We are working on a campaign for a client that has business interests with sunglasses. This client recently sponsored a concert for John Oates, of Hall & Oates fame. We were looking through pictures from the event and noticed all of the band members except Oates were wearing sunglasses.
Coworker: “I wish John Oates was wearing sunglasses during the show.”
Me: “Maybe he wasn’t wearing them because his private eyes were watchin’ you.”
In a sense, everyone’s a salesperson. You sell yourself to a company in hopes of being hired, or sell yourself to an attractive person who has a beauty mark in hopes of them liking you back. I can be a good salesman in these cases. But when it comes to actually selling something - products or services to another person or entity - I am genuinely no good. Take the time I Craigslisted a sofa.
Sofa. Two-seater. More of a loveseat, I guess. Folds out into a bed. Is it still a loveseat if it turns into a bed? Let’s go with “love-sofa bed” to be safe.
Tan, minimal crumbs. $100.
It didn’t take long to pique some interest. A man called, and we conversed. From his voice he didn’t seem like the type of guy who murders Craigslisters with nail guns. A day later he pulled up with his mid-sized SUV, took a look at the sofa, and whipped out five fresh U.S. twenty-dollar bills.
“One hundred dollars, right?” he asked, extending out his hand, filled with the cash, toward my palm.
I could have closed it up right there. But I felt bad for the guy. Should I really charge him a hundred bucks for the sofa? Given, it was a quality sofa even after two years of heavy use, but then again, look at him. He seemed really nice, and not like a guy who would murder me with a nail gun. I became flustered.
“You can make it ninety if you want.”
And that abruptly ended what should have been a clean $100 transaction. He handed me four twenties, dug around in his pocket for change on the fifth one, then gave me a crumpled-up ten. I closed a sale, but even then, it fell short. And so years from now, as I stand on my deck in a silk robe and look out across my vast empire filled with oceans and mountains and my own aircraft carrier, I’ll pull up my bank account on my mobile device to view a balance that I will have earned from something besides sales. And while the number will reach far into the hundreds of billions of dollars, I’ll always subtract an extra $10 that could have been.
Getting rejected by McSweeney’s - and believing that you have what it takes to get published there - is, in and of itself, one of the whitest things a white person could ever do. The rejections from editor Chris Monks, however, are some of the kindest rejection letters you’ll ever receive. Chris actually makes you feel good about losing.
I’ve set a goal to get published on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and this was my second attempt in about four months. It will happen eventually.
This piece, Presentation of the Updated Oklahoma City Logo to the Oklahoma City Mayor’s Office, was rejected on the basis of poking fun at the Midwest and the editor wanting to be mindful of not sounding elitist. However, he said, “this made me chuckle.” What a pleasant pass.
This essay was inspired by a party I randomly happened upon during a recent work trip. The event was sponsored by Oklahoma City’s tourism department. “Oklahoma City?” I thought. “They have a tourism department?” The group was unveiling a new campaign and logo, and had a party to celebrate. I of course have no absolutely no issue with Oklahoma City and am sure it’s a great town. You could really substitute its name in this piece for any mid-size U.S. metro area, mine - Richmond, Va. - included.
I did learn a lot about OKC, though. The porn star actually does live there.
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Presentation of the Updated Oklahoma City Logo to the Oklahoma City Mayor’s Office
Good morning everybody, thanks for having me today. I’m really excited to be here. As you are aware, our agency was brought on board to give the official Oklahoma City logo a comprehensive redesign, and after an eight year undertaking, we believe we’ve created something that distinctively captures everything that the Oklahoma City-Shawnee MSA has to offer as a place to live, work and play.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the new Oklahoma City logo.
Now, as you can see, we have gone to considerable lengths to make sure that no part of the “OKC” region is left out of this proud symbol – the product of a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. And Starbucks runs. Ha ha. Anyway, you will note that the logo is round and divided into several sections, all of which I will get into here. Yes, Mayor Jones, I know there are probably some questions and I just ask that everyone hold them until the end. Across the bottom of the emblem is a swath of green, which represents our vast farmland. If you look closely you can even see a little farmer riding on a tractor. That was my idea, to include the farmer and tractor on the green part. I hope you like it.
If you look even closer, you can see that the tractor is in fact a John Deere.
