See Through Fads

Are men really that stupid?

2011-10-20T18:11:00.000-07:00

Thisis a question to the universe. How does simply saying that a product is manlyor masculine magically make it so? You know, those ads that make arbitrary claimsthat an obviously gender-neutral product is “for men” or that it somehow makesthe user more masculine. Like the ad for that new Dr. Pepper rip of Coke Zero(I forget what it’s called, but the ads are all, ‘Grr, dudes and explosions!’) —so, come on, men. I want to know:

Isthere any reason why one can full of water and high fructose corn syrup is moremanly than any other can of carbonated sugar sludge?

Dowomen decide whether or not to have sex with you based on the brand of shampoothat you use?

IfI put a black and silver label on a product that your girlfriend uses, doesthat make it a different product?

Willyour testosterone levels increase if you eat a compressed stick of monkey meat,preservatives and concentrated sodium instead of a plate of chopped vegetables?

See,I know that intellectually, most men would say, no, what a fuckingridiculous set of propositions. Yet I also know when an ad says basically thesame thing, a lot of the time, it actually works. I don’t understand why it’sso easy to alter public perception with transparent messages that defy basiclogic.

Lastweek, we sold a spot on a particularly difficult brief. I can’t go into detail,obviously, but I’ll say that a lot of careful thought went into figuring outhow to present what the client wanted to say in a way that was factual,entertaining, true to the brand, relevant to the target market and didn’t feel “tooaddy.” So who knows, maybe I’m just jealous of people who only have to think ofways to say “Attention dudes with dirty hipster beards: chicks will have sexwith you if you buy our product.”

A splash of color

2011-09-16T08:05:00.000-07:00

I recently started a new blog (Dandy Vintage Ads) and I designed the icon and masthead using a 1949 Jantzen ad, which you can see in better detail at the blog. I loved the artwork but wanted something in color.

I got a lot of practice colorizing in photshop when I built my website. One of the things that inspired me for the site (aside from the unsubtle nod to Edward Gorey) was when our instructor said, "Don't use cliche things--like, if you're a writer, don't use a pencil or pen for your logo." And I decided that I'd use as many of these cliches as possible and put a dark twist on them. A typewriter falling on a cat, a mouse trapped in a prison made of pencils and an unseen writer who, rather than using a single feather as a quill, writes with an entire bird. But let's be honest. I'm not a great illustrator, and when it all came together, the result was just plain whimsical. Here's an example:

The top layer is the illustration.

Then the color goes on the layer below.

And together, we get this.

Same basic idea with the illustrated Jantzen ad.

The bubbles go on their own layer because they need more opacity.

In full color.

And complete with the background.

10 reasons to hate me.

2011-07-08T11:38:00.000-07:00

I suppose I sat on this for way too long because all blogs, at their heart, are based on a secret yearning to be liked. But don't think for a second that this is "10 reasons why I vainly believe that others are jealous of me" or "10 flaws I admit to in job interviews because I can somehow turn them around to show myself in a good light" or "10 reasons why conservatives/christians/republicans/whoever hate me and all other people who disagree with them."

I read the book after I've seen the movie.
The last novel I read is one of my favorite movies ever and it took me about 10 years to get around to reading the book. It was kind of a letdown.

I will cut you off.
On the road, I mean. If my turn signal could talk, it wouldn't say, "Pardon me, I'm terribly sorry but if you'd be so kind, I'd like to move in that direction, whenever you see fit to let me in." It says, "All right, fucker, hit your brakes because I am going to be in that lane within 5 seconds whether you like it or not."

I'm not afraid of confrontation.
There actually is a middle ground between liking it and fearing it. Yes, confrontation sucks but sometimes it’s necessary. I don’t understand passive aggressive people who huff around at their own emotional expense when a problem could be solved by dealing with it directly.

I don't like dogs.
I mean, except for your dog, obviously. Even if I haven't met your dog, I bet you have like the one dog that's so cool, I can make an exception.

I don't respect your religion.
Except for yours, obviously. I'm sure you picked the right one.

I've never been to middle America.
Not even Chicago. Not even to change planes on the way to the west coast. All your cliches about snotty northeastern liberal elite being out of touch with middle America: consider them validated.

I always ask what the base of the soup is.
Look, I am not eating beef broth. If a cow has even looked at that soup, I don’t want it.

I laugh at your emo breakdowns.
I’m not going to ask what’s wrong. I’m not going to send you virtual hugs. No matter how justified your sulking or your emotionally raw outburst is, I think it’s hilarious that you choose to broadcast it over a social network, and I’m on the other side of the computer laughing about it.

I'm cool with turning smokers into second class citizens.
I fully support any affirmative statement or resolution containing the words "smoking", "public" and "ban."

I don't think your kids are special.
I've created lots of things and impressed myself thoroughly with them. The difference is that later on, I have the luxury of admitting to myself that maybe it's not so great. Now I know a story I wrote in 2002 isn’t going to start cutting itself if I say, “What the fuck was I thinking? You suck.” So I won't begrudge you thinking those sticky-fingered little demons are exceptionally smart, unique, talented and destined for greatness--but they probably aren’t.

Live from Hartford

2011-05-01T17:37:00.000-07:00

Oh the wonders of technology. After a long absence of blogging, I find myself trapped on greyhound bus (heading back to New York, where I've now been living for 4 long weeks) and a full one hour and thirty-seven minutes into the bus ride, eavesdropping, naturally, on a loud conversation this guy and girl have been having for approximately one hour and thirty-six minutes.

From what I've gleaned, they are acquaintances who coincidentally ran into each other on the bus, and she is the fake friend or possibly roommate of a girl who apparently dated him. I know this mainly because this other girl has been the focus of their ~~conversation~~ shit-talking for the ENTIRE BUS RIDE THUS FAR. Originally I started to think, How unnaturally obsessed with this chick are you two? but upon further consideration, I think that the girl is much, much more obsessed and keeps steering the conversation back toward the topic of this other girl. It became hard not to notice because the girl they're talking about has the same name as me, and really my name, my ringtone, and the clinking of candy hitting a dish are all sounds that cut through all background noise and command my attention.

(My ears have become so discerning that I actually heard my phone ringing when I was listening to the song Kashmir... and my ringtone was also Kashmir) But, eh, non sequitur aside, I figure I've known at least the follow types of people, in no particular order: nutbars, crazy-but-lovable, toxic manipulative bitches, cokeheads, potheads, alcoholics, closet cases, crazies in a scary way, flighty hippies, over-achievers, slackers, goths, trannies, aging punks, Red Sox fans, art school students, and actors. Just to name a few. And this chick that they just wasted 90 minutes of their lives gossiping about, disparaging and reminiscing about, didn't even sound very interesting. She can be overdramatic and jealous at times and she's a bit sheltered, and the most genius fit of irony, apparently she's too judgmental as well.

But the reason I made that laundry list of 'types' I've known, personally, is that in the often fascinating cast of characters that I've encountered, I don't think I have anything approaching 90 minutes' worth of conversation about a single person.

Mediocre hacks live forever

2011-03-08T17:59:00.000-08:00

I only just recently started to check out Bill Hicks. If you know who that is, I’m sure I don’t need to invite you to congratulate yourself and skip over the part where I explain that he was an edgy comedian who died in the early ‘90s when he was just 32 years old. In fact, the title of the entry was the most sadly ironic thing he ever said, “Mediocre hacks live forever and pollute the earth with their existence, while brilliant geniuses die way too early.”

For some reason, this seemed the most fitting image I had on hand for the post title...

I think in the ‘80s all you needed to earn your edgy comedian badge was to say fuck a lot and talk about blow jobs, or alternately, make a thoughtful and pointed comment about the absurdity of religion. But while watching this guy in the context of The Edgiest Comedians of the 1980s, I thought it was clear that he had depth and insight that could be dressed up in the style of the era, but could easily transcend it as well.

Unfortunately, Bill Hicks’ real legacy was largely reduced to “The Guy From Whom Denis Leary Stole His Entire Act.” I was watching some of these scathing YouTube videos that purport to prove it, and the people who are carrying this torch do both him and themselves no favors. For every moment of undeniable plagiarism, there are 6 moments of loose and probably coincidental parallels. Yes, both guys talk about smoking, and yes, Hicks did it first—Sam Kinison hated his ex-wife, does that mean all comedians who do ex-wife jokes are ripping him off? There are almost no original topics—and when you get on a topic, there are some obvious places to go. It’s something you see all the time in advertising when you come up with an idea, and a self-appointed member of the It’s Been Done Squad is like, Rawr, 5 years ago someone used a visual similar to that in China. Then you’re like, But the concept isn’t even close and this is for housewives in Michigan who don’t spend their nights studying Ads of the World and I’ve never fucking been to China!

But that said, using my probably more based in personal experience than I want to disclose analogy, Denis Leary had been to China. He knew Hicks and his act, and he did some jokes that, intentionally or not, were so uncannily similar that it just looks pathetic. Yet the people who harp on the broader coincidences are only watering down the claim that Denis Leary is a big thieving hack. The worse part of it is that these broader coincidences also make Hicks look less original—it’s easy to confuse the two, but being the first person to say something obvious is not the same as being original (And yes, you should definitely read into that and assume I’m talking about more than just comedy).

Still, the story is almost poetic in the way that it echoes the theme of ‘Mediocre hacks live forever,’ and it even ends on a sharp note—with the eerie coincidence that their friendship ended over Leary’s album No Cure for Cancer, shortly before Bill Hicks died of cancer. Details that only seem to have significance because he’s gone.

Because I do think Bill Hicks was original—it’s not something you can prove by highlighting his most easy-to-steal bits—but if he were still alive, he would have done what original people do. They move on and create something new. Something that’s harder to copy.

3 things I've learned

2011-03-02T09:25:00.000-08:00

To be fair, I don't think there is a G in the word 'strength' when you say it in a southern accent.

The worst thing you can do when you work for someone who's afraid to take risks is to stop taking risks. When you substitute their judgment for your own, it's not 'the system' or the 'corporate structure' that's defeated your creativity. It's you.

If you live in blissful ignorance about the fact that no one wants to read what you write, it spares you a lot of worrying about the quality and effectiveness of your writing. The price you pay for not worrying is producing mediocre work that no one will read.

"Let's see your book" is a cop out. Maybe the world would be an infinitely better place if the value and importance of other people’s opinions were proportionate to the quality of their work, but that’s not reality and it never will be.

From all of us

2011-02-25T13:27:00.000-08:00

The quality of greetings that my friends should expect to receive.

It comes with a dodgy look around, hidden in a manila folder, slipped onto your desk with a quick and whispered explanation and what awaits inside is a problem you don’t want to solve.

I hate when someone gives me a card to sign at the office. It’s not that I don’t wish you a happy birthday or good luck in your next job or solemn condolences for your loss. It’s not even the fact that all workplaces generally have people who don’t necessarily like each other and that having everyone sign the card will breed hypocrisy (okay, I know the way I phrased that sounds like that bothers me but I really don’t care).

No, it’s the fact that I’m always the last person to get the card. When you’re surrounded by writers of course everyone has to write their little blurb. Some use it as an excuse to be overly poetic, and even though you sort of laugh how over the top and lacking in self-awareness one has to be to do that … it sets a bar that, at least, says you have to write something original. By the time the last few people get the card, it’s like, you don’t want to repeat what someone else said. Even though there is a limit on how many ways you can half-heartedly convey certain sentiments. Plus when you get one of those cards, you read what everyone wrote and because you’ve been there, you have a good idea of the actual thought and feeling behind it.

If it were up to me, we'd all just sign our names.

Anti social networking

2011-02-17T12:44:00.000-08:00

The important thing is not to feel anything out of the public eye.

I kind of, totally hate facebook. But I’m on there for a reason. And I don’t mean there’s a reason I go to the site, rather there’s a reason I don’t give in to any of my frequent whims to delete my account and never look back. Although ‘whim’ sounds a little too pleasant, it’s more like an anti-whim of disgust, not a whimsical whim of delight.

I may not like that voyeuristic blackhole, but it’s such a significant part of our culture that I have to understand it. The annoying part is that unlike my twitter and tumblr accounts, I can’t base my facebook account on something that interests or amuses me (in fact, I’m mostly able to enjoy twitter because my personal account is limited to people I’m genuinely interested in, while my considerably more popular non-personal account is all about a topic I’m personally--not professionally--interested in).

