The Semi-Circle of Life.

I don’t blog much- what with Osma Bin Laden’s death, flooding in the Mississippi, the royal wedding, the royal separation (I forsee T5- Rise of the AARP)- is there anything that I have to say that really matters? Probably not. But since that never seems to stop anybody else from blogging about brushing their teeth and the collection of Qtips accumulating on their nightstand, I guess I feel I’m entitled to my occasional thought, and I promise no paper was hurt and no tree felled in the writing of this post.

So I’ve had the weirdest few days, which is really the impetus for my desire to share. Weird in a mostly good way, which is good for you dear reader as I’m not going to complain. Much.

Now, Friday the 13th is one of those days that people either care about or don’t, I think. Fortunately, I am not my grandmother who I loved dearly but was riduculously superstitious and on more than one occasion accidently doused me in the face with the over-the-shoulder-flying-salt-trick. Thankfully, it wasn’t pepper. But I commited to be forever one of those people who don’t care about Friday the 13th when my wife and I decide to get married on Saturday, May 13th, 22 years ago. It’s amazing how many people were aghast that we’d even consider the date since every 7 years we’d have an anniversary on Friday the 13th and didn’t we realize that most buildings don’t have a 13th floor because it’s bad luck? Now I beg to differ on that point because any building that is taller than 12 stories does indeed have a 13th floor. Whether they actually call it “the 13th floor” or not, it’s still exists unless the rest of the building somehow magically hovers in place, CGI style. So fine, get off the elevator on the 14th floor, but I’m telling you you are standing on the 13th floor, OK? If you don’t believe, go outside right now and stand in front of that building you were just in and count the floors from the bottom up. So there.

So I’ve gotten a bit sidetracked, but really, the last few days have been strange. Starting with the stray cat who followed my son home and was blind and mostly deaf. Kind of like “Tommy” but much, much cuter, though I know some women will argue with me that Roger Daltrey was pretty cute in his day. And I guess the cat had no special discernible talent for pinball, so maybe it really wasn’t such a great comparrison after all. Now some people are probably saying finding a stray cat is not all that weird, except stray cats and dogs seem to find us, not the other way around. Maybe there’s a big “sucker” sign in invisible dog and cat braille stenciled on the outside of my house that only they can understand? If there is, and if any dog or cat happen to be reading this post right now, I hope they will contact me and let me in on their secret. But the weird thing really is that we’ve already found a one-eyed stray cat, or he found us. Now I’m not sure what’s going on with all the eye issues with these cats but my thinking is that with rampant healthcare costs that most cats just can’t afford regular eye exams anymore, but they somehow still can read that giant “sucker” sign on my house.

The good news here, is that owners were found in both cases, and we actually have a perfect record so far in terms of our dog and cat no-obligation-return-policy. And I’m sure the town police and animal control officer have our number on speed dial by now.

So like I was saying, it was a weird few days. My wife and I celebrated our 22nd anniversary and no that’s not weird but because the celebration seemed to go on for about three days and no actual vacation or time travel was involved, it just felt like it was never going to end. We purposely decided not to go out on our actual anniversary because we knew we had to be up early the next morning for our daughter’s piano recital which of course means the opposite and we ended up going out but rather than wait until the evening we started celebrating at lunch time instead, but actually maybe we really started the night before that, which was a Thursday. So it was all well and good, but then Saturday morning rolled around, as did our traditional 8:15 “whatever doesn’t kill you or make you sick makes you stronger” spinning class. I now realize that these classes were not named for the actual motion of the bike wheels but for the feeling you get of being less than “fresh” in class. The wheels don’t spin, the room does. And if it is true that exercise can sweat out toxins, then I must come to believe that 99.999% of gyms are basically big toxic waste dumps and should be regulated much more closely by the government.

