Tiger Woods on Broadway

You can hear Tiger's song in the new production of "Finian's Rainbow" a great show from 1947 which features one of the wittiest lyrics ever. It's sung by the Leprechaun who begins with "As I become more and more a mortal" and continues:
When I'm not hear the girl I love, I love the girl I'm near,
When I can't fondle the hand that I'm fond of I fondle the hand at hand,
When I'm not near the face that I fancy I fancy the face I face.
And so on and so on including the line, "as long as they have a bosom,I woos 'em
I promise to stop kicking poor Tiger because it's too easy, like shooting fish in a barrel. If want Tiger jokes tune into Jay Leno, he'll be telling them for years.

My Andy Rooney observations

I went to the post office this week. Did you ever notice that when the lines get long the clerks close the windows and disappear into the back? It's very frustrating. I live in the west so I get annoyed at the TV when the Weather Channel person stands in front of the west and gestures to the rest of the country even if there's nothing going on. I guess he or she is too stuck on themselves to just move out of the picture. I like honey, especially on biscuits, but no matter how hard I try, or how careful I am, I always get my fingers sticky. If I had a valet he could put the honey on my biscuit and get his fingers sticky. Alas I don't have a valet and never have.

He loved not wisely but too often

Tiger Woods is our contemporary Othello with the tabloid media as his Iago and his wife being strangled by gossip and humiliation. Now he gets the rap that his big mistake was marriage in the first place. He can't win either way. He's in a sand trap in the middle of a lake. He was forced into the role as Othello when his real calling was in Romeo and Juliet where he gets to cry plaintively "Oh I am Fortune's Fool!" Well, he still has his fortune.

Style, the decline of.

I went down to the Mirage on the Las Vegas strip yesterday to celebrate their 20th Anniversary and what did I find; a host of scruffy people shuffling around the casino floors looking like an army of Russian serfs storming the Winter Palace. The really dismaying part was that they were predominantly young people. These are the people who should be dressing smartly and acting smartly. Instead, they came off as if "they'd never sat on chairs before" in Basil Fawlty's critical opinion of some hotel guests of his. I know it's asking a lot in the age of grunge to clean up but that's how you move up in class, get a better job, better service, better looking girls. As Leo Gorcey, the spokeman of the Bowry Boys, would say, "I'm regurgitated".

A GI Jive for the 21st Century

One of my favorite songs of WWII was Johnny Mercer's "GI Jive" which he claims to have written at a stoplight at Hollywood and Vine. "Chuck all your junk back in the trunk, fall on your bunk, clunk!" It would be a little difficult to pen such a jaunty ditty today. "Drink lemonade, sit in the shade, fall on a grenade..you're daid!" Are there any songs from Iraq or Afghanastan? Maybe on the other side: "Praise Allah and pass the ammunition" and "Comin' in on a bomb and a prayer". Just like the devil the enemy has all the good tunes.

Why I'd like Obama to make a Christmas album

There are two reasons: 1. We are at war and the best Christmas songs were written during WWII. I'm dreaming of a white christmas, I'll be home for Christmas, Have yourself a merry little christmas. All express the poignance of troops far away and a home front longing for them to come back. At a restaurant last week I saw the hostess, a small, poor, innocent young woman staring into space and singing along softly with "Winter Wonderland". She was from the Phillipines, a place that war came to with a vengeance. 2. We need a unifying voice like Bing Crosby was in WWII. The most heard voice in the world it was claimed. Even the Germans called him "Der Bingle". Of course no such recording session will take place and we will go on fighting and dying just as before. I will be left to crack cynical jokes like I did yesterday at an Indian restaurant. A roving musician was singing "Silver Bells" and I told the hostess that it was an old Indian Christmas carol. She smiled.

Tiger, tiger not too bright in the middle of the night

Tiger Woods is stuck in the rough for a good long time. The tree he bashed into played the same part that the iceberg did for the Titanic. It just waited and waited till they met. However, as Jay Leno pointed out, Tiger lives the life any guy would envy. He plays golf year round, he has millions of dollars, a lovely wife and kids and lots of girls on the side. He is an easy target for one liners. I got off a feeble one myself this week. I said, 'He may not be on the links but he just set a new intercourse record". As Larry Flynt said many years ago, "I'll make the whole world a tabloid". And so he did.

Nothing changes.

