Morons and Child Annoyers

I love the evolution of the English language.

In 1936, a pervert was called a moron and a pedophile was merely a child annoyer. This article describes the final exploits of one Mr. Keane, who, following a "spectacular battle," was killed, even though he was "bent on thievery rather than rape."

Read this article from the Chicago Tribune in the voice of a radio broadcaster from that era and it all makes sense.

This is the height of the Great Depression. That kinda destroys everything I had previously thought. So, it wasn't all, "Brother, can you spare a dime?", soup lines and helping out hobos by offering them odd jobs around the house in exchange for a meal when they came calling at the back screen door while Grandma was cooling a pie on the kitchen window sill, the very window the moron would then peep into, though likely bent on thievery rather than rape.

The Lost Art of "Visiting"

Something has been lost in this world of ours. We like to talk about "conversation" as it pertains to brands, but we know little of it in the real world. We talk online. We "Like" this or that. Our "talk" is of a superficial nature. We all have Snooki and the State of the Union in common. We can gather with people we've never met for dinner or drinks in trendy restaurants and noisy bars and converse lightly, but we are there as much for the experience as we are there for each other.

Last Saturday evening, Mrs. Jetpacks and I stopped by my parents' place in Ormond Beach on the way home from an engagement in Jacksonville. My parents are of a generation that believe that the "living room" is a place to talk. Surely, there is a television in this room, but the room is set up in the manner of the old-world "parlour." There is a couch, a love seat and a couple of chairs, but they do not face the television; they face each other. In our home, the "living room" is really the "theatre," all seating arranged to engage the one thing in the room that could never engage us back - the TV. In the living room of my parents, the purpose proposed by the arrangement of the furniture is clear: we are here to talk.

The TV was never turned on in my parents' home last Saturday night. As we got settled, my parents informed us that some neighbors of theirs, Larry and Merry, would be stopping by, jokingly telling us that Larry and Merry thought that the tales of a son and daughter-in-law from Orlando were perhaps false, as they had never seen us.

Larry and Merry arrived in short order and pleasantries were exchanged. Before long, conversation flowed and familiarity was established. We certainly discussed TV and the personalities that drive it, but we never turned it on. We faced each other and talked.

It was to me a time traveling trip to another era, when the people of my parents' generation got together to visit, as I'm sure my parents must still do on a regular basis, judging from the ease with which they and their neighbors conducted themselves during our visit. For my wife and me, it was a bit of an exercise in learning to adapt to the old ways, when you looked one another in the eye, heard what the other had to say, tried to offer something reasonably relevant to the conversation, and hoped that you weren't making an ass of yourself. After a bit of practice, we found ourselves very much enjoying this old-school style of getting together.

It wasn't until long after we departed, perhaps the next day, that any of this even occurred to me. The arrangement of the room itself was the source of the preservation of a lost art; those seats facing each other, that TV purposely left off. We were six adults, two couples unfamiliar with one another, seated and engaged. No food to talk over, no waiter or waitress' service to critique, no wine to sniff and judge, no bill to fight over.

No doubt we are far removed from the courtly days of calling cards and parlour introductions, but something tells me that the simple rearrangement of the living room furnishings would go a long way toward regaining something that accidentally got replaced by the big screen plasma.

I'm going to suggest to my wife that we try to preserve this ancient culture, this dwindling tradition. It's time to invite the neighbors over to visit. Perhaps rearrange the furniture.

Until We Meet Again

The traditional meeting business has long suffered due to sites like GoToMeeting. Or due to improvements in tools like Skype. Or tools like the telephone. Still, there are the old-school types who prefer to do business the old-fashioned way: at a hotel - in a conference room - with pitchers of ice water and carafes of bad coffee - with stale danish and cloth napkins - with a projector so you can watch a Powerpoint presentation. Don't forget the always clean rest rooms and the helpful staff. Make sure to wear your best meeting clothes. And book a flight. And get a room. And don't party too much the night before the meeting. While in the meeting, take plenty of notes on a pad of paper, because the printed handout of the Powerpoint presentation is not enough to show you are pretending to be interested. If you raise your hand to ask a question, you just might hear, "Let's discuss this more offline," because meeting in person is somehow "online." But "face time," the proponents of traditional meetings argue, "is important." I agree. That's why Skype has video.

