Bringing home the bacon

I've never made any secret about it: I'm a devout believer that bacon makes everything better. In fact, a little over eight years ago I wrote this post about it. Can you believe it?

Not that I wrote about bacon. That I've been cranking out this crap over eight years.

Anyway, I've never been a fan of Dunkin' Donuts. Not because I don't like them, but because the one near my house is in a weird intersection that's impossible to get to. I'm all about easy. But their newest item might just be the thing to get me to go around the block, down several one-way streets and edge my way out onto the demolition derby traffic on 7th Street to get to their store.

And it's not even a donut. It's their new Snackin' Bacon. Mmmmmmm. Bacon.

I'm surprised it's not some newfangled donut variety, or a new blend of their legendary coffee. Obviously the fine sugar-coated, donut gourmet chefs at the DD R&D labs (that's a lot of D's - just like my high school report card) have seriously outdone themselves by coming up with this proprietary recipe.

I'm pretty sure I've cracked the code. Stay with me here: it's a bag, filled with bacon. Genius.

I can see where some might say that, new product wise, they just gave up and took the easy way out. I say they took the brilliant way out.

Next time you run into me at Dunkin' Donuts and see me standing there staring up at the menu board with a glazed look in my eyes, you'll know it's not because of the donuts.

The not-so-great debate

Because I'm a glutton for punishment—and a fan of classic comedy—I watched the 10th Democratic Debate tonight. And just like the last one, it was a tough room.

It's sad and funny to watch everyone come undone as it gets closer to the South Carolina primary, and then the 14-state super Tuesday a week from today.

Here's where I come out on it. I'm not a Bernie bro, and frankly he reminds me of too many loud uncles to get my vote. At this point I can't tell if he's pointing, waving or signing. I actually think, while I agree with and support many of his positions, he gives moderates in both parties too much ammunition not to vote for him.

I've always liked Pete Buttigieg. He's level, scary smart, articulate. And he doesn't point. I like his platform of inclusiveness. And I like the idea of someone unflappable, who's had military experience and can understand what it's like to be discriminated against just for who you are. He seems like a healer to me.

I like Elizabeth Warren, but frankly there was an air of desperation to her performance tonight. I kept thinking of Springsteen's song "Glory Days" because it just felt like she was trying to get back the unbelievably great mojo she had going in the last debate. She's got a plan, and I admire that. I hope she can stay in it long enough to get her message out.

I think Joe is a decent guy, but he just feels tired to me. And I don't know if Medicare covers hearing aids, but he should look into it. It's like he's in a yelling contest with Bernie. SPOILER ALERT: That's another thing he'll lose.

Amy Klobuchar is as dead center as you can get. I believe she'll have a seat at the table, but I don't think she'll be the nominee. I was betting we were going to escape without hearing about her uncle working in the mines. I lost the bet.

I don't think Tom Steyer has a billionaire's chance in hell, but I am liking him more and more. Saw his CNN Town Hall last night and was impressed. I'd peg him for Secretary of the Interior.

Finally we come to Bloomberg. I can't stand him. I see his commercials in my nightmares. If he was really that concerned, he'd stop running for President and channel his money into down ballot Senate seats.And the way the audience cheered his talking points, I'll swear he had paid ringers in there. Especially after the way Warren eviscerated him last time. Also, his jokes are as bad as his policies.

So now that we're in the first final stretch, they're all yelling and screaming over each other, and it looks more like a pie fight than a debate. But someone will emerge eventually, and then it'll be that person vs. the unstable genius/liar-in-chief.

I don't know who'll it'll be. I hope it's Pete. But I do know this much—whoever it is, they have my total support.

ENCORE POST: Mr. Tee

Today is Presidents Day. And since it's a holiday, I decided to repost this piece as opposed to writing an entirely new one.

I'm doing it because I want to observe the holiday properly. Because I want to use the day to spend time with my family. And mainly because I couldn't think of anything new to write about.

I admit it's the easy way out. But if you know anything about me—and you should know almost everything by now—you know I'm all about easy.

Enough chit-chat. This post has everything: Friendship. Drama. Vegas. Rewritten parts. Spelling errors. Ready? Please to enjoy.

A few years ago, I was looking for something I could do to add on to the monumental fortune I've made in advertising. Preferably something not involving monster egos, all-night work sessions, talking to account planners and unimaginably bad pizza.

So my close friend and art director extraordinaire Kurt Brushwyler and I kicked around escape plans for a while, and came up with a business idea we could both get behind: t-shirts.

Alright, so it wasn't the most original idea. But we were going to do it in a way that managed to combine two things we loved: t-shirts and Vegas.

I forget the name of it, but for a while there was a little newsletter/brochure you could pick up at any restaurant, usually near the restrooms by the sponsored post card rack and outdated copies of the L.A. Weekly. It listed all kinds of bizarre classes that not only reinforced every stereotype about L.A., but also that no legitimate institution of learning would ever offer.

One of them was How To Get Into The T-Shirt Industry. Coincidence? I think not.

