Dear So and So,

I’m thinking of starting a new benevolent organization for rental property owners called Landlords Without Boarders.

Have you noticed that the little musical motif that adorns the often incomprehensible Lottery spots is awfully similar to McDonald’s current motif? Not identical enough to trigger a lawsuit, but too close to be excused.

A year ago, I wrote a tagline, Making Optimal Possible, for Acquity Group, a Chicago IT and business consultancy. Six months later, LaSalle Bank started Making More Possible. And now I see that Freddie Mac is telling us that We Make Home Possible. People, please, there are plenty of lines to go around. Don’t make me do all the heavy lifting.

Speaking of taglines, I’m in mourning. My baby, We are Flintstones Kids, Ten Million Strong and Growing, is dead. After a 23-year run, the campaign has been replaced by a new campaign from BBDO punctuated by a new line, Better nutrition from head to toe. If the line my friend Scott Ferraiolo wrote way back when, Nobody Cares for Eyes More Than Pearle, can hang on for another year or so, he will win the unspoken competition he and I have had going since the mid-eighties.

Mysteries of the world, part I: There is a certain side street in Elmhurst on which there is a parking garage. I approach the entrance to this garage so that I must turn left to enter it. Cars approaching from the opposite direction enter by turning right. When I arrive at the garage, any cars coming from the opposite direction automatically assume they have the right of way into the garage, no matter how much later they arrive. Apparently, the right-hand turn takes precedence over the left-hand turn, into eternity. I have watched upwards of a dozen right-turners precede me into the lot, some of which weren’t even within sight of the garage when I positioned myself, signal on, for the left turn. Why do they assume that I should yield? Why don’t I get my turn? I view this self-centered, arrogant behavior as further evidence of the impending collapse of Western . . . Western what? “Civilization”? I don’t think so.

Mysteries of the world, part II: I’ve belonged to an HMO for at least 20 years. For the bulk of that time, doctor visits have required a “co-pay” of $10 or $15 for every member. This means the person with whom you check in at the doctor’s office should not be unfamiliar with the concept of the co-pay, since she is the one who requests it. She is the one who records the payment of the co-pay. So why is it that, to this day, every time I hand that person a 20 dollar bill, she reacts as if I am trying to pay with toilet paper or shells or dong. There is always that brief moment of apparent non-comprehension. Then she reluctantly takes the bill in her hand, still looking a little baffled, proceeds to look around, checking in drawers, finally leaving her station, then returning after a few minutes with my change.

Is it possible that, in fact, I am the only person who pays co-pays with cash? I know this was the case the last (and only, and first, for that matter) time I bought an item at Neiman Marcus, 14 years ago. That item was about $25, and the bills I handed the cashier sent him scurrying off on his own quest for change because, in his words, “I don’t often deal with currency.” But an HMO isn’t a suffocatingly snooty upscale department store. It’s a healthcare club for the common man. So why is all currency foreign to them?
One of my former bosses, Arthur Strum, often voiced his opinion that one-word headlines were a lazy copywriter copout. I agree with him. But if it’s true for headlines, it’s far more true (assuming that Truth admits of degrees) of taglines. There is a point where simplicity reduces to slothful, empty simplemindedness. A while back, United’s tagline was Rising. For Van Kampen, the word is Shine (not to be confused with Blue Cross/Blue Shield’s Shining Through.) HP has boiled itself down to Invent. For EDS, it was, until recently, Solved (not to be confused with Emerson’s Consider It Solved.) Now Conoco Phillips chimes in with their own Elevate. What’s next? Prefixes and suffixes and other syllabic tags? When you simplify to the point of impfying, you defeat your own purpose.

While I’m crabbing about adstuff, for as long as I can remember, Prudential has had as its bug, its icon, its logothing, an image of the Rock of Gibraltor. They still do. It would be reasonable to assume that this image was intended to represent stability, permanence, constancy, substance and size, something to be relied upon, trusted, blah blah. So, of course, now they’ve got a new campaign featuring . . . elephants.
Here’s further evidence that I am in fact prescient. On April 24th, after the Sox won a game against the Royals, their seventh of eight in a row, despite six walks in five innings and four errors, in an epiphanal moment, I shed the traditional Sox fan cloak of bitter, cynical, defensive defeatism, and declared out loud to several people, for the record, that the Sox were going to win the World Series this year. These were words I had never spoken before in my life. Late in the season, I wavered, but never abandoned this prediction. I’m pretty sure I was the first person (other than the simple-minded fools who predict a Championship every year) to foresee the outcome of this improbable Sox season. So there.

If I ever wrote a musical comedy, it would be entitled Oh, Contrarian! But, of course, I would never write one of those silly, contrived, insipid wastes of time. I choose, instead, to write this silly, contrived, insipid waste of time.

Stoically,

 

“To suppose as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and stay sober.” — Logan Pearsall Smith

“Self-sufficiency is the greatest wealth of all.” — Epicurus

“You can be comfortable, or outstanding, but not both.” — Sally Hogshead

“Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald