Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?



My Amazon order arrived yesterday. This, on it's own, is a reason to celebrate. Does everybody share the same sense of excitment? Anticipation? Sheer childlike joy when the box finally arrives? It's almost like when you used to empty the entire box of cornflakes to find those amazing spoons that glow in the dark ...

But I digress.

The contents? Guy's latest book "The Art of the Start", 3 DvD's (one being 'How to get ahead in advertising' - oh the joy!), and the classic hardcover "Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?" by the infamous Dr. Seuss. The reason this is so special is because i have one already. You see, my folks gave me this in 1975 (and i can prove it - I scribbled my name on the inside cover in ballpoint, and put the year next to it). For the past year or so, storytime with the kids has been dominated by the Dr's wise and wonderful words. Even my 2 yr old yells "Daddy read Dyuif evyttr khhuy YOU ARE!" ... and we all run upstairs, pull the book out, jump under the covers and read away.

This spanking brand new hardcover will be dedicated to Jagger, Dune and Emma. And guess what. We will write their names in the cover and put the year next to it. One day each generation may, just may, have a copy.

Now. You don't have to tell ME how lucky I am. :-)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bon Voyage!

Image
I'm off to New Zealand on Sunday. I don't think the idea of international travel has really sunk in yet. We had the usual trouble with booking flight tickets this week ... first we were set to leave Sunday ... then we weren't and the flights had changed to Thursday ... then 12 hours later we were on a different Airline and it was back to Sunday. But I'm not complaining. It's tremendously exciting. I owe all this excitment to Mandy. She did so well meeting her targets at the office that every year we're treated to an International flight somewhere exotic on the house. Last year was Cape Town (a bit close to home but boy what a beautiful place). The year before Mexico. But on Tuesday I should be sipping XXX lager in Auckland, New Zealand. The City of Sails. One of the more important things on my growing itinerary list of 'Things We Must Do!' is to take a 2 hour trip south and sit down amongst the rolling hills of the Shire where Bilbo Baggins celebrated hi
Read more

Why "The Woodshed"?

Because everybody deserves one. Let me explain. The notion of The Woodshed was first introduced to me in John Kao's 1997 book Jamming where he discusses the art and discipline of business creativity. Something that's very close to my heart. In Chapter 5 he discusses the need for clearing a space for creativity and introduces the reader to Charlie Parker's woodshed. Or, more specifically, whenever the great sax player needed to work out new musical concepts, he would withdraw from the usual people, places and things and "go to the woodshed". This may seem an odd phrase, but if considered for a short while you will find that you've probably been to your woodshed without even knowing it. When I was 7 yrs old there was a river a block away from our house in East London. I would run to it every other afternoon and spend the day either trying to catch crabs, doing homework, building bridges or playing in the mud with my Star Wars collection. The spot at the river
Read more

FlashBack Tribute # 1: Kai's PowerTools.

Image
Over coffee this morning, the conversation led me to recall a particular moment in my past where I was challenged to present (to my peers) what I believed was creative and inspirational. I think it was during '92 or 3. At the time I was a Mac evangelist at TBWA / Hunt Lascaris. My colleagues all had great references to Bob Dylan , Calvin and Hobbes and Nicolas Cage's intro sequence to Red Rock West . It was all very impressive and overall a great exercise. The folks called it a Creative Jumboree. I had very recently acquired a set of Photoshop filters called Kai's Power Tools. At the time there were a few Mac's in the studio but many of them lay idle whilst traditional art directors and copywriters locked themselves away in room's full of beanbags squirting water pistons at each other. Not many were converted at the time. I stood up, and behind me, on a large projector screen was the interface for KPT Texture Explorer. This, for me, completely threw the interface
Read more