I’m a Merry Christmas person. Does that make me bad? “Happy Holidays” doesn’t carry quite the same exuberance for me as “Merry Christmas.” And I must shamefully confess that deep in my heart I still think of Navajos, Cherokees and Apaches as Indians. My publisher tells me there is no such place as the […]
New York Times writer Samuel G. Freedman asks, “Can the forces that make you creative also kill you?” “Can you live with control and yet create free of restraint?” “Can you live enough of the dark side to tell the tale without becoming a casualty?” Freedman’s curiosity is well founded. History is littered with […]
“Added value” is the popular name for what’s included at no extra charge. But we are entering a time when it will no longer be sufficient to tell the world what you include and what you stand for. To hold the attention of the public in 2012 and beyond, you must identify what you leave out […]
Man of La Mancha rocked Broadway in 1965 with its thundering theme song, The Impossible Dream. You remember that song, don’t you? It opens in soft reflection, “To dream the impossible dream… To fight the unbeatable foe…” but then it defies mortal gravity to rise heavenward on a column of fury like an old […]
Most people see life as a linear progression, a canoe ride on the river of time. The scenery passes. The sun rises and sets. Occasionally there is a storm. It’s a tempting metaphor because we often think of time flowing like a river and to see ourselves as passengers on that river is a natural […]
Our system of education is built on the belief that learning is best achieved by bringing the best of the past forward through expert advice and clear example. Consequently, educators rise through the ranks like officers in the military: through compliance and conformity to the norm. But in this era of quantum change, are we really […]
Storytelling is gaining momentum. Open-mic nights are the hot ticket in Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit and New York with people lining up two hours before show time to hear storytellers tell stories. Let’s look at the reasons why: “Storytelling is human connection at its most primal form,” says Catherine Burns, artistic director for the storytelling […]
Pearl was a bit of a whore. We never kept her in a fence So she had puppies at least once a year. She was a good mother. Abandoned in the country, starving, We found her when I was in third grade. She knew she was my dog immediately. God help you if you got […]
Your brain is hardwired to notice the exception, the incongruity, the discrepancy, the disturbance, that thing – no matter how small – that doesn’t belong. “Something of the sense of holiness on islands comes, I think, from this strange, elastic geography. Islands are made larger, paradoxically, by the scale of the sea that surrounds them. […]
Anxious anticipation, nervous trepidation, heart palpitation and a tingling sensation are the smells and bells of adventure. Paul Tournier was a 3 year-old orphan in Switzerland when Teddy Roosevelt became President of the United States. Paul grew up to become a doctor. He did a lot of thinking and he wrote a few books. Paul […]
Words shine like a movie projector on the screen of imagination, creating lifelike images in the mind. 1: Which actors will you place on the screen? Will your voice be first person “I,” second person “you,” or third person “they?” 2. What will be your time perspective? Will your verbs be past tense “was,” present tense […]
The boys were born on the same day in the same year: February 12, 1809. Both were intensely private. Each boy lost his mother in early childhood. Neither was close to his father. The two never met but together they tipped the world on its axis and made it wobble for 100 years. You know […]
“If you’ve read about social media or been to any marketing conferences, you’ve probably heard tons of advice like love your customers, engage in the conversation, be yourself, and make friends. I call this unicorns-and-rainbows advice. Take a couple of time-honored adages, add in the unquestioning awe of an unaware audience, and pretty soon […]
Eleven million copies of Tuesdays with Morrie have been sold. But one hundred years before Mitch Albom began spending the-day-after-Monday with Morrie, a previous Tuesday gathering had already left its mark upon the earth and walked triumphantly into the pages of history. You are cordially invited to the home of Stéphane Mallarmé 89 Rue […]
THE OUTER YOU: The best ad campaigns have a style guide. Implicit or explicit, the style guide is always there. A visual style guide determines the look and feel of visual ads, signage and décor. Audio Signatures (distinctive enunciations, sound effects, special effects, unusual voices, rhythms, delivery styles, etc.) are the primary elements in […]
Ad Campaign: a series of ads bound together by a set of distinctive identifiers. Can you name the identifiers that mark your campaign? Okay, there’s the font you use for your company name and the color scheme you use on your business cards, letterhead and signage. But the world overflows with fonts and […]
