The Wheeled Waving Man of Welch Road

Most mornings this man can be seen on my commute. He sits on this little scooter thing in his driveway and waves to cars. Not all cars. I haven't figured out how he selects which cars are granted his wave, and I have sometimes not received one. This morning I didn't. He appears to be sleeping today.

Why does he do it? I've no idea. Maybe he sees it as some sort of community outreach, a ministry of sorts. Maybe he is just spreading cheer and goodwill to the people about to cut each other off as the two lanes merge to one and the morning cursing of our fellow man begins. Short of interviewing him, I will never know his motive. At any rate, I usually wave to him. 

It's Huuuuuuuge!

There's a small amusement park here in Orlando called Fun Spot. It's family owned and operated. This goateed gent is the Chief Operating Officer, John Arie, Jr. He's the son of the founder, John Arie, Sr. Junior appears in virtually all the ads for this place. On TV, he can be heard exclaiming the park's tagline, which I'm sure he invented, "It's HUUUUUGE!" Here are some more pictures of Junior for you.

Everything about Fun Spot says "family-owned." From the quality of the advertising to the smallness of the rides and attractions within the park, this is not why people come to Orlando. But they're here and Junior is going to grab them. What I like about Junior is his savvy. 

On long stretches of the toll roads leading from Orlando International Airport to Interstate 4, every other billboard is for Fun Spot. You'll see a couple for Disney, a few for Universal, but John has made his little park look like a major player. He knows people are maybe spending half a day at his place, and only if they happen to be staying on International Drive, where he is located. But the kids in the back seats are seeing his ads and saying, "That place looks fun, Dad!" And Dad says, "Maybe," which to a kid is as good as, "You bet! We'll be doing Fun Spot, kiddies!"

Fun Spot is not huge. It's relatively tiny. But Junior understands advertising. Say it over and over again and say it in as many places as you can afford to and you'll get business. Never mind that once they get there they'll realize it's a small step up from the type of traveling carnival you'd find in the parking lot of the K-Mart in Springfield, Missouri. It's still a fun spot.

One of my favorite Fun Spot billboards is up right now just outside of Universal. (Junior understands placement.) I'm almost positive the photo shoot was directed by Junior. It features two girls on Fun Spot's small, not-so-thrilling roller coaster. The girl on the left is being honest, "This is a fun little roller coaster. Weeeeeee!" The girl on the right is losing it, utterly terrified by the sheer velocity, harrowing turns and potential death that awaits. But not so terrified that she can't raise her arms in gleeful abandon.

That's advertrising.

Well played, Junior.  
   

Zombie Suburbia

We've all seen the haunting pictorials of abandoned urban centers, Detroit being the most popular for photographers to document, but the abandonment has reached many suburbs as the housing crisis continues to claim families.

On the two-mile trip to our local 7-Eleven in a middle class suburb, there are quite a few sad stories; homes that have been left to rot as the Florida jungle, ever creeping, tries to swallow them up.

So here's a little Fourth of July trip through our Central Florida neighborhood.

Taking Your Chuck Norris Love to the Next Level

This is Why We Don't Care

Florida has a reputation throughout the rest of the country as being a home for inbreeding, trailer parks, old people and barefoot rednecks. Like most stereotypes, these notions are all based in some bit of truth. Just like we regard Northeasterners as loud, obnoxious and wearing knit caps like they all work at the docks; or how we regard Pacific Northwesterners as pot-smoking, scraggly bearded vegans; or how we think of people in Texas as dim-witted yahoos bent on drinking beer and having sexual relations with livestock. Pick any place, really, and there is a stereotype to go with it. England: bad teeth; Ireland; drunks; Italy or France; philanderers; Australia, criminals; Japan, sex-with-robots - the list goes on.

Of course none of these prejudices are true. And even if they are, here's why we don't care what you think down here in Florida, all you miserable snow-bound pasty cold people bundled up in fancy, expensive scarves and boots, reading your hipster blogs and thinking you're so much better than everybody else.

CYA

Just in case you were considering taking a refreshing dip in this gator-infested, weed-choked swamp of a canal, the HOA would like you to know that this is not a permitted activity.

They warned you. And now they're covered against all lawsuits.

Stupid, paranoid, litigious America.

Supersaturated Street Scenes - Confederate Edition

At the interchange of I-75 and I-4 in Tampa stands what is billed as the largest Confederate Flag in the world. On the day that the Google car drove by, so did the type of dented white van you warn children to be wary of.

To The Bunker, Floridians!

The National Weather Service has declared Central Florida a hellscape of apocalyptic doom with these warnings for today.

Not a good day for sailing. Or swimming. Bad day to toss a lit cigarette into a pile of dry leaves. Not looking good for your plants either.

I'm going for a walk.

