Should You Hate Ads?

 

I swear that my dear Uncle George invented the first “mute” button for television.  He was a very clever and electronically savvy guy, and I remember going to my Aunt Edie and Uncle George’s house many years ago and discovering that he had found a way to electronically mute the television when commercials came on. It was amazing!

These days, with the flip of a switch, or a click of a remote or mouse we can ignore television or online commercials to our hearts’ content.  We love to hate ads.

But here is my confession;  our family income for the last 30 or so years has mainly come from commercial production because that’s what my husband does for a living.  Sometimes he turns to me after showing me a new spot (that’s television lingo for commercial) and asks me “But do you think it  will sell (fill in the blank)?”  He genuinely wants his clients to succeed.

Now before you write us off as sleazy “Mad Men” ad types, let’s take a step back and think about it for a minute.  

There are a lot of people you know, perhaps including yourself, who work for or own small businesses or big companies who create services or products that all of us require or want.  How do you let anyone know that you even exist without some kind of advertising?  If you don’t get customers or clients, you fail.  If you don’t sound your horn as loud or louder than your competitors, nobody hears you.  Our economy succeeds when businesses, big and small, thrive.  And as much as you might hate to admit it, advertising is a big part of that.

Word of mouth is certainly one way to succeed in selling a service or product, sticking out a sign or knocking on doors might work to some degree, but that would confine you to a very small, local circle at first and take time to spread.  Newspaper, magazine, radio and television, and more recently online advertising is a way to spread that word more quickly and to more people.

Now I know, there are some pretty annoying commercials out there, whether it’s the voice over (that’s lingo for the voice you hear “over” the video you see in television), the weird music, the actors, or just the overall concept of an ad.  Sometimes I watch those over-the-top, big budget national car or perfume spots and wonder “what the heck was that all about??”  I’m sure you can all recall a commercial that really got on your nerves or left you with a ?.

But you have to admit, you’ve also seen some very creative and entertaining commercials over the years (those of you who have been actually watching or listening for years!).  There are some really clever creative people out there, my husband included, who spend all or most of their time thinking of ways to draw your attention, whether it’s by making you laugh, cry, surprising you or simply introducing you to something new and exciting.  And what if you hadn’t found out about that great sale at ____? You would never have saved all that money!  When you’re in the market to buy something, you are paying a LOT of attention to ads because you want the best deal you can get!

Do commercials succeed?  Well, if they didn’t, they would have fizzled out a long, long time ago.   And as little as you might consider it, much of what you hear or view, your favourite programs, online content, radio talk shows, whatever you like, is there for you to enjoy because of advertising dollars.  

I know I’m not going to talk you out of that mouse click or that PVR fast forward, but the next time you see a commercial that makes you laugh, remember that some people went to an awful lot of trouble hoping that you would!

IJ

Quit The Drama

Victoria BC, where I live, is a pretty quiet city on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, and also lays claim to being the provincial capital.  It seems pretty far away from terrorism, Al Qaeda, or anything like that.  Sometimes I think we really don’t know how lucky we are to be where we are and to lead the privileged lives that we do.  Oh sure, nothing’s perfect, but I digress…

On the morning of this past July 2nd, spokespeople from the RCMP held a news conference announcing that they had stopped a terrorist plot and had arrested two people who had planted pressure cooker bombs on the lawns of the legislature.  It was pretty shocking.

The next thing you knew, the premier was holding her own press conference, exclaiming in somewhat dramatic fashion how we were not going to be changed by terrorists, how we would carry on with our lives as normal so the terrorists don’t succeed in doing what they want to do—scare the crap out of us.  Well, she didn’t exactly use the word “crap”.  But you get the drift.

Over the past week, we’ve learned a few more things about these terrorists.  They are a couple who live in a basement suite on the mainland, both having had trouble with drugs, the male having also had several arrests and charges mainly for petty crimes.  They don’t have Muslim names, but apparently became enamored with that religion over the past year or two via a family that befriended them.  They did not belong to a mosque, nor was there any evidence that they had ever had any connections or interactions with terrorists groups on line.  The pressure cooker “bombs” had been made inert before they ever got to the legislature lawns, so no one was actually in danger.

Do you know where I’m going with this?  It was the RCMP themselves who used the words “inspired by the Al Qaeda ideology” and “self-radicalized” at the initial press conference.  This begs the question, who is trying to scare who?  They apparently spent months following these two as they allegedly taught themselves how to make bombs, they must have known everything there was to know about them;  they had little money, the woman was on a methadone treatment program, they guy had his run ins with the law, the fact that they DIDN’T have any connections with ANY terrorist groups.  Should I say that again?

