Dear Bipedal Pushers and Bipolar Bearers:

I would be tempted to describe July as having been a “very quiet” month for me. However, that wouldn’t be accurate, as I spent much of that month running from room to room, frothing and wailing, “IT’S OVER! IT’S OVER! ADVERTISING IS OVER!”, and “THE JIG IS UP! I’VE BEEN FOUND OUT!” Fortunately, business (and with it, my stoic perspective) returned, to some extent, in August.

I feel the need, as usual, to clean up some of the mess left over from my last communique. Just because the British have always called hoof and mouth disease “foot and mouth disease” isn’t really sufficient explanation for why we now refer to this disease in that same way. After all, if we are reporting on an elevator accident in England, the headline doesn’t read “Lift Disaster!” So why did we, as a nation, immediately and without discussion, embrace “foot and mouth disease”?

As for attributing “God is in the details” to Mies van der Rohe in the last Write Between The Eyes, let me explain. With my business tanking and all, I had to let my Fact Checker go. In lieu of a Fact Checker, I simply called Mike Gebert and asked him whose quote that was. Mies van der Rohe was his big idea. Some of you have questioned the attribution. Is it Einstein’s, perhaps? One of you even went so far as to speculate that it may have been Napoleon’s quote, not Mies’s. (I was also taken to task by one of you who, mistakenly thinking the quote was, “God is in Details”, ran out and bought the latest issue.) Normally, I would stop at nothing to clear up a controversy such as this. But, like I said, times are tough and the Fact Checker is gone.

I’ve begun work on my first screenplay. It’s the story of an industrious Italian American youth working an entry level job after school at Dominick’s. He befriends the store manager, and in his unassuming way, inspires the manager to take his business to new heights, which he does, culminating in an award as Store Manager of the Year for the Midwest region. Working title: The Legend of Bagger Vince.

You may have noticed that, enclosed with this letter, is my radio reel. It contains four spots, the first three of which are real, if only in the sense that they actually aired. The fourth was created as part of a new business pitch.

I chose not to include my pioneering “image radio” spot for Ohio State University Hospitals, which won, not just an Addy, but a Juror’s Award (the only radio spot ever to do so, I’m speculating) at the Columbus Addys a while back. Why did I exclude this spot? Because, I’m told, you should always leave ‘em screaming for more. On the other hand, I’m considering expanding my website, www.communicaterer.com, to include this legendary spot in the near future. Stay tuned.

The reason I’ve enclosed my radio reel is in the hope that you will listen to it, realize it is I who deserves the moniker, “Mr.Radio”, rather than David Lewis, Bob Monachino, David Schiff, Keith Kinney or any other pretender. It is my further hope that, upon realizing this, you’ll pick up the phone and assign me that hot radio project, patting yourself on the back for being such a canny judge of talent.

You’ll notice I’ve also enclosed a copy of one of my recent Screen columns, reprinted without permission (sorry, Ruth). Within this column lies the secret to how some enlightened ad agency can take a bold step toward becoming the “Goodby” of the Midwest. I await that agency’s call.

If this issue seems a tad subdued, it’s because, until the “constructive criticism” dies down regarding the last newsletter’s savaging of NPR, French people and women who wear pedal pushers, I’ve decided that it might be prudent to return to the less bombastic, more smugly self-absorbed tonality of my earlier issues, evidence the 27 mentions of me, a mere six of you.

Stoically,

 

Among the items seized by the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service over the last year were a cow lung, cooked and battered in cheese; bush meat containing cuts of rock-hard dried paws, shoulders and heads of large rodents; and five kilos of chopped horse penis. Mmm-mmm.

“The hardest thing to understand is why we understand anything at all.” - Albert “God is in the details” Einstein

“An evil and foolish and intemperate and irreligious life should not be called a bad life, but rather, dying long drawn out.” - Democritus

“Rome wasn’t burnt in a day.” - Bill McNeil

“If there really are multiple universes, what do they call the thing they’re all a part of?” - George Carlin

“Mindless banter is good for the soul.” - Jeff Getz

“The first hundred years are the hardest.” - Raymond Roth (105 years old)