What took so long - Part 2

It's been well over a year since I wrote my first installment of what I've decided is going to be an ongoing series of posts, What Took So Long. And let's face it, a year can be a long time.

Like, for example, if you're a dog. Or a Republican presidential candidate. (For a story about a dog and a Republican presidential candidate, go here.)

So today, I'm reigniting the series with a journey into the bathroom. Not the comfortable reading room I sometimes call home at home, but the public restrooms we all must eventually use despite our best efforts to "hold it until we get home".

I don't know about you, but in public restrooms, there's really only one thing I want to touch. And it isn't the toilet.

So when these hands-free, self-flushing, whisper-quiet little bowls started appearing at restaurants and movie theaters (where they were desperately needed, especially if American Pie was playing), it was a huge relief. In every sense of the word. It meant no more one-legged foot flushing, on what was often a rather, um, slippery floor to keep balanced on.

Of course, what would be the point of having a hands-free toilet if you then had to turn the wet, slimy, bacteria infested faucet handle by hand. So to compliment the toilet, hands-free faucets started showing up as well.

The very definition of technology working for you.

A welcome addition to the public restroom repertoire, the only problem with the hands free faucets is that you can't adjust the water temperature. Warm leaning towards hot seems to be the impossible dream. The other control you surrender is the speed at which the water flows out. Somewhere between a trickle and a garden hose, it still seems like a good trade-off for not having to touch it.

Completing the public restroom trifeca is the automated paper towel dispenser. This piece of equipment is the most mixed blessing of all of them. Most come with a sensor where you wave your cold, wet hand past to get it to dispense one - one - paper towel. You then have to wait a long moment for it to reset, while you stand there waving frantically to get more paper towels. Again, still worth the trade-off.

If you have any suggestions for the WTSL posts, let me know.

That's it for today's installment. Signing off for now.

And as always, I know what you're asking yourself.

What's the downside?

It's always interesting to me - and not in a judgmental way - the importance atheists place on letting you know that they're atheists, and the extent they go to to prove something they don't believe in doesn't exist.

I'm sure the same enthusiasm is evident on both sides of the argument.

But my experience has been that, say, in the course of a week, I have more people telling me why I shouldn't believe than why I should. Sometimes it feels like they're protesting too much.

I happen to believe in God, but I don't run around trying to convince anyone they have to believe with me. More importantly, I'm not bothered in the least by people who don't share my feelings. I don't think less of them, I don't mock them (unless I can find the appropriate cartoon somewhere), and I go by the rule "to each their own" when it comes to faith. Or lack thereof.

My pal at Round Seventeen put up a post about why he doesn't believe there's a God. Well thought out, well reasoned and, as always, well written. If you've followed this blog for any amount of time - and if you have, really, it's time to take up a more productive hobby - you know this isn't the first time we've disagreed on the view from the other side.

One man's ceiling is another man's there's no proof a ceiling exists.

One of his points is that there isn't any physical or visible corroboration of the existence of God. I see it everywhere - trees, clouds, water, the fact we're close enough to the sun to tan but not to fry, my son's heartbeat at six weeks on the ultrasound.

I think prayers get answered in small ways every day. For example, my friend came through with awesome tickets to Springsteen tonight. Definitely an answered prayer from where I'm sitting (see what I did there?).

I also believe in the big bang theory (the real theory, not the sitcom). I believe light and matter collided to create the universe. But they didn't just get there by themselves. I also believe evolution and faith aren't mutually exclusive.

I know what you're thinking: the big bang is where everything including time began, and that I just can't wrap my head around the concept of nothingness. Please, I work in ad agencies. You have no idea how wrong you are.

Round Seventeen asks if termites go to heaven - after all, they're God's creatures too. My guess is they go to termite heaven, where everything's made of plywood and the word "tent" is forbidden. Thankfully termite heaven is nowhere near my heaven.

I'm not sure what the downside to having faith is. And I'm not sure why so many people are so upset about it.

The truth is that if there is no heaven, then the atheists get the last laugh. Although no one will hear it because they're dead.

And if, as I believe, there is a heaven, then it'll be a nice surprise for them and I'm sure they'll be welcomed with open arms.

