Look who's launching missiles at us

It. Is. ON!

In this corner, the impoverished, food deprived, medicine free, crazy-man-at-the-helm, third world country by any reasonable definition, the universally shunned nation of North Korea.

And in this corner, the most powerful nation ever on the face of the planet, leaders of the free world, the most technologically advanced military anywhere, the country that gave you Jersey Shore, Cop Rock and that Anthony Edwards show cancelled after three episodes, the proud, the brave, the star-spangly United States of America.

In case you haven’t heard, North Korea is doing what they’ve been doing the last 60 years. Threatening to launch a pre-emptive strike – this time nuclear - against the United States. The reason is because we, along with many other countries including their traditional ally China, have imposed sanctions against them that are unprecedented in their strictness.

And they’re cranky. You know how they get when they’re hungry.

Anyway, the sanctions are designed to get them to cease being bullies to South Korea and to have them dismantle their nuclear program. And now that their pal China's on board, they may feel the pain enough to actually negotiate even with all their posturing to the contrary.

But in case they're not kidding, and they are actually stupid enough to launch a missile at the west coast of the United States, I'm confident one of our missile interceptors - either land, submarine or air based - will knock it down before it even gets anywhere close.

I'm also sure that if that happens, within minutes this will be an "after" shot of North Korea.

Portlandia

I haven't been to Portland in a long time. Somewhere around nine years. And I miss it.

The last time I was there, I lived for three weeks at the Hotel Lucia downtown while I was shooting a commercial for an agency called Perceive that no longer exists (it barely existed when it did). Because we were also editing up there, I had plenty of time to explore the city. If you've ever been there, you already know it's a good walking town.

Alan Otto, my friend (currently) and creative director (at the time) would meet in the lobby every morning. Then we'd pick a direction and start walking for as long as we could before we had to be at the shoot or the edit. One morning we walked to the 97-year old Portland Luggage Company where I picked up a mid-size Boyt suitcase to complete my set and had it shipped home.

I love luggage stores. Whole other post.

Another great thing is that all of Oregon is a Powerball state. And for someone like me who's inclined to play the lottery since I won $5,000 in it once (yes I did), it was fun to play in a multi-state draw where we're talking real retirement money.

By the way, the hotel you see here isn't the Lucia. It's the Benson, just a block and a half up the street. It's one of the grand old hotels you run into, a 100-years old - the one where presidents, foreign dignitaries and celebrities stay when they come to town. In fact when we were shooting up there, at three in the morning Nic Cage was playing piano and singing to Lisa Marie Presley in the lobby.

Anyway, I imagine it'll be somewhat of a let down for them, but the Benson is where I'll be staying when I return to Portland in May. I'm looking forward to it because it's Portland, but also because the reason I'm going is for a gathering to celebrate my dear friend Paul Decker's life.

The good news is I already know what suitcase I'm taking with me.

Light at the end of the day

I hope you're sitting down. I don't know how to break this to you, but my Jedi instincts tell me the best way is to just come right out and say it: there are a lot of babies and whiners on the internet.

I know, I'm as shocked as you are. Shocked.

If you've been on Facebook or Twitter in the last couple days, like me you've probably noticed an ungodly amount of posts talking about how much people hate daylight savings time. How they just. don't. understand. why we have to change the clocks at all. How they're soooooo tired because they lose one hour in 24 out of one day in 365.

I'd like to promise all of you complaining about it that this is not the worst thing that will ever happen in your life. Trust me.

As you might've guessed, I happen to be a big supporter of DST. And I can't even begin to understand why everyone else isn't. There are so many more reasons to like it than not.

Let's start at the wallet. The fact it's light until almost 9 means electric bills go down. Way down for at least six months. Who's against that? Whiners? Anyone?

Next, the hideous commute I'm up against every night seems to get a little easier, because for some odd reason drivers are able to navigate better when they can actually see the road and what's around them. Body shops don't do as well during DST, but they make it up when we Fall Back.

Finally, and this may just be me, but I seem to have more energy. The longer it's light out, the longer I think it's not time to settle in for the night. I'm out and about longer getting more done. Not just more of what I have to do, but more of what I want to do.

So for all the whiners out there bitching and moaning about switching All The Clocks In The House! ahead and losing your precious hour, I say this with love: just shut up.

You'll get your hour back in November.

Look at it this way. Now that the day's longer, you'll have more time to think of something else to complain about.

Punctuation doesn't suck

Grammar's a hard thing to muster a lot of excitement about. And since I pass myself off as a writer, I have this secret shame I don't know as much as I should about it. The dreaded semi-colon? No idea if I'm using it the right way or not. At least in the three times in my life I've used it (two of which are in this post).

My friend Julie Prendiville gave me the best book on grammar I've ever read: The Deluxe Transitive Vampire. It makes grammar interesting, fun, and more importantly, important. (any number of writers could've done a better job with that last sentence. Don't think I didn't notice).

Anyway, it's been a long time since she gave me the book, and equally as long since I've read it. But as a result of the rapidly fading use of proper grammar, I'll be picking it up again soon. I can't stand the thought I might be part of what I consider the dumbing down of writing, even if I am part of a business that makes up words like stroft (Charmin - strong & soft), powercision (Hyundai - power & precision, or circumcision; was never sure which), funified (Chuck E. Cheese; false advertising at its best), freshalicious (Subway) and a million more.

In case you're wondering, the quick way to a dumb, new ad word is to combine two ordinary words into a colossally stupid one. Or just add -licious, -centric, -tastic, -esque or -opolooza to one.

Look, I know I'm not the only writer who's frustrated by the disappearance of proper punctuation. Most noticeably periods. I'm not sure when it happened, although it was probably around the time the first web designer/art director said, "Do we really need that period in the headline? I don't know, it doesn't look right." And naturally since art directors are well known for their legendary grasp of grammar and spelling, the (junior) writer he worked with went along with it.

The thing about punctuation is that it isn't only a design element. It's an essential tool in making written words read and feel as much like spoken conversation as possible.

So when I drive down the 405 - and by drive I mean crawl - looking at outdoor headlines with no periods, it's frustrating. Same with almost every headline anywhere on the interwebs. It's almost as if the laziness of abbreviated txtng has crept into everything.

Without periods, headlines are incomplete. They float. They're wishy-washy. They're not definitive, confident statements about the product.

I'm not letting myself off the hook either. I rarely use punctuation on my post titles. I'm not proud of it. I promise to do better from now on.

Not just for my readers, but for grandpa.

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: