On a refrigerator in suburban St. Louis, Missouri is a magnet. The magnet has schedules for the local football teams, along with a slogan from the Realtor who provided it: Go With Gordon — The Hard Working Nice Guy! Can you think of a less-remarkable nickname? Especially since Gordon gave it to himself? Amazingly enough, […]
The expression’s been around so long, it’s hard to believe a real person actually came up with it. But an article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine says that man was Arthur Schiff, who died last year at the age of 66. According to the article, Schiff wrote scripts for more than 1800 commercials, […]
In Sunday’s Oregonian, Steve Duin’s column takes the Army National Guard to task for a deceptively-packaged direct mail campaign. According to the column, the envelope appeared to be a credit-card solicitation. Upon opening, the recipient finds a piece of plastic that is “not a credit card. This is money in the bank.” The pitch implies […]
I just got back from a guitar workshop led by Robin Nolan. Robin’s a terrific musician and a good teacher. But he missed a real opportunity at the workshop. The 6-volume Robin Nolan Gypsy Jazz Songbook series is considered the “essential text” by students of the genre. Robin’s also written several other well-regarded guitar books. […]
I was working for the New York Mets when the first signs went up behind home plate. Invisible to fans in the ballpark, they were extremely visible to the television audience. It was jarring to see the Armitron logo as Bobby Bonilla hit (although, frankly, Bonilla was more irritating than the sign). Fans wrote angry […]