Fiber Monday

After a long weekend bathed in butter and gratitude, most everyone wakes up Monday looking for a way out of their self-inflicted carbo-wilderness. But too many seek solace in empty plates and clean sinks. They often choose a familiar route found endlessly browsing online for deals and discounts. I wasn’t planning on buying a four-person Jet Ski with built-in WiFi this year, but for a price like that, how can I possibly pass it up? It would be a crime to not install a Safe Room in my home, especially when you consider the savings. A crime for which, there’d be no defense. Law firms wouldn’t answer my calls and home invaders would give me a real dressing down before breaking and exiting. And to think, the company was going to throw in enough baked beans and bottled water to last the century. So much for worrying about what to cook each night.

Still, to buy something simply for the deal is to let others decide your happiness. Would you believe what alien insurance costs the other 364 days of the year? While plenty of people get misty-eyed and wobbly-footed when glancing at mind-bending sales, there’s another way to get by. 

Fiber. I know, I know. You’ve eaten enough. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it’s time to finally build that greenhouse and make room for a few generous banana trees. Or you could opt for asteroid-resistant windows, a priority of yours ever since you watched The Land Before Time. It could’ve been the sequel: Whatever That Is Up There In the Sky, I'd Say It’s Getting Closer. You’re not a gamer either, but you might just buy some stock in one of the principal entities, putting wrists to the test. Can I interest you in an avocado instead?

Go with what you know. Fruits, nuts, lentils, whole grains, fiberoptic cable, and anything else you might be able to sew into a shirt with a little practice and a straightforward non-Ikea set of directions. Or you could just keeping stuffing it. 

Make yourself uncomfortable

Bad ideas are like air. They’re everywhere, entering through pores, resting on shoulders like birds and demons, even venturing up noses when the coast is clear of green outcroppings. How can you avoid breathing one in and letting it rule over you for a day, a week or a lifetime? Too many people are taught that to be comfortable is to be happy. And not only that, but how comfort leads seamlessly to productivity. 

I know friends, good ones, who spend hours browsing various sites in search of the platonic desk chair. As if Plato hunched inside a tiny cubicle while Socrates prepared his quarterly performance review. They labor under the belief that comfort is a requirement for good work. It won't happen otherwise. What they’re really looking for is an upright bed, a mattress they can sit on. Why do we seek comfort when being uncomfortable is actually what drives creativity? The notion that La-Z-employees enveloped in the heavenly plushness of a cozy chair can fuel major breakthroughs is tragically overstated. 

What people need is a profound lack of comfort. Because the time for neutrality has since passed. There are no Swiss chaise lounges. Plywood seats with no shortage of splinters are very much in demand. Or metal cushions comprised of protruding rusty nails and booster shots. How about concrete sandals that are a chore to lift? Suits made of jagged bits of construction paper complemented by sandpaper hats and steel wool boutonnieres. This will create an eccentric bunch of workers, willing to do whatever it takes to do the job. Of course, it could backfire and lead to a dangerous stampede of nude troublemakers. But I never said progress comes without risk. 

Will certain segments of the working population avoid your company should they find out the level of emphasis placed on discomfort? It’s possible. What’s the alternative? To ply a generation of pampered disruptors, more used to bracing themselves for tidal waves of velvet and tsunamis of velour than ambling through the office with pebbles in their shoes? The slightest awkwardness is viewed as a deal breaker.

As a culture, we must first cultivate and ultimately fetishize discomfort. Stubbing toes, bumping funny bones and slipping on a well-placed banana peel will all go a long way towards creating a better, less comfortable world. How close to sleep does a person need to be in the workplace? If we can't keep you up during the day, what hope is there at night? 

While delicious meals are soon forgotten, nauseating ones live on forever. You never forget being sick, cursing the mussels and the obnoxious waiters, twirling their pointy mustaches as you trudge to the lavatory for another lap. The same goes for chairs. You may sink into one that’s made of half leather, half quicksand, but what sticks in your mind is the steel stool you took your SATs on. A little shaky, with a couple loose screws, you immediately identified with this overlooked piece of furniture. It was you. If I have my way and get to remake office environments as we know it, you will know that feeling again. 

Don't hold your brief

  

Briefs roll across my desk every day. Maybe not roll, but clunk. Folded or filtered depending on the assignment. Boxers, too. But that’s another matter entirely. On the subject of advertising briefs, I’m hardly an expert. Which in this day and age gives me rare authority to expound without reservations or an inkling of shame.