So one night after a long day freelancing at Chiat (is there any other kind?), Kurt and I hopped in his Prius and drove over to the world-famous, two-star Marina Del Rey Marriott for a three-hour class taught by guys who'd hit it big making t-shirts and selling them to Paris Hilton for $95 a piece at Kitson.

It was actually an interesting and educational evening. Needless to say the part about having to go to Vegas to hawk our wares at the Magic Fashion Convention was quite appealing.

Our master plan was to get those cart/kiosk things you see in the main promenade of The Forum Shops at Caesar's and sell the t-shirts off of them. It was going to be our test run. If they did well, we'd approach each of the casinos and holding companies about making exclusive t-shirts for their gift shops, with funny lines tailored specifically for each hotel.

I wrote about a couple hundred Vegas/hotel lines, and Kurt started working on designs for them. It was ours, and it was fun.

Right up until I called The Forum Shops to find out about the carts. Come to find out - and if I'd thought about it for a second I would've realized it - that Caesar's owned all the carts in their mall. They didn't rent them to outside vendors.

But since we both come from advertising, and are used to rejection, adversity, broken dreams and plans going awry on a daily basis, we knew exactly how to handle the situation.

We gave up.

Every once in awhile, when I talk to Kurt or we get together, we kick around rebooting the idea. But then we move on to more important things, like which sushi place to go to for lunch.

We still own the URL we came up with (no, I'm not saying it here just in case...) and still have the lines. Plus there are a whole slew of casinos that weren't there the first time around we could approach. So I'm not ruling anything out—we might come back to the idea at some point.

All I know for sure is if we do, there'll definitely be a lot of research involved.

My high school girlfriend

If you know me, or follow this blog regularly—and if you do someone really should show you what a library looks like—you know once I get hold of a joke I like I hang on tight and ride it straight into the ground.

Now normally, after that last sentence, I'd follow it up with "Just like my high school girlfriend." It's my version of “That’s what she said” —an easy joke I've used numerous times in more posts than I can count. And I'm sure more posts than you wanted.

The good news is I'll be retiring that joke for awhile. The bad news is the reason why.

Yesterday I happened to be thinking about my actual high school girlfriend Sandy. She was never the one I referred to in the joke. In fact I never had a specific person in mind—it was just a funny line I could use over and over. And over.

Anyway, when I went to the Google to look up Sandy, what came up wasn't her Facebook profile or her Twitter account. The first thing I saw was her obituary. Turns out she passed away unexpectedly back in October. And even though I hadn't spoken with her in decades, it was still a gut punch that hit me like a ton of bricks.

I remember a few years after we broke up, we wound up getting together for a mini-reunion to catch up with each other's lives. What I found out was that Sandy had a very tough go of it in the years since I'd seen her. She'd had problems with drugs, which I knew she'd dabbled with in high school. She'd gotten married, but her husband was in prison for armed robbery, caught by undercover cops in the middle of a drug deal. And, while she was trying to figure her life out, she was back working at the same dead end data entry job for a car leasing company she'd had in high school.

According to the obituary, she moved to Florida in 2006, and had been working in the mortgage industry for Bank of America. Apparently she was a fairly high-ranking banking officer there. She’d also become a hardcore animal rights activist, and had eight dogs, a snake and an iguana—all of them rescues.

It was nice to read that in the years in between, Sandy seemed to have turned her life around and become an accomplished professional. I hope she was a happy one.

So again, I'm retiring the "high school girlfriend" joke for awhile. While it was never about her, now I can’t say it without thinking of her, even though I know she'd appreciate it. Hey, funny then, funny now.

Besides, that line's not the real joke. The real joke is thinking people who were once special to you will always be around. The punchline is they won't.

God bless you Sandy. You meant the world to me and you'll be in my heart forever. Rest in peace.

Bed check

I'm not a scientist. And I'm not particularly well versed in the theory of time and space. But after years working in them, I can definitely tell you that time in advertising agency creative departments is a relative thing.

One of the beauties of it is that it's not as structured as other occupations. Creatives usually roll into the office between 9 and 10, and roll out when their work is done—whenever that happens to be. Or not.

Creatives tend to have a tough time shutting down the production line when it comes to thinking of ideas. And even if we make a concerted effort, the ideas just have a way of breaking through.

At the stroke of midnight. In the shower. On weekends. During holidays. At weddings. In the middle of funerals. Almost anywhere, the wheels are always turning. That's because the wheels don't punch a time clock, and they don't always turn as well with all the distractions of the open floorplan office. Don't get me started.

Apparently management at the last agency I worked at wasn't quite in sync with the creative process and the irregular hours it involves. So they did bed check on our group in the morning and late afternoon. One or two people would casually stroll through the office, acting as inconspicuously as possible with their heads swiveling from side to side and a notepad in their hands. Without regard to whether people were at the client, in a meeting, at lunch, working from home or just in the bathroom, they'd tally up the empty desks and report back to headquarters.

My creative director made a point of bringing it up in one of the creative meetings we'd have every few weeks where all the teams would gather to, you know, catch up and be family. Agencies are very big on being family.

The way these meetings usually went is everyone would gather at a long table in the conference room, then be encouraged to talk about how their day was going. What they were working on. Or vent about anything that was bothering them.