Now if you are a parent, or know anybody who is, I’m sure you understand why the words “piano recital”, “talent show” or “double-header” can put even the most loving parent on edge. And I love my daughter, and she is actually quite good playing the piano, and while she may not be Thelonious Monk yet, she really is talented. But I also know that the other 20 parents feel the same way about Junior. So as my wife and I waited patiently for our daughter’s shining moment, we listened to quite a wide variety of talented and not-so-talented players. To be very honest, the recital is only an hour, and it does go by pretty quickly, and my ears have never actually bled.Then something strange happened (I didn’t want to use “weird” again). A microphone appeared, and not the kind that is usually aimed at an instrument. No, it was the kind that singers often use for singing, as in vocals, as in “Hmm, I think the next prodigy is going to sing while she plays piano”.  And again, I guess that is fine because we all have to learn tolerence and patience and how else do you learn to sing in front of an audience? Well, actually, I would suggest you take several years of voice lessons before you attempt that or else limit yourself to hanging out in karaoke bars where you will most definitely not find me as you would no more want to hear me sing than you would’ve have wanted to hear that girl sing during her recital.

Now some of you may think I am being mean and heartless by criticizing a child, but she really wasn’t all THAT young, and remember when I said my ears had never actually bled during a recital? Well I’m telling you they finally did and I could feel my brain starting to actually drip slowly out but I really couldn’t think about any of that because the screech screech screech coming from the microphone was way too loud.

Pain can be a funny thing especailly when it happens to someone other than yourself, and that girl’s mother was beaming and I say good for her and her tone-deaf-I-love-you-unconditionally parental attitude. Yes- be proud of your daughter while we suffer because you lack the cohones to encourage the anti Judy Garland not to sing or possibly you’re just a sadistic prison guard in real life.

Even with all that, as a parent, I understand that woman’s devotion to her daughter and her talentless vocal chords. But what really, really got me, was how many parents, this mother included, got up and left soon after their prodigy finished. Huh? Manners people? I know little Johnny is the star of his baseball team and without him, and his talent of sleeping in the outfield and catching butterflies his team doesn’t have a prayer in hell.  I mean, can’t people devote one friggin’ hour to an activity, especially when you’ve made me sit through Twinkle Twinkle Little Star for the umpteenth time? And especially when you’ve let your child sing when clearly they should be focusing on their piano playing and then you leave, just like that. “We’re done; you were fortunate to have have your eardrums rearranged by my daughter’s vocals-now we must leave as we are far too busy meeting up with the ghost of Pavarotti to wait to hear your daughter play her insignificant song, you silly man.”

I did play a lot of football when I was younger, and though I was more of a speed  and hands person, I could throw down a decent block and tackle when I needed to. So my first instinct when this woman walked by me was to just take her out, below the knees and be done. But her child was too close, and I may be a lot of things but I am not a child-tackler, unless they’re my own of course and they deserve it. My wife, by the way, who clearly had been in almost the same amount of pain as I was, still pleaded with me not to harm this woman, or at least wait until she was outside of the church and my wife’s field of vision.

Of course, since we live in a vaguley veiled civilized society, I ended up doing nothing. Just fumed a bit and watched her leave. Made a few jokes- ok, made a lot of jokes. Had a good laugh or two or three. And my daughter played great, by the way.

What a weird few days, and I never even got to the part about the baby ducks.

The Full (disclosure) Monty

THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS AN ORIGINAL IDEA.

My first boss and sometime mentor Steve Cosmopulos told me that when I was first working for him after he left Hill Holiday Connors Cosmopulos and started his next agency Cosmopulos, Crowley & Daly. I was a fledgling and flailing arms akimbo art director just out of Mass Art and he gave me my first job.

“Every idea you come up with has probably been thought of and done by somebody else,” he said. Hmm. That kind of stinks, I remember thinking. So what’s the point then?

The point of course, is that it doesn’t matter. Our job as I see it is to push ourselves creatively forward, and to always be thinking. You can’t worry about what’s come before you, or what’s coming after you, so to speak.

