Heavy panting

There are some lessons in life you just have to learn for yourself. For example, don’t play basketball while wearing tuxedo pants. That’s one my son learned a couple weeks ago.

Not that playing in tuxedo pants doesn’t make you look quite handsome on the court. It’s just that when you fall and tear the knee, and you need the pants for a concert, it starts to get complicated.

Apparently in the small print on the dad contract, I’m the one who has to repair the damage. So I took the pants back to the tux shop where we bought them to see if they could patch ‘em up. They went in last Saturday for a concert yesterday. Alonso, the swarthy yet rushed counterperson said it would be no problem to fix the hole. Yes they could do it in time for the concert. And of course he’d call me the next day to let me know when they’d be ready.

Which of those things do you think happened? If you said none, then you’ve obviously dealt with Alonso before.

It's frustrating to say the least. Hard to believe, but there actually was a time when businesses couldn't afford not to do what they said they were going to.

Alonso is not of that time.

The pants were ready today. But, and I don't know why I'm surprised at this, they weren't repaired in the way I was expecting. Which was that the hole would be entirely sewn up, with only a hair-thin line left that you could never see unless you were looking for it. I don't know if Alonso did the sewing himself, but if so we clearly had a failure to communicate.

The pants were patched like a pair of jeans. You could see the tear, and behind it an ironed on black patch. The good news is my son wound up not using or needing that pair of pants.

Next time, if I want my tuxedo pants patched up like a pair of twenty-year old Levi's, I'll send them here.

Bedside manner

Every once in a while - a great while - my faith in humanity is momentarily restored. This is one of those times.

A while ago I had seen this letter from an emergency room doctor to a man who's wife he'd treated. Sadly she later passed away, but she'd left such an impression that this doctor felt compelled to write his first letter ever to a family member. What strikes me is the time he took to write this letter, which is clearly carefully and deliberately worded, was probably longer than he gets to spend with most of his patients.

In an age of cost cutting, managed care, debates by monkeys in congress over healthcare and the traditional distance doctors keep from the personal lives of their patients, this letter is nothing short of remarkable.

I never want myself or any member of my family to have need of an ER doctor. But if it's unavoidable, I hope they get someone as compassionate as this.

You know, for kids

Here's a little bit of toy trivia for you.

Fifty years ago this very day, the hula hoop was patented by Wham-O. It's actually been around (no pun intended) since the mid-1800's, just not in the form and material we know today.

If you saw the Coen Bros. Hudsucker Proxy - an extremely underrated film - you know the hula hoop is central to the plot and lead character played by Tim Robbins.

I was thinking about the hula hoop - because really, what else do I have to think about - and I realized it's the same thing I, and all my creative brethren, strive for in advertising: An idea so uncomplicated and pure, it resonates on a visceral level.

But as anyone in the biz will tell you, the simple ideas are the hardest to find. And the hardest to sell.

In the movie, Tim Robbins character shows his idea to a colleague in the mail room: a circle on a piece of paper. The colleague thinks he's nuts. The simple ideas are a lot like shopping for homes - you have to look past what they are and see what they can become.

It's a skill not every agency and client has.

I'm not sure why toy makers can see it and people who are supposed to do it for a living can't. Wham-O followed up the hula hoop with another astonishingly simple idea: the Frisbee. And the rest is history.

As anyone who's worked ten minutes in an agency knows, until the dial gets reset to simple we're going to keep winding up with things like this:

Mail enhancement

I never understood all the jokes made at the expense of the post office. It always seemed to me it was more about people's impatience waiting for something to arrive more than the actual service itself.

I'm just going to come out and say it: I love the mail. I look forward to it getting here, I love using my Warner Bros. Wile E. Coyote letter opener to open it, I love going through it and I like when there's a whole bunch of it. I also like sending it out. When I seal those envelopes, even if they're bills, and I slap that stamp on it and drop it in the mailbox, it actually gives me a sense of accomplishment.

And I'll take a sense of accomplishment wherever I can find it.

Don't you think it's amazing that for 46 cents, you can mail a letter in L.A. and usually within a couple days it's being read by the person you sent it to in NY? Assuming you sent it to NY. I think it's incredible. I know it's not instantaneous like email, but I think the whole "snail mail" label is a misnomer considering what the service is.

Believe it or not, some things are worth waiting for.

Obviously my unbridled enthusiasm for the post office doesn't make me a fan of ending Saturday mail delivery. The thought of it is quite depressing. I like having the "one more day" option, which means if I'm expecting something on Friday - for example, a check - and it doesn't get here, there's always Saturday.

Only starting in August, there isn't always Saturday anymore. I can't say I'm surprised by it. In fact, I wrote an earlier post here about the decline of personal, handwritten communication. A decline that's going to eventually doom the postal service.

By the way, just so you know I'm not the only one who loves the idea of personal, handwritten letters, my friend Janice has made a nice business sending letters from Paris to people all over the world like myself, who love receiving them.

It's only $2 billion dollars standing between Saturday mail delivery and seeing it disappear. Can't the government fund that and build one less B2 bomber? Or two less drones? It just seems so correctable. More than that, it seems like something both parties should be able to agree on (pauses waiting for laughter to subside).

Besides, it would make me really happy. And since I'm an only child, I think we can all agree that's what really matters.

I have an idea I'm pretty sure would make the government take action to rescue the postal service. It's pretty simple really.

Just tell them Saturday delivery means tax forms arrive earlier.

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.