Today's NY Times has a business piece titled: "In Detroit, agencies compete to sell city as a creative haven". I was in that story over 40 years ago when I wrote the same campaigns. I won the right to advertise Detroit by doing a United Way campaign that used Peanuts characters for the very first time in advertising. My line was: "Don't turn down Charlie Brown". But for the City of Detroit I wanted to go one step farther since I knew the sociology of the place extended far beyond by office at Campbell-Ewald (who is in today's competition). I did a campaign based on the youth of the city (mostly black) called "Detroit is getting well". My bosses turned it down flat as too controversial. And it probably was since the place went up in flames a year later. I did get a kick out of a recent episode of Mad Men where the creative team was trying to come up with a proposition for Western Union. After some false starts Peggy the copywriter said something like, "A telegram is cheaper than a phone call and makes the sentiment last longer". My very first assignment at Campbell-Ewald was for FTD and the headline was: "Flowers last longer than a phone call, smell better than a card and look better than a telegram." Can history repeat itself? Of course it can Old Sport. Dear Old Detroit, please come up with a winner.

Lyrics for a lousy time

I have some song lyrics to cheer us all up. The song is "Life is just a bowl of cherries" and it was written back in the Depression by Lew Brown and Ray Henderson.
It goes something like this:
Life is just a bowl of cherries,
Don't take it serious, life is too mysterious.
You work and slave, you worry so
But you can't take your dough
When you go, go, go.
The best things in life to you were just loaned,
So how can you lose what you never owned.
Keep repeating it's the berries
And live and laugh at it all.
To get the maximum enjoyment listen to the version the Hi Lo's did in 1956. They are the greatest vocal group ever in my opinion. The last time I sang it was when I was driving from Paris to London (you can do that now) with my English pals, Bob and Steve. They griped that life was not a bowl of cherries and when I broke into "I talk to the trees but they don't listen to me" from Paint Your Wagon, they sneered that of course they don't listen you idiot, they're trees. However, all three of us sang a rousing rendition of "There'll always be an England".

Where is our Lawrence of Afghanistan?

It's hard to imagine that our troops will do any better in Afghanistan than the British, the Russians and even Alexander the Great. This is a country that is not hospitable to foreigners. So when I see Gen. McCrystal jogging around the US compound in perfect West Point style I know we're not going to win. History is going to win. My suggestion will never be taken seriously but I think we need a charismatic American leader who steps out of his uniform, grows a beard, goes native, and learns the language. Maybe the Afghans would follow him. But then he would have more power than the Pentagon and that won't happen. But it could turn the trick just as Lawrence of Arabia did in WWI.

How Star Trek saved our nation

The two men in rather odd yellow and blue t-shirts (one had alarmingly pointed ears) were as persuasive as they knew how with books, pictures and power point presentations after they were beamed down to President Lincoln's White House office in 1861.
Their argument was simple: let the South secede and send the Army of the Potomac north into Canada (a country not yet confederated). Save 600,000 lives, free the slaves and get Alaska in the treaty. As a man who understood that a house divided cannot stand, Lincoln agreed.
"I think the Vulcan mindmeld did it Jim," the pointy eared one said. "And it spared the Confederacy from the disgrace of being the only English-speaking country in history to be defeated in battle and occupied", the Captain replied.
The South was able to develop to its full potential from then on without gold, silver, oil or modern industry. People did leave for Alaska on the Alabaska Trail but most stayed on their plantations. Everyone had all the cotton balls they could ask for as well as Q Tips and 839,000,000 guns "so folks could feel safe".
The Confederate President in 2009 was one Wilson Crapnottle, a descendent of the family that invented "Mush Mouth",the national dish. a sugary stew of bourbon, pork and doughnuts. He was also a natural orator along the lines of Andy Griffith.
Meanwhile the US of Americanada became the most prosperous and respected country in the world. Captain Kirk knew that he had violated the Prime Directive by altering history but he said at his trial that he wanted the true north to play a bigger part on the world stage. President Gordon Lightfoot could only agree.

How lucky can one guy be...

That's what you'll hear Dean Martin singing when you make a Big Win on his Wild Party slot machine. Some people won't wager a quarter in a slot while others prefer to put in a quarter and take out a million. The point is that you have to be in it to win it. And so this week I was treated to Dean's crooning when I had the biggest of big wins: I won $90 on a 30 cent bet. Was it fun? You bet and a lot more fun than Dawn Powell (good name, no relation) in her novel "The Wicked Pavilion" expects from "The Friendly loan agent, the Smiling Banker and the Laughing Financial Aid Counsellor". The casino is not only fun but as I've said here before, totally honest.
Here's the full libretto of Dean's Song:
How lucky can one guy be,
I kissed you and you kissed me.
And just like the fellow said,
Ain't that a kick in the head.
Yes, a metaphorical, musical kick is to be preferred to a literal, below the belt kick from Wall Street and the Banking industry.