Which brings me to this big can of worms. Actually, truth be told, two cans of worms I have in front of me. The decision whether to open the first one or not was recently made for me by someone else. You see, in my first blog on this site, I explained how I came up with the concept of the “Homeless Art Director”. Yeah, it’s kind of wordy, but I felt like it was a story worth telling, as I felt I had an epiphany when I came up with the idea. Was all excited. Smiling. Patting myself on the back for coming up with a concept I could not only run with, but one that I really connected with personally, too.

So back to that can ‘o worms. You see, there’s this movie that was done by a Boston ad guy Erik Proulx called “Lemonade”. He also has a pretty interesting web site called http://www.pleasefeedtheanimals.com. I had heard some vague rumblings about the movie as it was in production, I guess, and some of my ad friends had mentioned it on their own blogs or LinkedIn or Facebook. Doesn’t matter really. It’s basically about a bunch of talented ad folks who have been laid off from their jobs and found ways to reinvent themselves, or make “Lemonade” from their “lemon” situations. Forgive me if I’ve oversimplified it, but honestly, I still haven’t seen it.

The worms. Yes, it’s time to open the can. I recently received an email from a guy in Vancouver named Mark Busse. He’s a partner/design director at a firm called industrial brand (http://www.industrialbrand.com). Now I don’t know Mark, though through several emails I can say he seems like a guy I’d like to have a beer with. Anyway, he sends me a cryptic email with the subject line:Not very original. In the body of the email is a web address http://www.homelesscopywriter.com, and then “Enough said”. Huh? Or better yet whowhatwherewhenwhyhow?

I went to the web site, and sure enough, a copywriter in Vancouver named Geoff Vreeken (http://www.geoffvreeken.com) had created this site after being laid off from his job, and he decided he wanted to give back in a way he hadn’t done before. It’s a nice idea and seems like a good cause. Now I don’t know Geoff either, but I received an email from him as well, the day after I got the cryptic email from Mark Busse.

The email basically said “I had quite a few people at Design Week 2010 telling me my old concept had been ripped off. Maybe it has, maybe it hasn’t, but I wanted to make you aware of www.homelesscopywriter.com, a charity site I launched last year. Best of luck, Geoff Vreeken. Pretty non-partisan, actually, when you consider that he’d essentially been told “Hey, that guy just put an X-Acto in your back...”

Now I’ve done my fair share of charity and non-profit work over the years. I was on the board of the Greater Table for 15 years and helped raise close to a million dollars through our Super Hunger Brunch, which is a great event and still continues to this day, and is now run by The Greater Boston Food Bank as they have the resources to successfully handle such a large event. So all I’m saying is that yes, I do give back, and still do- I get it, and we all should.

So Geoff, and anybody out there listening, I humbly must say I created my own site in my own way in my own office. The only witness who can vouch for me is the dog, and he’s just not talking. And I’m hoping I can just put this puppy to rest now.

By the way, there’s also a “Homeless Photographer” (http://www.collectivelens.com/blog/2007/08/26/the-homeless-photographer/), and a “Homeless Writer” (http://www.thehomelesswriter.pnn.com). Give it enough time, and www.HomelessAccountExecutive is sure to follow. Not sure what this says about the state our industry, but give me “www.livinginthelapofluxuryartdirector” any day instead.

Oh yeah, about that second can of worms sitting on my desk? Watch for my next blog- I promise to open it as well. My can opener just broke-seriously. Talk about coincidences.

Random Thinking

Nothing specific to blog about, but lots of specific things to say:

• There are a lot of things I've seen written that I wish I had wrote.

• There are things that I've written that I wish I hadn't, but not too much.

• I like Facebook because I've reconnected with some great people I haven't heard from in years.

• I don't like Facebook because I barely can remember what I had for breakfast today, and honestly don't care that someone I haven't talked to in 20 years burned their toast. Throw another piece in and be quiet about it.

• Why can't I get young designers and students to understand to turn off the automatic hyphenation feature in their software programs so their paragraphs don't bre-ak li-ke th-is and have 3 hyphenated sentences in a row. It looks sloppy whether it's in your design work or a cover letter. Stop it and pay attention.

