Do Chimps Like Honey?

Last night my husband's agency won a jar of honey at an advertising industry awards show called the BEES. (Oh, it's so clever! Must have been thought up by some clever people in advertising.) At least the jar had a personalized engraving on it, but still. A jar of honey? Couldn't it at least have been something useful, like a bottle of nice tequilla or case of cheese dings?

They won for Agency of the Year. Which is exciting, except now the Agency of the Year will get more work, and have to do more work, than before. (I find myself asking, "Is that humanly possible?") They might have to hire some chimps to man the phones ringing off the hooks. (I can just see it now ... the chimps could probably manage, "Hello?" but after that, they'd just get confused and start licking the receiver or bashing it on the desk. Might put a damper on chances for winning Agency of the Year next year.)

There was no acceptance speech given, because no one got to give acceptance speeches. I'm not sure if my husband was disappointed, because I don't think he had anything good to say (although he surely had a lot of funny things to say, like thanking Michael Bolton for being a hair model for the singing unicorn.) Advertising is comedy.

In my opinion, the funniest thing I heard was that they gave an award for "Best Crisis Management" and I took that to mean "The Agency That Best Manages Client Crises". Because there are more client disasters than a chimp has chin-hairs, I figured the winner would have been truly fantastic and deserving of the award. Then my husband told me the award went to someone who made a nice social media campaign for an actual disaster (as in natural) and I felt a little sheepish.

Or Chimpish?

Life of an Ad-dict

Is it possible to be addicted to working in advertising? I'm just asking because, like, you know, there are so many people in advertising who profess to really, really hate what they do, yet they keep doing it. What's the draw of the industry? Why is it so seductive? Is there a secret happy place in advertising I don't know about?

Is it the fast pace? The craziness? The excitement of being able to handle the flaming chainsaws when they come flying at you? Really, I'm dying to know. It's kind of fascinating in a car accident-meets-train wreck kind of way, but no one seems to have any answers.

A Grown Man, For Crying Out Loud

I'm about to write about some fairly hilarious things that happened to my husband at work today.

I am not making any of this up. And it's so funny, I can barely type. (My legs are crossed together to keep from pissing myself entirely.) Yet I'm afraid to even begin writing, because I know I won't be able to do it justice. That's the disclaimer.

My husband's client (Client) has been working out of the agency for a few weeks. The Client drinks three, or sometimes four, quad-shot lattes every day. Every day. I've just eaten a bunch of ice cream and was with my kids all day, but I am still sharp enough to figure that's at least twelve shots of espresso per day. And you should know that these are non-fat, non-foam lattes, which makes it all better. (Somehow there isn't as much kick if you suck out all the fat and foam, right?) Apparently there is just the right milk-to-foam ratio, per the client. And it's becoming kind of obvious, caffeine vortex or not, that things are getting a little intense around the agency.

[As an aside: we have a spare blood pressure cuff sitting around our house (don't ask) that my husband is going to take to work on Monday. He is going to require employees to take a reading before walking through the door and if they're off the charts, they get to go home and rest until they've calmed down a little. This is also known as vacation in most workplaces.]

So this amped-up, jittering Client has been bouncing off the walls at my husband's agency for about three weeks now. It's not normal to have the Client in-house at an agency generally, but this latest campaign is apparently an advertising equivalent of brain surgery; a real code orange shit-your-pants emergency product is going to be launched soon by this big hotshot company, and they've asked crazy coffee guy to come and babysit. I imagine it's like if I asked my nanny to do a few speedballs and then babysit the kids (I can imagine the scene right now, with her hula-hooping super fast in the backyard until she just launches herself into space, with the kids and dog staring in amazement). I digress.

Today the Client broke down in my husband's office and wept with joy over something that was actually going right with the campaign. My husband is used to people crying in his office, but this is the first time a man, and a Client, has cried in his office. And I imagine my husband was groping in vain for some non-existent panic button under his desk, like they have in banks in case of robbery, that will bring the police or at least blow up the room so you don't have to be in this embarrassing situation any more. Luckily the agency's Creative Director was there to witness the whole thing, and after the client left (mincing steps leaving puddly footprints on the floor) they had a good laugh about it.

It gets better. During his crying jag, the Client began blubbering about how my husband was actually making him a better man. A better man! I'm sorry, but I (as I sit here typing and yes, still laughing) fail to see how advertising in any form could ever make anyone, man or woman, better at anything except working long hours and eating cheese dings for dinner. I mean, really? Really? Apparently through his daily contact with my manly husband, the Client is learning how to stand up for himself. I imagine he's becoming more assertive when ordering high-maintenance coffee drinks and not crying when they only put in three shots of espresso, or working only twenty instead of twenty-two hours a day, etc. These are important life lessons within the context of advertising.

