Project Mayhem

I am 47 years old. I have never been married. I have never lived with a girl. I am not gay. What I am is a human oddity, a drooling side-show freak in the relationship circus.

“Step right up, ladies and gentlemen; see the human azygos, the mateless mutant of more than 40 years! See the relationship reject as he caroms from female to female; dumping those who love him and being dumped by those he loves. Listen in horror as he describes his tragic love tales like never before unveiled. Tell your married friends! It is an experience They. Will. Never. Forget.”

“What’s wrong?” people ask innocently upon discovering my still-single status. “I mean, you’re such a great guy,” they quickly add, catching themselves.

I used to be embarrassed by the question, stumbling through the answer. “Well, you know, I’ve dated a lot, you know, but it’s just never worked out, you know.”

No, they don’t.

Single year after single year, I have slowly devolved into the relationship equivalent of the Elephant Boy. People at dinner parties whisper and stare when I enter. They turn their heads when I glance their way, avoiding eye contact for fear this socially paralyzed form might approach them. I proclaim my normalcy as I slog my way toward their frightened cliques, howling indignantly, “I … am not … an animal!”

Okay, so given that playing field, where does one 47-year-old guy with a 30-year-old attitude go to find a woman? If you say, “online dating services,” I will club a baby seal, I swear. Online dating is like eating a T.V. dinner; the box has this awesome photo on it along with masterful descriptions: “country-style gravy and tender meat morsels.” But, when you open it up, it’s nothing like you imagined. It’s cold, frozen … ordinary. You try to heat it up, stir it around, add a little this, add a little that, but it’s still freeze-dried, preprocessed wannabe food.

Same with online dating.

Because there are no regulations when it comes to online dating services, the participants are free to place whatever photo and corresponding description they so choose. A colleague of mine went out with a guy once that she met through Match.com and she said the only similarity he had with his photo was that he was male … she thinks. When it comes to online dating services, there are more men and women filling out false reports than steroid-using ballplayers. Where’s the regulation, man?

Online services should do what baseball-card manufacturer Upper Deck did years ago. To prove the authenticity of each piece of its memorabilia, the company places a hologram seal on the item which certifies that Upper Deck personally investigated and confirmed its authenticity. The only way you get the hologram is if Upper Deck’s people approve it. They should do the same for online dating services.

You say you’re only 39? Cool - we’ll just have our investigation team confirm that information and slap a hologram on your profile. Oooops, whoa, sorry, dude, there’s a problem here. Yes, your age is correct … eight years ago! No hologram for you, gramps. And stay away from the college campus!

Oh, I see, miss, you say that photo is a recent one? Excellent. Waaiiiit a minute, honey, it appears that photo was taken before you started hijacking shipments of Haagen Dazs. No hologram for you either.

C’mon, online dating world, help us thwart online dating fraud. I’m tired of frozen dinners.

My name is Jeremy Baka and I approved this message.

I hate the word creative. In fact, I hate people who say they’re creative. Okay, hate’s a strong word; I abhor people who say they’re creative.

So many people are touting creativity these days that saying “I’m creative,” is like saying, “I have a lung.” The word creative has been so thoroughly beaten it means about as much as “hero” or “green.” Media tag people as heroes for doing everything from picking up trash in their neighborhood to returning a wallet to its rightful owner. [Note: That is not being a hero that is being a citizen.]

The 60s, man, now those were creative days. (Watch the series Madmen. Crazy mothers. No-holds-barred creative.) What I like best about that era was that the creative was so, so … simple. No fancy tech-gadget-this, or wireless-that, just … simple. Twister: That was creative. But it took Eva Gabor playing it against Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show for it to really take off. Chia Pet was cool … and Rockem Sockem Robots … and my Uncle Joe.

Uncle Joe, that guy had it. He was creative, man. But, he never said he was creative, you just knew it. He was a natural. He ran a photography studio and survived only by the wave of teens coming in during high school picture season. The rest of the time, he invented ways for us to have fun.

One year, he shows up with two dozen M-80s. Hell, just getting his hands on those things was creative … in October(!). The first couple he fired them up, threw them in the air and, BLAM! Cool, but not cool enough.

