Corporate Hallucinations

Join me at the IABC Communication World blog

First . . . a moment of silence for the King of Pop, please.

While fans everywhere mourn the death of Michael Jackson, I have particular reason to be a little sad and nostalgic today, because I have a special tie to Jackson.

You see, I lost my virginity to Michael Jackson. I mean, not to the man himself, but to his music. I'll never forget that it was Jackson on the radio on that hot summer night on the South Side of Chicago, so many years ago, when I became a man in the back of my mother's van, which was parked in an alley.

Oh, the romance of it all!!

Anyway . . . on to business:

Now that I'm writing a regular column on Creative Communication for IABC's Communication World magazine, the editors there have asked me to contribute to the CW blog.

My first post is up! It tells the story of my friend Ludd, who hates all things related to technology and Social Media. Check it out at:

Communication World Blog

If that doesn't work, try this:

http://communicationworld.x.iabc.com

Whew! We can at last take Iran off the worry list!

Like most people, I'm very concerned about the situation in Iran. Riots, protests, rigged elections, fake democracy, religious zealots in an unstable country progressing towards nuclear power, close proximity to Pakistan, another country about to explode . . . it's all enough to make one lose some sleep.

Or, rather, it WAS enough to make one lose some sleep. But as far as I'm concerned, after logging into Twitter this morning, the situation is resolved!

And we have Perez Hilton to thank for it!!

Now, to be honest, I don't know who Perez Hilton is. I can only assume he's related to Paris Hilton, but I really don't quite understand who or what she is, either. But, like his sister or cousin or wife or whatever Paris is to him, I know he's a CELEBRITY, which means, in this backwards ass country of ours, that his opinion MATTERS.

So you cannot imagine my relief today when, upon waking up and checking Twitter on my iPhone while still in bed, to find that Mr. Hilton has decided to address the situation in Iran.

Here is what the great sage and diplomat had to say to his 1,006,909 followers:

"Dear Iran, Get your shit together! Power to the people! xoxo"

YES!!! And more than 1 MILLION people heard him say it! One can only hope that the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and/or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are one of those millions of people!!

But even if they aren't, I'm sure someone will get Hilton's message to them. You know, word of mouth diplomacy!!

There is only one down side to all of this. I really got my hopes up that Iran was just the start of Hilton's Twitter diplomacy. I was hoping he would turn his attention and his Tweets to places like North Korea, Pakistan, and Darfur.

I was hoping to find some Hilton-style Tweets such as:

"Dear North Korea: I mean, what's up?"

"Dear Pakistan: Come on dudes, give up the Obama man!"

"Dear Darfur: I'm not sure, but I think you're in Asia, and, like, everyone knows what's happening with you because of Clooney."

But . . . no such luck. After quickly scanning Perez's Twit site, I only find stuff like this:

"Hey, Zac Efron, if you wanna make a sex tape, I'm available!"

We can only hope that if Ahmadinejad calls for advice while said sex tape is being made, that Perez picks up the phone! I hope he has caller ID!

Some people like to make fun of celebrities on Twitter, and Twitter in general. Not me. The bigger audience we can give heroes like Perez Hilton and Shaq and Ashton Kutchner, the more good they can do in this world!

I have seen the enemy . . . twice in the same day!

There are a lot of reasons employee communicators aren’t as effective as they could or should be. Among them:

Overly cautious, old-school executives who are afraid to try anything new.

Lawyers whose knee-jerk reaction is to say no to everything to “protect the company.”

Middle managers who see information as power, and believe the more information they keep to themselves, the more power they have.

And, of course, many communicators only have themselves to blame. Rather than learn the intricacies of the business they are in and push for strategic communication (which is hard to do), they become “order takers” for various “internal clients” and spend their time creating PowerPoint presentations, meeting agendas, posters, and other “communications” (which is easy to do).

But if you had to pick two of the biggest obstacles to effective internal communication, I would probably put these two things at or near the top of the list:

1. The first is the approval process—that onerous system of checks and rewrites and hand wringing where legions of non-writers add their personal stamp to a piece of communication, and in the process whitewash it of any real content, jargon it up to the point of unreadability, and strip it of any relevance to the audience.

2. The second obstacle is an overbearing IT team who, under the guise of “security issues” refuse to allow communicators to compete in an increasingly online, interactive world. They block access to Facebook—even though the communicators have set up a community for employees out there. They don’t allow video, or even audio, on the intranet. They drag their feet when it comes to allowing comments on articles, or—God forbid—blogs and other collaborative tools.

I’m not saying all IT people fall into this camp. There are many enlightened IT folks out there who truly get it . . . and they are worth their weight in gold. But when the IT folks are actively working against you, it can be almost impossible to get anything done in the modern organization.

And recently, I got to see both of these obstacles on display . . . on the same day!

Cindy and I were doing some training for a pretty big company. The client is a great lady and a great communicator. She wanted us to bring her team up to speed on social media. We got there early, so we could set up. But two people were sitting in the room where we were supposed to be doing the training.

They looked like they were hard at work on something, so we didn't want to disturb them. But .  .  . the training was due to begin, and we needed to hook up the projector, so we stuck our heads in and politely asked if we could set up, and they said sure.

And as we went about our business, I realized what those two people were working so hard on: they were going over an article for the intranet. It was the approval process in action!