Especially if they worked for Orkin.

Unbuckled

I was in a hurry to get somewhere yesterday. Pick up the kids, get dinner, go to the post office, work (stops and laughs at the thought of rushing to work, regains composure), whatever. I had to be wherever I had to be fast.

So I flew out of the house, got in my Lexus ES (the E stands for extra, the S stands for soul-less) 350, pressed the button, hit the self-accelerator and took off down the block.

What I didn't do was buckle my seat belt. And it took me awhile to realize it.

There are only three ways into my neighborhood. It's not gated, but you have to know the way in and out. As I was barreling up the block, and then around the corner, I felt an extremely pleasant sensation.

I was unconstricted, free, able to effortlessly lean over and reach down to pick up the loose change in the passenger footwell. And that's when it hit me: no seat belt.

Now, I have tried very hard to never be one of those a.) people b.) bloggers c.) parents who say when I was younger.

When I was younger, we didn't wear seat belts. We flew around the corners and around the car, and if we were sitting on bench seats we slid and sqooshed the people next to us.

It was, how you say, fun.

Yeah yeah, much safer. Blah, blah, lives saved.

For at least a couple blocks before I got to the perimeter of my neighborhood, and had to turn onto a busy main thoroughfare, I got to recapture that freedom.

In case my kids are reading this, you are never allowed to ride in a car without your seat belt for any amount of time. When we were younger we didn't know the dangers as well as we do today. I apologize if I've mislead you by making it sound fun. It's not.

(Yes it is.)

Wrongful Termination - Chapter 8

Jack Sheridan finished questioning Barbara Beckwith, as well as the rest of the creative department. What he learned wasn’t going to make his job any easier.

It seemed during his career, Dean Montaine had made a lot of enemies, even for an ad man. The creative part was the way he made them. Naturally, he’d plagiarized work from other creative teams who worked for him and represented it as his own. This was nothing new. The practice was rampant throughout ad agencies, especially if it was a good idea. Many of the most famous ad campaigns of the last fifty years have over a hundred teams claiming ownership. Some on campaigns that came out before they were born. For example, everyone seems to have worked on Volkswagen in the sixties. Montaine had even taken credit for the classic ad campaign for the original Volkswagen Beetle, despite the fact his resume didn’t list Doyle Dane Bernbach, the agency that created the ads.

But the thing Dean did that made him so insidious was this: he made you think he was on your side. That he was going to the mat for you. He made you believe he was your friend.

It was a lot of little things really. The way he asked questions about other creatives, leaning in to you, then lowering his voice to a soft whisper that implied an unstated confidence between two professionals. If the creative team in his office was junior, he’d give them lots of attention. Ask what they thought of something he’d written. They’d be wowed. After all, Dean had taken credit for creating a successful national campaign for the popular French mineral water Clair, as well as a start up car company, Neptune. Junior teams didn’t know that in fact he’d stolen those ideas from juniors at the agency.

Upper management was no friend of his either.

On more than one occasion, Dean worked for an agency freelance, only to try and ingratiate himself with the creative department and general manager, then organized a mutiny to squeeze out the executive creative director who’d brought him in in the first place. Sometimes he succeeded.

Then there were the people who ran awards shows. They hated him. Advertising awards are the guilty pleasure of every agency creative. If you ask, creatives roll their eyes at the idea of them. They make a big show of taking refuge behind the fact good work is it’s own reward. But inside every copywriter and art director is a little insecure kid looking for approval and validation. They love winning awards. They love saying they’ve won awards. They love schmoozing at the awards shows. They love getting drunk and seeing if the rumors are true about the media girls at the awards shows. If all creatives hated awards the way they profess to, the shows would never sell out, or be able to charge their obscene entry fees.

Of course, one way to help your chances of winning is to enter lots of ads. Which is exactly what Montaine did year after year. He had the agencies he worked for spend a fortune on entry fees. And he entered lots of work that wasn’t his. The problem was, the people who'd actually done the work also entered it. So when the shows received different entry forms with credits that didn’t jive, they called Dean to clear them up. He always told them the other people were lying. The award show officials knew better.

