is starting to get on my nerves - especially when I get to yoga class and find out we are dedicating the entire class to the memory of "the King of Pop". The yoga teacher recalls how, in her early twenties, she traveled to North Africa alone. Not a good idea for a young female, even now. Hailing a cab at the Tunis airport, she asked to be taken to Carthage. As the car headed into the desert, paranoia set in. Where were they really going? Was she about to be traded for a pair of camels? Would she ever see her mother again? Peering from his rear-view mirror, the cabbie bared his tobacco-stained teeth. "So," he began,"Tell me about this Billie Jean. Is she really his lover?"

It's a great story. Michael Jackson's music creating a connection between a middle aged Tunisian cabbie and a scared little hippy chick. But the curmudgeon isn't having any of it. Instead, he presents me with a recap of Michael's greatest tabloid hits.

Jackson squandered his incredible talent. He grossly mismanaged his money. He wallowed in crass, over-the-top materialism. He was a black man so self-hating, he whittled his nose down to Phantom of the Opera proportions and somehow managed to have white babies, probably with the aid of a turkey baster and a wad of caucasian sperm. He was a publicity hound who married Elvis' daughter, hung with Liz and Liza and paid Marlon Brando a million bucks to come to a party. MJ spent his adulthood trying to make up for the childhood he never had, building his own amusement park and private zoo, traveling with a chimp, playing video games and of course, playing with children. He was a probable child molester so tone-deaf, he gave an interview in which he described sharing his bed with a thirteen year old boy as perfectly natural. Now, we are learning about anorexia, drug addiction and a live-in Dr. Feel-Good who literally anesthetized Michael on a nightly basis.

Let's face it, people. The curmudgeon is correct. The gloved one was not an innocent, or a sprite, or a manchild, whatever that is. You could say Michael was victimized by an abusive father, by fame, by blackmailers, drug dealers, sycophants, hangers-on, and so-called plastic surgeons. But ultimately, we are talking about a talented, deeply flawed middle-aged man with some serious character issues.The grooves were infectious, and the showmanship, beyond compare. But the songs sound dated and strangely sexless. When Michael Jackson grabs his crotch, it's just choreography, and it's about as hot as watching a four year old who really, really has to pee. Just try and imagine the guy crooning "Baaaaby, I'm hot just like an oven, I need your lovin'" and you'll see what I mean. Give me Marvin and some of that old-time testosterone.

Now, Los Angeles is preparing for a funeral the likes of which we haven't seen since Lady Di was put to rest. As the curmudgeon grimly points out, it's going to cost a fortune for the city to take on all that traffic and crowd control, and LA, like the rest of California, is tapped out. But it's all a welcome distraction from the ruined economy and the fans need to mourn. As for Michael, he's finally getting what he wanted for so long. Unconditional love and a nice, long sleep.

If my son were stuck in a one-horse town...

2009-06-16T14:39:00.000-07:00

...he'd get the horse to buy him some beer.

Wright Wingnut

2009-06-11T23:35:00.000-07:00

So "them Jews" are barring Reverend Wright from talking to Obama. Thank you, asshole, for giving Rush Limbaugh ammunition for his outrageous attempt to turn far-right white supremacist Holocaust Museum killer James Von Brunn into an antisemitic leftist wack job. Hmmmm, there are so few of that type, and most of them are from Europe. Limbaugh would have been hard-pressed to find a poster-child for leftist anti-semitism in America, had Wright not presented himself like a suckling pig on a silver platter, with an apple in his mouth. Thank you, you unholy fool.

Republican DisSonyance

2009-05-29T16:15:00.000-07:00

Huckabee called her Maria! Limbaugh thinks she's stupid! Gingrich says she's a racist! She's Sonia Sotomayor, Obama's first supreme court nominee, and she's warming the hearts of Hispanics and Democrats everywhere. Hispanics because they are justifiably proud of a girl from the projects who made good, and Democrats, because they think all that right wing bluster will alienate Hispanics from the Republican party.

So what does it all mean? Well, Ms. Sotomayor birth certificate says Sonya, not Maria, so Huckabee can stop worrying that his cleaning lady's about to quit. And while Rush Limbaugh calling anybody stupid is the ultimate example of the pot calling the kettle black, one does have to set the record straight. The lady was high school valedictorian, graduated magna cum laude and phi beta kappa from Princeton, winning their top academic prize, and went on to Yale law school, where she was editor of the law review. If that's stupid, then Rush Limbaugh must be a brainless invertebrate (no, wait, bad analogy... he IS a brainless invertebrate).