Background

Walla Walla Widgets welcomed wild wackos working willfully wage-free while waterboarding world-class wunderkinds who were weak writers.

Note

With a debilitating addiction to alliteration, the company confused consumers. That was the goal - to confound and curtail. And as tempting as it is to rhyme words with widget – watch out. Flip that "w" upside down and wait for the pitchforks to form outside your apartment.

Objective

Boost brand awareness by 100%. This shouldn’t be difficult since it’s currently resting near zero. Create a campaign that changes the world one widget at a time. 

Target Audience

Men, women, children. Think people who are over the age of 5, since some of our more notorious widgets contain tiny parts and with them, a clear choking hazard. Think people under 100. We should have to tell them about the Russian Revolution, since they were not alive to witness it firsthand. Neither were they around to participate, sickling and hammering or whatever else their comrades wanted. They spend time with their family. They spend time at work. Their income bracket isn’t as important as how much they appreciate the feel of liquid cash. Although, cash in a blender gets messy on occasion. Since widgets are tactile, this is very important. Keep in mind anyone who’s ever commented on the crispness of a dollar bill after taking a big healthy whiff. They work with their hands but sometimes lick them – but only if the meal is sufficiently succulent. 

Brand Voice

Human, but not too human. Dogs should understand our ads as much as children. We’ve gone to the trouble of creating a new language, widgish, with the help of emeritus professors and mental patients. Headlines should be written in widgish while subheads should be in English and legal copy can be in placed in font so small you can't tell if it's hieroglyphics or prison tally marks counting the days in solitary confinement. 

Insight

Most people have no idea what a widget is. Let’s keep it that way. 

Execution requirements

Yes, please.

Haight speech

 

It’s that time of year when I’m left to remind everyone that the freedom to say whatever you want isn’t the freedom to think whatever you want. You might find chard a little too leafy for your otherwise hearty sensibilities. You might choose to protest a truck delivering crates of the stuff in the wee hours of the morning. Through your thick breath you spot bushel after bushel of this green monstrosity, unloaded and unloved. Destined for salad bars everywhere. Hate the farm, not the farmer. But the fact that your mind goes there – to a place of mistrust and paranoia is the problem. Kale warped many minds by waging a PR campaign unseen since the early days of Bieber.  

Ideally, we should be raised to love what we don’t understand. That goes for everything. Except hippies, of course. Because if there’s one group that receives the wrath from a more diverse set of people it just might be these sandaled warriors of the counterculture. Has it ever occurred to them that you don’t have time to hear their acoustic opinion? You’re not ready to fold your face mask and transform it into a stylish bandana. Which potassium fanatics never fail to mention is only “one small ‘d’ away from being a banana.” Whatever that means. 

Hippies aren’t here to inform you – not about current events. They want to talk about Nixon’s criminality, the V-2 rocket, or the Gulf of Tonkin incident. In their minds, they’re only a few weekends away from driving up the New York Thruway in a paper-thin VW bus for an outdoor concert on Max Yasgur’s farm. It’s all right in front of them. Flowers aren’t the only items stuck in their hair, caked in there after a religious-like commitment to not bathing. The not-so-great unwashed. They’re insisting you read Bukowski, grow a beard and start jogging. Claiming you can’t be truly alive unless you’re in an altered state of consciousness. And tie-dying is their solution to practically everything.

Peace? There’s an exception to every rule. 

All that food might eat itself

It’s a fairly familiar sight. Deflated fruit in the front drawer. Spoiled milk in the side door. Juice a day or two away from expiration in the back of the fridge. Rotten meats, moldy bread, wilted spinach. Despite coming from different corners of the world, some tropical, some arctic, both organic and artificial, they all end up in the same place: The trash. As garbage, each ruined item from a once great food returns to the earth. There’s no great sendoff, no elegy from an unemployed poet, no bugler to play a few mournful bars in somber reflection. There’s only more garbage, piling up and piling high. That’s what grocery shopping has come to.

The sad thing, tragic even, is that each leaves well before their time. They had more life to live, more flavor to give. You just couldn’t be bothered to get around to them soon enough. The butter waits, getting stood up by precious oil. The carrots are lost, replaced by parsnips. This process occurs throughout the rest of the pantry.

What a waste. Wouldn’t it be nice if when you cleaned out the fridge, everything in it was ready to go? You should see empty bottles, bags and boxes. But how will your problems just disappear?

