An Open Letter to Don Draper

Mr. Donald F. Draper

Sterling, Cooper, Draper & Pryce

c/o Pierre Hotel

New York, NY

July 25, 2010

Dear Don,

Don't suck.  Just please don't suck.  I'm going to see you tonight for the first time in almost 9 months, and I want it to be great.  I've missed you and I don't think I could bear it if tonight is anything less than brilliant.

So please don't suck, ok?

I've thought about you a lot in these past 36 weeks.  Where is your office?  You must have moved from the Pierre by now.  Where are you living?  Are you seeing anyone?  Is your divorce final?

Oh Don, so many questions.  And you, holding all the answers.  

It's funny, when I first met you I thought you were the king of cool.  A cigarette perpetually dangling from the corner of your mouth, rye whiskey and broads aplenty.  Ring a ding ding, baby, you know?

But as I got to know you a little better, I began to see how much more complicated you are than that.  For instance, you're an excellent creative director, but a jerk to work for.  And you're a terrible husband and father.  Yet still I find myself rooting for you, interested in your life, wanting you to triumph and succeed.

I see what you've run away from, how you've worked so very very hard to erase the past and create a new persona.  But let's face it, Don, you've fucked some shit up.  And now you're going to have to figure it out.

So I'll be waiting, Don, and watching.  I'll always be here for you.

Just don't let me down, ok?

Sincerely,

Paul F. Cammarota

Bye Bye Baby

Friday is rubbish day in my town. That's the day, once a week, when along with your normal household garbage you can put larger items out by the curb. Furniture, old TVs, mattresses... you name it. Since Friday morning is when the garbage men pick up the rubbish, that makes Thursday evening prime time for...

the Night Pickers.

Night Picker?  What the fuck is a night picker?

Night Picker is a phrase coined by my dad and sisters and me to describe the folks who walk or drive around the neighborhood the night before rubbish day and pick through the trash in hopes of finding some treasure to cart off and call their own. It's not dumpster diving; it's got nothing to do with food. It's about taking that perfectly good something that someone three blocks away is throwing out, bringing it home, cleaning it up and calling it your own.

I was raised in an upper middle class neighborhood, and that's the kind of neighborhood I live in now. You'd be surprised how much perfectly good stuff people simply throw away. 

The next town over from me is wealthy.  You should see the amazing shit they put out by the curb.

I think the fact that people are so quick to discard things has much to do with our very conspicuously consumptive society and what middle class means today. Years ago, something like a bike was a treasure. A decent one cost a good amount of money to buy, and it got handed down from kid to kid. Too bad for you if you were the last kid in your family. If it broke, either your dad fixed it or you took it to the bike shop. But you didn't throw it away.

Now, more often than not it seems people just toss that same bike out and buy a new one. Why not? Bikes and TVs and DVD players have become so inexpensive that it almost makes sense. Plus, I think we have gotten so used to buying new stuff to replace our other stuff that fewer and fewer people know how to actually fix anything anymore.

I am not ashamed to say that I have night picked a thing or two in my time.   An end table with beautiful wooden inlays that was missing only a small detail on one of the legs.  I placed that side against the wall. Another time, as I was walking our ridiculously tiny dog I spied a Weber grill that someone across the street was throwing away. Mint condition. Although I made quite a racket wheeling it across the street, scared the hell out of the dog and probably woke up several neighbors in the process, I still fire up that grill in the backyard today.

The legions of night pickers are many, and the treasures to be gotten are legend. 

But this is not about night pickers, at least not directly.

Nope, this is about little girls growing up.

Because last week I myself put something out on the sidewalk Thursday night for pickup on Friday.

I put out the high chair.

The high chair that endured countless yogurt spills and still has a little piece of spaghetti stuck in that crevice that I just couldn't reach no matter how hard I tried.

The high chair that bears the the faintest remnants of scribbles from markers and pens because no matter how I scrubbed, it never all came out.

The high chair that witnessed thousands of laughs and giggles and almost as many tears.

The high chair that heard me make every sound imaginable, from airplanes to elephants, that might encourage a little girl to open her mouth and take one more bite.

The high chair that held a baby safely while her daddy got a sorely needed cup of coffee.

The high chair that wobbled a little near the end, who's seat cover never fit quite right again after I took it off that first time to wash it.

The high chair that has seen two little girls begin to become big girls.

Yeah.  That high chair.

The trash men come at around 8:30 in the morning.  I could easily have put it out then.  But I didn't.  Somehow I couldn't bear to see them throw that little piece of my girls childhood into the back of the truck.  