You’re reading this and I’m honored, because you delete far more emails than you open. Which others do you open? I know, of course, that you read emails from your closest friends and family. But are there any newsletters, blog posts or subscriptions that you open more often than not? Can you pick a […]
The goal of the batter is to hit the baseball. This is why every kid who holds a bat is told, “Don’t take your eye off the ball.” Later, when endurance is needed, we say, “Keep your eye on the prize.” Can you name the ball you’re trying to hit? Can you name the prize? […]
This will be the smartest thing I’ve done in years or it will be the stupidest. And I’m going to do it openly so the whole world can watch to see what happens as these next few months unfold. The promotion of Wizard Academy is about to be turned over to someone else. Mark Fox […]
These are the 5 questions you must answer before you can know how soon your ads will start working: Q. 1: What percentage of the noise made in your category – in all the different media combined – is being made by you? This is your Share of Voice. Q. 2: What percentage of the […]
“There is a holy mistaken zeal in politics as well as in religion.” – The Letters of Junius, 1769 – 1771 “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to bed in the streets, and to steal bread.” – Anatole France, 1844 – 1924 […]
Relevance has always been an important part of effective communication but never so much as today. The appalling dropout rate in High Schools and the sharp decline in church attendance are just two of the indicators of an accelerated demand by people for relevance. “Why should I? Will it make me happier? Is […]
A 20 year-old kid walks the streets in Oklahoma. Married. No money. Works construction by day, changes tapes in an automated radio station from 1AM to 11AM each Saturday morning for $3.35 an hour. No microphone. No one will know if he’s doing a good job because station management is at home fast asleep.Frankly, […]
Once a year I allow myself to ramble a bit in the insane delusion that someone out there might actually want to know what’s happening in my life. Deep in my heart I know the only people who really care about my private trivia are my wife and my mom. My wife, of course, lives […]
Chronic problems in business are usually the result of binary thinking. “It’s either this way or that way. It can’t be both.” Strangely, the answer is almost always “both.” “Should I try to attract the price-driven (transactional) customer, or should I go for the (relational) customer who cares about something other than price?” Both. […]
Wizard Academy completed an experiment last Thursday and we’re prepared to share the results of it. Amateur musicians were gathered from across North America. We refused to allow them to create music in the manner they preferred. Instead, we showed them video clips of Bob Dylan, Elton John, Richard Carpenter and other musicians explaining […]
Monday Morning, One Week Ago – “Honey, I liked this week’s memo but you never really told us how to become self-selected. You just gave us examples of other people who have done it.” I took another look at that memo and said, “You’re right, Princess. I intended the reader to read the line that […]
Dewey Jenkins is a self-made man, the sort of person every parent hopes their child will become. Like many of us, Dewey started with nothing, nada, zip, zero. He worked hard, was focused and patient, always tried to do the right thing, accepted his setbacks with grace and his victories with humility. In this, […]
Curves are difficult to create in bodies, buildings and furniture. But they always attract attention. Curves are good. All the best stories have them. Good movies, plays and books curve one way then another, taking us in directions we did not anticipate. We can never see what’s around the corner. Curves are the mark of […]
Once a month my partners and I have a videoconference. We solve problems together and I share a few stories of things I learned the hard way. Craig Arthur, director of Wizard of Ads – Australia, tells me these stories are his favorite parts of our time together. Listening to my silly stories, he sees […]
I feel a bit like the boy in the Hans Christian Andersen tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes, though I’m not nearly so brave as he. You remember, don’t you? Two weavers promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes that will be invisible to those unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent. When […]
1. You have something to sell and 2. You want to tell the world about it. These are my first questions: 1. Are people already looking for it? 2. Can you deliver your message in 8 words or less? If the answer to both questions is yes, Put up a big, intrusive sign. The world […]
I’ve never met a business owner whose advertising failed because they were reaching the wrong people. Let me say that again. I’ve never met a business owner whose advertising failed because they were reaching the wrong people. Advertising fails when people have 1. no knowledge of the offer. The ad is easily ignored. 2. […]
We stay too busy to think big thoughts. This frantic busyness, this voluntary slavery to the merely urgent is preferred, I think, because big thoughts make us realize that we are much smaller creatures than we like to pretend. “We often talk about Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 in terms of failures: failures of intelligence, failures […]
