Everyone thinks Jamie is so damn sweet. Well, I am here to tell you that she has a mean streak lurking just barely beneath the very thinnest of saccharine veneers.

She read the last blog post about doppelgängers and said, ”You left out a few.”

”What do you mean?” I asked.

“You know exactly who I’m talking about.”

Damn it. I do know. The woman has access to the cardboard boxes and plastic crates in the shed and knows that I have a few additional show biz doppelgängers. Ones I’m not as eager to speak about as I was with Peter Fonda and John Lithgow.

First, here’s baby Jimmy and his doppelganger.

That is one happy baby. That being said, I did have a big ol’ Charlie Brown head when I was born. In fact, the first time my dad saw me in the hospital he said words no loving father should ever have uttered. ”God damn it, Helen, I think the kid’s a mongoloid.” Nice.

And now here’s second grade Jimmy and his doppelganger.

That is one butt ugly kid.

Jamie said, ”You should get a childhood photo of Peter Fonda and see if you looked alike as kids.” No such luck. I did. He was a particulary good-looking lad. I’m willing to bet that no one ever compared him to Howdy Doody.

Let’s do an informal poll: Which set of doppelgangers looks the most alike: Jim and Peter Fonda, Jim and John Lithgow, baby Jimmy and Charlie Brown or second-grade Jimmy and Howdy Doody? Leave your answers in the comments or email them to me.

More memories plucked from the plastic crates and cardboard boxes stored out in the shed:

Easy Rider, starring Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson, premiered about the same time I got my first job in advertising. Apparently I looked a bit like Fonda, which was not always a good thing.

He played a drugged-out hippy biker in the film and quickly became a symbol of the seventies counterculture. I worked on Wilshire Boulevard, where most of Los Angeles’ ad agencies were gathered, and when I walked down the street at lunch, construction workers looked down at me from their work stations several stories above the street, and hurled obscenities in my direction.

”Fuck you, Fonda,” was one of their favorites. Not particularly creative, but to the point. My creative director probably would have praised it for economy of expression.

It’s not like we were twins, but I can understand how they may have confused one of us for the other from their distant perches a couple stories above street. We had similarities — long reddish brown hair, coloring, short trimmed beards, facial shapes, and lanky frames.

Fonda’s hair was better than mine, but c’mon, I clearly have a far stronger, more masculine nose. When he’s clean shaven, his lips definitely appear to be the result of some deYong-ish DNA. There are other deYongs, the ones armed with those lips, who probably look a lot more Fonda-ish than I.

That being said, I seriously doubt if anyone ever walked up to him and said, ”Hey, aren’t you that ad guy?”

My girlfriend thought it was hilarious when strangers asked me for my autograph. She loved the look of disappointment on their faces when I told them I was not who they thought I was. When we went to see Fonda’s follow-up films, we had to see them at drive-ins because she could not contain herself. ”Ooh, ooh, ooh,” she’d squeal. “You look just like him at that angle,” and at other times, ”Nah, I don’t think you two look anything alike.”

But time is a cruel mistress. Fonda’s career foundered. Hollywood stopped calling him and construction workers stopped calling out to me.

Twenty-five years rolled by with no one saying I looked like anyone except, well, me. Truth be told, I kind of missed being mistaken for a movie star.

Then NBC began promoting a new show named Third Rock from the Sun. It starred John Lithgow, who’d had a long, successful career as a dramatic actor but finally achieved real fame in this over-the-top comedy by playing a dim-witted alien who was baffled by human behavior and American culture.

But now instead of hearing that I looked like a handsome young movie star, people began saying I looked like this balding, middle-aged, ruddy-faced TV star. Strangers on the street once again began asking for autographs. Restaurant hostesses gave me conspiratorial winks and led us to better tables than we would have otherwise been given. I once again became aware of whispering and pointing in my direction.

The craziest incident happened in the airport in St Louis where a blizzard had grounded my connecting flight. When I went to the counter to find an alternate flight, the ticket agents refused to believe I was not John Lithgow traveling under a false ID (obviously this occurred prior to to heightened TSA security checks). They were not convinced even after I showed them my drivers license to prove my real identity. The agent upgraded me to first class on the new flight, handed me a boarding pass and said, ”Here you go, Jim,” emphasizing my first name as if the two of us were in on a grand joke that no one else understood.