The first reason I hate facebook is that it entangles you with people you don’t even care about. I was looking recently at the “people you may know” and there were a few people listed who I thought I was friends with (bullshit facebook friends, I mean, not actual friends). But still there’s a twinge of rejection, and as I sat there thinking, Wait, wait, you assholes actually unfriended me? And I don’t know that, maybe I never added them. But I wondered, WHY DO I CARE? These are people who live in other parts of the country and I wouldn’t even call if I were visiting the towns where they live. And yet I let this annoying technology keep them in the periphery of my life when in reality, I should already be struggling to remember their names.

The second reason is the oversharing. It’s something we joke about as though it’s an unstoppable force, but the way that the entire concept of privacy is disappearing from our lives? That’s not an earthquake or a tidal wave, we are 100% responsible for it. But I understand, I don’t want to be the one who comments, “People you went to camp with when you were 11 don’t want to hear your emotionally raw breakdowns. You just made me uncomfortable.” I’m not even going to say the worst thing that someone on my friends’ list ever posted--I’ll just say it was a photo that was so inappropriate, honestly, it would make you uncomfortable just reading about it (that should establish that it wasn’t about nudity or even sexual in nature, right?).

140 characters of depth

2011-01-06T13:23:00.000-08:00

Other than spamming people and spreading viruses, I think one of the more annoying things people do on twitter is trying to be incredibly profound and philosophical. It’s not profundity or philosophy that bother me but rather the act of awkwardly forcing it into a medium that you’re otherwise using for shameless self-promotion or to broadcast your margarita consumption.

With this in mind, the dumbest tweet I read in 2010 was:

The fastest way to succeed is to double your failure rate.

I am aware that in creative work, generally you will fail more than you succeed. A non-stupid way of saying what this tweeter was trying to say is that it's important not to be tormented by failures because fear of failure that can make us afraid to take risks and therefore less likely to create something spectacular..

"Fail spectacularly" is a very romantic idea with some logical problems. Namely because failure could mean that you suck or that you should learn from a huge mistake that you made. But I suppose most of humanity's greatest inventions and philosophies don't work in the hands of idiots, so I won't blame an otherwise useful concept like "Fail spectacularly" for that.

And yet whole point is, Be fearless and try more, you will have more failure and more success. Doubling your failure rate, my dear pseudo-philosopher, means failing more and succeeding less.

If my failure rate is 50% and I double it, then I’ll succeed at being a failure.

It's a fine line between annoying and interesting

2011-01-04T17:54:00.000-08:00

I have to confess something. Whenever I see a trending topic of some obscure washed up celebrity, I must click through to find out why they're trending.

The following stories annoy me:
- Having a baby.
- Engaged/getting married.
- Plastic surgery.*
- New reality show.
- Whining about something (celebrity problem or normal person problem).
- Or trying to get attention for a cause.

Things that do not annoy me:
- Dead. Not that I'm hoping that they're dead, but I am convinced that the only reason anyone clicks through at all is the possibility that they're dead.
- Checking into rehab. I know a lot of people would probably put this on the above list, but I see that and I'm like, "Quick, someone get Dr Drew on the horn. Potential new cast member for Celebrity Rehab!"
- Arrested. The severity of the charge is irrelevant. Jaywalking? Drunk driving? Mass murder? It's all good but of course bonus points for bizarreness (Randy Quaid and wife, I am looking in your direction).
- Dramatic change in weight. Again, I don't want to give the impression that this is all about schadenfreude--most of us just add former classmates on facebook to satisfy that emotional need, anyway--but it's very interesting to see how weirdly their familiar celebrity heads and faces change after losing some weight. More interesting than finding out some has-been started packing on the pounds.

*Kenny Rogers excepted.

Pop culture wishes for 2011

2010-12-28T22:50:00.000-08:00

Ah, the end of a year. That time when everyone makes predictions and rehashes all the stories we had to hear way too much about. This is not what I think will happen in 2011, but what I’d like to see.

Diddy gets punked
Once you’ve become a parody of yourself, people will believe anything. I want this guy to get on a plane, land in Tokyo 12 hours later and find out that for half a day, the whole world has started calling him by his latest new name. Imagine his confusion at a gaggle of Japanese reporters shouting, “Diddy Snugglepuss! Diddy Snugglepuss! What brings you to Tokyo?”

Country crossover backlash
I don’t care where the backlash comes from, but it needs to happen hardcore. Country artists were once relegated to their own media and their own charts. Hide Taylor Swift, Lady Antebellum, et al, under a hoop skirt and twist em around until they’re so disoriented they don’t even realize we’re sneaking them back into Nashville, far far away from the fiery hot glow of the national pop spotlight.

An incredible redemptive act by Mel Gibson
People are beyond accepting that he’s a complex human being with both good and bad qualities. I’d like to him do a completely spontaneous and heroic act. Bonus points if it defies public perception of him. For example, “Bar Mitzvah almost ends in tragedy, surprise hero saves 22 from sinking yacht.” I’m not talking about a comeback, I’d just love see how the everything-is-black-and-white tabloid media and pop culture consumers would react to something like that.

Glee goes dark
In the pilot of Nip/Tuck, a drug kingpin murdered a child molester in the operating room and left the doctors to dispose of the body--which they did by swaddling the corpse in spiral cut hams and feeding him to gators in the Everglades. That’s a bit of the old Ryan Murphy--“for the love of god WHY” darkness, not “in this very special episode” darkness.

Sarah Palin becomes a media hermit
The media isn’t about to ignore this famewhore, therefore her fame must reach critical mass. Give the bitch so much of what she wants that she chokes on it. She needs an Alaska-sized, so-overexposed-that-everyone-resents-you-for-being-overexposed dose of fame’s downside. Clearly we’re incapable of ignoring this dragon so let’s keep feeding it until it’s so fat it can’t get out of its cave.

Law and Order SVU goes out in a blaze of glory
It’s hard to imagine this trashtacular show could jump the shark any more than it already has, but I would like to see them try. We’ll need a bevy of washed up 90s stars, hell, reunite the cast of an old show, like Blossom, plus an underground society of rapists perpetrating a major conspiracy, illicit hookups between the main characters, death of a main character and CGI of Jerry Orbach reprising his role from the original Law and Order. Cram it all into one “explosive” series finale.

Also:

Groundbreaking ruling from the FTC puts product placement in jeopardy

Former contestants file a class action suit against The Biggest Loser

Stephen Fry does a guest arc on House

Will Smith’s kids ‘divorce’ their father and decide to live as normal children

American Idol is canceled but not before Steven Tyler inadvertently says something obscene on the air and J Lo scolds him “You can’t say [blank] on the air! This is a live show!”

Three words: "the Facebook murders"

Amateur night

2010-12-08T11:55:00.000-08:00

If we had a brand or phrase book for me, this would surely be in it. It’s most Saturdays on the road in Boston, when all the suburbanites drive into the big city. It’s being on the train when there’s a concert and people start shoving their way to the door while the train is still moving, even though 70% of the passengers will get off at the next stop.

But I have an entirely different kind of amateur hour on the brain. Radio commercials. Let me point out that last night, I actually heard one that started, “Are you tired of sex pills that don’t work?” Oh my god, get out of my head! Yes, that is my EXACT problem, I said aloud to the radio, how did you know? But that’s not even what I want to talk about (after all, how could I--especially during wartime--defame the brave ‘sex pill’ advertisers and their important products?).

On a scale of sheer intolerability, the worst radio ad ever is “Kars 4 Kids”--I don’t even know, they misspell the word cars intentionally and it’s got this jingle that makes me want to beat my head against the dashboard.. We’re talking, I change the station within 3 seconds awful.

More annoying is the latest Coca Cola spot with some guy on a road trip and his friends have fallen asleep on his arms, so, oh no, he can’t drink his Coke. He tries to wake them up to no avail. I mean, it’s not a life-changing piece of advertising, but on both concept and execution, it’s done competently. This competence is then underscored by a 15-second local ad that piggybacks the national spot. It’s like, “Okay class, first I’m going to show you how to execute a concept, and then we’ll see how to take the same concept and ruin it.

After the national ad reminds us that Coke is enjoyable, local guy is all “Your Coca Cola arm is so important, it lifts your ice cold refreshing Coke that you bought from Joe’s Convenience Store to your eagerly waiting mouth.” I’m pretty sure they have the one shitty script and just cram in the name of whatever gas station or convenience store chain wants to pay for it this week. What annoys me is that waxing poetic on one’s “Coca Cola arm” beats the original concept to death with its total lack of subtlety, in essence dragging down the preceding spot while not in any way supporting the local client.

If you’re thinking, oh well, it’s easy to talk shit and radio is an easy target (I won’t deny it), this is a simple thing that contrasts the difference between a competent creative who knows how to use the medium and a hack who doesn’t know what the fuck they’re doing. The local piggyback should be about the many convenient locations of the outlet where you can stop for a Coke on your next roadtrip. It doesn’t sound creative, but it ties in the theme of the national brand with the needs of the local client in a way that makes sense.

Things I Love #53: Not admitting I’m allergic to wool

2010-11-14T11:00:00.000-08:00

I supposed that I could just as easily say “I love wool” but didn’t feel that fully communicated my devotion to the warm, fuzzy natural fabric that comes from an animal that doesn’t have to die for me to share in its warmth.

We have the time, you didn't earn a piece of it

2010-10-21T11:15:00.000-07:00

Well I happened upon a provocatively titled blog post -- “Is Social Media Making Us Stupid?” It turned out the author had published something that he admitted was long and boring, then whinged that it didn’t “go viral” because people were too stupid to sift through volumes of flatly presented info in search of some genius electrifying conclusion. And the loss was ours because surely it would have changed all our lives if we hadn’t been so busy clicking through to big dumb stupid top 10 lists and cute cat videos.

While what I imagine were middle aged ex-magazine writers and nutty professors came out in droves to support him and beg for a link to this fascinating ignored tome, I found myself with little sympathy and even less interest in reading the source of his bitterness.

The only defense anyone could offer for the world at large is that we simply don’t have time. Which I think is bullshit. Like 50 years ago, everything in existence required more time than it does today but if you open up a magazine from 1960, you won’t see visual solutions or 8 word headlines--the ads are epic tomes of persuasion. It’s not that we have less time now, we’re just more possessive of our time. People could read long ads, articles, blog posts and yes, even the results of some study that you did. They just don’t want to--they want to spend their time doing things they enjoy.

Though I do think those old-timey copywriters were lucky assholes because they could get away with so much text and condescension, I’m not jealous of them. I sure as hell don’t want to live in that world. Even it means a copywriter can’t go 12 consecutive minutes without being told, No one wants to read a damn thing you write. I think this puts advertising ahead of the curve because we know that we have to earn every second of your attention.

Social media doesn’t make us stupid--it allows for such an overwhelming amount of things to compete for our attention that our focus tends to be drawn to the most interesting things. And while this might make people uncomfortable or bitter, the truth is that no one is above having to compete for attention. Smart people with important things to say need to stop thinking that they can get away with being boring. Don’t blame the world and don’t blame social media -- if you’re really so smart, figure out how to make these terribly important things you have to share more interesting than a cat flushing a toilet.

Identity in progress

2010-10-15T07:40:00.000-07:00

At the time, I did a variety of self-portraits. My hair may have been this color but I don't really remember.

So I started answering a prompt that was like, what are 10 words to describe you. I had gotten to about 6 words and I’m killing myself trying to remember the word capricious. This is when a thesaurus is suddenly the greatest invention ever. The other part of the question was, would your friends use the same 10 words to describe you—like that’s a normal topic of conversation among friends.

But I remembered when I was working on my identity, a friend summed up my personality as “British.” I mean—when I was designing my site and business cards and stuff. I know “working on my identity” sounds like some deep psycho-therapeutic process. Though in a weird way, it almost is—another one of my friends emailed like 30 people, asking them, “What do you think of me?” I think she only got one response—it was ‘bubbles.’ I said, yeah maybe if the bubbles have knives inside of them. She was more offended by the ‘bubbles’ suggestion than by my comment—which I guess shows that I knew her better than that guy.

At this point, I’ve deleted the list of words and I’m thinking about my identity design and how I met this top designer from Google. He seemed very impressed by my logo (the illustration in the masthead—hard to explain but makes sense when you see it).

It was the most bizarre conversation. He asked me what I’d do if I had a billion dollars. All I could think was, nothing! Nothing at all! I think I said I’d write a tv show. I had this conversation with a guy at a bar once, about how I’d write a tv show and he was like, “Bullshit. If you had all the money in the world, you’d go write Two and a Half Men?” (And I’m not just pulling that out of my ass because of a certain Twitter that abounds with hatred and veiled death threats for the show and its cast members—he actually did say Two and a Half Men). Well I told him no no no, if I were writing a tv show, it’d be more like The West Wing. The funny thing is, despite what my gold-leaf NBC store mug would suggest, I’m actually quite indifferent about that show … but I think it’s the best example of the kind of drama with a sense of humor that I’d want to write.