See it. Believe it. Say it. These are the first steps. But be prepared; most people will think you’re an idiot. Or delusional. Or full of yourself. Maybe they’re right. The outcome is all that separates confidence from hubris. You saw it in your mind. You believed it could happen. You spoke about it […]
You open your mailbox and grab a handful of paper. How long does it take you to sort that mail? Do you open each envelope and consider its message, or do some of them get tossed into the trashcan unopened? More than 71 billion dollars were spent on direct mail marketing last year according to […]
Brands are extensions of belief systems. You are attracted to a brand when it stands for something you believe in. We buy what we buy – most of it, anyway – 1. to remind ourselves and 2. tell the world around us who we are. Brands are identity reinforcement, just like art and architecture […]
“My name is Natsu and I’ll be serving you today.” Pennie said, “Natsu… What a pretty name!” “Thank you. I was named after my grandmother. It means ‘summer’ in Japanese.” Thirty seconds earlier, Natsu had looked like any other waitress. But now that we knew her grandmother was Japanese, we couldn’t help but see the […]
Ken and Barbie are perfect. Ken and Barbie are plastic. Ken and Barbie are hollow. I do not prefer them. True friends are flawed in endearing ways. Quirky. I’ll never forget the morning when I asked a roomful of newly arrived Wizard Academy students to tell a little about themselves. The last to stand was […]
As you do or don’t know, I make my living as an advertising consultant. My income is directly tied to the growth of my clients’ businesses, so you can be sure I keep a close eye on their income trends. Although my office works with only a few dozen of America’s 5.91 million businesses, these […]
Most people believe advertising is scalable. These people are right. And they are wrong. SCALABLE: When a large-scale problem can be solved by the straight-line, linear expansion of a small-scale solution, that solution is scalable. Example: You want to put a box of loose snapshots into photo albums. One album holds exactly 50 snapshots. This problem […]
What makes us America? If you were to name a single incident in American history that you feel was America’s finest hour, what would it be?Would it be a moment of patriotic sacrifice? “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” – Nathan Hale, [Sept. 22, 1776] A moment […]
“Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings.” – Proverbs, ch. 22 Stand before kings? Sounds great! But how does one get “skilled in his work?” American children were taught for 100 years that all we had to do to be successful was listen, take notes, remember […]
If you’re reading this sentence, it’s because the headline (A.) startled you by its intrusive, personal nature, (B.) irritated you by its assumption that God exists, (C.) intrigued you because you never really thought about it, or (D.) touched a pre-existing suspicion or belief that hides in your heart. Headlines – including the subject […]
How does one reconcile these two famous proverbs? “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” That first platitude would argue that pre-emptive action is a waste of time and resources; “Leave well-enough alone.” The second platitude says quite the opposite; “A stitch in time, saves […]
STEP 1: What percentage of your sales volume comes from repeat or referral customers? These customers are driven to you by past satisfaction. Don’t read any further until you’ve decided on a percentage. Give it your best guess. STEP 2: What percentage of your sales volume is triggered by your location and its exterior signage? […]
If you’re a man, you will definitely have a midlife crisis. When it happens – and it can happen a number of times – you can let it lift you to the next level, or you can let it unravel your life. Wizard Academy’s Dr. Richard D. Grant, a clinical psychologist, was chatting with […]
In an over-communicated society, predictability is the enemy of effective writing. A recent Yankelovich study tells us that Americans are confronted by more than 5,000 selling messages per day – radio and television and magazines and newspapers and billboards floating on an ocean of store signage, posters, point-of-purchase displays and product packaging – each one hoping […]
According to the U.S. Census, our nation is home to 5.91 million business owners whose businesses have fewer than 100 employees. If the American dream is to survive, these small businesses must thrive. The success of Wal-Mart and Google is not enough. Wizard Academy is a business school – not for big corporations – but […]
I look at Vivian Maier and remember Jane Hathaway, Mr. Drysdale’s scholarly secretary on The Beverly Hillbillies. Vivian was born in France in 1926. We don’t know how or when Vivian came to America, but at age 11 she began working in a New York sweatshop. She learned English by sitting in movie theaters, alone […]
