Encore post: Take the afternoon off

Every once in awhile on a Zoom call, my colleagues see me wearing this hat. And they always want to know the significance of 3:30. I explained it in this post about six years ago. But since I was asked again recently, I thought an encore posting might be timely.

So here you go. More than you ever wanted to know about this hat. Please to enjoy.

You might think what you're looking at is a ratty old baseball cap with 330 embroidered on it. You'd only be half right. What you're actually looking at is a collector's item.

Years ago, my colleagues and close personal friends Alan Otto, Tena Olson and I decided what America, and dare I say the world, was crying out for was another advertising agency.

And really, can you ever have enough?

So to fill the void, and to have a place to go where we could work with people and clients we like all day long, we immediately leapt into action and started getting together every Sunday morning at Starbuck's to map out our plan of attack for opening our own agency. Between lattes and banana bread, we batted around ideas how we'd differentiate our agency from the zillion others out there.

The first name we were going to go with was The Beefery. We took an old butcher cow chart, and instead of the names of the cuts we substituted clever ad terms, none of which I can remember right now. That may be why we never went with it. Under the heading of collector's items, there are also Beefery t-shirts and hats hidden away deep in some storage locker somewhere.

Anyway, we knew an agency called The Beefery wasn't going to get any vegan clients, but we were okay with that. Then, somewhere in the course of those caffeinated Sunday morning discussions, we decided to go with a name that represented something the three of us had experienced many, many times in our combined years in the business— nothing really good happens after 3:30 in the afternoon.

Ideas. Strategies. Disruptions. Pitches. Performance reviews. Client meetings. They all happen, but just not as well as they should after 3:30PM.

Our promise was we were going to get while the gettin' was good in the first three-quarters of the day. People were fresh, their creative juices flowing, they hadn't burned out yet. Every single day, we were going to hit the ground running first thing in the morning.

We'd be unstoppable. Then completely stoppable by 3:30.

Of course almost immediately it occurred to us, what with this being a "service business" and client emergencies having a timetable all their own, that clients would have a tough time buying into our philosophy. Which explains why, at the end of the day, 330 never got off the ground.

Despite that fact we continued to meet at Starbucks for months afterwards, occasionally talking about opening an agency but mostly just enjoying each other's company and the people watching.

Optimists that we were, when enthusiasm was at its highest we ponied up and had these hats made. I wear it all the time, and have to say I still like it a lot.

But not nearly as much as I like the idea of calling it a day at 3:30.

Hipster

Let’s start with the title. There were a lot of ways I could have gone with it:

Shoot From The Hip.

Hip Hip Hooray.

Joined At The Hip.

Hip Hop.

Hip-A-Long Cassidy.

Keep Hip Alive.

But I didn’t choose any of those. Instead I went with Hipster, because it conjured up an image of Rich in a knit cap, wearing ripped jeans and an olive drab t-shirt with a vaguely smug, ironic saying on it.

I know how much he’d like that.

Rich by the way is my good friend Rich Siegel, proprietor and author of the RoundSeventeen blog, former captain of the USA pole vaulting team and bronze winner in the ’96 Olympics in Barcelona.

After years of breakdancing and spinning, poppin’ and lockin’, and his part time gig as an Elvis impersonator at the Graceland chapel in Vegas, his hip had enough Jailhouse Rockin'.

So this past Monday he walked with a limp into the hospital bright and early and had hip replacement surgery, which he so eloquently wrote about about here.

I spoke with him by text yesterday, and he was doing fine. A lot of napping. As those of us in the tribe say, “Why is this day different than other days?”

Anyway, I along with his other friends and quite possibly some members of his own family he doesn’t owe money to are glad he came through it swimmingly. I imagine he’ll be back on his feet setting off airport metal detectors, working on his Lee Majors impression (look it up), auditioning for Dancing With The Stars and doing a #glitchchallenge (@_aubreyfisher) on the IG in no time.

Get well soon Rich. Oh, and by the way, fuck Trump.

Take the afternoon off

You might think what you're looking at is a ratty old baseball cap with 330 embroidered on it. You'd only be half right. What you're actually looking at is a collector's item.

Years ago, my colleagues and close personal friends Alan Otto, Tena Olson and I decided what America, and dare I say the world, was crying out for was another advertising agency.

And really, can you ever have enough?

So to fill the void, and to have a place to go where we could work with people and clients we like all day long, we immediately leapt into action and started getting together every Sunday morning at Starbuck's to map out our plan of attack for opening our own agency. Between lattes and banana bread, we batted around ideas how we'd differentiate our agency from the zillion others out there.

