Halloween revival

October 31, 2007

It’s Halloween night.

For the past several years, I’ve gotten used to gazing upon Halloween night from afar. I went to college, and I pushed it away, no longer understanding its allure and confused about why adults went to great lengths to create a spooky environment for 25 of their closest drunk friends. It was an overnight thing - one year I was excited and celebrating and being a goofball with all of my friends as well; the next, I was rolling my eyes and staying inside to watch something decidedly not Halloween oriented.

I begrudgingly dressed up when asked, or I did something in the spirit of Halloween, but I always did it because I was supposed to. I didn’t look forward to it by any means. I simply said to myself, “I’m too old for this. Whatever. Halloween is just not my day - more power to everyone else.”

I convinced myself that I was over Halloween.

Tonight, I realize it wasn’t that I was over it. I just had the scope all wrong. Halloween isn’t for adults.

It’s for our kids.

Well, truthfully, it partially is for us, but only by association.

Driving home tonight from a friends house - where three other babies were dressed in Halloween costumes and three other pairs of parents giggled and oohed and ahed - I saw trick or treaters everywhere.

And I remembered back to my days trick or treating. The doling out of candy, the early morning outfit check, the long lasting linger of sugar and chocolate - spreading itself out over a three week period, one piece per day in a school lunch. I remember dumping a pile of sweets on the floor and trading them with my friends as if I had just dumped out a bag of 1986 Topps rookie cards.

I remember the darkness, and the ingenuity, and the excitement in guessing what my friends might show up as. Most of all, I remember that, above everything, there was a buzz throughout the city. Every child of trick or treating age was champing at the bit, struggling to keep the joy inside, and then when darkness fell, the entire lot of us burst out onto the Sioux Falls landscape to beg for candy from strangers. That’s right. It was the one night we could buck conventional wisdom and accept a strange Resee’s peanut butter cup.

For one night, the world was ours. We overtook every house we could find with the lights on, and we pounded on the doors of those who thought they were safe, save the foolishly lit basement light or the flicker of a television. We were in charge, dressed like vandals, stealing through the night in search of better prey.

I thought back on my younger trick or treating days and realized I was all wrong. It wasn’t that I grew up too fast. It was that I didn’t bother to leave things in perspective. I forgot that Halloween was a day for kids.

Now, through the eyes of a father, I can begin to understand what makes it so special.

Tags: On... |

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Jump ball

October 30, 2007

Another year.

Another basketball season.

Another 82 games of excruciating horribleness.

Another season of rooting for the Indiana Pacers, my arbitrarily chosen team, picked because I loved Reggie Miller and held on to because I still love Jermaine O’Neal.

But this team - the one that was just two wins away from an NBA Championship in 2000 and the only one to ever knock the Jordan-led Chicago Bulls out of the playoffs between 1991 and 1998 - is in horrible shape. Bad trades. Bad personnel. The loss of a great leader and a culture still reeling from The Fight and The Retirement.

The Pacers could be the worst team in the league this year.

Or, they could surprise the hell out of everyone and succeed. They have some of the tools - a bright young forward in Danny Granger, a new energized coach, a lack of distractions and a multiple-time All Star in O’Neal. I hope they do. I hope they’ve filled a team with under-the-radar talent that can at least make a playoff run and prove everyone wrong.

Either way, I’m happy. I’m not watching basketball for just the Pacers this year. I’m watching basketball to watch basketball, to enjoy the game and hope for classic match-ups, great games and spectacular performances. I’m watching LeBron as he tries to follow up a tough NBA Finals. The Suns as they try to leap to the front of the Western Conference. The Spurs as they try to repeat. The Mavs as they try to put last year behind them.

I’m watching new rookies with phenomenal hype. I’m watching superstars in new locales, All Stars in new roles and role players in new races for starting minutes. I’m watching Kevin Garnett find a renewed sense of excitement in a basketball-rich city, and I’m watching Kobe Bryant as the pieces fall apart around him on that basketball-rich city’s biggest rival.

With the Pacers slotted to be horrible, I’m free to accept it and enjoy the game for what it is. And with a new digital cable package, I’m free to watch 85% more games on TNT and ESPN. So if the Celtics are playing, you’ll know where I’ll be. Or the Warriors. The Cavaliers, the Suns, the Spurs or the Mavs. The Pistons. The Bulls. You know where I’ll be.

Another year.

Another basketball season.

And finally, a chance to be a fan of the game. Not just a fan of my team.

Tags: Sports, Basketball, Indiana Pacers |

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Teen Mommy Darci

October 26, 2007

Here’s a great PSA spot from a few years back out of Boise for teen pregnancy - Teen Mommy Darci.

