This is the last photo ever taken of my mom and dad together. It was taken in May 1985 at my first ad agency’s tenth anniversary party. He suffered a heart attack a week later. “I think he was very sick before the heart attack,” my mom said after his death, “but he held on just long enough to go to your party.”

And that somehow leads us to today.

Jamie asked me what I’d like for Christmas. I gave her the same answer I always give when asked that question. “There’s nothing I want, nothing I need. I have everything I could possibly want in life.”

In other words, I have a lot to give thanks for. A lot to be grateful for. I may not have accumulated as much as some other people, but I have more than most.

Back in the late 1930s, my dad and a bunch of his Dutch pals migrated from frigid northwest Montana to sunny Southern California. They began their adult lives milking cows for other dairy farmers, but each of them fanatically saved every penny of their truly hard-earned wages, and they all eventually started their own dairies.

Milking cows is hard, dirty work and no one ever got rich from doing it. Nevertheless, all those Dutch dairy farmers — all except my dad, that is — became extremely wealthy.

How, you may ask. Well, dairies require land, a commodity that was cheap and plentiful in California in the 1940s, so the others bought as much of it as they could afford in hopes that they could use the meager profit they made from milking a small number of cows to buy more cows and sell more milk and then buy more land, ad infintum. I doubt that any of them were economically-savvy enough to anticipate how California’s post-World War II population would boom nor how that boom would impact the value of their land. Much to their surprise, sprawling suburbs soon began encroaching on the dairy properties that once sat in the middle of nowhere. Before long they all became land rich even if they were cash poor. (One of them just happened to begin his dairy a few blocks from a small Southern California amusement park called Knotts Berry Farm. The park grew and expanded and every time he wanted a chunk of cash he sold a couple more acres to the Knott family.)

“I never wanted more than I could handle by myself,” my dad always said. So instead of buying hundreds of acres as his buddies did, he bought twenty. Instead of acquiring thousands of cows, he slowly built his herd from six to one hundred. Instead of hiring dozens of workers to milk cows around the clock, he worked from 4:00 in the morning until 8:00 at night to do all the milking himself.

All of his Dutch dairy farmer buddies were baffled by his attitude. Twenty years later they were still poking fun at him the way guy friends do. “You’re still driving a Buick, Bill, but we’re all driving Cadillacs.” And a decade later, “You’re still driving a Cadillac, Bill, but we’re all driving Mercedes Benz.”

“Maybe so,” he’d chuckle, ”but everything I own is paid for.”

After they left, I’d look at him and ask, “Don’t you want to be rich like Jake and Hank and Sam?” and he’d respond by saying, “There’s nothing wrong with wanting more, but you should always be happy with what you have.”

I cannot tell you how many times my mom or dad uttered those words. And even more importantly, I cannot begin to estimate how many times they demonstrated that philosophy in their everyday lives. Hearing it called a philosophy probably would have boggled their minds because to them it was just a way to get through life happily.

My first business partner, the guy who founded the ad agency mentioned above, had the opposite point of view. He lived as if he were rich even though he wasn’t. From Monday to Friday he’d tell me, “You are the cheapest man alive.” Then, when I visited my parents on the weekend, my dad would say, “God damn, you just piss your money away.”

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve given my parents many silent thanks for pounding their remarkably sensible philosophy into my brain. I’ve tried to follow their example and that, I think, is what makes me such a lucky man. I’m just plain happy with what I have. And why shouldn’t I be? I have the best wife in the world. The sweetest little dog in the world. Great friends. Great neighbors. Five wonderful god children. And I was lucky enough to be born in the best time and the best place in the history of the world.

Happy Thanksgiving, indeed.

 

 

 

A couple weeks after we moved from California to Texas, we went to the local Saturday farmer’s market. Jamie was paying for something at one vendor’s booth when he looked up from his folding chair and said, “I’m guessin’ you ain’t from Texas.”

“We just moved here three weeks ago,” Jamie replied.

”Did you buy a gun yet?” the vendor asked.

”No,” Jamie answered.

The woman behind us in line overheard this conversation and butted in to say, “Slackers.”