One of our clients was very involved in a Los Angeles children’s charity. She invited me, my business partner and our wives to its big annual fundraiser at Merv Griffin’s Beverly Hills Hotel. It was a Hollywood-ish kind of event and a number of celebrities were in attendance. We had attended the previous year and knew that Merv, one of the charity’s biggest supporters, would once again regale the crowd with hilarious show biz stories, and that Carl Reiner, another major supporter, would also get up again and tell his own hilarious stories.

There was no way Jamie and I were going to miss the event, especially after it was announced that John Lithgow was going to receive an award and be named Man of the Year.

The event was preceded by a cocktail hour at which all the celebrities mingled and exchanged small talk with the little people (“Small talk with the little people.” Hah! What other kind of talk would you exchange with little people?) Jamie and I spotted Lithgow but stood off to one side while he spoke to a number of other people. We waited until he was alone for a moment, when all the well wishers and groupies had briefly drifted away, and then we made our move.

”Excuse me, John,” I said. ”Would you mind if my wife took a photo of us together?”

Lithgow looked at me. He started to speak, but stopped. He looked at me again. His face lit up. And then, with that distinctive John Lithgow delivery, he said, ”Well, yes, I can certainly see why.” Jamie took a couple shots of us looking directly into the camera, and then John said, ”Let’s do one where we’re looking at each other.”

And that, my friends, explains the photo above.

Somewhere up near the top of this story I said that time is a cruel mistress. Fame must be an equally cruel master. I just cannot imagine being so famous that complete strangers feel free to intrude on your privacy, demanding that you be included in their selfies, interrupting your dinner, or even worse, staring and pointing like you’re a monkey in a cage.

Toward the end of my advertising career, I was the public face of our ad agency, the guy the reporters called when they wanted a pithy quote. My job was to make sure the agency got lots of publicity and that our name graced the pages of all the right publications. On the continuum between anonymity and fame, I fell somewhere in the Zone of Well-Knownedness.

My girlfriend joked that she had always wanted a famous boyfriend, and that I was almost fulfilling her fantasy by being a big fish in a very small pond. Big enough and small enough that other Orange County advertising people often approached us in public just to ask if I was who they thought I was. It was low-level attention, nothing too annoying, but she quickly grew tired of it. ”We can’t go anywhere without someone recognizing you,” she said. ”I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want you to be famous anymore.”

She was right.

If my fleeting brush with fame taught me anything, it would be this:

It’s probably much better to look like someone famous than to actually be someone famous.

%$&*!

Jamie and I had dinner in Santa Monica a few months ago with god daughter Stella and her parents Dan and Caren. Caren got up to use the ladies room and when she came back to the table she said, ”Hey, Jim, your doppleganger just walked into the restaurant.” Sure enough, John Lithgow was sitting not too far away from us.

I stopped at his table on our way out of the restaurant. I repeated the line from the charity dinner of twenty years earlier.

”Excuse me, John,” I said. ”Would you mind if my wife took a photo of us together?”

He went blank for a moment. You could see the cogs turning as he accessed his memory banks to figure out how we knew each other. Then, BINGO, there was an obvious flash of recognition. He leaned in so that we were face to face, looked directly into my eyes, and uttered three words that made it clear he knew exactly who I was.

”Fuck you, Fonda.”

%$&*!

Only the first paragraph of that last story is true. The rest of it is a complete fabrication. We did dine in the same restaurant in Santa Monica, but I didn’t stop at Lithgow’s table and he didn’t say, ”Fuck you, Fonda.”

But it would have been freakin’ hilarious if he had.

%$&*!

I just read an article in which former child actor Cole Sprouse said, ”When we talk about child stars going nuts, what we’re not actually talking about is how fame is trauma.” I think fame is like cocaine in the 80s. They might tell you it’s harmless, but in truth it’s horribly addictive and destroys everything it touches.

A few mornings back Jamie said, ”Today is our anniversary.” I guess a look of horror must have crossed my face because she started laughing and said, ”Not our wedding anniversary. The anniversary of the day we moved to Texas. Our wedding anniversary’s not for a couple more weeks.”

