Lost weekend

It's all a blur.

I wish I could say it was because I spent 48 hrs. in Vegas, non-stop drinking and gambling, maybe taking in a few shows. But sadly, no.

This past weekend was a total loss because that cold, flu-y bug that's been taking no prisoners finally came a knockin' at my door. Well, it came knocking at my wife's door about a week ago, so I knew it was only a matter of time.

Hard to imagine, but I'm not as pleasant a patient as you might think. At the beginning I'm fine—the part where it looks like I can go on with my life and work through it without having to carry around a box of Kleenex. But once we move on to phase two, the sore throat, runny nose, coughing up all colors of the rainbow, sneezing and other sordid bodily adventures, I'm not good about it at all.

I get that no one likes being sick. I just think I hate it more than most people.

All weekend long, I was taking naps in between CNN repeating news about the groper-in-chief's middle east trip and The Aviator playing over and over on HBO.

The other thing I hate is that my normally marginal level of productivity is reduced even more (I know, how would you know), and every little thing seems to take its toll.

Sunday morning, after two days of sweating through a fever and hot weather, I thought a shower was in order, not just for me but as a public service to my family. They all said it would make me feel better. It didn't. While I was in the shower it felt great, and I was tricked into thinking I was refreshed and felt good enough to get a few things done.

Come to find out it was only one thing: make a beeline back to my bed and take another nap.

The older I get, the longer it takes to bounce back from anything: colds, flu, bad movies, the price of sushi. I hate being reminded of that.

But I know that this too will end. Being the considerate individual I am, and the fact I'm still under the weather, I've decided to stay home from work today (you're welcome co-workers) and take care of myself.

Tomorrow, hopefully, I'll be back at it: showered, rested and ready to be marginally productive.

Watered down

Like the lawn in a torrential downpour, or cocktails at the craps table in Las Vegas, ideas for Super Bowl spots from advertising agencies—like the people who create them—are often not what they start out to be.

For a lot of creatives, the Super Bowl spot is the Holy Grail, the pinnacle, the showcase where you can either make your mark and launch into a career arc filled with money, location shoots, media girls (another time) and a title too long to fit on the puny business cards you'll never carry.

Or it can be a spectacular flop seen by a billion people and sink you faster than the Quizno's Spongmonkeys—which by the way I think is awesome and one of my favorite commercials ever. Call me crazy, but I admire the bravery of it all. Just try not singing the tune after you've seen it.

I know, right?

Anyway, there are a few rules about the annual Super Bowl assignment that seem fairly universal no matter what agency you're at. First is the freelancer's spot never gets chosen, even if it does. No agency hands the biggest boondoggle and budget of the year to the freelancers to produce. And if their spot is picked, it's—take your pick: refined, evolved, massaged—just enough for them not to be able to claim it as their own.

Next, you would think that since the date of the Super Bowl is known over a year in advance, agencies would give themselves enough lead time to concept, sell and produce the spot they really want to make. Not so much. Virtually every agency starts working on their Super Bowl spot late in the game. Then it's a mad rush to meet the goal, with everyone hoping they don't fumble.

Ok, I'm done now.

Finally, just to prove God does have a sense of humor, it's almost always the team who couldn't care less about sports who has the winning spot. Then they have to go through the entire ordeal, pretending they're interested in the game and that they have a favorite team.

Sometimes, even though it's a score (sorry) to get your Super Bowl spot sold, it takes almost more than you can muster to get motivated to see it through.

But to quote Don Draper, "That's what the money's for."

A glowing recommendation

Summer's coming, and it's never too early to start planning that vacation.

Instead of dragging the kids to some boring, expected vacation destination with things to see and do, like Hawaii or New York, why not take them someplace they'll have memories of for a lifetime? Or a half-lifetime.

The Chornobyl Tour sounds like fun for the whole family. Just read all the glowing reviews.

Like me, I'll bet you have a lot of questions about it. I know what my first question would be, and I'm sure I know what yours is too. But—and this is the funny part—it's not the first question on the website's FAQs. That position belongs to this one about cost:

Even with the answer they give, they don't address the hidden costs. You know, things like replacement shoes, burn ointment, vomit bags—lots of vomit bags, toilet paper—lots of toilet paper, wigs and more. But I'm sure you find out about those soon enough. And as far as that top of mind question you were going to ask, don't worry, they do answer it somewhere around number 11 or 12.

