Thinking outside the balks

June 5, 2013 by Created by RCW

If you’re reading this blog post, then you’re probably something like me—that wasn’t meant as an insult—and you’re looking for opportunities to express your true creative self.

Unfortunately, whenever you visit the Want Ads looking for employment, you are met with hundreds of ads all touting their desire for an outside-of-the-box thinker and yet doing so in the most boring way. Talk about making a bad first impression.

So here is my call to all companies: If you want outside-of-the-box thinkers, don’t approach them from inside the box.

Boxes scare creatives because boxes are scary. In hockey, it’s the penalty box. In mythology, it was Pandora’s box—okay, technically jar, but let’s not dwell on semantics. The Boxer rebellion. Boxing Day shopping. Johann Sebastian Box. You get the idea.

To some extent, I blame Human Resource departments, whose job it is to protect the company from legal repercussions rather than actually identify resourceful humans. But senior managers are also to blame, as the majority of them hold their jobs by propping up the walls of their box—often with the corpses of the peons below them.

Several years ago, as Creative Director of a medical advertising agency, I had the opportunity to hire a medical writer.

Now, I am nuts. And the job of medical copywriter in Canada is nuts, because the regulations in Canada are nuts. And working for me is nuts. So when I wanted to hire someone, I needed candidates who were…well…nuts.

Below is an excerpt from the ad I posted on a variety of web-based job sites to get just the right candidate:

We have needs (many of them in fact). But today our biggest need is for a full-time Scientific and Medical Writer to help us create amazingly compelling advertising for our healthcare clients….

What type of person are you?

You’ve always been smart—annoyingly so, if we talk to your siblings. You’re just as comfortable talking to a doctor, as you are an artist. You’re always looking for new ways to do things—especially mundane things. You not only dream up big ideas, you can also figure out how to execute them. You are able to convince others to buy into your ideas. You find yesterday’s successes to be today’s challenges. You don’t like taking “no” for an answer. You really want to re-write this ad and send it back to us. And you’ve never met an acronym you didn’t like, including PAAB, RRR, CME, ASC, BID, PM, PI, and ASAP.
Here are some must-haves:
Science degree (BSc. minimum, but dazzle us if you don’t)
Ability to distill clinical data into amazing copy (other distillation expertise will be considered)
Knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry (aside from your medicine cabinet)
A sense of humour in stressful situations.
Nice-to-haves: Did we mention the sense of humour?

Think your skills meet our needs? Then startle us with your creativity. Forward your resume (boring), 3 writing samples (better), and anything else we may find entertaining (don’t worry, we’re easily entertained) to:

I got some amazingly milquetoast applicants, but I also got some incredibly creative applicants and eventually hired an amazingly brilliant writer—who may be reading this and the Canadian market is too small not to constantly ass-kiss.

Like attracts like. So if it looks like you wrote your job ad with a pencil shoved firmly up your backside, you’re not likely to attract the kinds of candidates who think outside of the box. They’re more likely to be outside of your league.

You need to show that creative thinking already flourishes within your company because damned few creatives are willing to be the first and possibly only person who thinks creatively. Without the right amount and type of bullshit, we wither and die in such environments.

Spare the box, hire the creative genius.

PS The job boards to which I posted included:

(Image is property of Robert Mann Packaging and is used her without permission.)

It’s a meme!

May 31, 2013 by Created by RCW

You never know what will take the internet by storm, only that every intellectual eddy has the chance of becoming a hurricane of the ludicrous. Case in point, the myriad variations on Star Wars’ General Ackbar and his sudden realization that “It’s a trap!”

In the interests of short-cutting this process, I have tried to come up with a definitive list of variations of this meme for future use by one and all.

PS By the very nature of stating “definitive list”, you will immediately come up with others, so please feel free to add.

(I suck at graphic design, so I have not attempted to mock up any of the General Akbar memes I list below.)

It’s the clap! – Dr. F. Ackbar, family doctor

Use the flap! – Henry Ackbar, frustrated dog owner

There’s an app! – Simon Ackbar, computer nerd

Here’s your Pap! – Dr. G. Ackbar, gynecologist

Cut the crap! – Jodie Ackbar, frustrated wife

Mind the gap! – Eddie Ackbar, metro/subway driver

I played Hap! – Willie Ackbar, unemployed actor

Touch your lap?! – Candy Ackbar, stripper

Read the map! – Sir Edmund Ackbar, adventurer

Need a nap! – Old man Ackbar, old man

Want the wrap?! – Tootie Ackbar, waitress

Suck the sap! – Angus McAckbar, maple sugerer

Lick the strap! – Mistress Ackbar, dominatrix

Dis ma rap! – Big Daddy Ackbar, home boy

What’s on tap?! – Jessie Ackbar, Ackbarfly

Shut yer yap! – James Cagney Ackbar, mobster

It’s a snap! – Fast Eddie Ackbar, informercial host

Take a slap! – Jacques Acqbar, hockey coach

Please don’t….ZAP – the late Ensign Freddie Ackbar, red-shirted Starfleet cadet

Buffalo

May 29, 2013 by Created by RCW

When I was a kid, there was a TV station in Buffalo that would start its evening news with a public service announcement:

“It’s 11 o’clock. Do you know where your children are?”