Those couple of weeks have now passed and I have now been married to this sweet, beautiful, wonderful woman for twenty-two years. She had to drag me kicking and screaming to the altar, but marrying her is clearly the best thing I ever did. But what the hell was she thinking?

Here are twenty-two years worth of photos. But first a story about our wedding day.

%$&*!

If you were a Friends fan, you may well remember the episode where the friends discuss their freebie lists — pre-approved lists of celebrities each character could sleep with without upsetting their significant others.

Here is some of the dialogue from Season 3, Episode 5 (“The One with Frank, Jr.”) that helps explain the concept:

Chandler: Well, we (he and girlfriend Janice) have a deal where we each get to pick five different celebrities that we can sleep with, and the other one can’t get mad.
Ross: Ah, the heart of every healthy relationship: Honesty, respect, and sex with celebrities.
Monica: So, Chandler… who’s on your list?
Chandler: Uh, Kim Basinger, Cindy Crawford, Halle Berry, Yasmine Bleeth, and, ah, Jessica Rabbit.
Rachel: Now, you do realize that she’s a cartoon… and way out of your league?
Chandler: I know, I know, I just always wondered if I could get her eyes to pop out of her head.

You get the idea.

Jamie and I thought this was a funny concept so we each made up our own freebie lists. I do not recall who filled out slots number two thorough five on my list, but perched securely at the top was nubile blonde starlet Heather Locklear.

Hubba freakin’ hubba.

The morning of our wedding, just hours before my womanizing ways were scheduled to come to an abrupt end, Jamie walked through the front door and said, ”You are never going to guess who I just ran into at Starbucks. I was standing in line behind a young couple and they had the most beautiful little girl. I kept staring at the mom standing right in front of me and thought, ‘I hate her. She has an absolutely perfect ass.’”

She caught my attention with that line.

”Go ahead. Guess who it was.”

As I said, It was the day of our wedding. I was stressed beyond belief, and didn’t feel like playing a guessing game. ”Just tell me,” I snapped.

”Heather Locklear and Richie Sambora.”

I could not believe my good luck. A once in a lifetime opportunity had dropped right square in my lucky lap. Here it was the morning of my wedding day and my soon-to-be wife, a team player if there ever was one, was surely about to reveal that she had told Heather Locklear about her fiance’s freebie list, and that Heather, intrigued and surely more than just a bit titillated by the opportunity, was at that moment upstairs in our master bedroom.

Quivering with excitement.

Eagerly awaiting the sound of my footsteps on the stairs.

She may have even started without me.

My eyes glazed over, and Jamie noticed a goofy grin on my face.

”Oh, my god. I am so sorry,” she apologized. ”I was distracted by her perfect ass and forgot all about your freebie list.”

”And by the way,” she continued, ”Richie is so handsome in person that I’m moving him up to the top of my list.”

OK, so maybe Jamie disappointed me on my final day as a single man, but she’s made up for it by making every single day of the last twenty-two years an absolute delight. I can’t wait to wake up every morning just to spend another day with her. And I cannot imagine my life without her.

Happy anniversary, Poochie Baby.

A little trivia: We’ve been married for twenty-two years and were together five years before that. I just realized that means she has been with me exactly half her life.

Now here are those photos.

This is our cat Ozzie. He’s about eighteen years old now but doing very well for his advanced age. The thing about Ozzie is that he’s always been a bit of a pain in the ass and has always required his own bedroom because he insists on pestering any other pet or human who attempts to sleep while he is awake.

He’s been getting louder and louder since our old female can Sydney died about a year ago. We decided Ozzie might be lonely, missing Sydney, so we put a spare TV on the floor in his bedroom. He liked it. We turned it to Animal Planet and he liked it even more. Then we turned the sound waaaaay up so the deaf old duffer could hear the sounds all the TV animals make and he loved it even more.

So Ozzie now watches Animal Planet all day and all night. He loves to sit about six inches from the screen (as in the photo above). Sometimes he lies on the floor directly in front of the TV with his head turned upward so he doesn’t miss a moment of the action. Other times he curls up in his bed across the room. But no matter where he positions himself, his eyes remain glued to the TV.