• While we're talking about design,  http://kuler.adobe.com is a great site. Just don't become lazy using it.

• Not a single day goes by that I don't hear the following bands on the radio: Red Hot Chili Peppers; Sublime; Smashing Pumpkins; The Beastie Boys. Every single day. Bands I always loved are becoming music that annoys the savage beast. Stop it, corporate radio, or at least play some of their lesser known tracks. Sheesh.

• I've been having a lot of fun playing around with iMovie. Just need to find more time...

• If life begins at 50, why do I need a Red Bull in the morning before I workout?

• Watching Sopranos reruns reminded me (again) of how great the music was. Check out this wiki site for every song played on the show: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_on_The_Sopranos

• Especially listen to "Evidently Chickentown" by John Cooper Clarke. What a great song, and it's almost 30 years old.

• They say if you love your job you'll never have to work a day in your life. Well, I really like my job but some days it definitely feels like work. Especially post 9/11.

• My new dog, a shelter-rescued coonhound, likes to try and climb trees. Seems that his breed was bred for hunting bear and boar. Funny how they never put that stuff on the intake papers. But he's a great pup, and I'm guessing those squirrels are his own personal windmills.

• At least I didn't mention what I had for breakfast. OK- it was half a bagel and some Smart Bacon.

ARE WE GETTING RUDER, AND WHO'S TO BLAME?

So I answered my own question, right there in the headline. I do believe people are ruder, sloppier (you count the ways: table manners, writing, dress, etc.) I don't want to come off as some old mothball curmudgeon (hey, I just was blasting the Sex Pistols, so give me a break), but what the hell happened to common sense? Maybe the mistake is being made at the grade school level- CS101- it should be taught and tested right along with the MCAS. Send little Johhny or Joanie home with a common sense test- so many people are not teaching their kids to think for themselves, and so many adults have forgotten the fine art of not being a jerk or a poopie head.

Bear witness to the following: I'm not naming names, and we've all been manner guilty at one time or another. ITEM #1.  My son had his Bar Mitzvah this year. We did a real down-scale, down-to-earth celebration for a lot of reasons. I designed the invite myself (it is what I try to do for a living- designing), then put them in the mail. Maybe Emily Post would roll over in her etiquette-appropriate coffin, but there was no formal "reply card". Didn't want to spend the $$ on stamps, and we were trying to be very "green" by asking people to RSVP with a simple phone call and/or email. Many did as were asked. And just as many decided the "Respond by date" was just another way of saying "Ignore after opening". So we finally started calling the 50 or so people who chose to have us hunt them down like the dogs they decided to be. And some of these were very good friends. I love them all (maybe a tiny bit less now), but come on? Can't you even pretend that my son's Bar Mitzvah is momentarily more important than the work/soccer/football/field hockey/cheerleading/baseball/dance/music/game/practice thingymabob you're doing 24/7 to respond to me for 30 seconds? It's not a big request. Seriously.

ITEM#2. A children's clothing drive. Charity. Sounds like a nice thing, right? Especially if you offer the lure of wine & cheese to go with your good will? And all you have to do is show up, drop stuff, eat & drink, and we get it where it needs to go, into the hands of the people who need it. Actually, you don't even have to show up- you can just drop stuff on our front porch, ding-dong-ditch style. Remember- it was about the kids, but it sure would've been nice to RESPOND to the invite/RSVP we sent out, friend.

ITEM#3. A friend recently had one of those "jewelry" parties. OK- I know these things aren't for everybody, and there's a a party for everything these days from A-Z. But there's nothing that says "I love You" or "You care the very best" like when you expect 25 people and 5 show up. RSVP? The French better come up with something more appropriate, and quick. "WC anybody?" No- not "Water Closet", more like "Who Cares"...