Teeny-tiny trailer!

See kids - teen pregnancy can be fun! Check out Action Teen Father too, with Diaper Action Grip!

(Thanks to adfreak for reminding us how great this is.)

Tags: Random YouTube, Advertising/Marketing |

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Details, details, details

October 26, 2007

Today, I fudged a small detail to make an idea work. It was caught, and we all laughed about it. It was harmless, a leap of logic that no one would make, a trifle that doesn’t hurt the idea, but the absence of leaves the idea incomplete.

The big picture was enhanced. Without it, it was killed - it didn’t make sense. It was a detail that, in the long run, added up to nothing - a giant zero on the scale of relevance. Or at least a 0.1.

I’ll admit. I’m not detail oriented. It’s a death knell for me as a professional proofer, I’m sure. I force the details as part of my job, and it’s become second nature to find mistakes in other people’s writing, but I’m sometimes just not that interested in details.

It puts me in a difficult position.

It’s evident that, many times, I miss my own errors. But that’s merely a by-product - it’s the idea-killing details that bother me - the details that bring down a monster concept. Obviously, crucial details are important, like the minor nerve endings and white blood cells in a body of work. But the nitpicky details? They’re like birthmarks, skin whorls that are ultimately useless.

And critiquing them does nothing but drive an idea off course.

Some great ideas have been killed by details, cut down and left for dead by a billion small pin pricks. I’ve put together brilliant plans and incredibly creative concepts, only to watch then torn apart by the nitpickers - oftentimes, middle management marketing managers who are paid, apparently, to ask for creativity and then slowly sap every last ounce of it out of a project.

It’s one of the perils of working small - of living in the Midwest where very few businesses want to be edgy. Or, in that case, can afford to be edgy. There’s no reason for simple marketing to become uber-creative just because, I understand that. But the micromanaging? Please.

Forest for the trees, my friends. If the overall concept works, and it’s fun and it gets attention and highlights everything that’s good about a business, then so be it. Don’t bring a baseball eye to a prize fight - an eye trained for OBP and WHIP and ERA will find flaws in anything, if given a chance, and the overall thrill of the fight is lost in the shuffle.

I will overlook a bad turn of phrase if the overall story is brilliant. I will overlook an unusual spelling if it’s used in context. I don’t believe the details should run the overall theme, the rats not fleeing the ship but overtaking it, steering it in the wrong direction and driving it into an iceberg, forever killing the idea.

I see this every day. The logo is a half-inch too small, the wording should be switched around like this, the headline is too big, the picture doesn’t show enough staged diversity. These aren’t critical details, like a wrong phone number or misspelled web site. These are the things that a person with too little control changes because it’s all they can do to make the project theirs.

I’m not wired to take every small part of every day into account. My head has always seen the positive or negative of an overall series of events, not the battles therein. I’m a war guy, willing to lose a skirmish in order to better life as a whole.

I’m a big picture guy. Or at least, I try to be. I might not be very good at it, but at least I’m not nitpicking as much as I could.

And that idea I talked about fudging? This post is it. That scenario has never happened to me.

But it sure illustrated the point, right? Big picture wins.

Tags: Writing, Advertising/Marketing, Blogging, Annoyances |

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Twitt’rin’

October 25, 2007

Okay, so I’m giving Twitter one last chance.

When I first signed up, it seemed pointless. So I let it sit. I ignored it, as it deserved to be ignored. But now that more people are using it, I realize it could be an interesting little time waster.

Like I need more of those.

“What’s Twitter?” This might be what you’re saying if you’re one of those without knowledge of the inner social networking secrets abound on the Internet.

Well, it’s a site/program/network/thing that allows you to type what you’re doing. Like “MrVilhauer is typing.” or “MrVilhauer is wondering why his wife decided to tell the entire office it was his birthday yesterday, resulting in an off-key rendition of the popular ‘Happy Birthday’ song as sung by the employees of HenkinSchultz.”

That’s it?

Well, yeah. There’s more, I guess. Um, you’ll just have to go to Twitter yourself. I can’t explain it. It’s a pointless exercise in Internet connectivity. But since my 9rules profile page has a Twitter feed, and since Aaron at Charisma:18 seems to post something every 15 minutes, it must be the cool thing to do.

If you’ve got an account, let me know. I don’t use Google Mail, so I can’t import my contacts and invite them all.

Again - Twitter. My Twitter page is here. Go. Become superconnected like the rest of the cool kids. I’ll see you there.

Tags: Random Links, Blogging |