Bobbleheads

I had a decision to make about what to call this post. It was either going to be Bobbleheads or Asshats. Either one would’ve been just as applicable, although I suppose the one I chose is more specific.

I was driving – and when I say driving I mean crawling – to work today on the 405 which, for those of you outside of L.A., is the world’s biggest parking lot. Kevin and Bean on KROQ were pretty funny this morning (especially on their phone call with “Justin Bieber”), so I was looking around at my fellow gridlock victims to see who else was laughing. What I saw was more than a few of them bouncing their heads up and down. And not because they were laughing.

It took me a second, but then it all made sense. They were texting or reading texts while they were trying to drive.

Alright. Asshats.

Suddenly the 405 was even more frightening than usual. While these human bobbleheads were busy with their smartphones (something something about phones smarter than the people using them), I saw more than a few of them narrowly avoid rear ending – and not in a good way – the car in front of them.

There needs to be some kind of “Idiot Behind The Wheel Texting” hotline where you can report these lamebrains. Of course, it would only be available to cars with Bluetooth and voice-dialing.

Or maybe a Megan’s Law kind of website where texting-while-driving offenders have their pictures posted, along with the messages they were texting when they ran into the car in front of them. Just to make sure they're really put to shame, their driver's license photos would also be posted.

Texting fines have to be jacked up. Like the carpool lane fines, their wallets need to hurt if they're caught. Or even better, a mandatory night in jail for being a threat to every car on the road ahead of them. That'll give 'em something to text about.

I don't like it any better, but at least the nose pickers keep their eyes on the road.

I didn't even know it was sick

It's not easy trying to eat healthy. Even though I maintain that bagels, cream cheese, chocolate and oatmeal cookies represent the four basic food groups, people say I have to try harder.

But what works against me on that is the protein portion of our program. Virtually every meat product in Lazy Acres or Whole Foods says "uncured" on the label.

Intellectually I know that's a good thing when it comes to meat. It means it's not loaded with sodium nitrates. Actually even if they were they aren't. The amount of nitrates to preserve meats is minimal - it's the idea of it that's so huge. (If only this weren't a family blog I could type the joke I'm thinking right now.)

And while we're on the idea of things, let's talk about the power of words. Specifically, the word "uncured." Don't like it. It conjures up images of cows or pigs at their least flattering - as opposed to the flattering pictures you usually see.

Plus, my taste isn't that refined when it comes to, let's say, bacon. All I know is the uncured meats go bad in a week, and the cured ones expire around the next appearance of Halley's comet.

I'll stick with the cured meats. I like knowing my refrigerator will go bad before the meat does.

Seeing red

There's good news and there's bad news.

The good news is that for the past week, and the next couple coming up, I'm working in Santa Monica. I lived here for almost 20 years, and the city feels like home to me. I can see the ocean from my office, the sunsets are stunning and I know the shortcuts when I need to get where I'm going.

The bad news is those shortcuts don't do jack for me at quittin' time.

See that red cross going from where the 10 freeway starts to where it intersects with the 405? That's what I have to navigate every night to get out of the west side, and then crawl the rest of the way home to Long Beach.

As I've said many times here, I grew up on the mean streets of west L.A., north of Wilshire. And I don't want to become one of those guys that starts a lot of sentences with "back then", but back then this was a precision driving town. People knew how to maneuver. They knew how to go with the flow.

Which is hard to do if the flow's not going.

It's also gotten a lot more crowded since I was a kid. I blame it on the Rose Parade.

Every January, at the same time the rest of the country is digging out from fifteen feet of snow, playing hopscotch over downed power lines and holding on to lamp posts so they don't blow away, they're also watching the Kiwanis Club float celebrating "Togetherness Through Diversity" and the Davis High School Marching Band on television, and seeing the clear, beautiful and often warm sunny January days we get to enjoy here.

So everyone watching sells their house and moves here. The majority of them from the east coast. The thing about the east coast is they actually have public transportation that works, so many times the car they're driving here is their first one.

Which is no news to you if you've ever been on the 405 at rush hour.

Remembering Paul

I’ve thought about this post even before my great friend Paul Decker died Tuesday. Truth be told, I’ve been thinking about it since Kitty – his wife, and the love of Paul’s life – sent me an email saying how ill Paul was.