“Proverbs contradict each other. That is the wisdom of a people.” – Stanislaw Lec EXAMPLE 1. “Win the heart and the mind will follow. The intellect can always find logic to justify what the heart has already decided.” In other words, speak to the right brain – the heart – if you will […]
“Success is a snowflake,” she said. I was talking to the princess of my world, doing my best to ignore the day that waited impatiently outside our door. I had shown her the photo of Jane DeDecker’s Old Man and the Sea and told her the back story of Teddy Roosevelt’s famous statement, “It is […]
Ray, I agree with what you said. Determination must be fed or it will fade. Commitment, on the other hand, is settled, secure, irrevocable. Costs are no longer counted. You’ve heard me say many times that one of our society’s most costly mistakes is this misbegotten belief that passion produces commitment. America’s high divorce rate […]
Gold, for thousands of years, has been the world’s only truly secure investment. The economy ebbs and flows, like the tide. It always has. It always will. But gold is like the Rock of Gibraltar. Safe. Secure. Indestructible. If all the gold in the world were melted into a single cube, that cube would be […]
The single biggest mistake made in face-to-face selling is the seller’s reluctance to name the price. When your customer asks, “How much?” the next syllable to leave your lips should be the first digit of a number. “But you don’t understand. That’s just not possible in my business. We have to gather some information before […]
It is dangerous to write sentences that require the reader to think. Frankly, you would be safer to blindfold yourself and walk in front of a Taliban firing squad wearing a Jesus Loves You T-shirt. Here’s an example of dangerous writing: “Amnesia is not knowing who one is and wanting desperately to find out. Euphoria […]
Adolphe Monticelli has been forgotten by all but the most devoted art historians, but his legacy will live eternal through the work of Vincent Van Gogh, Paul Cézanne and a whole generation of French Impressionists. Monticelli may rightfully be called,”The World’s Most Influential Painter That No One Has Ever Heard Of.” Thomas Jefferson was alive when […]
“Thoughts are the threads that bind us to deeds.Deeds are the ropes that bind us to habits.Habits are the chains that bind us to destiny.“– Inscription carved on the West Wall at the Palace in Maygassa My friend Don Kuhl says, “All change is self change” and the first things we must change are our […]
We love that moment when a divergent anomaly becomes the missing piece of the puzzle.The key that unlocks a mystery.The “Eureka!” of an inventor.The punch line of a joke.We hunger to see disparate elements resolve into a coherent pattern.Tedious teachers tell us the answers. Astounding teachers make us see the answers for ourselves; Click! Snap! […]
Paul Compton had a wife and four daughters, and in later years, a fourteen-year-old son added himself to the dinner table. That son was me. My own mother was a great cook and she loved me like crazy, but Mom had to work full time and there was a lot to do in the […]
Ads are (1.) category-focused, (2.) product-focused, or (3.) client-focused. The good thing about category-focused ads is that they’re portable; anyone in the category can use them. The bad thing about category-focused ads is that they don’t distinguish you from your competitors, because anyone in the category can use them. I’ve been told there are some good category-focused […]
Is there any part of your business you’d like to improve? Listen to me: You won’t improve what you don’t measure. Here’s how to get the ball rolling: Step One: Identify, clearly, what you’re trying to make happen. Step Two: Determine how progress might be measured. (This is the hardest step by far.) Step Three: […]
Old ideas are carried by old words. New ideas are carried by new words. Old words keep you inside the box. New words help you escape it. If you want to remain inside the box and fall behind the pack, just keep talking about target customers, demographics, gross impressions and unique selling propositions. Do you […]
Roy, Ogilvy’s St P. office is a client of ours, only there are a tonne of project managers there, and we had really only one contact person, with a few other managers who knew vaguely about us. I was chatting to the lovely Katya, my contact person, on skype one day. Joked something about her […]
I was talking to an old friend. He asked the usual questions. “Family okay?” “Everyone is great.” “Business good?” “Busier than ever.” “But are you having fun?” He asked the question as any child of the ‘60s would ask it. The anthem we sang as young men was, “If It Feels Good, Do It.” Live […]
These 14 furniture store owners came from across America for a private session at Wizard Academy. Might your business group enjoy a day or two on campus? You choose the curricula. “Numbers don’t lie” is what people say when they defend their faulty logic. Their math is always flawless. The problem is that they gathered […]
Two young people are given the same directive by their boss. One of them, palms upward, says, “But I don’t know how.” The second one doesn’t know how, either, but quietly thinks, “I’ll figure it out.” The first one grows up to become a manager who believes training to be the key to success. “Go […]
