Meet Long John Jon, America's Top Long John Model?

At $6.49, thermal underwear should be an easy sell in the winter. So when Menard's booked "Long John Jon" as the underwear model for their weekly mailer, they knew they had all the makings of a successful product pitch. Because John Menard knows you can't sell thermal underwear to the cheapest and least fashionable of men featuring someone happy to be photographed in his johns because they fit him properly.

Okay, so maybe it didn't play out quite like that. This ad leaves us reaching for explanations. Is the inclusion of this photo the handiwork of some $10/hr layout designer reaching back into a vault of discarded 1980s stock photography? The product packaging looks relatively sensible, and of this millennium.

Who is Long John Jon anyway, and what kind of direction did he get during the shoot? Has he modeled for anyone since? Do his balls really hang that low, or was it just a weird day and temperature?

I can't explain any of it. Neither can Aaron. We hope you can.

The Accounting : of Software, Professors & Buildings

Assistant Professor Ben Trotter of Texas Tech's College of Business tried to teach me accounting. A frumpy old man with thick round glasses and a striped dress shirt tucked into khakis bulging with fat at the crotch. He's your typical casting director and costume designer's accountant. So real its unreal.

Forgive me, my mind may be taking cinematic liberties. To avoid potential defamation and/or future royalty payments, I would like to make the following perfectly clear. I'm not sure how much this Re-Imagined Ben Trotter compares to The Real Ben Trotter, if he does compare at all. He may be more real, and if that's the case I expect Ben Trotter owes me some sort of something for using my fictional characterization of him in his own real life. And without my permission!

Ben Trotter had a bad leg. Clinching a rusty metal brief case in one hand, and a plastic cane in the other, he slowly clopped about on the school's cheap enamel floor. The slaps from his heavy rubber soul echoed lightly of the wall's original faux-wood paneling, peeling off at the lima bean green corners. You see, the Texas Tech College of Business somehow functioned out of an imitation 1969 banking headquarters, which the college actually commissioned intentionally, as a school, with great fanfare some 35 years before.

At 17 stories, it was the tallest building for miles. Calculations and computations were the future of business, so naturally, the college was made to resemble a giant calculator. It must have been an inspiration to attend business classes in such a modern architectural symbol, especially for a rural Texas kid. According to my father, a former rural Texas kid who I never call father and always call "dad," Texas Tech business students of the 70s wore suits and ties every day. Not shorts and flip flops. Apparently they cared about business, or at least how it feels to be in business. That's feeling business could use today.

Yes, I went to the same school my dad did. Every so often I must pause to remind myself of this very fact. It never fails to surprise. But really, I didn't go to the same school as my dad. The only thing my Alma matter has in common with my dad's is the name. Because in 2003, going to business school in a worn-out 1970s bank, lead by a diverse cast of lovably aimless assistant professors, doesn't inspire anyone into the Forbes 50... or to so much as put on a suit.

It does inspire future Deans of Business, determined to correct the administrative mistakes of their mentors. It inspired more than a few students to rethink that whole business thing to become fashion and interior designers, or writers, or architects. But most of all, it inspired scores of fashionably anachronistic accountants like Ben Trotter, clinging to some imagined "Golden Day of Accounting," long before Intuit demystified the dark art into commoditized Quickbooks software.

So the building suited Trotter. No, that's putting it too mildly. He buzzed along like a circuit inside the giant calculator building, living and breathing the building's time. I always assumed he'd been doing the same thing for 30 years, getting really good at not making tenure. He'd clap-clop step by step down to the sunken bottom of the college's most massive lecture halls, cheesily joking with students along the way to make his descent less awkward.

He became a victim of his own success, failing at research and business, making a mess of his private practice, but excelling in mass brainwashing pedagogy. Trotter transformed batch after batch of clueless 19 year old business students into clueless adding machines on legs. They were right on the money with each ledger, though they couldn't tell you why. Because when he lectured, Ben willed the accounting rules into you with his voice. Nobody had any choice but to execute them as instinct. They were "The Way Things Are."

But I couldn't be bothered by rules. Possibilities entertained me and I did little but dream delusional dreams of becoming a multimedia mogul of some exotic, rebellious sort. Accounting, and its imaginary lines between symbolic amounts didn't interest me. And they still don't, beyond what they can tell me about the scope of possibilities at my disposal. But the made up rules matter a whole helluva lot to accountants, judges, attorneys, equity holders, creditors and the government.

