N-B-C-you later!

I can never thank the decision-makers at NBC News enough for promoting Ann Curry -- the former overly empathetic and hyper-politically correct news-reader on their flagship TODAY Show -- to her new position of co-couch-sitter with Matt Lauer. Now I have considerably less distraction on weekday mornings and am able to get to work on pressing projects much sooner than I used to.


Not that the über-liberal Ms. Curry is ideologically any different than her predecessors, Meredith Viera or that irrepressible cheerleader for all left-leaning causes, Katie Couric. Heavens, no.


It’s just that Ms. Curry’s interviews and “reportage” drip so heavily with breathless sincerity, hand-wringing angst and feigned concern, she routinely gets in the way of her stories and subject matter. Watching her in action feels like pushing a Prius with discharged batteries through a swamp of whipped Crisco and honey mixed with buckets of crocodile tears. Yuck.


The power-off button on the remote is suddenly much easier to push on weekday mornings. To quote Jimmy Fallon, another personality on the same network but at opposite ends of the broadcast day; “Thank you, NBC!”

The Wonders Of It All

Our world is a place of many wonders – a baby’s birth, a bird in flight, the grandeur of snow-covered mountains, Donald Trump’s hair. Here are some of my personal wonders of late:

I wonder …  why pants with two legs are called a “pair” and eyeglasses with two lenses are a “pair,” but a shirt with two arms is only a shirt. Shouldn’t it too be a pair of shirts, like a pair of pants or a pair of glasses? Who decides these things? And while we’re talking shirts (well, me at least), why is a woman’s called a blouse, but a mans’ is a shirt? And why do women’s blouses have buttons on the opposite side as men’s shirts?

I wonder …  whatever happened to the imminent catastrophic disaster that was predicted ad nauseam as a result of the Japanese Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant explosions following the massive tsunami? According to the agenda-driven media, we were all doomed to become glowing examples of a nuclear nightmare come true. Yes, there are still many serious problems to overcome as a result of old nuclear technology built in a worst-possible location being hit by a natural (but not unprecedented) disaster of Biblical proportions. In spite of this, no lives were lost due to the reactor “disaster.” In fact, the biggest, most impressive meltdown has been of the anti-nuke hysteria surrounding the entire incident.   

I wonder …  speaking of dangerous and deadly energy production – why there isn’t an uproar over the many thousands of birds (many of which are rare and endangered) and entire colonies of ecologically vital bats being Osterized every year in the U.S. by windmill farms built smack dab in their migratory paths because that’s where the wind is? I mean, can you imagine the media stink if these same creatures were being decimated by oil production?    

I wonder …  why every major newspaper and TV network trumpeted the killing of Osama bin Laden as a proud moment in our history, a triumph of justice and a source of great comfort to the victims of 9/11. And yet, a vast majority of these very same news outlets regularly preach the progressive foolishness that capital punishment is not justice served, does nothing to benefit the victims’ families and is an evil act unto itself. Except in this case, right?

I wonder …  why Nancy Pelosi blustered to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in a July 17, 2008 interview about $4-a-gallon gas prices that, “The price of oil is attributed to two oil men in the White House and their protectors in the United States Senate.” In a later interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, she called the rise in gas prices “… a scam of the greatest magnitude.” So, is she blasting and blaming the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for our latest skyrocketing prices at the pump? To put it in social media vernacular: LOL. Of course not. I’ll say one thing, Ms. Pelosi, when it comes to great scams, you’re the queen.

I wonder … what the crew of the USS Carl Vinson must have thought when it was ordered that Muslim seamen would respectfully wash and anoint the body of a heinous terrorist with perfume and then recite prayers for his soul – all in the name of giving him a “proper” Islamic burial at sea (even though Islamic law requires burial in the ground). Wait. Haven’t we been told repeatedly that Osama Bin Laden wasn’t a true Muslim? And talk about sending mixed messages to our sworn enemies. We can send a high-velocity round through that monster’s forehead, but at least we showed respect to his body before turning it into shark chum in the Indian Ocean. Certainly don’t want the bad guys mad at us, right? And speaking of ticking people off …

I wonder … how anyone can take seriously the latest imagined indignation being protested by the American Indian Movement all because our Navy SEALS strike team used the code name “Geronimo” to identify Osama bin Laden during the raid on his compound? Are you kidding me? Maybe the commando team assigned to Ayman al Zawahiri will use the name “Custer” and make it all better. Get a life, people.

