Project Mayhem

April Fool’s Day — a day that says as much about the resulting antics as it does about the clowns who perpetrate them; the same people who send “Happy Monday” emails.
April Fool’s Day gives license to every jokester awaiting his or her chance to showcase their hidden “Yuk Yuk” skills. It’s the Karaoke equivalent of wannabe Divas awaiting their moment to shine while they sing the hundredth rendition of “It’s Raining Men.” Everybody from local news anchors to lamp-shade-wearing office pranksters view this day as their big opportunity to prove why they should have their own prime-time comedy series. Instead, they end up providing the best arguments for changing the Day’s name to April It’s-Okay-to-Be-A-Dick Day.

While writing this entry, it occurred to me I had no idea who started the whole April Fool’s thing. A little research revealed that it actually began in Europe. Once I determined the country of origin, it all made sense. Hint: It’s the same country with a maximum 35-hour work week; a mandatory five week vacation policy and the infamous Maginot line which held about as well as Cleveland’s pass defense. You guessed it, C’est le Français. Viva la French dips!

April Fool’s evolved after the Gregorian calendar was revised. This changed New Year’s Eve from landing on April 1 to January 1. Apparently, some of the country folk in France heard about the change but others didn’t, and some ignored it all together. These mutants were labeled “fools.” Interestingly, my research also lead me to discover that Scotland actually celebrates two April Fool’s Days. The first is reserved for general pranks, while the second is devoted to only those practical jokes involving the rear … as in the butt … your posterior … your extrémité arrière … your ass. Ooooo, beam me up, Scotty! Yee Haw!

Some of the most egregious April Fool’s Day stunts aren’t pulled by people, but companies. Burger King’s announcement a few years back about its “left-handed burger” comes to mind here. I can just envision that brainstorm: “Now THAT’s funny, gosh darn it — high five, Jim!” Admittedly, I’ve been in my share of brainstorms where we played with April Fool’s Day ideas for clients. None made it, but here are some headlines I’d like to see.

IHOP Recalls 125,000 Pancakes
Microsoft Teams With Viagra
Branson Strikes Deal With Vodka Brand to Form Absolute Virgin
Jet Blue Extends Service to Include In-flight Depends
California Milk Advisory Board to Sponsor Pam Anderson Got Milk Commercial

Feel free to add any of your own…

The contest: Name Jeremy’s Kidney Stone
Win a dream date with Jeremy! (Second Prize. First Prize: You get to stay home.)

Please send your entries to Project Mayhem, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington, DC, something-something-something-something-something dash something-something-something-something. Entries must be postmarked by Jan 1, 1974. No reproductions allowed. Entries must include a self-addressed stamped envelope, so that we can respond with naked photos of Ben Franklin. All entries become property of my wastebasket. Void in Oslo. Members of Nickleback’s road crew are not eligible for entry.

They say, “never bury the lede.” So here goes: I’ve given up sports. For One Year. Really.
Many of you who know me will be shocked. Surprised. Maybe a little disbelief thrown in for good measure. Truth be told, friends of mine who are huge sports fans have had some reactions that have been, quite honestly, appalling. If sports is just another in a long line of horrible social addictions (sex, shopping, Ann Coulter), then the reactions make sense: anger, bordering on rage. You know that group of drunks that get together every night? Then one guy decides to get straight, and he’s treated like a pariah? Yeah, that kind of nails it. Essentially, I’m the heroin addict who gave up Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.

So how did an addict come clean? It’s actually not that complicated.

I was watching a horrific NY Football Giants loss one gray December afternoon. And it pissed me off. Boy, did it piss me off. Now, I’m the first to admit that sports plays (had played?) a much bigger part of my life than a normal person would allow. I hang on every pitch, every third-and-long, every five-on-three advantage. To the point where I’m ignoring things. You know, little things: personal hygiene, small-arms fire, Hurricane Katrina. But this time, I took it out on my kids. Not physically, you understand – I’m not that deranged. But I was short with them. Raised my voice. Overreacted to messes made. Now, these aren’t things to get crazy over, but in the middle of screaming at one of my three-year-olds for coloring outside the lines, I had an epiphany. I was behaving irrationally because of sports. Sports I hadn’t bet on, sports that had no meaningful relevance to me.

And I decided then and there that I wasn’t going to let millionaires have any impact on my emotional well being. Really, that’s it.