Things I Love #52: Shortcuts and Alternate Routes

2010-10-12T07:12:00.000-07:00

I don’t have a GPS and of all the technology items that I’m missing, it ranks pretty low on my priority list. Perhaps this is because I am a human GPS already. I’m not discounting their usefulness when you’re in completely foreign territory or moderately unfamiliar dizzying suburban sprawl (I mean, left at the big oak tree? When the road splits you want to head toward the somewhat decrepit looking house with a trampoline covered in pine needles--not the dirty vinyl-sided house with a trampoline somewhat covered in pine needles? Winding roads densely lined with trees are my sense of direction’s complete undoing. I’m useless here.)

But I use the GPS analogy not because my brain is an ever-expanding index of short cuts, but because as a nominee for Most Impatient Human Being in America, the sight of a traffic jam--oh hell, the mere suggestion or implication of a traffic jam--and I immediately start “re-calculating” my route. This requires a great deal of exploring and seeking out new routes (ideally, scouted out ahead of time but don’t think my irrational hatred of waiting hasn’t led me to get horribly lost or down a few [dozen] dead ends in search of relief from the unbearable state of moving too slowly).

By any other name, it's still a scam

2010-10-08T07:29:00.000-07:00

Well, no need for this to go to waste. Click for full size.

Here's why crowdsourcing is a scam and unfair to people with marketable skills.

Consider this scenario.

You show a comp to a client.

You discuss the comp and are asked to produce it on a rush job.

You produce the custom piece to specification within 24 hours.

A week later, the client realizes there is a technical problem on his end and your work cannot be used.

As an agency or freelancer, you bill the client for your time and have legal recourse if they don't pay.

As a sucker 'crowdsource' victim, you get screwed and have no recourse.

I'm not making up this example--that’s what happened to me when I stupidly broke my own 'no contests' rule.

Things I Love #51: Eat This, Not That

2010-10-01T07:22:00.000-07:00

Surely the unsweetened passion tea is a THIS, not a NOT THAT

If you’ve ever ~~met~~ seen me, it’s somewhat clear that I’m a guru of neither fitness nor dieting. Actually I follow a strict “no dieting” policy--I suppose that’s a post for another time, but I just find the whole concept faulty. I’m in favor of small, permanent changes rather than massive temporary ones. This is where Eat This, Not That is genius! In this crazy world of mozzarella stick sandwiches and “drive thru diets,” Eat This, Not That is a beacon of nutritional honesty.

Plus they explain nutritional sins in easy to understand comparisons. One of my favorites is the Reese’s peanut butter cup flavored cereal--which they point out has more sugar than an actual Reese’s peanut butter cup.

Annoying office girls.

2010-09-28T18:26:00.000-07:00

If you’ve worked in an office, you probably know one. And when you have to work with or in some cases just near an annoying office girl, the tendency is to think that the degree to which she is objectionable is somehow superlative. The thing is, and trust me on this, by definition, annoying office girl is not superlative at anything. She's not annoying even that it prevented her from getting an office job.

You already know who these girls are in your office, so I’ll make a list to prove that they aren’t as unique (i.e. uniquely aggravating) as you may think.

1. Very concerned with processes.
Doing things is of much less interest to her than deciding how things should be done. Particularly by other people. Like you.

2. Needs approval/validation.
As much as she seems authoritative or bossy, there is an undercurrent of doubt in everything she says. Even the most absolutely obvious statements imaginable--“We should replace the dead batteries in the carbon monoxide detector” or “Let’s throw away the roast beef sandwiches that were left in the conference room over the long weekend.”

3. Hypocritical.
The sad part is, she believes that because she legitimately works hard (for the 40-60% of the time she spends working and not gossiping or taking care of personal matters), of course she has every right to make remarks about how lazy her co-workers are.

4. Loud.
You know her personal problems. You know what she’s having for dinner tonight. You could ghostwrite her autobiography and you don’t even need to have had a single conversation with her in your life.

5. Must advertise every nice thing and every difficult or undesirable task she’s done.
If X equals the time she spent doing the thing no one else wanted to do, then 2X equals the time she spent comparison shopping hotels for her upcoming vacation and 4X equals the time she invested in making sure everyone knows that she tackled the problem.

Difficult as it can be, I think the best way to cope is to have a sense of humor about it. After all, she sure as hell isn’t going anywhere. She’s probably worked there a lot longer than you, and will still be there when you move on to a better, more interesting opportunity. Just pretend she's your own personal live version of The Office. After all, isn't relatability/alleged realism why people like that show?

Things I Love #50: I Survived

2010-09-19T21:07:00.000-07:00

Generally, I make a point not to include specific tv shows (or movies, books, songs, etc.) on this list. I have to make an exception for I Survived.

The production is simple and understated. A person against a black background tells a personal story to the camera. Small pieces of text exposition are overlaid on a very general scene, such as a road, a forest or the outside of a house. The stories are about accidents, mishaps, natural disasters and crime (including terrorism)--though they cover a wide range, there’s a disproportionate number of people who were attacked by strangers. Multiple stories are interwoven into an episode--rather than presenting full stories in succession, it rolls through a bit of each story so you’re hearing them all at once.

I imagine they do it this way because the stories are so awful, personal and raw that to present them with tacky re-enactments would be disrespectful to the people featured. And to go through stories one at a time would be too much of an emotional gauntlet for the viewer (they always follow the same arc--you don’t go on I Survived unless you totally were going to die yet somehow against all odds, didn’t--it gets really intense and I usually lose it when people finally get rescued or escape. Especially the rescues because those people tend to be in more helpless situations.

And it always ends the same. “I survived because ...”

The midterm that went 'round the world

2010-09-03T07:25:00.000-07:00

I was thinking recently about how being a writer isn't always about the words that ends up on the page. There's also the whole issue of how long it takes for them to get there.

When I was in college, I had an opportunity to go to Europe for Thanksgiving. And I decided to go, extending my break for 2 days, with little concern over the consequences.

After I had purchased the ticket, my Principles of PR professor reminded us of the “take home midterm” that she was only handing out in person on the day I was set to fly to Paris. There was a firm speech about how it was on the syllabus and if we didn’t plan for it, it was our own fault and we’d just have to fail. She agreed later, in private, to a very slight compromise—so I went to school that morning at class time, collected the midterm and then whisked it off to Paris.

If you’re ever in the situation where you have a take home midterm that you bring to Europe for a whirlwind vacation, let me tell you that you probably aren’t going to finish it.

My last day there, I woke up at 6 AM in a suburban Dutch hostel. One bus, two commuter trains, two flights, one cab ride and 21 hours later, I arrived home and promptly collapsed on the floor. I went to bed early, setting my alarm for 7 AM. My stupid body, still on continental time, believed I was letting it sleep until one in the afternoon.

I woke up the next morning at 7 AM and had less than 3 hours to get dressed, write a midterm paper, print it out and walk to school. I made it on time for class, got a B on the paper with the comment that it wasn’t my “best work.”

Outside the comfort zone

2010-08-25T07:19:00.000-07:00

Not quite ready to invest in my own just yet...

I have been kayaking. Three times now! I'm not a ... good kayaker. The lowest point came on my first out on the Charles River when we were spooked by a crew team and proceeded to crash into the bank on one side of the river. Then promptly did the same on the other side of the river. At which point, I tried to propel the boat back from a large stone wall, only to find that my life vest was entangled in the trees. The boat moved. I did not.

Prior to the outing, my friend and I joked incessantly about boating accidents, about capsizing, about how we were going to die in the river. I realize how that sounds--you're probably thinking what a miserable existence we must have, but running aground and getting my life jacket speared by a rogue branch? It's not something we look back on and laugh (okay, technically it is--but I mean, we were dying of laughter WHILE it was happening). To this day, we STILL joke about how we are going to die in a small watercraft.

Earlier this summer, I tried pond kayaking and more recently I went way out to Western Massachusetts to "funyak" the Deerfield River on an inflatable kayak. It was a sharp increase (a 9 mile kayak!) from the Charles where I think we did maybe 3 miles tops and suffice to say, a pond kayak is quite a leisurely endeavor.

Still have not decided if I'm ready to brave whitewater rafting, but the longer trek definitely prepared me to brave the speed boats and crew teams of the Charles once again -- perhaps in a solo kayak this time.

Things I Love #49: Laughing at the unthinkable

2010-08-19T06:42:00.000-07:00

As a reminder, yes I ONLY use photos that I myself took on this blog. And I think that if I explain this one, it'd be less satisfying that letting you wonder.

Unthinkable, in this sense, is not a euphemism for one thing, but rather an entire category of topics. There is almost nothing that I don't have a sense of humor about. Probably even that horrible thing that you're thinking, "Surely you don't think this could ever be funny?"

I heard a theory once that one of the reasons Boston seemed to have a disproportionate number of comedians was because, basically, working class life and the weather, the heartbreaking Red Sox, etc. are all so shitty that humor is hewn into our culture as a way to survive. I don't know if it's true or if there truly is a hugely disproportionate number of comedians from the area, but I like the theory. At some level, there's truth in it.

My all important high school yearbook quote was from Charlie Chaplin. He said, "Life is a tragedy when seen in close up, but a comedy in long shot." I know, it's no Ballad of Reading Gaol or Pink Floyd, but those are words you can live by. I certainly try to.

Things I Love #48: Euro pop

2010-08-11T07:06:00.000-07:00

When I first saw Mika in 2007, I was appalled that despite no radio play, he had sold out a 1000 seat venue in Atlanta. I bought my ticket from a sketchy scalper, whose prices were competitive with Ticketmaster, except that he could actually justify the markup.

Oh the contradiction. I don’t want to be all mainstream, consuming whatever the American pop-industrial complex decided is ~~important~~ going to make the most money. How to reconcile a love of ‘mainstream’ music, electro beats and not being too much in the mainstream? By listening to music that is insanely popular yet somewhat obscure in America.

I don’t understand why American radio won’t play Robbie Williams, Goldfrapp, Mika and I’ll predict now that despite “Bulletproof”, the rest of that La Roux album is never going to grace the U.S. airwaves. I know this music is not 100% obscure, just mostly relegated to tv and movie promos and Old Navy’s in-store playlist. But I’m not complaining.

You there, educate me

2010-08-03T06:57:00.000-07:00

I’m not a fan of treating people like cultural ambassadors—you know, bombarding a new acquaintance with questions that are essentially (if not literally): “What is it like in your country/culture?” and “How do you people do ____?” and “Tell me more about your exotic otherness, please. I’m normal so I know nothing about your type.” I just don’t think that because someone is different than me, it automatically means they have a responsibility to educate me about their ‘people.’

To put this in context I should say that I had a relatively innocent but not particularly sheltered, conservative or lily white upbringing. I mean, I went to magnet schools and for a few years, to the kind of place that didn’t have grades or classrooms—classic yankee liberal stuff, people who know that they’re supposed to prize diversity even though deep down, they hold some pretty ignorant beliefs and it even frightens them a little bit. As you can imagine, that results in a lot of diversity but also in it sort of being shoved down your throat (and that newer stripes in the human rainbow would probably be expected to enrich everyone else).

As a human, writer and copywriter, I’m interested in how other people think, what motivates them and what’s important to them. I like to think that most of what I write has an emotional layer to it—I mean, even the first campaign in my book isn’t strictly about humor or cities, it’s about the giving the reader a feeling of superiority.

I guess the point I’m casually meandering toward is this: if you spend time around people from different backgrounds, who have a different culture or lifestyle or beliefs than you do—things will naturally come up in conversation. You don’t have to view another human being as a stamp on your Passport of Cultural Enlightenment and your ignorance is certainly not their responsibility.

Things I Love #47: Pretending not to speak Spanish

2010-07-27T07:07:00.000-07:00

Shortly after I took this photo, I went outside and found a Spanish chain letter on my car. Which I was mostly able to understand but did not heed its warning. Que lastima.

First of all, I do not speak Spanish. I just studied the language for a very long time (a more than reasonable span of near-constant study that you’d think would end with one speaking a rather easy and logical Latin-based language). But it was a woefully decelerated and repetitive course of study. I never ever say that I speak Spanish, just out of sheer terror that someone may expect to me to carry on a conversation. Half the time, I can’t understand what people are saying.

I love it for the other half of the time, when I do understand.

Things I Love #46: Roller coasters

2010-07-05T20:24:00.000-07:00

Okay, confession: Yes I am in this picture (wearing black in the second seat) but aside from the fact that it's not really a roller coaster at all, I did NOT enjoy this. Roller coasters should be a THRILL, I'm not in it to be TERRIFIED.

