this is not a joke

so far so good

Well, I’ve been at Mekanism for about a month and a half now, which I think is enough time to get a pretty decent read on the place. Here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly...

THE GOOD
I left a massive, lumbering giant of an agency, and joined a small, lightening fast, well-respected shop. When you’re in the business of creative problem solving, it’s pretty rare that layers and layers of approvals are going to make the ideas any better. More often than not, it turns them into warty, three-armed, club-footed Quasimodos with terrible B.O. By keeping the staffers to a bare minimum, we can focus on coming up with good ideas and selling them, rather than defending them against hordes of internal job justifiers.

I have a ton of faith in this shop’s ability to execute. Most agencies don’t actually make the things they come up with. Typically, they outsource that to a production company or a digital shop. I joined a place that makes everything, and Mekanism’s full of scarily talented weirdos.

I’m helping build an office. The company is based in San Francisco, and they hired me to be a lead creative here in New York. So far, there are 5 of us: two directors, a producer, an office production assistant, and me. It’s exciting, and scary, and…did I mention scary?

THE BAD
Right now, we’re in a temporary office at a place called Techspace, right near Union Square. It’s a tiny little 450 square foot space with no Wifi and bad plumbing. We’ve been searching like mad for 5,000 sq ft loft spaces in Soho, but in the meantime, I‘ve flooded the shit out of the toilet...twice.

Communication with San Francisco is less than ideal. First of all, there’s the three-hour time difference. Second of all, concepting sessions via conference call really suck. Every call sounds like a mumblers anonymous convention in an airplane hangar through a can on a string. We’re working on a solution for this.

THE UGLY
There’s a highly active methadone clinic/AIDS rehabilitation center on the 5th floor of this building. Which makes the incredibly small, maddeningly slow elevators that much less bearable.

Oh, and the elevators are under construction. So only one of them works. Which is awesome.

P.S. I was directly responsible for the appearance of this sign

here we go again

Well, my friends. I've got some exciting news.

I quit my job a couple weeks ago.

Tomorrow is my first day at a new agency called Mekanism, sort of a digital production company/agency based out of San Francisco. I'll be working out of their New York office.

Why change jobs now, you ask?

As anyone who's ever jumped jobs knows, these things tend to move at a glacial pace. And this one was no exception.

Remember when I was going through that horrific Microsoft pitch about a year ago? You know, this one?

Well, right about that time I decided that I wasn't interested in trading my sanity for a paycheck. So I started reaching out to some old friends, just to see what was out there. And I began talking pretty seriously about coming on board full time with Mekanism.

The only catch was that I couldn't leave JWT before September, or I'd have to pay them back the money they spent relocating us to NYC. So I bided my time.

During that time, JWT finally listened to my cries of anguish, and transferred me off Microsoft, and onto...

Diapers.

But here's the thing. Working on diapers was the most fun I'd ever had working at JWT. Which made leaving a lot harder than it would've been a year ago.

Problem is, working on diapers was the most fun I was likely to ever have working at JWT. So it was time to go.

Anyway, it took until March to finally close the deal. And now, here we are, on the eve of a new adventure.

Luckily, I caught a cold during my going away party, so hopefully I'll make a great first impression by getting everyone sick.

Wish me luck dudes.

P.S. Oh, about that picture. This is how they shoot close-up shots of diapers. It's one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen in my life.

First Class

For the second time in two weeks I had to fly to London for a quick work trip. The first time I went I flew coach. On the way home from that trip, the flight was canceled due to snow, so my work friend and I had to fly into Boston then get driven to NYC in a blizzard by a crazy man. We got home at 4:30am. I would elaborate more on that story but my brain has blocked the experience from my memory.

But this trip was different. We sprung for business class, and upon boarding the plane, I realized that American Airlines had bumped me up a notch. I have NEVER flown first class but I learned that I could certainly get used to it, fast. I walked on the plane and looked around, and was a little disoriented. What was happening? Why are the flight attendants so nice? They asked if they could hang my coat. HANG MY COAT?!? The pilot smiled and waved from his compartment, and angels sang. Then we were off. As soon as they were free to get up, the lovely flight attendants took care of my every whim. "Would you like your pillow fluffed?", "Can I get you a mimosa?", "May I wipe your behind, please?" (or something like that). But seriously - Burt's Bees products, Bose headphones, consomme, and ICE CREAM. It was incredible.

I landed in London refreshed, clean and for the first time in my entire life, sad that the flight was over. How will I ever go back to coach?

really?

We used to live next to this crazy chick who was so histrionic with her, uh, relation-making, that Crissy wanted to bring a golden Oscar statuette back from Hollywood to place outside her door.

Unfortunately, she never got around to buying the Oscar before the girl moved out.

Then the new guy moved in.

The new guy is a tall, suave, Spanish dude who likes to throw loud dinner parties at least once a week.

There are a few things that seem to be pretty consistent with his parties.

1. They like to cook big-ass feasts.
2. They like to play loud-ass music.
3. They like to speak loudly in Spanish
4. They like to smoke cigars.

Cigars.

When you live in an apartment the size of a walk-in closet, highly pungent, offensive smells tend to linger. Trust me, I'm lactose intolerant.

But there is no more offensive smell on earth than day old cigar smoke on your towels.

The thing is, since we share a vent with this guy, their little cigar hotbox sessions turn our entire apartment into a 600 square foot wet ashtray at around 3am. Usually, it's so offensive it wakes us up.

It's a real problem.

We've complained about it twice now. We'll see if anything comes of it.

One thing's for sure...it's making us miss the hell out of that crazy chick.

P.S. I'm in LA shooting diaper commercials, so I don't have any recent pics. Please enjoy this old pic of our mini Thanksgiving feast.

app nerdery

A buddy at work just introduced me to this iPhone app called CrossProcess, that makes your crappy iPhone pics look all faded and Polaroidy. Not bad for a buck.

Doesn't everything look so painfully cool? You'd never guess that you were actually looking at:

A project manager hassling me about my diaper commercials.

An overheated cab from inside a Starbucks.

My partner Tweeting.

The alley where we take Franny to poo. We call it Poo Alley.

Snowmageddon

Last week New York got hit with a big ass snow storm that everyone was freaking out about. Just as the first snowflakes began to trickle out of the clouds, New Yorkers pointed to the sky, dropped bags of groceries in the street, and bolted the doors of their underground snow bunkers.

Was it pretty snowy? Sure. Was it the coming of the apocalypse? Hardly.

But you know who wasn't complaining? This guy. Cause guess who got a snow day out of it. This guy.

Seriously, when was the last time you got a snow day? 3rd grade? 4th grade? I mean, we probably got 6 or 7 inches of snow (mayyyybe), and you would have thought frogs were falling from the sky.

To be honest, the city was really beautiful for, like, four minutes.

Luckily, most of the snow is gone by now, leaving behind the scuzzy gray crust that had city kids rejoicing in the streets, prompting crust ball fights and crust angels as far as the eye could see.