The women in his life hated him. All of them. His daughter. His wife. His ex-wives. His mistress. In fact, a woman didn’t even have to have a relationship with Dean to hate him. She just had to have a conversation.

When Dean was at one of the bars he frequented, somewhere between a nice buzz and completely passed out, if he saw a woman sitting alone he'd strike up a conversation with her. It didn’t matter if they were waiting for someone, or if they were obvious about not wanting to talk to an overaged hippie. None of it mattered. His usual line would go like this.

“Excuse me, ever see that Clint Eastwood movie where they hang him by mistake?” If the girl said yes, he said, “You know, even when he was swinging from the tree he wasn’t as hung as I am.”

Believe it or not, every once in a while it worked. But when it didn’t, it could be brutal. He'd been slapped, spit on, kicked, had hot coffee thrown at him and been beaten to a pulp by boyfriends who'd shown up while he was still there laughing at his own juvenile joke.

Even when he thought he was being funny, it wasn’t hard to hate Dean.

Wrongful Termination - Chapter 7

Billy’s eyes were as wide as manhole covers.

Being a city kid, he was naturally skeptical. The only real horses he’d ever seen were the ones the police rode in Times Square, and the swayback nags pulling tourists around Central Park in replica turn-of-the-century carriages.

Neither had impressed him.

So when he saw the first bronco break from the gate, all four legs in the air, gyrating wildly, it was all he could do to remember to breathe.

He watched in awe as the cowboy in the red checked shirt tried in vain to stay on the wildly spirited horse. His dad couldn’t help wondering why anyone would put themselves through that kind of beating. That thought never crossed Billy's mind. He just thought it was fun to watch.

Robert thought about his two hundred dollar investment, and was glad it had paid off. The seats weren’t exactly where the black man said they were, but they were awfully good just the same. He felt like he’d won the lottery.

Seeing the smile on his son’s face, he knew he had.

For the first time, he let himself think that maybe everything was going to be okay. Maybe the pain of growing up without a mother might take a leave of absence.

What he didn't know in that moment was the leave was temporary.

Wrongful Termination - Chapter 6

When their cab pulled up to the Garden, the first thing they saw when they got out was a ticket scalper. He was a tall, happy black man with a New York accent, wearing a crisp, Stetson cowboy hat and a red scarf.

“Rodeo tickets right here! Hundred dollars. Get your rodeo tickets here! See them white boys get thrown all around! Hundred dollars.”

“Where are the seats?” Robert asked.

“He’s funny Dad.”

“That’s right little man. I’m as funny as they come. I bet you don’t see a lot of funny men like me up where you live, ain’t that right boss?”

Billy just smiled up at him.

“The seats, where are they?”

“Mister, they so close, you can watch the bruises change colors on the cowboys' ass.”

Billy giggled. Robert took out his 100% tanned leather wallet Johnson & Johnson had given him for one of his job anniversaries, handed the man in the cowboy hat two hundred dollars and took the tickets.

“These better be great seats.”

“If they’re not, you can come back and make me live in Harlem.” He started laughing hysterically.

“Bye mister.” Billy smiled up at him and waved.

“Bye little man. Watch you don’t get any dust in your eyes.”

For a moment, Billy and the black man held a knowing stare.

Then Robert took his sons’ hand and they went inside.

Guilty pleasures Part 2: The Three Stooges

I'm just going to come right out with it. I don't care what you think: I loved it.

For the second installment in my Guilty Pleasures series - you can read the first one here - I've chosen everyone's (almost) guilty pleasure: The Three Stooges.

I've always been a Marx Bros. guy. But I've also always loved The Stooges. I've even been to a Stoogefest a time or two in my life. Don't judge me. And having just seen the movie, which is funny as hell, I can only hope there's a whole series of them planned.

The movie pays homage to the original Stooges short films by divvying up the action into chapters, right down to the original graphics and music. Is it stupid? Here's a clue: it has the word "stooges" in the title. But it's the perfect escape film, the very definition of mindless fun.

There've been many big names attached to this project. At one time, Benicio Del Toro was going to be Moe, Sean Penn was Larry and Jim Carrey Curly. For whatever reason, it didn't work out that way. And it's everyone's good fortune it didn't.

