Wild Wild West

I live in the Wild Wild West. Yes, that’s right – two 'wilds' are absolutely necessary. Take this guy, for example.



I drive by him just about every day on the way to work. I’ve been meaning to stop and take his picture but he resides in the barrio on a busy road and I’m super lazy in the morning when I tend to drive by him. And then I got the bright idea of checking The Google and hot diggity dawg, someone from The Denver Eye already snapped his photo. I imagine his name is Slim or Tex but I call him Cowboy. My kids’ stuffed animal naming has rubbed off on me (Blue Dog, Brown Dog, Buggy, Fishy, etc.).

Cowboy guards the entrance to a trailer park. Times are tough and the market is weak for wranglers and cattle drivers. There aren’t even any good posses for Cowboy to join. So he stands there towering over traffic on Federal Boulevard watching stagecoaches zip by at fifty miles per hour. I’m sure he reminisces about the good old days when his primary responsibilities were to play poker at the saloon and drink whiskey.

Upon closer inspection, I noticed Cowboy looks quite a bit like Abraham Lincoln. And he wears an ascot like Fred in Scooby Doo. And he doesn’t carry a gun, just like Andy Griffith. And he wears a yellow shirt that reminds me of the man in the yellow hat from Curious George. And he has his hands awfully close to his crotch like he is checking for change, or about to play pocket pinball, or perhaps he has some sort of cheerleading routine that he is anxious to begin.

Based on that whole combo platter, what in the world does it mean to “cowboy up?” Be an honest gay authoritative figure that has a thing for monkeys and playing with his pom poms? I don’t know man; John Wayne and Clint Eastwood sure played it out differently.

I’m going to give Cowboy the benefit of the doubt. It is the right thing to do. Think positively, be kind and be respectful. Good things will happen. I think Cowboy probably saved many a damsels in distress. I think he was friends with the Indians and I don’t think he ever cheated at cards. I bet he even does minor repairs for free around the trailer park.

Tell you what cowpoke; if I ever need to form a posse, I’m heading over to that trailer park first. Based on this past weekend, it might happen sooner than later. I own the commercial space next door to my office. We are in a mixed use building with sixteen residential lofts upstairs and six commercial spaces on the street level. I signed a cooking school to a lease for the space next door. They have been in build-out stage for a few months and are finally ready to open in the next week or so.

The process has been a bit of nightmare. There are a few people in the HOA that flat out suck the yellow hat man’s balls. I expected some hurdles and the cooking school owner has been awesome to adhere to all HOA bylaws and go above and beyond in terms of trying to accommodate residents and the other commercial owners. But how do you deal with crazy people?

One of the commercial owners wrongly thought Xcel was going to cut the power to our entire building in the middle of his operating hours. He was talking to the General Contractor of the cooking school space and went on a tirade. More than once, he told the GC if he cut power to his business, he would get his shotgun and put it on him. After a few more threats to get his shotgun, he wrote an angry email to the property management company copying me with another fun threat to engage in “all out war.”

I had never heard of the power outage thing and knew it couldn’t be true. Sure enough, it wasn’t. At some point in the future there will be a new transformer put in which will require power to be cut, but that will be scheduled through the property management company with prior approval from the HOA. Look at that. Business being taken care of in a civil respectful manner. In the Wild Wild West.

Cowboy; hopefully I won’t need you to fend off my fellow commercial space owner’s threats to blow away the GC with his shotgun which apparently is a perfectly standard way to go about business here in the Wild Wild West. But please be ready to have Curious George hold down the trailer park fort and tell Barney he can put one bullet in his gun as long as he promises not to shoot anyone other than himself in the foot. And please recruit your fellow Mount Rushmore-ians and the whole gang from Mystery Inc., including Scrappy Doo. And let’s grab Will Ferrell in his SNL cheerleading skit just to make sure our posse is strong.

Giving people the benefit of the doubt, playing nice, being kind and respectful. Or shotgun threats. It's the Wild Wild West baby.

Advertising Agency and Client Interaction

I work in advertising. I suggest you read And Then We Came to the End and Where the Suckers Moon and watch Mad Men to get a taste for how this business works from a variety of perspectives. Or you can read this post and it should all make sense.