Still, it's fair to take a closer look at the quote, taken out of context from a 2001 Speech at (CONSERVATIVE RED FLAG!)...UC Berkeley. " I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Here's where the right wingers have a point. For a person whose job it is to weigh and measure and parse words, the quote is unfortunate. It lacks eloquence and clarity, and is too open to interpretation. Sotomayor does appear to claim that a Latina can make a better judgement than a white male, which is uncomfortably close to the notion that a white male can do a better job than a black one, or a Christian can be more effective than a Muslim, and yes, that is the kind of thinking affirmative action was established to debunk.

Now here's where Newt and friends are, depending on your tolerance for their world view, either misguided or full of shit. When Sotomayor talks about having "lived that life", she's not talking about race (and you can invoke la raza all you want, Hispanic is an ethnicity, not a race). She's referring to that great American taboo, class. We don't talk about class in America. It interferes with our mythology about upward mobility and pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps.

A judge who was a fourth generation legacy at Yale can't know what it's like living pay check to pay check, or getting evicted, or having a sick child and no health insurance. A judge from an underprivileged white or black background would share Sotomayor's perspective on how the law affects the working poor and the opportunities available to them. This is what Obama calls empathy.

Wolf-Boy

2009-05-16T16:25:00.000-07:00

I hear the gray wolf has been reintroduced to the wilds of Wyoming. This could work out well for us, because my son is maybe one D and a misdemeanor short of a wilderness program and I'm thinking the wolves would make more effective parents than we seem to be. The kid should adapt well: he already acts like he was raised by wolves. He can't be domesticated.The heavy metal music he listens to consists of mostly howls. He's largely nocturnal, preferring to hide out in his den during the day. He travels in a pack and wolfs down his food. Perhaps, after his stint with the wolves, he might come back more respectful: Wikipedia says the cubs are very deferential to their parents. If his surrogate wolf-mom starts to give him constructive criticism and he accuses her of biting his head off, she might get mad and actually do it - unlike his real mom who mostly bites her own tongue. And just think how well vulpine parenting worked out for Romulus and Remus: They grew up to found Rome. Which beats the hell out of working at the Burger King.

A dish best served cold.

2009-05-13T07:41:00.001-07:00

We ladies may live longer, but men age better. We get saggy, they get craggy. As usual, our culture sends out mixed messages. While Oprah and More Magazine celebrate femmes who are "forty and fantastic" or "fifty and fabulous," Hollywood continues to team up George Clooney, Harrison Ford and Jim Carrey with costars young enough to be their daughters.

One of the reasons Paul Newman was so beloved, besides his charitable endeavors, acting skills and legendary blue eyes, is the fact that he remained happily married to Joanne Woodward. Women of a certain age take comfort in his famous quote "Why should I go out for hamburger when I have steak at home?" The Paul Newman phenomenon had a lot to do with why so many women liked Elizabeth Edwards. The dumpy, frumpy cancer victim married to the perfectly coiffed, eternally cute man. The tragedies they endured together! The family values! The love!

Of course, all that went out the window when the world found out dear John had an affair, and probably a love-child, with Rielle Hunter, a skanky Lucinda Williams lookalike with overly processed hair. Even worse, the dalliance occurred while his wife was recovering from cancer and during what might have been a viable presidential bid. Had Edwards' candidacy taken off, the scandal could have cost him, and the Democratic party, the election, thrusting us into an alternate reality too horrible to contemplate.

Time passes. Tabloids move on. Cancer metastasizes. Poor Mrs. Edwards is terminally ill. She has three children and a husband she claims she's still - oh please! - "in love with". Her days with her beloved family are cruelly limited by her disease. And instead of making the most of the rest of her life, she's away on a book tour for her tell-all tome, narcissistically titled "Resilience". It's like Stephen Hawking calling his memoirs "Genius" or Giselle naming hers "Perfection".