The cast they went with not only look like the Stooges, but they inhabit the roles with a disturbing ease. With the exception of Will & Grace's Sean Hayes as Larry, the mostly unknown cast (Chris Diamantopoulos as Moe and Will Sasso as Curly) does a stellar job of not only reincarnating the Stooges, but bringing them into the modern world.

There's a "kids don't try this at home with real hammers and sledgehammers" disclaimer at the very end of the movie that the studio lawyers clearly made the producers include. It's done in a humorous way, but if you give it even the tiniest bit of thought it's a sad statement about the times we're living in.

Anyway, I imagine there's not going to be any middle ground on this film. It's going to be a love or hate, all or nothing deal.

But for me, the best way to sum up my feeling is with those three little words.

Nyuck nyuck nyuck.

Let Titanic rest in peace

Yesterday my family and I went to see Titanic 3D. The wife and I, along with our great friends Dave and Maureen (yes, that Dave and Maureen) originally saw the movie on the second day of its release at the Village Theater in Westwood when it first came out. Because the Village screen is so big, it felt like we were actually on the ship - even at the end.

They've got to get that air conditioning fixed.

You may know, I'm not a fan of 3D. And in this particular case I'm not sure it added much. But at least it didn't distract from the movie.

As I write this, a 100 years ago the Titanic was already underway on its fateful voyage. It's still one of the great "what-if's" of history, like the Kennedy assassination, Pearl Harbor, the Challenger shuttle or 9/11.

The movie was better than I remembered. Love story aside (still a stroke of movie marketing genius on Cameron's part), it gives an unflinching glimpse of the sheer terror that must've gone on in the two hours it took the ship to sink.

When Kathy Bates as the unsinkable Molly Brown looks back at the sinking ship from her lifeboat and says, "God almighty," she's speaking for everyone in the theater.

There's currently a diving expedition company that, for $60,000, will take you on a ten-day cruise out to the site where Titanic rests, and bring you down to the ship in a submersible for an up close and personal look. There've already been couples who have been married down there.

How far behind can the floating gift shop be?

The unrestricted scavenging of artifacts and ship parts by unauthorized divers and treasure hunters has already taken its toll. I think it's wrong. For all the fascination, Titanic, like the Arizona that rests under Pearl Harbor, is a gravesite that deserves the proper respect and decorum.

Even though it only sailed once, it's not too late to give Titanic a second chance.

The hunger games

As you can probably tell from the giant rabbit in the center of the table (I call him Harvey - look it up), this was our Easter dinner table before the food arrived. Easter's a unique holiday in terms of food intake. Not quite as much as Thanksgiving or Christmas, but still shovel-worthy.

Of course, the two main ingredients in the Easter dinner are ham and chocolate (Ham & Chocolate - great band. Saw them at Hop Singh's in '92).

Now, I happen to have a very special relationship with both these food groups. Sad but true, as I wrote about here, I'm actually allergic to chocolate. Fortunately the effects are only weight-threatening and not life-threatening, so my allergy doesn't prevent me from enjoying it in small quantities.

No matter how many dozens of those little chocolate eggs I have, they're still small right?

As the only 100% Jew in the family (which may be why Easter always feels like dinner at Grammy Hall's house), the other item, ham, has religious implications and overtones. Or at least it would if I adhered to kashrut - the body of Jewish law that deals with what may and may not be eaten, and how it may or may not be prepared. When it comes to dietary guidelines, Judaism has a pretty strict food pyramid.

I guess "pyramid" was a poor choice of words.

Anyway, as you may already know from this post, I'm a big (and getting bigger) fan of pork products. They are simply delicious in a way that traditional Jewish foods like matzoh, gefilte fish, and borscht never will be.

So as I do every Easter, along with the rest of my Christian family, I celebrate the resurrection - of my allergies and my disregard of Jewish dietary law.

And I can't wait to do it again next year.

Wrongful Termination - Chapter 5

The rodeo was in town.

