About a year ago, I was channel surfing (the only kind of surfing I’ll ever do), and saw a channel featuring a game between the San Francisco 49’ers and the New York Giants. Ooh, I thought, this must be a replay of that great NFC Championship Game from 2011. So I clicked on the channel and saw…a video game between the two teams. It was a video of two people playing a Madden Football video game. I thought, “This must be the end of civilization as we know it.” But recently, John told me about the Pickleball Channel. All pickleball all the time. And so I looked. And there it was. Did you have any idea people are so enamored with pickleball that they want to watch it on tv? And did you know that there are pickleball teams? And did you have any idea that basketball great Kevin Durant bought one of the aforementioned pickleball teams? Said Durant (yes he actually said this) “We really, really want to leave our mark from day one on how hard this team is going to play and how successful we’re going to be as a group.” Inspiring words, to be sure. Makes me want to watch. But there you have it, people really watch this garb…uhh, stuff. Don’t people have anything better to do? Like read a book (or at least listen to one on tape) or do a crossword puzzle or drink a bottle of bleach?

But people don’t read so much anymore, and that makes us lazy, at least when it comes to language. Over the years in advertising I’ve watched the language get obliterated. So a “request” becomes an “ask.” As in, “The client has an ask…” I’ve got an ask for you, right here. Other favorites are, “I have a hard stop at 5pm.” Or, “Let’s reloop after the meeting.” Or (warning: this one is really gross) “That’s our BHAG.” A BHAG, I kid you not, stands for Big Hairy Aggressive Goals.” Oh those marketers are so clever, aren’t they? Let’s take it up in OND (short for the 4th quarter of the year or October, November, December). Whenever I heard this I’d have to figure out which months OND stood for and by the time I did, the speaker was three paragraphs ahead of me. Another example of business speak is the term “journey.” Life is a journey. You can go on a journey of self-fulfillment or sef-discovery or self-flagellation for all I care. Just don’t call it a journey. Journey is the band that sung the last song in the last episode of the Sopranos, Don’t Stop Believin’.” And you can’t convince us otherwise.

So as you go on your individual journeys of self-knowledge this weekend, think of us and our individual weight-loss journeys (but not before that generous helping of pie ala mode for dessert).

Andy and John