So I put it out the night before. 

And sure enough, by 6:00 am Friday morning it was gone.

I'd like to think that someone took it home, cleaned it off, and called it their own.  Maybe some dad somewhere else is making elephant noises to his little girl right now.

Bonne chance, Night Picker.

Bonne chance.

Kleenex, the Anti-Green

This commercial is amazing to me.



Admit it, you thought this was going to be a spot about how we should use a cloth towel instead of paper towels because it's better for the environment, right?

Of course you did.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. We're bombarded by this mantra every day. Whether you choose to do your part or not, it's not like the Green movement is a fringe thing. It's an inescapable message that one would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to be aware of. The very ideal driving society today, the impetus behind hybrid cars and Sigg water bottles and turning off the water when you brush your teeth is to consume less, and pollute less.

So how is it possible that Kimberly-Clark, the parent company of Kleenex, could think that it was a good idea in this day and age to introduce this line of disposable hand towels... a product that is designed to be used exactly once and thrown into the trash? Am I the only person who thinks that this is incredibly wasteful?

It's not like they're exactly urging judicious use of these things, either. In 30 seconds both these bathrooms see more traffic than a Penn Station toilet. I'm surprised this thing isn't hanging on the wall.

Not including the dog (who I'm not counting because that's just stupid), the cloth towel gets used 15 times in this 30 seconds.

The Kleenex hand towels? Twenty-two uses. Which must mean that consumers who would buy Kleenex hand towels are more sanitary and wash their hands about 45% more than those who don't.

Really.

You are going to use this product and throw it in the trash, which is then going to get put into a plastic bag, which is then going to spend all eternity at the bottom of a landfill. But isn't paper biodegradable, you say? Yes, it is. But not when it's encased in a plastic bag at the bottom of a landfill.

From the Kleenex website FAQs:

• Is Kleenex® Facial Tissue biodegradable?
• Kleenex® tissue is made with biodegradable cellulose fibers. Because the tissue is made with an additive to make it strong, it will not break down as rapidly as bathroom tissue. Therefore, we suggest you discard Kleenex® facial tissue in the trash.

Even Kleenex instructs us to make more garbage by sending these babies straight to the dump.

The hand towels are featured on the landing page of the Kleenex website, and when you dive a little deeper you get a slew of factoids about how single use towels are more sanitary than your cloth hand towel (which apparently is never ever clean, no matter how many times you wash it). You can even see just how the dispenser will look in your bathroom. I thought the upside down hanging box was just to make a point in the commercial, but it appears that if you want that public restroom look in your own home, it is easily achievable.

The copy in the commercial states that "...your hands are only as clean as the towel used to dry them." This may be true.

You know what we do in our house when that towel gets dirty?

We put it in the washing machine and hang up a clean one.

Not exactly rocket science, and likely what most people do. Which makes Kleenex Hand Towels smack even more of a product created to fill a need which doesn't truly exist.

From ugly and wasteful, we move to "at least we're trying."



Great idea. I think that at least Frito Lay is really making an effort here, even if they are missing a little bit.

From the SunChips website:

• We dream of a world with less waste. That's why we've introduced a bag made from plants so it's fully compostable. Every 10 ½ oz. SunChips® package is designed to fully break down in just 14 weeks when placed in a hot, active compost bin or pile. If it takes a little longer, don't worry about it. Mother nature will get to it soon enough.

Do you have a hot, active compost bin or pile at your home?

Didn't think so. Neither do I.

It's an awesome effort to develop biodegradable packaging. The problem here is that if you're a good citizen, you will follow years of indoctrination and put your chip bag in the trash, which is then going to get put into a plastic bag, which is then going to spend all eternity at the bottom of a landfill.

Which is not a hot, active compost bin.

That kind of defeats the purpose of the biodegradable bag, don't you think? And all those SunChip bags you'll see on the streets of Manhattan, and along the roadside? Well, they'll break down. Eventually. It'll take a lot longer than 14 weeks, but "Mother nature will get to it soon enough."

It's not perfect, but I do give Frito Lay an "A" for effort, in the hopes that this technology can be put to use in a way that will make a difference, and will make the world a little greener.

So I think that from now on, after I wash my hands, I'm going to dry them on a SunChips bag and toss it out the window.

Hey, at least I'm trying.

Do I look fat in this?

Do these jeans, this dress, this shirt, these shoes make me look fat?

This, friends, is the Kobayashi Maru of relationship questions.

