Don't ask: Borrowing a book

I'm not gonna lie.

My Don't Ask series of posts - Don't Ask: Watching Your Stuff, Don't Ask: Working the Weekend, Don't Ask: Loaning You Money, Don't Ask: Writing a Letter For You, Don't Ask: Sharing a Hotel Room, Don't Ask: Picking Up at the Airport, and the perennial Don't Ask: Moving - is one of the most popular and requested of all the random musings I slap up here at the last minute.

Even more than Guilty Pleasures, Things I Was Wrong About and The Luckiest Actor Alive. Even more than Why I Love Costco.

To the untrained eye, it might look like linking all those prior posts is just a blatant act of shameless self-promotion. Actually, I prefer to think of it as making quality writing available to the general public.

Anyway, since Don't Ask is the most read series, a new Don't Ask it is. Tonight, it's Don't Ask: Borrowing A Book.

It strikes me odd that for all the huffing and puffing about Kindles and iBooks, people still love the feel of a real hardcover book in their hands. Especially if they didn't have to pay for it. And it's mine.

It's still a free country, and you can ask whatever you want. But if the question is "Hey, can I borrow that book? I'll get it right back to you." the answer is no.

The world is lousy with Kindles, iBook apps and, yes, libraries. Go on them and in them and choose your own book to read. But this brand new hardcover copy of the latest best-seller, the one I've been waiting months for, the one I'll be adding to my Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Anne Ursu. Jonathan Kellerman, Gillian Flynn, Scott Smith, J.K. Rowling collection? This one's mine.

I reserve the right to be the first to smell that new book smell of fresh ink on the pages. To bend back the binding, and hear it crack as I turn the pages faster and faster because I can't put it down.

It's not that I don't trust you. However I believe that all across the city, there exists a library in my name, made up of books I've loaned out in the past. Except instead of one building it's spread across dozens of houses one book at a time. It took me years to build that library. I don't plan on building another one.

So kudos for wanting to read a good story, a tall tale or an educational volume. My heartfelt suggestion would be for you to learn the Dewey Decimal System, break out that Barnes & Noble Gift Card you got last Christmas, or perhaps find another friend who hasn't been shocked and scarred by the ever increasing space on his bookshelf.

However you get the book you want, I hope you enjoy your copy. I know I'll be enjoying mine.

Nous sommes à Paris

J'aimerais dire à l'inimaginable qui s'est passé. Mais malheureusement, il n'est pas inimaginable. Et c'est déjà arrivé.

Comme le monde en général, mon coeur se brise pour Paris ce soir. La violence insensée semble en quelque sorte plus offensive, plus vulgaire pour avoir passe dans un lieu aussi beaux et joyeux.

Nous allons tous être plus vigilants partout où nous allons maintenant, et le peu de paranoïa que nous portons avec nous d'hier de l'avant est malheureusement justifiée.

Mais nous, comme Paris, se poursuivront. L'image ci-dessus est un rallye après le massacre de Charlie Hebdo il y a dix mois. Parisiens la bravoure inspirer le monde entier. Et le message que la vie ne doit pas seulement être défendu pour mais vécu est celle que nous ne devons pas oublier.

Que Dieu bénisse les amis et les familles des victimes. Puissent-ils trouver le courage de continuer, et éventuellement retourner vivre dans leur paix Bienvenue Esprit.

Comme pour les auteurs, pendant qu'ils sont peut-être mortes estimant que leur récompense est en attente dans le ciel pour leur martyre, ils auront droit à une mauvaise surprise.

Parce que je pense que nous savons tous que le ciel n'est pas où ces bouchers vont.

Talking TED

Although I have almost 800 posts that might make you think otherwise, I actually have a lot of things to say about a variety of subjects - random though they may be.

Well thought out ideas. Inspirational, motivating stories based on my own experiences. And funny. I'm nothing if not funny.

Ask anyone who knows me - as well as anyone can know someone - and they'll tell you I like playing a big room. Plus thanks to serving a little time early on in the telemarketing industry ("Hi, my name is Jeff. How does two-weeks a year in a Peruvian timeshare sound?), I can rock a headset microphone like nobody's business.

I mention these things because they're all essential ingredients for giving TED Talks.

If you're not familiar with them, TED Talks are inspiring, enlightening, humorous and often surprising lectures on a variety of subjects. Everything from how to improve education, pancreatic cancer detection, how not to become an obsolete know-it-all (necessary viewing for creative directors) and many, many other topics.

I bring all this up because I'd like to take the stage and give a TED Talk. If not me, who? If not now, when? My 18-minute lecture would have a snappy title, like Say It With Cash or I'm Jewish-We Don't Do That.

The good news for me is I can actually be nominated to be a TED Talk speaker.

I'll bet you know what's coming next.

I'd like you, dear reader, to help me get a TED Talk of my own. You can go here to find out how to nominate me. I'm sure they get hundreds of nominations each year, but I'm not going to let a little thing like that stop me. As Han Solo put it so eloquently, "Never tell me the odds." Besides, if you do not play you cannot win.

So tell your friends, get out the vote and let TED know you'd like to hear what I have to say.