So now I'm off to buy an extra large pair of fancy jeans as gift to this Client, so he has room for the bigger balls he's obviously grown over the last three weeks.

I told you this story wouldn't be as funny through my lense as it was in real life. But it's still funny.

A Huckster's Paradise

I am slowly recovering from three days in New Jersey. We were there for Greek Easter, which I sometimes call Greaster. The nickname is not always appreciated, but I like it. It's funny.

You should never go to New Jersey without vitamins, mosquito netting and a bodyguard. These items should be on a checklist that you are required to submit to authorities before getting off the plane in Newark, because without these things, you might never make it back home again. New Jersey is one crazy place. It's almost like another country, called Newjerseyland or something.

It was raining, so we did the obvious thing. We took our kids to the Paramus Park mall and bought one of those car-cart things for them to ride around in (they refused). The first thing I saw was the Easter Bunny 'pavilion', which was smack in the middle of the mall. This Easter Bunny was decked out rather as the Jersey Bunny, because it was for some reason wearing a sparkling purple tuxedo paired with giant-bunny-sized white athletic shoes (natch). And of course, there was a New Jersey family getting a picture taken with the Jersey Bunny. The mom and baby girl were wearing matching pink outfits, and the dad and little boy were wearing matching blue outfits. It should be noted that the entire family was wearing white athletic shoes and that they all clashed rather nicely with the bunny's purple tux.

I couldn't stop staring. Honestly, I couldn't look away. But then Veronica ran toward Forever 21, lured by the fur, fringe and feathers on the mannequins, and I ran to distract her (I distinctly remember thinking, "Please God don't let my baby cross the threshold of that store!")

Anyway, then my husband and I started playing the "Top Ten Ways to Tell You're in New Jersey" game, but we soon realized we had to go higher than ten. I think we made it to around fifty before losing interest. A sampling:

11. An obvious and complete lack of wheat bread, anywhere.

10. The lady in white boots with foot-high hair riding the merry-go-round in the Paramus Mall.

9. Her infant daughter, who was wearing one of those baby-girl headbands with a huge bow that leaves a huge red indent on the baby's forehead.

8. White sneakers on everyone (including the baby on the merry-go-round).

7. Open-mouthed gum-chewing and snapping on everyone (not including the baby).

6. Ten stores in the mall that could have been called "Whores'R'Us".

5. Giant bugs, killer humidity and that special goose-shit smell in the air.

4. The lady on the merry-go-round, again. This time let's include her white rhinestone belt.

3. Yelling when talking will do, talking when whispering will do.

2. Goldberg's bagels (this is the only good thing on the list).

1. An entire shopper's island dedicated exclusively to big hair extensions. (We have video proof of this one.)

Where I am going with this is that I think New Jersey is the perfect state for people with bad intentions, or for people in advertising, because it seems like the folks that live in New Jersey will buy anything and everything, whether they need it or not.

Have you fallen into the Ad Hole?

I've started calling certain people ad-holes whenever they do something I don't like. It's original, and it fits, because mostly the people I don't like right now are in advertising. And yes, they're assholes too, but I'm sure they've already been called that. A lot.

Today I also changed the phrase "the end is near" to "the end is here", but I wasn't referring to my husband's career with the ad-holes. I was referring to the fact that my almost-two year-old son has learned to tease his older sister, complete with the "nah-nah-na-NAH-nah" song, to add to his repertoire of hair-pulling (which I suspect she actually likes).

Here's hoping he doesn't one day turn into an ad-hole.

Who's Watching The Store?

Once there was a little boy who had a Meyer lemon tree in his back yard. Every fall the lemons would rain down and pile up on the grass, and since the little boy was kind of lazy

(he was really, really lazy)

he would usually step over them as he played and let other people eventually pick them up, like his mother or his neighbors, to make lemon bars or other delicious lemony things. One hot day he discovered that if he asked her nicely, his mother would make him lemonade from these fancy lemons, and this lemonade was so tasty that soon his friends began to flock to the house for it. So the little boy asked his father for a lemonade stand, and because his father was handy, he made the boy a sturdy wooden booth that had a counter and space for a sign at the top. The father wheeled the booth to the corner (because this was a time when a ten-year old boy could safely sell lemonade on the corner) and gave him coins to make change, and the little boy's mother began to pick lemons on the double.