Like the Kobayashi Maru, it is a no-win situation, a question with no correct answer. It is designed, consciously or unconsciously, to test you, to gauge your reaction, to take your measure.

The reason this is a no win situation is because by the time the question is posed to you, your significant other has already answered it. She (and I'm going to use "she" here because let's be honest, this is a question asked by wives and girlfriends, not husbands and boyfriends) has already looked in the mirror and decided the answer, and that answer is "yes".

For you there is no right answer to this question, no reply that gets you out the door and to the party, no response to which she simply replies "ok, let's go."

Let's say she does looks fat in that. You want to be honest, right? She asked you the question, didn't she? You don't want other people talking about how she looks unless it is to say how unbelievably and incredibly awesome she appears tonight.

So you say "yes".

Sure, if you are an idiot or a masochist, or just plain mean you say "yes". But even if it's the truth, the last thing she wants is for you to agree with her.

And don't think you can be crafty and say "yes" without actually saying "yes". It doesn't work that way.

INT, MANHATTAN APARTMENT - EVENING (circa 1999).

A young WOMAN exits the bedroom carrying two pairs of slacks. The MAN sits on the couch, waiting.

WOMAN (to MAN)

Which ones do you like better?

(This is code for "Do these pants make me look fat?" One of the pants makes her ass look square and dumpy. The other makes it look curvy and nice. The MAN picks the curvy pants.)

MAN

The second pair.

WOMAN

Why?

MAN

They make your ass look better.

WOMAN

What do you mean, "make my ass look better?"

MAN

(a little nervously now)

I don't know, they're more flattering.

WOMAN

More flattering? Why are they more flattering? Do these other pants make my ass look fat? So you're saying I'm fat.

This all happened very, very fast.

So you can't say yes... well maybe on the inside, but definitely not on the outside.

OK, let's say she does look fat, but there's no way you're gonna say "yes". So you say "no".

Smart, right?

Wrong.

She just looked in the mirror. If she didn't think she looked fat, she wouldn't be asking. Now you're a liar. She can't trust anything you say.

So don't say no.

What if she looks great? Super incredible fabulously smoking hot? "Do I look fat in this?" she asks. You, supremely confident in the truth, answer "NO"

Simple, right?

Wrong.

See above. If she thought she was rocking her outfit, she wouldn't be asking in the first place.

You? Still a liar.

So "yes" is wrong for obvious reasons and true or not, "no" apparently, is also wrong.

Maybe you try the smooth route. "Baby, you are the most beautiful and sexy woman in the world to me."

Just for the record, the "to me" is not going to help you here. She is supposed be the most beautiful and sexy woman in the world to you, so that's just stating the obvious. And "to me" also means that you don't care what anybody else thinks, and you don't care about her flaws, which to her are that she looks fat. You can leave off the "to me"... doesn't make a difference. It's implied.

Also, you sidestepped the question. And she will know that.

Maybe you will try to change the subject... "C'mon honey, hurry up we're going to be late." That's right cowboy, just crack the whip and put some more pressure on that little heifer. She's already feeling insecure, and now in her head it's "Ohmigod we're going to be late and I can't find a thing to wear and I'm so fat."

Actually, you can change the subject, but it has to be on such an epic scale, and so completely off topic that it renders the original question totally forgotten. This is when a monsoon or an earthquake in a foreign land comes in extremely handy. Barring that, I usually bring up something I was asked to do, but forgot. This list is endless, so I can usually mine a nugget that utterly shifts the paradigm, then whisk my lovely wife out the door as she's changing gears.

I'm also clumsy, so sometimes breaking a dish or a glass is effective. Injuring myself by falling down or bashing my finger with a hammer has also been known to work.

If all else fails, I suggest dinner at my parent's house.

That usually seems to do the trick.

What a Charmer

The inner monologue of this cheap doofus really bothers me.

This guy looks to be about 30 years old, and this must be a first date because he doesn't seem to know much about the girl he's with. At 30 years old though, TGI Fridays is not where I'd be taking a girl on a date. Maybe when I was 17. But 30? Not so much.

Anyway, the girl says, "I'll have the green bean fries", and this douchebag thinks to himself, "Nice, a light eater. I'm getting off easy."

Green bean fries are a $7 appetizer at Fridays. Does this guy really think that $7 is the sum total of what he's going to spend on her dinner tonight? Oh, wait, $7.25 with the sizable tip this prince is sure to leave the server.

