20,000 NIS Ad, part II

I was working for Shalom L'Dorot, I felt a bit guilty. We were spending a fortune getting an ad into the paper, my aunt's business was a media marketing firm, and we were working with another media marketing firm. My aunt didn't seem to have much of a problem with it, after hearing which of her competitors is in charge of it.

"Oh, he's completely incompetent."

My Aunt does stretch stories occasionally, but she knows her business, and is a pretty good judge of character. She was right on track. Add this to the almost ^perfect situation,^ and you can see the comedy of errors that is getting ready to come out of this. Of course, you already probably knew that this was going to be a comedy of errors; I AM writing about it.

We had the plan for the ad, as Yosef, Daniel, and I had mapped out. It consisted of three or four TV stills, a letter to the powers that be, a two line explanation of what Shalom L'dorot is, a coupon to mail order the ridiculously overpriced video...and the name of anybody who in the past two years who had given more than fifty shekels to the organization. (Around fifteen bucks, at that time.) A few hundred people. Actually, their books consisted of anybody who'd ever given a cent to the organization. Yosef and I had the ^fun job^ of going through their entire books and copying down anybody's name who had made a donation of more than fifty shekels in the past two years. Of course they didn't just keep it in a spreadsheet or database, that would have just been too easy. "Hey Yosef, what happens if I write my name on this list?"

"Then you have to pay the organization."

"I'm working for free, doesn't that count?"

"Sorry."

So the next day, once again, we got the day off from yeshiva. This was the last possible day that we could submit the ad. Once again, we go to Yosef's places for a free lunch, which included Bonker's Bagels. I'm eating, he's messing the waitress, a rather loud American girl named Dina, that we were going to put an ad into the Jerusalem Post, and since, as he had told her, since he had heard she was single, we were going to put her name and number in the ad.

Normally, I would have just told her he was joking, but, I was very tired, I didn't want to anger Yosef, since he was my connection to the free lunch, and Dina, not the brightest amongst us, not only completely believed him, but was loudly protesting this.

Somehow or other, he sends her over to me. "Look, you don't know me, and I don't know you. Tell me the truth. Why are you putting my name in the ad." He's my boss, I can't rat on his little joke.

"Look, Yosef's in charge of it, I'm just helping him." She goes back to him louder and more frustrated than before. We finished eating and left. When we left, I, in one of the meaner things I've done in my life, turned to Yosef. "OK, we have to put her name on the list."

"Yep."

Commercial break:

Adirondack Life
Magazine Description Adirondack Life, published eight times a year, is a guide to the regions of the Adirondacks. Each issue showcases full-color photography along with such regular departments as "Northern Lights," "Special Places," and "Yesteryears."

OK, we now return...

So we got to the Jerusalem Post building at around two PM. The ad would have to be ready by the next morning if it was going to be in the in the international paper. We were starting the day before. It's one thing, I think to do this in school, but this I felt was something that really could have used some more time or effort...it was ^supposedly, a bit more important.^

But, we "had" to get this done now, "this was the essential timing that was needed." The quotes are given by Daniel, we didn't feel good about the thing. I decided to call my aunt on the progress this was making, because as she had predicted, it was not run very well, and by calling, she could help us and laugh at us.

Call #1 result: "You're making your designs with the JP themselves? These people don't know what they're doing. They're the rock bottom." People apparently go to them to put minor ads in, the JP gets "creative liberties," or it offers free assistance of design.

But, we were spending 20,000 NIS on this ad. Maybe a professional job would have been in order.

Oh well. We went to work with what we had; a brief outline. We mapped out a fairly decent ad, decided on the colors, decided that the great wall of names would be distracting or to hard too read if it was with all the material, so we decided that the names would be a background, with around 85% clearly there, and the rest, we figured could be put into the next ad.

At that point something dawned on me. "He where our is the list of names, anyway?"

"Right here."

"We're putting them in Hebrew?"

"The JP will just transliterate them for us." See, this doesn't really work all that well. Hebrew may be a phonetic alphabet, but the vowels are basically where you assume them to be, and some of the letters can be pronounced differently. For instance, if Doug Flutie were to be transliterated into Hebrew, then when retransliterated back to English, it would look like Dag Ploty. My last name, when transliterated from Hebrew to English comes out to be Qadeesh.