What happens in Vegas make me want to stay in Vegas

I first came to Las Vegas in 1948 when I was 13 years old. It's where I first tasted pizza. I've been back many times and now I call it home in the neon (that's what culture critic Dave Hickey calls it in his book of essays "Air Guitar". He likes the fact that everybody treats everybody the same). It's one of the great democratic aspects of a casino culture. Of course people from other places say that Vegas lacks culture (Define culture!)Of course the Strip has feather shows, Cirque de Nauseum and guys doing impressions of George Burns. However, there is a fine university, a philharmonic and a ballet (topless of course). But how many cities in the US have any cutting edge culture. Most orchestras play Beethoven and Bach, and the opera mounts the Ring wieder und wieder primarily to validate the middle class half asleep in their seats after a hard day of golf and vodka. You won't find much jazz on the air or in the air unless you live in NY.
Broadway seems to be stuck on a reef in the South Pacific and in rehashes of Andrew Paine Webber, er, sorry Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber...I was thinking of his millions. What do I like? The soft warm nights. The view of the Strip from my dining room window. My friendly new neighbors who brought us lasagna our first week. There are bookstores everywhere and lots of TV channels and internet to keep me amused. And if I really want to go highbrow for culture I can always check out the literary disco star Dr. Zhivegas.

The madness and melancholy of moving

We're leaving our mountain mansion in Lake Tahoe and moving to Las Vegas. Lots of reasons: downsize, better for the arthritis, livlier, 300 miles closer to our daughter in LA. I didn't realize how monumental the packing would be: 20 boxes of books, LP's, CD's, even 78's and that doesn't include the "high value" art and ceramics. I've lived in three countries and 14 houses but this one seems overwhelming. As my dear wife Peggy pointed out, "We have an intact marriage of over 50 years, we've lived a long time in a lot of places and we're taking our past with us." Of course, but it still isn't easy. In the new film "Julie and Julia" Julia Child says of her expatriate life abroad, "Where is home?" and her husband says, "Wherever we are is home". Johnny Mercer wrote a song, "Anywhere I hang my hat is home". It's true but as John Updike says in one of his stories that packing up and leaving the home empty with all its memories is something you'll miss. But he adds that the house won't miss you for a day.

Wisdom can walk in any door.

Sometimes it's from the pulpit. Sometimes it's from the White House. Rarely is it from television unless it's the Simpsons or from Don Draper, the creative director character on "Mad Men" who said, "Advertising is based on one thing: happiness". Then there is faux philosophy. I have a flyer before me that says: "Treat others with courtesy, respect and dignity and try not to pass judgement, with this philosophy in mind, I think we do a pretty darn good job". This is a promo flyer from a casino in Nevada. I would place a sign over the entrance that says, "Abandon hope all ye who enter here". Actually, the truest place to look is the humble fortune cookie. Here is a sample: The virtue lies in the struggle, not in the prize..Every exit is an entrance to new experiences..A focused mind is one of the most powerful forces in the universe..and one I really like: Compliment three people every day. If you remember the film "My dinner with Andre" you'll remember Wally asking Andre if a fortune cookie knows who is going to get it. Of course it does. Why just last week mine said, 'Your candid approach is refreshing". In the Peanuts strip Charlie Brown's sister Sally has three philosphies: "Who cares? "Life goes on" and "How should I know?" And when Charlie says they are "maybe a little too profound" Sally answers wisely: Who cares? How should I know? Life goes on!

No dog is an island

On the front page of the Reno Gazette today is the obituary of Gidget the 1990's star of Taco Bell commercials. As a chihuhua she was (and I quote) a diva on and off the screen. It goes on to say she suffered a massive stroke at her trainer's home in California and was euthanized. As the poet of yore said, "Do not send to ask for whom the Taco Bell tolls...it tolls for every star in the firmament.

