Monday, July 20, 2009

Another day in paradise.

A few of us are in a bit of a state at work.
We have discovered that our hold music is Phil Collins singing that questionable classic Another Day in Paradise. Nothing else, just Phil. There is no rotation system of questionable late 80's love songs, perhaps a Michael Bolton number or two thrown in for good measure. No. Only Phil Collins, banging away, call after call. Whether this has been the case since the song hit number one way back in 1989 is not known. If so then we are in serious trouble. We are an ad agency. We are supposed to be very "current" and "with it". We are all on Twitter, even though we don't know what it does really. We buy fashion magazines printed in Iceland for 180 bucks at Exclusive Books and then leave them showily around the office to prove our edginess
The fact that people: our clients, suppliers, prospective clients, journalists, model bookers, have been forced to sit through this, possibly for nearly 20 years now, is a bit sad really. You could call it oversight I suppose. But it feels a bit like leaving a dead cat in reception for 20 years so everyone can see it and then saying "oh, how did we miss that ?".
Now, I'm not one to knock old Phil. I think Face Value was one of the best albums of all time.
Hell, Another Day in Paradise is number 86 on Billboards Best 100 songs of all time.
Carol, one of our Account Directors, furiously pointed 0ut that she had noticed ages ago and said something but nothing had been done. Shit. She also observed that every day was not really Another Day in Paradise, especially in the ad industry, where everything generally goes to hell by about 10.15 every morning. So we will change it soon. There is fury and embarrassment and consternation. Now we just have to decide what to play next. It's a big decision.
After all, people could be hearing it for 20 years.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Flu and pseudoephedrine

I have flu now. I am not supposed to have flu because I had a flu shot. Yet I have it.
The same thing happened last year, so I marched into the chemist to complain.
He told me that they'd "put the wrong strains in the vaccine". God.
It seems the people in charge of the flu shots are the same lot that do the baggage at the airports.
Now, a bout of flu is normally good enough reason to stay at home and eat fistfuls of Maltesers washed down with Corenza C while vacantly watching Tour de France replays.
Alas though, I had commitments.
So I medicated. I took something called Advil. I haven't taken it before. Advil contains pseudo ephedrine which makes your pupils dilate and causes you to talk very fast and frequently. You feel pretty good actually, probably better than simple flu medicine should make you feel. I would imagine Advil is pretty popular with people who don't have flu at all. People who like trance music perhaps.
I had to give a talk at work and I'm not altogether sure it went that well. It was long and rambling and I talked very fast about not much. I suspect my eyes were darting around like a drug mule in an airport. As a flu medication Advil may be marvelous, but it plays havoc with your career.
Today at work I talked ever so slowly to try and make up for yesterday. Not sure if anyone actually noticed, they were too busy talking about Michael Jackson's memorial service. Lots of people thought it was marvelous and poignant. Some said they would definitely buy the CD. It is a fitting full stop at the end of a very strange life, I think, to have the CD of your memorial service go Double Platinum. I did think that the completely nutty Reverend Al Sharpton was great though, with his machine-gun- double-time-baptist-preacher eulogy thingy. Maybe they have Advil in LA too.