There is no middle ground on this topic—I mean, I don’t think anyone is indifferent about roller coasters. My preference leans toward steel mega or hyper-coasters (yeah, apparently that’s a real thing! I haven’t been on a giga-coaster… yet), but I have soft spot for a good old-fashioned, teeth chattering, whiplash-inducing wooden coaster (perhaps because my first coaster experience was the Yankee Canonball … most recently, I went on the Coney Island Cyclone).

It’s not funny when I say corkscrew.

2010-06-29T17:10:00.000-07:00

I was born in Massachusetts and for more than 25 non-consecutive years of my life, lived in or within 20 miles of the city of Boston.

I pronounce the letter R.

This showed up on my Facebook feed a few days after I drafted this post.

I drive my car through Harvard Square, make a haff- not hahf- hearted effort not to run over any hipsters or future Forbes 500ers. I parallel park and begrudgingly pump quarters into the meter. And if I were some weirdo who narrated my own life, I would pronounce all 14 R's that I just used.

You know why I do it? Because I think I'm better than you. Obviously.

That works better if you imagine it being said by Matt Damon’s character in Good Will Hunting, by the way. It’s fine if you want to accuse me of being stuck up, or ashamed of my roots because I decided in high school that no one would raise their eyebrows at me when I asked for a fork. English is my first language, and I make a point to pronounce words correctly.

For that, I get the privilege of traveling freely around America, never asked to pronounce words like car, park and chowder. And I can reveal my true masshole identity when I so chose. Though I suppose that’s a power you can’t appreciate unless you have it.

Things I Love #45: Drink Specials

2010-06-23T20:14:00.000-07:00

The sangria and the menus sitting on the table next to food suggest this was a tapas place. I'm thinking Eclipse di Luna in Atlanta.

Well, okay, there’s a bit of a bias here. In Massachusetts, drink specials are illegal. Search as you might, but the closest thing you’ll find to a happy hour here is a discounted food menu. That made it all the more exciting and exotic when I started going into bars elsewhere and they’d say, “Two for one mojitos today!” or “Half priced pitchers!” From a business side, it’s a great way for the bar or restaurant to push something that’s not selling as well as it should … and I don’t think I need to explain why it’s great from a consumer perspective, do I?

Pigeon farming

2010-06-17T20:14:00.000-07:00

I love scams! Well, I mean, I don't like scams but I'm fascinated by them.

Part of the attraction is the lingo. There is nothing else on earth* that has a larger or more fun set of words to describe it than a good old-fashioned scam. Hoodwink, flimflam, bamboozle, bunco -- I mean, you don't have to take my word for it.

So I was perusing job listings, and I found a company with an urgent need for dozens of copywriters. It was based in a northeastern town only noted for having a university (which is named after the town), and is otherwise a post-industrial wasteland. Anyway, I was morbidly curious—as with most scams, I’m like, yeah, I know it’s a scam but I still want to know what happens next. I decided that it’s probably a blog content-generation factory with absurdly high daily quotas.

Those kinds of job postings target 2 types of people: the dregs of society and college students. Though I’ve been both in my days, I don’t fall for it (or at least, not any more). The whole point of it is to bring in as many suckers as possible, because the turnover rate will be astronomical. The smart ones don’t even stay for the interview.

I wanted to coin a phrase for this and I thought since ‘pigeon’ is another term for a mark or target of a scam, how about “pigeon farming”? To confirm this term had not already been coined, I googled “pigeon farming scam” and learned that apparently just last year there was a Ponzi scheme called Pigeon King International. Where people were duped into investing in a pigeon farm.

*I mean, strictly in the realm of non-sexual things. There is no comparison to the magic of euphemisms and double entendres, it’s just in a completely different league.

Things I Love #44: The Aquarium

2010-06-14T19:24:00.000-07:00

I’ve done lots of gushing about the ocean already but what makes an aquarium so great is that it takes you inside an environment that’s completely inaccessible in the natural world.

I try to make a point to visit an aquarium anywhere I can, but the best I’ve seen so far is the National Aquarium in Baltimore. Though it was somewhat limited, I’d have to give a shout out to the aquarium at Mandalay Bay just for their jellyfish display.

Abandon all hope, ye chains who enter. Insert Aerosmith reference here.

2010-06-10T19:52:00.000-07:00

I was reading Blog That I’m Too Old to Write for Even Though I Am Gen Y and the fresh faced kiddies were talking about Boston. The descriptions of the city read like a college brochure. Verdant fields, history and burrito joints. Huzzah!

I once watched a drunk guy scale a statue of Sam Adams, put an inflatable football helmet on the patriot’s head and give a rousing speech about how we defeated the British, we defeated Hitler and now we defeated whomever it was the Patriots had just beaten in the Super Bowl. That’s Boston history for you.

Boston has an attitude. The city is a chihuahua that wantonly growls at pitbulls, so convinced of its own toughness that it has no interest in how it looks from an outside or objective view.

But actually what interested me is what they want to change about the city. They certainly weren’t talking about the Boston that I knew. So I started to wonder, has Boston changed exceptionally fast in the past decade or is it all part of the natural evolution of a city?

When I lived in Boston, this was the expressway.

Setting aside the sadness over the lack of chains that they had ‘back home.’ Personally I’d like to hang the rotting bones of Krispy Kreme on the border of Massachusetts with a sign reading “Abandon hope all ye chains who enter.” But overall, if you consider chains an ‘improvement’ that’s the thing that’s gotten better, I guess.

The problems, they said, are: Lack of late-night dining and under 21 nightlife, and the public transportation shuts down too early. When I lived in Boston, early in the millennium, we had Buzzy’s, South Street, IHOP, Deli Haus, the Night Owl and most clubs on Lansdowne were 19+ on the weekend. The complaints are not invalid, as most of that has since changed.

Some of the changes show how uneasy the city is with its split identity. There’s no such thing as a world-class college town, it’s like a Mercedes wagon. Technically it’s a luxury car but who cares? It might as well have wood-paneling on the side.

Kenmore Square used to be rife with nightlife and contained 2 of the above-mentioned defunct late night restaurants. It was also a seedy little shithole and call it cleaning up, yuppifcation, or what have you, but enjoy the irony that your parents probably wouldn’t be so keen to send you to BU if the hood still looked the way it did 15 years ago. Yes, Boston’s largest college is responsible for closing 2/3 of the things in its neighborhood that college kids want.

And Knight Rider invented GPS.

2010-05-27T17:42:00.000-07:00

There is something that I never, ever want to hear another person state as a fact.

"Star Trek invented cell phones."

It's annoyed me from the first moment I heard it. There is no doubt in my mind that if Star Trek had never existed, we would still have mobile phones, exactly the same as the ones we have today. EXACTLY.

The only thing that those Star Trek devices have in common with cellphones: size, two-way communication device, and flipping.

SIZE
Mobile phones fit nicely into the typical evolution of technology. Televisions, computers and cars all became smaller as the category evolved.

TWO-WAY COMMUNICATION
It’s not as if the concept of such a device was completely foreign in the 1960s. They had radio, walkie talkies—hell, even the cordless phone was invented in the 60s.

FLIPPING
See above comment about size—yeah, I understand it’s easy to look at a RAZR or something and compare it to Star Trek. But the phones that look (somewhat) like those TV props? They descended from monster-size bulky flip phones that didn’t resemble anything on the show.

Things I Love #43: Pilot V5

2010-05-18T14:03:00.000-07:00

As I was about to extoll the virtues of the V5, a great pen for writing and for drawing, it occurs to me that the drawing I selected was done with a finer Micron pen.

That's 'finer' as in finer point, not superior. The V5 is a tireless workmanlike ink pen, while Micron is a bit more sensitive. It's too good for, you know, grocery lists and last-minute notes to your roommate. Not the V5! Besides, as a writer, of course, I do lots and lots of scrawling of words, lists and concepts, not so much fine-point bird illustrations.

I guess stereotypes exist for a reason.

2010-05-12T08:15:00.000-07:00

I saw this 110 year-old woman on the news the other night (okay, so while I normally would describe like a 70 year old woman that way, it literally was her 110th birthday).

She said, “Those were the good old days! They didn’t do then like they do now!”

Not that I expect a 110-year-old to be out skateboarding, drinking apple martinis or watching Lady Gaga videos on an iPad but I laughed. I couldn’t even make up what she said without thinking, what a general and uninformed stereotype of an old person!

What I love about the “good old days” is that back then, someone else was looking back fondly to an earlier time, before indoor plumbing, and thinking those were the good old days.

Things I Love #42: Changing Recipes

2010-05-07T11:24:00.000-07:00

When I get a new recipe, the first thing I do is run down the ingredient list and try to think of potential substitutions. I was raised in a house with a mother who’s a very competent but by the book when it comes to cooking, and a father who was not above substituting cereal for bread crumbs in a pinch (or so goes the legend of the Honey Nut Clusters Mac n Cheese). I ended up somewhere in the middle, semi-competent and always looking for smart substitutions.

My cooking tries to compensate for other areas of my life where I don’t take enough risks. Not that I want to give the impression I’m some rogue culinary badass—but I’m not above getting a new recipe, making major substitutions and bringing my creation to a party without ever having tried it (or even the original recipe, for that matter).

That is how we got two-layer cranberry orange cheesecake. People were afraid to try it at first because the fluffy pink and orange creation didn’t make for a familiar or recognizable dessert, but ultimately it was well-received.

American Culture: The Original Crowdsource

2010-05-03T13:35:00.000-07:00

Shrieking over-simplifiers point fingers at stingy opportunists who want everything for nothing, while clueless innocents and untalented Photoshop whizzes scrap over mediocre prizes and non-existent recognition. So delicious and controversial. No wonder people love to talk about this.

But I accept this: there are good and bad examples of crowdsourcing. Perhaps not in equal proportions, but outside of greed and opportunism, what is it really that makes crowdsourcing so appealing?

My theory is that crowdsourcing is such an inherently American idea that the concept is already ingrained in all of us. We LOVE other people’s ideas—we like absorbing outside ideas into our culture so much that it’s actually called Americanizing. Our highest rated TV show, American Idol, is an adaptation of a British show. Our iconic dessert, apple pie, is a slight variation on a Dutch recipe.

Now obviously you can argue that all cultures are technically crowdsourced because cultures do, after all, come from people. But in the U.S., 99% of us have non-native roots and the country doesn’t have a long rich history with traditions that evolved in any natural way—our culture was (and continues to be) sourced from other cultures. The process is exactly the same as a company reviewing crowdsourced ideas—we take the best things, modify to our tastes and dump the rest of it (i.e. “Okay, China, we’re really excited about the fireworks, that’s something we can really get behind. We like the idea of the dumpling but we think filling it with cream cheese and imitation crab is more on-brand and you know, the less said about fish head stew, the better.”)

It’s not just about globalization, though. America was fundamentally designed as a crowdsourced nation from the beginning. Remember, this was like the Google Wave of countries (I know, I know but we had a slow and inglorious first couple of years, too). People sat down and thought about how they’d do things differently if they could start a country from scratch—and what they created was a democracy where everyone’s opinion is protected and can be expressed. The system didn’t assume that a popular or widely held belief is necessarily right, nor that good ideas could only come from one place. They established this ideal that’s now ingrained in all Americans—the crowd believes it has the right to be heard. Without that, I don’t think it would matter how receptive you are to outside ideas—why would anyone bother to give them to you?

Crowdsourcing is not just a way for companies to take advantage of a crowd that feels entitled to expression—it potentially gives consumers a voice that goes much deeper than a focus group. In democracy, we know that we can vote to change the government if we don’t like how things are going. But crowdsourcing will never be fair to the crowd until people start to realize that the power doesn’t lie entirely on the side of the companies that are soliciting their ideas.

Things I Love #41: Junk Stores

2010-04-29T11:09:00.000-07:00

I really didn’t know what to call this because it goes so far beyond junk stores, to any sort of flea market, bootleg mecca, immigrant hotspot, thrift/overstock/whatever. Simply put, there is not a store in America that I am too uppity to go into. Such a thing does not exist.

It's an honor to be in the presence of so much royalty.

Now if you're thinking, oh but who would ever accuse you of that? The prevailing attitude among Defensive Walmart Aficionados is that there's only one reason a person wouldn't shop there--you think yer too good for it. Let's just squash that one right now. I'm not too good for anything (well, except freeganism, but that should go without saying).

We have this one in the Boston area called “Building 19” and I used to love the one at former fancy mall Assembly Square (soon to be leveled to make way for an IKEA, obviously I am deeply conflicted about this because I love both things so much). Well, the junk store moved into what had once been a Filene’s. It looked like it used to be a Filene’s and there was one section where there was a hole in the wall and you could see into the old abandoned mall. It was so creepy and spectacular.