As long as the subject's not How To Make Money With Your Blog I think I'll be okay.

We're all freelancers

My friend, fellow blogger and dog-surfing instructor Rich Siegel – who runs Round Seventeen – put up a post today called Too Many Freelancers.

The gist of it is far too many of our staff brethren are packing it in for the seemingly greener, albeit much more competitive, grass of the freelance life, although not all of them are suited for it. Of course, he’s right.

But I’d like to offer another point of view. We’re all freelancers, whether we’re on staff or not.

It’s a quaint notion, a carryover from the Mad Men era, or a time you could work at IBM for forty-four years and have a nice pension at the end of it to see you through the rest of your days, that having a full-time gig at an ad agency somehow equals job security.

Ask the teams that work at Mitsubishi’s new agency every two years how secure their jobs are. The creative teams on Dell Computers can probably whip up a spreadsheet showing why that theory is wrong. Take a drive with the former creative director at Doner, Mazda’s old agency for thirteen years that created the Zoom Zoom campaign, and ask him how he feels about job security. The battlefield is littered with examples.

My point is we’re all just one agency review, one client loss, one new marketing director, one client’s wife’s opinion, one budget shift to digital, one creative director in a bad mood away from being shown the door.

Don’t get me wrong: I very much like the idea of job security. I also like the idea that I’m six-foot-two, a hundred eighty five pounds, totally ripped and get mistaken for Chris Hemsworth on a daily basis. But just because I like it don’t make it so.

The Round Seventeen post talks about Smiling and Dialing, Dry Spells and Making Nice, all daily chores freelancers are far too familiar with.

But they occur on the staff side as well.

Staffers get paranoid when it slows down, and try to look busy in case management is doing bed check. Not so much politically motivated as a survival strategy, staffers can be found making nice to people most in a position to turn the idea of job security into a reality. And day in and day out,the phone lines are always open to other agencies. Especially if an account's rumored to be shaky (SPOILER ALERT: They all are. Always).

So if you're on staff at an agency, thinking about making the leap to the freelance life, congratulations. You already did.

Revisionist history

With the number of revisions almost every project seems to go through now, it seems like clients are less interested in making the work better, and more interested in securing their place in the Guinness Book Of World Records.

To my colleagues in the creative department, this isn’t exactly breaking news. But what has changed is the sheer volume of revisions.

Where it once was a middle-management client trying to show how he made an invaluable contribution to the process by changing the copy from sometimes to always, it’s now evolved into a cage match to see who can initiate the most changes.

The other thing is there are now more layers than ever. There's lower-middle management. Middle-middle management. Upper-middle management. Lower-upper management, and so on. Everyone who comes in contact with the copy feels like it's in their job description to have an opinion. And of course we all know what opinions are like.

My friend Rich Siegel even paid homage to the practice of client revisions by naming his book and well-written blog Round Seventeen. Every time I see that name, all I do is wish seventeen was where the revisions stopped.

There's an old adage about clients getting the work they deserve. Or maybe it's just karma. Either way, never is that more true than when the project manager brings the deck back for revision 68 (yes, actual number).

I think I’ve posted this story before, but it’s worth posting again. One time Paul Keye, a Creative Director/Copywriter and President of his now legendary creative agency, the long gone Keye Donna Perlstein, was in a client meeting. As the client was carefully scrutinizing the copy, at one point he turned to Paul and said, “I think it would read better if we changed an to the." Seeing the reaction on Keye’s face, the client followed up with, “What can I say? I’m a frustrated copywriter.”

To which Paul Keye said, “No. I’m the frustrated copywriter. You’re an asshole."

It would all run a lot smoother if the people who had the final say had the final say the first time around. Sure, it'd mean the middle-management types would have to actually find other ways to justify their almost six-figure salaries, and titles like Assistant Vice President Of Enterprise Integrated Product Analytics & Corporate Audience Targeting.

But if they really wanted to look smart, they could do it by focusing more on their jobs and less on ours. Their job is to make sure the work is on strategy. It'd be a far better use of their time if they stuck to that. It'd also go a long way towards making their corporate overlords and the bottom line more successful.

And the agency less resentful.

License to killjoy

I don’t know whether to be shaken or stirred by this.

Daniel Craig is tired of playing James Bond on the big screen. And frankly, I couldn’t be happier. A little brushing up on my British accent and this could be my shot. I mean, if you’ve seen any of the movies you probably already know how similar Craig and I are built. When I saw him walk out of the ocean in Casino Royale it freaked me out. I thought I was looking in a mirror.

That sound you hear is my wife laughing hysterically.

Where was I? Oh yeah. So now, after four installments as agent 007 with a license to kill, Craig has naturally decided to bitch and moan about how tough it’s been. How rough it is making millions of dollars playing an iconic character in the most successful movie franchise of all time. Whining about how he’s been injured a couple times on set, and had to spend a few days in a five-star hospital in Monaco. Or the French Riviera. Or Geneva.

And having to cruise around in that Aston Martin DB10 take after take? Don’t get him started.

