9/11

Satisfaction

Consider this a companion piece to my friend Rich’s post The Way Advertising Should Be over at the fabulous Round Seventeen.

I can’t remember where I found this letter from Mick Jagger to Andy Warhol. It’s been floating around for a long time, but it always brings a smile to my face. Come to find out that Mick is exactly the kind of client we all want.

Who knew.

Let’s break it down shall we. First, Mick makes sure Andy knows how happy he is that he’s going to work on the project. A little positive reinforcement right off the bat - always a good thing.

Next, he provides the materials Andy needs to get the job done. Andy doesn’t have to have his staff call The Rolling Stones Ltd. offices to see what assets are available, what they can use, if there’s a style guide and what format they can be sent in.

Mick goes on to talk about his past, admittedly limited experience with the process, but he clearly understands something most clients don’t: the more complicated it gets, the worse it is. He then tells Andy to do “what ever you want…” , clearly expressing his complete trust in Andy’s taste, experience, thinking and opinions.

Then, he doesn’t put him on a deadline. He doesn’t try to grind him. Instead he offers him as much money as he needs to get the job done correctly.

He wraps it all up saying his representative will call with further information, but if he in anyway tries to rush the project, Mick wants Andy to just ignore it and take the time he needs to do it right.

All I can think is working with Mick must be a gas gas gas.

I have to believe there are still clients like Mick Jagger out there. I’ve even had some that have given me a few of the liberties Mick gave Andy. Still, in the same way it’s hard for a client to find all the qualities he wants in one agency, it’s even more difficult for an agency to find all the qualities they want in a client.

Which only goes to show you can’t always get what you want. But if you try, sometimes…

Home alone

This weekend is going to be awesome. It’s the kind of weekend a guy who’s been married as long as I have with two kids dreams about. And it doesn’t happen very often.

This weekend, the wife and daughter are away at a mother/daughter retreat they go to every year. My son, a student-council vice-president, is away on a student council overnight planning session/beach party. That can only mean one thing.

Saturday night belongs to me, and me alone. (rolling hands together) Muahhhhhh!

Here's how this weekend goes in my rich fantasy life. Since I have the place to myself, I decide to invite over 1500 of my closest friends for a wild, drunken, too-loud music, cigarette burns on the furniture, wine and beer stains on the carpet, cops have to be called kind of party. For reasons best left unsaid, there are hoists and pulleys, whipped cream and garden hoses involved. It goes until sun up.

Now here's how this weekend usually goes in my real life.

I have to make the important decision about dinner. It usually comes down to In-N-Out or Five Guys. I'm thinking this might be a Five Guys kind of Saturday. Then once I'm home, I catch up with the two nights of America's Got Talent and a week's worth of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report that have been sitting on the dvr. I'll finish my Gillian Flynn book. I'll somehow find the energy to get up off the couch and walk and feed Max, world’s greatest dog. Once that's done, I'm back on the couch and asleep by 9, a 48 Hours Mystery blaring in the background (Spoiler: the boyfriend did it).

I hope the family doesn't wake me when they come back. I'll need the rest after the weekend I'm going to have.

Guilty pleasures Part 3: The Master Of Disguise

Try to keep the groaning down. I can hear it from here.

Unlike guilty pleasures 1 (Final Destination 5) or even 2 (The Three Stooges), I'm certain I'm going to take a certain amount of ridicule for this third entry in the series. You can't change my mind. Have at it.

I'll say straight off the bat that The Master of Disguise isn't a good film (which has never been a requirement for a guilty pleasure), but it is an entertaining one.

In the ugly realm of kids films parents are forced to endure, when both of mine were younger we used to watch TMOD over and over and over. It wore out it's welcome fast, especially since my kids would repeat lines from the film. Over and over and over.

But watching it recently after not seeing it for a very long time, I found myself laughing out loud at Dana Carvey (for the right reasons). He plays a character named Pistachio - stay with me - and he just commits to it. I've always respected people who put themselves out there - consequences be damned.

Except Adam Sandler. Enough already.

See if you can keep a straight face during his (bad) Al Pacino in Scarface impression and the "...stuck in my esophagus" or "...little weiner and some tiny nuts" lines:

Alright, so maybe that clip went on a little too long and I should've warned you about the dancing over the credits at the end of it.

To make it up to you, please to enjoy this clip of Dana Carvey as Robert Shaw - Quint - from Jaws:

Yeah, yeah, I know. What can I say?

I have enough mindless drama in real life. Sometimes I just want some mindless comedy.

12 step program

NEIL: Hi, I'm Neil and I'm a moonwalker.

ALL: Hi Neil.

I'm sure there isn't a Moonwalkers Anonymous. But if there were, the first step would be to admit you've been 239,000 miles from Earth.

There have been 44 presidents. 1153 billionaires. 549 Nobel prize winners. But there are only 12 people in the history of recorded time who've walked on the moon.

I imagine at the annual People Who've Walked On The Moon reunions, who will sadly be one more member short when they next meet, the conversation is always the same:

"Can you believe we were there?"