Of course, I eavesdropped. And of course, it was awful. The “manager” who was approving the document just kept adding all this horrible shit!

She added buzzwords and press release boilerplate, and gratuitous phrases.

“Instead of saying we’re announcing this program, let’s say that we’re ‘truly pleased and excited to announce’ this program,” she actually said at one point.

The communicator (I assume it was a communicator) was as quiet as a mouse. She just kept nodding, and writing in the margins, and adding all the bullshit.

After 20 long minutes that seemed to take 20 hours, the torture session ended. At which point the manager stood up and said: “Let’s get this up on the intranet by the end of the day.”

And finally, the communicator spoke up.

“That’s not going to happen,” she said, in a very polite way. “My writer is tied up all day today. She’s not going to be able to do it until tomorrow.”

“Really?” said the manager, in a sweeter-than-honey voice. “She can’t find time to make these tiny little changes?”

“These are not tiny little changes,” the communicator said, and at that point I almost wanted to leap over the table to a) hug the communicator; and b) punch the manager in the throat.

Thankfully, before I could do either of those things, they left the room. I don’t know how the issue was resolved, but I hope the communicator stuck to her guns, and let the manager know that when you want to make wholesale, bullshit changes to a piece of communication, you don’t get to do it on your time line.

After watching that bloodbath, I then had my run-in with IT.

One of the communicators who was supposed to attend the training was home sick, and would be calling into the session. So our client asked if I could e-mail her the presentation, so she could follow along.

No problemo . . . the presentation wasn’t that big, so I just sent it off to her. But she didn’t get it! Why not? Because it was picked off by IT, who sent her an e-mail with the heading:

“Profanity Inbound.”

At first, I thought that was pretty cool. I'm "Profanity Inbound" personified! I actually think that would be a good name for my company: “Profanity Inbound.” And I think it would be cool if that was how I was introduced before speeches:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, prepare yourself for . . . Profanity Inbound.”

The rest of the message read:

“A message addressed to you contains offensive language or another violation of the e-mail policy. The message will be held for 10 days and then deleted.”

Wow! So they hold the message hostage for ten days and then kill it! And nowhere in the e-mail did they tell the recipient what to do if she really needed to retrieve that e-mail!

I was dumbfounded. I sometimes, occasionally, on accident, without meaning to, let loose with a swear word or two when I present. But not in e-mails sent to corporate clients! I’m stupid and crass, but not that stupid and crass.

And then I saw one final note, at the very bottom of the IT message. It read:

“Found the expression “Bs” 1 times, at 10 points each, for an expression score of 10 points.”

A ha! Now I knew the problem! In one of my slides I show a “B.S. Bingo card”—a bingo card filled with all the latest corporate jargon, that employees bring into meetings, and check off the boxes as the executives spew their corporate bullshit. First one to get five in a row either across or down wins! It makes the meetings go by so much faster!

And that’s what the IT Gestapo caught! The "B.s." wasn’t in the e-mail . . . it was buried deep in the Powerpoint attachment! Two letters on one slide, out of 120 slides!
 
Of course, being the competitive person I am, I immediately wanted to send the woman another e-mail, and try to beat that measly “10” score.

“What’s the record score for Profanity Inbound?” I asked the client. “If I can beat it, will they give me some kind of plaque?”

Of course she wouldn’t tell me . . . and I had to drop the matter because the training started.

But if I had my way, I would have tried for triple digits. If B.S. could get me 10 points, how many points do you think I would have collected if I sent this e-mail into the system:

“Listen to me, you IT sons of bitches. I know you’re reading this, you bedwetting pervert scum. Why don’t you find something better to fucking do, like fix the God damned search function on the intranet? I know you assholes are just sitting down there, playing your stupid ass computer games and jerking off to HTML code. Why don’t you mind your own fucking business before I come down there and shove your mouse, cord and all, right up your fucking ass?”

Profanity Inbound, indeed.

Where do these headlines come from?

I just saw this headline on USA Today:

"World's neediest kids suffer in recession."

Really? Why . . . are they getting laid off, too?

It reminds me of a headline I saw once in the Wall Street Journal:

"World's neediest kids cash in on dot-com boom."

Wouldn't a better headline be:

"World's neediest kids suffer all the time."

Just wondering.

And isn't it interesting that, in my first sentence up there, I wrote that I saw something ON the USA Today, and not IN the USA Today.

I did that without even realizing it. Because I got the news off the wonderful USA Today application on my iPhone. I find myself getting quite a bit of news these days from my iPhone--Wall Street Journal stories, New York Times columns, Cubs scores, weather reports.

It took me about six years of cell phone usage to get rid of my land line. I wonder how long I'll have the iPhone before I just decide to get rid of my computer altogether . . .

This Zappos thing? I ain't buying it

Have you heard about this Zappo’s company? At first, when I kept hearing the name, I thought everyone was talking about the company that makes lighters . . . but that’s Zippo, I think.

Zappos sells shoes online. Which explains why I never heard of them until recently. I don’t buy shoes online. In fact, I rarely buy shoes at all. 

Right now, I have five pairs of shoes. Gym shoes, deck shoes for the boat, brown dress shoes, black dress shoes, and sandals. And I only have brown dress shoes because Cindy bought them for me.