There’s an old saying, repeated in dining rooms and salad bars across America: “all that food won’t eat itself.” Unlike the rest of the population, the geniuses at Krift foods refused to take the phrase as gospel. They went to work, eventually devising a new gastro-technology where after a few days your food literally starts to eat itself. While cannibalism is understandably looked down on in polite society, it deserves to play an important role in sustainability. Plus, it’s not like your sour cream is going to eat your leftover sweet potatoes. Everything has been worked out so that each food keeps to itself. After sensing a few days without human contact, the process begins. A nibble here, a bite there, and eventually, what was once a decaying eyesore within your kitchen, is now nothing more than a memory.  

9 out of 10 culinary minimalists agree, auto-cannibalizing food is the innovation they’ve been waiting for. Finally, it’s not up to you to give that container of cottage cheese a good, healthy whiff to determine quality. This frees you up to enjoy life without worrying about what's still edible and safe to eat. Of course, the Krifters are working on a human version, but I’ve already said too much. 

While the side effects are long and lasting, what’s that in comparison to an odorless garbage can and a spacious refrigerator? I’d say it’s still quite a bargain. 

What’s rechoired of you

Despite a close and sometimes rocky relationship with the deity, I don’t consider myself a preacher. Not yet anyway. As such close friends, it would be a conflict of interest to perform for any flock, no matter how doting. However, should I come into possession of an antique pulpit, beautifully carved with elaborate inlays, then I would need a reason to test out the structure’s potential resonance. Philippians anyone?

When did preaching to the choir become a bad thing? Something to be avoided at all costs. Who besides robed singers should you preach to? The janitorial staff as they weave their extension cords through the pews, sucking up hard candies and other Sunday morning contraband? How about rivals, clinking grails in the back as they critique your readings from a lowly perch? 

Choirs, unlike other subsets of society, will get your stupid jokes. You don’t have to explain who Saul became or why scallops are frowned upon to this crowd. They get it all on the first try,  lapping up every reference like a hungry dog enjoying a fresh bowl. It’s only natural. Cooks enjoy preparing meals for buspeople and dishwashers. Why not preachers?

And the fact that they can sing is no accident. I’ve heard the common criticism of musicals as being outrageously unrealistic. Who sings in the rain? Who yodels that the surrounding hills are alert – living things suffering through our muddy missteps? Who croons that one particular season is the sole dominion of a mousy Austrian with bad hair? Not enough people if you ask me. But what these malcontents never stop and think about is would the world be a better place if people simply hummed more? Movies need soundtracks and scores. Is your life so serious that you feel holier than accompaniment? I sure don't.

There’s nothing stopping you from breaking into song at a meeting or while sitting in traffic. In fact, one reliable way to combat road rage is to select from Elton John’s vast catalogue of catchy ditties (as long as you avoid belting out “The Bitch is Back”).

Preach to the choir? With pleasure. 

Legal ease: Interview with Ray Decibelli

 

These days, it sometimes feels like everyone has a podcast. Your father has one. Your mother has two. My cat has a show devoted to birdwatching. The birds on my ledge do a program where they debunk common myths associated with avian stereotyping in cinema. It’s a good one if you can get beyond the constant chirping. So with fresh podcasts popping up every day, few remember the days of dial turning and irrational FCC regulations. Back when the radio ruled the airwaves. When you could only swear if it was to God. My next guest, Domenico “Ray” Decibelli, remembers that era well. Having announced thousands of radio commercials over the years, he’s familiar with a time when these ad buys mattered. Long before Spotify and Pandora, when car radios were the item that thieves cared enough about to steal. They’d ignore the handbag on the dash and the cash on the passenger seat. Remarkable. Can we go back there? Though he spent much of his life talking fast, Decibelli’s life has slowed down considerably since retiring. I caught up with him earlier this morning.

MTP: Morning, morning. How are things down in the Lone Star State? Is that an antenna I spy in the background? 

DRD: Let’s skip the small talk. If this were a 30 second spot, you’d be out of time already.

MTP: What are your thoughts on ham radios?

DRD: I prefer prosciutto.

MTP: How’d you get into voiceover? 

DRD: It’s a quick story. I was driving somewhere around here, opening up the throttle. Must’ve been doing 125. A cop pulled me over, as it happens when you’re doubling the speed limit. I rolled down my window and just started rambling. Talking real, real fast. He was actually writing a ticket when he crossed it out and gave me a number of someone to call. Turned out his cousin was an auctioneer in West Texas who, from what I could tell over the phone, had developed a pretty bad case of the hiccups. He needed an apprentice and I needed a job. That go me started talking for a living. Eventually, some adman in the audience heard me announcing the annual egg toss. Something about the way I said "yolk" made him believe I had a future in radio.

