Watered down

Like the lawn in a torrential downpour, or cocktails at the craps table in Las Vegas, ideas for Super Bowl spots from advertising agencies—like the people who create them—are often not what they start out to be.

For a lot of creatives, the Super Bowl spot is the Holy Grail, the pinnacle, the showcase where you can either make your mark and launch into a career arc filled with money, location shoots, media girls (another time) and a title too long to fit on the puny business cards you'll never carry.

Or it can be a spectacular flop seen by a billion people and sink you faster than the Quizno's Spongmonkeys—which by the way I think is awesome and one of my favorite commercials ever. Call me crazy, but I admire the bravery of it all. Just try not singing the tune after you've seen it.

I know, right?

Anyway, there are a few rules about the annual Super Bowl assignment that seem fairly universal no matter what agency you're at. First is the freelancer's spot never gets chosen, even if it does. No agency hands the biggest boondoggle and budget of the year to the freelancers to produce. And if their spot is picked, it's—take your pick: refined, evolved, massaged—just enough for them not to be able to claim it as their own.

Next, you would think that since the date of the Super Bowl is known over a year in advance, agencies would give themselves enough lead time to concept, sell and produce the spot they really want to make. Not so much. Virtually every agency starts working on their Super Bowl spot late in the game. Then it's a mad rush to meet the goal, with everyone hoping they don't fumble.

Ok, I'm done now.

Finally, just to prove God does have a sense of humor, it's almost always the team who couldn't care less about sports who has the winning spot. Then they have to go through the entire ordeal, pretending they're interested in the game and that they have a favorite team.

Sometimes, even though it's a score (sorry) to get your Super Bowl spot sold, it takes almost more than you can muster to get motivated to see it through.

But to quote Don Draper, "That's what the money's for."

The early signs

When my son was younger, much younger, I gave him a set of children's story books my parents had given me. Bound and colorful (the books, not my son), they were filled with the classic stories we've all grown up with. The set of books sits on his dresser, which is what he happened to be cleaning last night as he decided to attack the living ecosystem that is his room.

Going through the books, tucked between Little Red Riding Hood and Jack The Giant Killer, he discovered a couple of handwritten pages. The big surprise is that they were handwritten by me, a long time ago in a galaxy far away.

When he brought them out to me, there are two things I noticed right away. First, not bad handwriting for a 5th or 6th grader. And second, that short, clever, memorable headline that brings a smile to your face and tells the whole story in six carefully chosen words:

Pitcher Throws Himself Out of Baseball

I have some vague recollection of writing for my elementary school newspaper. And because, once again God proves he has a sense of humor, I was assigned to write about sports. In this case, the self-imposed retirement of Sandy Koufax.

It's hard to pinpoint when we first display a knack for what we'll be doing later on in our adult life. Whether it's growing up to be a fireman, doctor, politician or Dexter, the early signs may go undetected until the potential is realized.

Also, I never set out to be a writer. I was a Hollywood kid - I wanted to be an actor. I just didn't want it enough.

But it's funny where we wind up, and interesting to look back and see that even then, maybe, I had a bit of a knack for it.

The other thing I like about it is my son now has a bit of dad history as keepsake. It's not digital. He can hold it in his hands.

Perhaps years from now, after I'm long gone, late at night when he's thinking about me, he'll take it out, slowly read it, and with a slight smile on his face and a tear on deck, sigh deeply and think the only thought he can have about his old man after reading it.

"I can't believe they wanted him to write about sports."