1. No man is an island. 2. Every man is an island. John Donne famously wrote, “No man is an island” in 1624. The entire passage reads, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the […]
Old Persian tile showing Cyrus the Great fighting a lion.Cyrus was the king of Babylon during Daniel’s episode in the lion’s den. From the collection of Wizard Academy. “Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms […]
I’m going to explain a sophisticated ad-writing technique to you today, but I have confidence you’ll understand it perfectly. Learn to incorporate it into your writing and your ads will produce better results, generate more comments and make people smile. Tight-asses will criticize you, of course, but hey, they’re tight-asses. We’ll begin with a couple […]
Life is a journey on water. We spend our lives floating between the sunlit scenery of the conscious mind and the shadowy depths of the unconscious below. Dr. Richard D. Grant tells us our relationship to the unconscious is exactly our relationship to water. 1. We need it by the cupful to survive.2. A […]
There’s not a lot you can learn from the Road Runner, but the Coyote knows the secret of wealth. In September, 1949, the Coyote – Carnivorous vulgaris – built a catapult. But instead of launching him toward the Road Runner, it launched him straight up into a stone outcropping. The Coyote crawled out of the […]
Picasso and Lump. In the foreground is Picasso’s famous drawing of him. I concluded a recent Monday Morning Memo entitled “Melvin the Lion” by saying, “We won the game when we picked the wiener dogs. This is the dirty little secret of advertising: you determine the success of the campaign when you pick what […]
John Steinbeck began writing a novel in the summer of 1957 and abandoned it the day after Christmas. I was born 93 days later. Those two events were unconnected before today. Steinbeck wrote the first 114 pages of his novel before setting it aside. He had already completed 25 novels, including The Grapes of Wrath, […]
“Bitter arguments often result from a lack of definition of terms.” This is one of the first lessons the Cognoscenti are taught in the Magical Worlds Communications Workshop. Cognoscenti Skip Moen – an Oxford scholar – gave me a tragic example of this during his most recent visit to Wizard Academy. “It is not good […]
A couple of weeks ago Sean Taylor attended a high-class function to receive the Melvin Jones Award on my behalf. Melvin Jones founded the Lions Club International and his award is the highest honor the club can bestow. You can’t win the MJ Award unless you’re a Lion – which I’m not – so the […]
CLOCKWISE: Henry Ford, Kary Mullis, Genrich Altshuller, Sam Walton I was explaining to my apprentices the difference between cost-based accounting and customer-based accounting. “Cars in 1908 sold for about $2,500 apiece. Nearly 2,000 entrepreneurs became car builders between 1886 and 1908 and each of them began with the question, ‘How can I build a stronger, […]
Last week I spent long hours preparing nine ad-writing apprentices for what lies ahead. Strangely, each of them signed up for this excruciating 7-week adventure for the same reason; they wanted to escape the handcuffs of specialization. None of them are new to marketing. The first 4 are full-time advertising professionals with deep experience in: […]
A Chinese proverb extols the strength of the written word: “The palest ink is better than the best memory.” “Ah, yes, Xiao,” (Shee Ow, ‘Little One,’) “but the written word has no meaning until it has been translated into the spoken word it represents.” The second chapter of the book of Genesis tells […]
Marty Markowitz. Know the name? I thought not. Marty is the borough president of Brooklyn, one of New York City’s five municipal corporations. His domain stretches nine miles by eight. Marty’s not even a mayor, yet more people live under his authority than lived in the whole of America in 1776.* Mathematics would argue that […]
Ignorant people aren’t stupid but merely uninformed; a marvelous advantage when you need a perspective from “outside the box.” The truly naïve are so thoroughly “outside” they’re not even sure what you mean by “the box.” When you consult specialists within your industry, you’re talking to the builders of the box, the guardians of the […]
The Secret of Self Definition Corporate mission statements all sound alike because companies stand for pretty much the same things: “We believe in honesty, quality products, a positive work environment and a fair profit.” Yawn. You and I write mission statements because we want people to like us. Our pattern-recognizing, touchy-feely right brains see a […]
“Well, it’s a non-stop blitz of advertising messages. Everywhere we turn we’re saturated with advertising messages trying to get our attention… We’ve gone from being exposed to about 500 ads a day 40 years ago to about 5,000 a day today… It seems like the goal of most marketers and advertisers nowadays is to cover every blank […]
We’re staring into the face of a trend. I told you in Dec. 2003 that we were moving into an era of “working together for the common good” and that the transition would take 6 years. Thousands of you from Stockholm to Sydney to Las Vegas to South Carolina slipped into the hour-and-a-half multimedia […]