All this to say... I'm on day 13 in my 30-day free trial with Quickbooks for Mac, trying to get my books straight (quickly) for the start of the new accounting year. I don't remember any rules, and I don't need to. I have Quickbooks.

The Art of Labeling : The Labeling of Art

If you were paying attention, which most of you aren't, after that last post you would be wondering "what the fuck was that?"

That's Aaron J. He's an artist. As I write this, he's got a fine-tipped Sharpe jammed into a sketch pad, making improvised ink blots loaded with amorphous symbols, and not just sexual ones. The one he just showed me was a bowler.

In return, I showed him the paragraph I wrote about him. The above paragraph. He looked up from his sketch pad, his eyes watering. He must be high from Sharpe fumes, because I certainly am sitting just a few feet away. "A bowler could be confused with a hat," he mumbled.

"What?"

"A bowler could be a hat. Clarify what kind of bowler it is."

"Oh, right."

"And put this exchange in there too," he ordered. "That'll blow their minds."

Interesting life-as-art stuff is so hot right now. And that's exactly why I brought Aaron in on this project, or blog. Blog project. Visionary thinking like that is exactly what this blog project needs. Clearly, the last 8 or 9 posts were so boring that none of you bothered to come back, myself included.

But Aaron's post about iPod marketing and being crazy, that was right on the money. I couldn't imagine a better first post. It's exactly what this blog project about marketing and being crazy is about! Concerned for your topically-organized blog experience, I asked Aaron to label his post "marketing and "being crazy."

Aaron flipped out. He doesn't want to use labels. You see, we just had a big fight about labels. At one point I do recall Aaron declaring, "If you think this project needs labels then I'm out!"

I defended the purpose of labels, "They're like titles. They help the reader know what a piece is."

"Who's to say they need titles?"

Such an artist. Thinks he doesn't need titles. "You're not listening to me. I know what I'm talking about."

"Then tell me what the labels mean to this project."

"Blog project. Labels are terribly important to this blog project's branded experience. They help reinforce the identity of the blog, which is just a reflection of our lives right now. We spend 80% of our time talking about marketing and being crazy."

"Okay. Whatever."

So, I'll be doing all the labels.

Funnest Ipod Ever? Language as a Slippery Slope

The English language as a slippery slope (such a boring cliché):

"The funnest iPod ever."

This is the new marketing slogan for iPod Touch. I came across it on allmusic.com, and it was accompanied by a short video displaying its new features. For some reason they thought this slogan would connect and even felt it was necessary to end on this sentence rather than let the iPod’s actions speak for itself. Well, the slogan shouldn’t work, and it might not, and it doesn’t really matter. These products have been speaking for themselves for years already. All that you have to say is ‘new iPod’ and everyone knows what you’re talking about.

I could go on and on about how silly and stupid this slogan is, but that will be enough of that. No reason to get aggravated over something so silly, is there? It’s hard to stop yourself sometimes. There’s a lot of tension on and off the internet. It makes one wonder if a lot of it has to do with the world at large. I doubt it. There isn’t much happening in the world to report about. I saw that there was some sort of Youtube concert recently, but you have to wonder why that wasn’t in any of the newspapers I didn’t read. You really have to wonder where our priorities are right now.

Where are mine, you ask? Oh, you didn’t. Oh. How embarrassing.

Well, since I thought you did ask, but didn’t, I’ll tell you anyhow (I don’t care much for this passive aggressive behavior). My priorities lie with myself at the moment. There’s nothing else in the world that really gives me much pleasure but waking up every morning and seeing myself (I have mirrors all over my room and body). When I see myself in the morning I make it a habit to ask how I have been since I saw myself last. Sometimes I have a dream to relay, and sometimes I don’t really want to talk about myself, which can aggravate me (there’s no pleasing some aspects of me). And, so far, I have always been there for myself. There hasn’t been a day that I didn’t wake up and find myself right there next to me. Who else can provide such service at such cheap rates?

On reflection it’s quite clear that I’m remarking on the world around me (as if there were another).

However, instead going on and inviting myself into a folding match of minds, I’ve decided to sing a song:




And thank you.

And this is an open communication. Feel free to asks questions as well as comment. I can’t be bothered to know what you think without you telling me.

Farhad Manjoo's Post-Election Guide to Killing Time/Yourself

With the election over, self sabotage guru Farhad Manjoo of Slate.com presents us with his post-election guide to time killing.  It's a truly disgusting masterpiece collection of life sapplications.  He gives self-hating bored people what they want: things they can feel little for and do a lot of nothing with.  It's a self underemployed American's favorite nightmare come true!