So, I’m giving up sports for one year. Cold turkey. I’m not judging anyone who still loves the Yanks. Blueseaters are OK by me. And the Big Blue Fan Club can crash at my house any time. But I want to see what happens. I’m curious. What will happen to me? Will I go through major withdrawal? Probably. Will I miss it? I already do. Will I return to sports after my yearlong self-imposed exile? Who knows. But this much is certain: it will be an interesting ride.

And maybe I’ll even learn something about myself.

Now, where’s that remote…?

Happy Valentine’s Day is an oxymoron. More relationships are destroyed by that holiday than fostered. According to the National Retail Federation, consumers spend about $14 billion annually on Valentine’s Day. Compare that to the roughly 50-percent divorce rate and you get an estimated $7 billion being flushed down the toilet along with the periodic wedding ring. Seven BILLION dollars, roughly seven times the Gross National Income of Belize, where these folks could be vacationing had that not wasted their cash on someone they were going to dump or someone who was planning to dump them.But, I digress; the worthiness of Valentine’s Day is not the focus of this ProjectMayhem rant. Rather, it is the greeting cards that surround it. Nearly 200 million Valentine’s Day greeting cards are exchanged every year, each with its own excruciatingly cute, trite, staid and forced poetic prose. Though they try to be, they are not, funny, they are not romantic, they are not warm and they are definitely are not touching. I get the image of a blue-haired team of greeting-card writers wildly giggling to themselves as they create such winners as the card I saw with two monkeys on the front and an inside punch line reading, “It’s Valentine’s Day, Let’s Monkey Around.” No, God, please. Or, the one in the “contemporary” section that read, “You Make My Heart Bling.” Kill me. I knew I missed my calling, I should have been a Valentine’s Day greeting-card writer: “You Make My Heart Go Sizzle … Fo Shizzle!” Yeah, that’s cool. Can you dig, yo?
The more borderline-romantic these displays of faux creativity get, the more painful they become. Card Cover: “Look at you, standing there reading this Valentine’s Day card, looking so irresistibly, so oh-my-God gorgeous.” Inside Card: “I know it’s not polite to stare, but don’t ever expect me to stop.” What the …? That’s so cute … Grandpa. (I can’t help but think of the weird uncle in every family who thinks he’s funny and snort-laughs at his own jokes. No one thinks he’s funny, but, you know, he’s your uncle.) And then there are the cards that sound so horrifically stale, they could be script material for “Leave it to Beaver.” Ward Clever: “Who says opposites attract, June? After all, look at us, we’re both perfect and we get along great.” [Cue laugh track.]

But, somebody’s buying these things. I monitored the Valentine’s Day greeting card section in the store for a few minutes, before store security got nervous and started doing walk-bys. (It is Los Angeles, after all.) People seemed to be fairly receptive to the crap they were reading; a few chuckles here and there and one straight-out guffaw! I imagine these are the same people who keep the sales reps for The Clapper, busy. We were in a Walgreen’s, so… I watched one woman pick up and point down one particular card two or three times. She left without buying it, but I just had to know. I meandered over, the security detail shadowing me. On the cover was a cuddling African American couple with a flowery inscription reading, “Our Love is Forever.” Inside: “I love you, baby. Then. Now. Happy Valentine’s Day.” There’s a decision, here?

Feeling at this point that I better buy something or my image would be posted on Walgreen’s watch-list, I randomly pulled a card from the aisle-long display of Valentine’s Day cards and proceeded to the counter. I read it as I walked. Cover: “To my wife: (I’m not married) With love to you as always, and love as never before. Love to you today, my love, and love forevermore.” As I walked toward the checkout counter, I deftly slipped the offending card next to the Preparation H in aisle four.

Here’s a thought: Divorce cards. Laugh if you will, but there’s $7 billion-worth of potential profits out there.

