Job Security

The ad agency I'm freelancing at, like every ad agency, has lots of nice, shiny things lying all around the office.

Laptops. Monitors. DVD players. Speakers. Headphones. iPads. iPods. Cameras. Things like that. Tools of the trade.

There are also the things people who work there bring in and leave in plain sight.

Family pictures in pricey frames. Open, wide open, purses casually tossed on to a desk or the floor. Giant backpacks, filled with all kinds of confidential information and personal I.D. in virtually every one of the 67 zippered pockets.

All things thieves looking for a quick, easy score are drawn to.

There are security cameras throughout the agency. Everywhere you look, they're looking back. It's like being at Macy's. Or the casino at the Bellagio.

The eyes in the sky are supposed to provide a sense of security. After all, they're for our protection. But no matter how hard I try, I can't shake the feeling there's something a little more sinister at play.

For example, the camera outside the bathrooms. Really? Even though people going in say they're going to take something, usually what they do is leave something. I wonder exactly what the company thinks is going to get stolen out of the men's room.

Or the one hiding in the corner of the tiny kitchen that's aimed at the cabinets. Just try and make off with those decaf packets that don't work on any other machine. In. The. World.

I'm usually extremely slow to jump on the conspiracy theory bandwagon. But here's what I think: the cameras are there to keep tabs on us.

Being placed where they are, whoever is monitoring them can see how much time we spend in the bathroom. Or the coffee room. (I suppose if you spent less time in one you'd spend less time in the other).

It's not as if we're in an office you can easily stroll through. You need a roadmap and an experienced tracker to find the front door and elevator. Once you're there, you have to have a key card to ride up the elevator and get in and out of the office. And the stairwells. And the parking lot. Our office is spread across three buildings. You can't get from one to the other without the card.

And while nothing's impossible, it's just not an easy place for someone to get into unnoticed and stroll through stealing things.

The cameras are an additional layer of security, but the layering is suspiciously thick. There are more cameras than there are points of entry.

There's something murkier at play here.

Don't get me wrong. If my laptop ever goes missing, I'd definitely feel better knowing there's a chance they got a picture of whoever took it.

And if the thief has to pee before he leaves, he's really screwed.

Judgement day

There's an odd sort of posturing people do when they make a judgement about someone or something.

They dig their heels in. They don't like to be questioned about it. And they really don't like to be told they're wrong, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they are.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess we all have friends who are like that. I know I do. They know what they know, even if what they know isn't right. Their patience for giving someone a second chance or admitting they might have been wro...wro....wrong about something is non-existent.

If you work in advertising, you know agencies are lousy with people like that. People who feel that just the act of making a decision is more important than the decision they make.

It's frustrating as hell.

But sometimes they really do believe that a bad idea is a good idea. That's even more frustrating.

I've already written here about the fact I have trouble cutting people slack sometimes. The good news is I keep learning the lesson over and over.

Not going to go into details, but there was a person I'd made a decision about. Based on a few things, I viewed them a certain way, put them in a certain box.

Come to find out that wasn't all there was to this person. I even wound up having a day of email exchanges that were funny, interesting, welcome and most of all unexpected.

I feel like I'm rambling a bit here (so what else is new?), but the bottom line is maybe once in awhile it pays to put the brakes on, attach the filter and think a little more before I dig my own heels in and make a decision or a judgement about something or someone with such brazen certainty.

This is good advice. Trust me, I know I'm right about this.

Yul love this movie

Okay, first of all, sorry about the title. I couldn't help it. I was scrolling through the cable guide, and this little gem caught my eye.

Westworld was made in 1973. Before Arnold terminated anything. Before Captain Picard even knew what a borg was.

It's about an amusement park with three different "worlds": Roman world, Medieval world, and the scariest one: Westworld.

Yul Brenner plays a robot gunslinger. For an insanely expensive admission ticket, guests can pretend they're cowboys. They can ride horses into town. They can sidle up to the bar for whiskey. They can have their way with the dance hall girls. And the best part is they can challenge the Gunslinger to a gunfight at high noon all day long, killing him over and over. This is exactly what he's been programmed for.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, a funny thing happens. Seems there's a computer virus that starts spreading from robot to robot, world to world. During a sword fight in Medieval world, a guest is suddenly stabbed. In a shootout with James Brolin, Yul Brenner shoots and kills him. For real. Then chases his friend through the park trying to kill him as well.