Bookstores, piracy and the decline of language

It seems that Amazon deleted two of George Orwell's books from their Kindle list.I've read about the mixup that was due to some illegal piracy of copyright. It was cleared up and apparently customers got their refunds and nobody had to report to the Ministry of Truth. It does show how the transistion period from print to ebooks is going to have glitches and does have a passing nod to "1984". Personally I like to browse the bookstores not so I can find a book but so a book can find me. At the same time I find myself reading letters to the editor in my local Reno paper and they do annoy me. George Orwell was well aware that political creeds are often rationalizations of emotional problems, particularly these days. Most of the letters are rants against Obama and Socialism. Here is a mature, courageous and intelligent leader who is able to articulate a new form of social protection for the country and he is clobbered with inarticulate, uneducated clap trap. When in doubt just say go to hell and declare victory. In the film "Charlie Wilson's War" Wilson, who is a congressman from Texas boasts that he can spend taxpayer money any way he likes because his constituents only want to keep their guns and be left alone. By the way Orwell worked in a bookstore himself in Hampstead in the 1930's. He wrote about it in "Keep the Aspidistra Flying".

Michael, McLuhan and the mob

I'm not immune to pop culture and I'm not a bigot like Peter King or Bill O'Reilly it's just that I've spent most of my time with jazz. The funerary arrangements for Michael Jackson have been pretty over the top and the mob in front of the Staples Center reminded me of the final scene in Nathanael West's "Day of the Locust" (but not so apocalyptic). Actually it was my fellow Edmontonian Marshall McLuhan, the electronic age guru, who said that it isn't the content of the television that's important, it's the audience. At least that was his comment on the first moon landing. The bathos (Oxford dictionary: unintential lapse in mood from the sublime to the absurd or trivial) went on and on. In an Updike poem titled "TV" he said that he turned on the tap of TV but it didn't come out hot or cold, only lukewarm and tepid".
Adman Jerry Mander's book "Four arguments for the elimination of television" is worth reading in this tv saturated age. Briefly the arguments are: 1. The mediation of experience, 2. The colonization of experience, 3. The effects of television on the human being and 4. The inherent biases of television. The funeral show was put on like a giant biblical epic, as per DeToqueville's comment that the most prevalent trait he found in America was "religious insanity". But this is the age of footage and man did they have the footage. There's nothing in the archives on the death of Mozart or Napolean. To digress, did you know that Johann Strauss II composed "The morning papers waltz"? Isn't that nice? Couldn't there be a lovely "Waltz of the Anchors"? A tv reporter once asked Milton Berle for a comment and Miltie declined. The reporter said, can't we get something and Miltie said, "Just say film at 11."

The Flat Belly Press & The Post It Note Diet

I love browsing the magazine stands, especially the men's section. They all promise to give you rock-hard abs...a belly built like a six pack etc. The only guy I ever knew who subscribed to Men's Health was grossly overweight and resembled the character in Smilin' Jack who was always popping a shirt button. Can you read yourself into a flat belly? I couldn't. I do 60 sit ups a day on a contraption called the Ab Roller. It works and I have a belly I'm not ashamed of. As for diets there is no end to them so they must not work very well. I haven't seen The Darfur Diet yet but it's coming I'm sure. Publishing isn't wisdom, it's an ad industry with a regular schedule and predictable content. For women it's always "Seven signs your mate is having an affair". For readers of The Economist it's always "India is at a crossroads". For Entrepreneurs it's "How I made millions from lint". Want the real skinny? Get the smallest post it note and write on it: "Eat less. Exercize more. Live longer". Pass it on.

Give us this day our daily scandal

We have resurrected the Three Stooges in the form of three holier--than-thou Republicans: 2 Governors and 1 Senator. I have written about the Governor of my state of Nevada (see The Gentleman is a Dope) but he has been upstaged by our junior senator John Ensign and the Gov. of South Carolina Mark Sanford. All three have been caught with their pants down and the media have obligingly pushed custard pies in their faces. It might be different if they were lovable rascals like Errol Flynn or smooth charmers like Cary Grant but they are dreary, very ordinary guys who are not very smart and heap ridicule on us mere citizens. Will they resign? Of course not. They may have left their mistresses but they still have time to screw their constituents.
Back in the 1960's when this happened, comedian Mort Sahl used to roll his eyes, shake his head and say, "Our leaders!"

The kind of driver I'm looking for.

Or more often the kind of driver I'm looking out for here in rural Nevada. Whenever a see a guy in a truck with a beard and a baseball cap (and often a dog in the back)I know I have to watch out. Why, because I know he thinks he can break the law and drive as he pleases. He might be drunk, or on meth or just plain mad at the world. He will never use his turn signal or turn on his lights when it would improve safety (he probably doesn't even believe in safety) and he might even be smoking or eating or texting. I must quote from a Louise Bogan (1897-1970) poem titled: Several voices out of a cloud: "Come, drunkards and drug takers; come perverts unnerved" and later "Get the hell out of the way".