I’ve tried to get him interested in Judge Judy, but she’s too harsh for his refined tastes. Jamie’s tried to interest him in The Real Housewives of Wherever, but he couldn’t care less. I thought he might like to watch a Spring Training game, but he is apparently not a sports fan.

If you’re reading this, Animal Planet, Ozzie is now available for endorsements.

UPDATE: Ozzie has one of those new smart TVs that shuts off if the remote control hasn’t been used for more than four hours. We always know when four hours have elapsed because that’s Ozzie’s cue to walk downstairs, stand at the entrance to the living room, and screech at the top of his lungs. One of us has to pick him up, take him back upstairs, and turn his TV back on again. That keeps the old boy happy for four more hours.

I told the story of my one degree of separation from Bill Gates a few months ago. Now here’s my other one degree of separation from the world’s third richest man story.

I had an early advertising hero. His name was Paul Keye. As the headline above says, his last name rhymed with high. He was the creative director and a partner at a great little L.A. ad agency named Keye Donna Pearlstein.

Paul was a copywriter, an absolutely terrific copywriter. He had immense talent and an ego to match. He was legendary for lording that talent over lesser copywriters. And in Paul’s world, all of us were categorized as lesser. Apparently the Wall Street Journal agreed, because it featured Paul in one of its award-winning ads (above).

KDP’s offices were just a couple blocks down Wilshire Boulevard from DJMC, where I was working at my first job in advertising. I finally got up enough nerve to make an appointment to show my portfolio to Paul.

Earlier in the same week in which my appointment was scheduled, KDP had run an eight page, full-color self-promotion ad in MAC, the weekly Los Angeles advertising trade publication. It had very, very long copy but I read every word of that ad over and over again and marveled at Keye’s mastery of the language.

I arrived a few minutes early and was ushered into the Master’s office. He was, I quickly learned, a tall, disheveled, shuffling, abrupt man. He motioned me over to two facing chairs and gruffly told me to sit down in one of them. He then sat in the other one, laid my portfolio down on the floor between us, and opened it up. He hunched over and slowly began thumbing his way from one of my ads to the next. After he’d looked wordlessly at the first few selections, he peered up over the top of his eyeglasses and barked, “You’re looking at me.” It wasn’t a simple declaration. It was an accusation.

“Well,” I squeaked, “I thought maybe you might have some questions.”

“I don’t like people looking at me while I’m looking at their work.” He reached into his desk and pulled out a copy of that eight page Keye Donna Pearlstein ad I had already read and re-read so many times that week.

”Here,” he said as he thrust it toward me. “While I’m reading your stuff, why don’t you read something that’s really well written.”

It was devastating but 100% accurate. So I read those eight pages one more time and reminded myself that I was a complete copywriting amateur compared to this genius, and that I had no business showing him my meager wares.

”You’re not ready to work here yet,” he grumbled as he finished reviewing my work, ”but you might be someday. Keep working at it. Come back and see me again in another year or two.”

I closed my portfolio, picked it up off the floor, and left, completely unworried about the way he had unfavorably contrasted our talent levels, thrilled that he hadn’t thrown me out of his office, and completely inspired that he thought I might sometime in the future be worthy of merely showing him my work again.

Let’s jump ahead nearly twenty-five years. Through a strange series of events my longtime business partner and I became partners in a new ad agency. Our third partner was Leonard Pearlstein, Paul’s former partner at Keye Donna Pearlstein. I told him Paul was my writing hero, someone I worshipped as a god who walked the earth.

”What was it like to work with him every day,” I asked.

”What was it like? Oh, I’ll tell you what it was like,” Leonard responded. “We were Microsoft’s first ad agency. Bill Gates was our client before he was Bill Gates, if you know what I mean. We created Microsoft‘s very first ad and sent it up to Gates for approval. Then Paul and I flew to Seattle the next day to review the ad and take care of some other business. We walked into Gates’ office and sat down across his desk. We could see that he had used a red marker to completely re-do the ad. There were red marks everywhere. Nothing was left untouched. Bill pushed the comp slowly across his desk toward us and said, ‘I hope you don’t mind. I’m a frustrated copywriter.’”

