I don’t know about you, but I’m worried sick. This financial market meltdown is giving me the willies, and now I think I see the devious greedy paws of chimps on the taxpayer’s checkbook.
Get a load of this: while Bernanke and Paulson are begging politicians for a big fat Wall Street payday, chimps dressed to the nines have been spotted in the crowd, hungrily licking their chops.
Now I’m not usually an alarmist, but what if these chimps are behind the entire brouhaha? What if it was their clever plot to deregulate the financial markets, slash rates and make money easy to get, take on a ton of bad debt, fail miserably and then stick it to taxpayers to bail the banks out? Are chimps running Wall Street? Are we patsies, being played like a glockenspiel?
Now some may think I’m out of line here, but I’m going to Brooks Brothers to see if chimps and monkeys are snatching up fancy duds.Something stinks here, stinks to high heaven.
They think they’re so smart, and maybe they are, but monkeys are often discovered posing as authority figures endangering life as we know it here on this planet many of us call “home.”
Imagine being wheeled into the operating room and your last vision before drifting off to slumberville is a monkey behind a surgical mask, his clumsy fingers fumbling about the razor sharp scalpels on the surgical tray.
Or picture yourself taking your favorite suit into the tailor shop for alterations, and the guy measuring your inseam suddenly begins throwing angry hairy-armed haymakers into your unsuspecting crotch.
What if you were in church and the collection basket came your way and you noticed it was filled with banana peels–– then you see your pew consists of monkeys in their Sunday best! Holy is the moly!
We must all be ever vigilant in unmasking these impostors and bringing them to public attention. If we do not, I fear our very fabric of life will unravel like some sort of unraveling thingy.
As roadside attractions go, it’s hard to top the Gaffney Peach, conveniently located by Interstate-85 in Gaffney, South Carolina. Constructed in 1981, it’s a million dollar water storage tank that’s shaped like… get this… a PEACH!
It’s a wondrous sight when one is zipping along trying to avoid the long radar arm of Johnnie Law. This large peach on the horizon is the sort of thing that brings angels to tears and makes puppy fur feel softer. It’s a middle finger thrown to the traveling residents of Georgia, the alleged “peach state”, claiming the crown for South Carolina.
But tragically, last year this glorious monument was sullied, spoiled and shat upon by a Fatz Cafe erected in its shadow with a hideous neon sign obstructing the magnificent view of peachy water tankery. Makes me want to puke my spleen.
The peach of my eye is poked.The sin, the shame, the injustice of it all!
Now I’ve never eaten at a Fatz Cafe and I assure you that I never will after what they’ve done. They have soiled a monument, a national treasure. It’s like drawing a black marker mustache on the Mona Lisa or putting Popeye arms on Venus de Milo. Fatz has ruined a work of art.
I hope you’re happy, Fatz Cafe, you Fatz Catz, for marring the jewel of I-85. My heart goes out to all Gaffney’s children (all motorists are Gaffney’s children). Boo hoo hoo hoo, woe be we.
Youngsters these days show no respect for their elders. In my day we knew that those older than us had a little something called ‘wisdom’ and that was the cheese worth hearing, so we’d happily sit at the feet of knowledge, sniff its dirty socks and soak it in. But seems kids these days are too busy smoking their reefer cigarettes and snorting their crack heroin needles up their sniffers and listening to their loud alternative emo rock music to care two figs about the things they could learn from keeping their dadblum ears and minds open. That’s the problem with kids these days— they’re not minding their p’s and q’s from those they could learn a thing or two about a thing or two. Maybe THAT’S why these kids these days can’t read or write diddley-squat and can’t find their own g-d country on a map with two hands and a compass! It’s enough to make Marco Polo blow smoke out his ears!!! In my day we could draw the map with our eyes closed and our hands tied behind our backs after being spun around like a top. Maybe kids should put down their maryjane sticks and turn down the loud alt rock music and give a listen to folks like me who’ve lived and learned and want to do the good Christian thing and share our wealth of knowledge with the g-d ingates who pay us no never no mind any-who. Now that I got that off the old lungcage, where’d I put those spats of mine, dadblammit? I want to step out tonight, consarn it all.
What’s wrong with advertising these days? Advertising people. You grab a chair, I’ll grab a soapbox, let’s bitch this thing out.
I recently met with an art director with about eight years experience tugging down a small fortune in salary.
He took me through his book of nicely laminated ads and while he had some tasty things, well over half of what he was showing was fake ‘joy pop’ ads–– ads whose whole purpose was to snag awards.
The guy did these ads at big name agencies that actually spend a small fortune in time and salary costs to chase awards for chest thumping purposes. Imagine that, big time professional ad agencies playing make believe in hopes of winning some shiny trophies that prove to the world they are CREATIVE, dagnabbit!
Outrageous. Pathetic. Shameful.
Is it this guy’s fault he’s been showered with money for demonstrating his creativity for essentially phony ads? Hell no. He’s just playing the game. He’s a junkie, hooked on the goof of award shows and agencies that’ll drop their drawers to win them. He produces the work, snags some awards and steps up to the cashier’s window and another agency ups his ante.
But he’s not worth much to me–– certainly not his current high salary.
The beautiful thing about advertising is it’s a true free market. You’re worth whatever you can get. If someone else thinks this game of fakery is worth big geeters, they’ll pay it. But to me, if there’s any justice out there, this guy is headed to a healthy market adjustment to his salary. His stock will be downgraded until he can prove he can work with live ammo on real business problems. And when he can suffer through the rigamarole you sometimes encounter.
But then again, maybe not. Maybe he can just keep climbing the salary curve doing what he’s done.
I’ve seen it time and time again: creative people who play the game and are rewarded. People who have work whose sole purpose is to get the next job. Ads not for clients but for creatives.
And so it goes. Ours is one of the few professions where such a thing could exist. Lawyers don’t do this. Engineers don’t. Other professions wouldn’t dream of rewarding work that was basically make believe. But we do. Some of us do. Too damn many of us do.
Let’s be adult and professional and prove our worth on real assignments for paying clients. I’d much rather see rejected ideas for real client projects than phony ads created to cop an award. Be up front about it. This is a subjective business. If it was a real assignment for a real client and you had a terrific idea that the rest of the world ignored or rejected, show it, stand tall and make your case on the interview.
Don’t succumb to the fake ad game. Students have to do this, professionals shouldn’t.
With the game being played by alleged serious professionals, is it any wonder we have a hard time getting paying clients to trust us?
I’ll now dismount the soapbox. I have some real work to do.