I’ll wear my shoes until they fall apart, and then go to Payless and buy more. It seems criminal to me that anyone would have more than five pairs of shoes . . . unless you’re a mountain climber or something and need a special pair with spikes on the bottom. Or you’re a girl. Girls have different rules for shoes, I know. Girls and gay guys.

Anyway . . . this Zappos is all over the media. You can’t turn your computer on these days without hearing about Zappos. They are the darling of the online world, the social media world, and the retail world.

Zappo’s CEO has become a celebrity in the Social Media space, because he uses Twitter to build his brand. And he actually writes his own tweets!!! And he was doing it before Oprah!!

Many of his tweets are stupid . . . but when it comes to executives using Twitter, you’re judged not by the quality of your tweet, but by whether or not you’re willing to tweet to begin with, it seems.

Such is the nature of the 140-character world we find ourselves in these days.

I did some online research on Zappos, and the company is all over the blogosphere. One blogger just couldn’t contain his enthusiasm for the company.

“This is a company that's bursting with personality, to the point where a huge number of its 1,600 employees are power users of Twitter so that their friends, colleagues, and customers know what they're up to at any moment in time,” he gushed.

Wow!! Sixteen hundred “power users” of Twitter, all about 22 years old, sending constant tweets about their lives!! That makes me wanna buy me some shoes!!!

I get the fact that Zappos is the Google or Yahoo of today . . . young people, very hip, very cool, non-corporate, blah blah blah.

I have no problem with Zappos. I don’t shop online, so I probably won’t ever have any dealings with them. But I only wish them the best.

But one thing about the whole Zappos phenomena bothers me. I’ve heard rumors of something called “The Offer.” The CEO likes to talk about it at social media conferences, and the bloggers have all written about it.

Supposedly, the company offers $2,000 to new employees to QUIT the company. That’s right. If you quit after a week, you get two grand!

The idea being, I guess, that you’ll weed out the bad seeds before they can do any damage, and before you spend even more money training them.

And supposedly, very few employees take the company up on “The Offer.” VERY few.

Well . . . I call bullshit. I don’t think the company offers employees $2,000 to quit. I think maybe when they started out they might have done that . . . and then it became a legend, and now they have gotten too big to do it (they recently had to lay people off!) but they don’t want to say they don’t do it anymore, because then they wouldn’t be quite as cool as they are now. 

Supposedly, the company offers this cash to call center employees, customer service reps, and other workers who toil for $11 an hour.

Bullshit. I’ve done telemarketing. I’ve interviewed plenty of call center employees. It is hell on earth. It sucks your soul out of your ass.

And I don’t care how cool the CEO is, or how often he Twitters, or how cool the corporate office is, or whether or not you can wear ripped jeans to work, two thousand dollars is two thousand dollars.

Maybe it’s the cynic in me. I don’t know. But I don’t think it really happens.

But . . . BUT . . . that’s not what this column is about. Let’s say that they really DO offer employees $2,000 to quit. This leads to another, even more important question:

WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH THE YOUTH OF THIS COUNTRY?

Why aren’t teenagers and recent out-of-work or never-had-work college grads lining up to get hired and then quit and get the cash? Where’s the entrepreneurial spirit? Where’s that old Yankee ingenuity?

When I was that age, I would have done anything for two grand. So would most of the people I knew.

Once, in college, I hitchhiked home one weekend to work because I needed money . . . and my college roommate—and current best friend—sold my mini-refrigerator, my clock radio, and my pillow for an ounce of reefer.

It was like some kind of fucked-up, ass backwards Jack and The Beanstalk story . . . only instead of getting upset, I was glad he had weed.

Here’s how the conversation went:

Me: “Where’s my fridge?”

Donny: “I sold it.”

Me: “Where’s my clock radio?”

Donny: “Sold it.”

Me: “Where’s my pillow?”

Donny: “I don’t know. I think the guy I sold the other shit to took it.:

Me: “What did you get for my shit?”

Donny: “Ounce of weed.”

Me: “Any left?”

Donny: “Shit load.”

Me: “Cool.”

My man Donny had the spirit of capitalism in him! He was an entrepreneur! He would have done anything for two thousand bucks. Me, too.

When I was 20, in between colleges, I worked at Wendy’s. I managed to last six whole months . . . but only because the guy who managed the night shift could get mushrooms. I would have quit after a month, but I was afraid of losing my mushroom connection.

You think I would have taken two grand to quit? I would have quit for a six pack of beer and a double with cheese, and gone across the street to McDonalds!!

I can’t believe there aren’t more people lining up to get hired at Zappos, then quit for the cash. And if it IS true, shame on all the young people out there.

Where is your entrepreneurial spirit? Where’s your imagination? You can’t sit through an interview and a couple of days on the job for two grand?

Has Obama already managed to suck the work ethic out of this country by getting in bed with the unions and giving everybody a handout?

What gives?

What's wrong with this picture?

I remember when Mark and Larry Ragan, from Ragan Communications, hired me in 1992.

I was fresh out of college . . . well, maybe not so fresh. It had taken me a total of 8 years to fight my way through three different colleges, and there was quite a bit of drinking and some mild drug use involved, and I had to work 50 hours a week the entire time while taking classes.

So let's say I had just staggered out of college into the working world.

In order to get the job at Ragan, I had to pass several writing tests, and survive a two-week "trial period." And I almost didn't make it.