It’s safe to say, I don’t go for the bargains. I’m in it for the overall feast for the senses, the interesting finds, the vain hope that some day I will find something amazing, and the occasional obscure ethnic food item. My best friend used to work at a Building 19 and she said miniature past-dated pies were popular with the Depression-era set, but I am more prone to go for Goya guava cookies or some Chinese sauce with a dubiously translated label.

I really don't think this needs a caption.

Things I Love #40: Science

2010-04-21T08:19:00.000-07:00

If the first 3 weeks of an American Idol season have taught us nothing else, it’s that you don’t need to be good at something to be passionate and interested in it.

Last known photograph of me engaging in serious scientific study. It was featured in my college newspaper, which may make this the single greatest thing I've ever done for science -- made it look fun in a publication chiefly read by self-absorbed artists.

I may be too stupid to contribute to our further understanding of, basically, anything that science explores but don’t think for a second that means I won’t cheer on those who can … from afar. Good job, science, your work touches every aspect of my daily life and I know that you're always working to make it better. I approve!

Bears in Advertising

2010-04-19T13:23:00.000-07:00

Unlike most blogs, I don't steal other people's photos. If I don't have something that I took or made myself I don't post it. I almost thought I didn't have a bear -- I scrolled through zebra, giraffe, turkey, lemur, 112 cats and dogs and a liger before I finally came upon this guy. Yes he's stuffed, and no I didn't kill him.

Well I was just rooting around in my half-done blog post file, and I found a reference to tweeting Edward Boches that I originally wanted to do my college thesis on ‘Bears in Advertising’ (this, I think, was in response to a Bruins ad with a bear in it – it was a while ago, and you know the saying, 'What happens on twitter, stays in .. your consciousness for about 10 minutes.')

But this completely and totally true. I was deciding between 2 thesis topics: “Bears in Advertising” and “Post-Modern Advertising.” Of course, I did basic preliminary research on both topics and ultimately chose the latter. Then, in a typically collegiate 3 AM flash of brilliance, at the last possible minute, I changed the topic of my thesis to "The 20-30 Year Old Market" ... which, at the time, held the dividing line between Gen X and Gen Y.

I reviewed it recently. The beginning was extremely boring. Lots of comparing/contrasting, tables and I used cross-tabs! I don’t entirely know what a cross-tab is, but at the time, I’m sure I totally understood it and was an expert not only on them, but on the entire subject of the youth market for a couple months.

Of course in retrospect, I really wish I had just done the bear thing. It's like the time I cheated on a Christian Morality test in high school. Or it would have been, if I had actually written about bears -- something I could look back on fondly, have a good laugh and be totally glad I had done it. At the time, it seemed too much like spitting in the face of an Honors Program that frankly, tolerated a lot of shit from me for the privilege of paying half my tuition.

I’m not even going to link to the actual thesis. Looking at it now just makes so happy to be a creative today (as opposed to an account person today or a creative then).

Things I Love #39: Lotus Flowers

2010-04-07T12:53:00.000-07:00

I made this when my pen-tooling skills were at their height. It's begging to be on a graphic tee.

Since there’s not much to say beyond ‘They’re pretty and smell nice’ let’s talk for a minute about the time I was in Paris and bought L’Occitane Lotus eau de parfum (which has since been discontinued, but that’s another story). So, how pleased was I to find this exotic French perfume in such a wonderful scent.

Almost a year later, I finally learned that L’Occitane was an international chain. There had been one in Boston the whole time and they were about to open a second one in the Prudential mall. Right next to the exotic California Pizza Kitchen.

I should add, that does not negate the fact that the perfume was fabulous.

On romanticizing the past and false nostalgia

2010-03-31T09:02:00.000-07:00

I feel like I know a number of people around my age who totally romanticize the past. And I’m not talking about nostalgia for a time that we lived through, but a kind of false nostalgia for times that we never experienced, usually the 50s or 60s.

The thing is, I like ‘classic rock’ and I hold a not entirely age-appropriate belief that rock music became good in 1969, peaked in the mid 70s and then turned to shit by the early 80s. Still, while I may occasionally think that it must have been so cool to see Led Zeppelin in their heyday (or at all, for that matter), I do not make the leap that this somehow means everything from that era was awesome.

I’m sorry but I watched Woodstock and didn’t wish for even one second that I had been there. I could practically inhale the 40 year-old stench of patchouli, mud and B.O. through my TV.

It’s really easy to sit at your computer at work and surf the internet for 50s style dresses and think, Look at this fashion, everything seemed so simple. It must have been such a great time! The problem is, first of all, the people who are actually nostalgic for that time have a totally warped perspective of what it was really like. If you remember the 50s fondly, you’re probably thinking about watching Howdy Doody, not Joseph McCarthy, or doctors prescribing valium to “calm down” housewives, or segregation. And all those terrible things we have today, like violence, sickness and war? Totally existed back then.

The stuff that always kills me is ‘we ate raw chicken!’ ‘we ate candy off the floor!’ ‘no one was allergic to peanuts!’ ‘we came home when the street lights went on – there were no AMBER alerts!’ Right, because salmonella, anaphylactic shock and child predators were invented in the 80s. I always say, the reason you never heard of anyone in school having a deadly peanut allergy is because they probably died from eating a PBJ and no one knew why.

All I'm saying is, you can appreciate the past. It's given us most of the awesome things we have now -- but be realistic about it. Almost Famous and Lassie aren't telling you whole truth about what it was like back then. Besides, even Lassie admitted that little kids fell into mineshafts, rather frequently.

Things I Love #38: Hair Dye

2010-03-19T11:39:00.000-07:00

It would be easy to say obviously I’m into it because I have been dyeing my hair for over a decade. It was like heroin. I tried it once when I was fifteen and from that moment on, I never stopped. Wait—did that just sound like I tried heroin when I was fifteen?

Anyway, I’ve got the technology and the means to make my hair pretty much any color you could imagine, so why should I be content to walk around with boring mousey brown? Then I figure, my hair color is fake, I went through a bit of effort to make it that way, therefore it should look fake. I want you to know that I bothered to change it!

Things I Love #37: World's Strongest Man

2010-03-12T08:31:00.000-08:00

This guy lifted this Toyota not once, but ELEVEN times.

I remember, many years ago, I saw a sport on ESPN in which there was an event called “The Refrigerator Run.” It was literally a bunch of hulking strongmen running up a hill with refrigerators strapped to their backs.

Now there are many things which I appreciate on a kitschy or ironic level, but I can admit it. I am actually amazed at the sight of a man picking up a compact car.

Things I Love #36: Wikipedia

2010-03-10T07:28:00.000-08:00

Seriously one of the greatest inventions of the information age. So it might not be the most thorough or accurate source, but face it, every day life is not a post-graduate dissertation. Thanks to Wikipedia, every stupid whim and passing, “Wait, what is that?” thought that we have can be answered in under 10 seconds.

Do you want to die today?

2010-03-02T08:20:00.000-08:00

Okay, so, confession: I've never been mugged. I've only been robbed by cowards who had to sneak around and use their brute force on some inanimate object that couldn't defend itself. After all, how hard is it to assault a door? It's not like it'll decide to fight back and knee you in the crotch.

Despite the fact that I have never actually been assaulted or mugged, and therefore know nothing about how it really happens, I always get annoyed at movies for portraying muggings in an unrealistic fashion.

It should be no surprise that I just watched The Brave One. I thought, I haven't seen a new Neil Jordan movie since The End of the Affair bored me to tears and at least this didn't sound boring. It was just meh, okay, but there are several muggings and all I could think was, Why do movie muggers always have to make the most incredibly stupid menacing remarks? Things that, if some thug said it to you in real life, you'd laugh in his face. No, actually you CAN'T have my wallet because I didn't believe that for a second!

I don't know how this could be solved, though. Maybe some sort of 'cultural exchange' program or extreme screenwriter camp, where the people who write this shit have to come face to face with a real, threatening person. This seems like the premise for a bad movie in of itself, though.

Things I Love #35: Convertibles

2010-03-01T17:02:00.000-08:00

Now a six-year veteran of convertible ownership. It’s almost hard to imagine not having one. Feel the air, get a tan while you drive and oh my god, you can top-load it. See, you can move things in a tiny convertible that you could never move in a larger sedan. A couple months ago, I got 3 antique wooden office chairs in mine.

Things I Love #34: Camera Phones

2010-03-01T15:49:00.000-08:00

Now I like to muse as much as the next person about, ‘Oh man what did we ever do without cell phones,’ and yes, the instantaneous, convenient and potentially life-saving ability to make a phone call from almost anywhere is pretty great. But as far as I’m concerned, cell phones became AMAZING the day that was I able to take a photo of something ridiculous and send it to a bunch of friends immediately.

Most importantly, camera phones allow you to document where you've been (Ellijay, GA) and the most interesting things to see there. (Literally this.)

You may see the soul of Savannah in gorgeous architecture and Spanish moss, but they won't read as well as this does on a 2"x3" screen.

Never go into a Mexican supermarket without a camera phone.

The trap and tragedy of talent

2010-02-26T14:10:00.000-08:00

I’m a talented writer and don’t find it immodest to say that because talent is a natural thing – much like I have brown hair, hazel eyes and stand 5’3” (note the hair color is purely theoretical, as I'm severely addicted to hair dye).

The first couple of times that someone tells you that you're good at something, it feels amazing and you're totally grateful to the person who told you. I know I was. The only real insecurity I could have was, well okay, I'm talented in high school -- but what about when I get to college? What about the real world? What about advertising?

But talent is a trap for a few reasons -- one of them is, for sure, if you assume that being a talented writer has anything to do with being a copywriter. Though it seems to defy logic, the connection is ridiculously tenuous. Simply put, copywriting requires a combination of talents. Writing is not the only one and it doesn’t cancel out the others.

The other trap is awareness. Unless you have ridiculously low self-esteem, eventually, you have to be aware of your own talent. People will continue to tell you, and you have to figure out how to take a compliment, be confident in your abilities, accept criticism and not behave like a conceited asshole.

After all, we do love our savants—precious little idiots who have no idea how good they are at something. We love this because when someone is so innocent and modest, it doesn’t make us feel quite as bad for being less talented. Nothing about this is logical, though—this idea that you aren’t supposed to know you’re talented. Unless you literally are some kind of idiot savant, eventually you figure it out. Projecting ignorance about it is difficult because false modesty can seem just as obnoxious as over-confidence.

We’ve elevated the discovery of talent to such an exalted place that making another person aware of his/her talent is more emotionally satisfying than actually having talent. Though that’s not to imply that having talent is emotionally satisfying in any way—to go back to my earlier example, it’s no more gratifying than having a certain eye color. In fact, it’s much less gratifying because no one ever feels like a failure for not meeting society’s expectations for blue-eyed people. That's the tragedy of it.

Things I Love #32: Hoop Earrings. #33: Eye Makeup

2010-02-25T15:39:00.000-08:00

Admittedly there’s nothing particularly deep to say about either of these. But I do wonder why I’m pathologically incapable of throwing away an earring when I lose the other one. Some day I will find I use for all these single earrings. (Okay, mental image of me as crazy old lady wearing 6 different mismatched earrings may have just persuaded me to go throw them away … right now.)

As for the mental image of me as a crazy old lady in tropical fish colored eye makeup, I should probably just accept that as an inevitiability.

Things I Love #31: 100% Juice

2010-02-19T14:49:00.000-08:00

So simple. Juice shouldn’t be complicated. Squeeze that fruit and bottle it!

Things I Love #30: Green

2010-02-16T16:25:00.000-08:00

You know you wish you had these, too.

I mean the color, not in the environmental sense. You could invent a machine that levels rainforests, and if you painted it chartreuse I’d probably love it. I’ve even created a blog, Green Frosting, in tribute of the color.

Also, this is a true story: if you ran into me a couple years ago on St. Patrick's day, you would've thought I was the most incredibly festive Irish person in Atlanta. In fact, I just normally dress that way and didn't realize it was St. Patty's day until about an hour after I'd left the house.

Things I Love #29: Dialogue

2010-02-10T16:16:00.000-08:00

Okay, confession: I wrote a huge list of things I love and went back after to talk about each thing. I just realized that saying “I love dialogue” sounds like some hippie bullshit. I love writing dialogue—it’s so complicated and messy, and it can’t be straightforward because in real life people don’t usually say exactly what they mean. When I write fiction, I love to tell the story as much as possible through dialogue.