After one week the lemonade stand became the talk of the neighborhood. Housewives (because they had those back then, real ones!) admired the unusual sweetness of the lemonade and construction workers began to make it a regular lunchtime stop, praising the little boy for his industriousness. "I pick them all myself," the boy would say. "It's a lot of work, picking all of these lemons, but it's worth it because the lemonade is so good and everyone is so happy." At the end of the day, the little boy would trot home, pockets jingling, to find baskets of mama's freshly-picked lemons waiting for him.

Soon the little boy became bored with tending his booth all day. (He had become a lemonade entrepreneur quite by accident.) So he asked his friend to sit at the lemonade stand while he went off to play baseball in the empty corner lot, promising to give the friend a whole dollar at the end of the day. The friend, wanting to be a part of the boy's glamourous enterprise, agreed, and sat down in the hot sun. This arrangement continued for several weeks, with the friend happily pocketing a dollar at the end of each day and the little boy making quite a good deal more while he was, in effect, off playing ball and having a good old time.

And then one day the lemonade wasn't very good. No one was really sure what the problem was, but suddenly the lemonade stand had fewer customers and by the end of the week, there were hardly any people buying lemonade at all. The boy began to complain each day about having to give his friend a dollar for tending the stand, even though the boy's friend was a very hard worker. Indeed, the friend was a very good person all around. He always kept the lemonade fresh, was polite to customers and never took more than a few sips for himself in the course of a day. And the little boy (who remember, was lazy from the beginning) liked having his friend tend the stand while he was off playing. He just wanted to keep a good thing going.

And so the little boy began to blame his friend. "It's your fault we're not selling any lemonade," he'd say. "Work harder. Make bigger and better signs. Get out there and sell yourself," he'd admonish, as he trotted off with his mitt to play ball.

Now do you see where I am going with this?

(The little boy grows up and somehow finds himself in charge of an advertising agency. But he still hasn't learned how to take responsibility for anything, really. He hires a friend to run things for him and goes off to play baseball, or the grown-up version of it, while the friend holding the bag gets ulcers and high blood pressure and has to deal with the crybaby prima donna Creative Director. Some things never change.)

You're Going To Eat This Kale If It Kills You

Working in advertising is like wearing an old sweater from college that you've just re-discovered on the top shelf of your closet. When you find it, you're faintly happy to see it, so you can't resist trying it on. After about thirty seconds you begin to itch and find you've made a horrible mistake, and then (you idiot) you remember that you made this exact same mistake about a week ago, and two weeks ago, two months ago and five years ago. Over and over again, you keep finding the sweater and every time you find it, you forget why you hate it so much.

You do this because of the drippy, mis-remembred gooey-nostalgic feelings you have associated with the sweater. What you've built up over the years into this fantastic story is nothing close to the truth.

Advertising's like that, too. Some of my best friends have tried, unsuccessfully, for years to get out of the industry, but as soon as they're out they begin to wax romantic for the good old days of late-nineties holiday parties that rained five-dollar bills down like confetti, for the time they got to share a limo with Charles Barkley or got lost on the way to the Vegas airport and wound up spending 36 hours on the strip, all expenses paid. The old glory days. It's all remembered wrong, of course (the fives were actually ones, it was really just Charles Barkley's agent, it was only four hours on the strip) but none of that matters in hindsight.

And then there's the Mister, who has been in and out of advertising (and in fact, in and out of one agency in particular) so many times we have both lost count. On the wagon, off the wagon, on the wagon. On. Off. On. Off. (I'll stop doing that. I think you get the picture and plus, it's annoying.) I'm not really sure why he keeps getting sucked back into the ad business. It could be as simple as the smart, friendly coworkers and megamillion-dollar bonuses or as complicated as, well, I'm not really allowed to say. Anyway I don't really think it matters.

As his partner in crime and astonished witness to what happens in advertising, I've decided to ignore root of the problem and resign myself to treating the symptoms (like any good wife, right?) that keep popping up because of his career.

So far, the best band-aid this year has been kale, in massive, more-than-anyone-should-probably-ingest quantities. Actually, kale is probably good for fixing more than just the ills of advertising, but I've got to stick to what I know. Eating kale (steamed raw juiced diced sliced chopped and baked) has made everyone around here feel just a little less crabby about everything else. And that's a good thing. And it reminds me that many more of my dear friends (who, by the way, also swear by kale) have gotten out of advertising, for good. And so there is hope.