The happiest place on Monday

There are two life rules that've served me pretty well. Always avoid the 5 freeway, and never go to Disneyland on a weekend or holiday.

But since today was neither, I decided it was the perfect time to carpé Mickey.

My kids were out of school today. Some kind of teachers conference or something. Anyway, since my wife is an administrator at their school, she was off as well. And since I'm a freelancer, well, need I say more? So, a Monday. The family's together. Everyone else is in school. Not a holiday.

It was go time for Disneyland.

There really is something magical about maneuvering through the park without being bumped by thousands of sweaty tourists wearing mouse ears and doing their impression of sardines. The ability to just walk into a ride and get on it without waiting is definitely worth the price of admission.

Even the price of admission is worth the price of admission. We have the Deluxe Southern California Resident passes. Which means we can just jump in the car on a whim - as long as our whim isn't on a blackout day - and drive on over to the Magic Kingdom.

We didn't spend the whole day there. Just the afternoon. We hit about five line-free rides, had some ice cream, and called it a day. If it were this easy all the time, we'd be there all the time.

The other thing about being there when the park isn't so crowded is that it gives you the chance to notice things you might not otherwise see. My wife was waiting while we went on one of the rides. As she waited, she saw the Mr. Incredible character (or as I like to call him, the other Mr. Incredible) interact with an obviously mentally challenged younger child. The character stared into the child's eyes, and the child stared back. Then Mr. Incredible got down on his knee, right in front of the child, and held his hand up. The child smiled and touched Mr. Incredible's hand.

On another, busier day, swarmed with screaming children wanting their picture taken with him, Mr. Incredible wouldn't have had the time to give to the child my wife saw today.

But on a slow Monday at Disneyland, obviously, that's where the real magic is.

Going bananas

I never should've looked.

As you may know, I often use Starbucks as my branch office when I'm working on an assignment. And, being a creature of habit, I always have a grande decaf and a slice of Banana Walnut Bread while I'm working.

Now, I've never been under the impression that it's a diet snack. But I always thought, you know - bananas? walnuts? - how bad can it be.

Well, today I found out.

A law went into effect the first of the year saying restaurants/coffee shops now have to post the calorie content of their food where the customer can see it before ordering. Which, as you can see, Starbucks has done.

Not that I ever gave any thought to it at all, but if I had I would've figured maybe 200, 250 calories. Come to find out I would've been off. By half.

It's just not fair. Where I once was just wistful and carefree ordering my faux healthy banana bread, I now find myself sweating like Mel Gibson at Passover dinner deciding whether I can justify that many calories for a snack.

Being beautiful isn't easy. I don't have to tell you.

Maybe next time I'll try to find someone else at the "office" who wants to split a slice with me. Maybe I'll just do without.

I did notice that my Starbucks sells real bananas at the register. I don't see a lot of fat chimps running around. Wonder how many calories in those?

The Hot Man

The buyers at Sur La Table must have been beside themselves when this little guy walked in the door. Let me explain.

My wife went to a surprise birthday party (not for her) on Saturday with a few girlfriends of hers. One of her close friends, not the birthday girl, decided to give them each the newest in kitchen potholder technology design: the Hot Man.

Get it? Potholder? Hot, man. It works on so many levels.

Anyway, this little guy is as fun to look at as he is functional. And really, how many men can you say that about?

A cut piece of metal, glazed fire-engine red and shaped like a man - knees up, arms open, just waiting to have a scalding pot of hot something placed on top of him.

As so many men are.

The beauty of it is he's really a one-size-fits-all kind of guy. And really, how many men can you say that about?

Metal pots, aluminum pots, small pots, big pots, medium pots. Bring 'em on. He's there to hold them. In fact, look at him. He's just asking for it.

Another thing about the Hot Man that makes him the perfect kitchen companion isn't so much what he does as what he doesn't do.

He doesn't judge. He doesn't care what her hair looks like. He isn't concerned with what she's wearing. He's not hogging the remote. He never sits waiting anxiously until she's done speaking so he can say what he wants to say. And the reason he doesn't? Because he's such an excellent listener.

