I noticed something very strange on my morning commute the other day. On page 15 of AMNewYork (a second-tier morning rag designed to leech off of its competitor, Metro) I saw a small display ad for a pet-sitting service. The ad featured a photo of a care-free cat bounding in mid-air. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I knew in my heart – I had seen that cat before. Only when I was at work a few hours later did it hit me – the cat was taken from a campy humorous jpg that perverted co-workers and college students had been forwarding to each other for years. Someone, for reasons unknown to me (but postulated upon in the next paragraph), had used that photo for this seemingly legitimate purpose.

My hope is that some young and crafty art director used that photo in the ad so that other young crafty art directors would recognize it and give him (or her, but most likely him) a small nod of recognition by posting it on his (or her) blog. So this posting is for you, young art director. There’s a whole world out there, and endless opportunities to insert phalluses, inside jokes, and references to masturbation into your work. So go out there and make me proud, but most importantly, make me laugh.