What was bothering most of us were these damn meetings.

The creative director said he was taking a lot of heat about the empty desks the management spies saw during bed check. To which I say if you can't take the heat...

Anyway, he made a point of saying he didn't care if we were there or not, as long as the work got done. (Hear that buzzing sound? That's the needle on the lie detector going into the red).

The upshot of it all was that for about three days after, people dragged themselves in at the expected hours, the ones we were reminded were the regular business hours as listed in the employee handbook. But to no one's surprise, the handbook wasn't a bestseller in the creative department. Within days everyone was back on creative standard time.

I think as long as the work gets done, you're available somehow when people need you, it really doesn't matter where the magic happens. There are any number of technologies that make it easy to be on the job without being at the job. And any number of coffee shops with free wifi.

Plus no one's doing bed check at Starbucks.

About last night

When it comes to the Academy Awards, I'm like Charlie Brown with the football. Every year I think they'll get it right, and the show will move at a fast clip and be at least half as entertaining as movies they're honoring.

Needless to say, it never turns out that way.

The good news is last night's Oscars clocked in at only three and a half hours—a good fifty-three minutes shorter than the longest show ever, hosted by Whoopi Goldberg back in aught-two.

The bad news is it felt like it went on forever.

In no particular order, and even though absolutely no one asked for it, here are a few things I liked and didn't like about the show.

Liked Brad Pitt winning and his speech. Funny, humble, genuine. Plus he took a shot at the GOP, so always a plus in my book. And I loved the line about riding Leo's coattails.

Loved that Renee Zellweger won. From the minute I saw Judy, I knew the award was hers. She rambled on a bit too long in her acceptance speech, but the Texas twang she tried not-so-hard to hide was pretty charming.

Loved Steve Martin and Chris Rock. After the Kevin Hart debacle last year the producers started doing the show without a host of record, but Martin and Rock were very host like. And very funny. They'd be perfect non-hosts for next year.

Loved that Parasite swept the big categories. It's a great film and well deserved, even if it did beat out JoJo Rabbit—my personal favorite.

Speaking of JoJo Rabbit, loved that director Taika Waititi went home with an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. I hope that helped make up for his movie being nominated for Best Picture without him getting a Best Director nomination.

Without a doubt, for me the standout moment of the night was director Bong Joon Ho—in the middle of his acceptance speech for Best Director—paying tribute to Martin Scorsese. And then Scorcese getting a standing ovation. It was heartfelt, spontaneous and genuine. It brought me to tears, and almost did the same for Scorcese.

Hated Eminem performing Lose Yourself. Sure it won Best Original Song—seventeen years ago. It had no relevance at all to the proceedings, and seemed to cause more confusion than entertainment.

Still undecided about James Corden and Rebel Wilson in their Cats costumes to present the Best Visual Effects award. I like that they were trashing the movie in a funny way, but I thought it went on a bit too long.

Liked Joaquin Phoenix winning Best Actor. Didn't like that it was for Joker, which I thought was a terrible movie. Yes he was good, but he has so many great performances he could've won it for before this.

Didn't like the way it ended or how Jane Fonda wrapped it up. At least I think it was Jane Fonda. It looked more like Katherine Helmond in Brazil. Anyhow, it seemed awfully abrupt and not well thought out.

On the bright side, after three and a half hours there was no risk of leaving anyone wanting more.

Agency opening ceremonies

Next time someone at your agency starts yapping about team players, and trust me, someone always does, tell them to put their uniforms and flags where their mouth is.

In just a few months, the 2020 summer Olympics in Tokyo will be upon us. Because the Olympic committee didn't ask me when they should schedule the games, they happen to start around the same time I'll be in San Diego for this year's Comic Con, so you can let me know how many gold medals we won later.

Sitting here, eating onion rings and a tuna melt—as the best athletes do—and thinking about the upcoming Olympic opening ceremonies, it occurs to me what all those team player loving agency big wigs should do. Every morning, after their warmup stretches and carb-loading, they should lead their various agency delegations into the office in an inspiring, heartwarming, intricately choreographed display of unity called the Parade Of Work™.

Instead of flags, they'd have copies of agency work carried in on poles, blowing aimlessly in the wind—which coincidentally is where you find a lot of it anyway.

People in each department would be broken into teams: instead of luge, cross-country skiing and bobsled, there would be digital. Social. Brand. Retail. CRM. All marching proudly into their open office spaces.

Of course before any of this could happen, the agency would have to devote more than a few non-billable hours to coming up with team uniforms for each division. Not sure exactly what they'd come up with, but I imagine there wouldn't be any shortage of knit caps, torn jeans, off-brand sneakers and my personal favorite, black t-shirts with the agency logo front and center.

The good news is players wouldn't be bothered with oppressive rules like no beards, tattoos, open-toed shoes or friendship bracelets. There wouldn't be anyone left if they were.

And as they get ready to start each day, the team captains would make it a point to remind them about the importance of staying focused, working as a team and good sportsmanship. That and, contrary to what they may believe, it's just advertising.

Not the Hunger Games.