We’re picky about the people we’ll work for. Which has meant, on a few occasions, passing-up what were generally considered “good opportunities”. On the other hand, it’s been a very long time since we’ve worked with the kinds of clients in the recorded conversation below.

(Although I make no guarantee for this entry’s veracity, I found no mention of it either on Snopes.com or UrbanLegends.com. And besides, it sounds pretty real to me!)

ON TALKING WITH CLIENTS.
What follows is an ACTUAL TRANSCRIPT of dialogue between the client and the creative team responsible for creating a documentary about the Rose Bowl Parade. Enjoy.

CLIENT 1: It’s confusing the way you jump around in time.

ME: How so?

CLIENT 1: Well, the show opens, and it’s present day, and then all of a sudden you say: “The Rose Parade was founded in 1890,” and we’re looking at old black and white pictures that clearly aren’t present day.

ME: Those are the pictures from the first parade in 1890.

CLIENT 1: But you never say that.

ME: I guess we thought when we said “The Rose Parade was founded in 1890,” it would sort of go without saying that the black and white pictures we’re seeing are from 1890.

CLIENT 2: But you see, YOU already know that. The viewer doesn’t.

CLIENT 3: Maybe you should say: “The Rose Parade was founded in 1890, and these pictures are pictures from the first Rose Parade, taken in 1890.”

ME: We could say that, but it might slow things down a little.

CLIENT 1: Well otherwise there’s no way anybody’s going to get it.

CLIENT 2: Also, it comes out of nowhere. People aren’t expecting a history lesson. You should warn them: “Here’s a historical fact about when the Rose Parade was founded: It was founded in 1890.”

CLIENT 3: And you should mention that those are horses pulling the horse drawn carriages.

CLIENT 1: There’re too many floats. We don’t want people to think the Rose Parade is all about floats.

CLIENT 2: It’s more than that. There’s too much emphasis on the parade. We don’t want people to think the Tournament of Roses is all about a parade.

CLIENT 1: One of the volunteers you interviewed really didn’t look good.

ME: So we should take her out?

CLIENT 1: No, she’s important. But can you make her look less fat?

ME: That’s really not something we can fix in editing.

CLIENT 2: Her hair’s bad too.

CLIENT 2: I’m a little upset. We specifically said that we wanted to see diversity, but you make the Tournament Association look like it’s a bunch of white men.

ME: Not to be out of line, but isn’t the Tournament Association pretty much a bunch of white men?

CLIENT 2: That’s not the point. You show the Tournament presidents of the past several years, and every one of them is a white man.

ME: Has there ever been a Tournament president who wasn’t a white man?

CLIENT 2: That’s not the point. You show a series of Grand Marshals from the past hundred years, and only three of them are black.

ME: There have only been three black Grand Marshals in the past hundred years.

CLIENT 2: That’s not the point.

CLIENT 1: One of the float designers said floats start as a “figment” of his imagination. “Figment” is a copyrighted Disney character. We can’t have him say that.

ME: Disney owns the character “Figment,” they can’t actually own the phrase “figment of my imagination.”

CLIENT 1: Yes they can. It’s a Disney character.

ME: Yeah, well so’s “Dopey.”

CLIENT 1: What’s that?

ME: Nothing.

CLIENT 3: Watching this video, no one would ever know there are horses in the parade.

ME: We actually have a lot of shots of horses.

CLIENT 3: Okay, you have shots of horses, but you never specifically say “The Parade includes horses.”

ME: Um, actually, after you brought it up at the last presentation, we put in the exact line: “The Parade includes horses.” We also have a scene where a horse driver talks in detail about specific horse breeds.

CLIENT 3: I still don’t think it comes across.

CLIENT 1: I really loved the ending

CLIENT 2: Me too. It’s a great ending.

CLIENT 3: Very emotional.

CLIENT 1: Still, it could be more emotional.

CLIENT 2: Yeah. It doesn’t quite wrap up what the Rose Parade means to me.

CLIENT 3: It could be more emotional.

CLIENT 1: It was kind of dry.

CLIENT 2: Maybe if you had some, I don’t know, people bursting into tears.

CLIENT 1: Really, the ending now. It just ends. Nobody cries. Nobody jumps for joy.

CLIENT 2: Why don’t you have an interview with the Grand Marshal right before the parade?

ME: You mean right before this year’s parade?

CLIENT 2: Yeah.

ME: This year’s parade has already happened, so it’s hard to go back and get a new interview from that day.