Yes, guns are legal in Texas and so is open carry. Which means that every once in a while you see some yahoo walking down the street with a handgun strapped to his hip like he’s on the way to the OK Corral. But it’s not the guns nor the gunmen who scare me. They actually make me feel a bit safer.

No, what scares the hell out of me are the other deadly weapons that Texans handle with complete disregard to their own safety and that of those around them.

Cars.

A great radio commercial for the motocross races at the old Ontario Motor Speedway said, “There’s only one rule in motocross. (PAUSE) And nobody knows what it is.”

That same philosophy clearly covers the macadam here in the Lone Star State. We’ve lived here almost eight years and have only figured out two ironclad rules:

1. No matter how fast you drive, someone will tailgate you.
2. No matter how closely you tailgate, someone will cut in between you and the car in front of you.

I’d love to attribute this insane behavior to overly testerone-fueled macho men in ten gallon hats, but that would be inaccurate. In reality, it is every man, woman, and member of the other seventy-four new genders for himself or herself or xyrself out here. Even eighteen wheelers swerve in and out of traffic and tailgate like they’re Formula One cars drafting at Monaco. And they’re not restricted to the right two lanes as they are in California.

About the same time we went to that farmer’s market, we also made a visit to the local office of the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles Department. We asked for a copy of the rules so we could study for our drivers license tests. The woman behind the counter seemed confused by my request. “You know,” I said, “the pamphlet that explains all the laws and rules.”

She was baffled.

“There’s no pamphlet,” she insisted.

”Then how can we study for the test,” I asked.

“There is no test. If you have a drivers license from another state, we’ll replace it with a new one from Texas. It’s good for ten years and we’ll extend it for another ten years as long as you apply before the first one expires.”

That may explain this stat I pulled off the internet: “The most dangerous city in the United States in which to drive is Dallas, with a collision likelihood of 46.5% above average. There are 14 fatal accidents for each 100,000 people, and 42% of those involve a drunk driver.”

Most people must be shocked the first time they cross the border from New Mexico into Texas and see that the speed limit has suddenly jumped to 85 mph. And if the speed limit is 85, most of the drivers are probably pegging the speedometer at 100 miles per hour or more out there between El Paso and Del Rio. But no matter how fast they’re driving, someone else is undoubtedly following them close enough to read the small print on their bumper stickers.

When we decided to leave California, a dear friend volunteered to get a U-Haul truck and move all our worldly possessions halfway across the country to Texas. The first 99% of his drive was uneventful, but he was pulled over by a state traffic officer as soon as he reached the outskirts of Dallas. When the officer approached the window our friend boiled over.

“These people are crazy,” he hollered. “They wouldn’t let me merge onto the freeway.”

The cop started laughing. “I can tell from your license plate that y’all aren’t from around here,” he said. Instead of giving our friend a ticket he gave him some advice: “Don’t worry about the other trucks. Just move over and they’ll get out of your way.”

Either that or they’ll pull out their guns and start shooting.

I just found a tattered old box stuffed full of memorabilia from my days in the ad agency business. The best part of those days was working alongside so many remarkably talented, funny, quick-witted people.

We had an office in San Francisco. I got into the habit of spending two days a week in the city by the bay because my girlfriend lived there, and because I thought my presence might help build a common culture between the two offices, but mostly because it got me away from my lunatic business partner.

One of our San Francisco copywriters, a kid named Larry Chin, had a brain that was severely mis-wired. In a good way. Larry was five foot four and Chinese, but he thought he was black. He listened to rap music back when it was in its infancy, lusted after bosomy black women twice his size, and dreamed of playing in the NBA. He was hilarious and I always enjoyed the time I spent with him.

Each week when I arrived in the San Francisco office, I’d find on my desk a stack of Larry’s latest doodles. I thought he was a genius, a gifted artist able to capture the essence of his subjects’ personalities with minimal strokes of the pen. Although much of his commentary took aim at me, he did cartoons about all his co-workers, and his output was so voluminous that I sometimes wondered how he got any real work done. You know, the stuff we were paying him to do.

Here are some of my favorite Chin originals.