My team...win or lose.

I became a Detroit Red Wings fan in 1949 when I would have needed to find the city on a map. But those posters in the barber shops in Vancouver with the team photo in the all red uniforms (Wayne Gretzky said were the best ever) did win me over. Fifteen years later I was working in Detroit and going to the games in the old Olympia and watching Gordie Howe and Bobby Hull skate like the wind and collide with each other like a thunderclap. Embedded in the ice at the new arena is the new motto: Hockeytown USA" and from the rafters hangs a large emblematic octopus. Why an octopus? Because in the days of the original 6 teams you had to win 8 games to win the Stanley Cup and some ingenious fan back then would throw a baby octopus on the ice. Today it has to be two octopi. By the way, here's the answer to my blog question. Who are the members of the famed Production Line? Ted Lindsey, Syd Abel and Gordie Howe. The top three scorers in the NHL in 1949. GM may be broke but the Wings are healthier than ever.

The best investment decision you can make today

Here it is: invest in yourself. This is an economic theory I got from a professor in Toronto in 1962. And it worked. While all the other up and coming young men were buying mutual funds and bonds and penny stock from other young up and comers I was buying my wife her first dishwasher, new furniture, toys for the kids, books a car and other real goods. I may not have had a portfolio but I had things I could use everyday and was not going to be bamboozled (that great transitive verb from the 18th century). I've pretty well stuck to this theory and missed the Lehman Bros and AIG debacles. I even know a wealthy woman and her son who both lost $3 million in AIG. That could have bought a lot of cakes and ale. I'm still surprised to see the ads and commercials for the brokerages as if nothing has changed. There is one good headline for Bessemer Trust that states,"Why should you believe anything we say?" And in a reverse Churchillian line, "Rarely in history have so many been so violated by so few." As George Soros says, under no circumstances believe that your broker is your friend. I hate to resort to Ayn Rand for wisdom but she was correct when said, "You must reach your own conclusions". So, it's your money and your life. Enjoy them both. For all his economic wisdom, John Maynard Keynes last words were, "I should have ordered more champagne."

We are one

That's what I heard the President say today in his address to the Naval Academy. It was an appropriate statement for Memorial Day and for all of us immigrants. I immigrated to the US twice: from Canada in 1964 and again from London in 1972. I became a citizen in 1992 joining what Fareed Zakaria calls "The Universal Nation", the only one that invites the rest of the world to become one of us. Going through the process always makes a good story. From the complete indifference of the IRS clerks right to the swearing in by the Federal Judge and waving the little flags they give out. At my citizenship party I gave out a quiz with two sections: What every American knows (no one knew which States were separated by the Mason-Dixon line* and a section called What every Canadian knows (when I asked who the leading NHL scorer was and hinted it was not Wayne Gretzky, everyone put down Wayne Gretzky)** I prefer being an American (it was good enough for the brother of Canada's Governor General)*** and besides who wants to live in a bilingual, socialist monarchy. In referring to Canada Theodore Roosevelt said, 'I want a nation, not a boarding house". It's the one and only nation for me.
* The Mason/Dixon line separates Pennsylvania and Maryland
** At the time it was still Gordie Howe
*** Raymond Massey was Vincent Massey's better known brother.

Life is a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved

In the Atlantic magazine there is an article profiling the lives of very advantaged young men. I mean they begin life advantaged and then life tosses them a lemon and they are divorced or drunk or life treats them to a cool lemonade and they stay married, sober and successful.
The conclusion of the article is sound. It says simply that Happiness is love. Can't argue with that. In fact I found this wisdom on a sign over the bar at The Arches in Newport Beach, Calif. It said, "The joy of life is living it". However, there is a sober reminder from Orwell that we must also acknowledge the hard facts of life, to wit, "You will be forgotten in one generation and in two no one will know you ever lived". Well, OK, maybe you need the Vulcan answer, "Live long and prosper". A character in Phillip Roth's "Everyman" says to Mr. Everyman (you never learn his name) "You're in your 70's so you've had a life". Something you can't say about James Dean or Heath Ledger. But hey, enough with the heavy philosophy. There is a nice cartoon in the May 11th, 2009 New Yorker that shows Dr. Frankenstein, Igor and the monster raising their wine glasses and toasting "To life".

