Dear So and So,

THE COMMUNICATERER RERETURNS.

Heraclitus’ contention that you can’t step in the same river twice apparently holds true for ad agencies as well. As a result, my relationship with Maddock Douglas has changed. I have returned to my original free agent role there, Purveyor of The Good. Which means I will be doing more writing, less writhing. My W-2 becomes a 1099. MD morphs from my favorite place of employment to my favorite (and biggest) client. (Except for you, of course, whoever you are.) In other words, in the words of George Castanza, “I’m back in business, Baby!”

Thus, the reversion back to my original format for this letter. I’ve got Dani Dudovick, the guy who created this original brand look, back on the job, creating a new iteration of this letter, which will debut with the next issue.

My time as CCO at MD was like doing graduate work at Ad Agency U. Of course, all that additional wisdom I’ve gained means you’ll be paying through both nostrils for my services. (Unamused silence as the half-hearted joke recedes into a persistant vegetative state.)

Congratulatory emails and phone calls are welcomed. I had to spamputate my old email addresses. The new, shorter address is jim@communicaterer.com. My number remains the same: 847-869-3415.

If I had the discipline to follow through on side projects, the first on my list would be a T-shirt bearing this sentiment:

Say it duol
I’m dyslexic and I’m duorp

Celebrity-authored children’s books. It’s remarkable/repulsive how these famous people manage to demean the entire genre by giving vent to their own self-inflated arrogance, through the simple (and, in these particular cases, I do mean simple) act of writing children’s books. Katie Couric, John Lithgow, Jamie Lee Curtis, Madonna, Jada Pinkett Smith, Jason Alexander, Bill Rancic, LeeAnn Rimes (does she write in rhymes?) The list keeps growing. Celebrities with time on their hands, a message in their smarmy hearts, and the self-deluded notion that while maybe not everybody can write a children’s book, surely they can, by sole dint of their celebrityhood.

Just because a person has the money, visibility and connections to get the book published, and has some moral ax to grind, does that mean they should? Publishers of the world, spare us these sophomoric attempts to enlighten and often brainwash the young. Please stop encouraging famous people with no apparent writing talent. It is an insult to all of the very good children’s book authors out there—Eric Carle, Judith Viorst, Jan Brett, Tom Lichtenheld, Judi Barrett, Jim Pacilio, Tomie dePaola, Shel Silverstein, Patricia Polacco—real writers, making valuable contributions to children’s literature. I’d like to suggest this title for the next stupid book that Katie or Jamie Lee or MaPrimaDonna spews: Hubris and the Ego-maniacal
Bunny.

I, on the other hand, could be making substantial contributions of a different sort to the culture, if only I could get an audience with the right people. For example, I could give Clay Aiken’s career a boost with this one little suggestion: Record the entire catalogue of Gene Pitney songs, especially I’m Gonna Be Strong, which Aiken should be aching to make his own. It would be huge. Seriously. If you can get word to him about this, for God’s sake, do it now. His career may be at stake staike st’ache.

Here’s another contribution I’d like to make, but I don’t know whom to call to get the wheels in motion. (Kelsey Grammer maybe, since he seems to be executive producing a lot of crap TV these days.) It would be, with luck, the last reality show, one that I would absolutely watch, called OCD People’s Heads Explode. (Say it out loud a couple of times.) This would be like Trading Spaces or Wife Swap, except it would involve two people with obsessive compulsive disorder, who manifest the condition in different ways. One needs germ-free symmetry with the smell of Lysol always in the air; the other is compelled to spread little spittle bubbles on everything, and is certain that the smell of Lysol is in fact Satan’s body odor. Make them live in each other’s environments for a week or so.

From my daughter Holly’s book of etymological speculations: the word “recidivism” must derive somehow from the word of which it is obviously a distortion: “revisitism.”
Long-time subscribers will note that I’ve crammed all the stuff below onto this same sheet of paper, rather than devoting a separate sheet to it. That’s because my shiny new letter-folding machine can’t fold two sheets at a time. You see, necessity is the mother of condensation. You’ll also notice that the Harper’s Index® Digest is back in all its reprinted without permissionness.

Okay, who’ll be the first to testdrive the sleek new turbot-charged 2006 Communicaterer?

Stoically,

 

“Until we become nicer people, there will be no peace in the world.” -- Kirk Douglas

“If you will persuade, you must first please.” -- Lord Chesterfield

The common ground Libertarians share with Jews:
a distaste for pork.

“A man with a hammer sees every problem as a nail.” — Anon

“It seems Harvard and other venerable institutions of higher learning champion diversity in everything . . . but thought.” — George Will

“If thought corrupts language, language also corrupts thought.” — George Orwell

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” — Einstein

“In confusion, there is profit.” — Frank Grubich