And really, how many men can you say that about?

My wife is many wonderful things, not the least of which is a professionally trained chef (we eat very, very well here). She's always on the lookout for new and fun cooking utensils and equipment.

So you can imagine how delighted she is that the Hot Man has made his way to her kitchen.

Apparently, the Hot Man is pretty happy about it himself.

Where credit's due

Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. Nowhere is that truer than in advertising.

When a campaign or an individual spot happens to hit big - locally, regionally and especially nationally - it seems everyone who was in the building, in one meeting, used to work on the business or walked by the conference room while it was being presented is ready to jump on the credit bandwagon.

The industry is lousy with examples of it: VW. Joe Isuzu. Apple. Nike. FedEx. Nissan. The list goes on and on. And on.

In the late 80's, there was a McDonald's campaign called Mac Tonight. It sprang from a local promotion by an operator's group for dinner at McDonald's. It was created by my friend and former art director partner Jim Benedict before we worked together.

Under the agency leadership of Brad Ball and Mark Davis, Jim was given the freedom and support to create a genuinely unique, fun and memorable spot for a client who wasn't particularly known for taking risks. With Jim's vision of a quarter moon leading man, and parody lyrics to Bobby Darin's "Mac The Knife", the spot took off in a way no one saw coming.

Wildly popular, McDonald's picked up the promotion nationally and suddenly it was everywhere.

What happened next was sadly familiar.

The executive creative director at the time (who has since long gone) started giving national press interviews about how he came up with the concept - some bullshit about how he was looking at the moon one night and it just came to him. Jim started getting assigned to other, less visible accounts. And his name was mysteriously absent from both the interviews and award show entries (and the spot won many awards).

To no one's surprise, McDonald's wanted to pool out the character and did in other, lesser spots created by the people who claimed they'd done the original.

To their own credit, the agency leadership was always honorable about rightfully giving the credit to Jim.

But, creatively speaking, low people in high places are a devious mix. If you've worked for one - and eventually we all do - I'm sure you have war stories of your own to tell.

Jim eventually became a creative director at McCann, where he continued to take on the challenge of doing outstandingly creative work for clients that had reputations for being resistant to it (I'm looking at you Nestlé). He died in 1994.

The agency, even in its current incarnation, still displays the spot on its website. And it should. It continues to be a great success story.

For them, and for Jim.

What took so long?

Right at the beginning, let me apologize for the Andy Rooney-ness of this post.

Every once in awhile, it strikes me as amazing the things people will put up with. And how long they'll put up with them.

Even more so when the answer/solution that takes its sweet time arriving is so obvious. So logical. So in your face, you can't believe it took so long to get here.

Like self-adhesive postage stamps. Hello? What was the hold up here?

I remember my parents having me lick stamps on envelopes for our holiday cards. Sadly I also remember to. this. day. the awful taste of the government-issue glue the postal service used.

I would've written a letter to complain, but it would've been just one more stamp to lick.

On a related note, same goes for return address labels. Even though I'm sure the labels were self-adhesive before stamps, I also remember having my hand cramp up writing our address over and over on so many envelopes.

So what if my parents cards got lost in the mail. It was the mail.

Another "what took so long?" Wheels on suitcases.

I can remember trying to lift one of the big, solid suitcases my parents packed when we went on trips. I couldn't lift it because obviously they'd packed it with bricks. Which didn't really matter, because even if they'd packed it with feathers suitcases back then were made of lead. Or at least it felt like it when you tried lugging one through the airport. Or the resort. Or the parking lot.

To this day, I'm convinced it was a conspiracy between Samsonite and the American Chiropractic Association.

I can literally remember the first suitcase I saw with wheels. I also remember the choir voices I heard when I saw it.

The first models had the old, roller-skate type wheels - big and hard to swivel (just like my high school girlfriend). Those wheels were magical in the way they could make every surface they rolled on sound like gravel.

But I didn't have to lift suitcases anymore. Who cared how they sounded.

Finally another minor miracle of our times. The upside down ketchup bottle.