I have been in this industry for over twenty years. I have worked for one of the world’s largest agencies, big shops in Chicago and Denver and also out of a spare room in my house. My own company rocks. I started it fourteen years ago and we do things the right way. But I still see things done the wrong way. Here are typical things that happen in the wild wild world of advertising. Ridiculousness on both sides of the coin.

Client: I need the kitchen sink, your first AND second born, the cure for cancer, and tickets to the SuperBowl.

Agency: Okay. When do you need this by?

Client: Yesterday.

Agency: Can we have a few months?

Client: No.

Agency: Okay, how about by the end of the day today?

Client: That is going to be tough for me. I have a tee time at noon.

Agency: Okay, we’ll get you something by 11am.

Client: Please send me the deck in advance so I have time to hate it before our meeting.

Agency: Sure. Look for that around 10:59am. What is the budget?

Client: You tell me. But I’ll tell you right now it’s a quarter of what you are going to want to charge me.

Agency: We mark everything up so high anyway, we can make that happen. But expect the work we give you to be done by the interns. Or we might pull old work we showed you last year that you rejected hoping you will forget. As a last resort, we will pull the new concepts we did for a new business pitch that we didn’t win. I think you are really going to love everything we show you.

Client: That’s what I expect out of you. I have to tell you up front that I’m not interested in doing television for this campaign. So don’t show me any television. It makes no sense and is a complete waste of money.

Agency: No problem. We think radio, billboards and online are the way to go.

Client: That sounds interesting. Tell me more. What are the numbers on that? What is my ROI? Will that increase my business by 700% within two weeks? It better, because that is what the board wants to see or we are all screwed.

Agency: Well, we have a really good idea involving a puppy, a cute pudgy baby that can talk in Spanglish, and hot chicks in bikinis.

Client: That sounds like a television idea. I don’t want television. Television would be horrible for this. Why are you always shoving television down my throat?

Agency: This is just a campaign idea that can work across all mediums. Typically your budget only gets us bathroom posters, flyers that end up littering the city and that one digital sign in the upper deck of the arena that you make us buy so you can have free tickets to the game.

Client: Okay, well I look forward to seeing all this in a couple hours.

Agency: You got it. By the way, can you check on payment for that last print ad we did for you?

Client: Oh, I held onto that. Client prerogative.

Agency: It has been 180 days.

Client: I’m not sure I like the ad.

Agency: You approved it and it has been running in market for five months.

Client: Yeah, I’m not going to pay for any of those ads. I don’t like the creative and I haven’t seen results. How long did you really work on that ad anyway?

Agency: Well, a couple hours and um, a combined sixty years of creative experience by our copywriter and art director!

Client: So you guys are charging me $15,000 per hour for that one print ad?

Agency: Don’t forget about those sixty years of experience. Plus, the ad does seem to be working.

Client: How do you figure?

Agency: Well, in the five months it has been running, your sales were up 20%. In the months before the ad ran and since it came down, your sales are flat.

Client: You can’t prove that is from the ad.

Agency: I can open up another over-priced job to investigate the value of the ad on your business.

Client: That is fine. Consider it approved now and I’ll refuse to pay for it later. Hey, I was just thinking about how great television would be for this next campaign.

Agency: According to the conference report you over-paid us to produce, you just said that you don’t want television.

Client: I didn’t want it when it was your idea. Now that it’s my idea, I love it.

Agency: We will have to open up a new job and still charge you for all the work that has been done already.

Client: How much time and money could have accrued during this phone call? Plus, you said your campaign ideas work across all media.

Agency: I’m just the Account Executive that says whatever you want to hear while I also try to gauge you for every penny you’ve got. I just sent you an invoice.

Client: I’ve been waiting on that revised creative brief with two minor changes for six weeks and yet you can send me an invoice in six seconds?

Agency: You know those accounting people. They aren’t human.

Client: Haha, right! You do great work. I really appreciate it.

Agency: Thanks. You are our favorite client. Let’s go to an expensive lunch so we can mark it up and bill it back to you by close of business.

Client: We have to make it an early one. I’ve got your 11am presentation and my tee time at noon. Let’s just cancel the presentation but not until 10:50am because I still want you to rush around to get all the work done in order to meet my totally arbitrary deadline.

Agency: No problem! The interns are already copying and pasting your logo in old story-boards. We may even deliver early.

Client: Fantastic. Thanks for kissing my ass even though you hate my guts.

Agency: No problem. It is what we do best.

