Happy Birthday and Thanks for the Molotov Cocktails!

Saturday I turned 40. I forwent the Botox. I couldn't justify the enormous vanity expense right now. Maybe some other day. We stopped at UPS to pick up a mystery parcel Friday morning. It was 2 old Anchor Steam bottles filled with SOMETHING and stopped with 2 old wine corks. Maybe it was free Restalyne? I think it was Molotov Cocktails.


It was a singularly strange weekend.


While I was having a Happy Birthday Cocktail the phone rang, and with that ring, there went the weekend.


It was a friend (he collects the strays of the world) of my Dad's who is WAY down on his luck and always has been. He has some health issues, mostly mental as far as I can tell. He is variously a Druid, a Native American, a Vietnam vet.... All of it may be true. I've heard stories about him doing a Native American dance 'n chant around a fire in his yard. Glad I missed it. I was at a party there once. I am pretty sure I was served, and ate a bite of, human flesh. My husband swears it was bear. I was told it was prime rib. OF WHATTTTT!!!!!


He and his wife, a wonderful, smart, well-read woman, live in a shack, an actual real, live, honest-to-God, shack in the woods. She used to be a teacher. I don't know what happened there - why she chose the eventual life she chose. It's none of my business. There really ARE people who live outside the box. I know more than my fair share of them. Some of 'em are scary lunatics. AVOID.

This man's wife, my friend, died suddenly Friday afternoon.

**ASIDE**My Dad knows another dude who is definitely from an important military family. The OSS has been verified. I'm certain the Army tested out the LSD on him. He's not too bad, just nuts. His wife, she's evil. They live in a shack too. No way am I visiting that shack, let alone cleaning it.


I have spent countless summer and fall evenings knocking back more than a few beers with her (the teacher, not the Devil's Hand Maiden), talking about literature and ideas. Thoroughly enjoyable times. I'm not too fancy for a shack and cheap beer. I'm such a heel too - I haven't been to see her since my Mom became ill, for a number of reasons, mostly because I didn't have time. LAME. She has sent books home for me to borrow, that I haven't read and haven't returned. Note to self: read those books and quit it with the HuffPo in the evenings!


What does this have to do with advertising and marketing? Nothing. Sort of.

Saturday morning I rode to the mountains with my Dad to pay my respects. The road to my Dad's hunting lodge was closed due to a hydrofluoric acid spill. Heck, why not, it couldn't get any creepier could it? I'm surprised we weren't involved in the accident that caused the spill!


We made it to the mountains in twice the time. We dropped off a chicken and stuffing dish, enough to feed a small army. I asked her husband if he needed help. He said "yes" so I spent my 40th birthday helping her sisters clean the shack for the memorial service. I challenge any gym to have a better work out than vacuuming a home with a Dirt Devil!


I asked him what he had planned for food the service. He told me he had no money whatsoever so he no food planned. Oh dear - not on my watch. There will be no party of any sort without church-clean and plenty of food. My chicken and stuffing was not going to cut the mustard for an entire memorial service! I ordered sandwich and desert trays from the grocery store (then called my Dad at his cabin to tell him when he could pick them up and pay for them). I can't believe it but I used a phone book! There was a computer available but I was too stressed out to even think of it.

We made it in home from the mountains in twice the time. My sister was at my Dad's so we could go out to dinner for my birthday. Forget it. I needed a shower more than anything (that shack was pretty dirty) and then a drink. We ordered pizza. I had a drink before the shower. In fact, I had ½ a bottle of wine. It wasn't cheap wine either. It was Special Birthday Wine. I didn't even taste it.

We spend so many hours thinking of how to get ahead, how to be the witty innovators, the cool kids. This Creative Class or whatever you'd like to call it - we are a walking advertisements for living outside the box. Are we though? Do we even want to? I guess it depends which box we're talking about, or shall I say, "shack"?

At the end of the day, we are advertisers and we are consumers. We innovate by what we consume. We're walking advertisements for ipods and iphones, Doc Martens and vintage clothing.

Sure, I'll sit around drinking Schlitz in a shack, but Heaven forbid I'm not in a pair of Juicys with my super funk glasses, Havaianas and vintage cut-up t shirt.

Before this economic melt down or whatever moniker it's going by today - Heaven forbid I miss that Prince concert, no matter if it was half-way around the world. I never left the country for a Prince concert, but I thought about it.

I've been called a princess by people who have allot more money than I do. I'm really not. You won't catch me butchering a deer.... or drinking those Molotov Cocktails, but you're darn tootin' I'll break my back to scour a shack in the woods, including the toilet.

I think it all depends on your audience. Who are you selling to? How do you reach them? Especially NOW? Newspapers are going, going gone; network television is less relevant. You could reach ME on Huff Po but all I see there is yellow teeth, Acai berries, and flat bellies.

You could reach the Shack People via the internet as well. There were TWO computers in the shack. I'm sure they go online and open email. They have to have opted into a great many lists. And that's just the Shack People (and I could be one of them any day, so I have nothing against Shack People).

Ima shut up now - however, I truly think the new advertising/brand building tool will be some combination of internet tools, Facebook, Twitter, Google, blogs and email blasts. Whaddya think?