But, in the end, Mark and Larry hired me, and awarded me the staggering sum of $16,500 a year.

That number popped out at me this week, as I was reading the stories of the flight that crashed in Buffalo a couple of months ago.

Whenever a plane crashes, I take an immediate interest and study everything there is to know about why it went down. That's what you do when you have a fear of flying.

Well, in this case, it was all apparently due to pilot error. The two pilots involved were probably exhausted, at least one was inexperienced, they were negligent in their pre-flight checks, and then, at the crucial decision-making time, they made some horseshit decisions and killed everyone on board.

The problem was ice on the wings. And here is what the young, inexperienced, dingbat of a copilot had to say, on tape, talking about ice buildup (which she had never seen before). 

"You know, I'd have freaked out. I'd have, like seen this much ice and thought, oh my gosh, we were going to crash."

Like, Oh My God, can you like, believe that shit?"

I think I had to go through more of a pre-hire screening than this woman did. I was an assistant editor of a small niche newsletter with about 1,000 readers.

This woman was flying commuter jets!!

And guess what? The copilot, a woman whose actual name I don't want to smear out here, was being paid $16,000 a year from this asshole airline, Colgan Air, which sounds more like an deodorizer than an airline.

$16,000. Or, $500 LESS than I was making 17 years ago. Does anyone else see a problem here?

When I was starting out, I made plenty of editorial mistakes. Grammatical mistakes, reporting mistakes, bad judgment, typos . . . but the worse thing that could happen to me was a letter to the editor and a slightly disapproving look from Larry Ragan that seemed to say, without saying, "I know you're young and stupid, but can you try not to be so stupid even though you're young?"

When you screw up as a pilot, people die. And she was being paid less than me? In 1992 dollars?

People in this country need to get their priorities straight. 

Let's forget about whether we should torture people. Let's forget about health care. Let's forget about Pakistan and Iraq and North Korea. Let's forget about whether Obama should speak at Notre Dame. Let's forget about American Idol and Susan Boyle and Twitter and Facebook and the Octomom and steroids in baseball and Oprah and everything else that commands our attention.

And let's focus on one simple thing:

Who the fuck is flying the planes in this country??????????

Thank God for "Meeting Speak"

Like most of the people who read this blog, I’ve sat in a lot of corporate meetings in my career.

Most meetings suck. We all know that. They are counter-productive. When I first started working for myself, from home, I could get more done in an hour than I used to get done in a day at the office.

Why? No meetings. (Except for the Crescenzo Communicaitons “status meetings” with Cindy, which is really just about the sex. And those only take about a minute and a half, and they are almost never counter-productive. Not from my perspective, anyway).

Over the course of my career, I’ve sat through thousands of meetings where absolutely nothing gets accomplished.

I’ve sat through hundreds of meetings where the entire objective of the meeting, it seems, is to give people a chance to cover their asses about why their project is late, or over budget.  

I’ve been in lots of meetings where the #1 objective of every single person in the meeting was to avoid getting any extra work.

I’ve been in plenty of meetings that have been hijacked by overblown executives, and the original goals of the meeting aren’t even addressed. Which means, of course, that we need to reschedule the original meeting and do it all over again.

I’ve been in meetings where the “leaders” (the people who called the meeting) obviously have no idea what they want to accomplish . . . in fact, they actually called the meeting hoping that someone else would figure it out for them!

And lately, I’ve been in meetings where half the participants are diddling their Dingleberries the entire time, instead of paying attention to what is being discussed. Those people later complain that they were left out of the loop.

If you sit through enough meetings, you learn what I call “Meeting Speak.” This is a system of polite words and phrases that you use, during meetings, because you can’t say what you really want to say.

Meeting Speak is what keeps corporate meetings from turning into fist fights.

For example: Let’s say that you are in a meeting that is supposed to be about proposed changes to the intranet. But some IT asshole hijacks the meeting, and starts talking about the fact that it’s really hard for him to work on the intranet, because he has all this work to do on the external Internet site.

And then he starts listing all the things on his To Do list, that have nothing to do with what the meeting is about. Sound familiar to anyone?

You know what you’d like to say to the IT guy, right? You’d like to say:

“Will you please shut the fuck up and get back to the topic at hand, which is the changes that we need you to make to the intranet?????”

But you can’t say that, right? So you switch over to Meeting Speak, and say:

“Can we talk about that offline?”

“Offline” is meeting speak for “not now.” And asking someone if you can talk about something “offline” is a polite way of saying, “If you don’t shut the fuck up and get back on track I’m going to pour my coffee in your lap.”

Another one of my favorites is:

“Allow me to play Devil’s Advocate here.”

I’m sure you’ve all heard that one a lot. It’s Meeting Speak for, “You are so God damned dumb that you belong in an institution, and I will now explain to everyone just how God damned dumb you really are.”

Here’s an example of how you might use this one:

Communicator: I really think that the intranet home page is looking great. Nice and clean, the eye knows where to go, and the most important stuff jumps out at you.

Web designer: This would be a really great time to put some Flash applications on there. Since it’s getting close to Easter, wouldn’t it be neat to have a little bunny hopping across the top of the page?”

Communicator: Well, let me play Devils Advocate here, Linda. Might not the hopping bunny be a distraction to our readers, who are mostly going to the site for information about the company?