Where am I going with this long rant? Does social media have anything to do with this lack of couth? You'd think it would make it easier for us. With a click of a button we can respond to emails, text messages, blogs, posts, invitations... or maybe not. Are we now so inundated between our real life and our cyber lives that we just don't have time for anything anymore? Are we so connected that we can't connect humanely anymore? 

So the next time you're eating, use a napkin, you Neanderthal, and don't pick your teeth at the table- if I wanted a floor show I'd pay extra. When you write that email? Use spell check- it's free, or worse, a friggin' dictionary if you own one. And the next time you get invited to something, RSVP for cryin' out loud, if that's the appropriate thing to do. Pick up a phone, click "yes" or "no", mail it, carve it into a stone tablet and roll up the street for all I care (and it'd be good exercise, too). But DO SOMETHING. Just don't be rude.

SHAMELESS ACTS OF SELF PROMOTION AND DIVING INTO THE SOCIAL MEDIA POOL.

So this is my first blog. Like so many other bloggers out there, I have a lot to say about a lot of things. But I honestly don't know how people have the time to read the seemingly endless stream of information that's put out there, but I've been told they do read it, and that I should be part of it.

Coincidentally (not really), it just so happens that I think I have an interesting story to pass along. It's about social media, self-promotion and how I came full circle to design this web site. I am by no means a social media guru- just a guy trying really hard to find work/a job. So in some ways I've been thrown into the social media pool kicking and screaming, and without a life jacket. It's old school sink or swim baby- no arm floaties for you.

Yeah yeah, the STORY. Well, I've been a self-employed/freelance art director/designer for a long time. I've really been trying to get out there over the last few months, networking like crazy, going to events, shaking hands, passing out my biz cards. Eating (or preferably, not eating) a lot of bad bar food. Since when did stale cheese and crackers and yellow-tinged broccoli crowns w/dip become our national meal? Blecch.

Networking is all well and good, and I was adding people to my LinkedIn (I'm not a total social mediaphobe), but I can honestly say in the last several months of doing this, I think I had only picked up one concrete job, and possibly a pound or two. It's been tougher getting my butt out of bed at 5:30am to hit the gym when I'm getting home late from "an event" the night before. But when my wife told me she was going to the Hatch Awards a couple of weeks ago through work (her boss couldn't go and gave her his ticket-thanks Sean), I asked if she thought she could score one for me as well, since an extra $100+ is hard for me to come by these days (thank you Anand). I have to say, kudos to the Ad Club- they still do a great job after all these years.

So the night before Hatch, I sat in my office, looking over a pile of bills, overdue notices and other heart-achingly warm correspondences, and looked hard into the mirror. OK, so that's not true- no mirror, but I really did "reflect" on my situation and where the hell was I headed? It certainly didn't seem like I was going in the direction I wanted- no yellow brick road- more like a urine soaked alley if I didn't do something, and fast. (Did I mention I'm already working 3 jobs? That's another sob blog.)

Well, I thought about what this economic downturn has done to people/families. Foreclosures, savings wiped out, rampant unemployment; locusts, hail and days of darkness. Not pretty. And I realized I felt "homeless", not literally (not yet, but a real possibility), but in the fact that despite years of good experience, I couldn't seem to find a job/work where I could hang my hat, have a "home", contribute (note my "Homeless biz card" on the front of my site). Now don't get on me about being tasteless in my approach. Well, I guess you can- everyone's entitled to their opinion. But try walking in my shoes for awhile- I'll bet you find them damn uncomfortable.

About those "Homeless biz cards". I shot a pic of some corrugated cardboard, hand-lettered the front copy, scanned it in, printed them out 8 to a page at Staples (my color printer has taken a leave of absence). I then glued them onto actual corrugated cardboard which I had purposely peeled and scuffed the backs for a bit more "authenticity". And then I cut, and cut, and cut. And I built a big corrugated "biz card box" as well, to hold my new downscale cards. I decided against hanging a sign around my neck- overkill, and I think my marriage may have ended that night if I walked into Hatch wearing one: my wife, who has been nothing but a rock of support for me (thanks Ab), was very "unsure" about my new cards. Honestly, I was too. But I figured Hatch being Hatch, with lots of creative people mingling, drinking, drinking while mingling, and drinking a bit more, it would be a good place to hand them out. This was pretty far outside of my comfort zone, but I decided if I ended looking like a buffoon, oh well. And it gave me an excuse to wear my one good black (what else?) suit. At least I'd be a well-dressed buffoon.