If you were driving down the Las Vegas Strip, past exploding volcanoes, pirate ships, the Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower, nine story Coke bottle and gargantuan flashing hotel signs, and if you were a stickler for detail, you might have noticed the limp flags hanging from light posts, lamely fighting a losing battle for attention. They read “National Rodeo Finals Oct. 15th - 24th, West Valley Center”.

Billy Delrogh noticed them. In fact, they were almost the only thing he noticed.

Seven years ago, when he was just five years old, Billy became a rodeo fan. His father, Robert, had been a senior vice-president of marketing at Johnson & Johnson in New York for most of his career. But when J & J hired a consultant to help them figure out how they could run more efficiently and profitably, one of their bright ideas was to offer senior management early retirement in a way they couldn’t refuse.

Which actually turned out to be O.K. with Robert.

In the last few years, he’d begun to notice his enthusiasm for New York dwindling. He was also having second thoughts about raising Billy there.

His debate was that while the city was the center of the universe, with its museums, theater, publishing and possibilities, it was also headquarters for the kind of perverse crime that lands on the front page daily, and urban paranoia that leaves you no choice but to walk with your eyes looking behind as much as ahead of you. Of course, September 11th had done nothing to improve that.

Besides, having Billy in a private school, which was the only real option in New York, was giving him a first class education but also shielding him from the very things the city had to offer.

So when the early retirement offer came down, Robert took it. He cashed in his stock options and profit sharing, and decided he was going to take Billy someplace new that had different things to offer.

Space is what he wanted one of those things to be. Despite the fact they lived in an extraordinarily spacious condo on Central Park West, Robert felt Billy should have the opportunity to grow up with a real yard to play in, instead of a cement balcony nine stories above traffic.

Before Sarah died giving birth to Billy, the condo had meant more to them than just a great place to live. Robert struggled for years as a mid-level executive at Johnson & Johnson, and Sarah had had to put up with an unreasonable number of late nights, missed holidays and family dinners with an empty place setting where Robert should have been but wasn’t. She’d taken a part time job as a cocktail waitress at a bar called Rendezvous in the east village just to help make ends meet. It was demeaning, and she grew weary deflecting nasty pick-up lines from drunken losers and losers trying to get drunk.

Persistence was what Robert had always told her. Make yourself indispensable to the company, they’ll see your value and they’ll reward you for it. And he was right. Eventually, they did. The title, the money, stock options, the corner office. All as a way of rewarding the fine work, and recognizing the contribution he’d made to the company’s bottom line.

What success meant more than anything to Robert was at last he’d be able to repay Sarah for her sacrifice. So they rewarded themselves with their dream condo, and the promise of a family to come.

It was exactly the kind of place people with rich fantasy lives imagine they’d live when they think about living in New York. But since Sarah’s death, it'd become a constant, sad reminder to Robert that he was raising his boy alone. While Billy was the most beautiful gift Sarah could have left as her legacy, the truth was that this oversized apartment, with their footsteps echoing on hardwood floors, the muted sound of the traffic coming in the weatherproofed windows, and the two of them rattling around in it only served to constantly remind him of the hole in his heart since she died.

In conversations they’d had while she was pregnant, Sarah always told Robert if anything ever happened to her she wanted him to show Billy things he wouldn’t normally be exposed to in the city.

The circus. The tall boats. The rodeo.

She wanted wide horizons for her son, and she wanted him to appreciate life beyond the cement and skyscraper world he was growing up in. Robert hated it when she talked about dying before he did. Each time she mentioned it, and she mentioned it far too often for a woman her age, he emphatically assured her she’d be around to watch Billy grow up, and see that he learned and saw everything she wanted him to.

It was an assurance he now felt foolish giving.

So, on the very day Billy turned five, a day each year that caused both great grief and celebration, Robert was perusing the New York Times. He turned the middle page of the sports section, and there it was. An ad for the Watkins Family Rodeo at Madison Square Garden.

Remembering his promise, he scooped up Billy, grabbed their coats, and they were off to a rodeo. In the middle of New York City.

He smiled up at Sarah as he closed the door.

Well shut my mouth

It's not brain surgery or rocket science, but some ad agencies would have you think it is.