Here is how that conversation would play out if we didn’t have Meeting Speak.

Communicator: I really think that the intranet home page is looking great. Nice and clean, the eye knows where to go, and the most important stuff jumps out at you.

Web designer: This would be a really great time to put some Flash applications on there. Since it’s getting close to Easter, wouldn’t it be neat to have a little bunny hopping across the top of the page?”

Communicator: You are an asshole, and that might be the biggest asshole idea I’ve ever heard.

At this point, the Web designer starts sobbing and runs out of the room, and you are asked to report to HR immediately.

One of my favorite newer Meeting Speak phrases is the ever-popular:

“I don’t know if I have the bandwidth for that.”

And the translation for that, of course, is:

“I do more fucking work in a day than you do in a month, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you dump even more work on me.”

Another one: “Let’s compare calendars offline.” That of course means:

“If I can stall this scumbag on dates, maybe he’ll forget what he asked me to do.”

Hallucinators, do you have any favorite Meeting Speak phrases?

I’m always looking for more information . . . and more ammunition.

Advice for Southwest Airlines: Start doing “Cane Checks”

Anyone who reads this blog knows I adore Southwest Airlines. I’ve known most of the communicators over there for years, and love every single one of them . . . as communicators, and as people.

I also happen to think Southwest is the benchmark for how to treat and communicate with employees. They are one of the few companies, I feel, that shows a direct link between employee communication and the bottom line:

Namely: If you A) Treat employees like adults and with respect . . . . then B) the employees truly are engaged, and feel like they are part of a family, not just a company . . . which means that C) that feeling shows up in how they do their jobs and treat their customers.

Every single time I fly Southwest—and I mean every single time—I hear passengers talking about how much they love to fly Southwest because of the Southwest people. I flew to St. Louis earlier this week, and standing in line to board, I heard three separate conversations like that going on.

Okay . . . so you know I love Southwest. Now for the constructive criticism and advice:

I’ve been flying Southwest quite a bit lately, which is unusual for me. All my miles are with United, so I usually fly them.

But, in order to save some cash for clients in these tough times, I’ve been flying Southwest. I recently flew them to Phoenix, Seattle, and St. Louis, all in the past month.

And I always check in very early, so that I get in the “A” group, which means I’m first to board. I need to do that, because if I don’t get an aisle seat, I have been known to freak out, like Rain Man, and start bashing myself in the head halfway through the flight.

It’s a combination of claustrophobia, fear of flying, and a small bladder. I need to be on that aisle!

But, on a recent flight, I checked in a little late and got in the “B” group. I was nervous. But I thought that, since I was B16, which isn’t bad, I would still be okay. I was actually counting the number of people ahead of me, and trying to estimate how many aisle seats would be left by the time I boarded. (That’s the sort of thing one does when one flies sober; had I been drinking, I would have been listening to my iPod without a care in the world).

Well, I had it figured that I would be okay . . . when the most horrible thing happened. They started the boarding process . . . but instead of the “A” group going, they called up some kind of “special needs” group.

And there were about 12 of them! That meant 12 more prime seats taken off the board!

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Special needs people have special needs, and as such should be allowed to board first, right?

Wrong! I think it’s nothing more than a scam! These scumbags are taking advantage of the system to get on the plane first! Let me break down this group of “special needs” people for you.

One old woman was in a wheelchair. Okay, I’ll give you that one. She should probably go on first. Even if she was faking, which she might have been, if she went through all the trouble to rent a wheelchair and have someone push her to the gate, she gets to go on first, just because she had the balls to fake it. I’ve got no problem with the Wheelie.

But after her, there were about six women with canes. Canes! Not crutches . . . canes! Not those metal rolling walkers . . . canes! You know, fancy little canes .  . . sort of like walking sticks. 

So if you have a cane, so you get to board first? Mr. Peanut had a cane! And he dances around like a big sissy! Winston Churchill had a cane, and do you think he needed special boarding privileges?

Of these six women with canes, three of them had what looked like fake limps. One of them walked right by me, and I swear to God, my leg started quivering . . . I wanted to “accidentally” kick her cane away from her and see if she really needed it.

And it gets worse! The other three women didn’t even bother to fake a limp! They just strolled up the ramp, carrying their little sticks. One of them, I swear, practically did a little two-step shimmy move, like Fred Astaire used to do with his cane.

And that’s still not the worst of it! Of the five "special needs" women who were left, they didn’t even have canes! They had luggage!

They were just . . . what, old? But they weren’t even that old. They weren’t all hunched over or anything like that. They were about as old as my mom, and my mom certainly doesn’t need special boarding privileges!

These sons of bitches didn’t even bother to fake a limp! The five of them just strode onto the jetway, like Nazis marching down the Champs-Elysees!!

When I fly Southwest, I set my alarm on my phone to go off exactly 24 hours and two minutes before my flight takes off, because you can check in online 24 hours prior to your flight. If you do that, you’ll get in the A group, or high up in the B group.

I’ve been known to wake up early to check in. I've called Cindy from the road and begged her to check me in because I wasn't at a computer. I’m working the system . . . and these fakers are all getting in ahead of me!

My suggestion to Southwest: Start doing a Cane Test. If someone has a cane and asks for special needs boarding privileges, they have to take the Cane Test. A Southwest Airlines person will take away their cane, and give them a gentle nudge. If they fall over, then they get to board first.