How can Mrs. Edwards put her children, now all old enough to understand and be humiliated by their father's infidelities, through another media assault? Why would she leave behind a book that casts their only remaining parent in a negative light? In three consecutive interviews, Elizabeth informed us that "All she ever asked from John was that he be faithful." Repeatedly pointing out that she's an army brat, she describes her humble origins. They "never had a lot, but they had enough". Consequently, she "doesn't care about diamonds"- she just wanted her man to be true. Well, diamonds may not do it for her, but square footage is the girl's best friend. Elizabeth, the twins and John, self-styled champion of the underclass, live lavishly in a 28,200 square foot home, which includes a high school sized gymnasium where John can play basketball if Obama ever visits (highly doubtful).

So it's not like they need the money. The book puts John and his bad behavior right back in the spotlight, and Elizabeth's impending death will be the coup de grace to his career in public life. Apparently, revenge is sweeter than the eight year old twins. And John isn't the only partner in the Edwards marriage with character flaws.

Personally, I always thought John Edwards looked like a slimmed-down Bob's Big Boy. And unlike Paul Newman, he DID go out for hamburger...

Out of service

2009-04-25T18:50:00.000-07:00

Today was a vibrant Northern California Spring day. The sky was an eponymous blue and the oversized vegetation preened in the sun. I was taking a brisk walk in the hills, the frisky wind refreshing my skin and my outlook. Suddenly, from a house a half block behind me, I heard an ear-splitting scream. "NOOOOOOO. NO NAP. NOT NAP TIME. NO NAP. NOT NAP. EEEEEEEEEEK! NO NAAAAP!" I sped up, trying to get away from the sound of some unseen, willful, angry little person with a set of pipes made for heavy metal. Alas, the road curved, and the wind was blowing in my direction. The raging child's voice followed me for an astounding three blocks. "NO. NOT NAP. NOOOOOOOO". I wondered if mom's ears were bleeding yet.

Nap time. Finally a reason to be glad I'm not thirty anymore.

Shameless Self-Promotion

2009-03-15T14:30:00.000-07:00

On the off-chance that anybody reading this doesn't know me personally, I thought I'd let you know I have another blog.
It's more thoughtful, less snotty and has generally longer entries, on topics ranging from family issues, to politics, to life in Berkeley, California. If you'd like to check it out, simply go to http://eucalyptusway.blogspot.com/

lip-sinking to new depths

2009-03-13T11:43:00.000-07:00

The above online campaign been stalking me for weeks. Somehow, I doubt the advertisers got Angelina's buy-in, and I really hope she sues.

Angelina Jolie has lovely lips, of course. They are large. They also have a distinct contour, a line that you can draw, because she comes by them honestly. Artifically plumped lips lose that shape and can look a lot like earthworms mating.

But this is the part that gets me. "Thin lips are ugly on anyone." Talk about tapping into young women's physical insecurities. Ugly like who? Kate Hepburn? Vivienne Leigh? Courtney Cox? Erin Burnett? All beautiful, all thin-lipped, all unimaginable with an outsized tumescent mouth.

When I was a girl, society gave Black women the message that their full lips were unattractive - which is racist and sick. I guess we have evolved a tad, since this ad isn't racist. Just sick. There are many ways to be beautiful. Black women generally have big lips, like the ravishing Beyonce, but that doesn't make sloe-eyed, slim-smiled Thandie Newton a dog. Angelina and Scarlett are pretty and pouty, but Gwyneth shouldn't have to wear a bag over her head.

This revolting ad is just another manifestation of our bigger is better culture - a culture that appears to be in its death throes as the economy snaps to like a pulled-taut rubber band. McMansions. SUVs. Bagels and muffins bigger than your head. Huge cocks and gigantic boobs and lips big enough to keep your nose warm.

The entertainment, advertising and fashion industries keep telling young women "You can't be thin enough". Unless, of course, the thinnest part of you happens to be your lips.

On G.E. stock breaking the $10 mark

2009-02-19T13:43:00.000-08:00

Insight from my hubby, the stock trader.
"If you had asked people six months ago which was most likely to occur first, General Electric dipping below $10 a share or the rapture, most would have guessed the rapture."

At least we have more time to repent.

