Greetings from the City of Excellence!

by Mike Nagel

In the early days of the pandemic, I heard a podcast that explained the calculation economists used to decide whether or not to shut down the U.S. economy.

The calculation required them to estimate the dollar value of a human being. If the cost of all the human beings lost during the pandemic was cheaper than the cost of shutting down the economy, the country would stay open for business.

The number they came up with for the value of a human being was: ten million smackeroos.

…

Happy Thanksgiving from beautiful Plano, Texas—“The City of Excellence”— home of the Frito Lay Corporation, Bank of America, and the Keurig Dr Pepper Group, previously the Dr Pepper Snapple Group, who I used to write billboards for back in my advertising days.

I wrote a billboard that said: “Dr Pepper”

I wrote a billboard that said: “Snapple”

I helped name a new flavor of iced tea. This was part of Snapple’s short-lived and wildly unpopular low-calorie iced tea line. The secret ingredient was water.

I wrote three hundred and seventy-five names, printed out single column in ten point font.

The one they went with was: Peach.

When you work in advertising, you get used to wasting most of your time on stupid crap that probably will never—and probably should never—see the light of day. It’s part of the job. Usually, you get paid either way.

In 1974, the poet John Ashbery did an interview for Poetry Miscellany magazine.

“I waste a lot of time,” he said. “Poetry disequips you for the requirements of life.”

Normally, I wouldn’t say advertising and poetry have anything to do with each other but in this case they happen to have something in common. Huge time wasters, both of them.

…

A lot of famous artists worked in advertising before, during, or sometimes after their success in more respectable creative endeavors.

Norman Rockwell made piles of ads for Coca Cola, Corn Flakes, Sun Maid, The Crest Toothpaste Company. Salvador Dali once painted a loving portrait of a Datsun 610 station wagon. Andy Warhol did a magazine ad for Lifesavers.

“Please do not lick this page!” the copy said.

It’s impossible to know for sure why these all-time great artists wasted so much time on such stupid crap, but it’s easy to guess. They did it for the paycheck, of course.

I don’t blame anyone for doing anything for a paycheck. Most of us throw away our entire lives the minute someone offers us one. The famous literary writer Dorothy Parker was once asked what her biggest inspiration was. “Need of money, dear,” she said.

…

This year we went to my parents’ house for Thanksgiving. They live in a town named after a famous cartoon coyote, in a neighborhood guarded 24/7 by minimum wage teenagers with bananas in their gun holsters. They ask who you’re here to see.

“I’m here to see my parents,” I say.

“Your parents?” they say. “Never heard of ‘em.”

My parents have lived in this neighborhood since I was a little kid. Since 1999. They bought a tasteful one-story here not long after we moved to Texas, relocated against our will from beautiful Southern California. We came for my dad’s job. He’d been offered a paycheck at a giant Canadian corporation called Northern Telecom. Later they called themselves Nortel. Then they didn’t call themselves anything. They’d gone bankrupt—kaput!—along with most of my dad’s life savings and self-confidence.

He’d thrown away seventeen years of his life working for that big, dumb Canadian monstrosity, all because they’d offered him a paycheck.

At one point, Nortel was so big it accounted for one third of the entire Toronto stock market. It had 94,000 employees, of which my dad was one.

…

Before his company went kaput along with most of his life savings, self-confidence, and one third of the Toronto stock market, my dad took me to work with him one Friday in a big, blue tower off US75.

There was a food court in the lobby. Fountain fixtures in the courtyards. The whole place had the pleasant, disinfected smell of a Holiday Inn.

I was eight years old and wore shiny black dress shoes, a button-down shirt, and a clip-on tie. I carried a briefcase full of fruit snacks. I wanted to be ready in case anyone was handing out paychecks.

In the elevator, a man in a Tommy Bahama button-down elbowed my dad. “You didn’t tell him about casual Fridays?” he said.

It gets a bad rap, but I’ve always liked working in offices. For one thing, there are casual Fridays. There are free pens. Sometimes there are donuts in the breakroom. They’ve all been cut in half.

Every office I’ve ever worked in has been chock full of the same funny, kind, thoughtful wierdos you can find everywhere else in the world if you know what you’re looking at. They’re worth ten million smackeroos a pop. Most of them don’t know that.

When I’m at my office now—a big white building off US635, next to the international headquarters for 7-Eleven—I don’t walk around like I own the place. I walk around like the place owns me.

…

I’m not a very thankful person, but I’m working on it. If you’re not careful, your whole life can go by without you stopping to appreciate a single minute of it. Half of mine already has.

On Thanksgiving Day, we sat around a bright white folding table in my parents’ backyard, in their neighborhood that’s guarded 24/7 by minimum wage teenagers with bananas in their gun holsters. We ate brisket and green beans and macaroni salad.