If they don’t fall over, meaning if they if they don’t really need the cane, then they go to the back of C group, and get stuck in a middle seat. And, for good measure, they have to check their stupid little walking stick.

And if you don’t have a cane at all? Then sign up like the rest of us, honey, and take your damn chances.

A contest! Help us develop a new form of communication and you can win a great prize!

Have you heard about this new thing the kids are doing? And maybe some of the grownups, too?

It’s called “Sexting” and from what I can tell, it involves either:

a)    Sending nude pictures of yourself (or someone else, I guess) via your cell phone to someone else; and/or

b)    Sending sexually suggestive text messages . . . in other words, having “text sex” the same way people have “phone sex.”

Now, sending nude pictures is nothing to laugh at. Because I think it might be a felony, and you might get put on the naughty list and all your neighbors will know you’re a pervert.

But sending sexually suggestive messages via the texting function on your phone intrigues me.

When we first heard about this, Cindy and I were both at El Jardin’s, drinking margaritas and reading the paper. There was a big article in there about it.

Of course, we immediately tried to send each other sexy messages with our iPhones, to see how it would work.

It didn’t. Work, I mean.

Because of all the initials people use in texting, and the abbreviations, there was mass confusion. And tapping out full sentences just takes too long, and you lose all your sexual momentum.

Here’s how it went with us:

To get things rolling, I typed: “TOYCATY.”

Which, of course, means: “Take Off Your Clothes And Touch Yourself.”

But Cindy thought it meant:

“Take Off Your Clothes, Asshole. Thank You.”

 Not exactly the language of love, is it? So we tried again. I typed in:

“IHMMIBNRN.”

Which, in my particular sexting language, means:

“I’m Horny, Meet Me In Bathroom Nude Right Now.”

That is what it SHOULD mean. But since there are no established sextisms yet (that we know about, anyway), my message got all jumbled up again. Cindy thought it meant:

“I’m Horny Mama. My Itchy Bum Needs Rubbing Now.”

Now, since I’ve never called Cindy “Mama,” and since she has no desire to rub anyone’s itchy bum, not even her love bug’s . . . she got really creeped out by the whole thing, and it didn’t work. I stood in the El Jardin’s bathroom stall with my pants around my ankles for 20 minutes while she carried on a conversation with the bartender.

When I came out, a little embarrassed, I thought to myself:

“Hey, I’m a communicator. Maybe I can help invent a sexting language, so we can all get on the same page! So Cindy and I brainstormed a couple of things. See if you can figure out what these sexting abbreviations mean . . . and feel free to add your own!

And let’s turn this into another contest! Whoever guesses the most abbreviations will get a shiny new Crescenzo Communications pen, valued at more than $21!

 

Here are some of the abbreviations we came up with. Guess ours, or add to the list! Whoever plays gets a chance to win the pen! Let’s get ahead of this hot new trend! Here are some of the more common ones Cindy and I thought everyone should use:

DPYTIT

FOIGITOW

OTH

ROTFL

AYAD

Guess at those, and add your own! At the very least, even if you never do any sexting yourself, you'll at least be able to tell when your kids are doing it!

A so-so eulogy for my father, Nick Crescenzo

As many readers of this blog already know, my Dad passed away last Sunday, very suddenly, at the age of 67.

It's been a tough week. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't know how anybody gets through life without my wife, Cindy. If cloning ever becomes legal, get yourself a Cindy as soon as you can. You won't regret it.

And while you're at it, get yourself a Zach, too. My son was a trooper all week . . . one of my favorite memories of all time will be Monday night, when he was helping me write my Dad's eulogy. That was something I'll always remember.

I've been trying to think of what to write about my Dad out here . . . and nothing seems good enough. Yet the idea of not writing anything seems wrong . . . if writers can't write about events such as their dads dying, what the hell is the use of being a writer in the first place?

But rather than write something for the blog, I decided to run the eulogy that I gave in church. It's not very good. In fact, much of it sucks, I think. But trying to capture my Dad's life in 10 minutes is an impossible task. I don't think Shakespeare could have done it. I'm not even sure OBAMA could have done it.

But it was the best Zach and I could do, under the circumstances.

Of course, what you will read below isn't exactly what came out of my mouth. I ad libbed a story or three. I had a hard time sticking to the script. I put in one extra story because a) I knew it was funny; and b) I knew it would piss off the Catholic priest, who was such an utter jagoff throughout the whole wake/funeral process that I am writing a letter to the Pope about him.

But what's below is pretty close to what I said. I hope it reveals a little something about my Dad, and his approach to life.

*************

WELL . . . you know I’ve never given a eulogy  before . . . and to have your first assignment be to try and capture the essence and personality and life of Nick Crescenzo . . . well that’s a tall order.

To do it right, I would need ten days in a saloon . . . not ten minutes in a church.

But when Sharon [Dad’s wife] asked me, I of course had to say yes . . . especially given HOW she asked me. She said: “Steven, out of ALL the children, you were always your father’s favorite child. In fact, he loved you so much more than all the other kids, it’s almost as if he didn’t love them at all. I think it’s appropriate that you give the eulogy.”

And you know what? That makes perfect sense.

