Truth in Advertising (7 page)

Finbar Dolan is the greatest copywriter who has ever lived. Despite never winning a single major advertising award, peers see him as a legend. His keen mind, razor-sharp wit, and deft prose leave industry giants and suburban housewives breathless. The words
Now with 20% more absorbency
hang in the Guggenheim with his name on it. As if that's not enough, he is a powerfully built man in his late thirties and can bench-press four times his bodyweight. He is a scaler of great heights, a poet, a marksman, a man skilled in the art of close hand-to-hand combat. Of the roughly 6,500 languages spoken on the planet, there are only four in which he cannot read and write.

What do you say about yourself? How do you describe yourself when people ask? Height? Weight? Fine. I'm 6' 2" but appear taller as I'm thin. I can't seem to gain weight, can't get past 170 or so. I slouch. I feel my ears are too large. I wear the uniform of the new urban landscape, the service economy, post-Apple. Jeans, sweaters, work boots. It's all part of the new irony, where college-educated, white-collar workers dress as if they were blue-collar workers, liberal guilt at cushy jobs that require zero physical labor. Where once the subway was filled at the day's end with men in soiled work clothes, carrying hard hats and lunch pails, perhaps canvas bags with tools, the smell of honest-to-God sweat, now it is peopled to a greater extent (and certainly on the L train to Brooklyn) with those who are terminally hip and under the mistaken impression that life is supposed to be easy, wearing $300 pairs of jeans made to look old, vintage-inspired eyeglass frames, waxed canvas bags from Jack Spade holding Apple computers/iPhones/iPads/iPods, reeking of Jo Malone Lime Basil & Mandarin for Him. What accounts for this new breed of creative man? The fickle mistress of fashion, certainly. But I would also suggest—from my own close observation—that this inchoate man is also confused and adrift in a world where the generational gap is wider than ever. And who sometimes feels the need to use the word
inchoate
when
not fully formed
would have worked just fine. Pulled down by a rip-tide of hair products and spin classes, white wine and
feelings
, my
generation of late-to-marry city dwellers lost any connection with their change-the-car-oil-on-Saturday-afternoon-with-a-couple-cans-of-Carling-Black-Label fathers. They bear little resemblance in income, hobbies, outlook, number of sexual partners. Men good with their fists versus men who take yoga. Men who understood how life worked versus man-boys who give long thought/reading/classes/trips to India to allay their confusion about the meaning of life. Who complain that they're not happy.

I worry that I have a kind of retardation having to do with romantic relationships (thirty-nine and single), marriage (see the aforementioned cancellation of wedding), children (enjoy holding and smelling them, fear being responsible role model for them). My day is spent in diapers (has to be a better way to say that) and yet I, myself, have never changed one.

There are hundreds of me out there. Thousands. We look alike and think alike and come up with almost identical ideas because we approach life from the same perspective. We roam the streets of New York and Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis, London, and Amsterdam. The less reflective among us whine that we're not “more.” Haven't done more, achieved more, made more. The smarter ones thank God every morning for the world of advertising. Most days I enjoy going to work and am quite fond of my coworkers. The bad days are the days when I wonder what might have been had I tried something else or when I read about someone doing something that took courage and talent, neither of which I possess.

Me on advertising: “Is there any way I can get an extension on this?”