Detroit must not be destroyed

I mean the cars that Detroit makes. If a woman can't walk past a window full of shoes then a man can't stay out of a car showroom. But what showroom? Hummer? Only if Rommel surrounds Palm Springs. Corvette? It is the fastest way to enlarge the penis non-surgically.
Dodge Polara, Chevy Agammemnon, Barracuda? None of the above. I mean the cars that Detroit is going to build starting today. GM destroyed the electric car and now it will destroy GM. But there's still Ford and La Dolce Dodge and the technology is now coming up to speed. When I worked on car advertising in Detroit I drove an old VW Bug and was told to park as far away from the agency as possible. Rightly so since everyone else was car crazy over Pontiacs and Cadillacs. I was told that when the head guy at GM died he wanted to come back as a V8 engine.

How to downsize and get more out of life.

Actually we've all been downsized already thanks to Wall Street, the banks, the SEC, and that lethal lamebrain W. However, there is a way you can deal with your own uncertain future that is certainly here. Let's start with where you live. Eliminate the 7 G's: No gate, No golf club, No garden, No guest rooms, No garage, No gas guzzler. Got it? Now add 5 E's for an easier life: Entertainment, Eating, Espresso, Excercize and eMail. We are now ruled by the ghost of George Sanders who looks cynically at rich and poor alike. Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse isn't really a viable retirement plan for most. It's better to have dreams and no money than money and no dreams. Give me Gatsby over Donald Trump every time. OK you're going to lose some sq. footage in a smaller place but Kafka said you can only live in one room at a time--even if it's Versailles. What you won't give up is the pleasures you take for granted: a cold beer on a hot day, a good book, the 4th of July. The world is too much with us, getting and spending we lay waste our powers

When did the Orwellian age begin and when will it end?

For me it began with an illustrated article in Life magazine about 1949. It was introducing America and the world to 1984 and it showed Big Brother glowering at a mob of desperate souls marching around a monument with the watchwords: War is peace, Freedom is slavery, Ignorance is strength. I couldn't grasp at that early teenage time what Orwell was getting at since I was already enslaved by the sultry looks and voices of Peggy Lee and Doris Day. At first the only way to describe the Cold War was Orwellian, but as time went on it became the only way to describe the modern world. The MX missle was called the Peacemaker (War is Peace) Fox New (Ignorance is Strength) Wiretapping and waterboarding (Freedom is slavery). You'll see Orwell's name pop up over and over today with no end in sight. James Wood did a long profile on him in the April 13 issue of the New Yorker called "A fine rage". Of course Orwell wrote many other things that were not sinister including an essay on how to make a perfect cup of tea and his ideal British pub. The only other political genius of the 1950's era was Walt Kelly's cartoon character Pogo Possum. When Pogo went looking for evil in the swamps with his friends Winston Churchmouse, Waterhole Nehru and Mousy Tung they came upon themselves and Pogo uttered, "We has met the enemy and he is us".

How the poor dine.

I have filched this title from Orwell's 1946 essay "How the poor die". I'm no Orwell but do live in a state of constant discernment a bit like Bill Murray. So in that spirit I must report on the dismal dinner I had at Applebee's last night. I only go there as a way of avoiding my own kitchen but what struck me was lack of any service morale in the staff. Orwell states in "Down and Out" that the Continental waiter wants a social relationship with the customer and the English waiter gives only dull servitude. Well, it was pretty dull, even hostile at Applebee's. When my wife asked how the Key Lime dessert was the waitress said she didn't like Key Lime pie. When the bill came she handed me a pen from a tire store. She said she is required to buy all the pens she uses and her billing pads etc. a new low as far as I'm concerned. No wonder she's depressed. Also in "Down and Out" Orwell points out that the only thing between the civilized atmosphere of the dining room and the raucous and rough low life of the kitchen was the door between them. Applebees has now removed the door.

Here's that rainy day

Let's face it we're broke. It's nothing personal, it affects everyone in the world. I comfort myself with an old saying from the advertising business, "Death is the only disaster". Yes, but until then what do we do? Simple, go on living. maybe not the same old way. You may have to give up valet parking or Starbucks but the sun also rises and you have to rise with it. There is a scene in an old movie called "Haji Baba' where that distinguished Arab actor Raymond Massey says to Cornel Wilde (Baba himself) "What is the wisest thing you know?" And Baba answers, "Since debt is always whispering in your ear you must learn to live without the fear of money". Pretty wise thought.

Get in early

That's the last headline I wrote before I retired from advertising in 1989. It was for an emerging markets website, and in retrospect, it made sense at the time. After all, Nathan Rothschild said that the secret of his success was that he always got in early and sold too soon. Today the line would have had to be Get out early, something nobody did when the crash came. I confess that it happened to one of my stocks. I owned a solid, 110 year old company that had never missed a dividend or a losing quarter, until October 2008 when the bottom fell out. My first margin call, and last as far as I'm concerned. Set your clocks back 50 years folks and see if it will come back. It will help if you're ten years old.