 

A lot of people doodle during meetings. Some people do faces. Some do geometric shapes. Some do flowers. I did alphabets inside word balloons. When people asked why I told them that everything they needed to be a copywriter was right there in that doodle. At every stop I made in both offices I accidentally left behind yellow legal pads covered with alphabets and word balloons. Everyone knew who they belonged to and dutifully returned them to my office. Whenever Larry returned one, it was filled with page after page of Chin-toons. For example, he did a whole series of cartoons based on my alphabet obsession.

 

 

 

I did some ads in our Irvine office for a Japanese client named CIE. Next time I visited our San Francisco office, Larry was effusive in his praise for the new campaign.

 

I don’t remember the story on this one. I must have made some comments that improved an ad Larry was working on.

Here are a couple Chin-toons comparing San Francisco’s De Young Museum to a fictional deYong Museum that existed only in his mind.

 

Once a farmboy, always a farmboy. I would come back to the office shocked by things I’d seen on the streets of San Francisco.

Larry came up with a prototype for the first issue of my own comic book, deYong and The Restless.

Finally, years later, long after Larry had left us to work for another great little agency on the east coast, he heard that I was retiring. He sent me this cartoon.

I lost touch with the talented Mr Chin many years ago. If anyone reading this knows where he is and has his contact info, I’d love to talk to him again.

We experienced a small earthquake while we were in Southern California.

It was just a gentle little rolling motion that both of us enjoyed. I know that sounds absolutely unbelievable to anyone who didn’t grow up experiencing earthquakes on a semi-regular basis, but it’s true. Lifelong Californians feel the earth start to move and think, “Cool. It’s an earthquake.” But when people who’ve spent their entire lives in Texas, for example, think of earthquakes, they’ve been conditioned by the media to think it means the earth will open up and entire cities will be swallowed.

For example, here’s how fear-mongering KTLA-TV in Los Angeles reported this mild little temblor:

A magnitude 4.3 earthquake struck Carson and the surrounding area at 7:58 p.m. Friday, according to the United States Geological Survey. 

The quake’s epicenter was located in Carson city limits, near Dolores Street Elementary School.

Hundreds of reactions poured in after news of the quake was posted to KTLA’s Facebook page, with one user calling the temblor “a scary one.”

“I literally heard it coming,” they wrote. “The house was rumbling for a good 10 seconds.”

Another user doubted that even preliminary magnitude of 4.4 was high enough, adding that they believe the quake “Was way bigger than that.”

Contemptible cowards, I say. A 4.3 earthquake isn’t enough to frighten a little girl. Here’s what a real earthquake looks like:

San Bernardino’s Montecito cemetery sits at the southern end of Waterman Avenue, perched in the low hills just above Loma Linda. My dad made my mom traipse all over the cemetery in search of the perfect gravesite. He wanted the plot that had the best view of the family farm down at the bottom of the hill.

Unfortunately, the trees that were mere saplings when he chose the gravesite have now grown much taller and much fuller and they now block the view of the dairy even if you stand on your tiptoes and crane your neck. (And trust me on this, my mom and dad are in no condition to be doing either.)

We poured a “highball” over each side of their headstone. I’m pretty sure I heard him say, “Enough of this sentimental shit, kid. Get off your ass and get back to work.”

Jamie and I have finally severed our last tie to the once great state of California. We just sold the first rental home my parents purchased back in 1961. It was in the family for almost exactly sixty years.

On what sounds like a completely different subject but really isn’t, my dad wasn’t much of a drinker. He consumed a bit more alcohol than I do, but I’m damn near a teetotaler. I’ve always assumed he limited his alcoholic intake because his favorite drink was the most godawful concoction in the history of alcohol. Seriously. Think up the worst alcoholic beverage you can imagine and I guarantee you that his drink of choice was worse.

When friends came over for a visit, he would excuse himself, mosey into the kitchen, and mix up a highball for everyone in attendance. That was what he called a glass of Canadian Club whiskey mixed with chilled Welch’s purple grape juice.

Have you ever heard of anything so disgusting?

According to Wikipedia, “A highball is a mixed alcoholic drink composed of an alcoholic base spirit and a larger proportion of a non-alcoholic mixer. Examples include the Seven and Seven, Scotch and soda, and rum and Coke. A highball is typically served over ice in a large straight-sided highball glass or Collins glass.”