MTP: Did you get any points on your license? 

DRD: Are you listening to me? I never got the ticket.

MTP: But your insurance went up, right?  

DRD: How much longer is this? I have an early tee time. 

MTP: That depends entirely on you. Moving on…who were some of your heroes growing up? 

DRD: Jean Shepherd, Wolfman Jack, his Quebecois compatriot, Wolfman Jacques. The usual folks. 

MTP: What’s something they don’t teach you at voiceover school? 

DRD: To make it in radio you have to break all the rules. Take two innocent little phrases “accessories sold separately” or “may cause an irregular heartbeat.” Speech coaches will instruct you to sound out every syllable. Not here and never when the light turns red. Take all your diction and toss it. You want words to bleed together to form, not simply a run-on sentence, but a run-on thought.

MTP: Any tricks?

DRD: I would hang out at taverns, paying close attention to the speech patterns of winos. Slurring was my secret. Drunks have a way of compressing a monologue into a single guttural sound. It’s really something. 

MTP: And this worked?

DRD: Every time.

MTP: Is there anything you'd change about your career?

DRD: This interview. 

MTP: How so?

DRD: I'd make it much shorter.

NB: Immediately after uttering this comment, a dial tone appeared. I couldn't believe anyone would hang up without saying goodbye or adios. I said "hello, hi, howdy, bonjour" for about 10-15 minutes before transitioning into a lovely conversation about pie with an operator. But Ray never called back.

Doored to Tears

I’m no Lewis. Nor am I a Clark. Yet, nature calls to me like an old friend with a baffling rotary phone obsession. Nature, as presently understood, refuses to text and doesn’t yet understood the ins and outs of social media. The only pinging comes after an unexpected electrical storm, when your metal plate rings off the head – at least until the rain subsides. Jack London understood that answering the call of the wild had nothing to do with voicemail, or the likes of preeminent phoneman, Antonio Meucci. 

Whether it’s the arrow hidden in the FedEx logo or a miniature silhouette of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch carefully placed between the U and P in the UPS logo, there’s a lot you might not notice beyond multinational delivery companies. Although, I’d be remiss to not mention the double helix depicting a DNA molecule beneath the DHL logo that’s only visible when viewing the letters through a powerful electron microscope. We use words and phrases without so much as a first thought. Forget second thoughts, since that requires too much thinking for the average recipient.

When the hiking hordes evangelize down trails and up hills, caught in a gorp-induced fever dream, one word keeps coming up: outdoors. They’re usually great, often good, but always, an asinine catchall term that denotes their desired locale. Nature itself isn’t enough – explaining why we’ve opted for the strength and resonance of the outdoors. But why? Why should communing with wild animals and thick bark have anything to do with doors? Doesn’t it strike anyone as odd to define something by what it’s not. Take me for example. Am I a man or a notdog? Don’t answer that. 

What do doors have to do with nature? Unless an old ship door is what we’re referring to, it seems strangely out of place. How often are we talking about the half-submerged flotsam rotting in the same weeds mobsters take their enemies to God’s Jersey shore? No more than a couple times a month. Certainly not enough to warrant the word's pervasiveness.

Nature is so much more than a place without doors. It is also a place without The Doors. Where bad poetry decays with the wilting flowers. Where Wordsworth and Whitman dominate instead. Frankly, wilderness also lacks windows and countertops. Why not bring that up? Do astronomers contextualize distant nebulae by an absence of crown molding or tin ceilings? Does the nonexistence of slate shingles and gutters come up when discussing interstellar travel? I don’t recall Richard Feynman talking about how the Apollo astronauts didn’t have to pick any invisible locks when touching down on the lunar surface.  

So don’t let the door hit you on your way outdoors.

Part Two

Rob Schneider, like John “This is medium and I asked for well” Donne or Alexander “Sure, I’ll hear your confession even though I’m not the” Pope before him, can tap into the public’s collective psyche with relative ease. Schneider has always understood what the people want. Which is a gift that hardly applies to every artist. But once he finds it, he delivers it. And there’s no apologizing or hedging from this animal.

It goes a long way to explain the production of Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo. The protagonist was a tireless soul, incapable of resting on his laurels, despite being steeped in a massive tea fortune. Americans crave movie sequels the way other populations yearn for potable water. Because both need it to live.