Puff Piece

2009-02-11T23:36:00.000-08:00

The Michael-Phelps-caught-smoking-pot-story is a tempest in a bong. By now, most Americans understand that pot isn't any worse for you than booze. Personally, I'd rather have a stoned driver coming towards me at 40 miles an hour than a drunk one going twice as fast, hurtling across the median line. So what are we to make of this good old boy sheriff down in South Carolina, who had his men burst into a frat house, guns drawn, in search of an incriminating bong that might have Michael Phelps' DNA on it? It's a frat house, for heaven's sake. The surprising thing is that they DIDN'T find a bong. Michael Phelps had the discipline, character and athleticism to win 14 gold medals. I'd say he's earned the right to unwind and smoke a little dope.

It's time this country got over its hypocrisy and legalized pot. After all, it's a lot less dangerous than the grotesque binge drinking that kills a dozen or so college students each year. Most intriguingly, legalization could be a huge boost to our flailing economy by creating thousands of employment opportunities, including:

• Agricultural jobs for farmers and farm workers

• Retail jobs for dispensaries and eventually cannabis cafes, the smoker's equivalent of a bar

• Trucking and distribution jobs

• Opportunities for entrepreneurs who want to sell pre-rolled or packaged pot, or pre-fab brownies and other treats

• Refining, processing and packaging jobs for factory workers

• Research positions for scientists who would finally be allowed to investigate THC's pharmaceutical properties

• Marketing, advertising and design jobs to market the pot to adults, just as hard liquor is marketed today

Then, there are the fringe benefits:

• More time for the cops to go after bad guys

• More room in the jails for actual hardened criminals, who we could put away for a longer time

• Fewer lives ruined by incarceration for a victimless "crime"

• Less congestion in the courts from trials for pot-related offenses

• Less business for murderous Mexican drug cartels

• Less hypocrisy in society in general

• Less fodder for sleeze ball "journalists" who spend their times trying to embarrass people like Michael Phelps

Live long enough and you'll prosper. Maybe. If we ever get out of this hole.

2009-02-11T11:47:00.000-08:00

Those long, elfin ears! Those diagonal brows! There is no doubt in my mind: Timothy Geithner is a Vulcan.

Eight Is Too Many.

2009-02-08T09:34:00.000-08:00

"...I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgement, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous..." Excerpt from the Hippocratic Oath

Stand back. I'm gonna spew. I'm gonna be venomous and judgemental and not nice. Because Nadya Suleyman, the psycho woman who just had the octuplets, makes me sick.

For starters, there's the pathological Angelina Jolie fixation. Mom's had a nose job, cheek implants and lip plumping to make her look like the fourth runner-up in an Angie look-alike contest. She's trying so hard, I wouldn't be surprised if she had a crossed-out Billy Bob tatoo on her ass. And despite the lack of a Brad clone to mate with, Nadya's apparently determined to out-baby Brangelina. Except rather than pick a poor nation to adopt from, she's just given birth to her own third world country.

No one can accuse the Jolie-Pitts of not having the resources to raise their children. This bimbo, on the other hand, is divorced, with no apparent source of income and 6 other kids at home. Suleyman claims she'll be able to support everyody after she finishes "her classes". Until then, she'll be giving them "love". Which better be caloric, 'cause she sure ain't breast-feeding eight kids. And what classes, pray tell? Because flower-arranging isn't gonna keep 8 babies in huggies and onesies. As for love, does this cow have any idea what an ordeal the NICU is for a preemie? The needles, the blindfolds, the lack of physical contact and nurturing? The estimated tab of $400,000 per child by the time they're discharged? Does she realize premature babies are likely to have digestive issues that could require surgery? Or severe vision problems? Or under-developed lungs susceptible to respiratory distress, asthma and life-threatening infections? She's looking at six or eight thousand dollars per kid just for RSV shots, which preemies need to get through the cold and flu season - not to mention the cost of treating the inevitable developmental delays and possibly life-long learning disabilities. But who cares when "all you ever wanted to be was a mom"? You just have to share that love because it's all about you. If it wasn't about you, you wouldn't be getting interviewed on TV: you'd be in the NICU with your babies.

Nadya Suleyman intentionally conceived eight children with ongoing medical problems that will cause them pain and suffering and cost society millions. She has demonstrated that she is unintelligent, irresponsible and selfish - all terrific reasons to replicate one's DNA. Just what our overpopulated world needs - more stupid, self absorbed people, consuming and polluting. Most disturbing of all, this case almost has me agreeing with the pope. In vitro, in this instance, really IS unethical. The so-called doctor who agreed to implant the embryos could have refused on the grounds that it was medically dangerous. Instead, he took the money and created eight children with compromised futures to accommodate a crazy woman's identity issues. The doctor should lose his license. As for Pseudo-Angie, I hope her uterus falls out.

