BY GARY JOHNSON
Reprinted from Loose Change (TCBMag.com)

1. Was fortunate to be at Neil Young’s Bridge Concert last Sunday. An amazing event, in an outdoor amphitheater in Mountain View. Jack White; K.D. Lang (forgot how incredible she was); Ray LaMontagne (“Trouble!”); Lucinda Williams; Steve Martin; Flaming Lips (a fav of mine—disappointed); Gary Jones, Jr.; Guns N’ Roses (Axl lives!); and legend Neil with Crazy Horse. Peak experience: being “there.” Jack White did some Stripes and Blunderbuss stuff, but his band was all New Orleans honky tonk. Absolutely Killer.

2. Spotted the guy who does the Men’s Wearhouse commercials (“I guarantee it”). Huge head, huger nose, all stuck on a tiny body. He was sucking on a reefer like there was no tomorrow. No doubt medicinal.

3. Donald Trump should sit down and shut his big trap-door mouth up. He’s all snake oil and brings nothing to the national conversation.

4. It takes twice as much to do business today as it did three years ago. It’s amazing how much more demanding the work is and clients are, all for fewer dollars.

5. The movement toward clients demanding metric-based payments is becoming problematic. It started with ad agencies getting banged on to show more ROI (no argument there), but now the agencies and clients are banging on media for the same. The problem is, clients and even agencies are simply shifting their risk to vendors. What’s the outcome? Good vendors walking and salivating, mediocre vendors picking up the slack. Who wins? Not the client and certainly not the consumer. There’s a better way.

6. Everyone understands that no matter who is elected, the ultimate solutions are the same. Right? OK, just making sure. We don’t have options.

7. War of any kind makes absolutely no sense anymore.

8. When it comes to old friends, it all turns into love at the end.

9. My big brother had a bypass yesterday. He’s good. It’s a miracle. Like transplants, a damn miracle. Medicine gets a bad rap often, perhaps rightly so, but when you see it at work saving your child or your brother, you realize what a dazzling technology it really is.

Editor’s Note: Gary Johnson is President of MSP Communications in Minneapolis, MN and authors the blog Loose Change for TCBmag.com.