•   •   •

We are all here. The beautiful twenty-six-year-old girls who work in media and enjoy the perks of free tickets to anything in town they want, who will be married within three years and entirely out of the industry within six. The thirty-eight-year-old producers, almost all women, almost all single, having pursued the career in the hopes of switching from commercials to Hollywood films but who never made the transition, who know far more about the complex job of
making television spots than clueless young creatives (“Yeah, but why
can't
we use a helicopter for that one shot?”) and who now bring a bitterness to the job in large part because they put off marriage and children in the hopes of achieving something professionally. The account people, jackets and ties, smart skirts and tops, the front line in client services (“I get to work with creative people
and
I get to work with business people. It's really the perfect balance.”). The skinny Asian boys with bad skin who run the computer help desk and who laugh aggressively at inside jokes, hidden away somewhere in the subbasement (“Um, like, is that
really
how you set up your desktop menu?”). The fit, handsome, gay designers, gym bags at the ready, shirts tucked in, black belts cinched a hole too tight. The accounting department, thin men who blink a lot and bite their nails, and heavy-set women, most of whom are black, who leave at five-thirty on the dot every afternoon. Human resources, socially conscious people who put up flyers near the elevators (
LEUKEMIA WALK SATURDAY
!). The art buyers, twenty-eight-year-old women, chunky shoes, multiple piercings, amateur photographers, fine arts degrees that translate into nothing in the real world, body art at the base of their spine (and often, for a fashion reason beyond my ken, the top portion of their ass crack), revealed when they spread a photographer's portfolio on the carpet and shake their head and use the word
derivative
.

So another day begins at Lauderbeck, Kline & Vanderhosen, a subsidiary of Tomo, Japan's largest shipping company and third largest in the world. Almost five hundred people looking for a paycheck, a dental plan, and an intangible something that will give us a sense of purpose at the end of the day. Most often we settle for free soda in the refrigerators.

I
an and Pam take a car service from the shoot back into the city, but I get carsick in a parking lot, so I take the subway whenever I can.

I make my way to Corner Bistro, where I find a seat at the bar. I eat a cheeseburger, drink a couple of beers, and read the
Times
, though often I stare at the TVs, which show a hockey game, a cable show with what appears to be a panel of eight people yelling at one another, and, for some reason,
The Sound of Music
. None of the TVs have sound.

•   •   •

I call Phoebe on my way home.

She says, “What if I had a guy over and was involved in an intimate moment?”

I say, “But you're in bed, sort of reading, sort of watching
The Bachelor
.”

“That's just weird that you know that,” she says. “Where are you?”

“Walking home.”

“I was reading a story in
Vanity Fair
about Johnny Depp. He owns an island.”

“Like I don't?”

“Then I started reading that Billy Collins book you gave me.”

“Which one?”

“
Picnic, Lightning
.”

“I like a funny poet. Why are so many poets depressed? It's always dead people and dead mothers and dead soldiers. Grecian urns. Epic poems. Why not a poem to donuts? To canned tuna?”

Phoebe says, “I loved Sylvia Plath in college. I loved Emily Dickinson.”

I say, “I've tried to read Emily Dickinson and I have no idea what she's talking about. Love is the thing without feathers? That's like a password in a spy novel. And then your contact says, ‘Yes. And Belgium is lovely in springtime.' You stopped listening.”

“I was watching that new iPad commercial. They're so good. How come we don't do ads like that?”

“Those are done by the talented people. We do diapers.”

“You excited about Mexico?”

“Yes. No. I'm wondering if I should have picked someplace else.”

“You always do this. At some point you have to make a decision and actually take a vacation.”

“Why? I enjoy the planning.”

“You'll cancel. I know you. You'll end up home alone cooking a chicken.”

“Keats was twenty-five when he died. Byron, Shelley, Tennyson.”

“What's your point?”

“I was just seeing if I could name some poets.”

Phoebe says, “How was the rest of the shoot?”

“Fine. We got what we needed. Barely. I don't know how, considering the director, the client, and the agency.”

Phoebe says, “It always works out. You worry too much.”

I wait at the light and watch as a cab goes by with three guys in their twenties in the back, one of whom has pulled down his pants and is sticking his ass out the window.

I say, “One beautiful thing.”

Phoebe says, “I've got a good one.”

It's a thing we do. Every day—well, most days—we have to describe a beautiful thing we saw that day, one beautiful human interaction. It was her idea, something her parents used to do with her when she was little.

She says, “So this kid gets on the train. Tough looking. Wearing this baggy suit. He sits across from a dandyish guy. You get the sense
the kid has a job interview or something. He has a tie around his neck. He starts trying to tie it. But it's obvious the kid has no idea how to do it. The dandy's watching the kid. Says something to him in Spanish. I'm thinking there's gonna be a fight. Only, the kid says something back, sort of . . . meek. The dandy says something and the kid hands him the tie. The guy ties it, talking the whole time. Undoes it, ties it again, then hands it to the kid. Dandy got off at the next stop. I love New York.”