The Impersonal Trainer

2009-01-26T10:48:00.000-08:00

"I am searching for on-line personal training clients."
My company, NAME WITHHELD, offers a very personalized on-line personal training service. ...

Believe it. This was posted on one of my linked in groups. The ultimate can't-be-done online business is now being conducted, on line. The trainer can't see your bad form, or take note of your problem areas. You can't be shamed, goaded or inspired into just five more reps. It defies the whole raison d'etre for personal training! What's next? www.facelift.com?

Bite me, Sweetness.

2009-01-10T17:42:00.000-08:00

My women's networking group has a massive off-topic email list which we use to post requests for referrals for everything from advertising writers (like me) to housepainters. So this member sends an email asking the group if they have tried to find work through online bidding sites. This process was described by many respondents as a "race to the bottom." Whoever sells herself the cheapest, wins, so to speak. I wrote back of my experience with a paying site where I have gotten exactly zero responses, and recommend against it. And then I impulsively typed the following: OBAMA BETTER HURRY UP AND GET TO WORK! THIS ECONOMY SUCKS! :-(

OK, I admit it. All caps, tacky, wrong forum, I got carried away. So this woman writes in to ream me, in a kind, nurturing and ickily self-righteous way, in front of some 300 women, reminding me that more millionaires were made during the depression than any other time. (No idea if it's true, but my husband suggested that might have helped make up for all the millionaires who jumped to their deaths). The lady gently chides me for sending out my bad thoughts about the economy to all the women in the group. It's this negativity that's causing all our problems, and making the bad economy a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Sorry, Precious. I don't agree. Between real estate tanking, and credit hard to come by, and layoffs all over the place, and people's savings or retirements evaporating, anyone with half a brain would hold a sober view of this time in our nation's economic history. None of this is caused by a sudden consumer reticence to hit the mall. This is no time to up your discretionary spending, and folks are wisely keeping their wallets in their pants or purses.

The stories keep getting closer to home. The foreclosures, layoffs, part-timing for partial wages, the insurance crises, heck, I'm just two degrees of separation from an 83 year old Bernie Madoff victim. This stuff is happening to people I know, and people my friends know. I'm not sure where the optimistic lady lives: a high end neighborhood, or her own personal bubble?

People who call a spade a spade are not pessimistic, or negative, or witless participants in a mass hysterical denial of how great the economy really is. They are realists. And if there's one thing a realist can't stand in a crisis, it's some damn Pollyanna telling you to get happy. You need to be grounded in reality, and you need to be able to indulge in occasional dark humor to let off steam.

Betrayal

2008-12-26T07:53:00.000-08:00

Harold Pinter died on Christmas Eve.

No great irony or significance there - the man was a secular Jew - but, considering he was also a nobel laureate, legion d'honneur recipient, Tony award winner and Oscar nominee, his passing is definitely newsworthy. In fact, since the guy was 82 and battling cancer, you'd expect a major news network like NBC to have a slickly produced obit on file. But Nooooooooh. It appears they got some intern to google the guy.

So what did they list as his most important credits? A few of his 29 plays,such as The Birthday Party, Betrayal, and The Homecoming?

Nope. His screenplay adaptation of John Fowles' novel, The French Lieutenant's Woman. Probably the only Pinter piece the intern had ever heard of.

NBC wants us to remember one of the twentieth century's most important playwrights for his screenplay adaptation of someone else's work.

No twit I.

2008-12-26T06:58:00.000-08:00

They say the birds descend from the dinosaurs. Call me brontosaurus, stuck in the twentieth century where I was born. I may be addicted to google, but I continue to use my computer as a glorified typewriter. Don't expect me to don my reading glasses just so I can watch your podcast on that itty-bitty screen. I'd have to locate the ipod I got three Christmases ago and actually figure out how to use it. Don't invite me to join your new social networking site. Linked In will do me just fine for the rest of my natural life. And for God's Sake, don't look for me on twitter. Because any forum that requires me to limit my blathering to 140 characters is strictly for the birds.

