I went to a fun party last night with my good friend Luke. It was a birthday party for our friend Caro, who just turned 27. It was at her little apartment, and the place was packed with boys and girls, all of whom were Caro's age, plus or minus five years... a good place to meet people, then.
Luke and I are always looking to meet new people - we both moved to Hamburg around the same time, and met soon after, lamenting about how we don't know enough people, and now despite our charm and talent, we are dreadfully single. I came home with three new phone numbers in my little cell phone. Go me! But wait, two of them are guys. Wha... ?
This is something that's happened often over here in Hamburg. I go to a party, and meet new and interesting people. Someone will sprechen at me, and tell them sorry, I'm the one guy here who doesn't speak German. A few of them bail immediately - especially German girls who don't speak English very well; they tend to be really self conscious about it which is funny, because I'm a guy, so theoretically it shouldn't matter: "Baby, your head may not speak good English, but that body is slammin' it's way through all kinds of language barriers!", etc. - but most speak English really well. So we talk about America, California, San Francisco, Germany, Hamburg, why I'm here, and how it's possible to be an English-only writer in Germany and on and on and on.
And because we're all basically friendly, interesting people, and I guess because there aren't too many other Americans around to hang out with, eight guys out of ten (a rough estimate) ask me for my number. And now that I think about it, I don't have anything near that kind of hit rate with women. I think last night is pretty typical - a 2:1 ratio. Hmph.
I went to a lot of parties back in the states (or at least I went to enough to notice this pattern now) and I don't remember reflecting on this issue - I never got a guy's number. Maybe it's because so many of the parties I went to were made up of a group of people I spend time with anyway (school, work) so getting ahold of them wouldn't require contact info. Or maybe there were loads of men desperate to give me their number, but they were afraid someone would think they're gay. I'm sure this is illustrative of something to do with American males vs. German males, but I'm not sure what it is. Does any body know what it is? Are there any guys out there who can offer an explanation (or perhaps their number?)
Anyways, in addition to two really nice guys, last night I spent a lot of time talking to a lovely girl named Sandra. We covered many topics, including cities of origin, occupations, German vs. English, and why she lives in the boonies of Hamburg. We spent a bunch of time talking about how one of the few things I know how to say in German is Ich möchte eine latte machiatto bitte, and the chaos that ensues when the waitperson assumes I sprechen and then follows up with a barrage of coffee-related questions. She was interesting, tall and lanky, and just the right amount of goofy. She made the most adorable facial expressions. She was wearing red Adidas sneakers, and I'm a sucker for red sneakers. And in a delightful reversal of the social order of German twenty-somethings, she asked me if I'd like to meet for a latte macchiato some time, and I told her I'd love too. She grabbed a pen, handed it to me, and held out a very long left arm. I left my name, number, an American flag, and a cup of coffee with steam above, a saucer below, and smiley face on the cup. Then I got her number and put it in my phone, you know, just in case she forgets, and then showers too vigorously.
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
How not to be Rock n Roll
So we got another brief the other day. Apparently the powers-that-be here at our big fat ad agency have been inspired, and have shouted from the rooftops that this year they want the agency to be... wait for it... more rock n roll. It's the theme for the year. Our ideas should be more rock n roll and our executions more rock n roll and we're going to be more rock n roll with our clients and more rock n roll with each other.
I'm not sure if I'm getting the entire message here, because the message is always given in German and then translated into broken, jaded English by my frequently bitter co-workers. But it seems to boil down to the following key items: we're going to let our work be a little more kuh-RAZY!, we're not going to pitch clients who won't let us rock out with our cock out, and every other tuesday there'll be cocaine-fueled orgies with underage groupies*.
It's hard not to roll the old eyes with a cynical smile when two guys with a combined age of 104 think it's perfectly reasonable to tell us to be rock n roll. I'm not sure I can think of something that is less rock n roll than sending out a memo to be more rock n roll. I'm pretty sure there weren't any PowerPoint presentations at Led Zeppelin band meetings, and I doubt Kurt Cobain ever took the budget into consideration.
The point here, of course, is that you can't just tell someone (including yourself) to be more rock n roll. It has to come from within; it has to be a genuine feeling of FUCK YOU for almost everything around you; it has to be a rebel streak that takes no prisoners and gives convention and nay-sayers a big fat middle finger. And I think it helps to get drunk and throw up a lot.
And now we have this brief to think of ways to make the agency more rock n roll. It's great - we can hang out and think of ideas that'll make this place more crazy (and newsworthy! we were specifically instructed to come up with ideas that would get us into the paper... just like how Ozzy would get the gang together and said "Lads, let's get ourselves some press coverage!") so we can present them and get them killed for being too expensive or too crazy or too offensive or all three. "No," I can hear them saying, "more rock n roll!"