Honestly.

And our premier was too soon caught up in the hype too…trying to be “presidential” in her dramatic speech at the legislature.  Come on.  Could you have found out more about it first before you did your Bush-like mount on the 9-11 rubble?

Don’t use those kinds of words.  Especially when they aren’t true.  These two were idiots, that’s all.  Why they did what they did (if they actually did it), is anyone’s guess.

THAT’S what we have to stop;  pretending that everyone who does something stupid is somehow “Al Qaeda” inspired. 

IJ

Guns Are Not Culture

I barely paid attention to the news story about the shooting at Santa Monica College the other week.  Here we go again, I thought.  And then I went about my usual routine.

It’s actually a horrible tragedy.  But you find yourself thinking that the numbers are the real reflection of just how tragic.  If only five people died, well, that’s not as many as in 9/11, or at the movie theatre shooting a couple of years back.  Not as many, so not as important.

Which is the real tragedy.  Since then, that story has faded from the news.

Last month when my husband and I were in Las Vegas, I noticed that one of the “tours” you could take, according to a pamphlet, was to a shooting range.  They even have pink guns for the girls, someone told me.  Pink guns?  One day we set out to find the old Welcome To Las Vegas sign and saw about 30 military guys in uniform, complete with their automatic weapons, running toward the sign.  At first I thought something bad was up, of course.  But when I saw the smiles on their faces, I realized that they were just heading over to the Vegas sign en masse to have their picture taken.  Yikes.  One of the last “tricks” in the Penn & Teller show we saw in Vegas involved the firing of guns in the theatre.  That was the only thing that turned me off in a show that was otherwise very entertaining.

I guess I will never understand what some call “gun culture”.  Kind of an oxymoron, really.  I can only imagine, however, that if you were brought up around guns, being without them would be equally as strange.  There’s a kind of casualness that comes from people who own them and use them that makes me uncomfortable;  an indifference in the shrug of their shoulders.  So what?  And that casualness is why the U.S. will continue to lose 32 people PER DAY to a homicide by firearms.

“I wouldn’t mind firing a gun”, someone said to me recently.  She was just curious as to what the experience would be like.  I can kind of understand that too.  But I would be leery of even that temptation.  What if it made me less determined to be against them?  What if I actually enjoyed the experience? That’s what would scare me most.

Guns are bad, they are just bad.  They were made to kill, and how could anything…ANYTHING be good about that?  Then I read this story today, about a 5-year-old girl in New Orleans:

“A preliminary investigation indicates the child was home alone and had somehow come into contact with a .38 revolver and accidentally shot herself in the head,” police said in their statement.”


Well, that is pretty much the only argument you need to make about not having guns.

IJ 

On Writing

 

Grade 4, Miss Logan…do you see me? (Answer at bottom of this post)

For some strange reason, at the age of 9 years, in the spring of 1967, I was gripped with emotion when our (Canada’s) Governor General, Georges Vanier, died.  To this day, I can’t tell you why.  I didn’t particularly know what a Governor General was, nor did I understand what his position or title meant.  But he died, and that somehow moved me.

So I did something I’d never done before, but have done many times since;  I wrote about it.  And I handed it in to my teacher, Miss Logan.  It wasn’t an assignment, I just handed it in.   In fact, I started to write about things whenever they struck me, and each time I would put it on my dear teacher’s desk.

Miss Logan must have been the most patient, understanding teacher in the universe to take the time to read my stories and encourage me.  She had fiery red hair and was of Scottish decent, and I thought she was so beautiful.  I remember the big thing in Grade 4 was to have autograph books, and to collect friend’s and teacher’s autographs.  I must have made or bought ten different ones over that year, and each time I did, I asked for Miss Logan’s autograph.  By the last one, she finally smiled and said “Again?”, and signed for the umpteenth time.  “Keep on writing stories, Irene”, she wrote.

My stories eventually morphed into songs which became my way of explaining and expressing the world around me to myself, and they were my therapy, especially after my mother died.  In 1996 when I first discovered the internet, I started writing about songwriting too.  My thought at the time was that if I wanted to draw attention to my newly-hatched website, I needed to create content.  So I created a songwriting tips page that still exists to this day.  I’ve changed the design a few times over the years, and when I came across this new word “blogging” a couple of years back, I realized how it could save me a lot of time if I didn’t have to continuously update each and every article I had written every time I wanted to change the look or add more links.   So the songwriting tips have turned into a blog.