If you think you can't change the world

2010-02-08T14:29:00.000-08:00

I hate the Super Bowl. Ironic, yes, that I chose to go into the industry for which the Super Bowl is a high holiday.

The thing is, I didn't choose to be born on Super Bowl Sunday. Well, okay, I don't really remember the decisions that I made as a fetus, but I was cut off from the rest of the world, so it's not like I knew, 'If I leave TODAY, I'll go through my formative years with everyone treating my birthday as a distraction from some overblown sporting event.'

But as for choosing advertising, well, I saw this, this morning:

And I thought, well I suppose I did. I assume the question was more about the cliche that marketing and advertising helps consumers by making them aware of products and services that are available. Like most cliches, there is an element of truth in it -- even though most people who say it actually spend their time figuring out how to convince the public that product x will get them money, respect and/or laid.

There's a story that I never tell, though. When I was a teenager, I worked for a crisis hotline. Our program lost its funding, and I lost the one thing in my life that was keeping me sane. We were trying to do something good and we failed because not enough people knew about it. At that point, I knew I wasn't meant to talk anyone off a ledge, but once I understood how much well-meaning groups need good publicity--I thought, maybe THAT is how I'm supposed to help people.

I planned to go off and major in Creative Writing at an absurdly liberal school, but in perhaps the most unexpected way that working for a crisis hotline can change one's life, I chose to study advertising and PR at another absurdly liberal school, instead. Well I said (joked) earlier, that I "promptly forgot" this altruistic motivation once I stepped into an advertising-obsessed environment. I'm not altruistic and I don't feel as self-righteous as I did back then, but I didn't completely forget.

My next project (in progress) is to organize a 'personal care item' drive, trying to convince people to donate all their unwanted xmas soap gift sets and shampoo they're never going to use for Beverly Bootstraps. More about that later.

There's something I wrote (ranted) when I was frustrated by the people around me. Sometimes I need to hear it, too: Just because you know people who care about advertising too much, that doesn't make it unimportant. If you're really so short-sighted as to think that you won't be in a position to change the world, or that you won't be able to do anything important, you deserve to be miserable.

Things I Love #28: Giving to Charity

2010-02-08T13:13:00.000-08:00

This is a good companion for the other post I’m working on and of course a follow-up to how much I love recycling and getting rid of stuff. In my life, I’ve probably given less than $50 to charity. That’s okay, judge me if you want. I don’t use my checkbook to soothe my guilt. However, I like volunteering, fundraising and most of all, donating stuff. It really doesn’t even need to be my stuff. I’m happy to give away other people’s stuff.

Things I Love #27: Recycling

2010-02-08T13:08:00.000-08:00

There are 2 awesome things in this photo. Recycling bins and a hawk.

This is one of my favorite ways to get rid of things. It hurts my heart when I see people throw away things that could be recycled.

Things I Love #26: Getting Rid of Stuff

2010-02-08T13:04:00.000-08:00

This was supposed to be an eBay photo.

It’s just so satisfying to get useless things out of my life. This manifests itself in so many ways. Having a yard sale. Offering something to my friends if I don’t like it. Selling stuff on eBay. Giving things away on Freecycle. See, it’s not about throwing things away. That is like the last resort for me, I’d rather put in extra effort to see that things will get put to a good use.

The future, on demand

2010-01-29T13:10:00.000-08:00

Probably the main recurring theme in my mind is the future. I’m a little bit obsessed with what’s going to happen next.

When I was a teenager, I imagined what TV would be like in the future. Not the content--I didn't predict man on man makeout sessions in primetime or basic cable shows where, in every episode, they say half the words you supposedly can 'never' say on TV.

I imagined this futuristic way that we'd watch TV. Of course it seems so obvious now, but bear in mind that I came up with this idea in the mid-90s with no clue that it was likely or even plausible.

See I imagined the whole concept of shows ‘airing’ wouldn't exist any more -- nothing would actually ever be 'on TV', instead you'd be plugged into this vast library of shows. Almost like on-demand, except much more epic. In my imagination, you were able to chose an episode from basically every show that ever existed. I also imagined that although TV schedules wouldn't exist in the sense that they did then (and still do), rather than airing at a certain time, new episodes would be released on staggering days/times.

I guess the major failing was that I, in my divine high school sophomore wisdom, didn’t figure out how this futuristic new TV system would make money. Now that it’s technologically possible, I suspect that’s the only reason why it hasn’t already been fully realized.

Things I Love #25: The Aphotic Zone

2010-01-26T20:19:00.000-08:00

This is the part of the ocean that’s so deep, there is no sunlight. This is awesome for a few reasons – one being that there is some incredible and freaky-looking stuff down there. Every single there is an expedition into the deep, a new species is discovered.

These are actually animals, not plants, that survive by eating minerals from underwater volcanoes. When the vents erupt, the temperature goes from 36 to 700 and it doesn’t faze these guys at all. Not only do scientists think this could be where life originated, this ecosystem proves that life can thrive in the same harsh conditions that exist on other planets.

Basically, nothing we ever create will be as amazing as this.

Things I Love #24: Picas

2010-01-21T19:59:00.000-08:00

It’s such a clean measurement. No crazy fractions or infinite decimals. And it breaks down into points!

Whatever, I'm a dork. I don't care. Picas are awesome.

Things I Love #23: Heists

2010-01-21T19:53:00.000-08:00

Here’s something I have accepted. I am, at heart, a thief. See: the problem with detectives as ‘heroes’. Even though I know they’re often stupid and formulaic, I love heist movies because those are some clever and daring people.

Things I Love #22: Chocolate

2010-01-21T19:12:00.000-08:00

This is me slumming it.

I am a connoisseur. Not a 'chocoholic', not someone who will raid your Hershey kisses or buy a 7 layer chocolate cake at the grocery store. No. I am a snob.

I like expensive and dark chocolate – have gone as high as 88% cacao, but prefer to stay around 70%. Spices, herbs, tea, flowers, cheese, the bacon bar—I’m down for anything exotic that you can put in a piece of chocolate. When all else fails, there’s no simpler pleasure more divine than a candied orange peel dipped in dark chocolate.

My chocolate snob recommendations: Literally anything by VOSGES. Hot chocolate, mice and penguins from L.A. Burdick.

Found item: Vintage MLK essay

2010-01-18T11:47:00.000-08:00

I defy any adult to sum up the influential life of this man more succinctly.

Things I Love #21: Best Original Screenplay

2010-01-11T16:02:00.000-08:00

Call it a writer’s bias if you will, but I have a simple belief—you can make a bad movie from a good script but you can’t make a good movie with a bad script. As a rule, I use the screenplay categories (both original and adapted) as the real indicator of the ‘Best Picture’ (and conversely, should the ‘Best Picture’ not get a screenplay nomination, I assume it’s an epic pile of mediocrity). Then again, in recent years, at least one particularly insufferable movie won a screenplay Oscar, so maybe I should rethink my position on this.

Things I Love #20: 419 Letters

2010-01-11T15:39:00.000-08:00

Sign found at New Hampshire flea market famed as an outpost for bootleg goods; specifically in was in a booth full of Mary Kay products and porn DVDs.

The premise never changes. There’s a large sum of money and if you help the author, he’ll give you a percentage of the money. Like a bad soap opera in broken English, I love to see what story they’re wrapping around the scam. A pious dying Christian? An unscrupulous bank manager? I’ll even admit I’ve been tempted to respond—I mean, I always knew they were a scam but I had to find out what happens next. Fortunately, good old Snopes satisfied my curiosity

New Kid in Town

2010-01-06T15:34:00.000-08:00

Claire was too skinny for her height and too tall for her age. Her parents weren't even that tall. Her mother was adopted and no one knew or remembered or cared if she was too tall as a kid.

But Claire was tough, anyway. She had four brothers and knew exactly how to pinch a guy so he'd never bother you again. She perfected the art of the knuckle punch, too. Her slightly older brother Jake was her test subject. She had bruised his arm countless times but knew she'd found the magic touch when she finally made him cry. He tried to pretend he wasn't crying, but she knew.

Killer knuckle punches didn't win friends when you moved to Houston from Missouri. All they could do was defend against bullies, but the Houston bullies already had their hands full with nerds and Adam the Jewish kid, whose basic problem as they saw it, was the he didn't accept jesus christ as his lord and savior.

When the first kickball game happened, all the kids were surprised that Claire didn't know how to play. The sport had been banned at her Missouri school because in 1993 a kid was paralyzed by an ill-timed kick which caused him to fall and injure his spine. Kickball was like dancing in that Footloose town. Claire hoped she would be good at it, but she honestly didn't know what to expect.

The first few games she was just figuring things out. Kicking the ball, though, was similar to kicking Jake in the shin, and catching the ball was like the old roof game (throwing a basketball on the roof and elbowing each other to catch it when it rolled back down). The principles were nearly the same as baseball, which even with the dangerously hard ball and the tough wooden bats, was not considered as dangerous as kickball at her old school.

Claire became an outstanding kickballer. Soon Adam was paying her 50 cents a lesson for tips on self-defense. The many insightful conversations shared over the bags of candy and chips that she bought with this new income successfully ingratiated her with the girls at school.

Things I Love #19: Brightest Color on the Clearance Rack

2010-01-01T15:26:00.000-08:00

This Halloween, I dressed as a banana. It was not a ‘costume’ per se, but rather I found an entire outfit—the perfectly shaped brown shoes, bright yellow pants, t-shirt and cardigan, and a tall green hat—in my existing wardrobe. The only thing I added was a giant Chiquita sticker on my back. Most people did not realize it was a costume and even thought that a guy who referred to me as a banana was being rude and insulting. Yes, I bought the banana pants—but I’m just as surprised as you are that anyone actually paid $80 for them.

Things I Love #18: Vintage Advertising

2010-01-01T15:00:00.000-08:00

This '50s ad for candy makes chocolate truffles sound like an energy bar!

I love the way that condescension and sleaze oozes out from an old ad in a way that makes you ask yourself, was the public really as stupid as the people who created this seemed to think?

Things I Love #17: Deciding What Color I’d Paint Your House If I Lived There

2009-12-29T14:54:00.000-08:00

The dark blue is my accent wall.

I start by identifying potential accent walls and elements of the architecture that could look more three-dimensional with color. From there, I start picking colors, paying close attention to how the choices would blend between adjoining rooms, and thinking carefully whether or not it would make the room too dark.

All this is going on in my mind while you are, perhaps, talking to someone else or in the bathroom.

Things I Love #16: Tacos

2009-12-29T14:26:00.000-08:00

I don't actually have any photos of tacos, but I have lots of photos of these. Which may be partly responsible for my love of tacos.

I don’t really suppose these need an explanation.

Things I Love #15: Gummy Bears at the Movies

2009-12-29T13:50:00.000-08:00

Those colorful bears, sitting there between ice cream bars, butter-drenched popcorn and industrial-sized chocolate boxes. My fruity little gelatin and corn syrup friends, smiling, and in their sickeningly cute way, saying “We’re delicious and fat free!” I don’t even know why they are there at all, because I’m the only person who ever buys them.

The problem with detectives as 'heroes'

2009-12-28T23:34:00.000-08:00

Tonight I saw Sherlock Holmes. It is a fact that I'll see literally any movie with Robert Downey Jr and this devotion has been tested by Hollywood many times. I remembered seeing this movie in 2005, when it was called Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. The only substantial difference between the two is that one has a clever script and the other has a lot of fight scenes.

I have seen 52 movies because of this man.

But on the subway ride home, I tried to use my own powers of observation to pull a Holmes/House on the other passengers. It only took a minute for me to get bored and accept that my talents are more in the realm of imagination.

This is when I realized that creative people are always villains in detective stories. All the so-called hero does is explain someone else's plot, in which the only unbrilliant thing was that bit where the detective was able to figure it out. All I'm saying is, it's a hell of a lot harder to figure out how to kill a guy in a locked room than it is to gather clues and figure it out after it's already been done.

The biggest flaw in the whole detective story construct is that the "villain" should keep his brilliance a secret in the first place. Unless there's some major proprietary thing at risk, creative people love to talk about HOW we created something, parading out our literal and figurative mood boards for the world to see. It's the basis of most DVD commentaries and probably the reason why Bond villains always spill their guts before attempting to kill their nemesis.

I think this is why I prefer heist movies--they're just as formulaic as detective movies, but at least the protagonists, although technically 'criminals', are creative. When the con artist finally tells you the whole story at the end, he's talking about all the crafty and smart stuff that he did, not pissing on the parade of some creative person who worked really hard to pull off an elaborate project.

Things I Love #14: Van Morrison in the Rain

2009-12-27T11:54:00.000-08:00

There’s something about a dreary day and the patter of rain that’s a perfect backdrop for Moondance. The first track, And It Stoned Me, sets the tone perfectly.