I wonder …  how many readers will be p’oed with me this week? Guess we’ll soon find out soon enough. I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is an edited repost of my column first published yesterday, 6.9.11, in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

A Pitchy Performance

I confess to having purposely avoided watching NBC's "new hit smash, critically acclaimed show" The Voice. For one thing, I'm not a fan whatsoever of the so-called coaches that mentor the contestants each week -- especially Cee Lo Green and Christina Aguilera – who I think both can each be blamed for single-handedly degrading the standards and quality of popular culture.

I also don’t have any desire to get sucked into yet another talent/reality show having been a devoted follower of all things American Idol for the past too many years and a sometime watcher of America’s Got Talent – now that Howie Mandel has replaced the laughably lame David Hasselhoff, the show is actually mildly entertaining at times.

Having said that – the first ever live!! (except on the west coast, of course) episode of The Voice happened to come on at my house last night and nobody in the room was interested or energetic enough to reach for the remote to change the channel to something less mind-numbing. Pathetic, right?

So through the process of digital osmosis, I wound up half-watching most of an episode. Unfortunately.

Last night’s show opened with the four celebrity coaches “singing” a mashup of Queen’s “We Will Rock You” and “We Are The Champions.” I put that verb in quotes because – in all honesty, and with the possible exception of the non-rocker of the group, country star, Blake Shelton – having sung as poorly as they did on last night’s show, I can’t imagine any of the four celebri-singers making it past initial auditions for The Voice, Idol, America’s Got Talent or even the old Star Search show with Ed McMahon.

I mean, seriously? They forgot lyrics, mumbled, sang off-mike and were at least a half-step below most of the late great Freddie Mercury’s high notes. Talk about pitchy. It was painful. As in, dawg, I’m just not feelin’ it. Watching these supposed pros stumble and struggle through the opening number, I could only hope that the live show wouldn’t be the death of their careers. Then again …  

What night is Glee on?

A Waterfall of Hype

I must begin this post with a disclaimer -- or mea culpa -- I’m not sure which is more appropriate. I’ve spent the last twenty-five-plus years writing ad copy for clients as large and well-known as Nissan, the LA Dodgers, Blue Cross, Carnation Foods, Lockheed Martin, Baskin-Robbins and well, I’ll just say that I can be blamed for thousands of TV and radio commercials, print ads, web sites and direct mail campaigns. Sorry.

I know far too intimately how the creative side of effective marketing works – specifically, how to use words, images and cultural attitudes to create something called perceived value for any given product or service. This is especially important when marketing what we in the business call a parity product, or something that is almost identical to its competition. Advertisers of parity products try to convince consumers that there are valuable differences between their – whatever – and all others. Buy ours, not theirs. Why? Because we’re brighter, whiter, newer, fresher, cooler, more hip, more fun, a better value, more impressive, less polluting, faster … you get the idea. Parity products include beer, banks, dairy, grocery stores, soft drinks and that mother of all perceived value marketing magic – bottled water.

Case in point; there is a TV spot running now for a popular brand of bottled water whose slogan is, Bottled At The Source. The TV commercial for this particular water shows a kid at home asking his Mom for the water by name (as all kids do, right?). Mom turns to  a store keeper (through the magic of green screen) and repeats the request. The store keeper turns and asks a warehouseman with a hand cart, who then turns toward a beautiful, panoramic vista with a snow-covered mountain peak in the background and lush, verdant rolling hills in the foreground punctuated by a forest of majestic pines in between. As bluebirds flutter overhead and God-like rays of sun warm his face, the warehouseman calls out to what can only be the great Spirit of Mountain Water in the Sky and calls out, “Crystal Geyser, please!”

Makes you crave a cold, tall glass of this nectar of Nature, doesn’t it? (Or a barf bag, in my case. Then again, I’ve been in this business a long time.)

Now, I’ve crossed swords with enough Standards and Practices guardians at the various networks to know that you can’t say things in a TV commercial that aren’t technically true (political and environmental advocacy ads not withstanding). And I happen to know that this particular water is, indeed, “bottled at the source.” Technically.

