11 pm. Conference room at Frank’s Advertising Agency. A sign taped to the outside of the conference room door says, “Quiet. A ‘Brainstorming’ Session is Underway Inside (the Conference Room).”
A white 3×5 card pinned to the middle of the conference room wall says, “Clean Hair.” The words are written in bold, block letters with a “Magic Marker” brand marking pen.
Pinned around the first card were several hundred others. One of them says, “Hair cleaner.” Another, “Wash hair.” Yet another, “Hair dirty -> clean.” A street lamp outside the window glares into the room, but its light is barely noticeable in the harsh florescent buzzing from the ceiling.
Frank, the owner of Frank’s Advertising Agency, sits at the head of the dark formica table, leaning back in a grey cloth chair. Though there’s room for twelve at the table, only four are there this late at night. Two of the men are the core of Frank’s creative team, his best and brightest. Then there’s his son, Alferd, who picks at his nails while he stares at the wall with the other men.
Frank stands up from his chair. A pleasant middle-aged man, he’s nearly bald – “bald as a cueball,” he often jests with his employees, though some remind him that cueballs don’t actually grow hair, so the metaphor isn’t particularly apt. Frank’s not entirely bald, just male pattern baldness, as though a caterpillar is curled around the back of his head; a two- to three-inch wide totally flat (except for the fat rolls on the back of Frank’s head) caterpillar with well-trimmed human hair.
Frank has loosened his tie, and it makes a red Y on the front of his white, short sleeve shirt. Sweat stains have worked their way from his armpits nearly to his waist, and the black and grey hair on his chest is visible through the thin cotton of his shirt.
Frank rubs his eyes and stretches, exposing the full extent of the sweat stains, as well as some armpit hair.
“Gentlemen, it’s now eleven o’clock. I’d be grateful if I could get at least a couple hours sleep before the presentation tomorrow. Someone’s going to have to come up with something soon, or we are going to have to work straight through. Jim, what do you think?”
“Well, I’m about out of ideas,” says Jim, a pleasant mid-30s fellow with light hair and a cardigan sweater. “I mean, we’ve got the basics down on the notecards, don’t we? It’s a hair cleaning product, right?”
“Yeah, that’s right. I know I don’t need to remind you this is our biggest client by a considerable margin, but will do so for expository purposes. They are going to insist on something that really gives their product a feeling of being . . . different. You know, to set them apart from the other hair cleaning products out there. How about you, Mike? What you got for me?”
Mike, a pleasant mid-30s fellow with dark hair and a panama hat, says, “Well, boss, I’m looking at the notecards. There seems to be a unifying theme here. This product is used for cleaning hair, right? I mean that’s the whole point, isn’t it? To help folks get their dirty hair to be clean? Maybe that should be the focus of the new ad campaign.”
“Say,” says Frank, narrowing his eyes and nodding his head slightly as though deep in thought concerning Mike’s observation, which he is. “You may be on to something there.”
Frank’s voice begins to rise with excitement. “This is what these ‘brainstorming’ sessions are all about: creativity!”
“Hey, Pop,” said Alferd, a pleasant young fellow with spiked purple hair, a Grateful Dead t-shirt and a tattoo of a green dragon on his forearm.
Frank looked at his son. “Mike’s right,” the boy continues. “This is about getting dirty hair to be clean. But you know what’s missing? You know what we’re not seeing in all these hundreds of 3×5 cards?”
The three older men turn their gazes to Alferd. The boy is new to the business; he is “just learning the ropes,” Frank often jests with his employees, though some employees remind him that unlike a sailing ship, an ad agency has no sails, and therefore the ropes metaphor is not quite accurate. No one expects Alferd to come up with the epiphany that will break the creative logjam at Frank’s Advertising Agency this evening.
“Rinsing,” Alferd says. “We haven’t said anything about rinsing the hair cleaning product out of your hair as part of the cleaning process.”
A slow smile crosses Frank’s face, and he nods proudly at the young man. “Yessss!” Frank says, raising his fist in a black power salute, even though he is a white guy.
