Family unties

In his most recent Ad Contrarian newsletter (which you can and should subscribe to here), the great Bob Hoffman says, “Anytime you see the word journey you know you’re in for some massive bullshit.”

The same can be said anytime your employer calls a town hall meeting—inevitably at the most inconvenient time—either in the lobby or on Zoom to tell the underpaid, overworked staff they’re more than just employees working for the man: they’re family.

While this point of view occurs at client side companies I've worked at, I've heard it from literally every agency I've ever been at. For some reason, the commeraderie and casual environment, combined with the rapid-fire wit and intelligence that pervades agency hallways and open office seating is frequently mistaken by leadership for a bond and allegiance that extends beyond the paycheck.

Clearly family means different things to leadership than it does to say Merriam Webster, who defines it as a group of people who live together, or one that is similar to another related by blood, marriage, law, custom or members of one’s intimate social group.

Some greeting card companies and inspirational posters (with and without kittens) define family as people in your life who want you in theirs. The ones who accept you for who you are. Love you no matter what, and would do anything to see you smile.

When was the last time an agency gave a rat’s ass about you smiling?

The truth is when agencies and companies talk about family, it’s more along the lines of the Sopranos. As long as you’re making them money, you’re part of the family. But the minute you’re not, or decide to leave, you're dead to them.

I worked for a company for two years. A lot of that time was spent writing about their core values, with emphasis on how they cared for their employees and considered them *checks notes* family. When I gave notice, I wanted to meet with the VP of Marketing to thank him for everything. Two meetings were scheduled, two meetings were cancelled. I wrote him a nice, personal email afterwards. Never heard back.

From the minute he heard I was going, as far as he was concerned I was gone. And it was a really nice email. Oh well.

When I worked at an agency that shall go nameless—as all agencies within walking distance of the beach, Sancho's Tacos and Pacific City should—they unexpectedly and unceremoniously let a group creative director go who, unlike the executive creative director that tied the can to him, was extremely popular and well liked. True to form, it happened Sopranos style: he went out to lunch and never came back. The next day, the executive creative director sent out a bullshit email condescendingly explaining how these things happen, and we're all still family and we'll get past this sad day together.

He didn't even work up a sweat shoveling that hard.

All this is to give you an important safety tip—don't cross the streams. Work is work, and family is family.

It's easy to tell the difference. Real family doesn't need a town hall to tell you who they are.

Thumbs down

A lot of people have been asking how my social media cleanse is going. At least I think they have. I can’t go online so I don’t actually know.

I’ve been at it, or not at it, for five days now and I have to say it’s going pretty well. But it’s a lot harder than I thought it’d be.

Clearly I was much more addicted to making snarky comments, pithy observations, endless and endlessly deserved Cadet Bone Spurs bashing, posting Tweets I thought were funny, clever memes, pictures of Ace and Lucy (world's greatest dogs), being the first to break news about recently departed public figures and celebrities, and racking up the likes than I thought I was.

It is nice to give the old scrolling thumb a rest. It’s also nice to reclaim time in the mornings and evenings to make a dent on that stack of new books piling up on my nightstand, continue bingeing The Sopranos and getting to bed earlier so there’s more night to wake up in the middle of.

At least now when I’m up in the night I’m not reaching for the phone.

The other frustrating thing is, to paraphrase Steve McCroskey, it looks like I picked the wrong week to quit social media.

What with the search at Mar-A-Lago, Cadet Bone Spurs taking the fifth over four-hundred times in his New York trial, Republicans losing what little was left of their conspiracy-theorin', propaganda-believin', election-denyin', Nazi-lovin', cult-joinin' minds over everything even more than usual, I can only imagine the cleverness, wit and belly laughs I'd be contributing as well as appreciating on social media right now.

I did make a minor modification in my program. Originally I was going to delete the social media apps from my phone. But I've discovered it's easier to reload the apps than it is to log back on once I've logged out. So the apps remain, but I'm logged out of all of them. And honestly, with my fat fingers and bad eyesight, logging in is much more of a challenge than I'm looking for right now.

Of course I am getting a low level thrill from the fact that, as promised, I’ll at least get to do a quick breaking and entering to put up my Rotation and Balance posts. Don’t worry, there’ll be no cheating.

Log in. Post. Log out. No one gets hurt. I won't even stick around or check back to see if anyone gives me any likes.