If you want to be free brother, pay cash

That was the word from the pulpit of Rev. Bob Marshall, Birmingham, Mich. and no truer words were ever spoken. We now have a common enemy, the credit card companies. I got an insert with my Visa bill detailing all the new rules in 8 pages of fine print. Don't bother reading any of it because there's nothing in there for us. It's all legal boilerplate telling you who runs the show. Your job is to keep using your card and pay your bill on time, or else. Or else what? Cash has no enemies and I use it for every small purchase possible. I need the card for the big stuff like a new tire or week at a resort. They've got us there but don't forget, these are not your friends. To max out your spending money, not your card, look into WalletPop.com. Plenty of good ideas there. Amen.

What's good for General Motors was good for me in Detroit

It was the best of times when I went to work in the GM building in 1964. I was an up-and-coming copywriter at the Chevrolet ad agency working on the largest account in the world then.
GM had 51% of the US market. We sponsored Bonanza and Bewitched, the top two shows on television. Dinah Shore was singing, "See the USA in your Chevrolet, America's the greatest land of all". And so it was. The cars were selling and the money was pouring in. The Tigers and the Red Wings were winning and Motown was swinging. Then it became the worst of times. In July 1967 the riots came and all hell broke out. The carnage is chronicled by John Hersey in "The Algiers Motel Incident". We wanted out. I asked the agency (a different GM ad agency) for a transfer to anywhere. In six weeks I was working in Amsterdam and Zurich and in March 1968 our family was living in London. I became "The Mid-Atlantic Man" Tom Wolfe wrote about. I had my clothes made on Savile Row. I bought a turquoise velvet safari suit. I vacationed at Davos and Verbier. Julie Christie smiled at me and I had long literary conversations with the young Salman Rushdie. I had left Detroit far behind in its rubble and, of course never went back.
And yet, and yet I shall always remember a wonderful Detroit. Come back my lost city. O glittering and white!

The gentleman is a dope

The Governor of Nevada, one Jim Gibbons, is in the midst of a messy divorce. The front page of today's (April 7) Reno Gazette Journal screamed "Gibbon's wife: He cheated!" The first lady, (who is obviously not as important as the second lady or the third) insists that the Governor had affairs with a former Playboy model and another woman. This guy is a Republican so no remorse of course. It might be different if he were charming and competent but he is neither. He has an abysmally low approval rating. I suppose all the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players but this affair is not very Shakespearean. It seems more like a Billie Holiday
song: "Don't explain...you cheat and you're my joy and pain" For those who don't follow Broadway the title of this blog is a song from "Allegro" the now forgotten musical written by Rodgers and Hammerstein between Oklahoma and Carousel.

Could Einstein quarterback the Rams?

Maybe if he could do it all with a piece of chalk and a blackboard. Could Dan Marino do physics? Well, he could demonstrate motion and gravity by throwing a football.
My point is that we are all suited to our best talents. Of course we'd all like to be Einstein and Marino in the same body or Marilyn Monroe and Susan Sontag in the same sexy dress. I once thought I could master any subject when I was at Berkeley. Only the string of D's and F's proved me wrong. So I let the B's and A's guide me even if it was in Russian, Rugby or Strindberg. There is a character in Saul Bellow's "The Adventures of Augie March" who is not well-eduated but is a math genius. As he says, "Either it comes easy or it doesn't come at all." Shto za zhzin. (What a life)

Social philosophy from the funnies

In the "Pickles" comic strip by Brian Crane, Old Gramma says to Old Grammpa, "Listen to this quote by George Orwell...Every generation imagines itself to be more imtelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it. and she adds "Amen" and he says, "Isn't it the truth." In the last panel their little grandson comes to them and says, "I fixed your computer Gramma. You didn't have it plugged in." Isn't it the truth? See my blog "Technology has no destination>"