I knew Paul only had one kidney, was down a gall bladder and had been a smoker far longer than he should’ve been. He’d had some health issues over the years. I immediately sent all the good thoughts and prayers I could their way. I offered to fly to Portland and help out for as long as needed, but Paul was too weak for visitors.

In my mind’s eye, this post was going to be a cohesive story about my longtime relationship with Paul, complete with a beginning, middle and sad, sad end. But as I sit here writing, hard as I try, I can’t seem to conjure up that kind of structure.

I’ve never been much for structure. Ask anyone I work with.

All that comes to me are mental snapshots, a highlight reel I know will fall short of giving a full picture of Paul because he was such an original. He was, as their friend Carla Clemen’s said in tribute, “one of God’s masterpieces.”

But incomplete as the memories may be, I’m going to share them. Because for me, any story involving Paul is inherently a great one.

Here are a few things I remember.

Paul spoke slowly. I’d often be in conversations with him where he’d pause to think about what he was going to say next, and then I’d start talking. And then he’d continue. Paul always thought before he spoke, making sure the words as well as the details conveyed exactly what he wanted. Not only was it refreshing, it was an education in how to listen as well as how to tell a story.

I met Paul at the first agency job I ever had, which was in the mailroom at Cunningham & Walsh. I remember they had built out a new studio and recording booth, and after work and on the occasional weekends Paul and I would go back there and do a radio show for our own amusement. I’d be talking about Bruce Springsteen (even then), and he’d be talking about baseball, asking me if I knew why Ted Williams was called “The Thumper.”

Since I mentioned Springsteen, I should also mention that at the time Paul couldn’t stand him. He thought he was a fake, a poser. I couldn’t convince him otherwise. I was never actually sure if he felt that way or if he was just having some fun with me because he knew I was such a hardcore fan. In fact, when Paul knew I couldn’t come to see Bruce in Portland last November, he decided to rub it in a little bit with this Facebook text:

The fact I was in the mailroom didn’t matter to Paul. He enjoyed people for who they were, not the position they held. And the fact this man, this writer, I admired so much treated me as an equal – which he continued to do after I became a copywriter – meant the world to me. Paul was the writer we all wanted to be. With a degree in English Literature from USC, he didn’t just make it up as he went. He knew what greatness looked and read like.

When Paul was going through his divorce, I was living in a two-bedroom apartment in Brentwood and my roommate had just moved out. Paul needed a place to stay, so I offered the extra bedroom and he moved in. I wish I could remember every conversation and story from back then, but sadly no.

I do remember at some point we decided we both could stand to be healthier, so every morning before work we’d walk about a mile and a half, stopping to have a donut at a place on San Vicente.

We saw the irony. We didn’t care.

One night during the time we were rooming together, I got into a horrendous car crash. I was thrown 20 ft. from the car, broke my arm and was knocked unconscious for over an hour. When I came to in Cedar’s ER, the person I had them call was Paul. He was the one who called my parents.

Paul gave me my first taste of real jazz. I remember one night he took me to the famous jazz club The Baked Potato in Studio City, where we saw the Dave Brubeck Trio. He explained – to the degree you can explain jazz – the music, the origin, the sound. He knew it all. At the end of the night, not only did I feel smarter, I felt more grown up.

While we’re on the subject of jazz, it should be noted that Paul and Kitty held their wedding at Harvelle’s, another legendary blues and jazz club in Santa Monica. I don’t ever remember seeing Paul happier than he was that day. If you know Kitty, you know there's no other way he could feel.

Always looking for ways to amuse himself, Paul came up with a game called Revenge. Basically it was where you’d challenge someone, and then you’d both run around in public with squirt guns filled with red water. Whoever shot the other person first won. That’s the explanation why I found myself chasing and being chased by Mal Sharpe all through Fox Hills Mall one night.

Just for the record, I lost. He snuck up behind me in front of a luggage store.

There was the legendary advertising brochure he did for Mammoth, Pervasive & Bland, a parody of large, dusty, non-creative, global shop that took pride in not using hackneyed phrases like “breakthrough” and “original”. The brochures became collector’s items in the biz because they only did a limited run. I’m proud to say I have one in mint condition.