Play it again, George.

2008-12-15T10:13:00.000-08:00

Excuse me while I go on you tube yet again and play the video of the Iraqi journalist throwing his shoes at Bush. What a pitching arm! What an aim! And how can I curb my compulsion to play the clip over and over? Hit play! See Dubya duck! Hit play! See Dubya duck again! I feel like one of those coke-addicted lab rats, compelled to push the lever over and over for just one more hit.

No thanks.

2008-12-08T19:29:00.000-08:00

What ever happened to you're welcome?

A gracious response to a thank you that implies that you're happy to help and would do so again.

Now, if you thank someone, you get back "no problem" or "no worries", responses that turn "you're welcome" on it's head. They're no longer about the person doing the thanking, but about the person being thanked. It's "no problem" you did not disturb me too much when I put myself out and did you a favor, but if it's a problem in the future, you're on your own. It's "no worries" I am not annoyed that you asked me to help you out, but if you push it, I just might get annoyed.

And since when did "waiting on" and "waiting for" become interchangeable? The guy with the order pad is supposed to wait ON me, and if I have to wait FOR him, I end up polishing off the bread basket. These days, we're "waiting on" the waiter, which could be why it doesn't occur to him to wait on us.

Think I'm being a word priss? Whatever you do, don't tell me "it's all good." There's a worldwide recession. The polar ice caps are melting. India and Pakistan are on high alert. China owns us, and it appears they're trying to poison us. Antibiotic-resistant TB is on the rise. Nicole Kidman can no longer move her face. They now make so many different kinds of Crest, you can get analysis paralysis in the toothpaste aisle. If you still want to tell me it's all good, I suggest you go read Candide.

Relax...God is in charge.

2008-12-05T21:37:00.000-08:00

That's what the bumper sticker on the car in front of me said.

I find nothing relaxing about the notion that God is in charge. I live in Northern California, where God's handiwork includes earthquakes, mudslides, fire storms and, depending where the big one hits, the potential for our very own tsunami. And if that's all too macro for you, there's always cancer and heart disease.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right...

2008-11-28T10:07:00.000-08:00

This week, I met the manager of a high end antique store who collects Manolo Bialnicks and believes Barack Obama may be the Anti-Christ. Her proof? A recent winning lottery ticket in Illinois bore the number...666. I also met a ship's engineer for an international shipping company who thinks 9/11 was engineered by the Pentagon to set the stage the Iraq war. His proof? Loose Change, a desk top "documentary" made by three putzes from Oneonta New York.

Now, I do think the antique store lady scores a bit higher on the stupidity scale because her delusions are racist and based on supernatural claptrap. And I understand how the Bush administration's profound cynicism, hubris and disrespect for human life could raise one's level of paranoia. But I still have to conclude that idiocy has no political affiliation.

Get your house in order, Bee-atch!

2008-11-27T13:51:00.000-08:00

Memo to Amy Winehouse:

You are not Billy Holiday. You were not born to a 13 year old, raped at 10, sent to a reform school run by sadistic nuns, raped again at 14 and driven to prostitution. You are not black, this is not the forties, and you do not have to enter clubs where you are headlining, through the back door. You are just a not-so-nice Jewish girl whose parents are still together and did the best they could to raise you. It's time to get the buzz out of your beehive and give the tabloids something more interesting to write about than your skanky, anorexic, illustrated ass. I say, get yourself to the nut house while you're husband' s in the big house. Add a piercing or three and see if Hot Topic will hire you as a salesclerk. Get right with God and reinvent yourself as a gospel singer. And if none of that works, could'ja please go self-destruct somewhere private and remote? I hear they grow opium poppies in Uzbekistan.

Mumbai

2008-11-27T11:44:00.000-08:00

More lethal Islamic wack job shenanigans. What a way to celebrate Thanksgiving. Yes, I am thankful I was not born female in a Muslim country, can speak my mind with impunity and still have all my lady bits. My husband has an interesting theory which my friend thinks would make a dandy Saturday Night Live skit: The 72 virgins are all dogs. That's why they're virgins. Bummer, Mahmoud. Your heavenly bride Snaggletooth has more facial hair than you do. No wonder the Koran says it's OK to drink in Paradise.

You go, grandma!