I guess my dad’s concoction met the strict definition of a highball. It did, indeed, have an alcoholic base spirit, the Canadian Club, and a larger proportion of a non-alcoholic mixer, the Welch’s grape juice. But what a hideous combo. Furthermore, our family had no fancy store-bought glasses, so I’m pretty sure he served his highballs in the repurposed jelly jars we used as everyday drinking glasses. To the best of my recollection, ice was unnecessary because the Welch’s grape juice came straight out of the refrigerator.

What does this have to do with us severing our last tie with California?

Well, Jamie and I decided to celebrate our final break by flying to California and visiting my parents’ graves. We picked up a bottle of Crown Royal (We had no choice. When I asked the liquor store owner for a bottle of Canadian Club, he shook his head sadly from side-to-side and said, “Too old fashioned.” His alternative was an equally inexpensive plastic bottle of Crown Royal) then stopped at a small grocery store to purchase a bottle of cold Welch’s grape juice, and then made our way to the cemetery. After duplicating my dad’s disgusting concoction to the best of my abilities, we choked down our drinks and poured two more over Bill’s and Helen’s graves, just to thank them for the head start in life they gave me.

And then we left California.

Jamie says she’ll return to visit friends, but I swear I’ll never return until god kids get married or have babies or I need to attend a funeral. Who the hell knows? Maybe I’ll go back for something else somewhere along the line, but the state in which I grew up has transformed into something I don’t recognize, don’t like, and don’t want to spend time in.

Give me Texas. Give me Madeira. Give me the Barossa Valley. Give me peace and quiet and politicians who are at least semi-rational and no more than semi-corrupt. Is that asking too much?

Let’s set the Way Back Machine for Los Angeles’ Griffith Park in late summer 1972. Here we are on the set of the first TV commercial I ever wrote. As you may be able to guess, the client was McDonald’s.

I (the scrawny, long-haired, bespectacled and bearded lad third from the left) may look as if I’m in charge, patiently explaining the intricacies of the storyboard to Ronald McDonald, Bob Elen, the ad agency account executive, and Carl Gruener, its broadcast production manager. In reality I was scared to death that one or all of them would figure out that I didn’t have the slightest clue what I was doing.

This was back in the days before McDonald’s introduced playgrounds to its restaurants, and this commercial was supposed to promote their precursor, a primordial traveling McDonaldLand playground that went from location to location.

I don’t remember much about the commercial and, sadly, no longer have a copy of it. It’s no great loss because there was nothing especially memorable about it except that it was the first one I ever wrote. But I do recall that we had a problem with one of the TV networks. At some point in the commercial Ronald looked at a couple kids and said something like, “Let’s get this show on the road,” at which point the action shifted to super fast motion to show the transformation of Ronald’s 18-wheeler into a McDonaldLand playground.

After viewing the completed commercial, some officious genius in the network Standards & Practices Department said, “No way. We can’t show kids running down the stairs. That wouldn’t be safe.” A long-forgotten ad agency executive, probably one of the two other guys in the photo, finally convinced His Officiousness that it would be impossible for any children to suddenly shift into super fast motion, so the commercial eventually received his blessing.

By the way, this is the real Ronald McDonald. Each large market around the country had its own local Ronald who made personal appearances in that region. But this commercial must have been some kind of big deal because King Moody, who played Ronald in all McDonald’s national commercials between 1969 and 1985, deigned to grace us with his presence at this shoot.

Did I really just write the sentence, “This is the real Ronald McDonald” and emphasize the word real?

Advertising is a very strange business.

Tawny Kitaen, 1980s sex kitten, has passed away. She was just 59 years old.

Not even my closest friends know about the long term relationship Tawny and I shared. But now that she has passed on to that Great Music Video in the Sky, it’s time for the truth to come out.

But first, let’s pause for 4 minutes and 31 seconds to remember what critics universally acknowledge as her greatest performance: “Hot Babe With Giant ‘80s Hair Rolling Around On A Jaguar Sedan” in White Snake’s “Here I Go Again” video.

Tawny and I first met back in 2001. Fate brought us together at about 11:30 a.m. on a misty Saturday morning at Starbuck’s at Fashion Island in Newport Beach. Our relationship quickly blossomed into something truly beautiful and lasted until 11:45. Maybe even 11:47. Longer, sadly, than many of my other relationships.

