Tuesday, January 18, 2011

10 on Tuesday

10 Oscar Winners from 10 Years Ago

Watching the Golden Globe Awards Sunday just got me even more excited about the Oscars. To keep up the momentum, I'm revisiting the Academy Award winners from a decade ago, when the sure thing was Julia Roberts instead of Natalie Portman, and the question wasn't whether Jeff Bridges could repeat as Best Actor, but Tom Hanks.

Best Picture: Gladiator
Best Director: Stephen Soderberg, Traffic
Best Actor: Russell Crowe, Gladiator
Best Actress: Julia Roberts, Erin Brockovich
Best Supporting Actor: Benicio del Torro, Traffic
Best Supporting Actress: Marcia Gay Harden, Pollack
Best Original Screenplay: Cameron Crowe, Almost Famous
Best Adapted Screenplay: Stephen Gaghan, Traffic
Best Foreign Film: Taiwan, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Best Song: "Things Have Changed," Bob Dylan, Wonder Boys

Just call me "Mommy"

Take a deep, cleansing breath. Hang on to your temper. It's just annoying, that's all.

Last week, on Thursday, we were given a new assignment. Kind of a no-brainer. Revise a folder -- giving it a new photo and adding a new logo. These directions were in writing. We were told that it needed to go out end-of-day today. During the initial Thursday meeting, I reminded everyone that we had Monday off for Dr. King's birthday. No one thought losing a day would make any difference -- this project is that easy.

Friday I left the office early -- at 3:45 -- because I had an appointment to donate blood. Before my departure, I asked my art director if he had any new photo options for the cover to show me. "Not yet," I was told. I reminded him that we needed to show it to the team internally first thing Tuesday morning so that it could go out end of day Tuesday.

I got in this morning and he had parts of it done. He'd completely forgotten about dropping in the new logo. I asked him how long it would take him to be ready to present internally. He said an hour. We gave him extra time, an hour and a half. He still wasn't ready.

The account team made some small changes/suggestions. Some I agreed with, some I don't, but we're a team so we incorporating them all and letting the client decide. None of this is hard, none of this is unusual.

My art director wanted another day. Um ... no. We all agreed last week on end of day Tuesday. The time to ask for a different deadline was last week, when we discussed end of day Tuesday and the impact Monday's day off would have. Besides, this art director has nothing else on his plate. There's no reason why he can't get this all done in the remaining four hours of the work day.

Even though the art director was in all the same meetings I was, has all the same notes I have, he still has tons of questions about what he has to do. Every time I look up, he's in my doorway. He's even come by as I write this.

He's a 50 year old man, and I'm spoon feeding him as though I'm his mommy. It's making me nuts. NUTS!

I must remind myself that he's very nice, very kind, very sincere ... as well as hard of hearing. Why this means he can't read this notes he's been given, I don't know, but that's not the point. This isn't a serious problem, everything will get done. It's just annoying, that's all.