It seems this week that I’ve been everywhere but on my own blog.  So a couple of things to pass along.

First, it’s official: My first book hits Amazon on February 1, and some other outlets as well (which I’ll announce later).  It’s called “‘What Was That Number Again?’ Crimes Against Advertising, and How to Prevent Them”, and hopefully it comes in handy for anyone who’s ever had to write an ad for anything.

The book has its own website, whatwasthatnumberagain.com, and even a Facebook page you can go “Like” if you want.  Both locations will have consistently updated content.  I’ve decided that rather than ever put out a second edition, I’ll just keep adding content and writing new chapters on the website.  (That includes something extra cool that happens on the site on February 6th.)

Second, I was honored to be invited aboard the Charles Adler Show this week, nationally syndicated on 14 radio stations in Canada.  On the show, we talked about the piece I wrote for Sympatico about the “incident” at the school in Florida where the Sheriff was called in after a girl gave a boy a peck on the cheek on the school playground.

If you missed it, here’s the audio:

This is traditionally the time of year when there’s a bit of a decline at the gym.  People show up in droves on January 1 or 2, and by the 10th or 11th, the numbers begin to drop, part of a decline that will see attendance levels back to their pre-holiday levels by Valentine’s Day.

It’s an annual cycle, one that never seems to change.

Why do we put that kind of pressure on ourselves?  Why do we decide sometime in December that “next year is going to be different,” and then hold off on making important changes until January 1, making sure we have enough time to build up expectations and the likelihood of failure?

A couple of thoughts on this…

First of all, I’m not sure why people make resolutions in the first place.  If you decide on December the 10th that losing weight is important to you, it’s beyond me why you would start doing something about it on January 1 when you’ve got the chance – and the momentum – to start by December 11th.  If it’s worth doing at all, it’s worth doing today, isn’t it?

If the pressure of “launching” whatever your new effort is on January 1 doesn’t crush it under its own weight, then surely the pressure of making an annual change will.  Seriously?  You’re going to go to the gym every day for the next year?  What happens when you miss a day because of an injury or an illness?  Now the whole year is shot.  What if you resolved to be a nicer, more tolerant driver and find someone completely worthy of “the finger” on January 4th?

People look at making annual resolutions that start on January 1 because there’s a sense of turning a page.  My suggestion: Get a desk calendar that has a new page for each day, and make daily resolutions instead of yearly ones.  If you have an annual resolution to go to the gym three times a week and you fall off the wagon, your resolution is broken.  If you resolve to go to the gym tomorrow and you fail, you get another chance the following day; you can renegotiate the deal you made with yourself and have an actual shot at success.

Don’t resolve to eat better in 2012, because subconsciously your year goes down the toilet with your very first cheeseburger.  Instead, resolve to eat better today.  Once you’ve accomplished that, make the same resolution for tomorrow.

Granted, daily goals are way smaller than annual ones.  But I can virtually guarantee you that daily goals will keep you in the game longer, and will increase your chances of having a year full of achievements you’re proud of.  If it’s true that climbing a mountain requires a first step, it’s surely easier to focus on the step than on the mountain.

If we really wanted to make a dent in drunk driving deaths, we’d go about it differently.

If we were truly committed to saving lives, and it was actually important to us, we’d be taking more serious steps to do something about it.

Imagine what would happen if all cars had one of those breathalyzer locks on the ignition – the kind that won’t allow you to start the car if your blood alcohol level is above a certain point.  The technology obviously exists, and the units cost about as much to install as a driver’s-side airbag.  Privacy advocates would no doubt scream in opposition, and the market would complain about what a pain it is.

…sorry to inconvenience you.

Imagine what would happen if a single drunk-driving offense carried an automatic license suspension of ten years, with a repeat offense resulting in a lifelong driving ban; and imagine if a person caught driving with a license suspended for drunk driving were given an automatic ten-year jail sentence.

…but hey, wouldn’t want to keep you “business” people from getting loaded with your corporate Platinum cards (that get paid for with the shareholders’ money).  Forcing you to behave responsibly might impact your ability to close that big deal.

Imagine what would happen if a car manufacturer instituted a policy in their contracts where a single drunk driving conviction meant you had to give the car back.  No replacement provided, you simply forfeit the right to drive that manufacturer’s car, and you couldn’t buy a car from that automaker again.  Imagine if Ford said, “You’re not the kind of person we want driving our cars.”  It would carry the implied message that every person behind the wheel of a Ford was simply a more responsible driver, and on some level, a better human being.  Personally, I’d pay a premium to be a member of that club.