”No, I’m a frustrated copywriter,” Keye responded. “You’re a fucking asshole.”

”And that,” Leonard said, “was the end of our relationship with Microsoft. We could have had the biggest client in the world, but your hero called Bill Gates a fucking asshole just because the guy edited his copy.”

”That’s what it was like to work with Paul Keye.”

I understand Leonard’s point, but subsequent events seem to have proven that Keye’s opinion of Gates was not inaccurate.

NOTE: Do yourself a favor and blow up the size of the Wall Street Journal ad at the top of this story. It is just such a pleasure to read the way Paul Keye used words and expressed his thoughts.

ANOTHER NOTE: Our agency’s Wall Street Journal rep nabbed me several poster-sized reprints of the ad at the top of this story. Years later I asked Leonard if he could get Paul to autograph one of them for me. Leonard refused. ”Don’t embarrass yourself,” he snapped. ”You’re his equal now.” Leonard was wrong. Paul was the sun and I was Pluto. I regret that I never got that autograph.

I am not the only one with old family photos. Jamie has them, too, except she’s young enough that most of hers are in color.

When strangers stop us on the street to tell Jamie how beautiful she is, I always say, ”And she’s even more beautiful on the inside.” They frequently nod and say, ”Oh, you can tell that just by looking at her.”

When she was a little girl and her “Mother of the Year” was still sound asleep, the pajama-clad three year old would often leave the house and waddle down the street and around the corner to a neighbor’s house. The neighbor was Mrs Johnson.

“I think she understood what my mom was all about,” Jamie reminisced, “and decided to fill the void.” Mrs Johnson was a huge influence and I have to think her kindness and sweet nature rubbed off on Jamie. She spent hours with the beautiful little girl, teaching her how to make breakfast, wash dishes, bake cakes, and play Old Maid. They would sit together in Mrs Johnson’s living room and watch game shows on TV. Finally, an exhausted Mrs Johnson would say, ”I need to rest my eyes now, Jamie.”

Last night I looked over and saw Jamie was asleep on the couch. I quietly said, ”Are you asleep?”

”No,” she answered, ”I’m just resting my eyes.”

Mrs Johnson’s daughter took the photo above and below. Is that the most beautiful little girl in the world, or what?

Don’t know who took this photo of Jamie and her older brother Cary, but how cute is it? The cowboy boots were obviously an omen of things to come because Bubba and his wife joined the exodus from California and became fellow Texans a few months ago.

Finally, here’s Jamie and her Uncle Terry. She’s still close to Uncle Terry and Aunt Wanda and visits them every time she finds herself in Southern California.

Jamie and I had been going out for a few months when her grandfather called to say, ”We’re going to be up in your area this weekend. Let’s have lunch.” Jamie’s grandparents lived in northern San Diego County. Terry and Wanda lived in northern Orange County. I lived halfway in between. Grandpa suggested that we all meet for lunch in the middle.

It was the first time I met Jamie’s family. We all got along great — all except for Uncle Terry, who sat silently across the table giving me the evil eye throughout the lunch. He thought I was just some dirty old man who was taking advantage of his sweet, innocent young niece. He was not about to give me the benefit of the doubt.

I’m not saying his initial impression was wrong.

But after a couple years I guess he finally decided I might be ok.

Uncle Terry and I are separated in age by only two years, but I call him “Unc” and he calls me ”my nephew, Little Jimmy.”

Cracks me up.

But enough about me. Look at those beautiful cheeks. And Jamie’s aren’t bad either.

You may look at this photo of San Bernardino, California, my hometown, and think to yourself, What a lovely town. It looks so peaceful. So tranquil. Living there must be absolutely delightful.

You would be incorrect. I just stumbled upon an online article that names San Bernardino as the eighth most dangerous city in America. But other sources dispute that number eight ranking. They say it’s far worse than that.

Just before the pandemic, CBS Local Los Angeles rated San Bernardino the most dangerous city in California and the third most dangerous city in the United States.

Another source placed it at #10 and yet another source put it at #2. No matter which is accurate, San Bernardino is not a very safe place and you should be cautious if you are to visit.