Sometimes Twice a Year We Suffer Like This

Evil Trash Men Made Me Make You a Moonset Desktop Background

The county I live in recently awarded a new contract for trash removal to some evil company that I don't like. Used to be you could set the bins out for pick-up at 8 or 9 in the morning and you were fine. (We can't set them out overnight because the bears will strew trash all over the place, which is no fun at all to clean up.) So anyway, these new guys are evil. You can hear them squealing through the neighborhood at about 5:30 AM, and I can tell they're psyched by the revving of the engine and the speed at which they drive. They're psyched that this neighborhood hardly has any bins at the street. "HAHA! We got here so early these dolts didn't get their stuff out in time! We're home free!"

It took me a couple of times missing them to now sleep with one eye open on Sunday nights. ("Prison Sleep" I've heard it called.) So I'm stumbling out there this morning and saw the moon setting. It was pretty. Made me say, "Whoa," in my hazy state and go find the camera, which was fortunately set on the "You do all the thinking for me" setting and so I was able to see it later when I was awake. Click it for Mondo Moon size.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

Casa de Jetpacks sits on a canal near the Wekiva River Conservation Area, so it is not uncommon to encounter all manner of wildlife in the yard and around the neighborhood. Sand hill cranes are regular tenants, as are otters. Lizards, snakes and turtles are of course ubiquitous. Every morning and evening you can spot deer so tame that they just look at you as if you've interrupted their private breakfast or round of cocktails in their reserved room at the club. Hawks are always on the lampposts, and they are always being harassed by smaller birds, but the hawks just sit there cool as hell while being darted at by noisy little pests. The occasional alligator wanders into the yard. Earlier this week I got so tired of an armadillo rooting around in my garage and yard that I dispatched him to Armadillo Hell, where I'm sure all armadillos go upon expiring. And then sometimes we get bear, but only at night when the trash cans are on the street waiting to be emptied the following morning. Until today, that is, when a bold bear decided he'd have a broad daylight lunch of pears from the tree in the yard. The dog followed me out and scared him/her off with some vicious barking that had it been tested, would not have been backed up by any sort of bite. 

Got my copy of Mad Men Unbuttoned today in the mail. (I had already received a galley.) Written by Natasha Vargas-Cooper, it is a complete dissection of the era in which the hit series takes place, as well as THE authoritative history of ad agencies of the time - and just in time for the new season. Copyranter has an entry in there. So does Bad Banana. So do I. Buy it for the fan in your life. Now. (That was a call to action.)

Saw a tweet from Flashman of Sydney this morning. Seems there's a course on media, society and politics at the University of New South Wales that uses one of my Mike Adams cartoons on a handout promoting the course. Cool.

Saw another tweet today from Ad Pulp that announced a contest being put on by BBR Saatchi & Saatchi of Tel Aviv. They call it "The Impossible Brief." They're asking people to solve the Middle East Crisis, since Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama or any of their staff of career diplomats, or the UN, or Bono, or Madonna, or Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie couldn't. Hell, no one can, can they? Since I'm not doing anything this summer in the way of real work, I took a stab. Frisbee, after all, is universal.

And I will commute weekly to Tel Aviv if that's what it takes to get an ad job in this economy.

What's Gaudier Than a Pink Hummer Limo?

One with a pink barbecue grill attached to the back bumper.

Seen in Altamonte Springs, Florida.

We'll Call It "Whispering Monkey Skull at Tuscany Pointe"

I passed this giant piece of limestone sitting out in front of a subdivision in Ormond Beach.

Welcome to the Jungle (Or "Coffee with a Gator")

There was an 8-footer out in the backyard this morning. I joined him for some coffee at a safe distance. We were both bedheaded and groggy. Acoustic cover of the G&R tune is by Brent Truitt.

Put Your Ass in The Air Like You Just Don't Care

Reminiscent of the Casare Paciotti ad from a few years back, we have a passed out woman, martini glass on the floor, face down on a white leather couch in a short dress. She is but the next local model in a series of ads for Scan Design, a trendy Florida furniture store known for provocative, odd ads.

She is in love with her couch. Why is that so wrong? So she's a potential victim of date-rape by her lusty couch. Why is THAT so wrong? She is in love, and the couch knows it can have its way with her, because it respects her in the morning.

Scan Design excuse themselves in the copy of this ad, explaining that the idea came from a painter who was simply trying to win their competition, the theme of which was "Fall in Furniture Love." The painting is the template for this ad. It's an ad within an ad. So clever.  Rustin Robinson painted a woman passed out face down on her knees, bent over a couch with her ass in the air. And he won. (Click image for the big.)

Let's Go Caving!

From the people who brought you Boxing Glove Is a Brain comes this work of epic retardation, featuring a pioneering team of doctors all geared up to explore the uncharted territory that is your vajayjay. Pretty sure I don't want to know about the debris at their feet.