* yeah, I made up that third one.
I'm not sure if I'm getting the entire message here, because the message is always given in German and then translated into broken, jaded English by my frequently bitter co-workers. But it seems to boil down to the following key items: we're going to let our work be a little more kuh-RAZY!, we're not going to pitch clients who won't let us rock out with our cock out, and every other tuesday there'll be cocaine-fueled orgies with underage groupies*.
It's hard not to roll the old eyes with a cynical smile when two guys with a combined age of 104 think it's perfectly reasonable to tell us to be rock n roll. I'm not sure I can think of something that is less rock n roll than sending out a memo to be more rock n roll. I'm pretty sure there weren't any PowerPoint presentations at Led Zeppelin band meetings, and I doubt Kurt Cobain ever took the budget into consideration.
The point here, of course, is that you can't just tell someone (including yourself) to be more rock n roll. It has to come from within; it has to be a genuine feeling of FUCK YOU for almost everything around you; it has to be a rebel streak that takes no prisoners and gives convention and nay-sayers a big fat middle finger. And I think it helps to get drunk and throw up a lot.
And now we have this brief to think of ways to make the agency more rock n roll. It's great - we can hang out and think of ideas that'll make this place more crazy (and newsworthy! we were specifically instructed to come up with ideas that would get us into the paper... just like how Ozzy would get the gang together and said "Lads, let's get ourselves some press coverage!") so we can present them and get them killed for being too expensive or too crazy or too offensive or all three. "No," I can hear them saying, "more rock n roll!"
* yeah, I made up that third one.
Saturday, February 17, 2007
Tomorrow's To Do List
Tomorrow is Saturday, and I have no plans until the evening. So! I'm going to be so productive, it's going to blow your mind. Here's what's on the list:
Get up at a reasonable hour. Dude. Seriously. There's only so many hours that can be made productive, so you've got to take FULL advantage of them. Sleeping in is for losers with no future! Rise and shine and bring out your glory!
Wash sheet and set it out to dry. I only have one sheet for my bed. It needs to be washed once in a while, and it's time. I have a washer, but no dryer, and since I only have the one sheet, I've got to get up early (see above), wash it, and then hang it out to dry so that come bedtime, I'm not laying in a soggy fog of cold cold sadness.
Finish Slaughterhouse V. Holy crap this book is good! I borrowed it from Ricardo (or as Germans would say, he borrowed it to me) and started reading it. Then I noticed that I couldn't stop. I've read it long ago in high school, and I remember liking it then too. The writing is so good. It's visual, and uses lots of metaphor, but in a good way so it's not annoying and overblown. Good shit!
Start reading How to be Good. Last week I got a credit card from my bank (yay!) and this week I learned how to order English books off Amazon.de (yay!). Shipping of English books is free anywhere in Europe (who says America isn't loved around the world?) and apparently it's pretty fast too, cuz the books where here only days later. How to be Good is by Nick Hornby who wrote High Fidelity which of course was turned into one of my favorite movies ever, and a great book called A Long Way Down that I read a few weeks ago and loved.
Ride bike. Somewhere. Anywhere. It's going to be sunny, so get out there you fucking pansy.
Go to a birthday party. There's a birthday party for this crazy girl named Renatta tomorrow night. It won't start until 10 or 11 or even midnight because we're all so goddamn hip. So that leaves PLENTY OF TIME to get through this exciting to do list.
Exciting!
Get up at a reasonable hour. Dude. Seriously. There's only so many hours that can be made productive, so you've got to take FULL advantage of them. Sleeping in is for losers with no future! Rise and shine and bring out your glory!
Wash sheet and set it out to dry. I only have one sheet for my bed. It needs to be washed once in a while, and it's time. I have a washer, but no dryer, and since I only have the one sheet, I've got to get up early (see above), wash it, and then hang it out to dry so that come bedtime, I'm not laying in a soggy fog of cold cold sadness.
Finish Slaughterhouse V. Holy crap this book is good! I borrowed it from Ricardo (or as Germans would say, he borrowed it to me) and started reading it. Then I noticed that I couldn't stop. I've read it long ago in high school, and I remember liking it then too. The writing is so good. It's visual, and uses lots of metaphor, but in a good way so it's not annoying and overblown. Good shit!
Start reading How to be Good. Last week I got a credit card from my bank (yay!) and this week I learned how to order English books off Amazon.de (yay!). Shipping of English books is free anywhere in Europe (who says America isn't loved around the world?) and apparently it's pretty fast too, cuz the books where here only days later. How to be Good is by Nick Hornby who wrote High Fidelity which of course was turned into one of my favorite movies ever, and a great book called A Long Way Down that I read a few weeks ago and loved.