Just take a look at some of the crime stats and give thanks that you don’t live where I grew up.

Let’s put those numbers in perspective. In 2020 there were 69 murders in San Bernardino and a homicide rate of 31.06 per hundred thousand people. That compares to an United States average of just 7.8 homicides per 100,000. In other words, local residents are four times more likely to get murdered than the average American. I can’t find 2020 statistics for McKinney, Texas, where we now live, but in 2019 our murder rate was a minuscule 1.0 per 100,000. In 2018, the rate was zero. In 2017, it was 1.1 murder.

But back to San Bernardino. Turns out the fear of living dangerously is nicely dispersed across the metropolitan area.

San Bernardino Neighborhoods to Avoid

The city center is the most dangerous area. This includes:

Feldheym

Stadium West

East Valley

Carousel

International

Little West

Valley View

Colton

Lankershim and Warm Springs

Colton

Perris Hill

Please note that my actual hometown, Colton, a seedy little suburb nestled up alongside San Bernardino’s sweaty underbelly, is apparently so dangerous that it was listed twice. The same article notes that parts of neighboring cities of Rialto, Highland, and Redlands “can be dicey.”

In other words, avoid the entire “Inland Empire” region. You risk your life damn near anywhere in the area.

On the other hand, the valley is surrounded by beautiful mountains and there are actually some days when they’re not hidden behind a heavy brown veil of smog.

Choose wisely.

We have a small guest house. It began its life as a garage, but decades ago some long-forgotten previous owner turned it into a guest house. We’re getting ready to turn it back into a garage.

Sadly, that will mean the end of what must be one of the strangest pieces of art in North Texas — the macabre monkey mural that graces the wall in the guest house bathroom. The simians have long, rope-like arms and white blobs instead of noses. If I had to guess, I’d say they’re half chimpanzee and half orangutan and while you’re at it, throw in another half alien.

Neighbors who’ve lived nearby through multiple owners of our home tell us that the monkeys have been staring down at bathers for decades. They’re like ancient pictographs because no one really knows their age nor their back story nor who their creators may have been.

I suggested that the monkeys might have some sort of historical significance or at least have some value as memorabilia, and that we should have them carefully removed, restored and framed for display in the house.

Jamie, who without my knowledge has apparently elevated herself to Family Art Critic & Decor Goddess, insists that she does not want the hideous creatures in her house. Nor in her guesthouse.

Her loss, I’d say.

But what the hell are these creatures? I spent some time googling ”long-armed simians” in an attempt to pin it down. Are they chimpanzees? Or maybe gibbons? Possibly siamangs (a type of ape I had never heard of until I googled ”long-armed simians)? Possibly orangutans?

What do you think?

I never really liked living in the big city but had to because I was always partial to eating, and small town advertising copywriters have a disturbing tendency to starve to death.

After working for a couple years at a really good small agency in Los Angeles, and then for a few more months at the biggest agency in town, I gradually came to realize that I was just not cut out for life in the big city. I decided to explore possibilities in smaller markets, and my first thought was Phoenix.

So I took a few days off from my job, packed my portfolio and my suitcase, and drove six hours across the desert to the the Valley of the Sun.

The whole trip was, I admit, a bit haphazard. Planning ahead was not my forte in those days. I hadn’t bothered to set up any appointments in advance. I figured I’d just show up and doors would magically open for me. Truth be told, I didn’t have enough experience to know I didn’t know how to interview for a new job.

I brought along a list of the largest ad agencies in Phoenix and started at the top. I found a phone booth, poked in a dime, dialed the number of the Owens Agency, and asked the receptionist if I could speak to the creative director. He answered on the first ring.

Loren: Loren Markus.

Jim: Hi, Loren. I’m a copywriter and I’d like to show you my portfolio.

Loren: You’re a copywriter? Where have you worked?

Jim: In Los Angeles.

Loren: At ad agencies?

Jim: DJMC and Clinton E Frank.

Loren: You mean you’re a real copywriter?

Jim: Huh?

Loren: You’ve worked at real agencies and written real copy for real clients?

Jim: Well, yeah, sure. What do you mean?