The theme of this year’s Thanksgiving meal was: Texas Style!

My sister and brother were here. So were their two spouses. So were their four kids. Three my little brother’s, and one—the newest—my older sister’s. She didn’t think she could have kids. This kid is what you might call an Honest to God Miracle. I don’t believe in miracles, but it’s hard to ignore the fact that there’s an extra kid crawling around here lately.

With the exception of J and myself, everyone in my family believes in god big time.

They think there’s a loving, generous, emotionally-sane being at the center of the universe, working all things out for good, loving all the little children, thinking each and every one of them is precious in his sight.

How dumb!

“Hey dummies!” I say when I see them.

“Hey!” they say.

Sometimes I think my family feels a little awkward about the fact that they’re all going to float up to beautiful, sunny, pearly-white heaven when they die while I spend eternity weeping and gnashing my teeth in the cold, dark pit of hell. Sometimes I feel awkward about that too. It’s an awkward situation.

“But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur,” the Bible tells us in Revelation.

Awkward!

To make things even more awkward, I recently became an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church, headquartered in Modesto, California, the land of milk and almonds.

The Universal Life Church’s motto is this: “Getting Ordained Online Is Fast, Free, & Easy!”

In the 1970s, the Universal Life Church faced a minor controversy when it was sued by the Internal Revenue Service for unpaid taxes. It seems the IRS didn’t think that a church that doesn’t believe in anything deserved tax exemption. They thought that privilege should be reserved for churches that were completely out of their goddam minds. The kind of places that believe in grape juice that turns into human blood and saltines that turn into body parts. The IRS thought that level of batshit craziness deserved to be rewarded.

The controversy was resolved when a federal court ruled that it’s not up to the IRS to tell churches how crazy they have to be before they can stop paying their taxes. Sanity should not be penalized. And anyway, the Universal Life Church most certainly does believe in something. They believe that getting ordained online is fast, free, and easy.

As an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church, I can tell you from experience: it is.

I got ordained so that I could get my good friend Matt hitched to his supercool girlfriend, Kaelyn. They live in Hollywood and eat cheeses I’ve never heard of.

Epoisses. Mimolette. Pule.

“Want some Pule?” they say.

“Never heard of it,” I say.

I met Matt back in my advertising days. Back when I was wasting most of my time on stupid crap that would never—and should never—see the light of day. I’d meant to do something important with my life. Instead I went into marketing. Here’s what happened: They offered me a paycheck.

My job was to write junk mail letters to people convincing them to do all sorts of things they overwise would almost certainly never do. That’s my job still. My first day as a Jr. advertising copywriter at the ad agency, Matt  taught me a very important lesson about advertising.

“When you’re writing a letter to someone,” he said, “always start with hello.”

…

Hello!

It’s Tuesday, December 5th, 2023, and I’ve been making a list of all the things I’m thankful for. I recite it to myself at night in bed before I fall asleep.

It takes about five seconds.

My wife, J, is first on the list. Then our dog, Ollie. Then our cat, Mozart. Then my job in marketing, which is a pointless waste of time like all jobs in marketing, but they pay me a big fat paycheck every other Friday, deposited directly into my Bank of America bank account, thank you very much.

Then I say thank you for my health, which I’ve come to realize is a fleeting and precious gift after watching my father-in-law suffer a devastating mindfuck of a stroke this past Mother’s Day.

Then I’m done.

At first, as a committed non-believer—an ordained minister of the Universal Life Church—I didn’t know who I should thank for these good and perfect gift s from above.

Then I knew.

I should thank my lucky stars.

“Are you there, my lucky stars?” I think now before I fall asleep. “It’s me, Mike!”

…

After my dad’s job went kaput along with most of his life savings, self-confidence, and one third of the Toronto stock market, he went a little nuts for a while. Nobody blamed him. It’s natural to go nuts. Plenty of funny, kind, thoughtful wierdos have. Some of them called him up.

“Join the club,” they said.

Here’s what happened: My dad stopped sleeping. Then he stopped eating. Then he lost thirty-five pounds, straight out of his face and neck. He was nothing but a skinny, electric ball of anxiety all the time, worrying about the same thing people have always worried about since the invention of standardized currency exchange. He was worried about money.

Nobody had told him he was worth ten million smackeroos.

Back then, whenever I’d go over to my parents’ house for dinner—which became, and has remained, a rare occasion—I’d find Bible verses written on colorful 3x5 cards and taped to the bathroom mirrors.

The one about God working out all things for good. The one about God having plans to prosper us and not to harm us. The one about each and every one of us being fearfully and wonderfully made by a loving, generous, emotionally-sane creator.

How dumb!

.

Ron Rolheiser, the Canadian priest and spiritual writer, says that the opposite of faith isn’t doubt, it’s anxiety.