“The best radio ads entertain the public and generate favorable comments.” That kind of thinking is why most radio ads don’t work as well as they should. I know it’s counterintuitive and disconcerting but the ads we hate often work better than the ads we love. What are you trying to make happen with your […]
“Most of one’s life… is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.”– Aldous Huxley, 1894-1963 “Our minds are lazier than our bodies.”– Francois, Duc de La Rochefouchauld, 1613-1680 You probably have a limiting factor in your life that’s holding you back. A limiting factor may be a habit, a preferred chemical or an attitude […]
I detest the Positive Thinking cult. Yes, you read that correctly. But I am supremely optimistic. I see the Positive Thinking cult as the religion of Hubris; man worshipping himself. “I am my own god. I control my own destiny. There is nothing I can’t be, nothing I can’t do, nothing I can’t accomplish. I […]
People don’t really change their minds. They simply make new decisions based on new information. In the absence of new information, there will be no new decision. Give a person the same information you’ve given them in the past and they’ll make the same decision they’ve made in the past. Want a new decision? Provide […]
Art is the language of relevance. Science is the language of credibility. Art is interpreted by feelings. Science is what’s left when feelings are gone. Art is the language of the brain’s right hemisphere; science is the language of the left. And the tug-of-war between the two gives us a funny, dual consciousness; the heart […]
Relevance and credibility are the matches and gunpowder of advertising. Relevance is a glowing promise that can ignite the flame of desire. Credibility is quiet power: Details. Facts. Proof. The flame of relevance without the gunpowder of credibility is empty, glittering hype; fluffy and without substance. We see a hollow promise, the brief light […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about aging. Now I’m a cliché for sure: a middle-aged man contemplating all the things in his life that will likely remain undone. The weirdest triggers send us off on these melancholy journeys. By “us” I mean pampered American men. Today’s introspective journey was triggered when Dale Betts asked me […]
“Hello ladies. Look at your man. Now back to me. Now back at your man. Now back to me. Sadly, he isn’t me. But if he stopped using lady-scented body wash and switched to Old Spice, he could smell like he’s me. Look down. Back up. Where are you? You’re on a boat with the […]
A fortress protects you and makes you feel safe. A strongly held belief is a fortress. It protects your view of reality. You defend your fortress when you feel it’s under attack. But is every strongly held belief true? The sincerity of the believer does not determine the truth of the belief. Don’t panic, I’m […]
I’m always stunned, slack-jawed, big-eyed and stupid when a person chooses to do what obviously won’t work. I stand there in a daze, awed by the fact that Jesus can love such idiots as the human race. Maybe I overreact. My first big-eyed moment happened when I was 21 years old. I was a sales […]
Violent crime in America declined each year from 1993 to 2004. Then just about the time the iPod became popular in 2005, violent crime began trending upward. CONCLUSION: iPods cause violent crime. Or at least that was the conclusion of a 2007 report published by The Urban Institute, a research organization based in Washington. (I […]
Moses was 40 years old when he tried to lead Israel out of Egypt by the strength of his own arm. He failed, then ran from the anger of Pharaoh like a little girl. But who can blame him for trying? He was, after all, the only Israelite who lived in the palace under the […]
Christian Jürgensen Thomsen was a young man interested in archaeology so when the Danish government of 1816 needed someone to climb into the attic of Copenhagen’s Trinitatis Church and sort through the rubble that had collected there, Thomsen was their man. Upon entering the attic, Thomsen reported random items in “dust and disorganized disarray, hidden […]
I became an advertising salesman so I could buy groceries. A college dropout with no financial safety net, I installed aluminum guttering on houses during the day and changed reel-to-reel tapes in an automated radio station at night. Our format was radio preachers who needed your money to pay for the airtime we sold them. […]
January 27, 2010: It’s weird when you think about it: Apple releases the iPad just as Salinger breathes his last. It feels like the ending of a play. J.D. Salinger and Jack Kerouac were the tortured voices that led us into forbidden places in our minds. We followed them, spellbound, as they sauntered into dark […]
In 1969, spending time with your friends meant piling into a car and driving around. Every town had a strip called “the drag,” a place to see and be seen as you cruised back and forth at 20 miles an hour. It's how you made contact. And when you and your friends weren’t in your […]
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