Look, people are going to continue to get behind the wheel after too many drinks.  It’s human nature to occasionally behave like a completely reckless, careless, selfish, ignorant piece of scum.  (Apparently.)  And so, people are going to continue to mark Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s by attending funerals.

One in three people will be involved in an alcohol-related crash during their lifetime.  And according to the Centers for Disease Control, the average drunk driver has driven drunk 80 times before the first time they get busted.  (That’s eighty, as in eight times ten, in case you thought it was a typo.)

To really do something about it is going to take courage.

I wonder when the public, the Government or the auto industry is finally going to summon the courage to say “enough” in a way that actually matters.

It seems to have become a regular thing that I have joined the CTV News family for a weekly commentary on the week’s events; I usually appear on CTV News Channel, Saturday mornings around 11:10 Eastern Time (although the piece airs nationally).  I’m going to make an effort to post the highlights from my notes and the conversations with the anchors each week after the piece airs.  This is the first attempt.  My time on CTV News Channel is markedly more lighthearted than what’s below; I hope you get to catch it sometime.

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STORY:  Justin Trudeau calls Environment Minister Peter Kent “a piece of sh*t” on the floor of Canada’s House Of Commons during Question Period.

First, my position on this issue has nothing to do with an exchange that Justin and I had on Twitter (and on this blog) back in March of this year, or with the fact that he still owes me the beverages he promised.  I’ve been in broadcasting since 1981 (Justin was 10).  Never once in those 31 years did I curse on the air.  Were there subjects I was passionate about?  You could say that.  After all, I was in the middle of reading a live weather forecast for my area – an hour or so outside of Manhattan – when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a second plane hit a second tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.  I didn’t curse in that moment, simply because one doesn’t curse on the air.  And if I could be restrained in that moment, Justin Trudeau could certainly have avoided leaping to his feet and having “piece of sh*t” immortalized in Canada’s meeting minutes for all eternity.  Please don’t let anyone give you any excuse other than it being a carefully orchestrated piece of Trudeau Theatre.  It was, I might add, executed brilliantly, including the mock apology afterward.  If you know anything about Justin Trudeau you have a very strong hunch that he fully intended to use that word, fully intended for the media firestorm afterward, and milked it for everything it was worth.

Come on, Justin.  Most Canadians view “Question Period” as a room full of angry monkeys flinging feces at each other as it is – we don’t need you to try and make the analogy more real.

I think that’s a point that needs to be made as well, because I think it escapes most Canadian politicians.  I know that during “Question Period”, you folks think you’re earning your pay and showing Canadians how hard you’re working in holding the other side’s feet to the fire.  The truth is that “Question Period” is the time when you disappoint us the most, and when most of us realize our emperors have no clothes.  It’s when we realize we elected a room full of people we thought were going to look out for us, who then get to Ottawa and essentially turn the Government into a day care.

~

STORY:  Just two weeks after a media frenzy over having a search and rescue helicopter pick him up from a fishing vacation to take him to a photo op, Canada’s Defence Minister Peter MacKay is under fire for ringing up a hotel bill that averaged $1452 per night during a conference, in a hotel where his staff had rooms that cost less than $300 per night.

I have trouble with this story because as I said a couple of weeks ago when “Choppergate” happened, I’m a MacKay fan.  But what this story has done has removed any credibility that Canada’s federal government will ever have in being able to question corporate executives about lavish spending.  If Peter MacKay can pay $1452 a night for a hotel room, then Fred’s Garage can write off a $34,000 kitchen makeover for the break room.  If Peter MacKay can have a military helicopter serve as a personal taxi to take him from photo op to photo op, I can write off a stretch limousine to take me to Grand & Toy for a box of paper clips.

Mister MacKay, $1452 a night is what Charlie Sheen pays for a hotel room.  And that’s AFTER he’s trashed it and had to pay for the repairs.

Know why Canadians don’t get particularly upset about these stories?  Because it’s just the latest chapter in our belief that Government exists to screw the little guy.  They steal our money (although they call it taxation), and then waste our money on things that we could never afford for ourselves.  And it’s become such an accepted part of the way things are done that individual incidents of abuse don’t really add much to the overall size of the pile.

News flash for many in Ottawa:  YOU.  WORK.  FOR.  US.  Not the other way ’round.  Every penny you spend is OUR MONEY.  It’s NOT yours.  You can NOT use it as you please.  When we get angry with you for having wasted it on something stupid, remember that it is, in fact, a reprimand from your employer, and take it as a warning that you’d better not make the same mistake a second time.