Here’s the thing: the source for this particular brand of bottled water isn’t in some far-flung, Eden-like glacial valley where furry animals talk to each other and never poop near the water supply. No, the source is actually about 185 miles north of where I live in a place just beyond Olancha, California, a teeny tiny town on the edge of the dry and dusty Owens Dry Lake bed. Makes you thirsty just thinking about it, right?

So, why don’t they show the real source in the TV spots for the brand? Because the Crystal Geyser Alpine Spring Water bottling plant is in reality a few massive, nondescript corrugated metal buildings that squat alongside the ribbon of asphalt that is Highway 395. There are huge windows on the side of the buildings facing the thousands of cars, RVs and trucks that scream by every day on their way to Mammoth, Reno and beyond. As you roar past you can see a plumber’s nightmare of wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling pipes and valves and stainless steel and wires and cables and various other industrial equipment.

Outside, between the massive metallic structures is a vast parking lot that is typically occupied by dozens of tractor trailer rigs and forests of wooden pallet stacks. Not a bluebird, verdant valley or cascading waterfall in sight.  

I’m really not surprised. Because I know that, as it is with most parity product marketing, it’s more often than not the implication of purity, or superiority or better performance/enjoyment/whatever that makes consumers part with their hard-earned dollars – not actual product benefits themselves. A rose is a rose and water is water, after all.

The blatant marketing sleight of hand used in the Crystal Geyser commercials, however, just makes me want to take a drink – but not of water. Which reminds me of a much better campaign for yet another parity product, the brilliantly executed “Most Interesting Man in the World” commercials for Dos Equis beer. Of this type of smart advertising I can only say, cheers!

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a slightly longer version of my column first published yesterday, 6.2.11 in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Riders On The Storm

Looking back two Sunday mornings ago, I’m not sure I rode my bike the entire 26-plus mile length of the 2011 Pasadena Marathon Bike Tour. I seem to remember doing more swimming than riding.

When I registered to ride the annual event it was an unseasonably warm, early March day. When my wife and I went to the Pasadena Civic Center the Friday afternoon before the event to pick up our swag bags and numbered participant bibs – the sun was out and the temperatures were typically pre-Southern-California-summer-like. However, when my wife, youngest son and I loaded up our bikes and drove east on the 210 Freeway in the pre-dawn darkness May 15, it was not only cold, it was also wet. As in cloudy and drizzling. Sigh.

I should have known. Although this was my first time riding the Pasadena Marathon, a good friend and cycling mentor of mine has ridden it several times now. It has rained every time. Maybe it’s some sort of reverse karma for NOT raining on so many New Year’s Day Rose Parades.  

No matter. To my way of thinking – and to hijack a familiar cliché – even a bad day cycling is better than a good day at work. Or something like that. My wife and I had both had fallen in love with cycling sometime in 2005 and had made one of the best investments ever in our 25 years of marriage by purchasing serious, high-end road bikes (who knew a bicycle could cost more than my first car?!?) At one point, we’d ride well over a hundred miles in any given week and often entered cycling events of 50 miles or more. Over the years, however, having let other time commitments, weight gain (mine, not my wife’s!) and family commitments get in the way, we eventually let our three-to-four-per-week rides dwindle down to none at all.

Thankfully, we both had recommitted to healthier, lighter living at the beginning of this year. Along with that came concentrated efforts to exercise as many days out of the week as we could. We already had the bikes and the funny looking bike clothes and strange plastic shoes – all we needed was the motivation to get back on our saddles (or seats, in this case) and start putting in the miles to strengthen our cycling muscles and build our endurance back up. The Pasadena Marathon Bike Tour was just what we needed.

As we’ve trained the past few months, we’ve ridden hundreds of miles over the streets of Pasadena, including many of the very same roads covered by the 2011 Marathon route. But riding on a weekday afternoon and dodging rush hour traffic is a far cry from the experience of an unobstructed, pre-dawn ride down the middle of Colorado Boulevard past Pottery Barn and the Apple store, blowing through red lights without a care while Pasadena Police and CHP officers keep all motorized traffic out of your way. To say the least, it was a uniquely exciting ride. Helicopters hovering low overhead in the wet, gray skies only added to the strangeness of the experience. In my cold, sleep-deprived thoughts, I could almost imagine what Armstrong, LeMond or Merckx must have felt like riding the Tour. Almost.  

