my 2 cents

Thanks

Not only on Thanksgiving, but every day I give thanks for all that I have.

I don't have Donald Trump's riches and I don't drive a sparkling new luxury car.  But I know that what I have is of much greater value.

I'm fortunate to have love -- the love of my family and my wife and best friend of 38 years Roz.  I have two fantastic  children, Jennifer and Michael, and two grandchildren, Jack (named in my father's memory) and Gabriel.  I still have my mother to keep me on the straight and narrow.  I have the memories of those who came before me.

I have many friends and a smaller number of really close friends -- the kind that, even if you haven't seen them for months or more, you can pick up the conversation comfortably, as if you'd just spoken the afternoon before.

I'm fortunate that I love my work.  I love where I live, right next to the greatest city in the world. 

I am thankful for the gift of music, especially jazz.  It never gets boring.  It inspires, soothes and moves me.

All of these things -- and so much more -- make me cherish each day that I am fortunate enough to wake up.  For it all, I always give thanks, every day.

40 Years of Excellence

One of the most famous and most-loved streets in the world celebrates 40 years this week.  It's not Broadway or Fifth Avenue here in New York, nor the Via Veneto in Rome or the Champs d'Elsee in Gay Paree.

It's Sesame Street.

Unlike most people, I came across Sesame Street not as a kid or a parent.  It was the summer of 1970 and I was finishing work on my Master's thesis, with books and note cards surrounding me on the living room floor.  I needed to take a break one afternoon at 4, so I put the TV on and this kids' program had just begun.  I was about to change the channel, but something about the show caught me and I watched it all.  And I watched it again the next afternoon and the next. Thus began my almost 40-year relationship with Sesame Street.  I was entranced by the fast pace, the captivating Muppet characters, the diversity of the human cast and the overall intelligence and humor of the show.  And they had big stars of the time as guests on the show, singing with the kids or with Big Bird or Kermit -- names like Richie Havens, Judy Collins, Bill Cosby, Buffy St. Marie. 

I became a regular watcher again about 14 years later, when my daughter was old enough to begin watching it.  I was a hit with her and her friends because I could imitate the voices of Cookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch and Grover (my favorites), as well as passable mimics of Bert & Ernie and Big Bird. I remember around that time how nicely they dealt with the real-life death of the man who played the storekeeper, Mr. Hooper.  Instead of just pretending he'd moved away and closed his store, the show dealt head-on with death and the emotions that come with it.

And about six years later, I began watching Sesame Street yet again, with my son.  Around that time I had my first real-life encounter with Sesame Street.  I was representing a client at a luncheon at Channel 13.  I got there a few minutes late, and everyone was already seated.  I was shown to a table, sat down and everyone introduced themselves.  When the man next to me turned, shook my hand and said, "Hi, I'm Bob McGrath," I acted like a star-struck teenager.  "Bob!!" I shrieked much too loudly.  One of the (human) stars of Sesame Street, sitting next to me at lunch!  Unbelievable.

We had a nice chat and I told him how I had first discovered the show while working on my Master's paper.  He laughed and told me he's heard many similar stories, and that Sesame Street has always, right from the start, had a very big following among college students.

About a year later, I attended the opening of a McDonald's in Rockefeller Center.  Mickey D's was a client, and they had just started their first Happy Meal tie-in with Sesame Street.  Jim Henson came to the opening and I had the chance to talk with him.  I had no idea what he was saying to me, because I was so distracted hearing Kermit the Frog's voice coming out of the mouth of this tall, bearded grown-up.

Fast-forward another ten years.  I was handling p.r. for The Christopher Awards (still a client) and a puppeteer named Caroll Spiney was being honored for a children's book he had written.  Most of us have no idea who Caroll is, but we all know two of his most famous characters -- Big Bird and  Oscar the Grouch.  I got to hang out with Oscar after the ceremonies, when Caroll so graciously and patiently obliged a long line of adults who wanted the chance to get their picture taken with Oscar.  When I had my chat with Oscar, I found myself, like everyone, having conversation with the puppet and not the elegant, white-bearded man holding Oscar.  It was amazing to see adults revert so quickly back to childhood with Oscar.