Things I Love #13: Getting Lost

2009-12-27T11:47:00.000-08:00

The only reason getting lost has a bad rap at all is because sometimes it interferes with getting to a specific place at a specific time and occasionally someone mistakenly drives into a swamp or something.

Things I Love #12: Dive Bars

2009-12-27T11:25:00.000-08:00

This is actually a carpet warehouse on the outskirts of Atlanta.

There’s something magical about a bar that doesn’t even try to be cool or hip (or even particularly good, for that matter).

Things I Love #11: The As-Is Room at IKEA

2009-12-27T10:04:00.000-08:00

A rare treasure from the As-Is Room, we had to take it apart in the lobby to fit it in the car, then reassemble it at home without the instructions!

Right by the registers, there’s a room where they sell all the damaged, returned, partially assembled and/or incomplete items at a slight discount.

For every time it works out brilliantly (a table we were going to buy anyway, with no damage? Why not!), there are a dozen things that make you wonder who the hell buys this shit (I’ll pay the extra $50 for a sofa that doesn’t have a giant gash in it!).

Normally everything at IKEA is designed with a specific purpose. Not the big jumble of crap that they call the As-Is Room. I like to go in there and imagine the possibilities. Could this damaged table be saved with some Mod Podge and a clever design? Why can’t the baby changing table serve as a buffet?

Trying to glaze my way out of this mess

2009-12-25T08:54:00.000-08:00

File photo from 2006, the last time I made 'the cheesecake'

Well it’s xmas morning and I’m more than unusually put out that I attempted to make a cheesecake yesterday and it didn’t work out so well. Cheesecake is probably the most precarious item in my cooking repertoire. From the other side of the oven window, an almost-but-not-quite-cooked cheesecake looks remarkably similar to a perfectly cooked cheesecake. Since you can’t open the oven until it cools down completely, there’s no testing or adjusting—you just find out in the end if it’s presentable or not.

I don’t think of myself as a competitive person (this is, to be honest, probably not the most accurate aspect of my self-image) but I freely admit this: an invitation to a family get-together is, in my mind, a challenge to a baking competition. But of course, when I win (and I always do), everyone wins, because they get to eat the awesome dessert that I’ve made. The cheesecake recipe in particular is a low blow. It universally sweeps any unofficial cooking competition, and honestly, I think I’m more annoyed that I might—for the first time ever—not have the best thing on the table.

The sad part is, I’ve allowed the cheesecake to overshadow the fact that in the past 48 hours I made an amazing seafood lasagna and a perfect date nut bread. But in an attempt to regroup this morning, I whipped up a Trader Joe’s gingerbread cake. So now I’m full of cake-from-a-box shame but hoping that I can redeem myself with an original eggnog glaze.

Things I Love #10: The Week in Photos

2009-12-23T09:15:00.000-08:00

Yahoo's The Week in Photos is a very simple and elegant presentation of 12 photos from around the world, with brief captions. If you had been in a coma or something, reviewing this site would be the best way to find out everything you had missed

It's a great reminder that even in this world of media over-exposure, paparazzi and pixelated cell phone vids, there is still some incredible photojournalism. There are these beautifully composed photos and every set runs the entire spectrum of emotion.

For example, there had been a tragic daycare center fire in Mexico -- the photo simply shows a man painting these tiny coffins white. Unexpected and heartbreaking. But then it will usually end on a light note, such as a giddy elephant getting bathed with a firehose or a goofy grin from the world's ugliest dog. One of my favorites actually, is a line of Welsh troops applauding as their Regimental Goat is paraded by on his way to retirement.

Things I Love #9: Cashmere

2009-12-23T09:13:00.000-08:00

The best kind of cashmere -- bright green and on clearance.

It’s best that I don’t even start gushing about cashmere because I might never be able to stop.

Things I Love #8: Arctic Creatures

2009-12-23T09:09:00.000-08:00

It never occurs to them that they could just migrate to Florida. So they bulk up with fur, fluff and winter fat and tough it out every year. The playful yet brutal polar bear, the incredibly round arctic hair, potentially most adorable creature on the planet, the sea otter… and I haven’t even gotten to penguins yet.

Things I Love #7: Old Houses

2009-12-23T09:04:00.000-08:00

The flat of Beacon Hill, probably around 2001 when I lived in the neighborhood

When I moved to the south, I was surprised by the lack of historical preservation in Atlanta. I mentioned once that I grew up in a 100 year old house and my classmates were like oh my god really? It’s funny to me because though it wasn’t full of crisp white plaster and brushed steel, it’s not like I grew up in an episode of The 1900 House. We had central AC and a two room sound system. In New England a house from the 1890s isn’t thought of as historical (where I live now, there are houses in this neighborhood that were built in the 1600s).

Holiday cards 2009, the Bold series

2009-12-21T08:26:00.000-08:00

Simple idea this year, building images out of letters. All bold fonts.

Georgia Bold Tree

Goudy Old Style Snow

Helvetica Gifts

Gill Sans Kitty (Unfinished)

Things I Love #6: Compact Cars

2009-12-19T15:30:00.000-08:00

Mid-day, weekend before xmas at the mall. This tiny spot, where most suburbanites dare not park, was waiting for me.

I love me some tiny car. Stalking round the beach parking lot with a Hummer in front of me, I realize I’m not playing to my strengths. 30 seconds later I’ve parallel parked on the resort town street and Hummer guy continues to circle the lot.

It is a fact that In a garage full of old-people cars, beaters and SUVs, there will be an amazing parking spot so tiny that no one dares to squeeze into it.

Things I Love #5: Sangria

2009-12-15T12:04:00.000-08:00

Years of primary research went into the development of this, my first but certainly not last, homemade sangria.

If I had a time machine that only allowed you to go back in time to give awards to people whose brilliance was not properly acknowledged, I would bestow an award on the person who figured out that the way to deal with crappy summer wine was simply to add fruit and more liquor to it.

Sangria
1 bottle of cheap Cabernet
4 shots of triple sec
1 nip of brandy
1 apple and 1 orange (sliced)

Mix in a pitcher, chill and serve over ice.

Things I Love #4: Steel Drums

2009-12-15T11:47:00.000-08:00

Okay so I don't have a photo of steel drums. Or even a reggae CD for that matter. But doesn't pirate crab looks like he can jam to the island rhythms?

Alone or with other instruments, steel drums are happiness.

Things I Love #3: Improv

2009-12-15T11:41:00.000-08:00

Not that I ever thought improv was easy but after taking a class, I have so much respect for people who make it look effortless. When I was a kid, I loved the British Whose Line shows on Comedy Central. These days, my favorites are This is Spinal Tap, everything else by Christopher Guest, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Reno 911 (yes, really).

Things I Love #2: Fake Foods and Vegan / Vegetarian Alternatives

2009-12-15T11:16:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I’m not a vegetarian. But if there’s a vegetarian or vegan version of something that should be meat or full of dairy products, I cannot resist it. I don’t understand how it’s scientifically possible to make a cake without milk, butter and eggs – but if I see one, I have to try it. The one that most intrigued me was vegetarian shrimp—flavored with seaweed!

Things I Love #1: Antique / Thrift Stores

2009-12-15T11:11:00.000-08:00

This is the first post in a series tentatively called "50 Things I Love."

One of my old favorites, Kudzu Market in Decatur, GA

Thrift stores are a mix of intrigue and the hunt. It doesn’t feel like shopping, it’s like looking for something to rescue and/or repurpose. Antique stores, on the other hand, are like stepping into a time machine and getting little glimpses of the past (without having to deal with the asbestos and polio or whatever problems existed back then).

Less than useful skills

2009-12-08T11:10:00.000-08:00

When life is short on major triumphs, sometimes it’s nice to take stock of your less than useful or practical skills and remember all the tiny little victories and moments of genius that they provide. Here are a few of my mine:

Voiceovers
Recognizing the voices, I mean. Acura – James Spader. Droid – James van der Beek. Expedia – the guy who played the neurotic producer on Murphy Brown. British Airways – Michael Sheen. Lowe’s – Gene Hackman. Visa – Morgan Freeman. Oil of Olay – the woman who played the heart surgeon on Chicago Hope. I am convinced that there must be a practical use for this skill, but have yet to think of one. Maybe if I witness a crime and have to do a “voice lineup” or something.

Parallel parking
I’ll tell you my secret—to parallel park, you must be fearless. Put all worries about hitting other cars out of your head, because the only way to master this artform is to leave behind a wake of scuffed and dented bumpers. (On a personal note, if you lived in Mission Hill or Jamaica Plain in 2001, sorry about that). But now, oh let me tell you – I am a master! I once parked in a spot that was about 6 inches longer than my Chrysler. It was as if I didn’t know my own powers—when I saw what I had done, all I could think was, “How the fuck am I going to get out of there?” (Another personal note: if you parked in front of me that day in Charlestown, sorry about that).

And it was long-ass car, too.

Finding cashmere at a thrift store
I know what you’re thinking, what’s so hard about that? Well, yeah, and what’s so hard about running 100 meters? Nothing, and yet if you do it quickly enough, you can win a gold medal. The skill is that I can tell you what a sweater is made of with one pinch of the sleeve. While I could, theoretically, use this skill to pull out all the lambswool or cotton-poly blend or merino or whatever else you might want, as a general rule, I’m looking for the cashmere.

Oh, and for the record, I was kidding about Morgan Freeman. At this point, even deaf people know his voice.

It's a crowdsourced xmas

2009-12-04T09:53:00.000-08:00

So I have a relative who’s a big supporter of the ‘wish list.’ Around this time, the blackest of Fridays, will come a request for my wish list. If I do not respond, more anxious requests will follow, reminding me that we are “running out of shopping days.”

When I was a kid, I loved this because it was a sure thing—I always knew at least one of the presents under the tree was something that I wanted. Now that I’m an adult, it just annoys me. What I really want is to be surprised by your thoughtfulness. I want something that is beyond my imagination, that you chose based on what you know about me.

If I have to tell you exactly what I want, I know what’s going to be in that paper before I open it. It won’t be fun, interesting, unexpected or thoughtful. At best, it will meet my expectations. Having an expectation immediately sucks the fun out of receiving a gift.

I like to shop thoughtfully. Choosing everyone else’s gifts is enough work that I find it annoying when I’m expected to choose my own, too.

Oh, but don’t think I made this up as an allegory about ‘crowdsourcing.’ I think it’s a good parallel, that brands should be coming up with thoughtful unexpected ways to serve their consumers, and that having the consumer think for you won’t result in solutions that go beyond their expectations or imagination.

I really do have to cross my fingers that certain family members won’t see this … and unless I want a basket of strawberry scented lotion, I’ve got a list to write.

Myths about the young classic rock fan

2009-12-02T13:44:00.000-08:00

I’ve found that when you like music that’s older than you are, people like to make assumptions. So, I would like to address some of these assumptions … which are all untrue.

I only listen to classic rock.
Okay, I’m not going to make some generic Facebook profile claim that I “like everything except country” but I do listen to an embarrassing amount of euro pop and electro/trancey stuff. Among other things.

I have always liked classic rock.
A few years ago, I decided I wanted to expand my horizons a bit so I started to check out some older bands. So, look, good for you, knowing Led Zeppelin for 40 years—that’s not been my experience. For me, they basically didn’t even exist 5 years ago.

I love rock 'n roll.
So I was born in the early 80s, a time when rock music went through a big change. I always listened to new music and was never really enamored with rock. I didn’t really appreciate it until I started listening to stuff from the 70s.

I am stuck in the past or an ‘old soul.’
Firstly, I don’t understand how I could be stuck in a time that I never lived through. I mean, this one deserves its own post—but suffice to say, we’ve made some exciting and wonderful progress since the 60s. As awesome as I’m sure it was to see The Who in concert when the whole band was still alive, you know, I can watch footage of it on the internet for free while riding a Greyhound Bus. I can live with that.

I like this kind of music because of my parents.
This is not even remotely true. Most of the classic rock that I like, I discovered with the help of the internet. And we have different taste in classic rock.

Note: I did not write the above account of the events of Dec 2, 2006, but I am the 'friend' cited in it.

What you may call 'controversial work'

2009-11-30T20:30:00.000-08:00

Sunday I went to this exhibit at Harvard’s Carpenter Center for Visual Arts.

I used to work in fundraising and one of my clients was an AIDS organization that did some controversial work. While Googling my client's name, I found this Phoenix article and was immediately fascinated by ACT UP. So much more interesting than my client - and my client wasn't exactly boring.