The question any reasonable individual sleeping on a freshly-painted park bench would ask is this: why do we have to receive our sequel fix from cinema alone? It’s a fair one. Relying on Hollywood to give us what we want is foolish. Just consider their most notable misses. If Schneider failed to give us a second Hot Chick, what hope is there that these California elites will keep up their end of the bargain? It’s 2020 and by now we should have had Battlefield Mars and Paul Blart: Subway Cop. Even those franchises that seem to understand our desire for more come up short. In all the films about Gotham’s caped crusader, it’s always just one rich guy in spandex. Somehow they missed the most obvious extension: Batmen. A crime fighting troupe of flying rodents dancing through the streets on a musical spree of unfettered vigilantism. But who am I to make such a request?

Seconds should be included at dinner. The best restaurants already know this.  Two children is a given. It gives parents a rival to their firstborn. Weekends are two days for a reason.  Here’s hoping politics gives us more sequels so we don’t have to ask the likes of Rob Schneider to bring us salvation and deliver us from boredom.

My Influenc-urtext

 

“The difference between some pulp and lots of pulp is some pulp.”

 

There are few processes more essential than dissemination. Just ask any of the planet’s most notorious pollinators – that’s if you’re able to catch them between floral shifts. I exude witticisms during my morning cup of joe. Maxims are commonplace for me. As a teenager, they were as prevalent as my acne. Dictums materialize from nowhere, while precepts come about without precedence. Mottos follow me – not the other way around. Proverbs seek my advice. Axioms ask a lot of me – yet I deliver every time. I hand out epigrams to strangers like others hand out Halloween candy. I voice truisms in my sleep and new aphorisms when I’m waking up. I let others quote Twain and Will Rogers. I’m perfectly comfortable quoting myself. 

 

“If someone offers you a lot of money in cash, insist on getting the amount in coins. That way, you’ll be covered in the event of a fire.”

 

The concerning thing is that there’s no solid way of compiling all this wisdom. It could get lost – disappearing like the coming Yeti. Intrigued by civilization, but not quite ready to take the full plunge into the fully-clothed workforce. 

 

“Ads that don’t make you laugh should make you cry. Ads that don’t make you cry should make you sing. Ads that don’t make you sing should make you dance. And ads that don’t make you dance aren’t good ads.”

 

#Mosierisms came about the way most great things come about. By accident and on purpose. I’m not clear on what a hashtag is (it was news to me that it has nothing to do with cataloging breakfast potatoes), but I have a feeling it will help increase my visibility. And to think, I once believed cleaning my windshield would do that. But spotless glass only goes so far in this industry. You have to expand your network through other means. 

 

“It takes a leader to convert liters to gallons.”

 

“The more you care, the less you dare.” 

 

“The ideal creative brief should double as an undergarment.”

 

But is Mosierism right? What about Mosieritis? Since what I want ultimately is for people to experience my creative virality. Or maybe Mosierian if my best robes come back stainless from the cleaners in time (cults can’t compete in the marketplace of bad ideas without good threads). Mosieresque works for my followers. Mosieresco sounds like a salad dressing. The point is that I’m not settled on a single hashtag. And why should I? I contain multi-dudes. 

 

“Eating squirrel is nuts.”

The Great Merge

 

There’s a lot we can learn from supersized corporate entities, floating above the fray, wheeling, dealing, yet never kneeling. You’ll read about it on your way to work from the bedroom to the bathroom. Previously great companies have decided double vision trounces the pitfalls of having a single brand message. 

 

Some people still don’t understand that America is a collection of fifty individual states. Our national spirit depends on random combinations - that to some, confound and confuse. And ad agencies have been merging rapidly for the last few years, shedding their original identity in favor of a few extra letters. If it worked for law firms – what makes the hawkers of shaving cream and kitty litter so special?  

Understandably, people are attached to their names and the names of the companies they work for. That needs to change. We need to merge companies that don’t have anything in common. Two shoe companies can join forces, but what about Apple and The Onion over a shared love of produce? Salads and sandwiches must merge. Cats and dogs. Pens and pencils. Shoes and sandals. Doctors and dentists. There's no stopping us once we really commit to our merging world.

Individuality gets more people into trouble than anything else. When you’re in a group, you don’t have to think – they think for you. That’s all groupthink is, a chance to put on autopilot for a while. What’s the harm in that? I don’t have the data to back up this claim – but when have I ever needed that?

Dreams of a one world government may be closer than most citizens realize. It only takes a few mergers before we’re all dressing the same and speaking Esperanto under single global time zone. Folks in the 1970s had it right with their passion for the hyphen. Although, getting back to grunting might be a good start at the wholesale revamping of communication. We’ve lost our way and a reboot might just be in order.