And last year I hit the mother-load.  Childrens Television Workshop was being honored with a Christopher Award for so many years of excellence in children's TV, and most of the Sesame Street cast was there.  I again met Bob      McGrath, along with the actors who play Gordon and Luis.  I got to play with my old pal Oscar, and I met my grandson's favorite -- Elmo.  (That's me in the picture, with, from left, Bob, Oscar and Caroll.)

Over the past 40 years, I've had many encounters with Sesame Street -- both in front of and behind the TV screen.  It's been fun, on both sides.  I hope many more generations of kids all around the globe will have the chance to learn about letters and counting and about life from our friends on the world's most famous street.

Odds 'n ends

A couple of things of odds 'n ends today, as I just returned from the Distracted Driving Summit in Washington. 

U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood invited nearly 300 people involved in traffic safety to a 2-day meeting to focus on distracted driving -- a growing epidemic that's killing  thousands of Americans every year.We've all spoken on our cell phones while driving, and many of us have texted while driving. (Not me -- I don't like to text.)  This dangerous practice is especially prevalent among young people, who have the need to be constantly connected. 

This morning I met with a couple of young people, as we were prepping for a session on outreach to youth about distracted driving.  One young man, Greg, was texting while he drove and ran into another car -- killing two men.  He now has to live with that burden and he broke down as he told us the story, even though it was four years ago.  I met another young woman who now spends her life paralyzed in a wheelchair, after crashing while on her cellphone as she drove.

New studies show hands-free cell phone use while driving is almost as dangerous as hands-on units.  A key message that has to get out -- and that's a challenge we involved in public safety marketing have to address -- is that driving a car requires our full attention.  Most of us do it practically on auto-pilot because it's easy to drive.  But taking our eyes -- or our concentration -- off the road even for 3 or 4 seconds can be a fatal error if something happens (a car stops or swerves into your lane, or an animal runs into the road, or any of thousands of unexpected scenarios) while your eyes or your mind are elsewhere.   

I've developed, for my non-profit client The National Road Safety Foundation, a program to reach teen drivers and involve them in the communications challenge.  Along with National Organizations for Youth Safety, a youth-based coalition of advocacy groups, we announced today at the Distracted Driving Summit a competition for young people to create concepts for PSAs that address distracted driving and other risky driving behavior like speeding, driving under the influence, drowsy driving and failing to buckle up.  The winner gets $1,000 and a  trip to New York to see his or her idea turned into a professionally-produced PSA that will eventually be broadcast nationally and will go everywhere virally on the web. 

Pretty cool that the Secretary of Transportation likes the idea and featured it at the Summit.  And it's going to be written about on the White House blog.  The Secretary's office put us in touch with Seventeen Magazine, who will be partnering, and we welcome other media partners to step up as well.

I'll have more about this as the project progresses.  Meanwhile, corny as it might sound, don't text or talk on your cell while driving... and tell family and others you care about not to do it either.

UPDATE 10/16/09:   My client The National Road Safety Foundation, is running a competition for teens to come up with ideas for a PSA on safe driving.  It got the attention of the Secretary of Transportation, who is now working with us the project.  This story is appearing this weekend on some 200 TV stations nationally on "Teen Kids News."

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I just saw this on the O'Dwyer's PR blog and had to share it... 

Before I began blogging almost three years ago, the letters WTF meant nothing to me.   Had you asked, I might have guessed it's the call letters of a radio station somewhere.   Then one day, when someone used it in a blog comment, I asked a friend who's a texter and she told me.  Oh... ok.  Since then, I've used the expression myself.

Pity the poor unsuspecting folks at the Wisconsin Tourism Federation.  When the group was formed 30 years, who would have thought those letters would eventually come to mean something that has nothing to do with Wisconsin or cheese or lakes or whatever else that fine state has.