Here’s the thing: there isn’t a good-looking actor with a rented tux and a not half-bad English accent on earth who wouldn’t trade places with him in a heartbeat. Part of the problem is that Daniel Craig is too far removed from his waiting tables/starving actor days to remember that he’s won the golden ticket, the acting lottery. He doesn’t have to work for the rest of his life.

Unless he keeps making movies like Cowboys & Aliens. Then he might.

Craig isn’t the only actor with a sense of entitlement and a lack of gratitude. David Duchovny spent the last six years of X-Files telling anyone who’d listen how bored he was playing Fox Mulder. Then he had a few years employment on Californication (I’m still waiting to meet someone who actually watched that). But now that his career has cooled, he’s suddenly up for returning to the character that bored him so in the reboot of the X-Files, in the form of a miniseries, airing in January. I’m sure he suddenly realized there were many more facets of Mulder to delve into. That or it was the money. The truth is out there.

David Caruso, long rumored to be the angriest actor in Hollywood, literally walked off the set when his character made his final exit after the first season of NYPD Blue. Then a funny thing happened: no one would hire him. He made a couple of bad movies, then disappeared. Until CSI Miami came along to resurrect his career, he was nowhere to be found. And the only reason he was able to do that was because Caruso, still under contract to NYPD Blue producer Steven Bochco, needed his permission to do another series. In a magnanimous gesture proving Bochco is a far better person than I would've been, he gave it to him.

Katherin Heigl, Chevy Chase and even another Bond – Sean Connery, all decided to to jettison the roles that made them household names. Connery went on to further success in other roles. The other two, not so much. Although if Hollywood ever makes a movie called Box Office Poison, I think they have their co-stars.

I don’t believe in being beholden to something you did in the past. But there is such a thing as gratitude and humility at being given the chance. Neither Caruso, Craig or Heigl were anyone before those roles.

Also, the audience doesn’t really need to know how much Craig hates what he's doing. It’s a slap in the face, and it tarnishes all the goodwill built up over the last four films. I was extremely excited to see the new Bond film. But after hearing Craig’s comments, I’m less interested. I’ll get to it when I get to it.

The good news is the franchise has a built-in loyal fan base around the world, and will continue to be successful even without Craig.

Or as Hollywood calls him, Dr. No.

You're gonna need a bigger box

It never stops.

If you work in an ad agency, you know there's one thing people working there love to do more than anything. SPOILER ALERT: It's not creating ads.

It's complain.

Two disclaimers right off the top: first, there are plenty of valid things to complain about. Second, I've definitely contributed to the culture. I have a reserved seat on the complain bandwagon. Ok seat, could be closer. Armrests don't work as well as they should. More padding wouldn't hurt. SWIDT?

Ad agencies, while sometimes a hotbed of creativity, can also be an unrelenting cacophony (waited 780 posts to use that word) of privileged, overpaid people who have it good whining about how bad they have it. Cue the violins.

They work too hard. Nobody understands them. People just don't get it. The traffic sucks (well, that one's true). There are too many meetings (also true). They should be promoted. That guy should be fired. The food guy always has the same sandwiches. This isn't as fun as it used to be. This coffee is awful. They hated my ideas. They only had an hour forty five for lunch. They had to work the weekend. The client is an idiot.

I used to work with this art director who liked to quote an old boss of his. He used to say, "You get paid four-times what the average person makes. I expect you to work at least twice as hard."

It's like the kid who cried wolf, and keeps crying. At first it's deafening, then after awhile you don't even hear it anymore. Somebody call a waaaaaaaaambulance.

I know what you're thinking: who the hell are you and what've you done with Jeff? I get it. And I'll be the first to admit, for the second time, I'm as guilty as anyone else - it doesn't take much of a push to get me started. When the complaint wave hits, I want to hang ten just as much as anyone. But when I complain about work, at least somewhere far below the surface - in a quiet little voice only I hear - I'm at least grateful I have work to complain about.

As I crawl at a snail's pace into the office every day on the world's largest parking lot, the 405, I look around at the coffee grinders, rust buckets, rattletraps and jalopies slogging it out in the lanes next to me, and that same little voice tells me to be glad I have a really nice car to wait it out in.

In my experience, complaining about people is a useless exercise. I've found they're not changing on my account anytime soon, so I try not to let them get to me. I make an effort, often unsuccessful but at least I'm trying, to use a little grace in dealing with people I disagree with. And by disagree, I mean they're wrong. At the very least, even when that's true I go out of my way to try and treat them as I'd want to be treated.

Since every agency I work at has open floorplans, maybe the complaining just seems louder because it echoes off the polished concrete floors.

Don't get me started.

But it's become a runaway train. Everyone wonders why it's gotten so, so bad. It's like the person who crosses the middle of the street, gets mowed down by traffic (when it's moving), then denies their contribution to the accident.

My suggestion is we all - including myself - try to dial it down a bit, and focus on the more positive things about agencies (yes there are some) for awhile. Like the fact we don't work in the insurance business. What we do isn't exactly breaking rocks or digging ditches (although I've occasionally watched someone dig their own grave). And that paycheck, at almost every level, is at least twice the national average.

Maybe November will be the No-complaining month. Let's see how that works.

Of course, if you don't like that idea, by all means feel free to complain about it.