You could always tell when Uncle Joe was churning something around in his head. While all of us kids were jumping around celebrating the last explosion, he had a glazed look on his face like he had just dropped acid. He was hosting an internal brainstorm. The next thing you know he’s clanking, clinking, clanging around in the basement. Then, suddenly, here he comes with a six-foot-long steal pipe and a sledge hammer. Nice! He pounded that sucker in the ground at about a 45-degree angle, dropped in an M-80 followed by a small stone and – PHOOM-ZING! – a canon. Awesome! But there was more…

Same pipe, drop in an M-80 followed by a drumstick from an old set of drums and – PHOOM-SHOO! – a rocket launcher. Toss a Frisbee with an M-80 firmly Duck Taped to the top and –WHIP-BLAM! – a mid-air collision. Hang an M-80 from a string two inches above a bucket of water and – BALOOOSH! – a humanless cannonball. Place an M-80 under an upside down bowl with a baseball on top and – BOOF-WOOSH! – a sky-high pop up. (He had outfitted three of us with baseball gloves, but we still missed it.) Okay, it’s October, you had to know it was coming: put an M-80 in a pumpkin and – PAHWP! – pumpkin pie! Everywhere.

We worked our way through 18 of the 24 M-80s, but our zealousness for creative blew up in our faces, so to speak, when I convinced him that the doll I handed him was an old one of my sisters that my Mom had already thrown away. With my sister watching in horror from her bedroom window, Chatty Cathy underwent instant open-heart surgery, M-80 style – PHWAP!

That shut us down for the day.

Uncle Joe ultimately replaced the doll, however, bringing it over to the house … along with four balsawood propeller planes and a cache of firecrackers.

– Jeremy

Waiiiit a minute. Hold on. Stop. What the f*&%??!

That’s what I said while watching what turned out to be a commercial for Always minipads or maxipads, or whatever, by Proctor and Gamble. My Tivo was on the blink so I was doing what I always do when commercials come on – reading. Then, suddenly, Boom!, there it was: Have a happy period. I could almost here the crash of the collective number of shoes women were flinging at TV screens all across America. Are you kidding me — a happy period? Whoa! That takes balls. (Pardon the gender jump.)

So, here’s a quiz: Select from the options below the answer that best describes the person responsible for coming up with the idea that a woman’s period is “happy”:

¨ A 90-year-old woman who was so beyond her period she considered it a blessing to have ever of had one … whatever or whenever it was.

¨ An English professor looking to raise awareness about the lost art of punctuation.

¨ A 35-year old creative director at one of the most prestigious ad agencies in the world. (Hint: He is a he.)

For all those who picked the third one, congratulations, you have just won an epidural-free birthing process, complete with your own Bedazzler!

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, from Leo Burnett, the renowned ad agency that brought you the likes of the Marlboro Man, the Pillsbury Doughboy, Tony the Tiger and the Jolly Green Giant comes the happy period, the Jolly Period, if you will.

[Note to creative dude at Leo Barnett: Please read “The Female Brain” by Dr. Louann Brizendine. Okay, at least read Chapter Two: Teen Girl Brain. It’s about what happens to a girl’s entire body when she experiences a period. C’mon, man, if you’re going to promote it, you have to know it. That would be like asking the Pope to write a book on “How to Pick Up Chicks”.]

Yes, I think we’ve all seen the mock letter that some woman supposedly sent to Proctor and Gamble ripping them on their ad, but since this blog is supposed to be about being creative, I chose instead to use this as an opportunity to once again say: Do not force a creative approach or idea. Don’t fall in love with something just because it’s yours or just because it’s different. It has to make sense. Otherwise, what you have is a really cool, innovative, groundbreaking and completely ineffective concept.

Now, I’m sure the good folks at Leo focus tested the crap out of this ad and had good cause to run with it, so I only have one comment and it goes out to the ladies in the focus groups: In the words of Jay Leno, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING??? My God, if we let creative run irrelevantly rampant like this, think about what other erroneous tag lines we could soon be forced to endure:

Charmin: Have a great one.