In a society where time is money, who could afford the hours it sometimes took waiting for the ketchup to come out of the bottle? Okay, not really hours. It just felt like it when the fries were getting cold.

But now that ketchup bottles have gravity working on their side, that time can be spent much more productively. Eating.

I'm sure you have a few "what took so long?" examples of your own. I'd love to hear about them.

That's the end of this post for now.

And yes, I know what you're asking yourself.

The pressure's off for now

I have high blood pressure. Go figure.

When I found out about it seven years ago, my first question was how on earth could I have a condition like that? After all it's not like I have any stress in my life.

I work in advertising. It doesn't get more stable than that.

And thank God I don't have teenage and almost teenage kids.

Oh, wait a second.

Then there's that little inescapable-no-matter-how-hard-I-try fact: hypertension is one of the things my mom died from. So I take it seriously.

I've taken Diovan 160 for almost 7 years. It's my personal miracle drug. It's controlled my blood pressure beyond reason, keeping it at a chart-perfect 120/80 virtually regardless of what kind of stress I've been under.

Father's little helper.

But a funny thing happened yesterday. My blood pressure shot up to 145/90, just outside the high end of normal (by the way, The High End of Normal was the title of my first album. I think it's still available on Amazon).

If you know anything about me, you know that my body is a finely tuned precision machine. For years I've been finely tuning it with In-N-Out burgers and sugar-filled Coke from Mexico. And you can always tell when a finely tuned machine isn't running right.

Yesterday morning when I got up, I knew immediately something was wrong. I was anxious, clammy, out of sorts. When I stood up my heart was beating like the opening drums in Hawaii Five O.

Well, I saw my doctor today. He checked me out, gave me an EKG and said everything looked fine. At 136/84, my blood pressure was a little higher than normal and a little lower than yesterday.

What he decided to do was take me off Diovan 160, and put me on Diovan HCT 160/25.

The difference is the new pill is actually two medicines: one controls my blood pressure, and the other is a diuretic. What will a diuretic do you say? For starters, it'll make me pee like Seabiscuit about 100 times a day while it gets rid of the salt and extra water in my body that's increasing my blood pressure.

So I'll start taking it tomorrow and see how it goes. Then I'll check back with my doctor in a couple weeks.

In the meantime, my blood pressure will be under control.

And I'll be sitting very close to the door.

You're gonna need a bigger check

Oddly enough, my chum Rich (oh come on, you were thinking it) also has a post about sharks up on his blog today.

Must be something in the water.

If you haven't seen the ABC show Shark Tank, you're missing out on watching capitalism at work the way it was intended.

And by that I mean people with no money begging in front of people with a lot of money. It's extremely entertaining.

The premise couldn't be simpler: entrepreneurs present their business ideas to five "sharks" - multimillionaires who have made it big in their respective fields (real estate, infomercials, fashion, etc) and are looking to invest their own money in new enterprises.

For an ownership stake of course.

There are a few fascinating aspects to the proceedings. One is how smart the sharks are. Not that I think rich, accomplished business people aren't smart. But the speed at which they can evaluate an idea or product, see its weaknesses and strengths, and make a decision about it is breathtaking.

It runs completely counter to the image of slow moving, indecisive, multi-layered management. Not that I've ever had any experience with those kind of clients...er...companies.

Another thing is how good some of the ideas and products actually are. Some are so good, you can't help but wonder why they'd surrender sometimes up to 75% of their stake just to get the seed money.

But then there is something to be said for a straight line to the money, without banks, middle men, brokers and relatives wanting in for a price (although there's some of that because the money for the prototypes had to come from somewhere).

I think the show is at its best when there's a feeding frenzy: an idea so good all the sharks want a piece of it. Sitting back and watching them outbid and insult each other, throw more money and take less of an ownership stake in the idea they're fighting over is unbelievably entertaining.

As is the look on the faces of the entrepreneurs they're fighting over, as they suddenly realize they're sitting in the catbird seat with five millionaires clamoring to be in business with them.