The world I want to wake up in announces a new merger every day. But it won’t be relegated to the rarefied sphere of Davos dilettantes and corporate raiders. No, we must change our language to be more inclusive, too. I dream of having friends over to lunch-dinner at my chair-table for food-drinks. 

 

But those changes are, in essence, rather superficial. Why can’t we merge with our pets? Our doorstops? Our favorite brand of oatmeal? Sure, the merging with robots has already happened – just look at the growth on your hand as you scroll through social media on the fast track to happiness. You're only partially human at this point.

 

When we go to Mars, there’s no such thing as packing light. We’ll need to bring the entire planet with us. That’s right. Mars can’t compete on the universal stage without the Earth in its back pocket.  The definition of “mirth” is amusement, after all. Towing an entire planet might seem crazy, but that's only if you've never seriously considered putting a house on a moving truck. We uproot trees all the time and transplant themselves every chance we get. 

Whoever said you can't take it with you, obviously had a very rudimentary understanding of space travel.

Check, mate

You don’t want to be rude. But it’s not your fault there’s a delay. Plus, you did something you never do – called ahead to confirm the reservation. You arrived with a few minutes to spare on the off chance any seating had opened up by then. Nada.

The restaurant’s foyer is a little on the drafty side, this being November. Therefore, you’re maneuvering constantly, to let people in, let people out, avoid touching, coughing and staying six feet apart. Not exactly easy. You can’t help but take an interest in your table – ya know, the one you reserved last week. The one they said wouldn’t be a problem. The one that should've been waiting for you - cleared and cleaned.

You’re not asking for much. However, sitting down on the early side could mean a chance to review the extensive menu and not make any mistakes. Other members of your party insist on looking at it while standing awkwardly in the doorway. You’re against that. You’re not an animal, since that style of dining is commonplace at both zoos and circuses. You can't think about food until seated.

You ask the maître d’ again if there’s any movement. He equivocates, not wanting to offend his current diners. You refuse to be seated in the garden by the dumpster. You have this table, and that’s that.

You decide to take matters into your own hands. There he is. This guy has been at it for an hour, but it feels like days. His check is on the table and he’s ordering another espresso. More biscotti now? Why is he looking at the entrees? This is absurd. You’re livid. He’s playing with his peas, making bad art out of cold food. But at what point does security get involved? The restaurant has a major stake in the peaceful transition of dinner. They don’t want to make a scene, but they also don’t want a serious logjam blocking the fire exits.  

You inch closer to the table, motioning to your watch, trying to get the attention of the oblivious eater. He’s really milking it. Once the check hits your table, it’s understood that you have about ten minutes to get your affairs in order. He must know that his dinner is over. 

He ought to leave before things get ugly.

Simple Grifts

 

There’s the Spanish Prisoner, the Nigerian Prince, and the Corsican Plumber. Then there’s gold-bricking, coin-matching, and doubloon-flipping. You could play Three-card Monte, Two-book Brontë, or One-quip Kanty. Anyone can get fooled by a pigeon drop, chicken flop, or pheasant mop. Watch out for the bar bill scam, the barbell scam, or the barbecue sham. Be careful around art students, wedding planners, or postal workers. It’s not always safe in a recovery room, diploma mill, or with a license to kill. It’s a mistake to trust every auctioneer, psychic, or grandmother. Walk past dropped wallets, tossed coin purses, and blank checks. Tech support is not what it seems. Neither is fortunetelling. 

These are the schemes of people who refuse to take life as it comes – making more than they deserve, more than they need. However, each and every one of these tricks is a little too complicated. It takes time, practice and the luck of finding a credulous rube on every corner. 

However, the best grifts are simple. They don’t involve rolled up sleeves or literal sleight of hand. There’s no need to have a late-night conference call with an out-of-work magician whose moral compass points somewhere towards Patagonia. That is to say, far from true North. 

What is it then? These simple grifts. As long as you’re pretending to be someone else, abiding by values and ethics that are more than fungible, you’ll be all right. May you always sway with the wind. Move when the needled does. Follow polls and trends, not your gut or soul. Do that, and you’ll be fine. Though the same can’t be said for those left in your wake. But every great artist needs an audience.

Since you can’t spell alive without lie, why not live one? Your bank account will thank you (but that’s only if it’s a financially-focused sentient being, manufactured by rogue government contractors). 

Sore Leusser

  

Don’t believe what you’ve heard, I’m a winner for real,

They’re all out to get me, if you don’t watch, they’ll steal.