Anyway, I think getting a taste of what the post-Apocalyptic landscape is like is a super idea, and especially timely now that the liar-in-chief is president and will probably nuke someplace just to distract us from the Russia story.

We'll be living in it before we know it.

Of course, Chornobyl is in Russia. So the good news is if we can wait just a bit, we'll be able to make reservations for the Precedential Suite in the new Chornobyl Trump Tower.

Don't worry about finding it. The sign is lit up around the clock.

The most important burrito of the day

One of the many benefits of being a freelancer, besides working at home in your underwear—and let's hope it's your underwear—and setting your own lunch break (mine is from noon to 4PM), is that the city is lousy with ad agencies you can choose to dial for dollars or actually work at.

It seems there are almost as many agencies as Starbucks. In fact, some of them are in Starbucks.

Anyway, when I have the luxury of deciding which ones I want to work for, there are several criteria I take into consideration before taking the gig.

First and most obvious is the caliber of the work. Is it smart, entertaining, memorable and effective. You know, like me.

Next, the caliber of people. Besides knowing what they're doing—which is far rarer than you think—are they people I want to work with, that I want with me in the trenches. I don't have to have drinks with them after work or share our deepest secrets, but I don't want to be stuck with people I can't stand for the length of the assignment.

Location, location, location. I've had offers from agencies in cities all over the place, for example New York, Detroit, San Francisco, San Diego and Bakersfield. Guess which one I said no to?

After all how many pickup trucks and country stations can a city boy take, amiright?

But it finally dawned on me there's another important factor to think about before making any employment decisions. Do they serve a breakfast burrito, and how good is it.

When I worked at Chiat, the breakfast burritos were exceptional. Dare I say even good enough to get me in to work early on occasion. Chiat has their own restaurant upstairs (note to all other agencies), so not only could I order a breakfast burrito, I could get it exactly the way I wanted it.

As an only child, having it the way I want it is something I just take for granted.

The agency I'm currently at serves breakfast to the employees once every couple weeks. Today was my lucky day—it happened to be breakfast burritos. They weren't bad, but they weren't custom either.

To make it easier, they color-coded the wrappers. The red was made with ham, the green with bacon and the black with no meat at all (that's just crazy talk).

They were cut in half like the picture, and there was hot sauce and sour cream in bowls next to them—that's about as customized as they got.

Still, since my agency's tsunami adjacent, I can look out the window at the ocean, or eat out on the patio and feel the breeze, and somehow it makes the burrito taste much better than it otherwise would.

What am I saying? Just that if you're serving a quality breakfast burrito, odds are you're going to attract a higher caliber of talent.

And if you have Taco Tuesdays, dammit, I'll sign on the line.

A pleasant run-in

Almost seven years ago, I wrote a post about running into people out of context. That is to say in an environment where you don't expect to see them. It's astonishing to me. Not running into people. The fact I've been cranking this thing out for seven years.

Anyway, running into someone I didn't expect to see happened to me again today.

As you may or may not know, the wife and I decided I should work the rest of my life to pay for the extensive kitchen, living room and bathroom remodel we currently have under way at the ponderosa. Contractors, subcontractors, city inspectors and assorted strangers come and go from our house from seven in the morning until four in the afternoon.

Our dogs hate it. But at least they're not paying for it, so quit your barking.

If you've ever done a remodel, which I hadn't until this one, you know part of the process is finding time to pick out accessories like faucets, drawer pulls and lighting. Which is how the wife and I happened to find ourselves on a Saturday afternoon date at Rejuvenation in Culver City, scoping out the many stylish, unexpected and just plain bitcin' lamps and lighting fixtures they have.

Wandering through the store, a little tired, a lot hungry and somewhat overwhelmed by all the choices, I was oblivious to other shoppers and designers-in-training circling my orbit. Then, out of nowhere, this guy walks by me, and slams into my shoulder as he passes.