Mike and Jim pat Alferd on the back, representing that they are pleased.
9:30 AM the next day (unless the meeting in part one lasted until after midnight, in which case it’s the same day, just later). Fiftieth floor of Cleanco Tower. Board room of Cleanco, a manufacturer of cleaning products.
A glass wall looks out on a panorama of grey rooftops nearby and a profusion of trees growing by a river in the distance. Several posters for today’s ad presentation lean against the glass wall. Jim and Mike stand near the presentation pieces.
Alferd is not there. He is tooling around in his 1987 Celica, completely lost in the city after deciding to toke up a bit of his high-grade Michoacan this morning to “get his creative juices flowing.”
The conference room table at Cleanco is polished black marble sitting on gleaming chrome pedestals. Thirty leather chairs sit around its perimeter. The glossy surface of the table reflects small bright trapezoids from the overhead lights. The double doors at either end of the room, each ten feet tall, are dark, finely carved mahogany.
On a credenza at one end of the room, fresh coffee sits on burners. Frank walks over to get some decaf. He pours a cup of coffee from the orange-lidded pot. He sloshes coffee over the sides of the cup because he is shaking so badly. He decides to leave the cup on the credenza, as he does not want Cleanco’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Burnbrose Q. Amside IV, to see how nervous he is.
The doors at one end of the room swing open. Mr. Amside enters. He is dressed in a closely tailored, dark grey Armani pinstripe suit, a spotless white shirt with extra heavy starch, and a bright red tie with an immaculate Windsor knot. His full head of white hair is well-trimmed, his nails are cut straight across, his shoes are freshly shined. His face is relaxed and confident, in the way of men who have accomplished a great deal and have many large piles of hundred dollar bills sitting around in their basements. Red jowls wiggle in time with his double chin.
Four middle-aged men follow Amside into the room. Like their boss, they are dressed with wealth and breeding. Frank recognizes them. All the top executives of Cleanco will be watching this presentation.
“Frank, good to see you,” Mr. Amside says, extending his hand, most of a smile on his face.
“And it’s a pleasure to see you, Mr. Amside. Thank you so much for having us up this morning.” Frank takes Mr. Amside’s hand, and gives it a manly shake. Mr. Amside winces at the squeeze, and withdraws his hand. Dang it, Frank thinks. I forgot about the arthritis.
Frank’s heart would have fallen if things like his stomach, guts, and various other rather disgusting organs had not occupied the rest of the space below his heart.
The rest of the men shake hands. Mr. Amside sits opposite the presentation materials the ad guys have stacked on one side of the room. The executives take seats beside him.
“So, Frank. What you got for us today?” Mr. Amside asks.
“Well, we’ve worked hard on this, gentlemen,” Frank says. “And I really think you’re going to like it,” Frank says hopefully, since he hopes Mr. Amside will hire his agency for this advertising gig.
Frank places a trifold presentation piece on the table with the doors still closed. “Ready?”
“Let’s ‘do it’,” Mr. Amside says.
“Here’s our suggestion for the name for your new hair cleaning product, then,” Frank says, opening the doors of the trifold. Inside, Frank has written in black magic marker, “Name: Cleanco Hair Cleansing Product.”
Mr. Amside frowns when he reads the name. The old quadfreakingzillionaire couples the frown with a furrowed brow and a little nod, signifying thoughtfulness. This is because he is being thoughtful about the presentation.
“Now let’s move on to the jingle,” Frank said, moving on to the jingle.
Jim and Mike stand up. Frank lifts a large poster onto the table. Frank pushes a button on the ghetto blaster the narrator forgot to mention earlier. The poster has the words of the jingle written on it, as well as many quarter notes and half notes to signify that these words were accompanied by music.
An instrumental version of Yankee Doodle Dandy blasts from the speakers. Jim and Mike begin to sing.