We met a few people beforehand for drinks, and much to my relief, the cards were a big hit, and more importantly, the color actually came back into my wife's face. A woman my wife used to work with thought the cards were so great, she was going to blog about it (thanks again, Meg) on her company's job/blog site.

So walking into Hatch, I had a bit of confidence that I hadn't totally made an arse of myself. People were very responsive (all positively, at least to my face). Otherwise, I suppose they just steered clear of me. When the Awards portion of the evening actually started, I was standing in the back of the room with several people, trying to listen over the din. Don't get me wrong- Hatch is fun, but when you don't have anything entered, the natives can get kind of restless. A series of speakers, presenters, and winners whirled and blurred across the stage. I was about to use the rest room, when Edward Boches (CD of Mullen), took the stage. He was poking fun at Gary Greenberg, another very well known ad guy, who wasn't there that night. But it caught my attention, because I know Gary, and we both teach at Emerson. A minute later though, Edward Boches began to discuss a story from 25 years ago- that of the writer Jonathan Plazonja, and his best of show Hatch “campaign” he did for himself, just out of school, to get a job. And I was at the Hatch Awards that year so I remembered it clearly; I was working for Steve Cosmopulos at the time, and a lot of people were bull that some out-of-work kid without a job won, and that none of the so-called "big agencies" took home the “grand prize”. So I made a quick decision that I was going to walk up to the stage and hand this guy (who I did not know) my new "card"; I first apologized for interrupting him, (which I realize does not mean it’s OK), and I said “in the spirit of Jonathan Plazonja, I wanted to give you this”. I then high-tailed it to the back of the room. Luckily it was rather dark, so my embarrassed and horrified expression and out-of-body experience wasn't clearly visible to anyone except my friends. What the hell had I just done? Who WAS that guy. Did I really do that at Hatch. Yes, I did.

Would Edward Boches slam me- yes, kind of. Would he ever speak to me- yes, eventually. When you do something renegade, you can't really predict the results, and have to be prepared for what comes next. Ahh, but there's the rub- you don't know what's going to come next. But you can try and control it- I sent the story out to some local media, along with a truly horrific ex-con-like shot of me holding my card (the "nice" head shot I had didn't seem to fit the storyline). A good friend of mine wanted to know who the "old woman" was holding up my card (thanks Bob).

I got some good press. Then came Edward Boches' blog about what I did. He titled it “Hey stage crasher, you remind me of a bad TV commercial” (here's the link:http://edwardboches.com/hey-stage-crasher-you-remind-me-of-a-bad-tv-commercial). Nice. So I started to follow his blog, and honestly, the comments were mixed. But I came forward and defended myself. I didn't know if he would even allow my post to show, but he did, and better than that, he was fair and started a dialog with me. And emailed me privately. Of course, I also think it was also good fodder for his blog. But he met with me, sincerely tried to help me, took photos with me, was a real stand-up guy. I'm not delusional-I don't think I'll be invited to his house for dinner or anything, but I think I've made an ally out of him- maybe a networking friend- but at least I know I'm not on his sh_t list. So here's the end of it- a link to Edward's last blog where he says really nice things about me: http://edwardboches.com/engagement-works-better-than-interruptio

Did I get a job? Nope, not yet- still looking. So make sure you check out my web site. But I have a greater understanding about the power of social media to connect people. And it inspired me and energized me to create this site, this blog, and keep pushing it all forward. I wish I knew where this would all lead, but there are life experiences you just can't predict, and the roller coaster ride has been pretty interesting so far.

Craig

craiggrant@comcast.net