It's sort of like the public relations company that handles lists and release distribution -- PR Aids.  It's now called Cision, once Aids took on another unfortunate meaning. 

So the people in Wisconsin have finally made some changes.  It's now the Tourism Federation of Wisconsin -- TFW. 

Let's hope texters don't come up with some other shortcut that uses those letters.  New logos and stationery gets expensive.

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The greatest birthday present

Today's post has nothing to do with "marketing, media or public relations," but it's all about "life."

I usually don't make a fuss about my birthday, especially as the number gets bigger.  I had a great day today, starting with a bunch of birthday messages by email, Facebook and Twitter, including from blogging friends around the country and the globe.  Some nice calls from family and friends, and a birthday lunch with CK, who brought a helium balloon and made me walk around my Manhattan neighborhood with it tied to my belt.  It brought smiles to some normally jaded New Yorkers.

Then I got the call that my daughter, Jen, who is pregnant and due with her second later this month, broke her water.  I rushed out of the office, caught the next train home and jumped in the car for the trip up to Maine.  Made it in a record 5 - 1/2 hours.

Our grandson Jack, who is now 3-1/2, greeted us at the door and said Momma has a birthday surprise for me.  I went in to see Jen and she said Happy Birthday Dad.  My little grandson, Gabriel Kai Reich Janczuk, was at her breast, sucking and making little cooing sounds.

I'll never forget this birthday... never.

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On the beach

Posts here have been sporadic the past several days, as I've hit the beach with my family.

I'll be putting new stuff up, but on an irregular basis until I return Feb. 15th.  The warm breezes and beautiful beaches on Kaua'i have made me lazy.

See you soon.

Aloha.

Other Voices: Memories and The Last Hurrah

I give this space over, from time to time, to non-bloggers.  The idea is to bring other voices into the mix and, possibly, get others hooked on the joys of blogging.

I've known and worked with Judd Cohen for more than 25 years.  We worked together at a mid-size p.r. agency back in the early 1980s, and we've shared office space and, occasionally, clients since the early 1990s.

Judd is a baseball fanatic.  For several years, he and his family made their summer vacation a pilgrimage to visit and see a ballgame in every Major  League park in the U.S. and Canada.  He may write a book about it some day.

Next season, he'll have two new ballparks to visit -- right here in New York.  I know which will be first on the list.

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I was at Yankee Stadium last night; my final visit after 56 years attending Yankee games.

The final night at The Stadium was a tribute to, as everyone called it, an "iconic" ballpark that  some of the greatest teams and players called home and where some of the greatest games were played.  But, what most of us were celebrating were memories and the passage of time.  For me, it started with my first game and my father buying me a hot dog (25 cents, sold from wicker baskets) when I was eight.  They tasted so great back then.  I took my son to his first game at age six on a cool, sunny September Sunday during the Yankees skein of losing seasons in the late '80s and bought him almost every item in the souvenir store.

Everyone last night had memories.  That's what we were really cheering, the memories and the players who helped make them and brought them back to life last night.  After the game, as the Yankees paraded around the field, I looked around the stadium at the great seats behind home plate that my father used to get, to the last row of the upper deck in right field (they called it the Grandstand then, and admission was $1.25), where I used to sit in high school, to the seat where we sat when Jim Abbott pitched his no-hitter (my younger son's second game), to all the other seats on Opening Day, the World Series, playoffs, dull games.  The ballpark was alive with memories.  I felt emotional, but held it back and put my arm around my son.  In a way, he had grown up at Yankee Stadium.  He is now 25, a broadcaster who covered many games there in the past several years.  He interviews players whose autographs he sought as a kid and is friendly with journalists and broadcasters he looked up to.  He has his memories.

A baseball game is a great bonding experience for fathers and sons, perhaps the best, and in talking about baseball we usually say much more.  I also learned something years ago.  In the relaxed environment of a baseball game, kids probably tell their parents more about their lives than they normally do.