I recently had to sign an NDA (a Non-Disclosure Agreement, sometimes called a confidentiality agreement) before this one firm would hire me for a freelance gig. It's become common practice the last few years. But here's my question: what exactly are they protecting?

If you work on a fast food account, you get asked to work on other fast food accounts. Same for cars. Same for airlines. Same for most categories. Like any profession (stops and laughs hysterically for using the word "profession"....okay, regaining composure...), leveraging your experience is what keeps you employed.

No one goes from one job to the next yakking about everything they did, saw, wrote and learned at the last one. You just assimilate it all into your own personal database.

Just like the borg, except without all that nasty face metal.

Agencies like to flatter themselves that what they do is so proprietary, their processes so innovative, that spilling the beans will cause them "irreparable damage and financial loss and hardship."

Here's the reality check: there are no beans to spill.

Every agency has a catchy name for their process. You say tomato, I say tom-ah-to. They're all doing the same things to win, keep and grow business. And the idea that your car client doesn't know what the other guys car client is up to is a sweet notion from a bygone era.

A copywriter friend of mine was fired from an agency because he had the unmitigated gall to post an ad he'd done on his website, along with all the other ads he's done. It's a common practice. But his agency blew a fuse, saying he was not only violating his confidentiality agreement but was trying to steal the business. Neither of which was true. To my way of thinking there are felonies and misdemeanors: if they were upset he didn't ask first, they should've reminded him to next time and moved on.

Here's the thing large agencies have in common with small ones: the level of paranoia, based on nothing, is genuinely frightening.

Does an account get stolen from time to time? Of course. Do employees get poached from one agency to another? Sure. But if either were genuinely happy where they were in the first place, it would be a lot harder to do.

The other thing about these agreements is there's usually a time period attached to them. Agencies don't want you to write on an account in the same category for 1, 2 or 3 years without getting signed permission from them.

Good luck with that.

In case you don't know, this is how I make my living. I can be writing on Taco Bell one day, and Del Taco the next. Or Land Rover and Chevy Tahoe. Southwest or Jet Blue. That's the nature of freelance.

Fortunately I know how to use the strikethough option before I sign one of these contracts.

Don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I believe your word and honor are all you have, and if you sign a contract you should abide by it.

But some contracts, like the one on the back of your ticket in the parking lot, just aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

I'd tell you which ones, but I'm not at liberty to say.

Walk Away Renee

As you may know, in the past I've compared and contrasted versions of the same song. I did it for Tracks Of My Tears, Stand By Me, Secret Heart, and even a then-and-now comparison of Cat Stevens singing The Wind.

I do it for the sheer pleasure these songs, some classic, bring to the ears and the soul. I do it because there are great versions that don't get seen often enough and deserve to. I do it because it's exciting to discover new artists as they perform old favorites.

But mostly I do it because it's easier than thinking of a new post every day.

The Left Banke recorded the original hit, and their version is included here.

Sad and poignant, teary and nostalgic, melancholy and timeless, please to enjoy these versions of Walk Away Renee.

Cruising the root canal

I went to the dentist today.

I try to keep my visits down to the twice a year cleanings, and not just because of the usual reasons. So happens my dentist is in Santa Monica, which works out to a 60-mile round trip. Yes they have dentists in Long Beach, but mine is not only the world's best dentist, the practice happens to be owned by my very good friend's uncle.

And in dentistry, like Hollywood, it's who you know.

Anyway, the reason for the visit, or so I thought, was to get a filling for a cavity. Wasn't too happy about it. I've been a member of the No Cavity Club for a long time, and as of today I had to surrender my membership.

Turns out I had more than a cavity to be unhappy about.

The cavity was fairly close to the gum line (queasy yet?), and once my dentist started drilling, he decided he better stop and take an x-ray to see how far down the decay was. It was far enough to need a root canal.

I'm not new to the root canal circuit. I've had two before, plus crowns, both in the back bottom teeth. My first thought was "Gosh, another root canal. I'm so glad we're doing this! He'll save the tooth and it'll be better than ever!"

No it wasn't. My first thought was "Crap, the last time this cost $2500 a tooth."