Ride bike. Somewhere. Anywhere. It's going to be sunny, so get out there you fucking pansy.
Go to a birthday party. There's a birthday party for this crazy girl named Renatta tomorrow night. It won't start until 10 or 11 or even midnight because we're all so goddamn hip. So that leaves PLENTY OF TIME to get through this exciting to do list.
Exciting!
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
The Ukranian way.
Got on the elevator this morning along with Andrej, who sits across from me, and a girl of, shall we say, some girth. We all exchanged pleasantries until the girl got off and left Andrej and me alone to ride up one more floor. And then Andrej turns to me, and in his thick Russian accent, he says simply:
She is strong!
Tell me Andrej, what's Russian for awesome?
She is strong!
Tell me Andrej, what's Russian for awesome?
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
My very first (very small) ethical dilemma (in advertising).
So we got a brief this week for a bank. They offer this savings account where twenty percent of what you put in gets put into a lottery, and you can win money and prizes. That's right, you put, say, fifty Euros of YOUR money into YOUR savings account, and assuming you don't win, a month later you have forty Euros. The account doesn't pay any interest.
My first thought was well that's fuckin' retarded. It goes against everything I've ever been told about the virtues of saving. The whole point of saving money is to let it sit there and not touch it and not do anything stupid with it like gamble it.
The second thing I thought was this would probably go over well with the young, not so wealthy, not so educated crowd. So I asked who the target audience is. Yep. Nailed it.
I knew this would happen eventually - it's the nature of the business. I knew that one day, someone would waltz into my office (or we'd meet in the kitchen, whatever) and ask me to make ads that convince the not-so-intelligent to do stupid things.
Back when I was trying to figure out if I wanted to make advertising my next career, I talked to some people in the biz, and a couple times I asked this question: do you ever feel bad about trying to get people to buy things they don't need? Most people just hemmed and hawed a bit and said you get over it. But one guy whose name I can't remember put it really well. He rolled his eyes and said something like: "Look, I try as hard as I can to do good work that doesn't take advantage of people... but if I make an ad that says something ridiculous, and you're dumb enough to fall for it, then you're just dumb, and there's not much I can do about it." I thought that was a pretty good answer. And I think it's fair. I'm a Darwinistic kinda guy, and I think the buyer ought to beware. Do your best and don't be an asshole, but everyone knows that advertising is all promises promises. But there's just no way accommodate everyone's stupidity.
Still, I don't want to lie to people, or trick them (Cigarettes are healthy! Mel Gibson loves the Jews! This bank account is a great deal!). And what they want us to do is tell people who don't know any better that this savings account is FUN! and HEY, A EURO ISN'T THAT MUCH ANYWAY! and YOU'LL WIN A LOT AND GET RICH! Which is okay if you're the national lottery, but not so cool if you're a bank who's supposed to be telling people how best to handle their money. Hmph.
Then the account folks pointed us to our lawyer (THAT's always a good sign) if we have questions about what we can and can't say. So I talked to Christian. Turns out it's legal to offer accounts like this, but it's not legal to advertise them. Or at least, it's not legal to say things like you're gonna get RICH from GAMBLING with us. He also said that the client knows all this, but they want to make ads anyway. I guess they figure they can either a) get away with it, or b) get caught, pay a fine, and still basically get away with it. Great.
So I let all that brew in my brain for a bit, while Ricardo and I tried to find good angles to sell a product that we both know is pretty lame. We came up with some initial ideas, nothing spectacular, and I kept whining (internally) about it. So I talked to Christian some more.
Turns out, he's got one of these accounts with another bank. Same deal - no interest, and twenty percent of what he puts in goes into the lottery. Every two weeks they do a bunch of drawings, and he's won a couple of times. Usually he wins €5 or less, and a couple of times he's won €50. He said that he's probably broken even. And that it's kinda fun. Huh. Christian's not a retard... he's pretty smart. Made it through law school and ever'thang.
So that pretty much took all the wind out of the sails on my little ship of righteousness. Meanwhile, Ricardo and I have a pile of ads that are kinda funny, and not too dastardly. We present them tomorrow... I'm sure most of them will get kicked out, especially the ones that make outright gambling references... and the one that shows a hand with outstretched fingers against a white background. The pinky finger is missing and the copy says "If this were our bank you could win back up to 150,000 fingers or maybe a car!"
That shit is genius.
My first thought was well that's fuckin' retarded. It goes against everything I've ever been told about the virtues of saving. The whole point of saving money is to let it sit there and not touch it and not do anything stupid with it like gamble it.