Cleanco Hair Cleansing Product,
If applied liberally to wet hair,
Then rubbed vigorously into the scalp, such that it “lathers”,
Followed by thorough rinsing,
Your hair will, at the end of this undertaking,
Be clean, or at least
Cleaner than before.
Frank turns off the ghetto blaster.
The room is silent – so silent that one could have heard a pin drop on the floor, if someone had thought to drop a pin and there were no carpet, which there is, and there were not a great deal of ambient noise, such as the ventilation system, which there also is.
The Cleanco executives look at Mr. Amside expectantly, as they expected him to tell them what he thought of the presentation. The ad guys look at Mr. Amside hopefully, for the same reason Frank previously said something using the same adverb.
“So.” Frank asks. “How we doing? Do you like it?”
“No, I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all,” Mr. Amside says, still frowning.
The other Cleanco executives nod their heads in agreement with their boss’s assessment. Frank’s heart would have fallen once again, but his other organs were still there.
The frown slowly leaves Mr. Amside’s face.
“I don’t like it, I love it!” Mr. Amside exclaims with an exclamation mark.
The Cleanco executives nod their heads in agreement once again. Frank beam. The other ad guys beam.
Alferd pulls into Taco Bell and orders six Chicken Chalupa Supremes, four bean burritos with green sauce, and a Nachos Bellgrande.
Six months later. The advertising jingle is so successful that people shopping for hair cleaning products could be heard singing the words of the jingle. Sales of Cleanco Hair Cleansing Product skyrocket. Mr. Amside has to buy a new house with a bigger basement.
Nine months after that. Two novels based on the jingle are published. One is titled, “A Product of Cleansing.” The other is “Cleaning Miss Daisy’s Hair.” Both are on the New York Times Best Seller List for months. Oprah touts one of them on her show: “We are talking about hair cleaning today. Hair that is clean is our topic, girlfren.”
Three months after that. Dominique Canard du Croissant, famed French film maker, produces Nettoyant Cheveux Propres, based on the jingle. The movie opens with a closeup of a naked young woman stepping into the shower. The film leers at her perky breasts. The film does a microscopic closeup on one of her nipples so it fills the whole screen.
The nipple slowly morphs to a clown dressed all in white with gold frills, wearing an undersized white bowler hat. The clown rides a bicycle upside down on a tightrope. He moves at a slow, deliberate pace. The clown scene fades back to perky breasts and/or nipples and/or stepping into and/or out of the shower, including some butt shots.
The reviews of the movie are positive. The New York Times says, “This is an important film for our age. It captures, with beautiful metaphoric imagery, the way so many of us are like clowns riding bicycles upside down on tightropes.”
Frank, the cautious ad guy, accumulates considerable wealth from the royalties on the novels and films.
He still has less money than Mr. Amside, though.
The end.
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Hello there!
Oh, wow, humor is the trickiest thing you could ever try to write. I mean, it’s the finest balance of all. It’s making sure you’re clear enough so that the cue for the reader/audience to laugh shines through, and yet vague enough for the reader/audience to feel like they’re in on the joke. That little click in their brain when they “get it” is an important part of the process, or so I believe.
Well, definite points for effort with this. It had some shining moments. I liked:
“Dang it, Frank thinks. I forgot about the arthritis.” – this made me smile. It produced a good visual of Frank mentally kicking himself.
“The room is silent – so silent that one could have heard a pin drop on the floor, if someone had thought to drop a pin and there were no carpet, which there is, and there were not a great deal of ambient noise, such as the ventilation system, which there also is.” – I thought this was ironic, in a good way.
I also love the name Burnbrose Q. Amside IV!
I thought the clown on a tightrope part was quite funny, simply because the whole bit sounds so typically modern Hollywood and modern critics. Kudos for that!
However, I have a few thoughts regarding the text, and here they are:
My biggest problem, if you would call it that, is the format: this piece is written without a narrative voice at all. As a reader, I simply sit and observe the situations you depict for me on the page, I’m not pulled into them because you haven’t written Frank (who seems to be the protagonist) with any sort of emotion, opinion or thoughts of his own. Your format is more like a screenplay than it is a short story. I’m not sure if you’ve been writing screenplays before this, possibly?