Hyatt, borrowing a concept from Demotivators, placed this ad in today's New York Times, hoping you will hold your next meeting with them. Their tagline is "Great Happens," with the subtag "When People Get Together." It's one of those over-the-top pledges that means nothing and promises everything. It's all explained in vague detail at Hyatt Meetings, with nice pictures of the helpful staff setting the conference room table with pitchers of ice water and cloth napkins.

Cute execution. Nice skewer of the traditional corporate poster, except that it's in promotion of a traditional corporate practice. 

Previously in Motivating The Troops with Buzzwords:
There is no "U" in "Team."

Old Art Director: Special Holiday Edition

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Previously:

Old AD #3
Old AD #2
Old AD - Pilot

Note to Print Media: You're Doing it Wrong

Again. And still.

My local paper has several Twitter accounts. Here's the latest tweet from @OrlandoOpinion


What a worthless thing to waste my time on. What does it matter how we think the Senate should vote on Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court? Why is this news? What will you do with this information once you've gathered it? Will you send a note to Florida's two senators saying, "The respondents to our idiotic and inane poll think you should/should not confirm Obama's nominee."

If I were a Senator, I'd say to myself, "Hmmmm. Screw those idiots. What kind of loser takes the time to register his/her opinion on such a question? Maybe only crazy activists on either side of the political spectrum?"

Besides the complete and utter stupidity of such a tweet, what kills their request for me to go to their pole further is the command "Vote!"

No! I won't! You're being stupid.

But I suppose a few people clicked that way, then saw a banner ad for Embassy Suites and said, "You know what? That happy couple frolicking in the surf sure makes me want to take my wife to Fort Lauderdale for the weekend. I think I'll book a room. Aw, what the hell, let's upgrade that room to a deluxe suite! Oh, look! a car ad! We need a new car right about now!"

A couple of summers ago, I did a short six-week or so freelance stint at the local paper. It was a sad experience as I watched them try to desperately come up with ways to make more money and stem the exodus of subscribers. They wanted to create a weekly "Legal" section, much like their weekly "Auto" section, that they would fill with ads from personal injury attorneys. Problem was there are just not that many "legal" story angles to fill a section every week. They started up a weird offshoot site called Engine Head, which they tried not to associate themselves with, lest the street racers and local motorcycle enthusiasts realize it was a cleverly disguised ruse. I wrote a radio script for them in which the announcer said something to the effect of "subscribe to our feed" or "bookmark it and check us for weather, traffic, blah, blah, blah." They did not like that. They changed it to read, "Make us your homepage!" Delusional thinking, I told them. Does anyone have the local paper's website as their homepage?

Since I was there, they've undergone massive layoffs and attempts at colorful rebranding to the point that the paper now looks like a website, complete with banner ads along the bottom of the front page. I'm sure they're selling a few issues of commemorative Orlando Magic editions in the wake of our local team's surprising performance in the NBA playoffs, but the end is in sight for the print version and has been for a long time.

Naturally, all papers are trying to do the online thing, and the more clicks they can show, the more they can charge their banner ad placers. But when your tweets are that dumb, I'm not clicking on the links within, so I'm not seeing the banners, and I might just unfollow you now. The local TV stations' websites offer everything you do. They also want to be my source for news, weather, traffic, jobs, classifieds, and my first choice for stupid celebrity mugshots or pictures of kids on Spring Break getting drunk. Or dumbass polls that mean nothing.

What do you have that distinguishes you from anyone else? How are you different? Why should I visit your site? You're not offering me anything compelling.

Mad Frenchmen

Everyone seems to be in agreement that Mad Men, the show about 1960s-era advertising, pretty much sucks.

Didn't watch it. Couldn't tell you. But in the spirit of suck, and because I enjoy making you cringe with me in perplexed wonder at what people were possibly thinking back in that era, I give you an extra helping of embarrassing nostalgia for your weekend pleasure. This is for Pepsi, 1965. From France. Swingin' times.



UPDATE: My mom called last night. Mom: "Did you watch Mad Men?" Me: "No. I heard it's terrible." Mom: "No. They're saying it's the best show on television."

SoCal Media

Click for bigness.