I always thought it a little odd. Were Buffalo parents really that bad that they had no idea where their kids were at 11 pm?

I imagined some fat, hairy father in a sleeveless undershirt, chugging a beer and waiting for the news.

“It’s 11 o’clock. Do you know where your children are?”

“Why? What’s the little bugger done now?”

Or a dowdy housewife, cleaning up the dinner dishes, suddenly thinking to herself:

“Oh shit! I left Billy on the mechanical horse at Wegman’s!”

“It’s 11 o’clock. Do you know where your children are?”

All these parents sitting home watching TV while thousands of kids run loose on the streets of Buffalo—taunting the homeless, looting Toys’R’Us.

“Oh my god! They’ve set fire to North Tonawanda!”

“It’s 11 o’clock. Do you know where your children are?”

They don’t start the news with that anymore. Do you think some guy at the TV station came into work one night and said: “Screw ‘em. They’re your kids. If you don’t care where they are, why should I?”

Of course, I guess the final joke is on us what with Alzheimers and all that.

“It’s 11 o’clock. Do you know where your father has wandered off to?”

Pride Week

May 19, 2013 by Created by RCW

The last week of June each year, the City of Toronto explodes with colour and excitement as the fever of inclusion takes over the city. It’s another Pride Week.

Gay, straight, budgie…whatever you consider yourself, if you haven’t experienced the pageantry of Toronto Pride Week, you should consider your life cheapened. You should then get your butt to Toronto and party.

Following on the success of Pride Week, however, the other Deadly Sins have petitioned for their own festivals.

Greed Week is slated to run over two weeks and its organizers are actively petitioning for a third.

Wrath Week got pissed at everyone and so plans to do its own thing.

Planning for Envy Week has been difficult as organizers keep asking for the date to be moved because they feel the other Sins got better dates.

Lust Week started slow and gentle but really built up a head of steam before petering out.

Avarice Week demanded the largest budget and still refused to control its expenses.

Sadly, Sloth Week just never really took off.

(Note: Photo is property of Pride Toronto and is used without permission.)

Stupid is pretty smart

May 11, 2013 by Created by RCW

I find it interesting that most people seem to be less afraid of being stupid than they are of looking stupid.

I say this because of the inordinate amount of stupid material I find every day—the people posting this stuff obviously don’t think it’s stupid—and yet many of the brightest people I know (and not just those with whom I agree) are paralytically afraid of saying anything lest people think they’re stupid.

Now, I appreciate that stupid is subjective, but this is not a condemnation of stupid, it is a call to embrace our personal stupid and use it to move forward to brilliance.

If you watch a group of children as they age—not literally moment-by-moment; that would be stupid—you will see that they start out unfiltered and unhindered by subconscious voices that make them edit themselves. They are free to create amazing things and proudly display those things on refrigerators around the world.

As they get older, though, those subconscious voices creep in and you find the children become less enthusiastic about their art. They become more self-conscious about being seen as stupid, and so the refrigerators of the world become increasingly barren.

That is incredibly sad, and not just because the typical refrigerator is a featureless, oddly coloured box with little inherent fashion sense. It is sad because it creates a population of adults who are incredibly repressed and overwhelmingly self-conscious.

As I have mentioned before, I have numerable friends who want to write, but they are routinely stopped from taking any action by an infernal firewall of what to write. They can’t just write anything. Writing just anything would be stupid.

No! No! No! Writing just anything would be freaking brilliant!

Writing just anything would make you a writer, rather than the non-writer you are now.

Write the word “stupid”. Write “stoopid”. Write “styupid”. Write “stewed pet”. And bloody screw AutoCorrect.

Let stupid be your creative scissors and run around the room not caring into whom you run or stab. Stupid begets intelligent, no matter how stupid that sounds.

Besides, no matter how clever, intelligent or prosaic you are, someone is going to find your writing stupid. Stab them with your stupid scissors and move on.

I absolutely abhor the novel Crime and Punishment, routinely espousing that the crime was the writing of the book and the punishment is the reading, and yet many people find it a marvelous work of art. How stupid is that? (You can read that as I’m stupid or they’re stupid…I don’t really care.)