At least there’s light at the end of the tunnel. This trial run is only going to be somewhere between three weeks and a month, and then I’ll reassess my scrolling ways.

Like losing weight, exercising more and paying for an upcoming wedding, I’m sure this will get easier.

On second thought, those might not be the best examples.

Reclaiming my time

If you know anything about me, and if you don’t by now you have no one but yourself to blame, you know that for the most part, in life and online, I'm a social butterfly. I comment, I post, I joke, I engage.

What I also do is scroll, sometimes doomscroll, first thing when I get up and last thing before I go to bed. If I'm up in the middle of the night—did I say if? I meant when—I also take a look at what I might’ve missed since I went to bed.

I’ve spent too many hours, way too many hours, going down a YouTube rabbit hole. And even though I’ve now seen every version in existence of Springsteen singing Twist & Shout, all the Breaking Bad and Friends blooper reels and discovered some of my favorite artists I wouldn’t have known about otherwise (Paul Thorn, John Moreland), I’m not getting those hours back.

So I’m reclaiming my time. I’m going on a social media cleanse for a bit, and see if I can’t put that reclaimed time to better use. SPOILER ALERT: I know I can.

I have close friends who've found themselves in Facebook jail for thirty days, and at first it sounded awful. But right now, honestly, no Facebook for thirty days sounds like heaven.

My friend and great writer Kathy Hepinstall, who's probably written another book in the time it's taken you to read this sentence, signed off of Facebook for good awhile ago. I didn't get it then, but now I recognize that, as usual, she was ahead of her time.

The first step will be to delete the Facebook, Messenger, Twitter and Instagram apps from my phone. I'm all about easy, but if I want back on I'm going to make myself work for it. And I'm not looking for more work.

As much as I'd like it to be, it won’t be an entirely cold turkey withdrawal. I'll still post the occasional link to my Rotation and Balance blogpost, but only because my seven readers demand it. What I won't do is sneak back on to see how many people liked it, cause seriously, where's the percentage in that?

Because I do what I do for a living, I’m expected to maintain a certain level of social media awareness. So occasionally I'll look but not comment. I’ll be stealthy, ninja-like and silent—just like you wish I was in real life.

You won’t even know I’m there. And I won’t be unless my job absolutely requires me to take a look.

I realize this is going to put a big dent in my wishing you a happy birthday/happy anniversary game, but it's the price I'll have to pay. And just to make sure I don't miss yours, happy birthday and happy anniversary in advance.

One of my best friends since elementary school has never been on Facebook. Never had an account, never logged on. I asked him about it one time, and he said, “Don’t worry, I’ll be your friend in real life.”

So, if you need to get hold of me, you can always text or email. We can even set up a time to have a meal, face-to-face. I realize you'll have to change out of pajamas to meet me, but that's just the price of being my friend.

Anyway, not a total goodbye to social media, just so long for now.

And of course, like a wise man once told me, I'll still be your friend in real life.

Say no to NOPE

Here’s the obligatory SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t seen the movie NOPE, there are things in this post that will spoil some of the surprises in the film. Consider yourself warned.

I’m a great audience. Really, the kind filmmakers dream about. I go into comedies wanting to laugh, I go into suspense and horror films wanting to be nervous and scared—even more so than I am in real life—and I go into love stories wanting to fall in love all over again.

I’m easy that way. And other ways. For another post.

The point is when I went to see NOPE, I was ready to be scared and surprised. After all, I loved Jordan Peele’s directorial debut GET OUT, liked but less so his follow up US, and was ready to enjoy his latest offering.

Come to find out the biggest surprise was how disappointing the movie is.

It’s hard to write about it because even though I said SPOILER ALERT at the top—remember way back then—I don’t want to spoil too much if you’re planning to see it even after this review.

Jordan Peele is a massively skilled writer, director and visual artist. There are sequences stunning in their staging, and for the most part he doesn’t fall into horror film tropes like jump scares—for example the bathroom mirror being closed revealing someone, or something, behind it.

For the most part.

I understand Peele is going for symbolism and using the premise as metaphor for a broader message. But the screenplay is unfortunately so jumbled, and trying to convey several messages, it's unclear exactly what the story is supposed to represent or add up to at the end of it all. For me, there was absolutely no emotional attachement to any of the characters, with the possible exception of being afraid for the actors in the scenes with a chimpanzee that I'll talk about in a minute.