So the old ballpark is no more, the games will move across the street to the Xanadu by the East River, but the memories remain.  We'll have new ones starting next year and some day my son will go to a game with his kids and tell them about his memories of the old stadium, and the last game there.

-- Judd Cohen

May I brag a bit?

I've written here about my filmmaker son Michael and his videothing.com website.  It got attention a few weeks ago in LA Weekly and it's mentioned in today's New York Times in a Page One story about a nationwide alternative music tour he just completed, where he was the videographer documenting the tour online.

Here's the article...  click here

Weekend fun: Fatherhood

CK tipped me off to a great PSA from the Ad Council.  It promotes parental involvement, especially among dads.  More than 79% of Americans feel "the most significant family or social problem facing America is the physical absence of the father from the home," says the Ad Council.

Play this...



It's a great spot that effectively gets an important message across.

It made me think of all the silly things I did with my kids when they were young.  I used to play "runaway boat" with them, splashing around the kiddie pool at the beach club.  My daughter or son would get onto my back and hang on as I'd crawl around the shallow pool making loud motorboat sounds.  If they'd fall off, I'd keep going until I'd run out of gas so they could catch me.  They'd then have to take me to the pool's edge, where they'd have to fill the boat up with vanilla ice cream-flavored gas.

Or at bedtime, the pre-book routine became "the dump."  I'd get down on all fours and they'd climb onto my back.  They'd steer me into their bedroom and I'd pull up alongside the bed and try to bump them off my back and onto the bed.  They'd hold on for dear life, and it became a nightly game.  I just started doing "the dump" with my grandson Jack, who is 2-1/2.

I may have looked foolish doing these things, but I loved it -- and the kids remember and still laugh about it.  Truthfully, I may have had more fun doing it than the kids did.  Which makes it hard to imagine dads who don't do silly things with their kids.  How sad.

Just for fun, leave a comment and let us know what silly thing(s) you did or now do with your kids.  Or silly things your dad did with you when you were little.  If you're too embarrassed, take another look at the clip above.

Kvelling about Videothing.com

OK, kvell is one of those Yiddish words that's become part of the New York City lexicon.  For those readers outside of New York and not in a town with a big Jewish population, kvelling means being extremely proud of something.  It's commonly used when a parent kvells about a child's accomplishments.

So I'm kvelling over a fantastic writeup my filmmaker son Michael just got in this week's LA Weekly. 

Michael's been earning a living (more or less) as a music video director since he graduated Emerson College five years ago, and he's done some vids for name bands including The Shins, The 88 and Brazilian Girls.  But his passion is a site he's been building for about a year that chronicles, in his unique way, the L.A. music scene and, occasionally, the music scene elsewhere.

It's called Videothing.com.  It's already gotten some notice including a small mention in the national music magazine The Fader.  But the LA Weekly piece is a feature article that really looks at what he's doing and (wow!)  puts it on the level of groundbreaking art, drawing comparisons to early David Byrne.

The site's been getting lots of buzz and lots of traffic, but he has intentionally not tried to monetize it.

So, read the article here and then you'll excuse me for using this space to kvell.

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Off to the beach

This is my last post for a week. 

Early Saturday morning we pack the car and head to Newark Liberty Airport, to escape the snow.  We fly to Cancun for a week on the beach.  The beach is beautiful, I'm told.  And I'm sure the margaritas will be great.

But the highlight for us will spending a week with our kids -- our daughter Jennifer, her husband Jon and our "terrible two's" grandson Jack.  (Our son Michael was planning to join us from Los Angeles, but he got a project for Converse.  He's a filmmaker and he's learning that you gotta take what comes along when it comes.)

So don't look for any new posts here for a week, unless I'm so inspired and feel like coming in from the sun to sit at the computer.  (Probably not.)

But please, be sure to come back in a week.  I'll be here, offering my 2 cents.

Hasta luego.