The exhibit was just okay. The posters didn't really do as much for me as the stories about ACT UP’s demonstrations (they routinely staged “die ins”, held a funeral in front of the White House and disrupted the New York Stock Exchange, among other things). But after years of exposure to cause advertising that over-relies on 'shock value', posters with full nudity and puns feel like a pretty transparent ploy to me. Maybe that wasn’t the case 20 years ago, but I can’t put my perspective in a time machine. I did learn some things, though, and in 2009 this completely shocked me – in 1988, Cosmopolitan ran a feature claiming that women had almost no reason to worry about contracting HIV.

I have a particular fascination with the misinformation in the 80s — the dangerous denialism and the absurd paranoia. Really, we love to look back at any time and say oh the ridiculous things they believed back then — it’s why we we’re amused by old ads with doctors endorsing cigarettes and PSAs that say a desk will shield you from the A-bomb. It’s at least 30% of the appeal of Mad Men. Yet even though I was too young to appreciate what was going on in the heyday of ACT UP, it all happened in my lifetime.

The problem is, though, if you think about it too hard, you realize that right now, there are things we believe and we have no idea how horribly wrong and absurd we are.

If you're in the Boston area, the exhibit will be up for 3 more weeks.

It's like copywriting. Without the writing.

2009-11-23T20:58:00.000-08:00

I just think that, as writers, we should be able to agree that certain phrases should be, let’s say retired from use indefinitely. It could be done in a democratic way, put to a parliamentary vote or something.

My nominations are:

Blank just got better.
It’s like the Copywriter Congress met in 1988, decided to retire ‘New and Improved!’ and it was contentious. ‘How else can we say that?’ someone asked. ‘I don’t know, say it just got better, or something.’ And the smart one in the bunch pointed out that if you say ‘just got better’ with conviction, it doesn’t sound nearly as lazy as it is.

But since then, so many things have ‘just got better’ that now this is truly a fantastical world. I don’t even know where the human race can go from here because we’ve made so many strides. Perhaps we can finally find new ways to announce recent improvements?

It’s like blank. Without the blank.
Yawnnnnn.

Because…
Two things strike me as particularly annoying. First, don’t presume that I asked why. I didn’t. Second, it’s not even necessary. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a headline that wouldn’t say the same exact thing with or without the word “because” at the beginning. And as an additional point, can we not agree it’s been co-opted by a lame internet meme? I say the intarwebz can haz because.

Why buying on eBay feels like cheating.

2009-11-16T12:24:00.000-08:00

I've been using eBay for almost a decade, mainly as a seller. Though I do occasionally buy an out of print movie or deeply discounted computer accessory on eBay, I don’t like buying collectibles on there.

I guess some people like the competitive aspect of outbidding strangers. Or maybe they get satisfaction out of owning things. I honestly don't. I get no pleasure out of the fact that there's a milk crate of LPs sitting on my floor. When I found a sealed copy of Quadrophenia from 1979, I couldn’t rip that plastic off fast enough.

Really I only enjoy two things about records: listening to them and shopping for them. Sitting at my computer cannot compare to the experience of combing through stacks of vinyl, kneeling on a musty old carpet, reading the fine print and comical misspellings on old bootlegs, squinting under the lights to find problematic scratches. And of course, the sheer triumph of finding something rare, obscure or interesting.

Eric Clapton's Rainbow Concert was the one album on my wishlist I didn’t expect to find in a store. I could’ve gone on eBay and bought it from any of 14 different countries. But that could never be as fun or satisfying as unexpectedly finding the UK import in Portland. Although I suppose if I’d simply bought all the records I wanted on eBay, I could’ve spent that afternoon looking at lobster tchotchkes instead.

You also can’t have an unexpected discovery on eBay because the whole thing is set up for you to search for a specific thing. I’ve got this one, “The Making of a Commercial” that I found at Kudzu in Decatur—a sweet little completely obscure Mad Men era LP about Ballantine beer radio spots. I’d never stumble on something like that on eBay because this post right here is the first mention of its existence on the internet.

Design and technology

2009-11-13T08:45:00.000-08:00

I was listening to an acoustic Who show and there's a bit where Pete Townshend introduces Who Are You. He says, "We used to play a tape of my guitar going EE-OW-EE-OW-EE [imitating synth]. Which in 1975 was still a fairly new thing to do. Of course today anyone can do it. You just go to a discount store, buy something by Casio, press program 16 and it goes EE-OW-EE-OW-EE. But when I first did it, it was brilliant."

Not many people would dare call themselves ‘musicians’ just because they can use a Casio keyboard, but almost the opposite is true if you replace Casio with Photoshop and musician with designer.

While I’m certainly not claiming that Photoshop is easy to master, I think it’s pretty well responsible for the fact that design generally doesn’t get the credit it deserves as a discipline. I imagine if you're the average person who needs a bit of design work done, you're probably intimidated by graphics and DTP programs and quite impressed with people who can make something with them.

So I used the Pete Townshend example because in the 70s, he was an innovator with a then emerging technology. But ultimately, synthesizers didn't make him a good or innovative musician -- it was the writing, concepts, composition and performance. In the same respect, there's so much more than technology that goes into good design.

With Creative Suite more accessible, especially to so many young and computer-savvy people, it means that more impressionable people with fertile minds are interested in design. And yes, only a certain percentage of these people have the talent and potential to be good designers, but if the design community viewed this as an opportunity to educate people (rather than a threat of thousands of CS hacks coming to steal their business and further popularize logo contests) -- I think that there could be great ways to reach out to a new generation of designers and to make everyone have a better understanding and appreciation of 'real' design.

Creative heroes.

2009-11-11T07:59:00.000-08:00

While I think there are some obvious themes, I only have to point out what might not be as obvious -- all of these people are writers.

Oscar Wilde
Known as: Nineteenth century wit and playwright.
My favorite: Everything, but a special place in my heart for The Happy Prince, the children’s story that first convinced me he was a genius.
Direct inspiration: Where I stole the name of my of my website – dandychick.com; reading too much Oscar changes my writing (temporarily but … noticeably).

Edward Gorey
Known as: Dark and witty illustrator of that alphabetical poem about kids dying.
My favorite: N is for Neville who died of ennui.
Direct inspiration: The style of my website and personal branding (including the design of this blog). Also arguably The Xmas Monsters!, which like my identity, were full of dark twisted imagery that’s somehow whimsical when illustrated.

From my website, inspired by Gorey with a nod to The Who

Pete Townshend
Known as: Guitarist/chief songwriter for The Who
My favorite: Pure and Easy, music from the Lifehouse era. Even though the project failed, he never stopped thinking conceptually and embracing technology. And special mention of Relay, a 1973 song about the internet.

Christopher Guest
Known as: Co-creator of This is Spinal Tap, pioneer of “mockumentary” comedy.
My favorite: Again everything, but I admire his real-life persona and Spinal Tap the most.

Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant
Known as: Co-creators of The Office
My favorite: Extras, which literally made my chest hurt from laughter. I also love the backstory of their creative partnership.

Robert Smigel
Known as: Creator of TV Funhouse, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.
My favorite: Conspiracy Theory Rock. I love how completely fearless he is.

Sacha Baron Cohen
Known as: Borat, Ali G
My favorite: Another fearless one, although in a different way. It’s impossible to choose, I like the edgier stuff, his genius at disarming people, his perfect mix of social/political comment with dumb comedy. “How do you know you don’t like [abortion] if you’ve never tried it?”

In the year 2010 ...

2009-11-09T13:01:00.000-08:00

If I believed in god, I'd say that today, I got a 'sign.' It all started 2 days ago when I had the idea to take New Yorker cartoons and give them new shocking and obscene captions. Sounds easy, yes, but I liked the contrast of this so-called sophisticated humor with crass and inappropriate humor. When I woke up this morning, I even thought, "Yes! I'm starting a blog called the New Fucking Yorker!"

Then I checked my email and found that today someone purchased my New Yorker cartoon book, which I forgot I had listed on Amazon some months ago. So, the New Fucking Yorker has already been defeated by the sudden sale of an essential component for the project.

If I didn't think of a new idea for a blog every 3-5 days, I'd probably be more concerned. I'm working on another one with original cartoons, but wanted to share my early 'editorial' cartoons, circa 1998, in which I criticize my high school. Click for full size

Of course it goes without saying that I never went to "art college" ...

Optimism: now 30% less blind!

2009-11-06T09:43:00.000-08:00

I posted this in response to the question "What long term impact will the recession have on you?" at The Next Great Generation, Edward Boches' new blog for Gen Y'ers to discuss our absolute favorite topic. Ourselves.

I graduated college right after the dot-com bust. I learned handy tricks like how best to prepare stale bagels from the ‘day old’ bin, your old college ID: the discount card that keeps on giving and using inexpensive colorful accessories to obscure the fact that your winter coat is 5 years old. Then, things got better and I practically bankrupted myself to go back to school. Here I am at the beginning again.

I think “being poor” has 2 different meanings – one is actual poverty and the other is a somewhat callous way to describe ‘experiencing financial independence for the first time.’ It’s so ingrained as almost a rite of passage. A recession makes less of an impact if you experience it when you’re supposed to be 'young and poor' anyway. “I can’t afford a second martini” isn’t as powerful of a lesson as “I’m going to lose my house.”

The bad decisions that cause recessions are made when things are going well. My hope would be that we can get deeper than the “things will get better” mantra, actually understand how this happened and make better decisions as consumers and as future business leaders.

Why charging for Hulu is a dipshit idea.

2009-10-23T10:43:00.000-07:00

Joking, joking. This is not the 'Erica explains why X is a dipshit idea' blog. But in truth, I suspect Hulu's plan isn't really to make money off of subscribers, but rather to leverage advertising prices.

Hulu has always been a great medium for relevant, content-related, entertaining and even serial advertising (multiple spots with a running theme or plot), but instead it's treated as a TV spot dumping ground where viewers see the same 1-2 videos ad nauseum. I think the real goal is to offer 'sponsored' content at no charge, so advertisers will pay more for more substantial placement, subscribers still get the privilege of ad-free viewing and non-paying viewers will tolerate more advertising.

Otherwise, as soon as they start charging, they're competing with Amazon, iTunes, digital cable / on-demand, DVDs, DVR and mobile content providers. Can they really expect to break consumer loyalty to powerhouse brands and stand up to more-experienced competitors that already have more offerings?

Hulu is only popular now because it's free, and you tend to be less discriminate when you aren't paying. No matter what, there are some needed improvements before their service is worth paying for:

- Get rid of the 8 day waiting period on new TV episodes. Or Hulu subscribers become second-class viewers who are delayed a pop culture eternity and can't discuss shows with anyone who watches live TV.
- More mobile/platform options, because none of their competitors require you to be chained to the computer.
- More exclusive shows and 'bonus feature' content.
- No advertising for subscribers.

Why the "Protecting Americans from Drug Marketing Act" is a dipshit idea.

2009-10-22T13:44:00.000-07:00

I've never actually made a list of the top ten things I hate, but if I did, direct to consumer pharmaceutical advertising would probably sit somewhere between mayonnaise and people who rape children. And it's not about the creative standards, which I think we can agree are generally rather low. I've never discussed the issue with anyone in pharma advertising, but I imagine it'd go like this. Me: Admit it, all the creative sucks. Them: Blah blah federal regulations, lawyers, clients, doing the best we can.

I freely admit that, creatively, I couldn't do better. Nor would I want to. Pharma ads are like freak hairless cats, gross to look at and full of inherent problems because they just aren't supposed to exist.

What I specifically dislike is Americans being price-raped by companies that spend billions to advertise controlled substances to the general public. It's well-known in creative and marketing circles that there's big money in pharmaceuticals. Personally, I want no part of it. I'd rather be poor and able to live with myself.

That said, this act IS a dipshit idea that won't fix anything. Only one thing will stop drug companies from marketing prescription drugs to consumers: an outright ban. This act only makes it more expensive to advertise -- does anyone really believe they'll let that cut into their profits? No, they'll use it an excuse to lay people off, cut R&D and raise prices, i.e. now that an erection pill ad costs twice as much, so does grandma's heart medication.

Those are, by the way, the arguments (threats) you can expect to hear if this takes off. Basically you're going to die, if not from crippling Rx price hikes, from diseases that they can't afford to cure, and if not from that, at the hands of their laid off employees who will turn to a life of crime. None of which could possibly be helped at the expense of a 4 page magazine spread or a Super Bowl spot that doesn't even mention what condition the drug treats, aka the pre-eminent source for health education. Without those ads, the unthinkable alternative would be to rely on doctors and easily accessible independent sources of information.

Sorry, but no I honestly don't believe that I need CGI 'spokesbees' to make informed decisions.