2008-11-13T12:35:00.000-08:00

Drove over to a street full of cute little boutiques to buy a gift for my yoga teacher's fiftieth birthday party. I pull into a metered spot, grab a handful of change, charge into the store and am about to start looking when I realize I still have the meter change pressed in my clueless palm. I tear out of the store just in time to see that the meter man has materialized out of nowhere and is about to write me up. "Wait!" I cry, holding up my palm full of coins." I was coming out to feed it. See?" "I see," the little prick responds,as he writes me up, places the ticket on my car and walks away. I'm furious, at him, at myself, at all the inequities of life on this planet. I look around, trying to calm down as I feed the meter. A lady is walking towards me, preceded by two small, frisky, apple-cheeked children, one barely out of toddlerhood, the other maybe five. I smile at them and the little girl smiles back with a cheerful "Hi, old lady!"

I guess I'm having a day.

Reality check

2008-11-08T19:17:00.000-08:00

Been floating on cloud Obama for 3 days now. I haven't felt this positive about the world since the fall of the Berlin Wall. I'm flush with progressive patriotism, which is all about diversity, tolerance and brotherhood. Loving every one and smiling like Stevie Wonder. Doing happy dances all over the house. My family diagnosed me a long time ago, but now the dog thinks I'm insane too.

Sooner or later, I had to come down.

It happened at the grocery store, by the frozen food section, when a young man tossed a carton of ice cream back in the bin. "Fuck the French", he exclaimed to his girlfriend, seemingly a propos of nothing. Did he not like French Vanilla? Who knows. It appears that even in Berkeley, the French are still fair game. Other than Arabs, they're the only people one can dump on without fear of being politically incorrect.

I felt like speaking up, identifying myself as franco-american and putting him in his place. Or maybe going into my best Parisian accent and playing dumb. "Ze French? Wat eez zees "phoque?" Perhaps a simple "Phoquez-vous", would have sufficed. But I kept my mouth shut. As I shuffled on down the aisle, I could feel myself falling, tumbling down off of cloud Obama, back to this imperfect earth.

Open mouth, insert tennis shoe.

2008-11-06T16:33:00.000-08:00

Out for a stroll with my doggie in tow, I approach the edge of Tilden Park, a large reserve crisscrossed with paths. As an urban female with a modicum of street smarts, I don't do wooded pathways alone. I stick to roads and sidewalks.

Two guys with back packs come up to me. "Excuse me," one of them asks, "Do you know a good path for us to take a hike in the park?"

"Sorry." I reply. "I don't know my way around the park. I'm a street walker."

They gave me a strange look as they turned away. I was halfway down the block before I realized why.

NOW I get it.

2008-11-06T09:15:00.000-08:00

A North Dakota study just linked high lead levels in human blood to the consumption of wild game killed with lead bullets. High lead levels, of course, can lead to learning problems and brain damage. So it would seem we have, pun intended, dodged a bullet in not electing McCain/Palin, as there is no doubt in my mind that avid mooseburger muncher Palin is not just full of shit: she's full of lead.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081106/ap_on_re_us/lead_venison_3

There goes your tip, sweety.

2008-11-04T12:14:00.000-08:00

My heels are so cracked, they're starting to look like a dried out lake bed in the late 21st century. I listen to Oprah. I know the drill. Love yourself! Take time for yourself! Pamper yourself! It's pedicure time.

I bury my head in US magazine while a pretty young Asian woman works on my calluses. (Why are pedicure ladies all Asian? Isn't it enough that Asian women have bird bones and teeny tiny waists? Do they have to have perfect feet too)?

The aesthetician looks up at the US's smiling cover shot of Jenny McCarthy, commenting "That actress used to be so slim, but now she's getting fat".

"Oh well," I reply, "she's getting close to forty. It's hard to keep your weight down past a certain age." "What about you?" the young lady asks. "Were you slim when YOU were young?"

I've just spent 4 weeks on South Beach and was feeling borderline svelte. And I guess I tend to forget how old I am. Thanks, Oprah. Next time, I'll do my own feet.

PS Of course I tipped her anyway.

Big Love, Big Hair

2008-09-03T20:49:00.000-07:00

Finally got around to reading the New York Times Magazine story about Mormon Polygamist women and I have to conclude that nature trumps nurture. Doesn't matter if you're born in or outside the faith - the big hair gene will out.