I know I like Daniel Kaluuya, who also starred in Peele's GET OUT. But here, he appears to be sleepwalking through most of the film, especially in his scenes with Keke Palmer who single handedly provides the jolt of energy, humor and liveliness missing from the other performances. You can even see it in the trailer:

The main story revolves around the first black Hollywood horse wrangling family, and a flying saucer that visits them to maybe devour them? Take them to the planet from whence it came? Stop by for a spot of tea? Never really clear where it's from or why it’s there other than to hide in a cloud that doesn’t move, and come roaring out once in awhile so the sound design department has something to do.

Steven Yuen is also in the movie, and there’s a backstory to him about being a child star on a sitcom with a chimpanzee as his co-star. There are flashbacks to this, and a horrific incident with the chimp that's without a doubt the genuinely truly scariest thing in the whole film. But sadly the entire sequence is only about five minutes total of a two-hour, eleven-minute film.

And as long as I’m picking at the bones, I know I said Peele is a great visual artist. Which is why it’s so baffling near the end of the movie, the flying sauce which had looked like a solid object earlier transforms into something like a king-size sheet caught in the wind, rippling through the sky trying to be scary.

NOPE has been getting mixed reviews, with an 81% Fresh from critics and 69% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. My feeling is Jordan Peele is experiencing what I like to call the M. Night Shyamalan effect. That is to say he's the recipient of a great deal of residual goodwill from his awesome first film, making people show more restraint when it comes to being as honest about his follow up efforts as they might want to be.

It’s probably worth a viewing once it comes on the streamer of your choice, if only for the two horrifying scenes with the chimpanzee. In the comfort of your home, with some Ruffles and onion dip at the ready, and the ability to stand up every once in a while.

But as far as spending money to see it in the theater, paying the concession stand and parking tax, and not be able to stand up for over two hours?

I can sum up my answer in one word.

The Lesson

I’m a terrible person. No, really.

I know, you beg to differ. To you, I’m just the handsomest best friend you could have, wildly funny, an unfairly talented writer, a great listener, a shoulder to cry on, generous to a fault, someone whose name appears in the Thank You/Acknowledgement sections of almost all the books my friends have written, a dependable source of Breaking Bad trivia and a dispenser of sage advice.

The only things I’m not are a ride to the airport, someone who’ll help you move or a guard dog for your laptop at Starbucks.

But despite all my many good qualities, I’ll say it again. I’m a terrible person.

Here’s why, and please pardon the abrupt shift in tone but the situation calls for it.

This past Saturday morning, the wife and I woke up to a fire truck and an ambulance at our neighbor Suzie’s house directly across the street from us. Naturally we were hoping everything was alright, but were curious what was happening.

We didn’t have the kind of relationship with Suzie where we’d be comfortable going over to ask what was going on. She’d moved in about eighteen months ago, and had been redoing her house for that entire time. Contractors coming and going from the house were just something we got used to, as was the shortage of street parking.

We’d met Suzie when she initially moved in, but hadn’t spoken to her hardly at all since. She was noticeably standoffish, not just with us but with other neighbors as well.

The prior owner of the house, Bob, had been a magnificent gardener. The front lawn was always impeccably kept, and beautiful rose buses adorned the yard. Since we looked directly at the house, we appreciated waking up to that view for years.

But since Suzie had bought the place, the front yard had gone to hell. The lawn was overgrown and underwatered, and the rose bushes were being given last rites.

And of course me, who can kill a plant just by being in the same room with it, never missed a chance to comment on her lack of gardening skills or her less than sparkling personality.

The ambulance was there for Suzie. I saw her wheeled out on the gurney, intubated and unconscious. She died a day later.

Yesterday I saw a truck in the driveway, and a woman going in and out of the house. I went across the street, introduced myself and asked what had happened. She told me Suzie had passed. She’d fought cancer for the past twenty-one years, and had been diagnosed with leukemia not that long ago, and was on some industrial strength chemo that apparently was too much for her body to take.

Her friend, who had known her for sixty years, went on to tell me what a welcoming person Suzie was, and how she worried about seeming so standoffish. She didn’t want people too close to her because of the chemo and her weakened immune system.

She also let me know how awful Suzie felt about the appearance of the front yard—how’d she’d wanted it to be beautiful not just for her, but also for the neighbors. She was just too weak to give it the attention it needed.