She continues, "And for my entree, I'll have the sizzling chicken and cheese."

He begins to panic. "Entree? Chicken... Whoa!"

"Chicken...Whoa." Really? It's not like she ordered a 2 pound lobster, you dick.

And finally, his date decides that "...for dessert, I'll have the cheesecake."

Wincing now, he whines, "What am I, a bank?"

Yes, you dumbass, you are a bank. You are the bank of $21.99, which is approximately what your date's meal would cost at a typical TGI Fridays.

After he realizes she's ordered from the special "3 courses for $12.99" menu however, he becomes relieved and happy.

He should be relieved and happy, relieved and happy that an attractive girl like this would even go out to dinner with a cheap loser like him. (Although if she continues to eat fried beans, cheese and cheesecake, she may not remain attractive for too much longer.)

I don't have a problem with Friday's. If you can get a 3 course meal at a sit down restaurant for $12.99, that's awesome.

No, the problem I have here is that the message (3 course meal for $12.99) is completely obscured by the creative, which is so far off base it's like casting Gary Coleman in The Shaquille O'Neal Story.

A $12.99 price point appeals to very young people or people with families to feed. Not 30 year old guys on a first date. So if this guy is a teenager, then this scenario makes sense. Maybe he's there with his date and her 3 kids. Then it makes even more sense. But if he honestly can't pony up the $45 that dinner for two at Fridays would cost then why is he there at all? Why didn't he take her somewhere else, like Pizza Hut? Or why not just ask his mommy for the money, since it's likely that a clueless loser like this still lives at home with his parents.

Look, not everyone can afford the fanciest restaurant in town. So if Friday's is the place you can afford for your dinner date, that's cool. But if you go there, you actually have to spend some dough on the girl. Because that's part of the point of the date in the first place. You have to let her see that she's important enough to you that she can order from the regular menu. But all this skinflint can think about is spending as little as possible on this girl and this meal.

I'm surprised he's not paying with a coupon.

You Kiss Your Mother With That Mouth?

INT. JAKE'S LIVING ROOM - DAY (1950)

JAKE (to Joey)
What's that kissing on the mouth shit?

JOEY
What? I just said Hello. Since when can't I kiss my sister-in-law?

JAKE
Ain't a cheek ever good enough for you? I never even kissed Mama on the mouth.

JOEY
Well, you're not supposed to kiss your mother on the mouth.

JAKE
Well, that's what I mean.

This exchange, between Jake and Joey LaMotta, occurs around 3/4 of the way through the screenplay of 1980's Raging Bull. Afterward, LaMotta smacks around his wife and goes on to beat his brother into unconsciousness.

In 1980, this made perfect sense to me.

The kissing part, not the beating part.

I did not grow up in a family of mouth kissers. There were plenty of hugs and kisses, but the kisses were always on the cheek, which seemed right. A kiss on the lips seemed far too intimate for family.

And that's the way it was for many years. Until I had a baby of my own.

And everything changed.

After I saw that perfect little baby and held her in my arms, felt her warmth and life, heard the little squeaks and sighs she made as she squirmed around in her sleep, I just had to kiss her perfect little baby lips. Kissing her lips felt, in some way, more protective. Like it would keep her safer somehow. And she would know that Daddy was there to take care of her.

I figured when we got her home from the hospital and the new kid novelty wore off that I'd stop doing it. But I didn't. It felt perfectly natural, and come on, when it's your kids, they're irresistible. And those sloppy, slobbery, spitty kisses you get back are great. My wife also did it right from the beginning. My mother thought it was weird at first... now she kisses the kids on the mouth too.

Friends of ours have two boys, and their mother recently remarked to me that though she would miss it terribly, she was going to have to stop giving her boys the big smooches on the mouth she calls "movie star kisses".

So I know it's not just me.

Not every kiss is a lip kiss. There's plenty of cheek kisses too. Oedipus and Electra aside though, I know that just as our friend will kibosh the movie star busses, eventually I will have to stop kissing my kids on the lips. I've already pretty much stopped with my older one. But no matter how old my girls become, when I look at them part of me will always see them as those sweet, innocent bundles I carried home so gently and carefully from the hospital.

They will always be my baby girls.

So, did you kiss your mother on the mouth?

And do your kids kiss you on yours?

What, me Grammy?

Did you see Alfred E. Neuman on the Grammys last night?

I like music, but the Grammys is not a "must see" for me. It is for my wife though, so that means we were watching last night.

