Body of work

When my pal Rich Siegel first saw this picture, his reaction was I should wear a hat more often. I know (think) he was kidding, but the funny part is even though I know that fabulous looking, thin, brutally handsome, dark haired guy on the left is me, or a former version of me, in my mind's eye I see myself as the guy on the right. I have issues.

Anyway, what you're looking at would be the before picture of me. Today's after picture would be an older—and by older I mean more distinguished and attractive—grayer (my dad went gray at 25, I never stood a chance), fuller version of myself. But nowhere near as full as the gentleman on the right.

Of course I'd be wearing black in both pictures, because, you know, black.

In my head, I've always felt like I was overweight, even though much to my everlovin' surprise I keep stumbling on to more pictures that prove otherwise. So the question is if I was that thin once, could I be that thin again?

And I'm starting to think the answer is fuck yeah.

For starters, it's not like someone stuck an air hose up my ass, tattooed Goodyear on it and sent me flying. I'm carrying slightly more weight than I should be, and might I add carrying it quite well. But I am getting tired of my doctor and my pants telling me to lose a little. So I'm making small, manageable changes to my routine I think will result in slow, steady progress towards getting me back into my 32-inch 34-inch waist pants that have been hanging in back of my closet since, well, that's not important right now. I know it's an ambitious goal, but if we can put a man on the moon...

Here are a few of the steps I'm taking to look as thin as Chandler did on season 3 of Friends.

Soda is off the menu. Mostly.

I've always loved Coke. And I used to drink a lot of it, but not so much anymore. I now go almost all week long without having one, or any soda for that matter, and try to stick strictly to water (preferably lemon flavored and carbonated). Sure I might have a sip or two of my son's soda at the movies on the weekend, but he gives me the side eye when I ask, doesn't like to share, and lets out a disapproving, judgmental sigh because I know he thinks it's just hastening my demise and he doesn't know where the insurance policies are. I'm just kidding. He knows exactly where they are.

Timing is everything.

Grazing used to be a 24/7 proposition. I think the electric bills were so high because of all the times I'd stand at the refrigerator with the doors open just staring, hoping something I wanted to eat would appear since the last time I opened the doors and stared. Ten minutes ago. Now, mealtimes punch a clock. Breakfast, lunch and dinner happen, with healthy snacks in between. But when dinner is over, the diner is closed and it's only water and Lipitor until morning.

Up the down staircase.

I work on the 2nd floor of my office, but I park on P2. I'll do the math for you—it works out to six flights of stairs. I'm excellent going down them, and getting better going up them, except when the weather is hot and humid. Since I sweat like Albert Brooks in Broadcast News anytime it gets over sixty degrees, I haven't abandoned the elevator just yet. But I do try to think about Rosalind Shays in L.A. Law when I press the up button, and that seems to motivate me to make the climb manually.

Staying in for lunch.

I'm a social animal. I like going out to eat, and spending tons of money I don't have on lunch. But the lunch hours they are a changin'. For a more than reasonable price, my friend Maria prepares clean meals for me to eat everyday. If you don't know, clean meals are just like healthy ones except they have flavor, fill you up and leave you excited about the next day's meal. Other people in the office have seen the meals Maria has been making for me, and asked if she can make meals for them too. She has a built in market for her budding business, and I'm ready to pony up the bucks to invest in her commercial kitchen. She's a clean-eating food empire waiting to happen.

Skipping is a good thing.

This three meals a day, food pyramid, five food groups bullshit is just the man's way of keeping you round. I'm learning to listen to my body more, which is good cause lately it's been doing a lot of talking. And it's saying, "Hey chubby, maybe you don't need lunch today." Maybe I don't. The new rule is if I'm not hungry, I'm not eating. And if I'm only a little hungry, then I just eat a little. Then I burn off some calories getting mad at my body for calling me chubby.

In addition to those steps, I'm making it a point to exercise more. I have an expensive mountain bike with flat tires sitting in the garage. I also have an expensive air compressor sitting there with it. I don't need a roadmap to see I'm minutes away from getting back in the saddle and biking all around town. Although I won't be doing it in bike shorts. No one needs to see that.

While I'm talking about exercise, I may as well mention I'm finally joining a gym. When I used to live in Santa Monica, I'd get up at six in the morning, walk over to the legendary Gold's Gym in Venice and work out surrounded by world-class body builders and steroid abusers. In fact my former personal trainer was a Mr. Nebraska. I could've found it intimidating, but instead it was inspiring. Being the Hollywood kid I am, one of the things I loved about Gold's was the occasional celebrity I'd see working out there. During the Gold's years, I like to say I worked out with Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern, Jennifer Connelly, Keanu Reeves and the late, great Gregory Hines to namedrop a few. I'm not sure if they bragged about working out with me, but I like to think so.