The show is inspiring in a way that most shows aren't. It gets you thinking about possibilities. Even more so when they do a follow up piece about the success of something or someone they've invested in.

It'll be back on the air sometime this year. Dive in.

Eye eye eye

Say the title fast. Funny, yes?

So here's the thing - if I knew the kind of gruesome images I'd have to look at while I was trying to find one for this post, I probably would've picked another subject. I won't go into detail. Just do yourself a favor: don't Google "eye" images. And if you must, do it on an empty stomach.

One night almost a year ago I was driving home with the family from somewhere. Actually it wasn't the family from somewhere. It was my family. Sorry that wasn't clearer, but English was never my strong suit. Ironic really when you think about it.

What was I saying? Oh, right.

While I was driving, out of the corner of my left eye I kept seeing this bright, white flash shooting by. I immediately figured my kids had something in the back seat they were using to reflect the bright spot across my field of vision, and I asked them to stop. My son said they weren't doing anything. But the flash continued and I got angrier, because I figured they were just being kids and pushing it.

We pulled up in front of our house, with them still insisting they weren't doing it. I was pissed. I got out of the car, slammed the door, and stood for a minute in the night, ready to read them the riot act for flashing a light in my eyes while I was driving.

Then I noticed the bright white flash was still there when I moved my eye.

Oops.

I immediately apologized to my kids, held them close and told them how much I loved them. I did this because I thought seeing bright flashes no one else could see couldn't be a sign of anything good, and I figured then and there that I probably didn't have much time left to tell them those things.

If they gave gold medals for jumping to conclusions I'd have a drawer full of them.

We went inside, and I immediately called my eye doctor. He said that while not a good sign, it didn't necessarily mean it was serious. Then he asked me a couple questions: had I noticed an increase in "floaters" in my eye.

Now whenever I hear the word floaters, I think of the dozens of movies I've seen, new and old, where the grizzled, veteran detective refers to the bloated body they fish out of the ocean or a river as a "floater."

Which is stupid, because one of those wouldn't even fit in my eye.

I may be getting off track here.

Anyway, he also asked me how bright, how many and how frequent the flashing spots were. Then he said to come see him the next day.

The big concern was retinal detachment. When you have a sudden increase in floaters, which I did, and start seeing bright flashes of light - or sparking as it's called in the eye biz - those can be signs of it. After dilating my eyes, he had a look inside. Besides all the floaters floating, everything was fine with my retina.

I won't bore you with the details (I may be past that point already), but the reason was apparently one of the floaters stuck to the retina, and every time it started to pull away, it caused the bright flashes (alright, I will bore you with the details).

Once I found out it was harmless, I just got used to it. Now, even though it's still there, I don't even see it.

At least in my left eye.

When I got up to pee at 5 this morning (I swear some nights I feel like a walking Flomax commercial), I was seeing the bright flashing again. Except this time it was in my right eye.

I didn't panic as much this time. I figured I at least had time to record a message to leave for my kids. Kidding. Sort of.

After going through the same drill - calling, dilating, exam, nothing to worry about - I can now relax and enjoy what's left of the weekend, even though it's cloudy outside.

Those clouds are outside, right?

The finish line

I do it every year.

The resolution about losing weight.

And before the clock strikes midnight on New Year's, I also do something else every year.

I pack it away like Oprah in a cupcake factory.

I'm not proud. I'm not hungry either.

It's just that I know with the resolution made and the food deadline looming, I want to make sure and stuff my face while I still can.

Without the least bit of the restraint or will-power I've resolved to exhibit in the new year, the run up to midnight is filled with cramming down every last bit of sugar-filled, cholesterol-causing, artery-clogging, waist-growing, clothes-tightening, mirror-avoiding food I can possibly get my hands and mouth on.

I'm like a runaway train. Except my train is all dining cars.

I know what you're thinking - it can't possibly be that bad. The reason I know is because that's what I thought too. Right up until I got on the scale this morning.

Truth be told, it's not quite as dire and desperate as I've made it sound. And even if it were, it's a new year and I'm on it.

After all, I made a resolution. What could possibly go wrong?