“That's really nice.”

Phoebe says, “You?”

“I can't think of anything.”

“That's not the game. The game is that there's at least one beautiful thing that happens to you every day.”

“I can't think of anything.”

“Think harder.”

It takes me several seconds, but it comes to me sharp and clear.

“I was walking to the subway this morning. Early. Like five thirty. To get to the shoot. And there's one of those guys, the Ready, Willing and Able guys. Former homeless people, guys just out of prison. You know these guys? The city puts them to work sweeping and cleaning. Anyway, he's swapping out a huge bag of trash and putting in a new empty bag, and there's this homeless guy sleeping in a corner, by a subway grate. The heat from them, right? This homeless guy is curled into a ball. The cleaning guy walks up to him. I'm sure he's going to wake him up, tell him to move on. Except . . . he takes his jacket off. This uniform jacket. And puts it over the guy.”

Phoebe says, “I like that. See, you just have to look. Beauty is everywhere.”

“Thank you, Oprah. Now go to sleep.”

“Don't tell me what to do. Did you call your brother?”

“Yes.”

“You're lying.”

“I'll call him tomorrow.”

•   •   •

It's early the next morning and the office is quiet.

Someone has put up politically correct holiday decorations, limited—by an agency committee comprised of deeply serious human resources people—to snowflakes, snowpeople, and sleds. Except at Denise Muniari's desk, which looks like a mini Rockefeller Center around the holidays. She has a small tree in front of her desk with lights and ornaments on it. She also has a miniature manger, with tiny figurines of Mary, Joseph, the three Wise Men, animals, and, of course, the birthday boy. Denise is the creative department's manager and believes, as she once told me, “It's Merry
fucking
Christmas, not Happy
fucking
Holidays. I have the utmost respect for Jews, Fin. God knows they've been through a lot. But don't rain on my baby Jesus birthday parade.”

I hear music, faintly. It gets louder the closer I get to my office. I stop outside the office, in the hallway, and listen as Paulie plays the guitar and sings.

I stand at the door. Paulie looks up and smiles.

Paulie says, “Fin D. What up, my brother?”

“Hey, Paulie.”

“How was L.A.?”

“Didn't go. Shot at Silvercup instead.”

“Bummer. Who wants to go to Queens in December?”

“Who wants to go to Queens ever?”

“I thought you took the red-eye back. I love the red-eye, Fin D.”

“Really? Can't stand it myself.”

“No, man. I love the idea of going to sleep on one coast and waking up on another. Check this out. It took the Donner party five months from Springfield, Illinois, to reach the foot of the Sierra Nevadas. Imagine that. Five months. And yet we traverse the continent, with a nice glass of tomato juice and a magazine, in under six hours.”

I say, “The modern world is an amazing place, Paulie.”

“I guess,” Paulie says, still smiling. “Mostly it's just louder and faster.”

“You're in early.”

“Can't sleep lately. Plus I like it here when it's quiet. So how was Gwyneth?”

“Couldn't be nicer. Couldn't be lovelier. She's rich and beautiful and successful and happy. Like all of us.”

I turn to leave and Paulie says, “Oh, hey, Fin man, I almost forgot. That NVD spot is up for an award. We found out from the account team.” He chuckles. “You bastards.”

About a year ago Ian and I helped Paulie and Stefano out with a project. Our group also works on a pharmaceutical account (indigestion pill and depression/anxiety medication). The company had a new drug that helped relieve what the account team referred to in meetings and e-mails as “NVD,” which I soon found out was pharma-speak for the family of symptoms known as nausea-vomiting-diarrhea. So Ian and I thought it would be interesting to personify them. We'd cast guys who looked like they might
be
nausea or vomiting or diarrhea. The amazing thing was how many actors in New York and Los Angeles actually look like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.