We missed the main 5:45 a.m. start of cyclists by almost 20 minutes, having had to make a frantic round trip dash back home to snag our son’s forgotten helmet (are you kidding me?!) and found ourselves riding the first several miles of wet streets almost entirely alone. Then we began to catch up with and pass the more “interesting” of riders that one always finds bringing up the rear at these types of events – the weekend warriors riding rusty bikes with equally rusty muscles and endurance levels, the riders in fleece animal costumes (don’t ask), those cyclists seemingly more interested in leisurely riding three or four abreast and chatting with each other than in actually completing the course in a respectable amount of time. We even passed several stragglers obliviously texting away while riding. Seriously?

Somewhere between the two and three mile markers, we blew past a rider we affectionately came to call “Butt-Crack Guy.” This rather rotund fellow was not so much riding his bicycle as he was torturing it. He was barely dressed in a way-too-tight tank top, a windbreaker flapping in the breeze and a pair of saggy, soggy gym shorts being dragged off the back of his tookus by the combined forces of rain and gravity. The poor bike squeaked and creaked with every pedal stroke as he strained up a slight incline past some beautifully restored Craftsman-era homes in South Pasadena. Try as I might, it was several more miles before I could get that image out of my mind.

Thankfully, I will never forget the wonderful experience of riding all those miles through a cold, wet Pasadena this month with my wife and son.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a slightly modified version of my column first published yesterday, 5.26.11 in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

if u r rdng ths & drvng pls stp

So where was I? Oh, right. In my column last week (posted yesterday) I opened up the whole driving-while-talking-on-a-handheld-wireless-phone can of worms (Stick This In Your Ear). Since then, it seems that things have gotten worse. Now, apparently, you don’t even need a car to be a dangerous cell phone user.

A few days ago I was heading down my long driveway (several homes share the same driveway) and stopped at the street to let a mom pushing a baby in a stroller pass by. Another young child toddled along beside the stroller. This kid heard my truck coming down the driveway and made eye contact with me. He instinctively hesitated before crossing my path, tugging at his mother’s sweat pants to alert her to my presence.

I stopped to let them pass, or course. But even with her son yanking on her pants to get her attention, she didn’t have a clue I was there. Of course not. Because while she pushed the stroller with one hand, she was otherwise 100% engaged in reading and sending text messages on her Blackberry, or iPhone or whatever beloved device was cradled oh-so-carefully in her other hand. She was so distracted that she didn’t look away from her precious wireless device until she was almost past the grill of my truck.

So apparently, now we can’t even “drive” a stroller without worshipping at the temple of multitasking technology. Scary stuff. Especially since recent studies show that there is 37% less activity in the area of the brain tasked with driving when someone is using a cell phone. The same studies liken using a phone while driving as being equivalent to driving while being two to three times over the legal limit for being drunk. That ain’t just distracted, friends. That’s idiotic. What semi-responsible person would consider knocking back four or five shots of booze, then grabbing his keys and hopping in the car for a drive? And yet, we do worse than that by using that wireless device while behind the wheel.

I’ve received more comments from readers since my first column appeared on this topic earlier this month, than from any of my nearly 150 other columns. I’m not surprised. People are frightened. They’re frustrated. And they’re angry at the reckless drivers who insist on texting or talking on the phone while they pilot thousands of pounds of death-on-wheels around the same streets our family members and friends use every day.

As long as I’m taking batting practice at hornet’s nests, I have to say that I’m not that impressed with all the drivers out there with those goofy Bluetooth thing-a-ma-bobs dangling off their ears so they can careen down the highway while endlessly talking “hands free.” It might make it legal, but it doesn’t make it smart. Also, just between you and me, it also doesn’t look cool or high tech. It looks dorky. And deadly.

I’m baffled as to why as a society we so readily accept this relatively new and ridiculously dangerous practice. We’ve even come up with a nice, safe, inoffensive term for the practice: “Driving While Distracted,” or DWD. Ah, isn’t that nice? Oops, did I just mow down that nice young couple in the crosswalk? So sorry, I was “distracted.” Not reckless. Not stupid or careless. Nope. That’s far too judgmental. Distracted has a much nicer, more innocent, ring to it. Unfortunately, people wind up just as dead.