Florida Hospital, Where Vaginal Spelunking is not Just Our Mission, It's Our Passion.



(The body copy was removed from this ad to highlight the cluelessness from which Florida Hospital's creative team operates. And it was really tiny and pretty standard.)

If I Only Had a Brain

Around Central Florida, ads for Florida Hospital have been appearing with this image of a boxing glove that looks like a brain. Or perhaps it's a brain that is simply a boxing glove. I don't know. And aren't brains grey? (That's "gray" for my American countrymen.) What I do know is that this is one of those ads that makes you go, "Gross." And perhaps I'm a little short on grey matter, but this is a confusing message to me. So if a stroke is "a knockout punch to the brain," then is this glove a brain that is going to knock someone out? Or does the glove just represent a stroke? Or does this glove represent that the hospital is fighting back? With a punch from a brain? An outdoor board execution with this same image says "We're champs at fighting back." OK, whatever.

It'll probably win an award.

And on The Seventh Day, You Will Get Your Ass Up and Work

Under the job title of "Federal Emergency Relief Contractors / Special Project in South Florida," I found an intriguing call for "Cooks, Dishwashers, Food service workers, Shower operators (sanitizing showers and refilling supplies), Laundry workers, General maintenance people, Administrative assistants, Machine Operators, Project Managers (this is a higher skilled position), Janitors, Laborer, Grounds Maintenance, Washer, Machine Appliance Mechanic, General Maintenance Worker, Laborer, Driver Courier, Parking and Lot Attendant, Shuttle Bus Driver, Truck driver, Light, Truck driver, Medium, Truck driver, Heavy and Truck driver, Tractor-Trailer."

The best part of the ad was this paragraph:

Workers are expected to do any tasks assigned and work 7 days/week, 12 hour/ day – 40 hours regular time pay and 44 hours overtime pay. They must provide their own transportation to and from the work-site, and will be provided shelter, and all meals. This commitment could be up to 6 weeks or more. Workers will be paid the prevailing wage designated for each area.

So this thing is like bootcamp, or prison, except you get paid. It could also double as a sort of in-patient weight-loss or detox program and stop-smoking clinic, I'd bet.

If I was a Fox Newser, I'd cry out against the socialist nature of this Nazi Work Camp. If I was an MSNBCer, I'd glory in the Peace Corps/New Deal aspect of it all. As an unemployed writer, I see it as a story and two paychecks. Six weeeks of 84-hour weeks and free meals? Maybe a bunch of stories. I'd embed on this one.

I'm gonna apply for Laborer, Grounds Maintenance.

Rolling Stone? The Atlantic?

Unemployment Will Make A Man Do Weird Things

The last time I was on an extended unemployment stretch, I packed up everything and moved from Missouri to Florida. After I found a room to rent in a weird guy's house, I found a job as a landscaper. Actually, we mainly just cut lawns in the heat. It only lasted for a few months, but I have a tendency to romanticize that brief employment as the best job I ever had. The boss and owner of the company, a former timeshare salesman, was a thick-accented Jersey guy who always had a joint hanging from his lips. After we were done with a yard and it looked exceptionally nice, he'd say, "It's cake!" Or he'd announce as we approached a lawn, "Make it cake, boys!" I came to interpret that direction in a way that is best interpreted by the following diagram:

So, now that I'm unemployed again, I apply for jobs online and send cover letters and resumes to the people who hire people like me, and when I run out of those, I go to the yard and work on some long-neglected corner that needs a cakemaker's touch. Then I come in and check the inbox or send out another query letter for that damned book that keeps collecting rejection letters. Or I'll mess with the design of one of my websites. Sometimes I'll even mess with the whole purpose of one of my websites. And then sometimes I'll just get a really crazy idea like building a mock cake with a landscaping theme.

Click it. It's effing huge.

Admit it. It looks delicious.

People Get Ready, There's a Train A-Comin'

It appears the President will be down in Florida tomorrow to announce a bunch of federal dollars coming our way for a high-speed rail connecting Orlando and Tampa.

That's cool. I've always wanted America to get a decent rail system. (An old post that continues to ring true for too many on this blog is "Amtrack Sucks.")

But I wish we lived in the 1930s, when if a President announced a monster huge job like this, it'd get done in a year. As it is, projects like these have gone the way of jobs in just about every other industry in this country, including advertising. Studies. Meetings. Holdups. Overruns. Redos. More meetings. Another meeting. Focus groups. Surveys. A poll. More studies. Put it on hold for a while. Reconvene. Look at it. Have more meetings. Talk in circles. Too many people trying to justify why they are involved in the project and fighting with one another over who has control.

I'll believe it when I see it.