“A white 3×5 card pinned to the middle of the conference room wall says, “Clean Hair.” The words are written in bold, block letters with a “Magic Marker” brand marking pen.”
This is extremely flat description for a short story. It’s all visual, nothing emotional, and as we’re not watching a movie where the visuals are presented to us without us having to do any of the work, but reading a story where – even though we do enjoy getting to work out some of the details for ourselves – we do want to get a nice, clear picture of what you wish is to envision. If you would try it:
The black marker wasn’t working. It refused to spill its guts – the way God had intended for it to and the way Frank needed it to in order to show his subordinates, watching him patiently as he struggled with the insubordinate piece of office supplies, that he was not loosing his touch, that he could lead them to victory.
It wasn’t the first supply giving him trouble this evening: the post-it’s wouldn’t stick to the whiteboard, the whiteboard had nearly fallen off the wall once (it was a very small whiteboard) and the consequent dash-of-rescue had caused him to spill his coffee, creating a dark stain on the new carpet, which was bound to infuriate Fiona when she came in the morning to clean. The new carpet had been her pride and joy for the past two days, and now he was going to get it, he just knew it. And on top of this, the copiator had tried to bite his finger off when he was attempting to change the cartridge: the entire office seemed to be possessed lately and he didn’t know how to exorcise its demons.
Now, this was just a suggestion to show you a little bit about what I mean. I’m not saying this is perfect, in any way, but to me, this would create a world I might connect with and relate to – most people has probably been under pressure at work, and I’m sure we’ve all had a marker of some sort refusing to function. Introducing the office in a bit more detail – small whiteboard might mean small company, new carpet might mean small company that’s trying to expand – and it all ties into this big, new client that will be the answer to their prayers.
Giving Frank a more humane touch of struggling to save face in front of his co-workers might also help in establishing him as a likable character.
Now, I’m not sure what you see Frank as, really, because you didn’t delve into his character at all, and if I’m totally off the beat then ignore my advice, but it’s always good – in any circumstance – to get thoughts that are directed at your work from a different angle than yours. It might open doors you didn’t even knew were there, in your own head. :)
I also listed above the only parts of this tale that were “funny” to me. If you expand on description, make us dive into Frank’s head, make him a screw-ball in his observations, make me connect with him and laugh with him at all the silliness around him, then I think you will heighten the humor. As it is, it’s very dry and too descriptive of the surroundings – as if you’re setting up a scene in a screenplay – when there should be more internal description of the characters. There’s nothing in the text that makes me care about the characters and the agency and what happens to it. I’m not dancing in my seat that Frank landed the new client. Why should I be? See what I mean?
Keep working on it and I’m sure you’ll get there!
Best of luck to you!
Annie.
PS. Remember the “hook”! Your first sentence should be a hook that hooks the reader so that they simply cannot look away from the page and wants to read what sentence will follow that first sentence, and then the second sentence, or at least last sentence of that paragraph needs another hook to hook the reader into the second paragraph and so on and so on. x’s
Advertising, as Raymond Chandler once famously said, is the greatest waste of human intelligence since the invention of chess. As someone who has a background in the creative end of advertising, I’m thrilled to say that your story does nothing whatsoever to change my opinion! ;-)
It is…an inane business, and this story does an excellent job of exposing – even in a humorous form – just how horribly inane it is.
Having said that, I wonder whether your humor is…sharp enough to really work well? The style is engaging, and your creativity in avoiding the obvious ”s-word” is…very good. But my main criticism here is that you seem to be altogether too “nice” to your characters, although it must also be said that you do a great job of exposing everyone for the…idiots they are? However, that could just be a matter of my own personal taste.
I did like this story, and I like where this is heading. With a slightly tighter edit, and some cosmetic rewording here and there, it could be classic!
I wish you the best of luck!