Across the middle of the logo, running horizontally, is a big blue segment. This is the Oklahoma River, and while I understand that the river is technically more of a green hue, we didn’t want people thinking this part of the symbol represents farmland, as we already had farmland covered in this thing, and that’d be like two-thirds of our city covered in farms, which is simply not the indicative of the region. Oklahoma City offers a lot more than just some fucking farms, right people? Also, I drew in some little rowboats on the river just to avoid any confusion.
Now, if you take a look in the top left area of the logo you can see a photograph of country musician and Oklahoma City native Toby Keith, as well as one of pornographic film actress and Oklahoma City resident Jesse Jane.
Oh, I forgot to mention, there are a few cows in the middle of the farmland part to represent Oklahoma City’s major contributions to the U.S. livestock supply. My apologies for missing that detail earlier. Yes, Mayor Jones, I will definitely take questions in a little while.
In the logo we have avoided illustrative references to Oklahoma City being one of the most at-risk areas for tornadoes. Our research found that tornadoes, regardless of size, poll extremely unpopular in the 18 to 40 demographic, which is a group we are actively pursuing to increase their interest in coming to Oklahoma City. Studies did show, however, that this segment thinks fighter planes are super cool, which is why we added jets at the top of the logo firing Hellfire rockets down at cows on the farmland part. We think this really pumps up the excitement surrounding Oklahoma City, as well as the imagery of Jesse Jane sucking her finger with that classic “Get over here” facial expression.
The rockets and jets are even in 3-D, which you can check out with the glasses I’ve provided at your seat.
At the top of the logo, I’ve plugged in a few buildings. Just squares and rectangles; nothing very distinctive to the Oklahoma City skyline, as drilling down to that level of detail was difficult to accomplish on a computer design program. We also added in the State Capitol building, which required sacrificing a few of the tractors and cows, but I felt it was important to include. If you are having trouble finding the Capitol building on the logo, it is just to the left of Jesse Jane’s areola.
Right there.
I’ve also included a picture of a typical white male to show how our race is the predominant one in Oklahoma City. I’d considered adding a black person in there too, however African-Americans are a minority here and thus not as important. And I simply don’t like Asians, which are only 4.1% of the overall population anyway.
After some heavy thought and sleepless nights, I decided to include the image of a hamburger to pay tribute to the Oklahoma City corporate headquarters of Sonic Drive-In. I could not find a picture of an actual Sonic hamburger anywhere so I used one that I found in Clip Art, which I think suits just fine. I also didn’t want to overlook our city’s less salient traits – we need to be honest to prospective tourists and residents – so I snuck in the symbols for two of the many active Oklahoma City gangs, the South Side Locos and the Crips, and actually ended up Photoshopping each of them directly onto Jesse Jane’s left breast.
Oh, and the black scribbles all over the logo are supposed to be roads, as we have lots of Interstates here.
So, folks, that’s it. What do we think? Happy to take any questions you may have.
Is there anybody alive out there?
Years ago I knew the owner of a comedy club, and one evening the namesake host of Comedy Central’s Insomniac with Dave Attell, Dave Attell, was performing there. I was given the keys to a Dodge Durango and asked by the owner to pick up Dave Attell from his hotel and bring him to the comedy club. Along the way I imagined myself hamming it up with Dave Attell and really getting to know him as a person during the five-minute ride back to the club. Maybe we’d even realize the nature of one another’s creative genius, uncover our complementary skillsets, and decide to collaborate on a project that would begin as a sketch series and later turn into a book, movie, action figures etc. I pulled up to the hotel and Dave Attell got into the Durango. He grunted out a hello, I replied with an innocent “Hey!” that in hindsight was way too enthusiastic for my audience, then he asked if it was okay if he smoked, and I really didn’t care so I said “Sure” and he rolled down the window and began smoking a Marlboro Light. He had on a hooded sweatshirt and, I could be wrong, but I don’t think he ever looked at me. It was raining, and I could sense he didn’t really want to talk or ham it up or discuss a potential collaboration or what our action figures would look like, so the Dodge Durango was pretty silent during those five minutes minus the roar of the V8. When we arrived at the comedy club, Dave Attell got out of the car and threw his cigarette on the rainy sidewalk. I forget if he said thanks but either way it was okay. And that’s the story of the time I drove Dave Attell from his hotel to a comedy club.