Inspiration also happens on the local level. My once and always neighbor Sebastian just lost 35 lbs. and is still going. Other friends have lost weight as well, and somehow their lives seem to be going on just fine and no one appears to be going hungry.

So there you have it. I don't usually like to share about this particular topic, but I felt the picture called for it. I'm uncharacteristically optimistic, and looking forward to the new me.

But just in case things don't work out, I did ask Mr. Red Hat where he got his pants.

Ugly sweater

I'm a cold weather kind of guy. Anything above seventy degrees, and I start sweating like I'm carrying a backpack filled with lead uphill through the rainforest.

I was in Austin this past weekend, visiting young Mr. Spielberg, and checking out how much return we're getting on that out-of-state tuition. We also had the pleasure of seeing my longtime friend and writer extraordinaire Cameron Day and his wife Debbie, and all going to watch Holland Taylor perform in ANN, which she's brought to the lucky theater goers of Austin for a few weeks.

When the show was over, we stepped out of the theater into the night, and it was just as exceptional as the days had been on this quick turnaround: low 70's, mild breeze, clear blue Texas skies. Since I wasn't going to be there long, I figured the weather would hold until I came home today.

Well, not so fast there Mr. Sweaty Face.

When I went outside this morning, it was ninety degrees and muggy. Really muggy. Steamy, salt-sweat in my eyes muggy. To add to the drenching, I had to carry not only my suitcase down two flights of Airbnb stairs, but also a large suitcase my son had packed up for me to bring home so he wouldn't have to do it in a couple weeks when summer break starts.

Always happy to help my boy, but by the time I got both of them downstairs I looked like I'd just stepped out from under a hot shower. I tried to wipe myself down, but that only lasted for a minute or two.

Wait, what's that? A gentle, cool breeze? Oh thank God. What?! What do you mean it's over?! Crap.

The topping on the cake was I was standing in front of the building, and my Lyft driver pulled up on the side street and waited for me there. So I had to take the two suitcases and drag (roll) them almost half a block to him. Alright, maybe it was a hundred yards. Ok, feet. But still, the end effect was the same. I was a walking puddle.

Having come from the mean streets of West L.A., north of Wilshire, I always loved going to cities that had what I like to call real seasons. Where the temperature changed, and you don't really know from one minute to the next what it'll be. To my point of view, that's the way nature intended it, not this continual perfect, dry weather year in and year out.

But after this morning in Austin, I've reconsidered my opinion and decided I love the predictable, pleasant, dry weather here just fine, and I'm never going to complain about the lack of seasons again.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some serious laundry to do.

Fire drill

At the building where I work – like all office buildings - the management company is required by the city to have annual fire drills. When you least expect it - provided you don't see the firetruck and guys in orange vests outside - building management breaks into your work day and makes an announcement over their static-y public address system. Lights start flashing, it's panic at the disco and everyone's instructed to evacuate the building using the stairs, not the elevator.

Slowly and orderly, everyone saunters out to the parking lot, wondering if there’s enough time for a Starbucks run. Then they check in with their company's point person to prove they weren’t left behind in the faux towering inferno.

It’s an inconvenience that interrupts work for a bit, but the intentions are good and this kind of fire drill can actually make a difference in a genuine emergency. Which is exactly the opposite of the fire drills you usually find in an advertising agency.

Sadly, people working in agencies are well acquainted with the other kind. The pain-inducing, frustration-increasing, time-wasting, resources-draining, brain-numbing, soul-crushing kind.

Agency fire drills are notorious shape-shifters. They can come in the form of an account person yelling in the hall for everyone to “Look busy!” as a new client prospect tours the agency.

They can be an all-hands-on-deck, cancel-your-weekend-plans mandate to try to save an account that’s been going out the door since they got it.

They can even be the creative director’s kids graduation, engagement, wedding or circumcision announcement that has to get done first, before the actual paying work. Don't even get me started on headlines for the circumcision announcements.

"Take a tip from a mohel who does!"

"Is your mohel good enough to make the cut?"

"It's time to put some foreskin in the game!"

The common characteristic of agency fire drills is they’re all, without exception, monumental wastes of time. They’re the original model for the hamster wheel. And the unlucky ones who are "volunteered" to participate are rats in a maze, who manage to find their way out the other side without reward for their effort.

