Throwback Tuesday: Close Shave Edition

I'm in The Full Monty now ... then 9 to 5 ... then my 15th year in Cedar Rapids' annual Follies song-and-dance extravaganza. I've spread myself a bit too thin this spring as far as rehearsal availability goes though, so I'll be a pit singer in this year's Follies--where I won't have to wear costumes, worry about my hair or even shave. But Facebook just reminded me there was a time when I not only had to worry about shaving for the show BUT I HAD TO DO IT ONSTAGE. I can't quite remember why, though.

It's Migraining Men

I spent last night dancing to "It's Raining Men" like a shameless, wanton stripper with five half-naked cop guys in a massive photography studio filled with smoke, disco lights, towering Palladian windows, a stripper pole within pants-throwing distance, and multiple photographers and videographers. Which is nothing new, really. I mean it WAS a Tuesday.

Then I spent the early morning practically grunting in pain with the first migraine I've had in probably 15 years. I'd forgotten how the pain can be so breathtaking it almost chokes you. It was so bad and I was so near-delirious that even though I knew I needed to get out of bed and find any pain medication I could get my hands on, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to stand up and I'd collapse on the floor, which would be measurably worse. Or I'd get lost in the dark, because I knew from experience that the last thing I wanted to do was turn on any lights.

Now I'm at work exhausted, groggy, still in lingering pain, overdosed on acetaminophen because I can't take Ibuprofen with my psychotropics, and ingesting caffeine all but intravenously. So hello, Wednesday!

Doug the Christmas Cop on Sunday, Harold the Stripper Cop on Tuesday.

Our Full Monty photo shoot is giving my theater adventures a very coppy throughline.

THE UNDERLYING ROOT OF MY FURY ABOUT TRUMP AND HIS UNCHECKED, UNFETTERED, IRREPARABLE DESTRUCTION OF THE NOBLE AND HERETOFORE INCREASINGLY SUCCESSFUL AMERICAN EXPERIMENT

I can't believe that in the entire Democratic party's top leadership, we can't find one person to define a unified brand and a clear message and a single-concept campaign of voter-ready talking points and sound bites and kick what is an easily, EASILY kickable collective trump-party ass.

Do Democratic leaders have NO competent marketing consultants on their speed dials? Do they have NO concept of how every successful company and organization and big celebrity and small-time social-media sensation and trumpian cancer packages and sells itself in the consumer marketplace?

Never even mind the eventual filleting of the electorate into deep-dive targeted marketing; Democrats don't even have a rudimentary umbrella concept to sell to and fire up and unify frustrated, horrified, furious, and NOW MORE THAN EVER EASY TO SELL TO AND FIRE UP AND UNIFY American voters.

In my 30 years of dealing with more inept, incompetent, road-blocking advertising clients than I can count, I've NEVER seen one so disorganized and aimless and market-averse and pathetically unable to grasp even the lowest of low-hanging fruit.

Trump and his laughing-all-the-way-to-the-bank sycophantic orbit have figured it out; they discovered they could fire up legions of low-information, emotionally inarticulate, festering-in-xenophobia voters with overly simplistic, lost-in-the-bombast irrational, who-cares-if-it's-blaringly-hypocritical-to-the-point-of-being-blatantly-untrue promises of dropping-magically-out-of-the-sky JOBS and ten-dollars-a-month TAX SAVINGS and dangerously aimless NATIONALISM and hush-hush racism and IF THIS FUCKING MORON CAN SOMEHOW GET RICH AND BECOME PRESIDENT THEN THERE'S HOPE AND PROMISE FOR ALL OF YOU FUCKING MORONS TOO HERE BUY THIS SHITTY MAGA HAT THAT WAS MADE IN CHINA.

Jesus, Democratic leaders. I have tons upon tons of experience in successfully developing and accomplishing this essential marketing strategy for big and small clients in multiple countries. I've never done it in the political sector, but how hard can it be giving how less-than-low you've set the bar? I'm just a small-potatoes writer in an only-four-Representatives state whose ideas you'd never even look down on from your top-of-the-national-party level, but at least I can recognize the foundational problem here. And I and every other competent marketing professional--clearly more than you--know exactly what you need to do to fix it. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?

Proposed taglines for trump.dating

StrKKKts only!
Taking sheep breeding to the next level!
Swipe Reich!
Take a break from inbreeding!
Have sex for less than $130 million!
Three-wife limit!
Where “happily married people” count as “local singles”!
Date local married singles!
Grab him by the bone spur!
Red hats, white sheets and who cares if you’re already married?
A new way to fuck the whole country!
Where it doesn’t matter how small your hands are!
I do-tard!
Where shitholes meet!

Solution-oriented jewelry. No, really. Solution-oriented jewelry.

Via JoeMyGod: Get your solutions here

To provide a solution, you first have to define a problem. Not that linear thought has ever been in the Trump family logic arsenal. I've been in the industry of writing corporate-speak for 30 years, often to clients who insist their products and services are best defined by staggeringly craptastic corporate-speak. But "solution-oriented jewelry" outcraps anything I've ever written and holds a place of honor in a bucket of crap at the peak of the pile.