Since then, I have created a guitar blog too, and of course, this one.  I guess I just like writing, but I never seem to have enough time.

Although I still like to write about songwriting and guitar playing, my real joy is this blog, the one you’re reading right now.  That’s because it can be about anything that strikes me, not just limited to one subject.  My grandfather and my father both sat down to write their memoirs, mostly in an informal fashion, long-hand and relatively short in length.  My grandfather’s memoir was especially short…the most he said about his mother was that she had “bad legs”!  I think the point was to put to paper the important dates and events of his life before he died.  My father fleshed his out a little more and added some personal perspectives.  I think mine, when I finally get to it, will be especially wordy :-).  But I see this blog as being part of that;  a way of having my thoughts and my experiences out there for my kids to read long after I’m gone.

I don’t consider myself a particularly good writer, it’s just that I like to do it.  There are far better and more popular blogs out there.  There are even songwriting tips blogs, many, many of them now.  When I came across another blog the other day that had a title something like “Writing About Songwriting”, I wanted to tell the young person who owned it that she wasn’t the first to do that.  But why bother?  Good for her for finding a way to express herself about something she loves.   

 

There is a Facebook group I am a member of, full of people who grew up in Richmond, BC, in Canada.  It’s been fun to come into contact with some old friends, remembering our childhood and the way things used to be in our old neighbourhoods and schools.  So it struck me that I should try to find out whatever happened to Miss Logan.  Sadly, I discovered that she had passed away a few years back.  But, for what it’s worth, I just want to publicly thank her for encouraging me to write. 

‘Cause I’m still doing it, and I can’t imagine that I’ll ever stop.  

Well, you know, until I have no choice😊

IJ

(oh, I’m in the second row from the front, third in from the right 😊)

Over The Top in Vegas

 

IJ in the “mall” of the Venetian

I’m sure many of you reading this have been to Las Vegas, and maybe even more than once.  I discovered before and after our trip that many people think of Vegas as a perfect little getaway with all kinds of things to do and see.

And it is.  But when my brother said “Once was enough for me.”, I kind of wondered what he meant.  My husband and I had never been there, and since we had missed our trip to Hawaii this past winter, he decided that we should do something different and a quick trip to sin city was planned.

The landing at McCarran International Airport wasn’t quite as turbulent as some of my friends had described, so I was happy.  Since the knife incident earlier at Victoria International, you can imagine why I’d be worried about what kind of trip this was going to be.  We disembarked and headed to the long line of people waiting for taxis to the Vegas strip.  In that line was a client of my husband’s, who described what we should see and do during our visit.  In fact, I noticed that pretty much anyone I spoke with before the trip had all kinds of advice for us.  Not just advice, but enthusiastic, over-the-top, almost giddy, advice.

It was late morning when the taxi driver dropped us off at our hotel, The Flamingo.  As we entered, I immediately noticed a smell which was kind of perfumed and smoke-laced at the same time.  Over the next few days, I noticed that many of the hotels had similar smells.

We got into our room earlier by upgrading, of course, which was the first hint that the “cheap” getaway might not be so cheap.  The 20th floor hotel room was recently updated, and yet it was a throw back to the 60’s version of Vegas with an old-fashioned chaise lounge, a box of mirrored lights over the king-size bed and a switch that opened the curtains and sheers, exposing us to Bally’s, a hotel across the street, and a great view of the water show at the Bellagio, kitty corner to our hotel.  We sat on the chaise lounge and stared out in wonder.  Wow.

Our first venture out onto the strip reminded us a little of our first exposure to New York City;  a kind of in-your-face senses overkill.  In the streets, alcohol and cigarettes, beggars and sex show pitchers mingled with music blasting from speakers and noisy traffic congestion.  We hung on to each other and chose to start walking to the south.

The super-sized hotels appear deceptively close.  It isn’t until you try to get to one that you realize it’s going to take longer than you thought.  I swear that a two minute crossing of the street turned out to be more like twenty minutes.  I’m still not sure why.  Maybe it’s the escalators and overpasses you have to maneuver (you rarely actually cross Las Vegas Boulevard), and the crowds and street people all trying to do the same that conspire to make it such a trek.  And then there’s the size of the hotel properties.  On our second day we walked for 6 hours and only covered maybe a third of the strip.