But maybe things have reached a tipping point. I mean, if even Queen Oprah has become a champion of not using cell phones while driving, as evidenced by her splashy new “No Phone Zone” campaign – it surely won’t be long before Deepak Chopra, Marlo Thomas or Michael J. Fox – heck, maybe even that global guardian of all things wise and good, Al Gore himself, will take up the cause. Yeah, that would turn things around.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: A version of this post was originally published in the May 20, 2010 edition of the CV Weekly Newspaper (www.cvweekly.com).

This version © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Put This In Your Ear

I know you’re out there. I’ve seen you on Foothill Blvd. And Honolulu Ave. And Verdugo, Ramsdell, La Crescenta, and Ocean View. I’ve seen you on just about every street in town, in fact. Who are you?

You’re the in-a-hurry, Abercrombie-attired guy who almost killed me – literally almost killed me – on Descanso Drive, thank you very much. I was riding my bike, obeying traffic laws, and you pulled out in front of me from a side street without blinking an eye. Oh, you saw me. We even made eye contact. But you were so deep in conversation on the cell phone in your hand, you pulled out anyway. Trust me, you would have noticed had I not grabbed two handfuls of brake lever and instead, smashed through your side window at 32 mph.

You’re the lady I watched laughing and throwing your head back as you held a phone to your ear and cut off a mom pushing her child in a stroller across Pennsylvania Avenue just the other day. Thankfully, the mom saw that you were completely, utterly, lethally unaware that she and her baby were in the crosswalk and yanked her stroller back as your 4,000 pound SUV passed a few inches away.

Not to belabor the point, but you’re the moms and uncles and siblings and students I see everyday picking up your kids from Crescenta Valley High or Clark or Rosemont or any other local school. A day doesn’t go by that you don’t come close to mowing down a sophomore here, a freshman there. Here a junior, there a junior, everywhere an almost fatal encounter with a distracted driver.

Can I ask you something? What’s so flippin’ important about your conversation with your spouse, girlfriend, parent, kid, best friend or co-worker – that you would willingly, repeatedly put someone else’s spouse, girlfriend, parent, child, or best friend at risk through practicing your incredibly selfish and dangerous habit? And does it matter at all that there’s a law (granted, a laughably weak and fatally ineffective law) against driving while using a handheld cell phone? Apparently not. Twice already this year I thought I’d seen you break the law – once as a CHP officer, and once an L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy. I’ve since been informed that this particular law doesn’t apply to those professions. By the way both of you officers were driving, however, it absolutely should. Just because you wear a badge doesn’t mean you should be a cell-phone-wielding menace behind the wheel.

Now, I’m probably the last guy to support so-called “nanny state” laws and regulations that – while enacted with all good intentions – only serve to further restrict our freedoms. I think those hysterically health-conscious Santa Clara county officials that passed a law banning toys in McDonalds’ Happy Meals should be chased out of town by liberty loving citizens wielding flaming Big Macs and Filet o’ Fish sandwiches. Shame on them.

As one who loves motorcycles, I complained loudly and often when the California helmet law went into effect. I still ride without one when I’m in a state that allows it. But it’s my life, and doing so doesn’t endanger anyone else. In fact, by not wearing a helmet I can better hear other vehicles, pedestrians and other dangers that can be more easily avoided than if I had my ears covered. But that’s a topic for another time and a different blog.

There’s no denying that seatbelt laws have saved countless lives. I’m thankful my kids grew up having learned to automatically put on their seatbelt whenever they get into a car. When I was a child, seatbelts were a novelty, so I still have to remind myself to buckle up. But I have a few otherwise sensible adult friends who still rail against that law when driving alone, even though they’ve received enough tickets to make their behavior financially painful. And yet, by not wearing a seatbelt they’re not going to endanger other drivers, cyclists or pedestrians.

As often happens, I’ve run out of space before I’ve run out of thoughts on this subject. So let’s pick this back up where we left off in tomorrow’s post. In the meantime, the next time you’re behind the wheel, please – I beg of you – think about whether that call you want to make or text you need to send is more important than someone’s life.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: A version of this post was originally published in the May 6, 2010 edition of the CV Weekly Newspaper (www.cvweekly.com).

This version © 2011 WordChaser, Inc.