There was plenty of room to get by. I'm not gonna lie, I was pissed. I turned around fast, ready to give this guy a piece of my hungry, tired, overwhelmed mind—even though if you ask anyone who knows me, they'll tell you it's something I can't afford to give away. When I did, I was met with a big smile on the face looking back at me.

It was my close personal friend Rich Siegel, Round Seventeen blogger extraordinaire and fourth place pole vault champion behind Denys Yurchenko at the Bejing Olympics.

To this day, I think Rich was robbed of the bronze.

Anyway, we introduced the wives, and chatted for a short bit. In our conversation we managed to trash open offices, throw shade on a creative director we both know and talk about the many benefits of freelance over staff positions.

Ad guys. Nothing if not predictable.

Afterwards, Rich and his wife went to Kohler to look at fixtures, toilets and sinks. My wife and I went to Father's Office and had one of their legendary burgers, along with a light citrus-y pale ale with a side of Spanish mushrooms. Spending money always works up a hearty appetite.

So as we continue our adventure shopping for the remodel, I'll be sure to keep my eyes open for Rich or anyone else I don't expect to see out in the real world.

Right after I'm done icing my shoulder.

Stuck in the middle with you

It's impressive to see the line of black, armor-shielded Chevy Suburbans (Made in America!) pull up to an event. Even if the person getting out is the so-called president and de facto racist, homophobe, misogynist, sexual predator, pathological liar, traitor and spokesperson for the white nationalist movement. And Satan.

Nonetheless, it is important that we, as Americans who love this country dearly, make sure he's greeted at each and every appearance in a way reflective and deserving of the class, elegance, judgment and maturity he brings to the most powerful office in the world. It's in that spirit I offer several examples of people giving what can only be called the most appropriate salutation for the man he is. If in fact he is a man. I hear things.

Anyway, you don't even have to see him in person to show him the respect he deserves. I give him this greeting every time I see his fat, orange face and whatever the fuck that is on his head on TV, magazine covers or in my nightmares.

Hold 'em firm and hold 'em high. This one's for you Donald.

Room to spare

Here's a lesson I learned early on: no matter how nice my room is, the producers' is nicer.

Years ago, I was in New York on a food shoot for Taco Bell. As anyone in advertising—and by anyone I mean copywriters—will tell you, it's essential to the process to have a copywriter on a food shoot. After all, those bagels on the craft services table aren't going to eat themselves.

Our producer happened to book us at one of my very favorite places to stay in New York, the Essex House on Central Park South.

He met us in the lobby, and before he got us checked in he handed us all envelopes full of cash, which was our "per diem", money to be used towards food, incidental items and other miscellaneous expenses. I looked in the envelope, and it was filled to overflowing with hundred-dollar bills. It was the kind of envelopes you see in the movies.

"Mr. Kensington appreciates you keeping this between us."

I couldn't have spent all the money in my envelope even if the shoot was two weeks, and even though it was New York. But God knows I tried.

I got up to my room, and I was amazed. I actually thought I was in the wrong room. It wasn't a room at all, but an enormous suite overlooking Central Park. The only thing better than enjoying New York on someone else's dime is enjoying it in style.

The little red light on the phone started blinking, and it was a message for the team to meet in our producers' room before we headed out. When we got to his room, I'd fully intended on thanking him for the spacious accommodations he'd somehow managed to arrange given the budget we had. I'm not sure I ever got that thank you out. When he opened the door, all I could see was a long, long hallway that we had to walk down before we even came into the room itself. Come to find out that for as nice as our rooms were, he hadn't skimped on himself. He booked a penthouse. My room looked like the maid's quarters by comparison. Don't get me wrong—I was mighty happy I had it as good as I did, but did he really need this palace all to himself?

Did I mention three bedrooms?

Anyway, I always have and always will love the Essex House, despite the fact it's been bought and sold about twenty times since this all happened (It's currently a Marriott, in case any of my close personal friends happen to work on that account). I'm trying to figure out a way to afford it on an upcoming trip to the city. It's been years, but maybe I'll call and drop the producer's name. No matter how many owners they've had, hotels have a way of remembering parties who book as many big rooms as we did.

Of course this time, it'll be on my dime.

On second thought, the maid's quarters will be just fine.