This is my job to keep, because those were the stakes. 

I’ll whine and I’ll cry for as long as it takes.

How I look good for my age, I’m seventy-four, 

Acting like a baby tossing food on the floor. 

I’m a poet of a short verse, just read my Twitter.

How can I give up? What am I? A quitter? 

Everyone wants me to concede, that much I know.

You seem to have all the answers, where should I go? 

Maybe some place like Brazil or Estonia.

Although I could first use a pardonia. 

Should I start a network or do a one man show? 

Picture Spalding Gray with his assets in escrow.

Find your tickets at will call on opening night,

Unless the government intends to indict. 

The country has spoken, there won’t be an encore.

You want a mulligan for last time? Then yell fore. 

How I hate income taxes and paying my share,

This election proves democracy ain't fair.

My enemies will miss me once I’m not around.

You wait and see, those are their ratings going down.

What did you think of my speech? I wrote it myself. 

Moved Churchill and Lincoln to a lower shelf. 

So please let me be, let me stay in denial.

If not forever, then at least till the trial.

I have a few regrets, ones that I won’t withhold. 

Like the White House, I should’ve painted it gold. 

How can historians judge me after this fraud?

Soon I’ll be living elsewhere, in jail or abroad. 

I’m not equipped to cope with something like defeat.

I don’t smoke or drink, but I know how to cheat.

They will say that I’m depressed and prone to boo hoos. 

But I’m of sound mind, what they claim is fake blues.

I tried to do the math and add up every vote,

Which reminds me to stiff the guy building my moat. 

Word on the street is that my wife will divorce,

I may send my condolences from the golf course.

What comes next? Perhaps Junior should run in four years.

He’s like me but diluted – remember near beers?  

I doubt I’ll retire and empower an heir,

If anything outlives me, surely it’s hair. 

Look at the Founders, with their ridiculous wigs,

Who viewed their constituents as guinea pigs. 

My critics say I destroyed societal norms,

But George Wendt’s still here, outliving other life forms. 

Not that I loved Cheers or its sitcomic approach,

It was simply never the same after Coach.

Two months left in office is still plenty of time,

To make a big mess without committing a crime.

I might just transition, Donna’s got a nice ring. 

Me as the first female president would sting.

How did this happen? And to me of all people.

Why should I pray? My towers trump any steeple. 

I treated America like an abuser.

I’m not the president. I’m just a loser.

 

Stop the Count

  

How can we not? The man’s gotten fabulously rich on the mouths of American schoolchildren, laying claim to everyone’s inner sweet tooth. Then why are we so surprised that things have taken a turn for the worse? He is who he told us he was – Nosferatu, vampyr, demon of the night. Or, in this case, the one, the only, the Count Chocula. 

Chocula has been promoted as a wholesome creature, a lovable entity, humorous and harmless, skulking into kitchens as someone more interested in your pantry than your vital essence. But do we know that for a fact? And how do we know that’s definitely milk in his cereal bowl? The answer, supernaturally, is that we don’t.  

Look, I slept through most of Dental school, but I know a set of vampire choppers when I see them. And I don’t require the assistance of a hygienist or a fresh set of X-rays to make that determination. The man’s bloodlust is palpable, obvious even though the thickest of Transylvanian brogues. What keeps his canines sharp? Here’s a hint: it ain’t corn flakes.  

 

We make excuses, saying, “he’s one of the good ones.” But is he? Is he really? We’re warned not to get on his bad side – this is not someone who takes kindly to meal skipping. As long as you serve him breakfast, everything should be fine. Does anyone outside the bubble that is his immense black forest actually believe that? 

Cereal was always a cover for more sinister behavior. I’ve heard of breakfast for dinner, but bowl after bowl, all day, every day, it’s simply maddening. Only Jerry Seinfeld, at his network television apex,  consumed more cereal than Chocula. But Seinfeld was playing a part, a role for our amusement, kibitzing over minutia and giving the polity a masterclass in narcissism. So who then is Chocula catering to? Cavity-riddled goblins? It doesn’t make any sense. This is a vampire, without any terrestrial attachments, lurking in the shadows, preying on young impressionable minds to gain societal acceptance. He’s crying out in pain and we laugh it off. Those are mere advertising jingles. Nothing to hear here. He wants to eat your cereal, sure, but that’s all? 

Too bad we can’t turn the other cheek any longer. Because he might just bite it one of these days.  

