Best Magazine Reads: 8 Reasons Why I Love Jon Hamm/Don Draper

I was reading a recent edition of Rolling Stone, and the cover story was on Jon Hamm, who, as Don Draper on Mad Men, is probably my favorite actor in a TV drama ever.

It was a pretty good article that probably could have been more revealing of its famously mysterious subject, but the article did at least capture much of what I consider the "8 reasons why I love Jon Hamm/Don Draper:"

1. Like me, he's a huge St. Louis Cardinals fan. Like me, he wears their team hat quite a bit. And unlike me, he was a power-hitting catcher growing up in St. Louis. I was a hitting-for-average first baseman growing up in St. Louis.

2. He plays fantasy football. Major props there. Not to mention that he's a former all-state linebacker.

3. He loves Budweiser (meh, I can only tolerate it BECAUSE I'm from St. Louis, but I'd much prefer a craft) and Wilco (now we're talking ... one of my favorite bands).

4. All the actors want to please Hamm on the Mad Men set because he's "like the dad" and "they really don't want to let him down."

5. He worked for 10 years in L.A. before getting his big break, at one point even earning a living as a set dresser on soft-core porn movies.

6. People see Don Draper and they see glamour and authority, apparently a lot of people see their fathers. But I agree with Elizabeth Moss, who plays Peggy Olsen, in that Draper is almost impossible to not stare at and be in awe of.

7. He likes Jeff Bridges as an actor. You have to like that. I mean, Bridges is the Big Lebowski.

8. Rolling Stone writer Rob Sheffield calls Mad Men the "greatest TV drama of all time, and it's not even close. Mad Men is to TV what The Godfather was to the movies."

I would have to second Sheffield's opinion.

Zero Dark Thirty Most Overrated Film in a Long Time

Zero Dark Thirty is, of course, an important story to tell. I kind of enjoyed the movie, but its importance may actually be the reason I couldn't help but feel a little let down.

Because it's so important, director Kathryn Bigelow seems to have felt the need to allow the film to unfold very slowly over nearly three semi-painful hours. There is suspense, but at the expense of often feeling like a slog and American duty to make it all the way to the end.

And the end is what everyone no doubt wants to stay for. Although the scene in which Osama bin Laden is killed in his Pakistan compound is lengthy, I felt like I didn't learn much that I hadn't already read about and the bin Laden sighting ends up being a brief flash. Having this as an episode of America's Most Wanted (that show's not on anymore, is it?) or Bill Kurtis Presents might have been more illuminating than this movie.

And another thing. Jessica Chastain as Maya, the CIA agent who obsesses about her lead in the case to find bin Laden, is really not much of an actress. I expected a little more from someone who won the best-actress-in-a-drama award at the Golden Globes. She leads a cast that turns in a mostly made-for-TV-level performance.

Zero Dark Thirty is probably the most overrated film I've seen in a long time.

*** out of ***** stars

Remington the Christmas Mouse Offers Promising Holiday Tale from D.C. Author

Nothing surprises me anymore with D.C.'s renaissance man Dan Sullivan. That may be because I spent 5 years writing Wiener Sausage: The Musical! with him.

But that doesn't mean you shouldn't be pleasantly surprised. His latest work takes a detour from his stop-and-start blog, his non-profit leadership, his masterful on-stage storytelling, and this past weekend's zany turn at Chief Ike's Mambo Room in Adams Morgan as the world's leading "vajazzler" (don't ask).

It's a children's holiday book called Remington the Christmas Mouse. This story, much like Wiener Sausage (some might say), is a little raw but has a lot of promise.

The premise is creative: The star has fallen off the top of the Green Family's Christmas tree and without it being set properly in place to rise up the chimney and into the sky to light the way to the Green's house for Santa, the family will have to make due without a Christmas.

Enter Remington, an ornament who lives near the bottom of the tree. He realizes the star needs to make it back to the top of the tree but he also knows that the tree's hierarchical cliques of ornaments (the best and prettiest ones get to have all the fun at the top) will make this a treacherous and near impossible journey. He recruits a couple of other bottom-of-the-tree outcasts, a bear and a clock, who help him navigate upwards.