You can’t just walk by a hotel, you have to walk into it.  Then you have to walk through two or three city block’s-worth of casino before you get to the mall.  Every hotel has a mall.  Not just a little stretch of stores either.  They are theme-based, sometimes multi-level malls with dozens and dozens of stores and restaurants.  The Venetian has a canal running from outside street level to the inside mall, complete with gondolas and opera-singing gondoliers offering rides from one end to the other.  That’s just one hotel.

We were somewhat stunned at the excess.  The volume.  The extreme.

On our first night we bought tickets to see Penn and Teller.  I am embarrassed to admit that I watch Celebrity Apprentice (for the record, I detest Donald Trump), and Penn was one of the finalists this year which prompted us to go and see their show.  If you don’t know them, they are magicians, but that really does not describe them.  They reveal their secrets, they almost laugh at their own industry, and then they dazzle you with unparalleled trickery.   It was a fabulous show.  Afterwards my husband had to prod me to stay so that we could get our picture taken with Penn…I was exhausted from the 3am rise, the knife incident, the flight and the venture so far.  But I gave in and we got our picture:

Oh, and he autographed our fridge magnet.  Yes, we buy fridge magnets.

We also went to an unbelievable performance by Cirque du Soleil called “Love”, which is based around the Beatles’ music and their story.  Absolutely amazing, and a show I would highly, highly recommend.

By the fourth day, we had had enough of the excess, so we rented a car and drove along the strip to the outskirts, where we came upon the Neon Graveyard.  This little non-profit organization has taken it upon themselves to recover the old neon signs that originally graced many of the hotels on the strip.  The hotels don’t actually own these signs, they are leased from and maintained by a company until they become too old or outdated to be of any use.  The Neon Graveyard takes them and keeps them on a city lot, where they preserve them and give tours.  They are in the middle of installing electrical outlets throughout the lot so that the signs can be lit up for night tours.  That will be really cool!  I would certainly recommend taking the tour if you are at all interested in the history of Vegas.  We learned a lot and the tour guide was excellent.

We also found our way (eventually, and after some heated debate, but that’s for another story) to Red Rock Canyon, a national park that consists of a thirteen mile drive and a number of hiking trails all through the colourful rocks.  It was spectacular, and reminded me that what I love about travelling has more to do with the “flora and fauna” as they say, than anything else.  We were in a desert and this was an opportunity to pay some attention to that for a few hours.  We also ended up at a couple of ranches, saw some “wild” donkeys, and I actually saw a roadrunner running across the highway which prompted us to sing that old cartoon theme song “Roadrunner!  The coyote is after you!  Roadrunner!  If he catches you, you’re through!”

Aside from the previously alluded to heated debate, that was a wonderful day.  And it was also the last full day of our tour of Sin City, so it was a nice way to end it.

And what did I learn in Vegas?

1. A TV built into the bathroom mirror is really cool.
2. I can still get blisters, even in my best walking shoes.
3. A desert could actually have been under the ocean once.
4. The mob were sort of a fun bunch.  Kind of.  In a way.
5. Pawn Stars have a huge following.
6. Guns are fun?  Yikes.
7. Hotel pools are not for relaxing.
8. Margarita glasses come in much larger sizes than I knew.
9. Evil Knievel had a lot of guts.
10. The rat pack is long gone.
11. Now I see why the coyote could never catch that bird.
12. The “one arm” on the one arm bandits are just there for nostalgia.

I’m sure there’s more.  But that’s enough Vegas for me.

IJ

Knives On A Plane

 

Irene in Red Rock Canyon, Nevada, having survived the knife incident.

I couldn’t believe my eyes as I watched the officer in security at the Victoria International Airport slowly pulling a very large kitchen knife from my carry on bag.

What?!  Is this a joke??

It was about 4:30 a.m. and my husband and I were on our way to Las Vegas for a few days for a little get away.   We had decided not to bring our suitcases and just stuffed everything into carry on bags instead, careful to put shampoo bottles and toothpaste and anything else like it into clear, plastic zip lock bags just as the instructions tell you to do.  Nothing to hide.

I had been picked out randomly to be either patted down or go through that full body scanner contraption, and I had chosen the pat down.  In the meantime, my bag was slowly going through the x-ray machine.