The American Psychiatric Association says that anxiety is the most common mental health condition there is. More common than dandruff, near-sightedness, and the flu. More common than bad breath. One third of us will turn into a skinny, electric ball of anxiety at least once in our lives.

Here’s what the Anxiety Disorders Association of America has to say about it: “Join the club!”

…

I’m not a poet, but I am completely useless.

When the poet John Ashbery said that poetry disequips you for the requirements of life, I knew what he was talking about. I’ve never felt equipped for a single thing in my entire life.

When it comes to life, I’m as useless as a poet.

As a person who sometimes makes literature in his spare time the way that some people plant herb gardens or play PlayStation 2, I am sometimes invited onto podcasts to talk about my views on literature. For example, I am sometimes asked what literature is.

“That’s easy,” I say. “Literature is useless.”

There’s plenty of great writing that isn’t useless, of course. The Fodor’s Travel Guide to Greenland, for example. Various articles in WIRED magazine. The Bible. But none of these things are literature, I say. They’re far too useful for that.

“Same goes for art,” I say. “Pointless!”

Again: There are lots of wonderful pictures and paintings that aren’t pointless. Various ads for Coca Cola, Corn Flakes, and The Crest Toothpaste Company, for example. A loving portrait of a Datsun 610 station wagon. A certain ad for Lifesavers.

“Please do not lick this page!” the copy says.

Whenever someone I know is feeling useless, I remind them that they’re in good company. Many of our all-time great artist, writers, and poets were useless, too.

Disequipped for life.

Whenever someone I know is feeling useless, I say: “Join the club!”

…

There aren’t any perks to being an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church. You get a certificate in the mail. You get a laminated business card you can stick in your wallet. You can marry people. Technically, anybody can.

According to Section 2.302 of the Texas Family Code, a wedding is valid if it was performed by any person with a “reasonable appearance of authority.”

According to the Texas State Law Library website, anybody who believes they can marry people can marry people.

“If they review the law, and believe they can perform the marriage ceremony,” the Texas Law Library website says, “then they can perform the ceremony.”

When it comes to marrying people in Texas, if you think you can, and you look like you can, then you can.

Texas Style!

As the minister of my good friend Matt ’s wedding, I am expected to offer at least a few of my thoughts on love and marriage.

I’ve been married for fourteen years, in love for sixteen, and I still don’t know the first thing about it. I just try to keep the kitchen clean, order us both some Chinese food every once in a while, and see if J wants anything from the store.

“I’m going to the store,” I say. “Want anything?”

Once a day, before bed, I thank my lucky stars. “Thank you, my lucky stars!” I say.

I don’t think there’s anything particularly special about marriage. Anybody can get married. And anybody can do the marrying. The whole thing is as pointless as a poem. But I do think there’s something special about two people trying to remind each other, as often as they can, that they’re worth ten million smackeroos a pop.

“Do you promise to love each other and respect each other but most importantly to remind each other, as often as you can, that you’re worth ten million smackeroos a pop?” I wrote in my marriage speech, delivered before a small crowd of friends and family on a cold, bright Saturday in December.

…

Yesterday morning my brother-in-law, Graham, and I took some scrap metal to a junk yard here in Plano, The City of Excellence. We were getting rid of a bunch of crap from my father-in-law’s failed print shop. It went kaput earlier this year along with most of his life-savings, future earning potential, and sense of purpose in the world.

Kaput!

Here’s what happened: He had a fucking stroke.

Before his shop went kaput due to his having had a fucking stroke, he’d ordered a large number of expensive metal printing plates, the kind required to run his press. The plates were useless now except for the fact that they’re made of 100% primo aluminum.

100% primo aluminum, I’m sure you know, is worth bookoo bucks if you take it to someone who knows what they’re looking at. We took it to Andy—the owner of the Community Recycling junk yard here in The City of Excellence—a man trained in the art of knowing what he’s looking at, especially if what he’s looking at is a useless piece of crap.

Andy’s grandfather had been a junk man. And Andy’s father had been a junk man. And now Andy was a junk man, too. He made an honest living seeing the value in other people’s junk.

I liked that about Andy. I liked that he could see the value in other people’s junk. I thought that was a noble way to earn a paycheck.

I wondered if he wanted to take a look at a few poems I’d written recently.

“Ever see anything freaky?” I asked Andy while we waited for him to tally up what he owed us.

Andy smiled, leaned back in his chair, and then told us about the time a few years ago when Th e City of Excellence was tearing down the old hospital. One day, one of the demolition crews brought him a rusty metal box.

He leaned forward in his chair and looked back and forth between me and Graham with this wild look in his eyes.

“Full of legs,” he said proudly, like he’d found a box filled with cash.

Mike Nagel is the author of Duplex and Culdesac, both from Autofocus Books. He lives in Plano, Texas. Find selected nonsense at michaelscottnagel.com.