In reading some of the news regarding “National Signing Day” I recalled my own storied prep career. Here is what the scouting reports said about me back in the day:
“Smith anchored the offensive line on a team that went 5-5 during the regular season (when we say ‘anchored’ we mean he really dragged it down). During his senior year, Smith set a national (possibly international) record for offsides penalties. A review of games films show that Smith had exactly zero pancake-blocks; however Smith is rather fond of pancakes and played with blocks as a child.
Smith stands over 5′ 11” (in cleats) and tips the scales at 160 (when he’s fully clothed, and has a couple of rocks in his pockets). He reportedly can bench press his IQ (which is believed to be 3 digits, as evidenced by a GPA that approaches 2.0 ).
Smith’s physcial attributes have many likening him to legendary prep lineman of the past. One scout remarked: “This kid has the speed of Meat Loaf combined with the size, strength and scruples of Richard Nixon. I’ve never seen anything like him.”
He’s has been tagged as a “can’t miss” prospect as a busboy or a prep cook in college, though some scouts suggest that he has the tools to go both ways.
Smith is part of a large family in which he is described as “The fifth of six accidents,” by his mother.
In his spare time, Smith goes to great lengths to avoid homework, and squanders copious amounts of his youth in the Burger King parking lot (along the Zayre’s wall) and is an aspiring mall rat.”
(originally published following the 2012–Obama v Romney–US Presidential election).
I have never been one to make New Year’s resolutions. When people ask me about my resolutions, I usually respond with “I am going to GAIN 20 lbs and START smoking.” Some years I actually achieve the first goal, though not really willing to pursue the latter one.
However, following the insipid, melodramatic, deceitful, sinfully-expensive, US presidential election that has segued into the resumption of partisan brinksmanship over a budget deal (or lack thereof), I have been mad a lot in the past few months. Thus, I am making a New Year’s resolution.
For 2013, I resolve to stay mad. Anybody else?
I get mad that people don’t get madder about things or that they don’t stay mad at some things. Currently I’m mad that not many people seem to be all that mad about the looming Fiscal Cliff.
The Fiscal Cliff is not only a synthetic crisis, it is a LEGISLATED synthetic crisis. The Budget Control Act was approved by both chambers of Congress and signed into law by our incumbent, and next, President. IN AUGUST…..2011.
Rather than specifically addressing any fiscal solutions at the time, the bill allowed for several months of kicking the can down the road. Primarily, so Congress and POTUS could campaign uninterrupted for three months.
Can I get a “WTF?”
After Election Day, the only thing that Congress could agree on was to continue its long-standing habit of short work weeks.
A Double-WTF? would be appropriate here.
I’m mad that people keep blaming the lawmakers for everything, without blaming the enablers of the environment in which lawmakers operate. Voters and non-voters (adults) need to start accepting their share of blame for allowing these do-nothing practices and the constant influx of corrupting influences.
Many of them— laws written by lobbyists, permanent campaign cycles, the filibuster–are not addressed in the Constitution, thus wouldn’t be all that difficult to reform. Though they won’t ever be reformed as long as enough people don’t stay mad enough.
And don’t get me started about the Electoral College and the primaries….
OK, I got myself started. Why is it acceptable that an incumbent president and other elected officals (those campaigning for/against the incumbent POTUS) can make multiple trips to Ohio, Florida etc. in a week, while resolution of a forthcoming budget crisis is put on a back burner (Nay, put in the freezer)?
Does your job allow you to travel across the country several times a month when your sole objective is to get your next job? Or to help your friends get a new job? Without knowing your profession, I can conclude that the answer is no. Yet, this is precisely the behavior we are enabling when we allow the POTUS, or a sitting Senator, to travel to upstate New York (New Mexico, Kansas), to campaign for a candidate there.
The root word of “president” is “preside.” The root of “representative” is “represent.” Why do these elected officials go off for days/weeks on the campaign trail instead of presiding and representing?
Because, they can. Because we, the people, have allowed them to do so for generations.
If enough people don’t get mad enough, and stay mad enough, these lawmakers will continue to be derelict in their duties. Forthcoming elections and budget standoff will make the recents ones seem civil in comparison.
The shrill ( or ALL CAPS on Internet commentary) calls to “Fire them all!” are silly. If we had voted out the president and unpalatable members of Congress in the last election, they’d still be in office today. They will be until next month. No election outcomes would have changed the current fiscal cliff follies.
I’m mad that people keep assigning blame solely to Republicans or solely to Democrats. Both parties brought us here. Republicans and Democrats are the same shit served with a different spoon.
The pendulous patterns of voting one party out and the other party in are pointless. Freshman Congressmen are just shiny new cogs in a broken machine. Until the machine is repaired, we are doomed to periodically voting out the Curlys and replacing them with Shemps.
If we go over the fiscal cliff, and there is a resulting economic calamity, we (the elected officials, the voters and the non-voters, the taxpayers, the tax-exempt…) will get what we deserve.
My advice to voters/non-voters is this: take your share of the blame and stay mad.
If you disagree, then filibuster me.
See you on the other side.
Are you staying mad?
January 2nd 2013 Update–A “solution” has been reached by POTUS and Congress. Essentially the bill raises taxes without addressing spending cuts. Furthermore, it does nothing about the looming debt ceiling and delays any action on budget sequestration, (which would have required across-the-board budget cuts) for two months. Thus we’ve ensured that we’ll have another two or three similar budgetary goat rodeos in the Capitol in the coming months.
Essentially, after about 1.5 years of procrastination, and end-of-the-year crisis that was completely contrived, and avoidable, very little has been accomplished.