Loren: I haven’t seen a real portfolio in a couple years. The last guy who called me and told me he was a copywriter was working at a pizza parlor. Can you come over and see me right now?

This is odd, I thought, but immediately hopped in my car and drove a few blocks to the Owens office. Loren greeted me in the lobby with a big smile on his face. He was short and stocky and his face was accented with a pair of thick horn rim glasses and topped with a mop of curly brown hair. We went to his office and had a delightful time as he reviewed my work. He was a very funny, very warm, very quirky guy.

After Loren finished reviewing my portfolio he looked at me very seriously and said, “I love your work, but don’t have an opening for a copywriter. How would you like to be creative director instead?”

I was dumbfounded by the question. I was still a rookie, a beginner, I had barely gotten started in the business.

Jim: I don’t understand. Aren’t you the creative director?

Loren: Not for long. I hate this town. I gotta get back to Los Angeles.

Jim: But I don’t have enough experience to be a creative director. I don’t even know how to produce a TV commercial.

Loren: Neither does anyone else in this town. I’ll stay on for a month or so and teach you everything you need to know.

This was clearly the craziest idea ever presented to me. I was terrified by the concept of a future filled with faking it every day.

”No way, Loren. It’s impossible. I can’t do it.”

”Go home and think it over for a couple days. You’d get paid a lot of money and I think you could pull it off.”

I went home. I thought it over. I bounced the idea off my girlfriend. I spoke to other trusted friends. They all agreed that this sounded like a plot line for a bad sitcom and that nothing this crazy could possibly work in real life. I called Loren and turned him down. He was very disappointed. We said goodbye. And then we dropped off each other’s radar.

Five years flew by. My career was progressing nicely. I had achieved my goal of getting out of Los Angeles and with a few more years experience had become creative director at a very good little ad agency in Orange County. But one day I saw a Help Wanted ad in the AdWeek classified ads. An agency in Honolulu was looking for a freelance copywriter to work on a huge freelance project. In Honolulu. I made an appointment and met with the owner of the agency at a hotel in Beverly Hills to show him my work. We immediately hit it off. I took a week’s vacation from the Orange County agency. The Honolulu agency flew me to paradise and put me up in a fancy beachfront hotel. “I’m bringing in a bunch of people to work on this project,” the owner told me. “I’m going to team you up with another Los Angeles copywriter who relocated to Honolulu a couple years ago. I think you guys will be a good fit.”

The agency had beautiful offices on Honolulu’s Pier 9 right next to the Aloha Tower. But we worked so hard for the next week that I never got closer to the ocean than the agency’s lobby. True to his word, the owner of the agency teamed me up with a brilliant, quirky writer. He was short and stocky and his face was accented with a pair of thick horn rim glasses and topped with a mop of curly brown hair. The word simpatico comes to mind. The getting to know each other phase lasted about five minutes and then it was as if we’d known each other forever. The week was filled with a lot of laughs and crazy stories and we churned out a ton of good work. The agency got more than its money’s worth.

But from the moment we met the other copywriter and I kept giving each other quizzical looks and taking turns saying, “I know you from somewhere.” We had both worked at agencies in Los Angeles and knew a lot of the same people, but the best we could come up with was that we looked familiar to each other.

Finally, about three days into our five day project he mentioned something about having once lived in Phoenix. The proverbial light went on over my head. I said, “Were you ever creative director at an agency in Phoenix?”

I didn’t even need to go any further. It all clicked for Loren, too. “Oh, my god,” he laughed. “you were the kid I tried to hire to replace me as creative director.”

I don’t know if I’ve ever laughed any harder. I don’t know if two people have ever laughed any harder together. It was a great moment and cemented a friendship that lasted for years.

Loren was famous among his agency friends for expressing his advertising philosophy in six simple words:

“Run the risk of being noticed.”

To which I guess I would add, “The only thing better than being noticed is being remembered.”

Loren passed away a few years ago, but I can assure you that he was noticed by many and remembered by all whose lives he touched. He was a true character. A mad genius. A free spirit. A lovable oddball. A maverick. An eccentric.