A few years back they were going to remake this film with Arnold in the Yul Brenner role. It seemed like pretty good casting, even if it wasn't exactly asking Arnold to stretch as an actor. But then that pesky governors race came up, and suddenly he had another day job.

Probably better anyway. Westworld is another one of those movies that doesn't need to get remade.

It was written and directed by Michael Crichton.

Hmmm, wonder if he ever wrote anything else about an amusement park where things go horribly wrong?

Visiting Paula

Work in advertising on the creative side, and you find out pretty quickly that you only ever get to work with about five genuinely great account people. If you're lucky.

My friend Paula was one of the greats.

I met her 22 years ago when we worked at an agency downtown that handled McDonald's operator business. She was brilliant, funny and passionate about great work. She didn't suffer fools lightly, and approached her job with something I've often been accused of - an unfrightened attitude. It was a thing of beauty to watch her direct it equally towards clients, creatives and management.

It was impossible not to respect her for it.

She lived in Long Beach, and was a great advocate for the city. It was her convincing arguments (along with the fact it's my wife's hometown) that led us to buy a house and move here. We even used her realtor because Paula said he was the best. And if she thought so, there was no reason for us not to.

For years, every Christmas we'd go to her house in Naples for the boat parade on the canals. We talked frequently, even if it was just to check in.

When Paula became VP of Marketing for Disneyland Resort, she asked me to be the consultant on her search for a new agency. I told her I'd never done anything like that, and she said, "I think you can do it. Why wouldn't you?" We developed the strategy, created the assignment and went to the agencies pitching the business together. I remember flying with her to see some agencies in San Francisco on a morning with 75 mph winds in Northern California. The plane was buffeted around, sometimes pretty violently, from about ten minutes into the flight until we landed. Paula, who was not crazy about flying in the first place, had my hand in a vise grip the entire time. The experience of being the creative consultant was exciting for many reasons, not the least of which was the chance to be working with her again.

Eventually Paula sold her house in Naples and moved into one a bit further north in Long Beach.

As life so often does, it got crazy and we lost touch for a few years, despite the fact we were in the same city and only minutes away from each other. Or so I thought.

This past June, I had lunch with my friend Alison who worked with Paula and me at that downtown agency. Alison was an account executive under Paula. She too had moved to Long Beach, and also eventually wound up working at Disney. I met her in Burbank and we had a wonderful lunch, kicking around old times and catching up.

At one point, I mentioned I'd lost touch with Paula, and asked if she knew what was going on with her. She sighed and said, "Oh Jeff." A sad look came over her face, a look that said I don't want to be the one to tell you but I have to. I braced myself.

She told me that Paula had extremely advanced Alzheimer's. I was devastated and heartbroken.

Paula isn't that much older than me, but apparently it runs in her family. It found her mother at a young age as well. Alison told me where Paula was, and there was no question that I was going to go visit her. But truthfully, the idea of seeing her without her really being there scared me.

It took me two months after that lunch to work up the courage to go.

Paula had been in a long-term care facility in Long Beach, but by the time my wife and I went to visit her last month, she was gone. She'd been moved to another facility. Apparently she had hit another patient and was sent to a hospital for observation and to have her meds adjusted. She wasn't accepted back to the facility because they were unable to manage her feistiness (they should've seen her at the agency).

They didn't have the information about where she was taken at their fingertips because, as it turned out, this incident had actually happened a couple months before my visit. But they did give me the name and number of her conservator who told me where to find her, and expressed his appreciation that I was going to visit her.

The facility she's currently in is not in a great part of Los Angeles.

But ever since lunch with Alison, Paula has never been far from my thoughts. And today, the day before Labor Day, I went to visit her.

Alison made clear to me in the most compassionate way she could that the Paula I knew, my friend that I loved, wasn't going to be there. The woman I was going to see would look like her, but she wasn't going to remember any of our history. She wasn't going to know who I was. Which for some reason felt okay, because I know who she is.

When I got to the facility, I asked for her. A nurse escorted me to the lock-up area, a section where the most advanced Alzheimer's cases are. There are signs all over the door going in warning that patients may try to fight their way out when you leave.

Once inside, the nurse said Paula would probably be walking around. I first saw her talking to herself, walking towards me in the hall. She looked pale and thin, and her dark brown hair, always meticulously styled, was completely gray and disheveled. The nurse told her she had a visitor. Unfazed by the fact she didn't know me, I introduced myself and took her hand. She held on tight, just like the flight to San Francisco.