Wow. I don’t really know what to say. First off, I noticed in the notes for this that it was deliberately changed to present tense. I will say, you missed a few spots here and there, but nothing too terrible. My question is, WHY present tense. It made the whole reading of the story so awkward that I couldn’t really enjoy it. I think it would have been a lot smoother in past tense. Right now it sounds a little like you were shooting for the feel of a script.
Now, though the tense would’ve made it more enjoyable, HOW much more enjoyable is definitely questionable. While there were a few jokes here and there, like the recurring ‘inappropriate metaphor’ gag early on, I just didn’t really think it was that funny. There were enjoy entertaining jokes to add comic relief to a regular story, but not enough to warrant a ‘comedy’ label.
I think if you worked on the characters, adding less physical descriptors and more mental quirks, this could go somewhere. But right now I’m just not feeling it. Sorry.
Good short story. It is set up well, with good characterization. In some parts, I noticed you seem to ‘show’, not ‘tell’, and as cliche as this advice may seem, it can be very very helpful. Showing and not telling can be very useful in some types of writing, and it seemed as though you set this one up to be like that, and it actually did work…but there are some cases where I found it distracting. Read back through and find those little few words in a couple sentences that slow you down, then play around with the wording to make them more fun; interesting. Other than that, though, good…unique, story. Thanks for posting, and keep it up.
—Rylan
I think I know who authored this. You didn’t integrate the clown/tightrope metaphor successfully for the same reason that the Frank’s metaphors are not accurate as well. :p
Ok… despite the humor and the tongue in cheekiness of the piece, this didn’t read right. It read like a screenplay more than a short story. Maybe, with a few modifications, it should be posted there?
Also… why didn’t you include “Rinse and repeat” – the greatest marketing ploy ever… doubled sales of shampoo all over.
As for the writing itself. Spotted a couple of typos – check for that.
It included a lot of unnecessary physical description of characters and not enough about their personality … i.e. what made Frank conservative?
Otherwise I enjoyed.
This was hilarious, I laughed out loud several times. Although, I could have used some more imagery… it wasn’t really necessary because I just think you were writing a humorous piece mocking marketing people. It’s definitely funny, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s how they really operate.
Since it was so funny, I don’t even care that the grammar wasn’t great. I just wanted to read it to see how you could possibly be any more funny on the subject of hair cleaning.
To make it even better you could maybe develop the characters a bit more because they all had one or two lines of background, and possibly write some more creative imagery in. Although I like it the way it is, because it gets the point across and it’s clever. Very funny, good humor. Keep writing!
A bald guy in charge of a “hair” campaign. That, my friend, is a beautiful premise. And in the interests of disclosure, I must confess to being “follicle-challenged” myself. Still, I loverd this piece for the writing, the descriptive imagery, and the snappy dialogue. Very, very nice effort. You have a distinctive voice, and I look forward to reading more of it. As far as suggestions, I would say watch your modifiers—never use two when one will do.
Kudos.
Okay, I’m going to be honest and say that I haven’t read the whole piece, but there are several problems that I can easily point out.
You’re dialogue is the buiggest problem that I can see. Look at this for example.
>>>“I don’t like it, I love it!” Mr. Amside exclaimed with an exclamation mark.<<<<<
Read this please, this type of dialogue burns my eyes. It’s the Dialogue tag that bugs me. Read it out loud. The problem with it “Mr. Amside exclaimed with an exclamation mark.” is that this dialogue tag is redundant first of all and you use the word exclaim twice in the same freaking sentence. He exclaimed with an exclamation mark? What the hell is that? We know there’s an exclamation mark there. We are not stupid. You don’t need to tell us that. And we also already know from the quote itself that he “exclaimed”, just say said please.
that’s not the only dialogue problem that I can see. I’m going to copy and paste your excerpts because they all have the same problem
EXCERPTS
-—---—---—---—---—---—---—---—---—---—---—---—---—---—---—---—-
MY COMMENTS ARE IN CAPS.