In King Lear (III, ii), Shakespeare wrote: “The art of our necessities is strange that can make vile things precious.”

As used in the play, this line has absolutely nothing to do with the point I’m making, and depending on how you read it, the line actually blows my thesis apart or completely justifies it. Now that is freaking stupid.

As Liam Neeson should have said in the movie: Release the Stupid!

You may just find that your stupid is pretty amazing…and even if it’s not, you’re one step closer to your brilliant.

(Images used without permission. Pretty stupid, eh?)

On Word, Ho!

May 10, 2013 by Created by RCW

The things one thinks of:

What’s another word for “thesaurus”?

I need another thesaurus like I need/want/desire/have use for another/an extraneous/an alternative/a supplementary hole/gap/abyss/chasm in my head/cranium/brain carrier/noggin.

Is Roget merely the thesaurus author’s pseudonym?

Who first put the alphabet in alphabetical order?

Is it true that the letters of the alphabet, in order, spell out the name of a town southeast of Cardiff, Wales that even the locals can’t pronounce?

The word “onomatopoeia” was really an etymologist drunk-dial, right?

Why use a short word when you can use a perfectly viable polysyllabic etymological variant?

Eight Simple Steps to Counting to Seven

May 9, 2013 by Created by RCW

1. Say “one”.

2. Say “two”. (not going too fast for you, am I?)

3. Say “three”. (don’t try to anticipate me!)

4. Say “four”.

5. Say “five”. (out loud! don’t just think it in your head)

6. Say “six”. (not “sex”, it’s important to enunciate“six”)

7. Say “seven”.

8. Repeat Steps 1-7 without reading them.

Congratulations, you can now count to seven (or you have failed miserably and have to be held back…either way, I get paid).

Tune in tomorrow when we work on self-esteem issues in a lesson I like to call: “You don’t count”.

Today’s lesson was brought to you by the number OF THE BEAST and by the letter “Dear Penthouse, I always thought these letters were made up, but…”

10 Steps to Writing a Pilot That Sells

April 17, 2013 by Created by RCW

No, no! Not that kind of pilot. Although, cute photo. (Image used without permission)

1) Watch a lot of television; especially stuff you don’t like or think is bad. This will establish the belief within you that you could write something at least that bad and still get it on the air.

2) Conceptualize a show that combines one of your siblings or cousins, the second job you ever had, and a famous moment in history. Every idea after this will sound entirely plausible; and hell, this might actually work as a sitcom.

3) Conceptualize an idea that is morally offensive to you and then see if it was one of the shows in Step 1. If not, then the market is ripe for the picking.

4) Describe the absolute worst day of your life, a day when everything went wrong. Then switch one of the disastrous elements. Then, switch another element. Do this 10 more times. Season One!

If you can’t create 13 variants, your day wasn’t that bad and your life is too good for you to be writing for television. Go write greeting cards.

5) Grab a copy of Bulfinch’s Mythology and reset all of the stories in modern-day Seattle or the smallest town you’ve ever visited. Warning: Brace for complaints that it’s a rehash of Dallas or Friday Night Lights.

6) Grab a copy of Bulfinch’s Mythology and do not reset the stories. Hell, if it worked for The Borgias and The Tudors, it might work here. Call it The Olympians.

7) Start with Episode Two, because pilots suck and you’ll never want to show it to anyone. You need to know/believe your idea works.

8) No matter what your current idea is, when you go to pitch it and you think you’re losing your audience, suddenly reveal “And the protagonist is a ghost!” Vampire, werewolf and zombie are equally acceptable.

9) Stop reading advice on writing a successful pilot and just write your story, already. There is no telling why someone in a suit will get excited by your story, but I can guarantee they won’t if you’re not.

10) If all else fails, generate a top-ten list of ways to write a pilot that will sell and use it as the basis of a book you will later turn into a sitcom.

Dildo out of water

April 16, 2013 by Created by RCW

In writing, one of the tips for jazzing up your story is to put your character into an odd situation and watch how he or she deals with the new circumstances. In comedy, we call this being a “fish out of water”.

While traveling through Iceland a year ago, I got to see this on a grand scale. While wandering around a large pond in downtown Reykjavik, I was surprised to find a large dildo in the middle of the sidewalk—it was a few days after the end of Pride Week, so I could only imagine where it came from.

On Golden Dong (near the pond in Reykjavik)

Realizing there was an opportunity here, I sat on a nearby bench and spent an amazing hour or so watching locals and tourists come upon the vulcanized penis. It was a magnificent chance to people-watch and learn about the range of emotions.

Some were disgusted. Some were anxious for their over-inquisitive children. Many were amused. Most arrived quietly and left highly animated.

I’m not sure what this says, but I seemed to be the only one who took a photo of it.