I'm glad we were, because when Jay-Z and Rhianna made their way to the stage to collect their Grammy for Best Rap Collaboration they were joined by none other than Alfred E. Neuman. That's right, Alfred E. Neuman of Mad Magazine fame.

Here they are, on their way to the stage...



Getting closer...



Ah ha!


He's a little shorter than I thought he'd be.

Karen Walker, meet George Costanza

Sometimes God just does you a solid.

Like at the end of Animal House, when that kid is sitting on his bed reading a Playboy magazine, and out of nowhere, a Playboy Bunny flies through the window and lands on his lap.

And the kid looks up to heaven and exclaims "Thank you God!"

So when I saw this, all I could do was look to heaven and say...

Thank. You. God.



Oh, and there's a :30 cut down, too!



I honestly can't believe it has come to this for Megan Mullally. Will and Grace was a pretty good sitcom, and the Karen Walker character that Mullally created, the smart mouthed lush with the jiggly rack and penchant for prescription drugs was an absolute classic. The lines that came out of her mouth were almost always so wrong that it made them so absolutely and incredibly right.

So what happened? Since Will and Grace, Mullally has seemed to suffer from the Seinfeld curse. She's a talented actress, comedic, funny, no reason she shouldn't be able to get a show. But much like Michael Richards and Jason Alexander and Julia Louis-Dreyfus, for Mullally... not so much.

Ok, ok. Julia Louis-Dreyfus has a show on CBS and it's doing well. But it took her 6 years after the fall of Seinfeld to get there. Michael Richards isn't going anywhere, I guess, since he forked himself at the Laugh Factory.

And Jason Alexander... well, it looks like the cheap, petty and amoral George Costanza may have been the career acme for Alexander, unless 1996's Dunston Checks In suddenly re-awakens to spawn a slew of sequels and spin-offs.***

Karen Walker, meet George Costanza. Two memorable characters created by two talented actors, who became victims maybe, of the personas they helped create. Or maybe it's just a question of bad management and representation.

But "Turn the Tub Around" ?

The first time I saw this I thought it was meant to fall under the heading of "so bad it's good."

Obviously I was mistaken, because this is just so bad, it's really, really bad.

There's just something ... off... about the look of this thing, like a cheaply produced music video which has been shot on video, then had a lot of heavy filtration added in post to try to hide the video-ness of it.

There's no one else in this unusually dark and creepy supermarket except Mullally and these 5 stock boys. I'm pretty sure the supermarket is so dark because most of the production lights are trained on Mullally's face, which after 10 seconds suddenly explodes into an overexposed, blown out, soft focused mask. Lighting and camera tricks like this date back to classic Hollywood, when they were used to photograph leading ladies to help to hide wrinkles, bags and other imperfections. The same techniques are also used in beauty ads, with a healthy, healthy dose of Inferno thrown in for good measure.

Maybe that's a good thing though, because before the lighting change Mullally bears a striking resemblance to Teri Hatcher's botox practice dummy.

Tyce DiOrio is the choreographer of record on this. Shame on you, Tyce DiOrio.

Shame. On. You.

You are a talented choreographer. America knows this to be true because we watch "So You Think You Can Dance" and the choreography on that show is always fabulous. So what happened here? There you are on the website, going on about the Turn The Tub Around signature move. Signature move? It's a Cabbage Patch followed by a Running Man. I think I put those two back to back and invented your signature move in the early '90's.

So then I thought maybe this was supposed to be campy.

But this isn't camp. This is crap.

Camp has a point. It is overblown, overdone, ostentatious and purposefully bad, and it often pokes fun at or takes the piss out of its subject. To do camp really well, you have to have mastered the genre you are attempting to lampoon. You have to know how to direct a really good music video to direct a music video that's so bad it's good. You have to know which camera angles work and which do not, where to place the camera, and how to move it. You need to know the best stylists and hair and make-up people. You have to understand dance, lip syncing and performance and know how to shoot them. Only then can you start fucking around with those conventions to turn out something which is good in its badness.

Camp, at its best, is entertaining and funny. But just because you think your storyboard is funny doesn't mean you simply hire an unremarkable comedy director with little or no music video experience to direct it.

This is not for amateurs, people.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but camp is not traditionally the purview of heterosexual males, and this video has "straight guy" written all over it.

***In an interesting side note, Matt LeBlanc of Friends fame, another "where are they now?" actor at the top of his game in the mid-90's, also co-starred with a monkey in Ed, which was also released in 1996. I wonder if Matt and Jason held hands as they jumped the shark together.