CLIENT 1: It’s too bad, because the ending’s really weak.

CLIENT 3: Maybe you could add a horse.

We premiered the new Birmingham Venture Club logo at the March meeting today—and Michael Tomberlin posted a nice little note about it on al.com, along with a link to our website.

You can see the note, and the vertical version of the logo, at this address: http://bit.ly/v-club

I suppose this is going to make somebody mad, but here it is…

While watching the NCAA basketball tournament last night, an interesting thought crossed my mind: Why are there so many white coaches on the sidelines? Because that’s where they spent their careers as players.

Not only was it a common occurrence for all ten players on the court to be black. A large percentage of the black players in the games were dark skinned—which tells me that even a drop of Caucasian blood may well be a genetic impairment to basketball greatness.

Boy, March must be a disheartening month for White Supremacists.

(ANOTHER FABULOUS DAVID BROOKS EDITORIAL)

Every age produces its own sort of fables, and our age seems to have produced The White Messiah fable.This is the oft-repeated story about a manly young adventurer who goes into the wilderness in search of thrills and profit. But, once there, he meets the native people and finds that they are noble and spiritual and pure. And so he emerges as their Messiah, leading them on a righteous crusade against his own rotten civilization…

Of all the directors who have used versions of the White Messiah formula over the years, no one has done so with as much exuberance as James Cameron in “Avatar.”…The hero is a white former Marine who is adrift in his civilization….

The white guy notices that the peace-loving natives are much cooler than the greedy corporate tools and the bloodthirsty U.S. military types he came over with. He goes to live with the natives, and, in short order, he’s the most awesome member of their tribe. He has sex with their hottest babe. He learns to jump through the jungle and ride horses. It turns out that he’s even got more guts and athletic prowess than they do. He flies the big red bird that no one in generations has been able to master…

COMPLETE ARTICLE HERE: http://nyti.ms/white-messiah

I miss T-Buff’s white suit, and his reassuring vow: “We will…approve your credit.” I miss Suzuki Man. I miss Jim Skinner’s quivering liver. Heck, I even miss Jim and Jimmy.

Re-gard-less of what the tastemakers might say, not all “bad” advertising is bad. And today, nobody does Bad better than Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal—a North Carolina-based comedy duo who joined my roster of all-time ad heroes early last year with a musical-comedy masterpiece for The Red House (“Where black people and white people buy furniture!”).

Several months later, Rhett&Link created a dark epic in the grand Clint Eastwood | Sergio Leone tradition for Cullman Liquidation (used mobile home sales).

Now comes their latest creation: A jingle-driven love letter for Corydon, Indiana’s Butt Drugs. Yes, that’s the store’s real name. And yes, they have a lot of fun with it (“free parking in the rear!”).

I’d describe the primary tone of Rhett&Link’s spots as heartfelt irony. They select overtly peculiar or utterly humdrum businesses as their clients, and celebrate their actors’ absolute lack of star quality. But they never do it at the expense of the businesses, or their “stars”. Yeah, they’re playing these folks for laughs, but they do it with genuine affection—and they always leave me loving the people (and the businesses). That’s a special talent.

Better still, they benefit their clients’ businesses. Just to make sure, I called The Red House and Cullman Liquidation—and both reported a very positive impact from their spots (although Robert Lee from Cullman Liquidation did lament the stifling credit environment’s impact on his ability to finance new customers).

If you’ve never seen their work before, you owe it to yourself to spend a few minutes with Rhett&Link:

THE RED HOUSE

http://bit.ly/redhouse-spot

CULLMAN LIQUIDATION

http://bit.ly/cullman-spot

BUTT DRUGS

http://bit.ly/butt-drugs

“An idealogical system in conflict with the facts generally finds it prudent to defer to itself.”—David Berlinski

“I’ve gone into hundreds of fortune-teller’s parlors, and I’ve been told thousands of things. But nobody ever told me I was a policewoman getting ready to arrest them.”
—New York City Detective

“Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.”
—Anonymous

“There are 3 kinds of people in the world: Those who can do math, and those who can’t.”
—An English Major

Flipping through channels the other day, I stopped briefly at PBS’s latest ode to Darwin. After a couple minutes, it hit me: That whole hypothesis about adaptive behavior and natural selection is so true!

Witness, for example, how adeptly a biologist camouflages his conclusions against that vast body of fact which utterly undermines the theory of evolution—thereby preserving his status in the herd.