You know, anyone who knew my dad . . . even a LITTLE . . . has a thousand and one stories about him.

The man was a human story machine.

Every day with him was an adventure, and everything about him generated stories: His sense of humor, his love of life, his unquenchable spirit, his worldview, his contagious enthusiasm for . . .  well, for everything.

The man loved life . . . and he got a big BIG kick out of it.

One of my favorite Nick stories happened at my Grandfather’s wake. My Grandpa, my Dad’s dad, died about three years ago. And before he died, he lived with my dad for a while so my Dad could take care of him.

After Grandpa lost a lot of his mental faculties, but he could still move around physically, my Dad put a motion detector on him, and kept the other half of it in his own pocket, so he could tell if Grandpa started moving around.

So my dad would be watching TV, and Grandpa was supposed to be upstairs asleep, and suddenly you’d hear WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP . . . and my Dad would leap out of the chair, screaming “Grandpa’s on the move, Grandpa’s on the move.”

Then he’d go find Grandpa before he fell down the stairs or drowned himself in the toilet.

Well after Grandpa died, we had a wake and a funeral, obviously. Just like this one. A lot of sad people. Just like now.

Then we went to the restaurant afterwards . . .  for a typical funeral reception where everybody just tries to get through the meal. These things are not up there with your big-time fun events.

Unless Nick Crescenzo is there.

Because suddenly, in the middle of the lunch, you heard, WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP . . it sounded like the fire alarm going off in the restaurant, and it scared the heck out of everybody.

And my dad jumps up from his table, holding his half of Grandpa’s motion detector, and screaming:

“Grandpa’s on the move, Grandpa’s on the move. I snuck his motion detector into the coffin .  .  . Grandpa’s alive in there!!!”

I mean it was sick . . .  and it was FUNNY. And you know what? In seconds, the tension and the sadness was just sucked out of that room.

That was my Dad.

When Dad walked into a room, sadness walked out.

Why? Because he was the funniest guy on the planet, and he was so full of life you couldn’t help but to feel like a bedwetter if you weren’t at least TRYING to have as much fun as him. 

And believe me when I tell you this:

IT is PERFECT that the ultimate funnyman is being buried on April Fools Day .  .  . in fact, I keep waiting to hear a motion detector go off in THAT coffin and the lid to fly open and Nick pop out and say, “What’s the matter with you people? Let’s Party!!. Sher’s Place, Archer and Leavit!!!!” [the bar he used to own with his wife, Sharon].

************

Most of you know . . . my Dad was a cop.

He was a lot of other things, too. A father, a husband, a grandfather, a friend, and one of the great characters of our time.

But for 37 years, more than half his life and almost his entire adult life. . . . my Dad was a cop.

And not only was he a cop, but he was a homicide detective patrolling some of the worst neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side. His beat was the underbelly of America. It was one of those dirty, dangerous corners of the world that very few people in this room, or this country, or this WORLD . . . ever have to see.

When you asked him to describe his job, he liked to say he spent his time crawling through the alleys of the south side. That was his favorite phrase: Crawling Through The Alleys.

I got to see those alleys first hand in college. For a senior journalism class I wrote a paper on how being a cop shapes your personality. And as part of my research, I got to ride along with my dad for a night, on the job.

It’s something I’ll never forget . . . . . and something I’d never want to do again.

I met my Dad at the station, and we got in the car and we started prowling the mean ghettos. Eventually, we pulled into one of those alleys he was always talking about.

I remember thinking, MAN, this is it. A drug bust . . . maybe we’re going to roust some gangbangers . . . I had my notepad out and I felt like I was going to throw up.

“What is this, a stakeout?”  I asked as my heart was pounding like a piston.

“No,” he said, with a serious look on his face. “This is time to get some sleep.”

And he cranked the car seat back and was sound asleep in about 6 seconds.

I remember thinking . . . THIS IS IT?? These are the alleys, the mean streets, the underbelly????

Well . . . 15 minutes later, we got our first call. A gangbanger had walked into a crack house with an automatic weapon and just opened up. When we got there, they were still carrying the dead bodies out, and the house looked like the final scene from Scarface with Al Pacino. Blood and guts everywhere.

We were in the process of investigating that little problem when the next call came in: A 12 year old girl had been gang raped. We had to visit her in the hospital, talk to her parents, and eventually go arrest the 15-year-old kid who ended up being the ringleader in the assault.

I saw a different side of Chicago that day.

And I saw a different side of my Dad, too. I saw my Dad, the cop.

When he wanted to, my dad, the FUNNYMAN, THE ultimate JOKESTER, could make Jack Bauer look like a big sissy. That was the cop side.

After that, MY night was over. My dad was back at work the next night. And the night after that, and the night after that. I could barely make it through ONE night . . . and he did this day in and Day out . . .  for 37 years.

*************

I think that having the kind of job my Dad had can push you one of two ways.

It can poison you slowly from the inside, so that you are never quite capable of really enjoying anything . . . . OR . . . .

It can make you appreciate every minute, every second, of your own life.

My dad took that second path.

Nick Crescenzo was a man who loved to celebrate . . . ANYTHING . . . and EVERYTHING.

Every meal was a party. Every fresh cocktail was a cause for celebration. He could get giddy over a plate of pork chops. Give him some bacon wrapped scallops and it was like he won the Lotto.