The story is great and captivating. My recommendation, however, is that Remington would work better as a shorter children's book with lots more illustration from Kate Sullivan Nelson. Also, in the Amazon Kindle version I read, there were a dozen or so errors (where words were misspelled or misplaced), so that should be cleaned up. Finally, I'm not sure all the talk of Remington and his pals clearly being inferior because they are not as good-looking as the top-of-the-tree dwellers works for a children's book, where inclusivity and diversity are qualities worth reinforcing for young children. I would say there could be a better (and perhaps even funnier) way to highlight the social differences of the various ornaments.

A lot of promise from Mr. Sullivan is displayed in this book, and "children's storyteller" is clearly yet another side of of this artist that is well worth exploring further.

**** out of ***** stars

Our New Home in Takoma Park, Maryland

The movers brought all our stuff to our new house on Thursday and, after eight years in nearby Silver Spring, our address is now in the lovely, tree-filled Forest Park neighborhood of Takoma Park.

We have a nice fenced-in front yard and an amazing screened-in back porch and tasteful wooden playground in the back yard. There is a finished basement and a sun room that can serve as Jackson's additional play areas. There are really no negatives, except for leaving all our friends at Eastern Village Cohousing. But we have a good number of friends in our new neighborhood already and the neighbors have been uniformly nice in our brief meetings with them so far.

We're off to the Sunday Farmers Market (pictured above), a hallmark of life in the Republic of Takoma Park, which Wikipedia calls "the Berkeley of the East." Like our former home, Takoma Park borders on DC, and it is novel and kind of nice that the city has a "no nukes" policy, has very stringent tree-preservation guidelines, and is about as progressive as possible in every way.

More on all this later, as well as photos when we get a little more unpacked.

Posted with Blogsy

How Does Social Media Fit in to Traditional Public Relations?

I spoke on a really impressive panel on how social media is reshaping the world of public-relations this morning at the Mid-America Marketing Summit at USA Today's headquarters. 

Public Relations in a Social World (left to right)- Kevin Dando, Director, Digital Marketing & Communications, PBS
- Paul Mackie, Director of Communications, Mobility Lab
- Mike Smith, CEO, MSBD
- Elizabeth Shea, President and CEO, SpeakerBox
- Moderator: Jeff Davis, Partner, Sawmill Marketing Public Relations

It was an honor to be asked to speak on a panel with the likes of PBS's digital marketing director and other pros.

My main points were:

• That PR work is more transparent than ever, especially with social media
• Be great at social media, don't simply hand it over to an intern because it's simply too crucial to your full suite of strategic communications
• One of the most important traits of a consistently great PR person is the ability to be friendly, helpful, and a person who gets great stories out of himself and clients
• The ability to build an army of collaborators to help you spread your messages (on both social media and in person)
• Make your issues relevant, no matter how hard your organization may push back on that
• Practice and hone your storytelling and writing by having your own blog (on whatever topic you like)

Conference sponsor Speakerbox also covers our panel nicely here.

God of Carnage Throws Our Manners Out the Window

My buddy Tim Getman stepped into one of his biggest roles yet with the excellent God of Carnage, which just wrapped up a very successful run at the Everyman Theater in Baltimore.

Yasmina Reza wrote the play in French and it's been translated to English and performed all over the country. Its popularity makes sense. The story takes the excruciating plot of two couples getting together to discuss their sons' playground fight. We know this can't possibly go as well as the well-intentioned parents think it will. We're just lucky the play only lasts about 75 minutes because the couples would have definitely killed each other if it went any longer.

The pacing of the Baltimore production was top notch, and the four stars had me laughing steadily throughout. The story is also very compelling, as each person shows the ugly side of how we all think we're right most of the time when, in fact, who's to say who's right.

I'm curious to also see the film version, called Carnage, directed by Roman Polanski and featuring a powerhouse cast of Christoph Waltz, Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly, and Kate Winslet.

****1/2 out of ***** stars

The Campaign is Shockingly a Lame Duck

How does the combo of Zach Galifinakis and Will Ferrell fail? These two are so reliably funny, but being together in The Campaign seems to have negated each's own charms.

This movie is shockingly unfunny. The only saving grace is that the storyline of the little dorky guy with the dorky family rising up to fight the big bully has its charms.