The jeans I was wearing smelled like the Chinese place’s kitchen from the night before. I’m certain it was the cumin that had penetrated the denim in a way that made the pants unwearable for a second day, despite having already worn them for half of that second day. Who puts cumin in Chinese food anyways (besides the Chinese, as they have for centuries)? The cumin made the Chinese food, and my jeans, smell like a Mexican dish. I think cumin is more of an Indian thing, though. I honestly don’t even know what cumin is, other than “a spice” and “what you say when someone you’re expecting knocks on your front door.”
I removed my Levi’s and put them on a hot spin cycle with a dollop of Tide because only sad people trying to fill a void in their miserable lives use Cheer. Afterward, I put on - and I don’t know what this type of pant is called, or what the material is - a pair of tan, lightweight pants I bought from Urban Outfitters that I sincerely believe make me look like Matthew McConaughey walking on the Venice Beach boardwalk or the shores of Malibu without a shirt while puffing a joint, even though I don’t do drugs. I could also see Topher Grace wearing this type of pant at his ultra-modern condominium high above the Hollywood Hills, as he stands there looking over the L.A. skyline with a martini, hand-in-hand with Tobey Maguire, who is also wearing a pair of these pants and sipping a glass of pinot noir. Then they kiss. Linen, maybe? I think the pants were linen, which is ridiculous because that’s basically like wearing a bed sheet or an oil painting. The thing is, though, despite the lightweight material and comfortable nature of the pant, the weather was warm, and I decided that, if I had to be honest with myself, I was in more of an Umbros mood. “Umbros” are a generic trademarked term I use in reference to any short that is made of a light, athletic material. And like my lightweight pants, I do not know the fabric from which Umbros and shorts of its ilk are made. It was at this moment that I thought about how good a cold Bud Light would be on this warm afternoon, but we were out of beer. So I left the house and drove to the nearby 7-Eleven, where I got out of my car, walked into the convenience store, and was not five full steps inside when I began to panic. I could remember removing my jeans and putting them in the washing machine with Tide and without Cheer. I recalled putting on the (linen?) pants, and soon after taking them off. But while I knew my legs were currently bare, I could not remember replacing my pants with (polyester?) Umbros. And that’s when I seriously questioned a key component of my life.
Am I wearing pants? Like, am I literally not wearing any fucking pants or anything besides my underwear right now? Holy shit, I’ve done it. I’ve done it. I actually left the house without wearing any goddamn pants.
In the milliseconds it took for my central nervous system to come to grips with what might be happening, I surveyed my surroundings and within them found: two girls of approximately ages 14 and 15 getting red Mountain Dew Slurpees and potentially handed a case for a lawsuit that could pin me as a sex offender though I’m unsure of rules regarding wearing only boxer-briefs in public in front of underage people; a man in his 40s with a scorpion tattoo and another large enough to kill me who had “Airborne” and an associated division number on his right bicep; Snickers on sale, two for $1; a few college guys who would have found my predicament hilarious and asked me to come to their party afterward; and two cashiers, one of whom definitely had some personal issues with methamphetamine and has likely gone to several public places without wearing any pants.
I was wearing my shorts, as it turned out. There’s really no more to this story. I guess if you had to pull a moral from it, you might say: “Don’t ever leave the house without wearing pants or eat at places that use lots of cumin.”
For lunch I ate salad. Now you might be asking, “Did you eat a salad-salad, a fruit salad or some sort of meat-based salad?” More than likely, though, you aren’t asking yourself that question, because it’s a really uninteresting thing to inquire and you probably assumed, from the beginning, that I ate a salad-salad. You immediately imagined me eating a green salad with lettuce and some of those thin carrot strips and the weird purple things that aren’t onions but are perhaps cabbage, though I’m not 100 percent certain of that. The other day I touched a live octopus. Maybe you imagined some sunflower seeds on top of my salad, and even fresh bacon bits with a lite ranch dressing. And you would be right to think those things, as they are true. But if that’s all you imagined, and you didn’t press further, you would be missing critical information about the other two salads I ate along with my salad-salad: a fruit salad and a meat-based salad, the meat in this case being chicken. The octopus was slimy and suctioned its tentacles to my finger. I ate all three of those salads for lunch today, and even debated a fourth variant: seafood salad, except one time I ate seafood salad and vomited for two days afterward, so I haven’t had that salad classification since early 2007. The lesson here is that it’s important to always ask questions because if you don’t, you’ll never know how many various types of salad a person ate for lunch and you’d have no idea I ever touched an octopus.