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STORY: Former NHL player Mike Milbury is alleged to have walked out onto the ice during a youth hockey game in Massachusetts and in his role as Assistant Coach of his son’s team, roughed up a 12 year-old boy from the opposing team who’d been in an altercation with his son, and threatened him.

During his playing career in the NHL, Mike Milbury was never known for having the sharpest skates on the ice, if you know what I mean.  If you want to look up the defining moment of Milbury’s career, you won’t see video of him scoring the goal that won his team a Stanley Cup, or making the play that won his country a gold medal at the Olympics; you’ll see him climbing into the stands to beat up a fan.  To paraphrase my old friend and Yuk Yuk’s comedian Jim McAleese, Mike Milbury was the kind of player who would be awarded a penalty shot and dump the puck in the corner.

If I’m a parent of a kid in that league, I’m demanding a restraining order that Mike Milbury not be permitted near a sports facility of any kind until he’s completed some kind of anger management or counseling program, and that’s at a minimum.

Related articles

• Justin Trudeau hurls obscenity at Peter Kent in Commons (thestar.com)
• Mike Milbury Charged With Assaulting 12-Year-Old Hockey Player [UPDATE] [Mike Milbury] (deadspin.com)

Alastair Sim (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)

If you read nothing else in this post before you click “Play”, read this: As an actor, I make a helluva deejay.

It was 1998 when the idea first struck me: Create a one-hour version of the Dickens classic, “A Christmas Carol“, to be done as an old-school radio drama, that took listeners back to the days of The Shadow and War Of The Worlds; so I took Dickens’ original text, the Alistair Sim version of the film, a script produced by WABC in the early 1970′s, and my own love for the story, and came up with my own version.

I recreated this script with new actors every year as I moved from radio station to radio station all over North America.  In fact, Christmas 2011 will be the first time in a LONG time that a version of this play hasn’t run somewhere.

But it’s running here.

The version below was created in 2010 by the on-air people and the office staff of CJOT-FM in Ottawa, Ontario.  Thanks to the whims of an impatient industry, the station goes by a different name now than when we produced this a year ago, but many of the voices you hear are still at the station.

Our narrator is legendary Canadian TV personality Max Keeping, and that’s yours truly butchering the role of Scrooge.

Hope you enjoy it.

If you’d rather download the file for later listening (it’s an hour long, and a 57MB download), right-click here and select “Save Link As..”

Not long ago, I tried to rally support for the idea of a “Pay It Forward Friday”.

In case you didn’t click the link, the idea was simple – in the drive-thru at the coffee shop, pay for the coffee of the person behind you.  (Which I guess technically means you’re paying it backward, but whatever.)  Once you’re done, mention something on social media (probably Twitter or Facebook) with the hashtag #PIFF.

Ignoring that #PIFF is also used as a hashtag by people smoking a particular strain of marijuana (putting the ‘hash’ back in ‘hashtag’), I hoped we could at least dominate that particular tag for one day out of the week; in theory, people would see the hashtag, ask what it was about, and it would spread.

It was hardly an original idea; this was just my stamp on it.  Now, someone smarter than me has taken it a step further.  (That’s a link to a great idea from Mallory Brown, CEO from World Clothes Line.)

Who knows?  Maybe we do have a movement after all.

Advance warning: This isn’t so much a post as a meandering rant.  If you get all the way to the end and can walk a straight line, I applaud you.

I’m going to politely ask software developers to just go on vacation for a little while when it comes to social media applications and platforms.

Seriously – we’re overwhelmed, and we’re losing perspective.

I decided over the weekend that I would audition a few social media platforms that I’d been ignoring.  And while I’m not evaluating whether or not they work for you, I’ve come to the conclusion that for now, I’m pretty good with Facebook and Twitter, and the occasional dabble into LinkedIn and when I have the time, Google+.

I tried Foursquare for a couple of days and realized (largely with Tatiana’s help) that much like Facebook and Twitter, you get from Foursquare what you put into it.  I’m sure there are people who find tremendous benefit to using it, but I don’t know that it really serves my purposes right now.  I know a few people who seem to be using it a lot, and to me these are pretty savvy folks; so I don’t assume that they’d just flush a bunch of time on something just because it was shiny.  But right now, I’m spread too thin to be able to give Foursquare enough “I” to get any “R” from it (shoutout for the Scott Stratten fans).

The key for me was in having to explain to someone what these other sites do.  If the benefit was buried under too many layers of stuff, it didn’t make the cut.