I actually watched this several weeks ago and was trying to forget I had ever seen it. But then I thought I better write this blog now to remind myself never to watch it again.

I don't think I even laughed twice, which is almost impossible. I laugh at all kinds of dumb stuff.

Go back and watch Zach in Two Ferns or The Hangover, or Will in any of his other films.

*1/2 out of ***** stars

Argo Was Truly the Best Movie of 2012

I admittedly haven't seen Ang Lee's Academy-Award-winning Life of Pi, but it's a crime that Ben Affleck didn't win the Oscar for best director for Argo.

Affleck is clearly a student of film. And the student has now turned master. The heartbreaking Star Wars characters and Hardy Boys books on the bedroom shelves of Affleck's son in the film. The classical music touches all the way from the Hitchcock ending-credits tune to perfectly placed classic rock like "Dance the Night Away" by Van Halen and "When the Levee Breaks" by Led Zeppelin. The incredible pacing and tightly wound suspense in general.

The plot is based on a true story (almost unbelievable that it isn't fiction) in which six Americans escape from the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran as it is overrun by anti-Americans. This is set in 1979 as Iran is experiencing serious growing pains in its transition from a near-democratic state into a religious dictatorship. The more well-known hostage crisis is happening at the same time that CIA agent Affleck is creating a movie called Argo (based off a moment when he is talking to his son on the phone while they both watch Return to the Planet of Apes on their respective TVs) that will serve as the plot for rescuing the six non-official American hostages.

That it took 33 years for someone to make such a great account of the hostage crisis is amazing and perhaps a sad statement on the creativity of humanity(!) But that's going awfully negative. There is nothing negative to say about this film.

Best movie of 2012 (barely beating out Django Unchained).

***** out of ***** stars

Best Magazine Reads: Awesome Things I Learned (or Relearned) From the Jimmy Page Rolling Stone Interview

1. Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham died in 1980 in guitarist Jimmy Page's house, strangled on his own vomit, after drinking 40 vodka shots. This was the end of the band, except for a couple of reunion shows, obviously minus one of rock's very best all-time drummers.

2. Page played guitar on The Who's "I Can't Explain," which is tied for my favorite Who song with "Pictures of Lily."

3. Page never met or saw Jimi Hendrix perform, but he wished he had.

4. The Who's spastically wonderful drummer Keith Moon (perhaps rock's greatest skins man alongside Bonham and the ever-underrated Ringo Starr) was the one who actually came up with the name Led Zeppelin.

5. Page says what makes a great guitar riff is one that's hypnotic because it must be played and heard over and over again.

6. Rolling Stone routinely panned Led Zeppelin's albums.

7. Page downplays his debauchery as slightly overstated by the press and biographers. Regardless, I still love this classic tour photo of him swigging Jack Daniel's.

8. Bonus: My five favorite Zep songs, at least today, are: "Tangerine" from III, "Over the Hills and Far Away" from Houses of the Holy, "Going to California" from IV, "Kashmir" from Physical Graffiti, and "All My Love" from In Through the Out Door.


Read the whole interview here.

Gone Girl is a Page-Turning Mystery Thriller for Anyone Who Doesn't Have Much Time to Read

Gillian Flynn took her straight-forward style as a former writer for the non-intellectual (but great) Entertainment Weekly to compose New York Times Bestseller Gone Girl. 

It's excellent fiction, and the kind of T.C. Boyle-like breezy, quick-read storytelling (as opposed to that of more difficult scribes like David Foster Wallace or Don DeLillo) that I increasingly find myself drawn to at the point in my life when I'm raising one kid and have another on the way and have less time to read.

I suppose to truly conserve time, I could have waited for the movie, which is set to be produced by Reese Witherspoon's film company. But this was well worth reading ahead of time.

Nick and Amy Dunne are writers in New York City who lose their jobs and have to move back to Nick's hometown not far from Hannibal and St. Louis, Missouri. Their marriage begins to show major cracks until Amy suddenly disappears and Nick becomes the focal point of a homicide investigation.

The trick of making the story alternately narrated by Nick and Amy provides the suspense, as the reader doesn't know whose conflicting story to trust. But both are tremendously well fleshed-out characters. Gone Girl is an innovative who-done-it crime mystery.

***** out of ***** stars