Once the pat down was done I walked over to retrieve my bag.  “We’re going to have to open your bag and check it,”  the security officer said.  “Sure, go ahead.”  I casually answered.  I looked around to see where my husband was, and then looked back as the officer was pulling out the knife.  Knife??  Then he pulled out a carving fork.  Carving fork??  I stared at the implements in a stupor.  “Obviously, we can’t allow these on the plane.”  

Oh.  My.  God.  I looked over at my husband.  “Irene!”  he said, staring at me in compete shock.

It took me a few more seconds to shake off the brain fog before I suddenly remembered.

I had hurriedly stuffed the kitchen implements into a side pocket in my bag a few months earlier in the middle of my parents’ move out of their townhouse, and had completely forgotten about them.  Since I never go into that side pocket, I hadn’t even opened it when I was packing for Vegas.

I looked up at the security officer, but he didn’t seem all that perturbed.  “Do you want to put them in your car or something?”  he asked.  “No, no, just get rid of them.” I said, relieved that I hadn’t been arrested, or something worse.  He took them and handed me my bag.  I was still stunned as I walked toward the door, where another female security officer stood.  “I had to stop from laughing!”  she said, and continued on to tell me how many people often forget what they’ve got in their bags and get caught at security.  “It happens all the time,” she smiled.  Yeah, but not to me!  I thought.

And so began our adventure to Vegas.  It took me an hour or two to get over that one.  One older lady who was on the same flight as we were, eyed me suspiciously several times while we waited at the gate.  I saw her go up to the flight desk at one point, and wondered if she had asked where I was sitting.  Or maybe that was just my imagination.

And Vegas?  How to describe Vegas?  It was our first trip there, and many of you reading this have likely visited Sin City already.  I’ll save THAT story for next time 🙂

IJ

The Joy of Small Gestures

Many years ago when we were in our late 20’s, my husband and I were lined up in a local Dairy Queen one evening to pick up a treat on our way home.  It was not too busy, and we had just put in our order when we both noticed something on the ground at about the same time–a $20 bill.  We picked it up, realizing that a woman had just left with her order so it must have been hers.  We hesitated for a brief moment, and then finally went outside to try and catch her.

That hesitation was just long enough that by the time we got out there, she had already driven away.  But the guilt at not having tried harder to catch her stuck with us.  We felt so bad that the next day we took the $20 and donated it to the Salvation Army, because we couldn’t bear to keep it.  It wasn’t a perfect solution, but we felt better at not having spent it on ourselves.  It taught me a lesson, I guess, because I still remember that incident to this day.  I wouldn’t hesitate for a second now under the same circumstances to get the money back to its rightful owner if I could.

But it made no sense to me the other week when I looked outside my living room window to see that someone had come along and destroyed every last lovely red tulip in our front garden.  I couldn’t believe my eyes and had to go outside to confirm it to myself.  I nearly cried!  Just careless and self-serving nastiness, and for no good reason.  The tulips had been particularly bright and beautiful this year…I guess the temptation was too much for someone.

Later on that Sunday morning, I decided to post my experience to Facebook and received many responses from my friends which gave me some comfort.  But two responses were unexpected.  A couple of days later, my oldest daughter saw some tulips in a grocery store so she bought them and brought them home to give to me.  And several days after that, a friend gave me a chocolate tulip because when she saw it, she said she thought of the tulips I lost.  It’s amazing how little gestures like that can just make your heart swell with joy!

Another recent incident also restored my faith in human beings;  this past week a package arrived in the mail for my daughter, the one who had given me the tulips.  It had no return address on it, which was curious.  When my daughter opened it, she found her change purse, which she had somehow managed to lose a few days earlier.  Someone actually took the time and spent the money to mail it back to her, with not a cent missing.  I could see that my daughter was genuinely touched at the fact that someone would go to the trouble, just for a change purse.  And it seemed to bring everything full circle…she did something nice for me, and someone did something nice for her.  Good karma, perhaps?

Life is full of so many little lessons if we’re paying attention, never mind the big ones.  The loss of tulips and change purses are hardly front page news, but the small gestures they inspired somehow felt huge and life-affirming.  I’m hoping that the person or persons who destroyed the tulips will eventually learn what I did, all those years ago.

That a stupid guilty pleasure doesn’t feel nearly as wonderful as a good deed.

IJ 

(PS - Okay, after having lost my tulips repeatedly over the years, I realized it was the local deer. Apparently red tulips are their favourite 🙄)