Imodium D: Shit happens.

Preparation H: For Hemorrhoids on Steroids.

Exlax: Life is a bowl

Compound W: Beauty is only skin deep.

Pampers: Good things come in small packages.

– Jeremy

I received absolutely devastating news via email last night. I mean, devastating news – the kind of crushing information that makes you sit and ponder how cruel the world can be; questioning our very own chance for survival. This news came in the form of e-vite to my 30^th–year class reunion. Are you kidding me? I have officially been out of high school longer than nearly everyone with whom I work has been on Earth. And that, I tell you, is major suckage. “So, you graduated in 1978?” mused one of the 20-somethings at work, “Huh, that’s the year my parents got married.” Bitch.I am mixed about going back. Do I really want to see 47-year old versions of the young, vibrant, hopeful souls I knew back in the day? And think about the posturing… “I don’t want to go back, “said, my buddy, Jeff, a twice divorced high school friend of mine who has filed for bankruptcy two times in his life. “I, mean, I’m actually worse off than I was in high school.” When trying to console him about his many accomplishments, Jeff countered, “Thanks, dude, but at my age Lincoln was holding the Union together.”I am one of the people who make up the 75 million Baby Boomers in the U.S and 375 million more around the world. Every 7.5 seconds, a Boomer turns 50. If the purchasing power of this group in the U.S. alone were a GNP, it would be the size of Spain. But, there’s a problem, I am a Boomer only by birth. Here’s why:

The point is, you can’t just market to a group. (You can, but then you’re missing guys like me. And I spend.) In today’s marketing, a one-size-fit-all approach is best left for the spandex shorts section at WallMart. Successful marketers will be those who go beyond carpet-bombing communications and orchestrate a more laser-guided approach to audience dialogue.

In other words, that beer-drinkin’, bar brawlin’ good ole boy in the South might have the same political and philosophical beliefs as the Crystal drinkin’, thousand-dollar-dinner-a-night Wall Street boy, but try talking to them the same way and they’ll shut you down faster than my response to my 30-year class reunion invite.

– Jeremy

I’ve just invented my own word: dodzi. Well, actually, my nephew created it. One of the first words he learned was doggie, but it came out “dodzi.” Unfortunately, however, his limited vocabulary ensured that everything was a dodzi: a horse was a dodzi, a car was a dodzi, his brother was a dodzi, his … well, you know, was a dodzi. Anything and everything was a dodzi.

Dodzi, therefore, means, “Anything that is overused, generic or familiar to the point of being meaningless.” Consider dodzi my one-word expression of things that have jumped the shark … twice.

The word “creative,” for example, is dodzi, so is “unique.” Quoting Einstein, Aristotle, Roosevelt or Churchill is dodzi. Producing a colored bracelet or ribbon to represent your social cause is dodzi. Reality TV: definitely dodzi. Images of politicians attending a religious service: dodzi. The latest food, pill, beverage, herb, commodity, chemical or behavior that now causes (or prevents) cancer is dodzi. Athletes on steroids is dodzi. Celebrities in rehab is dodzi. Celebrities involved in the latest causes are dodzi. Award shows: dodzi. MySpace is dodzi. Corrupt CEOs (Redundant?) are dodzi. U.S. automakers complaining about fair trade is dodzi. The Clintons and Bushs: dodzi. Stories about clever Super Bowl ads are dodzi. OJ is dodzi. Hearing about the space station is dodzi. Evoking JFK comparisons during every election is dodzi. In fact, books about JFK are dodzi. Lying under oath is dodzi. Harry Potter is dodzi. Car chases on the news are dodzi. The world “like” is a dodzi. American Idol and stories about the winners and loser is dodzi. Diet books, drinks, pills, food are dodzi. Boxing is dodzi. Energy-saving light bulbs are dodzi, as is “Green living.” Sports analysts are dodzi. Hot teachers sleeping with their students: dodzi. Starbucks is dodzi. “The Simpsons” is dodzi. China is dodzi. SUVs are dodzi.

At this point, dodzi is getting dodzi. Anybody got any others?

– Jeremy

One of the Best uses of creativity ever.  EVER!