Until I'd had my first root canal - and you never forget your first - I was terrified of them. I imagined incredible pain, swollen chipmunk cheeks, sleepless nights and soup through a straw for days. Come to find out root canal technology has advanced along with everything else. It really was no worse than getting a filling.

The only thing that hurt afterwards was my wallet.

P.S. If I could've embedded the Bill Murray root canal clip from Little Shop Of Horrors I would've. Does that answer your question?

Smell good writer

What you're looking at to the left isn't a guarantee from a plumbing company. It's the reason people who work in advertising don't want to talk about what they do for a living.

When a plumber comes to my house, there's only one thing I care about: that they fix the job right the first time. And if for some reason my toilet is acting like Old Faithful when they get there, I don't even care what they charge as long as they just make it stop.

I can honestly say that what they smell like isn't on my list, Angie's List or Yelp's list of things to investigate before I call a plumber.

It's a scare tactic. They want you to believe that the enticing fragrance of a man who spends a lot of time with his hands elbow-deep in other peoples, um, plumbing is going to be wafting throughout your otherwise rose-pedal perfumed home.

It's a very distant cousin to the LBJ "Daisy ad. Okay, maybe not. But it's a good excuse to look at the Daisy ad. Subtle, no?

What plumbers, or any other vendor for that matter, smell like is one of those false promises concocted by:

a) the client

b) the small retail agency that "can't be bothered with award shows and promises verifiable results"

or

c) the client.

Here's the thing - if you're getting close enough to sniff the plumber, leaky pipes may not be your biggest problem.

The advertising landscape is lousy with poorly produced ads and bad radio blaring out these annoying, meaningless, false and unverifiable promises. Still, there must be a reason besides cheap airtime and non-union talent that they keep running them.

So I'm going to take a page out of their book and reposition my copywriting self. From now on, I'm going to be the Smell Good Writer. I guarantee that my copy will be done and delivered on time and it won't stink.

At least not as bad as Mike Diamond ads.

Northern exposure

I've always loved San Francisco. And a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I had one of the best gigs under the best circumstances ever there.

I like to file it under I won't be seeing a deal like that again.

Basically the head of research I worked with at Tracy Locke became the VP of Marketing for Taco Bell (if I'd known he was going to become a client I would've been a lot nicer to him). FCB San Francisco was their agency. Since I'd always wanted to work in San Francisco, I called him and asked if I could drop his name often and recklessly to get an interview.

He did me one better: he called the creative director and set up the interview for me.

Normally I'd say any way you can get in is good. But when you're a creative person coming in through the client door, you're viewed with a lot of suspicion. All you can do is give it your best and keep showing them you know who's signing your paycheck.

I lived in Santa Monica at the time, and commuted up there early Monday mornings, and back on Friday nights. Obviously this was before I had kids.

My deal was that FCB paid for my commute, all my meals, and the hotel they put me up at each week (the fabulous Tuscan Inn). Plus the cab fare to and from the airport and my house.

I freelanced on Taco Bell for three months, then FCB asked me to come on staff. On the flight back to L.A. that night, I called my wife and told her they'd made me an offer. Coincidentally my wife was interviewing at the now non-existant Stein Robaire Helm at the time, and they'd also made her an offer the very same day. We decided San Francisco was the one we were going to pursue.

Besides FCB covering all my expenses, I also managed to negotiate a six month severance contract (okay, sometimes the client door is a good thing). Today you have as much chance of negotiating a severance contract as you do finding the Holy Grail.

The day my wife and I were going to fly up and look for apartments, my creative director got taken off the business. Never a good sign. We decided to wait and see which way the account was going to go.

The way it went was into review. For the next five months, until we lost it, I worked on both the business and the pitch out of the FCB offices in San Francisco and Chicago to save it.

After freelancing three months, then working on staff for five, I sat out two more months (paid) in Santa Monica while FCB decided what they wanted to do with the Taco Bell group. Although the group knew way before they did exactly what they were going to do.

When they let us all go, I walked away with a check for six months salary. I also left with a lot of new friends I made there. Every time I see or talk to any of them - I'm looking at you Savoy and Martin - I'm grateful for the experience all over again.

Ironically the day I got my severance check I also got my FCB business cards and letterhead.

Guess which one I still have?