But, seriously, that thing about me replacing him as creative director in Phoenix was the worst idea he ever had. It would have been a complete disaster.

Ad agency people are eternal optimists and, often, complete suckers. Every time a client comes along with a wacky product concept and a good sales pitch, agencies line up for a chance to get in on the ground floor.

We were far from immune to this stupidity. Back in the late ’70s we had a client called Tri-Flon that had developed a Teflon-based lubricant. The damn stuff really worked and we were convinced that it would steal market share from WD-40 and that we would become immensely wealthy as the company’s fortunes skyrocketed and its advertising budget ballooned.

Tri-Flon was an underfunded start-up so instead of doing a big, national TV campaign we created a bunch of very small space print ads targeted at a number of industries. One of those ads, the one aimed at the agricultural industry, featured a farmer on a tractor. As you might expect of an underfunded start-up, budgets were extremely limited and we had to cut corners wherever we could.

When the art director complained that he didn’t have enough money in the budget to hire a model I said, ”No problem. I know someone who would be perfect for this ad.”

“What do you think he would charge us?” asked the art director.

“I can guarantee that he will work for free,” I answered.

“Can I see his portfolio?”

“Well,” I vamped, ”he doesn’t have a portfolio. But trust me on this. He’ll be perfect.”

I was his boss, so the art director nervously acquiesced. ”If you say so, but don’t blame me if it doesn’t work out.”

I called my dad that night and asked him if he’d like to be in a model in an ad.

“What does that mean?” he queried. ”What would I have to do?”

“Simple,” I replied. ”All you need to do is sit on a tractor.”

“Well, shit,” he exclaimed. “I’ve been doing that my whole life.”

“Just bring along a variety of your regular, everyday work clothes. We’ll look ’em over at the photo studio and decide what you should wear.”

“Sounds crazy to me,” he said in conclusion. ”But you’re the boss.”

My parents had never before visited me at work. They really had no understanding of what I did for a living nor how whatever it was I did could possibly generate enough income to survive. They understood brute physical labor but had no experience with the concept of getting paid to sit around and think.

The day of the photo shoot arrived and my mom and dad drove an hour from their home in solidly blue collar Colton, California to our offices in toney Newport Beach. I gave them a tour of our offices and introduced them to all our employees. They were a bit overwhelmed by it all.

When we got to my business partner’s office, he greeted them warmly and invited them in to sit down on his sofa. They’d never before met my partner. All they knew what that he was considerably older and far more sophisticated than their son and that — in their eyes, at least — he had taken me in, rescued me from inevitable failure, made me a partner, and set me on a path to success. To say they were intimidated would be a huge understatement.

“I know you have to get over to the photo shoot,” my partner began, ”but I’d love to talk to you for a few minutes. Jim’s told me some crazy stories about you, Bill, and I have a little trouble believing they’re true.”

“What did he tell you?” my dad asked timidly.

“Well, for one thing, he told me that you wear clothes you find lying in the street. Is that true?”

My mom was mortified. Here she was sitting uncomfortably on the sofa in this sophisticated man’s office, and he had just asked her to reveal the truth about what she considered a deeply embarrassing family secret. She was horrified that I had told the story and even more horrified that she was now being asked about it.

“Oh, no,” she blurted out. ”That’s not true.”

“The hell it’s not,” my dad interjected. And then, pointing toward his head, he said proudly, ”That’s where I got this hat.”

My business partner and I burst out laughing. My dad joined in because he felt absolutely no shame from picking up and wearing clothes he found on the road. He was a frugal man, a child of the Depression, and considered it wasteful to pass up a perfectly good article of clothing that he could acquire at no cost. My mom, on the other hand, turned a bright shade of red and lowered her eyes to avoid any further embarrassment.

That hat, the one my dad found lying in the middle of the road, is the one he is wearing in the Tri-Flon ad at the top of this post.

I had other work to do, so I could not attend the photo shoot but I knew our art director would take good care of my parents. When the shoot was over, he brought them back to my office and told me that my dad had been a big hit at the photo studio. The photographer, who had initially been wary of using a non-professional model, had asked the art director a question.

“Where did you find this model? He’s so natural that you’d think he’d spent his whole life on a tractor.”