Anyone who knew Paul well is also probably a customer of Modern Meats. I don’t think there’s anyone among us who didn’t look forward to the calendars, letters (suspiciously well written) and branded pens from Otto, president of Modern Meats. The note I wrote to Paul when I first found out he was ill was written with that very pen.

Here’s the truth of the matter: Paul isn’t gone when he dies. He’s gone when we die. It’d be impossible to have known him and not carry his spirit in your heart forever.

On the website where Kitty was posting updates about Paul, you have to log in with your I.D. and a password.

My password is ilovePaul.

Waiting

I'm in a bad way this evening.

I'm waiting on some inevitable news about my friend Paul, who just went into hospice care 1200 miles from where I am. Obviously the news when it comes will not be good, except in the sense that Paul will begin the next part of his journey free from the pain and suffering he's had to endure.

So tonight, no funny lines, snappy endings or snarky comments.

Just prayers and love for someone who has meant the world to me for over 35 years. Someone I'm sure you'll know more about soon.

I know you don't know my friend. But send him your best thoughts and prayers anyway.

He could use them tonight.

Out of site out of mind

Maybe it's because I'm a copywriter. Or because I have too much free time on my hands. Or because GoDaddy is so damn cheap. But like every other person in advertising, during the course of the day, whether I want them to or not, names for websites seem to keep popping into my mind.

I don't know how many I've registered or how much I've spent to do it over the years, but I've only actually built out one of them - my own that showcases my work.

It's like people who buy a gym membership the first of January and then never use it. I'm pretty sure this is how GoDaddy and Register.com make most of their money.

Of course there are the ones I own like Creepfactor, Shut That Kid Up and Well Placed Blame that I'm still hoping to do something with. But this year, I decided to let go of some of my URL baggage and let a few names I own expire.

So if you've been itching to start a site called AdZombies or Bad Ad Agency, I know for a fact the domain names are available.

I'm in a much more optimistic place than when I registered Career Go Boom, so it's now there for the taking.

There was the gift registry site Here's What I Want a couple friends and I were going to start. Turns out we didn't want it.

My friend Stephanie Birditt had a site called Stephopotamus, and I thought it was fun. So on a whim I registered Jeffopotamus. Had no idea what I was going to do with that one, which explains why it's gone now.

A couple years ago, our annual trip to the Hotel Del Coronado had more than a few things go wrong, so I was going to go after them with Hotel Del Hell - a site where everyone who'd ever had anything go wrong during their stay could vent.

But then they comped me a night, a dinner and a cabana and I felt better.

I suppose I'll keep registering names that occur to me in the hope that one day I'll actually do something with them.

Meanwhile, I wonder if goingbacktowatchmoretv.com is taken.

Siegel called it

Back in October, my good friend Rich Siegel, who writes the not-to-be-missed blog Round Seventeen, did something he's never done before. No, he didn't take the account team to a group lunch. He didn't suggest reducing the broadcast budget so he could do more banner ads. And he didn't start complimenting the British planner with the knit cap for his insights.

What he did was post a movie review of the film The Master. It was a scathing, no-holds-barred, flat out attack as only Rich can write on what he thought was a deplorable film, not to mention a monumental waste of time.

Here's the thing I found out this afternoon: he was right.

Now normally I'd say that one should make up their own mind about about a movie. I've seen many movies that weren't well-reviewed - Meet Joe Black, Signs and Unbreakable come to mind - that wound up being very entertaining. In fact some of them have even shown up in my Guilty Pleasures posts, like the Final Destination series.

Since the Oscars - which mark the official end of nights Hollywood honors its own because no one else will - are rapidly approaching, I usually try to see as many of the nominated films as possible. So I decided to fire up my screener of The Master, and give it a go. After all, I'm a big fan of the two leads, Jacquin Phoenix and Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Sometimes that's enough.

This time it wasn't.

I would've rather been the terrorists being tortured in Zero Dark Thirty, Lincoln being shot in the head, or Django being beaten than to have had the Les Miserables experience of sitting through The Master.

At least I didn't have to leave the house and it didn't cost me anything.

Except two and a half hours I'll never get back.