Agency fire drills happen because people high enough in the food chain to call them have placed a misguided sense of importance on whatever the drill is. They’ve entered a state of denial regarding exactly what the results of everyone dropping what they’re doing to do something else will accomplish.

None of this should come as a surprise. Despite how lean, nimble, agile and responsive the agency website says they are, I have yet to work in a shop that runs as efficiently and effectively as they do in their fantasy life. The one that lives in their manifesto on their website.

Anyway, once the real-world fire drill is over, everyone shuffles back into the building, takes a crowded elevator back to their floor, and picks up where they left off.

And if they're really lucky, maybe they get a venti cappuccino out of the deal.

The party line

Years ago, I worked for Wells Rich Greene, one of many New York ad agencies that had decided to open a west coast outpost in Century City. It was my second job in advertising, and it was exciting. The people were smart, funny and creative. I couldn't wait to get to work every day and spend time with them.

You know, just like now.

Anyway, there was this rather dapper and flamboyant account guy named Tom Baker, and he invited a lot of people from the agency, including me, to a birthday party he was throwing himself at his house in Santa Monica Canyon.

It was a spectacular house. Literally on the side of the mountain, you had to walk a staircase halfway down the hill to get to it. Not the famous Santa Monica staircase off 4th Street where all the joggers exercise, piss off the neighborhood and congest traffic. The other one.

Here's what I remember. It was a great party. The champagne was flowing, and I had more than my fair share. A lot more. Up until that party, I'd only had a sip of champagne here and there at a wedding or anniversary party. But it tasted like soda - really good soda - and they were pouring it like bottomless drinks at Islands, so I couldn't see any reason to stop.

The other thing you should know is I didn't have time for lunch and hadn't had a lot to eat that day. I think you see where this is going.

It didn't take long for all my champagne dreams to catch up with me. I stumbled my way outside to the stairs, and just plopped down on one of them. I was sweating, holding my stomach, rocking back and forth, groaning and grunting like Monica Seles on center court (look it up). The mountain was spinning around me, and I believe if the good Lord had chosen that moment to take me I would've been nothing but grateful.

I've never been that drunk before or since.

Ann Siegel, a girl I'd been talking to at the party who also worked at the agency, had wondered where I'd gone and came outside to find me. She immediately saw the shape I was in, put her arms around me, held me as I rocked back and forth and told me over and over it was all going to be okay.

I have no idea how long we were like that, but I do remember at one point I broke from her grip, leaned over the side of the steps and projectile tossed what seemed like bottles of champagne on the side of the hill. Ann asked if I was okay, and I remember babbling on just thanking her over and over for sitting and staying with me.

To which she said, "That's okay. Just don't kiss me."

The next day, I asked her to a movie, and we wound up going out for a year. Whole other post.

Here's what I don't remember: Saying goodbye to anyone, walking back up the stairs to my car and driving home to my apartment in Brentwood.

My memory picks up again at climbing the stairs (again with the stairs) to my second floor apartment, and pounding on the door.

My roommate Ned opened the door, and when I saw him I said, "I'm really drunk." Although he didn't have to be Columbo (look it up) to notice the fine perfume of alcohol, sweat and vomit emanating from me.

He helped me stagger to my bedroom where I collapsed on my bed. The room was spinning faster than Karl Rove on election night. Ned brought me a damp washcloth I put on my head, then standing over me, arms crossed, he took a beat and said the line I'll never forget.

"So, is this what all the girls find so attractive?"

Don't ask: Moving

You have to look closely to see it. This is a picture of me helping you move.

I know what you’re thinking: it looks like a couple on a tropical beach, enjoying a few beers and some special time together, far removed from all their cares. And yours.

Yes. What I said. Me helping you move.

I don’t know exactly when it happened, but at a certain age - maybe around 40 - I made the decision there were just certain things I wasn’t going to do anymore. Like help you move. In fact I decided I don’t have any friend I like well enough to help move.

So don't take it personally.

Sure, there was a time when renting a van or borrowing a friends pickup, dragging your stuff down the flight of stairs from your old place up the flight of stairs to your new place, and being rewarded with cheap pizza and beer at the end of it all sounded like a good time.

But that time has come and gone. Now it just sounds like lousy pizza, warm beer and a bad back.

I'll be happy for you and your new place, and I'd absolutely love to come over and see what you've done with it once you're moved in. Which actually should be pretty easy since there are over 25,000 moving companies in the United States.

It's just that now, I'm not one of them.