I’m still going to try to figure out how to use YouTube effectively, and I really will get around to using Google+ sometime (Chris Brogan is too smart to be this wrong); but when it comes to the major social media platforms, I’m left wondering what other minutiae of our lives our social circles need to be in on, and what the hell’s left to invent.  I read today that there’s a new app/platform for the iPhone that will tell me what the best menu item is at the restaurant I’m visiting; I’m flabbergasted that there was a demand for this.

I went through what I’ve come to call a “self-imposed Twexile” a couple of weeks ago, that I’m slowly starting to come back from.  The idea behind it was simple: I’m writing two books (the first of which I’ll be telling you about very soon).  I found myself cursing a writer’s block one day.  On Twitter.  I was writing about my inability to write.  I started to think that every 140 characters I was typing into Twitter was 140 characters that wasn’t going into either of my books.

I realized I had gotten caught up.  I got sucked into the social media vortex where I started to believe that tweeting about work was just as important as doing work.

A couple of weeks ago, when the Klout people redid their algorithm, all the wailing and gnashing of teeth made me peek at my own score, and then start looking around at my friends to see who had suffered a similar setback – as if my new Klout score was going to somehow damage my book sales, or hurt my chances of getting invited to speak somewhere.

I started looking around online, and found people threatening legal action and trying to get the Federal Trade Commission involved, because of the damage that the new algorithm had done to their business.  No, I’m not kidding. These people are out there.  Look, if your business depends on your Klout score, you seriously need to re-examine your career path.  If you’ve ever joined a social network, or even simply tweeted something solely in an effort to have a positive impact on your Klout score, you need to step away from the screen for a while and remind yourself about what’s truly important in the world.

There’s become something of a cottage industry built around being a “social media guru”.  The irony isn’t lost on me that a number of people were calling themselves “social media gurus” until the term became the subject of well-deserved ridicule, then they too joined the chorus of people doing the scoffing and pretended they’d never considered having it put on their business cards.

I’m going to stir a few pots when I conclude here, but before the Internet, our circle of friends (and their friends) and our interactions with those people – THAT was social media; and when I was a kid, the ones viewed as “social media gurus” were usually the guys on the football team and the cheerleading squad.

I was hoping that we’d all outgrown our need to be “one of the cool kids”.

Related articles

• Why I Deleted Foursquare from My iPhone. Have You? (windmillnetworking.com)
• Does Klout Score Really Matter? (community.constantcontact.com)
• Your Klout Score Probably Just Dropped – Do You Care? (readwriteweb.com)

I shouldn’t write posts when I’m upset (or even ‘irked’), because what I’m about to say may very well cost me a friend or two.

I was approached today by someone who asked if I would be growing a moustache for “Movember“.  When I replied in the negative, I was told that I must be a fan of prostate cancer.

I’ll say that again.  A fan of prostate cancer.

I know that the Movember people are shuddering as they read that.

For the uninitiated, Movember is part of a movement to bring men’s health issues into the limelight; men start the month clean-shaven, and do their best to grow a splendid ‘stache before December 1.

Because I was in the media last year at this time, I was a Movember spokesguy. I was in a media men competition to see which local “celebrities” could sport the coolest crumb-catcher.  (Let’s just say I lost.  Badly.  And ended up looking very much like this picture of William H. Macy.)

Many of my friends participated last year, and are doing so again this year, and I applaud them for taking part.  In 2010, about 119,000 Canadians were part of the nearly 450,000 worldwide Movember registrants, and of the $76.8 million raised last year by Movember events, $22.3 million came from The Great White North.  GREAT work.

That said, here’s my problem with what was presented to me today.

As a man who literally watched his father die of multiple cancers (I witnessed the moment of death, and it was something I’ll never forget), I have a hard time when someone suggests that I’m a fan of cancer.

I’m not sure why our society has come to value thinking things and feeling things over doing things, but it’s reaching a fever pitch and somebody needs to say something about it.

People put yellow ribbon magnets on the back of their car to show they “support the troops”.  Really?!?!  Have you ever donated to a care package for a soldier fighting overseas, or helped pack one up, like the people at Give 2 The Troops?  Spent Christmas Day at a widow’s home to console her and her kids the first holiday season without their Dad?  At a minimum, have you ever walked up to a veteran and thanked them for their service?  No?  Then tell me how, exactly, you support the troops.  Because no war was ever won with magnets on the back of a car.