I hate Oscar night. Watching young, famous, good looking, rich people win awards is not entertainment to me, it’s painful. That’s because I take it personally. It’s like the entire world is graciously applauding these Gods and Goddesses and then turning their collectively heads to me saying, “And what have you done that was so great?” Nothing. In fact, I’m zero for four in the real Oscar categories:
Category 1: I’m not young. I’m 46 years old. In Los Angeles, that means you’re close to needing life support. I was talking to a girl at work the other day and she said, “This creepy old guy was hitting on me at the gym.” Before I could stop myself, I asked how old he was. “I don’t know,” she said, scrunching up her nose, “like … 50, or something.” She actually spit the word “fifty” as if disgusted by its relevant taste. It’s official: I am now three years and seven months away from being “creepy old.” Nice. This was the same girl, mind you, who came into my office the week before and said, amazed, “Did you know that John Travolta started in television?” She seemed shocked that he would stoop so low, as if he himself were Oscar material. “He was on some stupid comedy series about high school, or something,” she mused. I thought about “Welcome Back Kotter” and how my buddies and I would rehash the series the following morning in the school cafeteria. We’d all try to do the sucking-in-air-laugh like Horshack and would repeat Washington’s cool catch phrase. “How ah you today, Mistuh Kotteah.” Travolta is 53 … does that make him creepy too?

Category 2: I’m not famous. I tried conjuring up a moment when I felt famous. I think it was when I went back for my 25th-year class reunion in Madison Township, Ohio. I hadn’t been back in years. Apparently, a wild rumor had started. (Not very difficult to do in a town where a few gossips serve as the city’s equivalent of a network provider.) Word was that I had “made it.” People had seen me on commercials and sitcoms; they had heard me sing the national anthem at Jacobs field in Cleveland and listened to one of my songs on the popular local radio station. Of course, I had done none of that. I kind of new something was up when a couple weeks before the reunion I got a call from an old high school buddy of mine in Ohio that I hadn’t talked to in decades. “Hey, uh, if this is the Jeremy Baka, uh … the one that went to school at Madison High School,” he continued, sounding like a teenager gearing up to ask out a girl. “Well, uh, if this is you, then, then, this is your friend Ted Ellis.” Beat. “Anyway, we was all wondering if you was comin’ to the reunion. Cause, you know, folks back here are proud an all…” Proud? I was working at a PR agency promoting car lubricants. When I arrived at the reunion, people stood a polite distance, talking in their decades-old cliques but watching me out of the corners of their eyes. “I seen you!” exclaimed a pudgy guy in a wrinkled dress shirt as he slapped his knee, a guy whose name I didn’t even know in school. “You was on a Doh-rEEttohs commercial or somethin’ … or was it that ‘Got Milk?’ thing?” He looked famous too. I was positive I had seen him on an episode of COPS.

Category 3: Good looking. Hardly. Average … maybe. All the damn models in L.A. skews the one-to-10 scale by at least two points … and now Beckham shows up. Great. That means I’m hovering around a 4.5. In the ‘80s, girls told me I looked like Patrick Swayze. In the ‘90s they said I looked like Bruce Willis. Now, I look like the creepy old guy at the gym.

Category 4: Rich. No. “Rich” has a meaning all its own in L.A. Rich to me used to mean a house. In L.A., “rich” means having a Bentley as big as a house and several homes in different parts of the world, each overlooking another heavenly body of water. What’s more, in L.A., it’s not enough to have a ton of money, you have to pull up in a Brinks truck and swim in it. I was walking down Sunset Blvd with a former female colleague of mine the other day, and I was naming the cars we were walking by that were parked back-to-back-to-back-to-back on the street. “Bentley, Rolls, Ferrari, Bentley,” I said, shaking my head. “Great – and I’m supposed to meet women out here,” I lamented. “I think that’s gross,” she said, sneering at the cars. “It’s just showing off. It’s disgusting — who needs a car that costs that much anyway,” she huffed, subconsciously shifting her Prada purse from one shoulder to the other.

So, there you have it. And the award for the “Oldest, Unfamous, Salary Dude With Average Looks” goes too … me.

With the Super Bowl just days away, it’s time to point the creative spotlight on the NFL, specifically, whoever is in charge of coming up with some of the most mundane, mediocre team names in sports. I mean, c’mon, what’s a “Brown?” I don’t even think Cleveland knows because they couldn’t even come up with a logo for it! What’s worse is they actually came up with that name following a newspaper contest where the person submitting the winning name won $1,000! (And that was in 1945!) The name comes from the coach of the Browns at the time, Paul Brown. Can the “Trumps” be far behind?
And what about the Dolphins? The Dolphins?? Are you kidding me — man’s loving best friend of the sea? I guess “Mermaids” was already taken. The Florida Mermaids. Dolphins aren’t deadly – unless, of course, the Navy has them towing a magnetized explosive. I’ll bet a baby seal could kick a Dolphin’s butt.