He’d call me from a restaurant to tell me that the lobster he was in the middle of eating was “better than sex” (one of his favorite expressions).

To him, sitting at a homemade bar in a garage in the suburb of Plainfield, Illinois was absolutely no different than sitting on a beach in Mexico. You know why? Cause it was LIFE . . . and LIFE was always good.

Don’t get me wrong: He loved Mexico. But he loved that bar in the garage in Plainfield, too.

The man’s enthusiasm for life was UNMATCHED. UNMATCHED. In fact, I don’t think anyone else I’VE MET even comes close.

This was a man who could have fun in the face of any kind of adversity. This was a man who could somehow make the most depressing events fun. This was a Cub fan, people, who could actually have fun with WHITE SOX FANS. And you know what a miserable lot they always are.

Every night was the GREATEST night of his life. Until the next great night, which was usually the very next night. Then THAT night became the greatest night in his life.

A song would come on the radio and it was the greatest song of all time. Until the next song came on, and THAT was the greatest song of all time.

There’s a corny country song by one of those fake country singers, it might be Kenny Cheesy or Tug McGraw or one of those other sissies who aren’t fit to hold Johnny Cash’s guitar pick.

The song is titled: Live Like You Are Dying . . . and it’s about how you would live and what you would do if you only had a certain amount of time left to live. How you would probably live life to the fullest, and seize every day and savor every moment.

Well, my dad never needed a song to tell him that. It is exactly how he lived his life.

Whatever moment he was in . . . THAT was the greatest moment of all time.

Every time I saw him, he was having the time of his life . . . and doing his best to make sure everyone around him was having the time of their life, too.

“Steven,” he’d always say: “I could drop dead tomorrow, so let’s party.”

And party he did. He may have passed on at 67 years old, but he crammed about 150 years OF FUN AND MEMORIES into those years.

***********

Anyone who knows my Dad knows he loved to gamble. He loved to gamble at the track. He loved to gamble at Vegas. He loved to gamble on the riverboats.

And the way he squeezed every drop out of every single day, you could say he also loved gambling with his lifestyle. He knew it was hurting him, long term. He wasn’t stupid. He knew, as he got older, it could probably even kill him.

So some ways, his lifestyle was the ultimate gamble.

And, since his body is now in that coffin, some might say that he lost that particular gamble.

I’M HERE TO TELL YOU: NO WAY. Not a chance.  My Dad didn't lose that bet.

I guarantee you that if Jesus himself came down last week and said “Nick, I can get you another 15 years of life, but you’re gonna need to slow down and completely change your lifestyle.”

I KNOW . . . I KNOW . . .  my Dad would have said, “Jesus, I appreciate the offer . . . but you can keep your extra 15 years . . . now let’s have a cocktail.”

He wasn’t going to change his lifestyle to gain a couple more years.

Nick Crescenzo wasn’t afraid to die. What he was afraid of was NOT LIVING.

Not living life to the fullest. He was going to live life on his terms or not at all.

He gambled with his life . . . but knowing what kind of life he had, and how much he enjoyed it . . . . he came out way ahead of the game.

You know, when you die of natural causes, you don’t get to write the script of how you go. You don’t get to pick how it happens.

But somehow . . . . .  I think my Dad managed to do it. I think he wrote his own ticket out.

Because I know for a fact that if he could pick a way to leave this Earth, he would pick exactly the way it happened.

On his last night, last Saturday, my Dad went out with the person he loved most in this world, his wife and best friend Sharon, to celebrate their 25th Wedding Anniversary. He was with his girls: Sharon and her daughters, Deneen, Anita, and Rhonda.

They drank . . . and they danced. They ate and they drank. And they danced some more and drank some more.

As my Dad would say: They had themselves a party.

When they got home that night, late, my Dad told Sharon it was the greatest night of his life. And you know what? It was.

And as they were sitting there, that last night, my dad having his traditional cup of coffee before going to bed, he said to Sharon:

“I’m going to make you eggs and sausage tomorrow.”

And Sharon said, “I think I’d rather have bacon.”

So my dad said he’d take the bacon out of the freezer.

The current celebration wasn’t even over yet, and he was already planning the next celebration:

Which was . . . . Breakfast!

And you know what? It would have been the greatest breakfast ever. The coffee would have been perfect, the bacon would have been better than sex, and the eggs would be to die for. It would have been a party.

And sitting there, coming off one celebration and already planning the next, sitting with the woman he loved more than life itself . . . he died. He died without suffering, he died without pain, and he died quickly.

There would be no long illnesses. No nursing homes. No loss of dignity—My dad always said, when he would talk about getting old: I’m not wearing any diapers.

Well he died diaperless.

In fact, my dad, Nick Crescenzo, died EXACTLY the same way he always lived: On his terms.

The world is definitely going to be a sadder place without Nick Crescenzo in it. The parties won’t be as much fun, and we won’t laugh as much.

We’re all going to have to do a little more to suck the sadness out of rooms, now that Nick is gone.

But we’re all a hell of a lot better off for having known him . . . and the next time you’re having a good time, the next time you’re really whooping it up and belly laughing, the next time you’re laughing so hard the tears are rolling down your face and you’re afraid you’re going to wet yourself . . . . and all your problems seem real far away . . . remember Nick Crescenzo.

That’s what he would want.