Things That Don't Have to Stay in Vegas

I was in Vegas for four nights. I was actually very well behaved. I was part of a group of twelve guys. Many of those other eleven were not as well behaved. No strip clubs or debauchery for me. I am proud to say all I did was stay up late, eat/drink/gamble a lot and laugh my ass off. It was a much needed break from reality and the shit I have going on at home. Here is an example of what happened, only some of which involved me. I will number them and provide some clarification at the end:

1-You know that scene in SuperBad where the curly haired fat kid gets a chick’s period stain on his pants and how you didn’t think that could really happen until it happened to you; at a strip club no less?

2-You know how you get a period stain reality check then have to figure out how to get the stain out of your jeans with water at the hotel room, or throw the jeans away or take them home and say to your wife, “a funny thing happened in Vegas…”?

3-You know how sometimes you pass out after you engage the deadbolt and your two buddies can’t get in the hotel room at 3am so house security has to come up and bang on the door and possibly knock it down to make sure you aren’t dead?

4-You know how one second your buddy is right next to you and the next he is gone for four hours and then he comes back and says he took a limo to a strip club and blew $800 and then came back like he simply had to use the bathroom?

5-You know how one guy gets a round of four drinks on the strip at a dive bar and it costs twelve bucks and then your round comes up while you are in the Venetian and the same four drinks cost fifty bucks?

6-You know how one of your friends wears jeans shorts bought off the rack and he still doesn’t understand why we can’t stop laughing at him?

7-You know how you are in a sports book watching football and all you need is Houston to cover which looks like it is about to happen but then on the last play of the game Jacksonville throws a Hail Mary for a touchdown and you lose your parlay bet?

8-You know how last second you decide to go see Sheryl Crow at the Hard Rock and you end up second row center and she makes eye contact with you like ten times and you get hit in the hand by her guitar pick?

9-You know how you go to a National Park with your buddy because he is trying to see all of them in the entire United States and you have low expectations because the national park is called the Mojave Desert and the only joshua tree you really care about is the one on the front of a U2 album but you go anyway and sure enough all you see are joshua trees?

10-You know how with all the diversions and distractions in Las Vegas the very most best part is all the laughs you have with your friends, to the point where your abs hurt like you’ve been doing sit-ups for four straight days?

Clarification:

1 and 2- This same guy texted one of the guys I was hanging with at the Mirage while he was at the strip club and ready to leave. It said, “Hey, do you know where everybody else is? I could use some help with the bill.”

3-This was one of my idiot roommates. We honestly thought security was going to break down the door. I was calling his cell, the front desk was calling the room phone and they were pounding on the door yelling at him. All the sudden I heard him say, “Hello?”

4-This was one of the guys I didn’t know. He apparently is a VIP. Spending $800 should get you that, right?

5-Since I was winning, I always seemed to get caught on the fifty dollar end of the round buying. Good times.

6-Sometimes I pray for hot weather when I know I’m going to see this guy cuz it’s so much fun to laugh at him and his jorts.

7-Gambling doesn’t pay.

8-This happened to Kerby and me. It was a spur of the moment decision to see her and we got lucky on last second released seats. I think Sheryl Crow digs me.



9-Not much clarification needed here is there?



10-We could have been anywhere I suppose. Nothing is better than laughs with great friends. But Vegas sure can make it funnier and mo’ better funnage.

Regrets

I just did one of the stupidest things of my life. You know what? Let’s go ahead and call it the stupidest. I’ll write about it someday, but not now. Not soon. Maybe in a few months.

So what does one do after one does the stupidest thing of one’s life? Well, if you had a guys’ trip to Las Vegas planned for months, you may as well go and try to forget the stupidest thing you ever did for a few days, right?

I’m out of here Thursday and back to the real world on Monday.

While I’m gone, please water the plants, feed the dog, get the mail, cut the grass, hold my calls and don’t throw any keg parties – I’ll know if you did! Of course, I don’t have any live plants, nor do I have a dog. I don’t care about my mail (nobody sends me anything good anymore), I live in a condo so no lawn to cut and I’ll have my phone so I’ll decide who to let talk at me. As for the keg party, can you wait til I’m back?

Oh, and if a midget dressed as Elvis shows up in a box wrapped in brown paper on your doorstep, please feed him, take him for a walk and don’t tell him you know me.

Viva Las Yer Mama.