Thursday, April 23, 2009

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.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

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.

Monday, April 13, 2009

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!

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

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>"

Saturday, April 4, 2009

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.

Friday, April 3, 2009

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.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

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