Even the people at the World Wildlife Fund have caved; this page on their website offers graphics and links you can put on your website to show that you support their efforts around the world.  But the text on that very page says, “It doesn’t mean you have to give us money   It simply means, for example,  that you approve of the work we are carrying out and the goals we are trying to achieve.”  Really?!?!  How many pandas did “approval” save from extinction last year?!

I’m sorry to be the one to point this out; really I am, but facial hair isn’t the cure for prostate cancer.  The cure for prostate cancer will come from research.  Research done probably by incredibly smart people in incredibly white lab coats using incredibly expensive equipment and incredibly expensive tests in incredibly expensive facilities.  So the cure for prostate cancer, and pretty much any other disease, will come from research.  Research that gets paid for with money.

The Movember people will tell you that the event raises awareness of men’s health issues.  I’m sure that there are some evangelists for the cause that get out there and talk about prostate cancer; but outside the media, the overwhelming proportion of men I’ve seen participating in Movember are simply raising awareness of facial hair.  My friends in the media are really driving the “awareness” bus on this one, because your average Joe seems to go through Movember without the words “prostate cancer” or “men’s health issues” escaping their lips even once, much less doing anything to raise money.  Yet social media is littered with conversations about the sacrifices some of these men are making by not shaving.

I’ll let that last sentence sink in.

Guys, if you want me to applaud your sacrifice, go run a 10K for breast cancer and raise a pile of donations in the process.  Tell me you support the fight against bullying after you’ve gotten involved in youth groups or community organizations that focus on it.

As a person who’s done a thing or two in his career to raise awareness for various charities and causes, let me say it this way:  Give money.  Or inspire other people to give money.  Make an actual sacrifice.  Take an actual stand that involves more than a mouse click.

Anything less than that is just (upper) lip service.

Brent Piaskoski is hilarious. You likely don’t know him, but your kids probably watch one of the shows he does for the Family channel in Canada.

When Brent and I used to do standup comedy together 20 years ago, he said something about Canadian Thanksgiving that I’ve never forgotten.

Brent talked about people from the US who would say “Thanksgiving? I don’t remember any Canadian pilgrims.”

Brent would say…

Sure… Thanksgiving is when Canadians gather with their family and their friends, and they give thanks… that they’re not Americans.

Happy Turkey Day, Canada.

We all take them.

But when other people take them, we find it irritating.

Shortcuts, after all, are what allow the taxi driver to pull up beside the “No Stopping” sign, put on his 4-way flashers, and sit there.  I’m assuming there’s some special “traffic laws don’t really apply to taxicabs” clause that I’m not aware of.

In a similar vein, I get irritated when cyclists do things like ignore stop signs.  Sorry, but momentum doesn’t outweigh law, and your desire to keep moving doesn’t suddenly make you a pedestrian every time an appealing piece of sidewalk allows you to avoid your legal obligation to do things like signal your turns.  But then again, it’s just a shortcut.

Shortcuts are what allow politicians to ram through legislation that appeals to their party, without asking what it means to their constituents.  Never mind that the first time you passed something without asking me about it you broke every promise that got you elected in the first place; asking for input from the people who hired you would be cost-prohibitive or something, right?

Someone needs to explain to me where corporations get off concluding a job posting with “only applicants being considered for the position will be contacted.”  Hey HR people – that’s even more classless than the “thanks, but no” form letters you used to send without people’s names on them.  If you don’t have the time to treat applicants with respect, hire internally.

I think most women would pass out were they confronted with actual statistics about the number of men who “shortcut” past the sink on their way out of the men’s room.

I’ve talked before about how most radio stations use a technique called “voice tracking” (especially on overnights and weekends) which allow DJ’s to record a six-hour show in twenty minutes, so they don’t even have to bother with being in the building when their shows are on.  Ironically, these are the same DJ’s who love to tell horror stories about the big nasty company that fired their staff via a prerecorded message left on a CD in a conference room.

Now, also thanks to technology, I can have any one of a dozen automated systems send out a “Thank you” message anytime I get a new follower on Twitter.  (Hey, maybe I’ll throw in a sales pitch while I’m at it, so someone in Idaho can read about my great real estate listings in Brooklyn!)  Whew!  I know the six seconds it would have taken to express genuine gratitude would have been exhausting.

Shortcuts let us get away without having to do the right thing.  They make our lives easier by creating a second class of interaction that allows us to act exclusively in our own self interest, without having to even acknowledge that others exist at all.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve grown tired of a world built on shortcuts.  If you need me, I’ll be listening to this…

(Doesn’t hurt that the video is kinda cute.  And yes, you could certainly argue that by linking to someone else’s video instead of creating my own, I took a shortcut myself.)