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An outtake from Clint Eastwood’s Chrysler commercial.
I’m on a return flight home from San Francisco to Richmond. San Franciscans might wonder why I would require a flight to Richmond when Richmond is a district in San Francisco. It’s also a city in Virginia. It’s actually also a city in the San Francisco area, along with the Richmond district, which includes both Inner and Outer Richmond. My point is that I am not going to any of the three Richmonds within the San Francisco metropolitan area, and am indeed flying to the Richmond that is 2,883 miles away, in Virginia. There is only one Richmond in Virginia, by the way.
My new mission is to bring “The” to the East Coast as a prefix on highway names.
We took a hike to see the California redwood trees. After the prior evening’s events, neither of us were in any form to go on such an excursion, but we had to get out and see. But we ended up walking about sixteen dozen miles longer than we’d planned, most of it uphill. Muir Woods, a natural treasure with stunningly tall trees and sweeping vistas, quickly dissipates into a beautiful godforsaken hellhole when you get off the beaten path, don’t have water, and haven’t eaten in a while.
While in the woods there was a high concrete wall that reminded us of a scene from Jurassic Park. In our increasingly disoriented and tired state, we began discussing how the concept of injecting a bullfrog with old mosquito blood to create a dinosaur continues to makes perfect sense. We even began mapping out a business plan to start dinoMaker Inc. (might actually form it as an LLC) out of a garage, though the idea hasn’t really been touched since we got some food and water in our bodies.
After we finally made it back to the hotel room - and this will sound odd - Andy and I robed pretty hardcore.
Yesterday I ate: two pancakes, two sausage links, two eggs over easy, hashbrowns, and corned beef hash. Then there was about a five-hour break before we made it to civilization again. This kicked off an unbelievable triumph of human digestion: clam chowder in a bread bowl, a house salad, a 1.57 lb. Dungeness crab, a Double-Double cheeseburger from In-N-Out, an Italian sausage sandwich, two full bowls of Oriental trail mix at a bar, half a meat pizza, and two tacos. After I polished off the final taco, Andy started at me aghast.
We biked 18 miles from downtown, across the Golden Gate Bridge, to an In-N-Out for lunch, then out to a little peninsula bar witha view of downtown before ferrying back to the city. We made it to the bar at 1:30, were planning to ferry back at 2:30 or 3, then found out the ferry didn’t run until 5. This delay proved to be a blessing; 10 drinks later the sunset over the Golden Gate and into the Pacific Ocean appeared even more brillant and will go down as one of the most amazing things I have ever seen.
Then we ferried past Alcatraz which must be no more than 50 feet from the San Francisco shoreline. Those inmates must have been just the biggest pussies.
Over the weekend I managed to cozy up to a patch of poison ivy. Not on purpose; that would be dumb. Though I’ve always wanted to try what they do in deep African countries where the natives attempt to build up a resistance to poisonous plants by rubbing their bodies with them, but I’ve never really gotten up the nerve. Anyway, I could see the rash forming on my right arm and hand during the past couple days, and with a long weekend and a major vacation on the very near horizon (hold on to your Instagrams) I decided to take steps to clear up this issue immediately. So I went to one of those walk-in medical centers because I don’t have a primary care physician (why get a doctor if they regularly bring bad news?) and I needed a fast treatment. Here are two series of actual exchanges that arose during the visit.
Check-in lady: [sitting in front of me] ”Last four of your social?”
Me: “5555.”
Check-in lady: “Do you consider yourself Hispanic or non-Hispanic?”
Me: [long pause] “I’m told I am a non.”
The second came when the doctor prescribed a steroid to stop the itching and spread of the poison ivy.
Me: “Are there any side effects?”
Doctor: “Yes. Some people get a lot of energy and become very hungry, so if you eat you may see some weight gain.”
Me: “Okay. I guess what I was asking is ‘Can I still drink?’”
Doctor: “Yes. Have fun on your trip.”