"That's some view wasn't it?"

"Yep, it's really something."

"See you next year."

There's a famous story about how Buzz Aldrin was pissed he wasn't going to be the first man to walk on the moon. He even went so far as to complain to NASA mission control once they'd landed there. But Neil Armstrong was not only the mission commander, he had the seat next to the lunar lander door. Because of the large, bulky space suits and the small space inside, there was no way Aldrin could've climbed over Armstrong to get out first even if mission control had okay'd it.

If they had, I imagine it would've been an even longer ride back.

Understandably, not many people remember Aldrin's quote when he set foot on the lunar surface: he said, "Beautiful view...magnificent desolation." What he did do that everyone remembers (besides going to the moon) is take the haunting, timeless picture you see above of his footprint that will live on the surface forever.

In case you're wondering, here's a complete list of the club roster:

Neil Armstrong

Buzz Aldrin

Pete Conrad

Alan Bean

Alan Shepard

Edgar Mitchell

David Scott

James Irwin

John W. Young

Charles Duke

Eugene Cernan

Harrison Schmitt

I suppose a better name would be the Dream Makers club. I don't know a single person who saw the landing and didn't dream of going up there, jumping around in 1/6th the gravity of Earth and taking a joyride in the lunar dune buggy.

In the 40 years since the last moon landing, the club has gotten smaller with the passing of Armstrong, Shepard, Conrad and Irwin.

This past month, with it's two full moons and clear nights, I've been thinking that maybe with their passing they're back up there again, looking down at us, once more knowing and experiencing things we mere mortals can never know.

And of course, enjoying the view.

Godspeed.

byePhoto

Space. It really is the final frontier, especially when it comes to my computer's hard drive.

I'll be the first to admit it: I've had "drive envy" almost since I bought my laptop. That's because my 17" MacBook Pro, which I bought in February of 2009, came with a 320GB hard drive. Which I thought was plenty of space at the time, right up until Apple did what Apple always does. Three weeks later, they introduced a 500GB drive for my model laptop.

Thank you Apple, may I have another?

Fast forward to August 2012, and come to find out I only have 5GB of available space left. Not enough to load new or update old applications.

So I only have two choices: make more space, or replace the drive for one with more space. I decided to start with the first one.

Since I shoot mostly high-res pictures, I started my clean up in iPhoto. What I found was the curse of the digital age - that because I can just keep shooting and shooting, I had many, many duplicates of the same photo.

You no longer have to wait for the perfect moment. You just have to keep shooting then see if you can find it.

At any rate, I started deleting tons of duplicates I'd taken. Not to mention the bazillions of shots my kids had taken with my camera at ten frames per second.

I'm not nearly done taking out the trash on over 17,000 photos, but so far I've picked up almost 5GB in space.

I'm going to have to upgrade to a 750GB drive soon (it's the biggest the specs on my laptop will allow for), but until then it's nice to know there's actually an easy and somewhat productive way to gain a little more space.

Of course, the laptop we just bought my son for his birthday has a 1TB drive.

Thanks Apple.

Writer squared

Freelancing is a lot like checking into a hotel. A really crowded hotel, with three conventions going on at the same time.

You never quite know what room, or in this case, cubicle, you're going to get.

As any freelancer will tell you, they stick you where they can. They also stick it to you where they can - usually in the wallet. But that's for another post.

The days where a hired gun could expect a spare empty window office to work in for the length of the gig are long gone. Now, they cram you into whatever space they can.

Lately I've been working in various parts of various agencies: open areas (supposedly better for creativity - total bulls@#%), the lobby, the kitchen, the (small) conference room (that I kept getting booted out of every time they had a meeting, which was every half hour because, well, it's an agency).

But there are cubicles then there are Cubicles.

The ones you see above belong to Chiat Day, and they are the most sought after workspaces in the agency. Rarely does a freelancer get to use them, although I have been lucky enough to work in them a few times while a staffer was on vacation. Everyone jockeys for these spaces, especially the ones on Main Street, which is the bottom row.

Say what you will about Chiat, aesthetically speaking it's nicer than any other agency to come into. It almost doesn't matter where they put you. There's always something to see: some interesting design or architectural detail to appreciate. And pretty people? The place is lousy with 'em.

Plus they let you bring your dog to work. There's a park. A basketball court. And a restaurant.

As far as walking into freelance gigs, I file it under "things could be worse."

Speaking of worse, a lot worse, I just finished working with an art director at an agency in Orange County. I've worked at this agency many times before, and all those other times I had an ordinary cubicle, the kind you're imagining right now. However this time, they put both of us in - well, room is too generous a word - a very narrow space about nine feet long and four feet wide. It was clearly one of those leftover spaces - not enough for an office, too much for a closet.

So it's the freelancer room.

As I broke a sweat trying to breathe while the table was smashed into me, and the chair was backed against the wall, the thing I made a point of remembering is that unlike a hotel, I'm not there for the accommodations.

I'm there for the love. Nah, just messin' with you. You know what I'm there for.

Besides, what did I really expect from an agency that thinks chairs like these are a good idea?