The first name we were going to go with was The Beefery. We took an old butcher cow chart, and instead of the names of the cuts we substituted clever ad terms, none of which I can remember right now. That may be why we never went with it. Under the heading of collector's items, there are also Beefery t-shirts and hats hidden away deep in some storage locker somewhere.

Anyway, we knew an agency called The Beefery wasn't going to get any vegan clients, but we were okay with that. Then, somewhere in the course of those caffeinated Sunday morning discussions, we decided to go with a name that represented something the three of us had experienced many, many times in our combined years in the business— nothing really good happens after 3:30 in the afternoon.

Ideas. Strategies. Disruptions. Pitches. Performance reviews. Client meetings. They all happen, but just not as well as they should after 3:30PM.

Our promise was we were going to get while the gettin' was good in the first three-quarters of the day. People were fresh, their creative juices flowing, they hadn't burned out yet. Every single day, we were going to hit the ground running first thing in the morning.

We'd be unstoppable. Then completely stoppable by 3:30.

Of course almost immediately it occurred to us, what with this being a "service business" and client emergencies having a timetable all their own, that clients would have a tough time buying into our philosophy. Which explains why, at the end of the day, 330 never got off the ground.

Despite that fact we continued to meet at Starbucks for months afterwards, occasionally talking about opening an agency but mostly just enjoying each other's company and the people watching.

Optimists that we were, when enthusiasm was at its highest we ponied up and had these hats made. I wear it all the time, and have to say I still like it a lot.

But not nearly as much as I like the idea of calling it a day at 3:30.

Mr. Tee

A few years ago, I was looking for something I could do to add on to the monumental fortune I've made in advertising. Preferably something not involving monster egos, all-night work sessions, talking to account planners and unimaginably bad pizza.

So my friend and art director extraordinaire Kurt Brushwyler and I kicked around escape plans for a while, and came up with a business idea we could both get behind: t-shirts.

Alright, so it wasn't the most original idea. But we were going to do it in a way that managed to combine two things we loved - t-shirts and Vegas.

I forget the name of it, but for a while there was a little newsletter/brochure you could pick up at any restaurant, usually near the restrooms by the sponsored post card rack and outdated copies of the L.A. Weekly. It listed all kinds of bizarre classes that not only reinforced every stereotype about L.A., but also that no legitimate institution of learning would ever offer.

One of them was How To Get Into The T-Shirt Industry. Coincidence? I think not.

So one night after a long day freelancing at Chiat (is there any other kind?), Kurt and I hopped in his Prius and drove over to the world-famous, two-star Marina Del Rey Marriott for a three-hour class taught by guys who'd hit it big making t-shirts and selling them to Paris Hilton for $95 a piece at Kitson.

It was actually an interesting and educational evening. Needless to say the part about having to go to Vegas at least once a year to hawk our wares at the Magic Fashion Convention was quite appealing.

Our master plan was to get those cart/kiosk things you see in the main promenade of The Forum Shops at Caesar's and sell the t-shirts off of them. It was going to be our test run. If they did well, we'd approach each of the casinos and holding companies about making exclusive t-shirts for their gift shops, with funny lines tailored specifically for each hotel.

I wrote about a couple hundred Vegas/hotel lines, and Kurt started working on designs for them. It was ours, and it was fun.

Right up until I called The Forum Shops to find out about the carts. Come to find out - and if I'd thought about it for a second I would've realized it - that Caesar's owned all the carts in their mall. They didn't rent them to outside vendors.

But since we both come from advertising, and are used to rejection, adversity, broken dreams and plans going awry on a daily basis, we knew exactly how to handle the situation.

We gave up.

Every once in awhile, when Kurt returns a phone call (my hair was black when I called him) or when I see him, we kick around rebooting the idea. But then we move on to more important things, like which sushi place to go to for lunch.

We still own the URL and still have the lines. Plus there are a whole slew of casinos that weren't there the first time around we could approach. So I'm not ruling anything out - we might come back to the idea at some point.

All I know for sure is if we do, there'll definitely be a lot of research involved.

Hello dummy

I know I was going to be writing Comic Con posts this week, but then I remembered this.

I had to take my daughter to Sports Authority, or Sports Chalet, or Sports Concierge or wherever the hell it was to buy yet another pair of volleyball shoes and shorts. On the way to whatever department that stuff was in, I passed this.

The sparring dummy. I think every creative department in every agency should have one of these.