Second call to Melanie reveals that the transliterators at the JP are almost as good as the graphic designers.

At this point we figure out which of the pictures of little kids advocating Jyhad off of Palestinian television we should place in the add, but Daniel told us over the phone that he wouldn't be able to bring the jpegs till seven. It was now half past three, so we really had nothing to do for a while. Then the transliterations came back. "They couldn't give these to us on disk?"

"Apparently not."

"This means we have to type them in manually. Right?"

^Oh, what a fun job.^ I spelled them out and he typed them in. The whole time, we were making fun of the way the names had come out. I'm almost positive that "Godless" is not really a last name. We handed in the names not in alphabetical order, but in the order of when they made contributions. So, "Moshe Batyeet," and "Michal Battit," who followed each other in order, and are obviously related, having paid at the same time, were not going to be too thrilled to see their "names" in the paper. We couldn't correct these mistakes. If we were to try to correct the spellings, and were to make any new mistakes, then it was our fault, if we just kept it the way it was, it was the paper's fault. So, when we made sure nobody was watching us, we added in "Deena + Avi Lable." (Get it? Deena, available? This was us putting in the waitresses name.) We finished the list, and were now rather bored.

Commercial break:

OK, we now return...

"OK, what if the next name were to be 'Yassir Arafat?'"

"Let's not do that..." Yosef's last name is Zucanik, so he added in "Sue Canic" to the list.

"OK, add my pseudonym in. 'Michael A. Rielk.'"

"I don't get it."

"My middle name's Ariel."

"Oh..." That looked silly, an English middle initial was out of place, I replaced Rielk with my other one, "Michael Ari Elkad."

It was now around six...and everything was done. I think we added in some more silly names, we stayed away from, like, Ben Dover, Phil McCracken, or Chuck Wagon, and we also, despite my requests, avoided using Arafat, Assad, the Iatolla, etc., or any posthumous figures. But if I recall correctly, a few of his old girl friends made it on, and I may have thrown in a baseball player. I maybe wrong on these, but the point is, we just waited. Seven o'clock went by, we shmoozed, eight, nine, still sitting around. Nine-thirty Daniel shows up. "What? I said I'd be here at nine thirty." It takes either a lot of nerve or a lot of stupidity to lie to two people, when all three know full well that it's a lie. Whatever, we let it pass. We had made a really good ad in good time, and all we needed were the final JPEGS.

He sees a copy of the add, he tears it up.

"Did you two do this?" He must be one of those people who asks his dog if he was the one who took the dump on the carpet.

"Yes."

"Why can't you see all the names?"

"Because it appeared disorienting. We determined that the focus should be the message."

"THESE PEOPLE PAID TO HAVE THEIR NAMES IN THE PAPER."

"And most of them are visible, the rest can have it in there in the next ad."

"This is the big one."

"Well, are you spending 20 K on this ad for the people who've already contributed, or to the uninformed." He ignored that. He starts screaming, Yosef and I are trying to calm down our fists. He redoes the entire ad, which actually had to be done, because, as Melanie said, the graphic artist messed up, and did the whole thing in pica instead of inches.

So, we tried to make it look better as he was doing it, but what we kept getting were, "I hear what you're saying, I don't agree with it, but I hear it." Yosef and I had to continuously walk the other one of us into the other room to calm the other one down. Our only consolation were those fake names that we were going to have taken out were being left in, unbeknownst to him. JP personnel who were in the building tried to calmly tell him that perhaps ours was better, he furiously responded that perhaps he'd withdraw the ad. (This is the day before printing.)

At around 12:30 Yosef pointed out that the photo shots really should have not only the quotes, but also the quotes from the Palestinian Covenant, to show that it was still in use, seeing as how one of the main goals of the organization was to try to make the Palestinian Covenant either brought to the attention of the world, and ideally dropped by the Palestinians.

"Yosef, I don't know who you think you are, or what your position in this organization is. But I am in charge, and I will be for quite a while."

I left when I heard that.

Yosef stuck around in the organization to collect two more pay checks, then he quit as angrily as I did.
��

Get me outa here!!!

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Michael Kadish

"Between the ages of 16 and 60 no man is completely sane except for the 10 minutes immediately following orgasm."-Dapper Dan Collins
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