My main man Manjoo is right-on with the timing of this article.  Bored peoples everywhere will need something to fill The Election Gap.  You know, that hole where your soul should be that election obsession once filled.  Because this election proved to be so much more than an effective tool for deciding the leader of the free world.  It was also a fantastic opportunity to develop and fine-tune some horrible habits! 

Habits like refreshing CNN every 3 minutes instead of 5.  Like any self-sabotage expert worth his weight in unorganized browser bookmarks, Manjoo knows refreshing CNN just isn't a  sustainable time waster in the post-election news cycle.   We need fresh news we can pretend to relate to now more than ever, and Manjoo gives it to us.  Hard.   How Hard?  Jennifer Hudson hard.

Most impressive in his bag of emptiness, Manjoo recommends obsessing over the financial crisis.  Brilliant, that's something we can do nothing about, but read about, and worry!   It has the added bonus of bringing the financial crisis home in a personal way.  Because while you're fretting over the nation's shared collective debt, you're likely creating a personal financial situation you can keep all to yourself. 

But there's a lot less where that came from!  Using Manjoo's guide, I enveloped myself so fully within The Nothing that it was almost as good as being dead.

One Two Another ~ One Cares About Another

2:  One, we need to have a talk about Another.

1:  Really, what's up?

2:  According to these numbers, and this mountain of customer feedback cards that I didn't even know we had, Another isn't living up to his promise.

1:  I know, I know.  He made us look bad yesterday.

2:  And today, and the day before yesterday.  It's worse than the time we put Someone Else in charge.

1:  You're exaggerating. 

2:  I'm not exaggerating.  And frankly, I saw this coming. 

1:  Don't give me that one, Two.  He had us both sold on him, right from the start.

2:  It was am impressive little show he put on.  What a fraud.

1:  It's not fraud, he didn't mean to do this.  

2:  Then you tell me what happened to the guy we interviewed.  

1:  He was scared, needed a job.  So he went out and got this one.

2:  You forgot the part where he lied to get it.

1:  He wasn't lying.  You know he wasn't, Two.  He meant every word of what he said.  We both believed him.

2:  He was real good at acting like the guy we wanted.   That sly bastard.

1:  But he's got so much potential, maybe we should see if he can grow into the role.

2:  Screw that.  This isn't difficult.  He could do it if he wanted.

1:  He'll do it.  Remember what he showed us in the interviews?   He could be anyone!

2:  Then why hasn't he been the guy we need him to be?   You know, the guy we hired him as.

1:  I'll talk to him about it.  Just give me some time.

2:  We don't have time, look at him out there.

1:   I can't bear to look.  I already know what he's doing.

2:  That's more than he knows. 

1:  He knows what he's doing, Two.  He's not dumb.  He distracted by something.  He cares about something else.

2:  He doesn't care at all!  He should be put out of his misery.

1:  He obviously hates this situation just as much as we do.

2:  Let's cut him right now, he should be thrilled to go home early.  

1:  Don't kid yourself, he's just like anyone else.  He'll be disappointed.  

2:  If he could be anybody, but doesn't do anything, then the least he should be is disappointed.

Another:  I am.

They're Yelling His Name in the Streets of Chicago

The pubs and sports bars were packed just a few hours ago.  Lushes watched and yammered mindlessly with trumped-up anticipation.  Iowa, or some other predictable and relatively small state, flashed in blue on a big screen.  Everyone cheered as though a well-executed bunt, that everyone knew was going to happen, had advanced the runner to second.

Later, the Woo People of Wrigleyville, who sound their slurred yawps of "WOOOOoOO" as they stumble through the night, got in on it the only way they know how, "WOOoOO OBaMAAAAA!"   A passionate yell indeed, though no different in spirit than a Cubs win, or a loss for that matter.  To many people in my neighborhood, this election was sport.

I get a very different vibe from the families in the co-op across the street.  To me, they're a refreshing exception in this neighborhood, as people who care for eachother.  They enjoy a tighter community than the singles and young professionals in the ivory towers next door.  Or me in my loft converted office, writing, working and doing nothing all day, monitoring the street from my second-story window.

One family returning home from Obama's victory speech marveled at the accomplishment and what lay ahead.  They were truly happy, with hope in their voices.  Things will change because they have already changed.  Obama, their guy, Chicago's guy, will be President.  They congratulated themselves realistically, not as spectators, but as though they made something meaningful happen.  Something that mattered.

Maybe they did.  I didn't.  I watched as usual, dispassionately.  But I can't help but feel a little better about things.