After a bit more conversation, she told me the house will be sold. In the meantime, the wife and I are going to have our gardner go over there and restore the front yard so it looks presentable and like someone still lives there.

I know it’s a new-agey kind of sentiment usually found on inspirational posters and those square day-at-a-time calendars Barnes & Noble sells at Christmas. And in a world seemingly fueled by judgement and hatred, it seems an impossibly quaint notion.

But none of that makes it any less true. It’s the lesson I have to keep learning. A little more kindness and a lot less judgement would make this world a far better place.

Not to mention me a better person.

Rest in peace Suzie.

The new GQP mascot

Why doesn't the GQP just get it over with already.

It's long past time to stop insulting the image of the gentle, majestic elephant by using it as a symbol for an insurrectionist party made up of spineless, ass-kissing, backward-looking, boot-licking cowards.

"C'mon Jeff, tell us how you really feel."

It's not hard to recognize they've never been ones for accuracy or truth, but you'd think they'd really like to have something more representative of their true character to put on their Made In China red caps and Let's Go Brandon t-shirts.

And what could be better than a mascot that universally represents the total absence of courage.

Today's GQP lives their sad, fearful little lives scared of everything good, right, fair and just. To name a few: women's rights. LGBTQ rights. Gay marriage. Gun control. Universal healthcare. NATO. Ukraine. Abortion rights. Voter rights. BLM. Police reform. Truth. Facts—real ones, not the alternative kind.

The list goes on longer than one of Moscow Mitch's floor speeches.

Seriously, the best thing they could do is reposition themselves as what they've always been: the party of people your parents warned you about becoming. After all does anyone really want to grow up to be Ted Cruz? Jim Jordan? Cadet Bone Spurs? Lindsey Graham? John Cornyn? Tom Cotton? Lauren Bobert? Marjorie Taylor Greene? It doesn't matter. Insert any Republican politician name here (with the exception of Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, for the moment).

I will admit one thing the GQP does exceedingly well. They confirm the obvious to anyone watching.

That besides courage, they're also missing a heart and a brain.

Encore post: One for Father's Day

I first posted this piece about 7 years ago. The kids sure don't look like this anymore, and I'm certain that beautiful pooch has crossed over the Rainbow Bridge by now.

Be that as it may, the essence of the words are the same.

It's hard not to feel like my life is becoming a Harry Chapin song, especially now that they have successful, happy lives of their own in progress.

But damn if they don't love their old man. When they were young, I used to ask them, "What's the one thing you know for sure?" And their answer would be, "That you love me."

Now that I think about it, some things never change. Happy Father's Day.

They don't look like this anymore. I don't know about the dog. He might if he's still around.

The thing about being a parent is that, as time goes on, I begin to realize all the clichés come true. How fast it goes. How fleeting it is. How one day they're riding tricycles, and the next they' re driving my car (with the same lead foot they must've inherited from their mother). One minute I'm driving them to kindergarten, the next they're off to college.

Father's Day isn't the only time I ponder these thoughts, but it hits a little harder today for some reason.

Here's the thing: I won the kid lottery. I look around at some of our friends' kids - who shall go nameless - and all I can think about is how fast I would've left them on the steps at the firehouse. Don't look so surprised. Think about some of your friends' kids and tell me I'm wrong.

I have two beautiful, smart, funny kids who still kiss their parents goodnight no matter what time they get home. We tell each other how much we love each other all the time. Their pain is my pain, and their joy is my joy. Their successes are my pride, and their failures are my heartache. There's nothing in the world I wouldn't do for them, with the possible exception of loaning them my American Express card.

Bill Murray put it best in Lost In Translation: "It's the most terrifying day of your life the day the first one is born. Your life, as you know it, is gone, never to return. But they learn how to walk and they learn how to talk, and you want to be with them. And they turn out to be the most delightful people you'll ever meet in your life."

Anyway, the days' activities will be getting under way any minute. I know they'll be giving me cards and a few gifts today (new Stephen King book, hello?), and I have a sneaking suspicion the family's going to hijack me to my favorite breakfast place (it's the Coffee Cup Cafe in case you get the urge to treat me sometime).

Whatever they have in store for me this Father's Day, I want them to know the very best gift they can give me, the one I'll never get tired of, the one I want most, the one I'll always want, is more time with them.

So maybe take the tie back.