My unlikely friend Mel

My friend Mel - short for Melissa - had the can tied to her at Yahoo this week, along with the rest of her department. I felt a literal pang of sympathy when I heard about it. Everyone in advertising has been through it and we all know what it feels like.

If you get laid off in advertising all it means is you showed up.

Anyway, it was interesting to me for two reasons: first, now there might be freelance work at Yahoo (see what I did there?). And second, sympathizing with Mel for this or any other reason isn't something I would've ever pictured myself doing not that long ago.

I always read my close, personal friend Janice's blog. I noticed on virtually every post she'd get a comment from someone named Mel, who I'd never heard of and she'd never mentioned despite the fact she was my office wife at Y&R. Come to find out Mel was a friend she used to work with.

Anyway, Mel would constantly leave comments on Janice's posts. Comments I'd often disagree with. Comments I'd almost always be compelled to comment on, usually in that subtle and tactful way anyone who knows me has come to expect. (btw, still waiting for that "unsend" button.)

Suffice to say it wasn't always the most positive or friendly feedback.

Eventually this back and forth got so heated, the three of us decided to meet for dinner so we could each see who was behind the comments. Needless to say, I approached the dinner cautiously (insert joke about me "approaching food cautiously for the first time in my life" here).

Long story short - although I have a feeling it may be too late for that - is that we all had a great dinner and Mel and I hugged it out.

Now I read her blog regularly, and we're pals online, through the occasional email and probably in real life if and when our paths cross again.

It's amazing what you can discover about a person once you give yourself and them a chance. Since I've gotten to know Mel a bit I see how many great things she has to offer.

In fact, there are two things in particular I really like about her: how often she reads my blog, and how often she comments on it.

Ironic ain't it.

The 101st Post

If you know anything about me, you know I'm one of the least disciplined writers around. Even if you didn't know anything about me, you could probably tell that from the infrequency of posts to this blog.

I'm easily, very easily, distracted when I finally make the hair-pulling, angst-ridden decision to actually sit down and write something. Shiny objects. New episode of Dexter. Cold pizza in the fridge. Run to the newsstand (to see what other writers are writing). Catching up on phone calls. Changing batteries in the smoke detectors. Folding laundry. Gassing up the car.

Pretty much anything really.

Since I'm pretty sure no one expected me to get this far, least of all me, I imagine the fact I've completed a 100 posts to this blog won't be a big deal to many people.

Like my friend Rich, who's written over 366 posts since starting his blog. Or my friend, former office wife and partner in snark Janice, who's written over 312 posts since she started her blog.

Here's the difference: they're both disciplined writers who set out with a goal to accomplish a certain number of posts in a certain amount of time.

I know, crazy talk right?

But damned if they didn't. And if that's not crazy enough, now that they've both reached their goal, to the pleasure of myself and the rest of their readers, they're going to continue on with their angry, brave, humorous, insightful, intelligent, revealing, fun to read, fun to talk about blogs.

Truthfully, I'm kind of happy with my little accomplishment here. But I do realize that if I ever hope to catch up with them I'd better get writing.

Right after I get some coffee.

On the street

I have a few loves in my life. One of them is roller coasters.

After all, what’s not to love about being strapped in the front car of a coaster by an indifferent, minimum-wage earning attendant, whiplashed up a 10-story hill by a rickety chain, then hurtling downhill at a face-flattening 75 degree angle with the ground coming at you at 65 mph.

I know, right?

Another one is Las Vegas. I love that town because everything you've ever heard about it, good or bad, is true. Name one other place like that. I already hear you tsk tsk-ing. But you know what your problem is? You’re just not focused on the right things.

Color me romantic, but I can’t get enough of daylight depravation, cigarette smoke permeating my clothing from walking through the casino, cocktail waitresses serving watered down mixed drinks 24/7, the feel of dice in my hands, crap table bets I know nothing about but make anyway, parents with 8 month-old babies slung over their shoulders walking through the casino at 3 in the morning, a one-third scale Statue of Liberty and Eiffel Tower right there in the desert where they belong, the intoxicating smell of desperation and bankruptcy.

The real question is what’s not to love?

So when my friend Janice (more about her in a minute) presented me with the idea of participating in the perfect mix of both those worlds – the stock market – I jumped on it.

After all, what could possibly go wrong?

It’s not like I haven’t dabbled in the market before. Years ago, a month before Close Encounters of the Third Kind came out, my friend Ned told me to buy Columbia Pictures stock. I did. The movie came out, made a ton of money and the stock took off faster than the mother ship. I held on to it for about two weeks then sold it for a tidy return on my investment.

I remember thinking, “I could get used to this."

My next dive into the investment pool was off a recommendation from my Taco Bell client at the time, Bob McKay. Bob started Taco Bell with Glenn Bell, and as you might imagine, had more money than God. Two things were true about Bob: he was an architect who actually designed the original mission-style Taco Bell restaurants, and became a multi-millionaire selling cheap tacos and burritos to the masses. And, he became a gazillionaire when Pepsi bought Taco Bell. Overnight he was one of the biggest Pepsi stockholders in history.

He seemed to be doing well. Why wouldn't I take a stock tip from him.

The tip was a company called Birdview Satellites. Seems they had this futuristic idea of satellites broadcasting television signals down to 18-inch satellite dishes they’d build and sell. You’d be able to mount these dishes on the patio, the roof, the backyard, wherever. Bob made a convincing case, and the idea sounded good to me. I bought a hundred shares at $20 each (I’ll save you the trouble - $2000).

It turned out as good as their idea was, it was just too ahead of its time. People - and by people I mean banks, investors, networks and the general public - thought getting crystal clear TV signals from space on small, inexpensive satellite dishes was just crazy talk. One telltale sign it was going south was when I got the statement from Paine Webber listing the stock value as “worthless.”

I remember thinking, "who needs this?"

About seven or eight years ago, I bought some shares of Apple at $52. The very next day, Apple had a press conference saying they’d overestimated earnings, and the stock value was sliced in half to $26. Yeah, I was feeling pretty street savvy right about then. The decision was whether to cut my losses or hang on to the Apple stock. I hung on to it figuring at the very least IBM would buy Apple and buy back the stock for something closer to what I paid for it.

Needless to say, I’m glad iHung on to it.

Fast forward to yesterday. I was iChatting with my aforementioned friend Janice, an awesome author, blogger and artist in her own right. As I discovered, I need to add “investor” to the list. Come to find out Janice is an E-Trade preferred customer. She’s online every day checking the stocks, buying and selling, and, as we like to say, building the empire.

I hadn’t thought about stocks in a long time, but after a little convincing from her about how much fun and rewarding buying and selling online was, it was all I was thinking about.

Today I logged into my dormant Schwab account and saw I had around 4 large sitting in a cash account. So I bought 10 shares of one stock, and 12 of another. Not many, but they were expensive shares.

I’d like to think otherwise, but I know Monday I’ll be online first thing seeing how the stocks are doing. And Tuesday. And Wednesday. You see where I’m going here. It may already be too late, but I really am going to try not to become too obsessed with it.

There are two things I know for sure. First, since I'm back in the market I'll probably be too nervous to see the sequel to Wall Street anytime soon.

And second, if these stocks tank, I’ll be having another chat with Janice.