I love to take my iPad to coffee shops to watch people as I work, but I hate sitting in hard wooden chairs. This particular Starbucks had two plush, comfy chairs just inside the front window. I was seated in one and the other was empty when a beautiful, auburn-haired young woman approached me. She looked deep into my eyes — nay, my soul — and began a conversation that is etched into my memory.

Tawny: Excuse me.

Jim: (looking up from my iPad) Yes?

Tawny: I’m meeting a friend here in a few minutes and we haven’t seen each other in a while and I was just wondering if you would be willing to let us sit here.

Jim: Here in these two chairs?

Tawny: Well, yes, if that’s ok with you.

Jim: Sure. Have a seat. If you don’t mind, I’ll just sit here until your friend arrives.

Tawny: (sitting down in the opposite chair) That would be great. Thank you so much. What’s your name.

Jim: I’m Jim. And you are…?

Tawny: Tawny.

Jim: (Still so stupid that I do not recognize Tawny Kitaen) Tawny. How do you spell that?

Tawny: T-A-W-N-Y.

Jim: Interesting. Is that your given name or a nickname?

Tawny: It’s a professional name. My real name is Julie.

Jim: Do you mind if I call you Julie?

Tawny: (laughing) No. It’ll just be you and my mom who call me that.

Jim: Well, I’m in good company then.

Tawny: (laughing and pointing to my laptop) What are you working on?

Jim: I’m just checking last night’s baseball scores.

Tawny: You’re a baseball fan?

Jim: Yes. I love baseball.

Tawny: My husband is a baseball player.

Jim: Anyone I would have heard of? What’s your last name?

Tawny: Finley.

Jim: Are you married to Steve Finley (a player for the Arizona Diamondbacks)?

Tawny: (almost insulted) No. Chuck Finley.

Jim: (I sit silently for a moment, dumbfounded because I know Chuck Finley, a darn fine pitcher for the Los Angeles Angels, is married to Tawny Kitaen and suddenly realizing who I’ve been sitting there talking to). Tawny? As in Tawny Kitaen?

Tawny: Yes.

At that moment another attractive young woman, obviously the one Tawny was waiting for, approached us. Tawny introduced us. She was the heiress to one of Orange County’s great fortunes. I graciously offered her my prized plush chair, then walked away and found myself a cold, hard wooden chair on the other side of the store. I finished looking at the previous night’s baseball box scores, re-watched Tawny’s infamous White Snake video (a couple times), checked my email, and then packed up to go home. My car was parked outside the front door, so I had to pass the two friends on my way out. I walked over to them.

Jim: Just wanted to say good-bye. It was a pleasure meeting you, Julie.

Tawny: (laughing) You and my mom.

She jumped up and gave me a big, lingering hug. Well, truth be told I may have lingered a little longer than she did. Perhaps I even lingered into that hazy ok-we’re-strangers-and-this-is-getting-a-little-uncomfortable zone. And with that, our relationship ended. Although I must admit that I went back to that same Starbucks at about 11:30 a.m. every Saturday morning for the next couple months, just hoping that she would be there again. She wasn’t.

About two years later Tawny was arrested for using her stiletto heels to turn her baseball player husband into a piece of Swiss cheese. This is merely an assumption on my part, but I’m convinced the poor woman did it out of frustration caused by the sudden end of our relationship.

Rest in peace, Julie.

Bill Gates announced yesterday that he and his wife of 27 years are divorcing. We’ll get back to that a little later. Right after I seemingly go waaaaaay off subject.

Back in the early 1980s the small ad agency in which I was a partner landed a major software account located somewhere in Texas. Dallas, as I recall.

Sometimes client-agency relationships just don’t work out. It’s kind of like a marriage. Sometimes all the assembled guests watch the bride and groom exchanging vows and think, “This is a big mistake.” Sure, both sides go through the ceremony with the best of intentions, but then he finds out she only pretended to like baseball and she finds out he has an unnatural attraction to teenage boys. Or something like that. Nobody’s fault. Sometimes it’s just better that you get a divorce and move on with your lives.