March 23rd 205 Update– #$@&%*! #$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!#$@&%*!
I managed the art and design studio of the Chicago office of the venerable ad agency J. Walter Thompson from 1996 until 1999. I was involved in every new-business pitch. And while the requests for each were ridiculous, rarely sublime, there is one in particular that stands out.
In 1997 we were in pursuit of a giant computer account (think cow spots) where the billings would be in the $150 million neighborhood. That would make it the largest account win in the agency’s history.
About 30 creatives and gobs of account managers, C-level executives, and support staff worked Saturday before the pitch. More employees joined us on Sunday. The team grew larger still on Monday, and then again on Tuesday.
My boss pointed out that the studio was going to put in a lot of time during the week. She reminded me that there was a hotel in our building and that we should rent two rooms—one for the men, one for the women—which would allow for naps and showers.
Uh..the hotel was the Four Seasons.
My boss and I went to look at the rooms—they were suites! Sweet!
They probably set the company back $5,000 for the week. These were the type of room that the President of the United States might stay in. Maybe even Robert De Niro.
Sad thing is, I napped about 10 hours there during the entire week, so I hardly remember the room. I don’t recollect if I got to lounge around in the monogrammed fluffy robe.
I do remember dozing off in my office a few times and then momentarily slumbering on a conference room floor where I sneezed myself awake after inhaling some pretzel crumb-size particle from the carpet.
We kept hearing that the presentation was going to be in a room that was the size of airplane hangar. And that all the visual materials had to be ”HUGE!”
I kept asking ”HOW HUGE?!?” I kept hearing ”REALLY, REALLY, HUGE!” Thus, when asked by studio techs and art directors for a scanning resolution, my response was ”HUGE!”
I chose to err on the side of caution and mandated that all materials would be scanned at 600 dpi.
THE HORROR!!!!!
Before I knew it we were scanning a gazillion images, and the file sizes were “HUGE!” I heard groans from the studio techs as they tried make clipping paths, and unsharp masks on their Mac 7500″²s.
Somebody screamed ”the server’s full!!”
That was a slight exaggeration, it still had 700 Kilobytes (roughly a Word document) of storage left. There would be no room for these HUGE! scans.
One of my colleagues had a karaoke machine in her office (of course with a dance floor). I set it up in a centralized area so that to use it as a public-address system. With microphone in hand, I implored, badgered, bullyragged these creatives to free up on space. It became something like a “Save the Server” telethon.
Somebody would clear off a few hundred megabytes, I’d breathe a sigh of relief. Then somebody else would add more HUGE scans, causing sweat to pour from my brow.
I spent the next two hours in my office archiving files to tape, JAZ Drives, CD and any media I could get my hands on.
Our color printers were overwhelmed. In the months prior, I had put in several requests to upgrade these printers. However, I was told these weren’t capital-expenditure priority.
We had one that was so old that the processor actually had a green-LED screen. The other was a bit faster, though barely able to chew through the massive volume of jobs that we pushed at it that week.
Well on Monday, the ”new” printer crapped out. It was after business hours so the chance of getting service was nil. I was told that I could do ”whatever it takes” to get a printer.
After six months of being told that upgrading the printer wasn’t a budget priority, suddenly it was.
I spent over an hour on Kodak Inc’s phone trees, pinching my American Express Card, ready to read off the number. I wasn’t able to buy a printer that night (none were in available in the supply-chain), but isn’t it pretty to think so?
The printer service tech arrived the next morning and he began printing out hundreds of solid-color test pages: cyan, magenta, yellow, black. Somebody started taping them together and we laid them on the floor in Candy Land fashion.
The rest of the week is a blur of Pad Thai and sweaty, bellicose account executives. There was one event around 4:00 am, when a bombastic account manager from our Toronto office managed to parlay my then-lack of knowledge with PowerPoint into a jag against the computer I was working on.
I remember him screaming in my face at one point ”Apple is a dead company! When we get this Gateway business, we’ll get rid of these piece-of-shit Macs! Apple will be out of business within six months! You mark my word!”
He was so close to me at this point, I could smell the Thai peanut sauce on his breath and I swear I could feel his chin whiskers on my Adam’s apple.
I truly wish I had recorded that exchange, I would enjoy listening to that on my iPhone.
On Thursday that week, the new business team delivered the pitch at the Gateway offices in South Dakota. A few days later, the account was awarded to a different agency.
I logged about 115 hours that week and I wasn’t even close to being the agency’s top-biller . There were a couple of other folks that crossed the 120-hour mark.
During a new-business pitch you tend to have an abundance of David Byrne moments when you may ask yourself “How did I get here?”
Eventually I did. In 1999, my wife and I moved to Michigan and I got out of the agency business. In strange sequence of events, the Chairman of Gateway became my governor, so I guess in a sense that I am his client now (for a few more weeks, anyway).
Occasionally, I look back on my “Mad Man” era, and grimace or clench my jaw.
But far more often, I laugh; sometimes a quiet giggle, sometimes a guffaw. There were mostly good times with good people.
In principle, I have no problem with year-round schooling. However, I live in an area (west Michigan) where daylight doesn’t surrender easily.
Grand Rapids, Michigan is near the western edge of the Eastern Time zone. This is what 9:15 looks like where I live:
This is what my 2nd grader sees when he looks out his window at his scheduled bedtime. Note the absence of fireflies.
I hate the idea of a 7 o’clock wake-up during the lazy, hazy crazy days of summer. I am glad that my son’s current school is off for the summer, and we have flexibility with the start times with his various summer camps he is attending. He gets to stay up just a bit later, thus a chance for the kid to be a kid.