I mean one that doesn't scream like a little girl when you hit it.

Beyond the exercise benefits, it's an excellent way to alleviate frustration with account people. Just dress him up in that light blue, button-collar shirt with the yellow power tie and have at it. I don't know how much he costs, but I'm sure it's cheaper than all the wall repairs and replacing all those dented trash cans.

Now to be fair, I appreciate every once in a great while account people get frustrated with creatives. So to help them relax, and really, who doesn't want a less uptight account person, they should also have one of these on their side of the office. They could put a knit cap on him, a t-shirt with something ironic yet retro on it and have at it.

Of course, nothing unites people like a common enemy. In which case you can dress him up in one of the clients' company uniforms - if you have a fast food client you're already ahead of the game - and have at him your way (see what I did there?).

No matter how long you pummel him, he still won't go as many rounds as the work.

But it'll be much more satisfying.

Why did the chicken cross the gays

The other day I saw a guy wearing a t-shirt that read, "I had gay sex at Chick-fil-A." It was interesting, because I didn't even know they had that on the menu.

Here's the thing: I support gay marriage. And I also support great-tasting Chick-fil-A chicken sandwiches, especially with their awesome cole slaw on the side.

What's a Jewish centerist Democrat to do?

This isn't what a lot of my liberal friends will want to hear, but Dan Cathy has a right to believe what he wants. He also has the right to say what he believes (see First Amendment). The rallying cry about his point of view being hateful is misleading. For that to be true, it would have to come from a malicious place. I don't believe it does. Mr. Cathy is a religious man, living his life and operating his business on Christian and biblical principles. He even goes so far as to close his stores on Sundays because he doesn't feel his employees should have to choose between work and worship. As far as I've read - and I don't know if you've noticed, but the press has been all over this - no gay person has been mistreated or discriminated against in any Chick-fil-A store, either as a customer or employee.

Of course, as much as it's his right to believe and say what he wants, it's anyone else's right not to agree with him, and not to patronize his restaurants.

It does strike me as ironic that a segment of society that bases most of its movement on tolerance and acceptance clearly has none for opinions that don't agree with theirs.

And before you lunge at me with something like, "Oh yeah, well you have no idea what it's like to be discriminated against just because of who you are!", please. I'm Jewish. I've been on the receiving end of that sentiment many times. I have a very good idea what it's like.

By the way, as admirable as it is, if we're going to start making it a point to live our values by not supporting companies that don't agree with our views, then we're all going to have to start being more consistent about it. Did you think Chick-fil-A was the only company you don't agree with? There's a long list of companies - popular companies, companies many of us shop at without a second thought - just asking to be boycotted. And they're not contributing to those disagreeable causes out of any religious belief. Which to my way of thinking makes their motives considerably more sinister than Chick-fil-A.

You know all those fun, flambuoyant commercials for Target? If you're mad about Chick-fil-A, you definitely won't be happy to find out Target donated $150,000 to anti-gay politician Tom Emmer. Of course afterwards, once word had gotten out, they apologized. But the fact remains it was a hollow apology and they did it. My guess is they're still doing it, only more covertly.

And next time you're in the market for an electronic gadget, an iPhone cover, or flatscreen television, my guess is you won't be closing the deal at Best Buy since they also contributed to Emmer's campaign.

Suit up

I have a very extensive wardrobe. One pair of blue jeans. Two pairs of black jeans. And twenty-five hundred black t-shirts.

Crap, I need to lose weight.

Anyway, what I haven't had in my collection for a long time is a suit that I've been happy with. And by happy with I mean that fits.

Every man should have a good-looking, well-fitting suit in his wardrobe. You never know when a wedding, funeral, bar mitzvah or job interview for casino pit boss will present itself.

While I was perusing the "suit" websites, I came across this one. It's not unfamiliar to me - I hear their exceptionally bad radio spots all the time: "Get two wool suits, two dress shirts, two ties, two pairs of dress shoes, two belts, two cufflinks, two pocket scarves, two parking spaces, two soft drinks and two hot dogs for just $199!"

I thought, "What the hell." Their suits can't possibly be as bad as their radio.

I decided I'd pick one of the three days and pay a visit to their store nearest me. While I was looking to see where it was, I learned this little tidbit about 3 Day Suit Brokers:

See the irony?

Now, I've never really been much of a math wiz (although I can add up day rates like a bandit). Apparently whoever named the store wasn't either.

But I will admit it does make it a lot more convenient, especially when that $199 is burning a hole in my worsted wool pocket.