“Um,” said Mike(REMOVE THE “UM, IT GETS ANNOYING RATHER FAST), a pleasant mid-30s fellow with dark hair and a panama hat(PLEASE DESCRIBE THIS ‘HAT’ SOME READERS DON’T KNOW WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE).(HORRIBLE, THIS DIALOGUE IS VERY UNATURAL AND SECOND READ IT OUT LOUD) “Well, boss, I’m looking at the notecards. There seems to be a unifying theme here. This product is used for cleaning peoples hair, right?(THERE IS A PRODUCT FOR THAT YOU KNOW. HAVE YOU HEARD OF SHAMPOO?) I mean that’s the whole point, isn’t it? To help them get their dirty hair to be clean?(YOU SAID THAT ALREADY.SECOND IT SOUNDS STUPID.) Maybe that should be the focus of the new ad campaign.”
_______________
I would love to give you more comments, but I’m too tired. You already know what the problem is “dialogue.” The way you protray it makes your characters sound unintelligent,not to mention ”robotic”. The quote above is a very good example. It’s very tedious and forced, real people do not talk like that.
My suggestion is to get a friend over and read this piece out loud together, pretend that you are the characters, read the dialogue again and say it in a way that your characters would say it, not how YOU, the author would say it. And please use character profiling before you introduce them, this is why the dialogue is so bad. They don’t sound like people, they all talk the same.
I may sound harsh, I’m sorry for that. You may protray me as “Bitchy”, but just expect something like this from a constructive critiquer. I’m only trying to help.
I hope this helps.
This is great in many ways. The humor is well-paced and appropriate to the tone of the narrative (I especially liked the mention of the “ghetto blaster the narrator forgot to mention”. I hope you intended it, because the overarching impression of banal business world meets terribly banal advertising running dog thoroughly permeates the narrative. The terrible brainstorming ideas (during which I almost maniacally kept waiting for someone to suggest “sex!”), the terrible presentation (no Powerpoint, no slick, professionally printed hands-on materials, no DVDs) and the terrible reaction by the Cleanco executives and the public all worked seamlessly to further that theme. Even the French movie with the clowns worked in that direction, being as visually and thematically irrelevant as possible, yet touted as somehow connected to the whole. I’m reminded of the Mr. Plow commercial on that Simpsons episode. One thing you missed, though perhaps on purpose, was the suggestion that people may have actually been whistling “Yankee Doodle” in the stores, not the Cleanco jingle.
One stylistic observation: you need to watch which tense you are writing in. Sometimes the narrative is in present tense, sometimes in past tense, and there seems to be no particular reason why one section is in one tense and the other in another, if you follow me. Pick a tense, and stick with it. My suggestion is for present tense throughout. It may just be my ear, but I think the story would flow better thusly.
“Let’s ‘do it’,” Mr. Amside said.
Do people really speak in quotes?
“Quadfreakingzillionaire.” This is my new favorite word, and I am going to find ways to work it into everyday conversations!
You have a great style. Your words are chosen intelligently, you don’t talk over the reader, nor do you talk down to them. You seem to have your sentence structure, grammer, and punctuation down pat. There’s really nothing here to critique on.
But…(oh, come on – you knew it was coming).
You’ve described most of your characters as pleasant. “A pleasant, middle-age man.” “A pleasant mid-30s fellow.” “His face was pleasant and relaxed.”
You may have meant to do it, and if so, my apologies, and leave it exactly the way it is. I just know from experience that ocassionally, one can over-use a phrase tremendously, and never notice until someone points it out.
I used to do it A LOT. I wrote a story with loads of dialogue, and finally, a friend took me aside and pointed out that after almost EVERY SINGLE piece of dialogue, I’d written “(whoever) cried.”
You know – “Oh, Kent,” she cried. “Oh Vixen,” he cried. “Oh Charlie,” they cried.
Once it had been pointed out, it was quite annoying to me.
But anyway – everything else was great. Except for the jingle, which honestly has to be the worst advertising slogan EVEN – but I think (I hope) you meant for it to be kind of a joke.
Great work!
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