On first looking into a James Patterson novel

In the first chapter of "The 6th Target" a man with a gun named Bucky kills two strangers on a ferry: a mother and her young son. There is language such as 'He wants to smash the kid like a bug and Loser, dog shit." There is no shock value to these events. People die but there is no death to be mourned. I was also reading Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons" at the same time. OK so you say I'm stacking the deck but the death of Basarov details his anguish and suffering, his urgent deathbed declaration to his unrequited love, the doctor's frustration at not being able to help him and his grieving parents visiting his grave and the sombre final words, "However passionate, sinning and rebellious the heart hidden in the tomb, the flowers growing over it peep serenly at us with their innocent eyes. They tell us not of eternal peace alone, of the great peace of indifferent nature, they tell us too, of eternal reconciliation and of life without end." Someone gave me Patterson's book with the recommendation that the chapters were only 3 pages long. So the book has 136 chapters. Unfortunately no worthwhile novel has 136 chapters. Patterson is an ex-adman like myself and he has hit the jackpot by turning out potboilers for the unliterary reader. Brilliant marketing. There are wonderful books to read. The title of this blog is of course from John Keats" "On first looking into Chapman's Homer". Go to Amazon.com and find something that will satisfy your mind and heart.

A sauce policy?

That's what it says on the counter of a McDonalds in Lone Pine, Calif. The notice tells you how many packs of sauce you can have with each item: McNuggets-1 pack, some others 2 packs. This is the free part. At the bottom of the stern warning it points out that additional ones are 25 cents each. McDonalds is the very nadir of service but this seems as if there are commissars at the head office. I only hope that somewhere there is a modern George Orwell in a hair net detailing all this misery for us. I look forward to "Down and out in Pasadena and Lone Pine". I'll give you a tip from WWII when rationing took food away from restaurants--bring your own ketchup and mustard and use as much as you like.

Technology has no destination

Whatever gizmo you buy today will soon be obsolete. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from laptop to cell phone to CD. This is not clean drinking water which is an end in itself. I first met this face to face when I wanted to trade in my perfectly good 35mm camera. Not worth a thing the man said. My Polaroid? Not making the film anymore. Records, LP's , 8 tracks, yes even iPods will be in the museum someday soon. What to do? Nothing, as in do nothing if you can live without the latest gadgets. Radio, the 20th century marvel still works. But one of the funniest lines I ever heard was on the old Fred Allen radio show when he asked Titus Moody, the flinty Yankee how come there was no radio in the house and Titus said, "I don't hold with furniture that talks". OK the telephone and the movies that we know may go and we all know that our love is here to stay. I'm not here to scorn progress so by all means check
out what science is willing to provide us. I cheer them on. Who knows, some guys somewhere are perfecting a way to fax us a cold beer.

Stop smoking and use your ashtray for creative inspiration.

Early in his career someone asked Anton Chekhov how he came up with his stories so quickly.
"See this ashtray," he said, "I can give you a story about it tomorrow". That's your cue to write something personal about how you stopped smoking or perhaps a travel article about asking for an ashtray in France (cendrier) or matches in Amsterdam (Lucifers) Or do a Stephen King about the poor man from Seattle who leaned out the window to smoke in a Vegas hotel and plunged to his death. Submit your work to one of the regular contests at Zoetrope.com. Like Chekhov I speak Russian. So Ooodacha (it means good luck).

Where's the safest place for your money now?

The casino. Why the casino? Because it's honest. There are no Bernie Madoffs or Alan Stanfords or Wall Street sharpies to hornswaggle you out of your money. I live in Nevada and am in the casino all the time and the Gaming Board is a lot stricter than the SEC. You make your bets just like you did with your 401K. Win and you put the money in your pocket or lose your limit, have a drink and live to fight another day. Join the player's club (every casino has one) and start building your comps with every coin you play. Pretty soon you'll be getting a free meal and many other goodies. At my local casino in Minden, Nevada they'll even comp you free gas and groceries. A casino is more fun and more on the level than your broker. Check out
About.com for their excellent gambling site.

The origin of Twitter

In the spirit of Charles Darwin I have sought the origin of the popular site Twitter.com You won't need to visit the jungles of Africa or the far off Galapagos islands. It is in the Queen Elizabeth gardens in Vancouver BC. You'll find a parrot on a perch. He's not in a cage and you can come very close to him and when you do he has one question: "Whatcha doin?" That's the inspiration for one of today's most successful business models. So young entrepreneur, I ask you, "Whatcha doin?"

How to make people like you

Try this: next time you're in a supermarket line ask the person behind you if they'd like to go ahead of you. Orwell states that your greatest area of influence is within 5 to 10 feet of you. What you do in that space can have beneficial consequences. Usually people won't want to go ahead of you but they'll thank you just the same. And if they do step ahead of you they'll thank you all the way out the door. Get "Why Orwell Matters" by Christopher Hitchens at PowellsBooks.com