That’s how it was with this client. Both sides knew pretty quickly that a divorce was in the offing but neither of us wanted to admit we had made a mistake. Luckily, we landed a huge account a few months later which allowed us the luxury of resigning the Texas account before they got around to firing us.

The bright spot in this otherwise mismatched marriage was a young woman named Ann Winblad. She had become part of this conglomerate when it acquired the software company she had founded a few years earlier. She was only in her late twenties, maybe her very early thirties, but that transaction had already made her a very wealthy young woman.

We liked Ann. She seemed to like us. And, personally, the two of us got along famously. She was very smart, had a great sense of humor, and knew good advertising from bad. Far as I was concerned, losing Ann was the only negative part of resigning the account.

Fast forward a couple years. I was attending the National Computer Conference in Las Vegas. Think of it as the nerd Oscars. Thousands of guys with socks that didn’t match, and with plastic pen holders in the pockets of their shortsleeved button down shirts, all scurrying from booth to booth to see the latest floppy disc drive from Shugart or the new, upgraded Dumb Terminal from Lear Siegler. It was an almost exclusively male event and most of the attendees thought of women as alien creatures from another universe.

I stepped into the immense Las Vegas Convention Center, paused in the middle of the main aisle just long enough to get my bearings, and then surveyed my surroundings. A hundred feet down the aisle, a head of blonde hair caught my attention. A head of blonde female hair. This was something worthy of far more attention than any of the show’s incredible technological innovations.

Although I hadn’t seen her in several years, I immediately recognized that blonde head of hair as Ann Winblad’s. She had not yet spotted me, so I hurriedly weaved my way down the crowded aisle in her direction. By the time I approached her, she had turned in the other direction and was deep in conversation, probably negotiating another multimillion dollar software contract.

I approached her from behind, put a hand on each of her shoulders, then leaned in and kissed her on the neck. I don’t know why I did it. Ann and I had never done anything more physical than shake hands. There was no reason for me to think it was appropriate nor that she would appreciate it. But I did it. Blame it on my OCD. Or maybe call it temporary insanity.

Without missing a beat — and I swear this is 100% true — she blurted out, “Oh, my god. Is that you, Jim?” I have no idea how she knew who was doing the nibbling. I’d like to think she had sensed my raw animal magnetism, but it was probably something far more humdrum. The familiar scent of cheap cologne, perhaps. She spun around and gave me a big hug. We laughed. We talked. She told me she was doing well. I told her the agency was doing well. We both lied and said we’d get together the next time either of us was in the other’s area.

Then she said, “Hey, my boyfriend is here at the show. Let’s go to dinner tonight. I think you’d like him.”

“Sorry, can’t do it,” I responded. “I’m just here for the day. I have a five o’clock flight back to Orange County. Next time.” Truth is, much as I liked Ann as a client, I had no real interest in dining with her nerdy new boyfriend.

In 1998 Sean Connolly wrote a best seller called “Bill Gates: An Unauthorized Biography.” Gates had by then become The Richest Man in the World and it sounded like an interesting read, so I picked up a copy. It was revealed not too many pages into the book that Gate’s girlfriend of many years was none other than Ann.

Yes, I had turned down dinner with Bill Gates. What a moron. Me, not him.

Every article about Gates’ newly-announced divorce mentions the fact that he negotiated a very unusual pre-nup agreement with his wife. Despite the fact that The Richest Man in the World was already a billionaire when he married Melinda, the pre-nup didn’t mention money. But it did spell out that he was allowed to spend one weekend per year in a North Carolina beach cottage with former flame Ann Winblad.

Now I’m pretty sure that if today you asked Ann about the time I nibbled on her neck at the National Computer Conference, her response would be, “Jim who?” I guarantee you that she would not remember me. Why should she? Very few of the women I’ve kissed in my life remember me.

I, however, would like to believe that I am now the answer to a cool trivia question in Ann’s life:

“Name someone not named Bill Gates who has nibbled on my neck.”

COMING SOME OTHER TIME: MY OTHER ONE-DEGREE-OF-SEPARATION-FROM-BILL-GATES STORY.

We miss Australia. We talk about it every day. I’m homesick for a place that isn’t actually my home. It’s getting so bad that I saw Australia in my purple potato chips today. Qantas is hinting around that it may start flying internationally again in late October. ‘Bout time.