The North Poll

The scene repeated itself all over the snow globe. Someone would come into work after seeing Moneyball, suddenly convinced they knew how to fix their own antiquated industry perilously barreling towards irrelevance. Maybe it was Brad Pitt’s jawline or a dormant love of baseball, but something was happening here. You could taste it. Master plumbers berated union reps for their crude dismissal of data. Joint fitters did the same. But the most glaring example of this was what transpired in the Arctic Circle, where a revolution was under way.

Kringle had always relied on the “eye test” when judging good and bad children (while it's true that this is usually a binary choice between two poles, in rare cases some kids are deemed "weird"). Over the years though, as his touch eroded, he continually missed the mark, gifting Xboxes to teenage sociopaths and filling stockings with Lackawanna Valley anthracite for model students. It wasn’t entirely his fault. His research department, if you could even call it that, had been gutted when elf after elf flew south, with big dreams and empty wallets. Something about Will Ferrell and not feeling appreciated. 

Originally, Kringle did his shopping for Christmas the day before, believing that a sense of pressure gave him the necessary motivation to succeed. He hadn’t anticipated globalization, overpopulation, and a lack of roomy chimneys in new construction projects. Times were changing, but he had not. 

A few winters ago, Kringle furloughed every elf, replacing them with Ivy leaguers – experts on forecasting and number crunching and he’d grown tired of risk and unpredictability. He wanted answers to things before they happened. He wanted to know the makeup of good and bad in specific counties, using that to plot his optimal route. He wanted a diet plan for each reindeer and a beard trimmer unaffected by the cold.

 

The problem is that some kids aren’t naughty until Christmas Eve, when most of the list has already been compiled. Still, they untuck themselves from bed and set fire to a woodshed or rip the head off a sibling’s precious doll. All the data in the world can’t predict that sort of last minute shift. Kringle had his raw instincts - instincts he’d chosen to ignore. A few years back one of the Dartmouth grads tried to convince the Big Man to delay his ride for a week since the weather  looked pretty bad. Explaining to the geek that this wasn’t an option, Kringle knew he’d erred, letting the pendulum swing so far it was liable to break someone's red nose. 

Kringle’s back doing it like the old days, when a broken tail light in his sleigh would get him a pass from generous Canadian Mounties. When missing some kids homes was part of the deal. When coal didn't carry any environmental concern. Some of the Ivy Leaguers are still around, now working with the elves, marrying data with the old school.

Sometimes, you just have to trust your gut and hope for the best. And in Kringle’s case, it’s quite a gut. 

Down for the count

In my day, kids didn’t have cell phones, interns or robot pets to help them pass the time. Things were simpler, less automated, and involved a great deal more vitamin D. Back then, I was forced to face up to my own mortality every afternoon by going outside to play. While leaving the house was fraught with paranoia and fear, after a little prodding, it became preferable to enduring the raucous jingle of Barney the Purple Dinosaur, constantly emanating from neighborhood TV sets. I had to escape. 

Some kids dug holes, others swung tree branches, but me? I took to hopping for hours on a pogo stick. It gave me something productive to do. Like treading water, skilled technicians of the practice do it as if their life depended on it. Because in some ways, it did. Falling was always a possibility. You could land on the errant acorn left by an aggrieved squirrel, despondent over another subpart winter of diminishing fruits.

I’d bounce and bounce. However, the act itself wasn’t particularly fulfilling. So in those early jumps, I would do something else that increased the degree of difficulty. Like say, drink a homemade Arnold Palmer or silently recite William Blake’s best work. Soon though, that left me cold, too. 

I had to count my hops. There weren't many other options. Otherwise, there was no way to assess my progress. It was easy in the beginning. I’d count and count and eventually jump off. After daily practice, my proficiency predictably went up. Hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands. Of course, this is also where I began to lose count. 

Too often, something would happen to distract me. The squeal of a distant car horn. The shriek of a dissonant baby. The scream of a discordant bird. While I was rarely greeted by this trifecta all at once, even one such example would send me flying into the tall glass. At around twelve or thirteen thousand, I reached my limit both spiritually and arithmetically. Initially, I tried to regain my composure and account for my slip ups. Then I stopped caring, realizing that the joy of bouncing had been taken from me by my commitment to such precise mathematical tyranny. I bounced for a while, without a care or a count, until the advent of the cell phone gave me a device to truly embrace. 

This is all to say that counting is hard. Do you think we’d have a metric system without also having ten fingers and ten toes? The first digits you learn aren’t those of a would-be paramour, but the ones conspicuously dangling off your extremities. You can count on it.