I remembered Alison had told me not to ask her questions as that upsets her, but just to listen or speak in statements. We walked around the facility and I listened and watched as Paula had a conversation with herself almost the entire time. Occasionally I'd chime in with something, and she would look at me, agree, then go right back to her inner talk.

I kept wondering if the old Paula, my Paula was in there. And if she was, could I somehow bring her out. Maybe if I told her a story about us, or about one of the many good deeds she'd done for me over the years, that would spark her into the moment for a few seconds.

Never underestimate the power of denial.

Years ago there was an episode of St. Elsewhere where Dr. Mark Craig's (William Daniels) mentor Dr. David Domidian (Dean Jagger) was returning to the hospital. Mark was thrilled, then shattered to learn that his hero had advanced Alzheimer's. Towards the end of the episode, Dr. Domidian has a single moment of clarity where he looks at Mark, recognizes him and says his name.

I understand life isn't like it is in the movies or television. But even though I knew better, even though Alison had warned me, I couldn't stop myself from hoping for one of those moments.

At the end of my visit, I was holding her hand and told her I had to go. I was standing and she looked up at me and said, "Ok." I told her next time I'd bring my wife with me. Then I told her how good it was to see her, and how much I'd missed her over the years.

She looked up at me, smiled, and continued the conversation with herself. However at one point, one of the things she said was "I love you too."

That was my moment.

Sometimes there's a man...I won't say a hero...

John Goodman

Drew Carey

Variations on Stand By Me

Getting the edge

Thanks to a certain play and movie, it isn't hard to figure out why getting a straight-edge razor shave has gotten a bad rap.

True, maybe not as bad or enduring as the one dentists have to live with thanks to Laurence "Is it safe?" Olivier in Marathon Man.

But still, mention to anyone you're getting a straight-edge razor shave, and it definitely conjures up certain images. Not all of them pleasant.

Fortunately, not all barbers wielding the blade are named Sweeney. In fact, mine is named Manny.

Every year when I vacation for a week at the Hotel Del Coronado, I walk on Orange Avenue to 10th Street to the Bow Ties and Haircuts Barber Shop. The place has been in Coronado forever, catering not only to vacationing touristas like me, but also many of the military personal from the naval base on the northwest side of island (which explains all the fighter planes thundering over the pool at the Del. I love watching them, but judging by the reactions of other guests it's easy to tell a lot of them didn't see anything about it in the brochure).

Anyway, I'd never had a close shave, in the literal sense, in my life. So one year I decided to try it. I planted myself in Manny's center chair, cleared my head of all the Sweeney thoughts, and went for it.

Now, ask anyone who knows me, I mean really knows me, and they'll tell you that despite appearances to the contrary, I'm really a pampered poodle at heart. Not afraid to admit it. My macho self-esteem isn't threatened. After all, you're reading the blog of a guy who used to go for three-hour haircuts at Giusseppe Franco's in Beverly Hills.

Giusseppe would shake hands with everyone and ask how it was going, offer a cup of espresso, then go upstairs and talk Harleys with his beauty school mate Mickey Rourke. Meanwhile, downstairs the stylists, in short skirts and tight tops, each more beautiful than the next, were dancing to the blaring music as they were cutting away.

Every six weeks, it was like dying and going to MTV.

So when I walked into Bow Ties and Haircuts, it was decidedly old school. Which to my way of thinking is exactly what you want in a barber when he's holding a straight-edge razor to your throat.

When Manny puts the chair back and starts by covering my face with the first of three or four steaming hot towels, I try not to think about the razor he'll be holding to my throat. Instead I try to focus on just how smooth and amazing it's going to feel when he's done.

Occasionally the thought does cross my mind that all those hot towels are there to mop up the blood spurting from my carotid artery, but then I realize I haven't done anything to make Manny mad so it's probably not anything to worry about. Too much.

Manny skillfully guides the blade across the contours of my face, even the curves that I have difficulty navigating. When it's over, the last towel is a cold one, which Manny tells me is to close the pores (if you're following along in your barber-to-english dictionary, you'll see that means stop the bleeding).

Afterwards, my face is amazingly smooth to the touch. This is what a shave is supposed to be.

I thank Manny, and tell him I'll see him next year.

But as I think about how this shave turned out, as opposed to the way it turns out with my little 59-cent Bic disposable razors, I think a year may be a little too long to wait.