The second thing I thought was this would probably go over well with the young, not so wealthy, not so educated crowd. So I asked who the target audience is. Yep. Nailed it.
I knew this would happen eventually - it's the nature of the business. I knew that one day, someone would waltz into my office (or we'd meet in the kitchen, whatever) and ask me to make ads that convince the not-so-intelligent to do stupid things.
Back when I was trying to figure out if I wanted to make advertising my next career, I talked to some people in the biz, and a couple times I asked this question: do you ever feel bad about trying to get people to buy things they don't need? Most people just hemmed and hawed a bit and said you get over it. But one guy whose name I can't remember put it really well. He rolled his eyes and said something like: "Look, I try as hard as I can to do good work that doesn't take advantage of people... but if I make an ad that says something ridiculous, and you're dumb enough to fall for it, then you're just dumb, and there's not much I can do about it." I thought that was a pretty good answer. And I think it's fair. I'm a Darwinistic kinda guy, and I think the buyer ought to beware. Do your best and don't be an asshole, but everyone knows that advertising is all promises promises. But there's just no way accommodate everyone's stupidity.
Still, I don't want to lie to people, or trick them (Cigarettes are healthy! Mel Gibson loves the Jews! This bank account is a great deal!). And what they want us to do is tell people who don't know any better that this savings account is FUN! and HEY, A EURO ISN'T THAT MUCH ANYWAY! and YOU'LL WIN A LOT AND GET RICH! Which is okay if you're the national lottery, but not so cool if you're a bank who's supposed to be telling people how best to handle their money. Hmph.
Then the account folks pointed us to our lawyer (THAT's always a good sign) if we have questions about what we can and can't say. So I talked to Christian. Turns out it's legal to offer accounts like this, but it's not legal to advertise them. Or at least, it's not legal to say things like you're gonna get RICH from GAMBLING with us. He also said that the client knows all this, but they want to make ads anyway. I guess they figure they can either a) get away with it, or b) get caught, pay a fine, and still basically get away with it. Great.
So I let all that brew in my brain for a bit, while Ricardo and I tried to find good angles to sell a product that we both know is pretty lame. We came up with some initial ideas, nothing spectacular, and I kept whining (internally) about it. So I talked to Christian some more.
Turns out, he's got one of these accounts with another bank. Same deal - no interest, and twenty percent of what he puts in goes into the lottery. Every two weeks they do a bunch of drawings, and he's won a couple of times. Usually he wins €5 or less, and a couple of times he's won €50. He said that he's probably broken even. And that it's kinda fun. Huh. Christian's not a retard... he's pretty smart. Made it through law school and ever'thang.
So that pretty much took all the wind out of the sails on my little ship of righteousness. Meanwhile, Ricardo and I have a pile of ads that are kinda funny, and not too dastardly. We present them tomorrow... I'm sure most of them will get kicked out, especially the ones that make outright gambling references... and the one that shows a hand with outstretched fingers against a white background. The pinky finger is missing and the copy says "If this were our bank you could win back up to 150,000 fingers or maybe a car!"
That shit is genius.
Friday, February 02, 2007
Oh, Flickr
Sometimes, you're just browsing through Flickr, and you find something like this, and you're all "WTF?" and then after a few minutes, you're still all "WTF?"
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Help me Lionel, you're my only hope.
As of this moment, right here, tonight, my upstairs neighbor has lost the right to complain about the volume of my music/television/whatever. He's lost the right completely, and he's lost it forever. Whatever weirdo modern day musical game show in front of a live studio audience he's watching is coming loud and clear through the thick cement walls of our building. And the only thing louder than the TV is his booming voice that occasionally yells, and often sings along. I'm picturing a fat old guy with broken hearing aids and a drinking problem.
This is one of the rare cases where I am lucky to be a foreigner in a foreign land; the only way this could be more annoying or distracting, would be if I understood the voices coming out of the television.
Funny - I just wrote that run-on sentence, and now I'm hearing an ad for the upcoming Lionel Richie concert here in Hamburg. I totally wanted to go, but the tickets start at 85 euros. Sorry Lionel, but I can't afford to dance on that ceiling. Perhaps I'll you can sing me to sleep instead... through my headphones at full volume.
This is one of the rare cases where I am lucky to be a foreigner in a foreign land; the only way this could be more annoying or distracting, would be if I understood the voices coming out of the television.
Funny - I just wrote that run-on sentence, and now I'm hearing an ad for the upcoming Lionel Richie concert here in Hamburg. I totally wanted to go, but the tickets start at 85 euros. Sorry Lionel, but I can't afford to dance on that ceiling. Perhaps I'll you can sing me to sleep instead... through my headphones at full volume.
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