Next on the what-were-you-thinking roster: the New Orleans Saints. Run for your lives! Save the women and children! Cower in Fear! The Saints are coming, the Saints are coming! I just don’t feel it. And, if it’s possible, they actually beat out the Browns for the Worst Helmet-Logo Award. The logo is called a “Fleur de Lis. It’s not bad enough that it’s French (Have they ever won a war? Or, been in one?), but the emblem stands for “flower of the lily.” A flower!? That’s worse than the Browns’ helmet logo … AND THEY DON’T HAVE ONE!

You are in the woods. You are alone. You hear a fierce rustling from the brush. Your heart pounds, your knees weaken. You would run, but you can’t. Your legs have abandoned you. Then, suddenly, it appears, the most wicked beast of the forest: it’s … it’s … it’s aggghhhhh … a cardinal. Eagles, okay. Falcons, you bet. Seahawks, sure. Ravens … okay, but you’re pushing it. But, Cardinals???!!! Hell no. What, are they going to chirp you to death; blind you with their bright red coloring? (At least Ravens are a menacing black.) Make no mistake, cardinal is nothing but a red dove.

On the other hand, some NFL teams got it right: Chicago Bears, Jacksonville Jaguars, Carolina Panthers, Oakland Raiders, Detroit Lions, Titans, Giants … Okay. The Baddest-Ass Name Award, however, goes to the Vikings. Viking were vicious, take-no-prisoners (unless for slaves) warriors .. Barbarians. Killers. If they wanted something, they took it … like a championship. Makes sense. My creative hat’s off to you.

Colts, 49ers, Packers, Bills … you’re officially on name probation. Add Cowboys to that, since I can’t help picturing that dude in chaps I saw in the West Hollywood Gay Parade.

And, what about the States or cities that don’t have their own teams? Since I have no life, eschewing all political correctness, I decided to come up with names that would work and names that wouldn’t to illustrate how carefully one must choose an NFL name:

Good Names:
Boston Stranglers
Los Angeles Crips
Las Vegas Mobsters
Montana Unibombers
Rhode Island Psychos (based on an ex-girlfriend)

Bad Names:
New Hampshire Primaries
Maine Lobsters
Virginia Wolves
Des Moines Des Stroyers
Miami Sr. Citizens

Feel free to add your own.

PR people whine about not getting respect, they obsess about their miniscule budgets and pay scales and they envy advertising agencies who command the big-dollar creative campaigns. Boo hoo. Call it career envy, call it jealousy, call it whatever you want, we deserve our plight because, well … we’re wussies.
Rather than stand up and fight for what is rightfully ours, PR people are content to remain the red-headed step children of the communications business. The reason the ad guys get the multi-million dollar budgets is because they demand them. They have spent decades convincing clients that ads are more valuable than PR. And we let them. “PR is more effective?” they say. “Prove it.”  Well, now it’s our turn: Ads are more effective, you say? Prove that they won’t be zapped off the airwaves by the growing army of Tivos, DVRs and satellite radio systems.

Ad guys are now the ones seeing the value behind what we communication Sherpas have known all along: PR works. Now, suddenly, ad agencies are morphing their offerings, proudly embracing PR strategies and tactics like an older brother taking credit for the younger brother’s yard work. If it didn’t rub me off so much, it would be funny listening to ad guys talk about the value of street teams, viral videos, product placement and immersing client messaging into the social fabric, rather than using ineffective, annoying, screaming commercials. I’m calling you out, ad punks.

Meanwhile, I’ll just sit back here and whine … or drink it.
 

No one really knows what pornography is — or at least, how to define it. A great man (I want to say Carrot Top, but I’m not sure) once said (and I’ll butcher this, I’m sure), “I can’t tell you what porn is, but I know it when I see it.” Another great man (Slappy White?) once said “Hey, buddy, enough with the parentheticals.”

Marc

I’ve worked 20 years in the communications business to reach the vaulted position of Chief Creative Officer. Perfect, just in time for “creative” to mean absolutely nothing. Today, touting creativity is like bragging about a boob job in Los Angeles.

Peace.
Jeremy